First, if I've miscategorized this bug, please accept my apologies. With a vanilla logging.properties in ../WEB-INF/classes and no <realm> specified in server.xml, and the <realm> specified in ROOT.xml - the logging file is created as zero length, and any messages are logged in catalina.data.log. Move the <realm> tag to server.xml and logging occurs as expected. There is a message thread on users@tomcat.apache.org with the following subject concerning this issue: "tomcat 5.5.15 - does JULI required a host tag defined realm?"
Most likely fixed.
Remy, I have downloaded and built to the latest nightly build, and the logging is working correctly. Thanks, Craig.