If you don't have the fortune of the log4j-1.2.jar on your classpath as Renko points out in his comment, you will only see the message no log4j2 configuration file found.
This is a problem if there is an error in your configuration file, as you will not be told where the problem lies upon start-up.
For instance if you have a log4j2.yaml file which log4j2 fails to process, because for example, you have not configured a YAML parser for your project, or your config is simply incorrect. You will encounter the no log4j2 configuration file found message, with no further information. This is the case even if you have a valid log4j2.xml file, as log4j2 will only attempt to process the first configuration file it finds.
I've found the best way to debug the problem is to explicitly state the configuration file you wish to use as per the command line argument mentioned above.
-Dlog4j.configurationFile=
Hopefully this will help you pinpoint if the issue is actually caused by your classloader not finding the log4j2 configuration file or something else in your configuration.
Update
You can also use the below property to change the default level of the status logger to get further information:
-Dorg.apache.logging.log4j.simplelog.StatusLogger.level=<level>