Change logging level in Tomcat at runtime? - java

I am using JULI logging framework in current Tomcat 7, providing a webapp specific logging.properties in my WEB-INF/classes folder.
Now I am looking for a way to change the log level of a logger at runtime.
I found several sources saying that changing the level of a logger at runtime might be possible via MBean Server. Unfortunately the appropriate MBean "java.util.logging.Logging" does not list my webapp specific logger, so I cannot execute the method "setLoggerLevel".
Does anyone know how to accomplish this? Thanks for any hints - excluding those suggesting to use log4j, that is... ;-)

Connecting JConsole to Tomcat and using the MBean tab to change the logger level is the ideal way. One issue is that the logger names don't exist unless the code has triggered the creation of a logger. You can't use the MBean to create a logger ahead of the code running. You should use JConsole to double check that the MBean itself doesn't exist.
Tomcat installs a custom LogManager that filters by the current class loader. JMX would be using the system class loader so it is possible that ClassLoaderLogManager won't return the logger names because the current classloader is not the web app classloader.
You could always create a servlet/jsp form or webservice deployed with the application to get the logger and set the level. You might have to pin each modified logger in memory to keep your logger level active. You can free the logger once the level is set back to null. You'll have to deal with security concerns with including such a page.
I wouldn't do this on a production server but you can configure a WatchedResource in tomcat that points to your logging.properties. Then any time that file is updated the web app is redeployed with the new settings. Watch out for ClassLoader leaks going that route.

Related

Logger level change for multi-tenant application as well as Package/Class logger level

here we have a use cases, we are working on a web application that will host multiple companies (tenant).
Currently, we have added company-specific log separation using MDC. It will separate the log files per company.
We want the flexibility to change the logger level at runtime for a company (tenant) specific along with package/class logger level change, as we are getting a bulk number of unwanted logs in those files.
Can anyone help me with this?
We have achieved it partially either for the Company or Package level.
· Company-specific logger level change using Turbo Filter.
· Package/Class level using Admin Centre (using Actuator endpoints)
Our question is if there is any way to change the logger level at run-time for a company-specific along with package/class.
Eg: As Our application is Hosted for two companies ACOMP & BCOMP.
Our requirement is
ACOMP should log at INFO as root logger level, also user can set few packages like com.test.samplepackage to DEBUG level.
Similarly,
BCOMP should log at DEBUG as root logger level, also user can set few packages like com.test.samplepackage to ERROR level.
Can anyone help me with this?

mixed java logging with slf4j, log4j and java.util.logging

I'm running a web application in a Weblogic server (Im not realy familiar with ).
Via JVM args a log4j config is passed with log level DEBUG to the application.
In the log file I can also find some log entries of DEBUG level.
So far so good.
During debugging I found some calls to logger.debug() that are not in the log file.
private static final org.slf4j.Logger logger = LoggerFactory.getLogger(ActionCtr.class);
The method call is definitely hit but nothing is written to a file.
If I do a step into during debugging I see in the logger:
org.slf4j.impl.JDK14LoggerAdapter(com.example.application.ActionCtr)
"java.util.logging.FileHandler.pattern" -> "%h/java%u.log"
And this leads to some questions for me (as I can not change the running application):
1) how could it bee that it uses the application is using a mixed up log4j and java.util.logging
2) How could I determine what is used in what classes?
3) There is no %h/java%u.log (~/java*.log) so I've tried to provide a java.util.logging conform properties file,
but this changed nothing - how an I determine where the running logger got its config from to configure it right?
1) how could it be that it uses the application is using a mixed up log4j and java.util.logging
Any of those logging frameworks could be used by the application directly or a dependent library that the application is using. It doesn't take too many dependencies to end up with a bunch of logging framework hitchhikers.
The SLF4J manual explains how that logging framework wrangles all of these other frameworks. This why you are seeing the org.slf4j.impl.JDK14LoggerAdapter.
How could I determine what is used in what classes?
Assuming you mean direct usages you can use Jdeps or Javap.
how an I determine where the running logger got its config from to configure it right?
The JConsole tool can access the JUL loggers at runtime. It will also show you all of the system properties which may include paths to logging.properties files.
If the application is pragmatically configuring the logging in an non-standard way then one option would be to use the java.security.debug using the access option. Run the application under a security manager will all or all required permissions but then enable access tracing.

