[LOG4J2-3181] When custom configurationFile is missing then no fallback configuration is used

• Type: Bug
• Status: Open
• Priority: Major
• Resolution: Unresolved
• Affects Version/s: 2.13.0
• Component/s: Configuration
• Assignee: Ralph Goers
• Reporter: Krzysztof Gąsior
• Created: 27/Oct/21 16:28
• Updated: 27/Oct/21 22:45

Description

So I am using following setting to define 'external' logger configuration file

-Dlog4j.configurationFile=/etc/xxx/log4j2.properties

I also put a default config inside the package with assumption to use it as a fallback, however if the 'external' configuration file does not exist following occurs:

ERROR StatusLogger File not found in file system or classpath: /etc/xxx/log4j2.properties
ERROR StatusLogger Reconfiguration failed: No configuration found for '27bc2616' at 'null' in 'null'

and as a result logger is not configured at all and not logging anything, despite the fallback config is inside the package. There is a similar problem described in following SO ticket

In such situation I would expect log4j2 to follow the automatic configuration path as defined here: https://logging.apache.org/log4j/2.x/manual/configuration.html
and use properties from class path or if those not found to fallback to a default settings. If not as a default behavior there at least should be way to force it to work that way.

Note that there is also a second issue, if define multiple configs via configurationFile, even if single of those fails to be found then same issue as above happens, and we get no configuration at all.