Configuring RollingFileAppender in log4j

Question

I m working on a set of web services and we d like to have a daily rotated log   I m trying to get org apache log4j rolling RollingFileAppender from the log4j extras companion working  since the documentation suggests this is best for production environments   I have both the main log4J library  log4j-1 2 15 jar  and the log4j extras library  apache-log4j-extras-1 1 jar  on the classpath   I have the following configuration for the appender in the log4j properties file       SOAP Request Appender log4j appender request org apache log4j rolling RollingFileAppender log4j appender request File SOAPmessages log log4j appender request RollingPolicy org apache log4j rolling TimeBasedRollingPolicy log4j appender request RollingPolicy ActiveFileName  SOAPmessages- d log log4j appender request RollingPolicy FileNamePattern SOAPmessages- d log zip log4j appender request layout   org apache log4j PatternLayout log4j appender request layout ConversionPattern  d ABSOLUTE   5p  c 1   L -  m n   However  when I start the web service with log4j in debug mode I get these error messages   log4j  Parsing appender named  request   log4j  Parsing layout options for  request   log4j  Setting property  conversionPattern  to   d ABSOLUTE   5p  c 1   L -  m n   log4j  End of parsing for  request   log4j  Setting property  file  to   logs SOAPmessages log   log4j WARN Failed to set property  rollingPolicy  to value  org apache log4j rolling TimeBasedRollingPolicy    log4j WARN Please set a rolling policy for the RollingFileAppender named  request  log4j  Parsed  request  options    I ve found documentation about how to configure this appender a little sparse  so can anyone help me fix my configuration   EDIT0  Added debug mode output  rather than just the standard warnings

User · Answer

I had a similar problem and just found a way to solve it (by single-stepping through log4j-extras source, no less...)

The good news is that, unlike what's written everywhere, it turns out that you actually CAN configure TimeBasedRollingPolicy using log4j.properties (XML config not needed! At least in versions of log4j >1.2.16 see this bug report)

Here is an example:

log4j.appender.File = org.apache.log4j.rolling.RollingFileAppender
log4j.appender.File.rollingPolicy = org.apache.log4j.rolling.TimeBasedRollingPolicy
log4j.appender.File.rollingPolicy.FileNamePattern = logs/worker-${instanceId}.%d{yyyyMMdd-HHmm}.log

BTW the ${instanceId} bit is something I am using on Amazon's EC2 to distinguish the logs from all my workers -- I just need to set that property before calling PropertyConfigurator.configure(), as follow:

p.setProperty("instanceId", EC2Util.getMyInstanceId());
PropertyConfigurator.configure(p);

User · Answer

I m suspicious of the ActiveFileName property   According to the log4j javadoc  there isn t such a property on the TimeBasedRollingPolicy class    No setActiveFileName or getActiveFileName methods    I don t know what specifying an unknown property would do  but it is possible that it will cause the containing object to be abandoned  and that could lead to the warnings that you saw   Try leaving it out and seeing what happens

User · Answer

Toolbear74 is right log4j XML is required  In order to get the XML to validate the  lt param gt  tags need to be BEFORE the  lt rollingPolicy gt  I suggest setting a logging threshold  lt param name  threshold  value  info   gt   When Creating a Log4j xml file don t forget to to copy the log4j dtd into the same location   Here is an example    lt  xml version  1 0  encoding  windows-1252   gt   lt  DOCTYPE log4j configuration SYSTEM  log4j dtd   gt   lt log4j configuration gt   lt  -- Daily Rolling File Appender that compresses old files -- gt     lt appender name  file  class  org apache log4j rolling RollingFileAppender   gt        lt param name  threshold  value  info   gt        lt rollingPolicy name  file                          class  org apache log4j rolling TimeBasedRollingPolicy  gt           lt param name  FileNamePattern                  value    catalina base  logs myapp log  d yyyy-MM-dd  gz   gt           lt param name  ActiveFileName  value    catalina base  logs myapp log   gt        lt  rollingPolicy gt        lt layout class  org apache log4j EnhancedPatternLayout   gt           lt param name  ConversionPattern                  value   d ISO8601   -5p -  -26 26c 1  -  m n    gt       lt  layout gt     lt  appender gt      lt root gt       lt priority value  debug  gt  lt  priority gt       lt appender-ref ref  file    gt     lt  root gt   lt  log4j configuration gt    Considering that your setting a FileNamePattern and an ActiveFileName I think that setting a File property is redundant and possibly even erroneous  Try renaming your log4j properties and dropping in a log4j xml similar to my example and see what happens

