Question

I am using log4net and have completely setup it up with param name=”File” value= “C:\Application.log”. Yet the file is not created in C:. I am running Windows 7 and maybe something like permissions is preventing the file from being created.

Here is the app.config:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>  
<configuration>  
  <configSections>  
    <section name="log4net" type="log4net.Config.Log4NetConfigurationSectionHandler,Log4net" />  
  </configSections>`  

  <log4net>  
    <root>  
      <level value="DEBUG" />  
      <appender-ref ref="LogFileAppender" />  
    </root>  
    <appender name="LogFileAppender“ type=“log4net.Appender.RollingFileAppender" >  
      <param name="File" value="C:\Users\Mohit\Documents\Application.log" />  
      <param name="AppendToFile" value="true" />  
      <rollingStyle value="Size" />  
      <maxSizeRollBackups value="10" />  
      <maximumFileSize value="10MB" />  
      <staticLogFileName value="true" />  
      <layout type="log4net.Layout.PatternLayout">  
        <param name="ConversionPattern“ value=“%-5p%d{yyyy-MM-dd hh:mm:ss} – %m%n" />  
      </layout>  
    </appender>  
  </log4net>  
</configuration>

Answer 1

You must provide a real file name. What you defined within your config is a folder name. Instead of:

<param name="File" value="C:\Users\Mohit\Documents" />

use something like:

<param name="File" value="C:\Users\Mohit\Documents\log.txt" />

Also, you’ll probably need elevated permissions for your application to write the log to the root c: folder. UAC won’t let you write to root folder.

Like Andy said, you’ll be better to choose some subfolder of Windows Users folder like:

c:\Users\Mohit\AppData\Local\<MyApplication>

log4net has some predefined variables you can use to target special folders. There are some questions about that here on SO:

How to specify common application data folder for log4net?

C# how to specify the appData file path in the app.config file