Changing the Liferay Logs Directory

This article documents how to change the Liferay logs directory from the default [LIFERAY_HOME]/logs to another desired path.

Resolution

Steps to Change the Liferay Logs Directory

Unzip the files log4j.dtd and portal-log4j.xml from [Liferay WAR]/WEB-INF/lib/portal-impl.jar
Move log4j.dtd and portal-log4j.xml to [Liferay WAR]/WEB-INF/classes/META-INF
Rename portal-log4j.xml to portal-log4j-ext.xml
Edit portal-log4j-ext.xml and delete all the category tags and keep only the needed tags, like the example below:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE log4j:configuration SYSTEM "log4j.dtd">

<log4j:configuration xmlns:log4j="http://jakarta.apache.org/log4j/">

  <appender name="FILE" class="org.apache.log4j.rolling.RollingFileAppender">
    <rollingPolicy class="org.apache.log4j.rolling.TimeBasedRollingPolicy">
      <param name="FileNamePattern" value="@liferay.home@/logs/liferay@spi.id@.%d{yyyy-MM-dd}.log" />
    </rollingPolicy>

    <layout class="org.apache.log4j.EnhancedPatternLayout">
      <param name="ConversionPattern" value="%d{ABSOLUTE} %-5p [%t][%c{1}:%L] %m%n" />
    </layout>
  </appender>

  <root>
    <priority value="INFO" />
    <appender-ref ref="FILE" />
  </root>
</log4j:configuration>

In the param tag that contains:

value="$liferay.home/logs/liferay@spi.id@.%d{yyyy-MM-dd}.log"

You must change $liferay.home/logs/liferay to the path where you want the logs to be created. See the following example:

value="/var/logs/liferay@spi.id@.%d{yyyy-MM-dd}.log"

Additional Information

The [LIFERAY_HOME]/logs files will still be created but will be empty files and not contain any data.