User · Answer

Faced more issues while making this work  Here are the details    To download and add apache-log4j-extras-1 1 jar in the classpath  didn t notice this at first  The RollingFileAppender should be org apache log4j rolling RollingFileAppender instead of org apache log4j RollingFileAppender  This can give the error  log4j ERROR No output stream or file set for the appender named  file   We had to upgrade the log4j library from log4j-1 2 14 jar to log4j-1 2 16 jar    Below is the appender configuration which worked for me    lt appender name  file  class  org apache log4j rolling RollingFileAppender  gt           lt param name  threshold  value  debug    gt           lt rollingPolicy name  file              class  org apache log4j rolling TimeBasedRollingPolicy  gt               lt param name  FileNamePattern  value  logs MyLog- d yyyy-MM-dd-HH-mm  log gz    gt               lt  -- The below param will keep the live update file in a different location-- gt               lt  -- param name  ActiveFileName  value  current MyLog log   -- gt           lt  rollingPolicy gt            lt layout class  org apache log4j PatternLayout  gt               lt param name  ConversionPattern  value   5p  d ISO8601    t   x   c -  m n    gt           lt  layout gt   lt  appender gt

User · Answer

Update  at least as early as 2013  see Mubashar s comment  this started working     According to Log4jXmlFormat you cannot configure it with log4j properties  but only using the XML config format      Note that TimeBasedRollingPolicy can only be configured with xml  not log4j properties   Unfortunately  the example log4j xml they provide doesn t work either   log4j ERROR Parsing error on line 14 and column 76 log4j ERROR Element type  rollingPolicy  must be declared      log4j WARN Please set a rolling policy for the RollingFileAppender named  FILE

User · Answer

Regarding error  log4j ERROR Element type  rollingPolicy  must be declared   Use a log4j jar version newer than log4j-1 2 14 jar  which has a log4j dtd defining rollingPolicy  of course you also need apache-log4j-extras-1 1 jar Check if any other third party jars you are using perhaps have an older version of log4j jar packed inside  If so  make sure your log4j jar comes first in the order before the third party containing the older log4j jar

User · Answer

In Log4j2  the  extras  lib is not mandatory any more  Also the configuration format has changed   An example is provided in the Apache documentation       property filename    foo bar test log  appender rolling type   RollingFile appender rolling name   RollingFile appender rolling fileName     filename  appender rolling filePattern    foo bar rolling test1- d MM-dd-yy-HH-mm-ss - i log gz appender rolling layout type   PatternLayout appender rolling layout pattern    d  p  C 1     t   m n appender rolling policies type   Policies appender rolling policies time type   TimeBasedTriggeringPolicy appender rolling policies time interval   2 appender rolling policies time modulate   true appender rolling policies size type   SizeBasedTriggeringPolicy appender rolling policies size size 100MB appender rolling strategy type   DefaultRolloverStrategy appender rolling strategy max   5   logger rolling name   com example my class logger rolling level   debug logger rolling additivity   false logger rolling appenderRef rolling ref   RollingFile

User · Answer

You have a bad package name  org apache log4j rolling RollingFileAppender    The correct one is   org apache log4j RollingFileAppender

[java] Configuring RollingFileAppender in log4j

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