Question

is it possible to change the location of tomcats logs/localhost_access_log.* log file, without changing the server.xml file?

Best solution would be a SystemProperty or environment variable. I just don’t want to change the default tomcat installation of this, because I roll out dozens of tomcat to diffent hosts, which makes this a tiring and error-prone process.

Thanks

Answer 1

Solved this by taking the following steps:

• On deployment a context file is generated in tomcat_home/conf/Catalina/localhost/<contextpath>.xml:

  < Context path=”/contextpath”>
  < Valve className=”org.apache.catalina.valves.AccessLogValve”
  rotatable=”false”
  directory=”/the/directory/to/log/to”
  prefix=”access_log”
  suffix=”.log”
  pattern=”combined”
  />

• cron that removed the tomcat_home/logs/localhost_access_log.*.txtfiles, since the Context/Valve-configuration is only additive and doesn’t overwrites an existing AccessLogValve.

I know that this writes the logfile twice, and you have to know your contextpath, both is not a problem for my usecase. Another option is to remove the complete Valve tag in the server.xml (it changes the server.xml but is easy to automate).