For the rootCategory definitions, whitespace characters between the log level 
and the comma before log type causes the default log level to be used (DEBUG)

  >  log4j.rootCategory=INFO , FILE

For the above rootCategory definition, the logger uses DEBUG as default for the 
log level. This is because the method "public static Level toLevel(String sArg, 
Level defaultLevel)" in the org.apache.log4j.Level class does not trim the level 
string. 

Therefore from the above definition of rootCatetory the string "INFO " is passed 
to the toLevel method. Which does not match any of the criteria in the toLevel 
method. A simple trim of the whitespace in the toLevel method would solve this 
issue. 



  /**
     Convert the string passed as argument to a level. If the
     conversion fails, then this method returns the value of
     <code>defaultLevel</code>.  
  */
  public
  static
  Level toLevel(String sArg, Level defaultLevel) {                  
    if(sArg == null)
       return defaultLevel;
    
    String s = sArg.toUpperCase();

    if(s.equals("ALL")) return Level.ALL; 
    if(s.equals("DEBUG")) return Level.DEBUG; 
    if(s.equals("INFO"))  return Level.INFO;
    if(s.equals("WARN"))  return Level.WARN;  
    if(s.equals("ERROR")) return Level.ERROR;
    if(s.equals("FATAL")) return Level.FATAL;
    if(s.equals("OFF")) return Level.OFF;
    if(s.equals("TRACE")) return Level.TRACE;
    return defaultLevel;
  }