[FIXED] spring-boot-logger.log file location for deployed spring boot app

Issue

I followed this tutorial to setup spring boot logging in my app and it work correctly in my development environment but not after I deploy the app.

The spring app log files should go to ${CATALINA_BASE}/logs/spring-boot-logger.log when app is deployed. How do I configure that?

My logback-spring.xml:

<property name="LOGS" value="./logs" />

<appender name="Console"
          class="ch.qos.logback.core.ConsoleAppender">
    <layout class="ch.qos.logback.classic.PatternLayout">
        <Pattern>
            %black(%d{ISO8601}) %highlight(%-5level) [%blue(%t)] %yellow(%C{1.}): %msg%n%throwable
        </Pattern>
    </layout>
</appender>

<appender name="RollingFile"
          class="ch.qos.logback.core.rolling.RollingFileAppender">
    <file>${LOGS}/spring-boot-logger.log</file>
    <encoder
            class="ch.qos.logback.classic.encoder.PatternLayoutEncoder">
        <Pattern>%d %p %C{1.} [%t] %m%n</Pattern>
    </encoder>

    <rollingPolicy
            class="ch.qos.logback.core.rolling.TimeBasedRollingPolicy">
        <!-- rollover daily and when the file reaches 10 MegaBytes -->
        <fileNamePattern>${LOGS}/archived/spring-boot-logger-%d{yyyy-MM-dd}.%i.log
        </fileNamePattern>
        <timeBasedFileNamingAndTriggeringPolicy
                class="ch.qos.logback.core.rolling.SizeAndTimeBasedFNATP">
            <maxFileSize>10MB</maxFileSize>
        </timeBasedFileNamingAndTriggeringPolicy>
    </rollingPolicy>
</appender>

<!-- LOG everything at INFO level -->
<root level="info">
    <appender-ref ref="RollingFile" />
    <appender-ref ref="Console" />
</root>

<!-- LOG "com.baeldung*" at TRACE level -->
<logger name="xxx.app" level="trace" additivity="false">
    <appender-ref ref="RollingFile" />
    <appender-ref ref="Console" />
</logger>

When I start the app on the deployment server using this configuration I get:

java.lang.IllegalStateException: Logback configuration error detected:
ERROR in ch.qos.logback.core.rolling.RollingFileAppender[RollingFile] - Failed to create parent directories for [/./logs/spring-boot-logger.log]
ERROR in ch.qos.logback.core.rolling.RollingFileAppender[RollingFile] - openFile(./logs/spring-boot-logger.log,true) call failed. java.io.FileNotFoundException: ./logs/spring-
boot-logger.log (No such file or directory)

I also tried configuring logging.file.name = ${catalina.base}/logs/${service.name}.log in application.properties like suggested here but then I receive an error when running mvn clean install locally

[ERROR] contextLoads  Time elapsed: 0.004 s  <<< ERROR!
java.lang.IllegalStateException: Failed to load ApplicationContext
Caused by: java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: Could not resolve placeholder 'catalina.base' in value "${catalina.base}/logs/${service.name}.log"

Solution

You want to write your log file to the ${CATALINA_BASE}/logs directory, but you used ./logs in your configuration file. This would of course work if the working directory of your Tomcat server were ${CATALINA_BASE}, but it is unsafe to assume anything about the working directory of the Tomcat server (and in your case it's not ${CATALINA_BASE}).

Use variable substitution in your logback-spring.xml file:

<property name="LOGS" value="${catalina.base:-.}/logs" />

The default value . will be used when there is no catalina.base property (i.e. when you use the embedded Tomcat).

Answered By - Piotr P. Karwasz