Strange problem

[Frank W. Zammetti]

Hi all,

I'm having an odd little problem here...

I have a webapp where I use Log4J underneath JCL.  I use an XML config
file and Log4J is initialized in a ServletContextListener.  The code in
the listener does some hackery on the XML... basically, I construct a real
path to my log files on the fly, update the XML and then configure logging
using the updated XML.  Now, before anyone tells me how there are 10 other
and clearly better ways to do that (I have no doubt there are), the bottom
line is that this works and has worked for over a year.  I've moved it
between Tomcat (on both Windows and Linux) and Websphere (and earlier
version) with no issue.

The problem now though is that I'm deploying it on a newer Websphere
(5.1.1) on Windows... what's happening is that the log files are created
and are locked (i.e., I can't delete them), and they are where they are
supposed to be (a logs directory under my webapp), so everything SEEMS to
be starting up fine and as expected.  However, no messages are making it
to the log files.  They are showing up in Websphere's stdout and stderr
logs instead.  So, I'm not sure this is a Log4J problem or strictly a
Websphere issue, but I'm hoping someone has seem a similar issue and can
shed some light on it.

I'm not seeing any messages indicating problems anywhere, for all intents
and purposes it appears like it should be working just fine.

Note that this very same code runs perfectly as you see it below (I did
remove spaces and comments to shorten the post though) under Tomcat, so it
truly is something Websphere-related, but whether I can configure Log4J in
some different way or not to overcome it is what I don't know.

Here's my config file:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<!DOCTYPE log4j:configuration SYSTEM "log4j.dtd">
<log4j:configuration xmlns:log4j="http://jakarta.apache.org/log4j/";>
  <appender name="CONSOLE" class="org.apache.log4j.ConsoleAppender">
    <param name="Threshold" value="DEBUG"/>
    <layout class="org.apache.log4j.PatternLayout">
      <param name="ConversionPattern" value="%d %-5p %l %x- %m\n" />
    </layout>
  </appender>
  <appender name="TOAINFOFILE" class="org.apache.log4j.FileAppender">
    <param name="Threshold" value="DEBUG"/>
    <param name="File" value="c:\\tomcat\\webapps\\toa\\logs\\toaInfo.log"/>
    <param name="Append" value="false"/>
    <layout class="org.apache.log4j.PatternLayout">
      <param name="ConversionPattern" value="%d %-5p %l %x- %m\n" />
    </layout>
  </appender>
  <appender name="TOAERRORFILE" class="org.apache.log4j.FileAppender">
    <param name="Threshold" value="ERROR"/>
    <param name="File" value="c:\\tomcat\\webapps\\toa\\logs\\toaError.log"/>
    <param name="Append" value="false"/>
    <layout class="org.apache.log4j.PatternLayout">
      <param name="ConversionPattern" value="%d %-5p %l %x- %m\n" />
    </layout>
  </appender>
  <appender name="TOAAGINGFILE" class="org.apache.log4j.FileAppender">
    <param name="Threshold" value="DEBUG"/>
    <param name="File" value="c:\\tomcat\\webapps\\toa\\logs\\toaAging.log"/>
    <param name="Append" value="false"/>
    <layout class="org.apache.log4j.PatternLayout">
      <param name="ConversionPattern" value="%d %-5p %l %x- %m\n" />
    </layout>
  </appender>
  <category name="com.company" additivity="true">
    <appender-ref ref="CONSOLE" />
    <appender-ref ref="TOAINFOFILE" />
    <appender-ref ref="TOAERRORFILE" />
  </category>
  <category name="com.company.toa.daemonthreads.AgingProcessDaemonThread"
additivity="true">
    <appender-ref ref="TOAAGINGFILE" />
  </category>
</log4j:configuration>

And here's my ContextListener:

import java.io.BufferedReader;
import java.io.ByteArrayInputStream;
import java.io.File;
import java.io.FileReader;
import java.io.InputStream;
import javax.servlet.ServletContext;
import javax.servlet.ServletContextEvent;
import javax.servlet.ServletContextListener;
import org.apache.commons.logging.Log;
import org.apache.commons.logging.LogFactory;
import org.apache.log4j.LogManager;
import org.apache.log4j.xml.DOMConfigurator;
public class TOAServletContextListener implements ServletContextListener {
  public void contextInitialized(ServletContextEvent sce) {
    System.out.println(this.getClass().getName() +
                       " - Initializing Logging...");
    try {
      ServletContext sc = sce.getServletContext();
      String lConfigFile = sc.getRealPath("/WEB-INF/loggingConfig.xml");
      lPath += File.separator;
      lPath = TOAHelpers.strReplace(lPath, "\\", "\\\\");
      FileReader     fr    = new FileReader(lConfigFile);
      BufferedReader br    = new BufferedReader(fr);
      StringBuffer   sbXML = new StringBuffer();
      String         line  = "";
      while ((line = br.readLine()) != null) { sbXML.append(line); }
      br.close();
      String xml = sbXML.toString();
      xml = TOAHelpers.strReplace(xml,
            "<param name=\"File\" value=\"", "<param name=\"File\"
value=\"" +
            lPath);
      InputStream isXML = new ByteArrayInputStream(xml.getBytes());
      new DOMConfigurator().doConfigure(isXML,
                                        LogManager.getLoggerRepository());
      Log log = LogFactory.getLog(getClass());
      log.info("Log4J initialized");
    } catch (Exception e) {
      System.err.println("Exception in TOAServletContextListener(): " + e);
    }
  }
  public void contextDestroyed(ServletContextEvent sce) { }
}

Thanks in advance!

-- 
Frank W. Zammetti
Founder and Chief Software Architect
Omnytex Technologies
http://www.omnytex.com

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