Why Does Zookeeper Not Use My Log4J.Properties File Log Directory

Why does zookeeper not use my log4j.properties file log directory

I wanted to add how I fixed this problem / customized my environment.

There are 2 logging mechanisms working here:

• bin/zkServer.sh redirects the zookeeper server's stdout and stderr to zookeeper.out
• log4j can append to logs to several places including:
  
  • CONSOLE - which ends up in zookeeper server's stdout and stderr
  • ROLLINGFILE - which is sent to zookeeper.log

bin/zkServer.sh uses :

• ZOO_LOG_DIR to set the path for both zookeeper.out and log4j.
• ZOO_LOG4J_PROP to set the log4j logging level and what log appenders are turned on

The "eventual" defaults in the setup conf/log4j.properties are set by a combination of zookeeper bash scripts:

• ZOO_LOG_DIR = . ( the working directory from which zookeeper is started )
  
  • set inside of conf/log4j.properties as zookeeper.log.dir
• ZOO_LOG4J_PROP = INFO, CONSOLE
  
  • set inside of conf/log4j.properties as zookeeper.root.logger

The effect of turning on the log appender CONSOLE is that logs now go to stdout. Because bin/zkServer.sh redirects stdout and stderr to zookeeper.out, log4j logs end up in zookeeper.out. The effect of turning off ROLLINGFILE is that no zookeeper.log file is created.

The zookeeper.out log is not rotated. The zookeeper.log log is set to be rotated and can be set to expire old logs.

I wanted logs to roll and be expired. The first thing I had to do was change conf/log4j.properties to cause the expiration/deletion of old logs. I did that by setting log4j.appender.ROLLINGFILE.MaxBackupIndex inside of conf/log4j.properties. The second thing I had to do was set the log directory, logging level and appenders.

I have a bash script that runs every minute. If it sees that zookeeper isn't running, it runs :

bin/zkServer.sh start

I changed it to specify environmental variables expected by bin/zkServer.sh.

sudo ZOO_LOG_DIR=/opt/zookeeper-3.4.6/logs ZOO_LOG4J_PROP='INFO,ROLLINGFILE' /opt/zookeeper-3.4.6/bin/zkServer.sh start

The effect of turning off the log appender CONSOLE is that log4j logs now no longer end up in zookeeper.out. The effect of turning on ROLLINGFILE is that zookeeper.log file is created, rotated, and expired.

BTW, conf/log4j.properties was apparently already in my classpath. I had to make no changes in that regard.

This chain contributed significantly to my understanding:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/nosql-databases/aebIvNnT0xY/doky1X9-WfwJ

Cannot change zookeeper log filename

After searching I found this link but I didn't found how to change the variable for the log, I noticed that inside the file zkServer.sh is defined the name of the file, so I needed to change this variable:

_ZOO_DAEMON_OUT="$ZOO_LOG_DIR/zookeeper-$USER-server-$HOSTNAME.out"

I don't know if it's ok to change that variable but know is working as expected.

zookeeper.log file not created inside logs directory

For Chef :
1) Create zookeeper-env.sh.erb template file and set the classpath.

NAME=zookeeper
ZOODIR="path/to/zookeeper/directory"
ZOOCFGDIR="$ZOODIR/conf"

CLASSPATH="$ZOOCFGDIR:$ZOODIR/build/classes:$ZOODIR/bin/build/lib/*.jar:$ZOODIR/lib/slf4j-api-1.7.5.jar:$ZOODIR/lib/netty-3.2.2.Final.jar:$ZOODIR/lib/log4j-1.2.16.jar:$ZOODIR/lib/jline-0.9.94.jar:$ZOODIR/zookeeper-3.4.5-cdh5.3.1.jar:$ZOODIR/src/java/lib/*.jar"

ZOOCFG="$ZOOCFGDIR/zoo.cfg"
ZOO_LOG_DIR="path/to/zookeeper/log/directory"
PIDDIR="~/zookeeper/data/$NAME"
PIDFILE="$PIDDIR/$NAME.pid"
SCRIPTNAME="/etc/init.d/$NAME"
JAVA="/usr/java/jdk1.8.0_25"
ZOOMAIN="org.apache.zookeeper.server.quorum.QuorumPeerMain"
ZOO_LOG4J_PROP="INFO,ROLLINGFILE"
JMXLOCALONLY=false
JAVA_OPTS="-Xms128M -Xmx512M"

2. Place this file under zookeeper/conf directory

I assume this works because zoocfg dir is being accessed through zookeeper-env.sh as seen in zkEnv.sh file under zookeeper/bin folder:

if [ -f "${ZOOCFGDIR}/zookeeper-env.sh" ]; then
  . "${ZOOCFGDIR}/zookeeper-env.sh"
fi

change the path of the log4j.properties for zookeeper

Here I assume you use the Zookeeper (and it's scripts) provided by apache-kafka

You need to export a variable before starting zookeeper

Here is the default

if [ "x$KAFKA_LOG4J_OPTS" = "x" ]; then
    export KAFKA_LOG4J_OPTS="-Dlog4j.configuration=file:$base_dir/../config/log4j.properties"
fi

So, you need to do

export KAFKA_LOG4J_OPTS="-Dlog4j.configuration=file:/path/to/your.properties"
zookeeper-server-start zoo.cfg &

It's best if you refactor these together into a systemctl service, though

log4j ERROR found in kafka connecting to zookeeper

These exceptions are not related to ZooKeeper. They are thrown by log4j as it's not allowed to write to the specified files. These should not prevent Kafka from running but obviously you won't get log4j logs.

When starting Kafka with bin/kafka-server-start.sh, the default log4j configuration file, log4j.properties, is used. This attempts to write logs to ../logs/, see https://github.com/apache/kafka/blob/trunk/bin/kafka-run-class.sh#L194-L197

In your case, this path is /usr/local/kafka/bin/../logs and Kafka is not allowed to write there.

You can change the default path by setting the LOG_DIR environment variable to a path where Kafka will be allowed to write logs, for example:

export LOG_DIR=/var/log/kafka/
bin/kafka-server-start.sh config/server.properties &

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