Log info into the default log file of the server

My Dev machine has JBoss while production server is running tomcat8 on AWS.
How do I setup Log (java.util.loggin) to log into default log file in the default directory, for instance following are the default paths for log files for each server. (no 3rd party loggers please)
/log/tomcat8/catalina
jboss-4.0.4/server/some_server_conf/log/
In some code examples I've seen, a FileHandler("file.log") is provided but then this log exists locally within the project folder and is not accessible from outside in a production environment. I want the application to be part of the root logging system that appends the log info into default directories and into default files.
Lateral Thinking: Please advise if there's a totally different strategy for production servers.
Part of the reason is that it's easier to see the log files right from AWS by requesting last 100 lines and I'd like to append some additional meaningful information there regarding my application as it runs.
public class Service {
private static Logger logger = Logger.getLogger("myproject");
public Service() {
logger.log(Level.INFO, "abc");
}
}
The easiest solution would be to simply install a java.util.logging.ConsoleHandler on the root logger of your myproject. That would direct all of your project output to the tomcat8-stderr.YYYY-MM-DD.log.
Otherwise you can create a ServletContextListener and install a custom handler on the root logger of your project which formats and logs to the ServletContext.log methods.

Weblogic 12c with Log4j2 stops logging after stop/start

I got a pecurliar behaviour when we stop a war in Weblogic 12c and then start it again. For some reason beyond my understanding Log4j2 stops writing to the log. It creates a new logfile but no entries are written.
I have debugged and sees that Log4jServletContainerInitializer and Log4jServletContextListener gets called just like they do when installing the war. I didn't notice any differences (unfortunally thats only a test of my attention span).
So do you have any idea of what might differ between install and start in regards of Log4J2 in Weblogic 12c and perhaps where to look for errors?
Your problem:
For some reason beyond my understanding Log4j2 stops writing to the log. It creates a new logfile but no entries are written.
Root Cause Analysis:
It is actually happen for some issues.
If your configuration for log4j is not correctly done in
log4j.properties file.
If your append properties are not made true.
If you use two loggers like Log4J and JUL, which uses the same
appneder(Stdout).
If your log4j jar file is not properly set to your classpath.
Solution:
Ans-1:
In your classpath, there is a setting of library that intercepts Log4J calls and converts them to JUL calls. Then it may cause this issue. So specify correctly that which importing is actually needed. java.util.logging.Logger or org.apache.log4j.Logger
Ans-2:
Properties are case sensitive. so your file name would be same with appender. and don't forget to make the appender to true.
log4j.appender.mainAppender.File=yourLogFile.log
log4j.appender.mainAppender.Append=true
Ans-3:
for Hibernate in particular, include slf4j in order to ensure that all the loggers co-operate with it.
Ans-4:
Sometimes this problem occurs for tomcat. If tomcat security enabled, and there were several permissions missing from the policy files, then this type of issue occurs. After giving permissions, it will work fine.
What Log4J does actually?
Log4J will only print messages which are info and up, and it will print them to both console and file. You can change this behaviour by changing INFO to ALL in log4j.rootLogger. If that doesn't work, add -Dlog4j.debug=true to your JVM arguments - that will make Log4J emit debug messages about itself (to System.out), so you can see what's going on.
Credit goes to #Isaac
Resource Link:
Log4J creates log file but does not write to it
Issue with log4j log not writing to file
UPDATE for log4j2:
Thanks a lot to rgoers for pointing the issue for log4j2. I am updating.
Root cause analysis from P.O.V of wilkinsona
When a restart is triggered, DevTools runs and then clears all registered shutdown hooks. One such hook is Log4J2's DefaultShutdownCallbackRegistry. Log4jContextFactory maintains a reference to the DefaultShutdownCallbackRegistry and LogManager holds a static reference to Log4jContextFactory. Log4J2's classes are loaded by the app classloader which means that there's a single LogManager, Log4jContextFactory, and DefaultShutdownCallbackRegistry shared across restarts.
When DefaultShutdownCallbackRegistry is run as part of a restart it stops the LoggerContext and sets its own state to STOPPED. As the restart proceeds a new LoggerContext is created and an attempt is made to register a shutdown callback for it with the registry. This fails as the registry's state is still STOPPED.
Solution:
Wilkinsona offered a hack method to solve the issue. That is given below. Try to cope with it.
Clearing out the callbacks in the registry before the Restarter runs the JVM's shutdown hooks is better. It prevents the exception from occurring, and logging continues to work after a restart.
private void prepareLog4J2ForRestart() throws Exception {
if (ClassUtils.isPresent("org.apache.logging.log4j.LogManager",
getClass().getClassLoader())) {
LoggerContextFactory factory = LogManager.getFactory();
Field field = ReflectionUtils.findField(factory.getClass(),
"shutdownCallbackRegistry");
ReflectionUtils.makeAccessible(field);
ShutdownCallbackRegistry shutdownCallbackRegistry = (ShutdownCallbackRegistry) ReflectionUtils
.getField(field, factory);
Field hooksField = ReflectionUtils
.findField(shutdownCallbackRegistry.getClass(), "hooks");
ReflectionUtils.makeAccessible(hooksField);
#SuppressWarnings("unchecked")
Collection<Cancellable> state = (Collection<Cancellable>) ReflectionUtils
.getField(hooksField, shutdownCallbackRegistry);
state.clear();
}
}
Resource Link:
Log4j 2.4 breaks rc1 devtools
Call context.close() rather than shutdown hook in DevTools restart
UPDATE2:
What kind of listener to add to my JEE application, to get the
expected behaviour?
For writing a listener, you can follow the tutorials
ServletContextListener Example
Writing a Listener Class
Servlet Listener Example – ServletContextListener,
HttpSessionListener and ServletRequestListener

Need solution to webapp errors from Tomcat trying to log events after logger has been disposed

Enviroment: JSF 2.0, RichFaces 3.3.3, Facelets 1.1.15B1, Spring Framework 3.x, WebFlow 2.1, MyBatis 3.0.1, Oracle 10/11 g backend, SLF4j into Log4j. Well thats probably TMI since my issue is only a logging problem but better to be too thorough than not.
Anyways... I just setup SLF4j & log4j so now all of the internal facelets log msgs are being dumped into log4j & I can actually see them. In addition I setup Tomcat to also dump to log4j instead of it's custom version of JULI. Upon doing this everything appeared to be working great.... until i shut down the app.
Midway through the shutdown process my app started barfing up errors left 'n right because (which makes sense) Tomcat is trying to grab a logger instance AFTER spring has already cleaned up the logger bean.
Anyone familiar with this? I imagine it must be a common problem for anyone who has Tomcat using the non-standard logging mechanism. What is the best way around this?
I thought maybe if I just raised the log level then Tomcat wouldn't even try to log msgs because of the level req.s but the problem occurs when tomcat is trying to retrieve a logger instance so that didn't work.
I would move the Logger higher in the food chain.
I personally never configured log4j with spring relying on its own configuration mechanism (and hunting for where the heck it finds the properties file it is using in the process).
If you can you can opt to completely remove log4j from your war and rely on the log4j in the common tomcat library classpath. Then of course you are at the mercy of the tomcat configuration and you cannot access the log from inside your app, but it is always there during the complete lifecycle of your app.

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