Logging soap messages to file with log4j

Hey folks, got a problem:

I'm trying to log the soap messages reaching/leaving my server (websphere).

I'm using log4j and this is my config file (part of it):



as nothing happened I assumed the log-configs within the axis.jar were overwriting my settings so I deleted them within the jar - didn't have any influence so far. the overall log level is debug

I don't get any logging info, not just no soap messages but nothing at all - all my other logs are running perfect it's just axis

any idea on this?

and do you know if debug would be sufficient to get the soap messages (at best together with the envelope but that's not really necessary)

I'd start with figuring out why log4j isn't giving you anything. On the command line that starts up WebPhere pass -Dlog4j.debug to turn on log4j debugging. It will print debugging information to the console (stdout a.k.a. System.out)

tried that - I'm logging the console output to a file but it didn't receive any log4j debug info - could this be set int the log4j.properties as well? if so what would be the line?

Are you also specifying -Dlog4j.configuration? I always find that it is far easier to force log4j to use a particular configuration file rather than having it find it on the classpath. I'm not aware of a way to turn on log4j debugging from the config file.

would that be right then:

startserver server1 -Dlog4j.configuration=D:\projects\myapp\doc\config\log4j.properties -Dlog4j.debug

this didn't have any other result... but I'm quite sure anyway that the right log4j.properties is being used as the other logs are working - or is axis maybe using it's own property anyway?

I'm afraid I don't know anything about startserver - a batch file I presume?

Ultimately the -D options must be passed to the Java command. For testing can you make a copy of the startserver file and force those two -D options into the command line? It very well may be doing that already but if you didn't get any log4j debugging then perhaps it isn't passing along the -D's to the Java command.

ah right it's a batch: this would be the current start parameters (as in the batch)

"%JAVA_HOME%\bin\java" %WAS_TRACE% %DEBUG% %CONSOLE_ENCODING% "%CLIENTSAS%" "-classpath" "%WAS_CLASSPATH%" "-Dws.ext.dirs=%WAS_EXT_DIRS%" %USER_INSTALL_PROP% "-Dwas.install.root=%WAS_HOME%" "-Dibm.websphere.preload.classes=true" "com.ibm.ws.bootstrap.WSLauncher" "com.ibm.ws.management.tools.WsServerLauncher" "%CONFIG_ROOT%" "%WAS_CELL%" "%WAS_NODE%" %*


thanks a lot for helping stdunbar! probably I'm just missing some important setting I guess after this I will do that:

wohooo - I found it: my project directory has an own /libs and in this is an axis.jar - within the jar is a log4j.properties and the settings in there are having an effect - apart from that I got the axis jar as well in my websphere libs it is being used as well but doesn't get the webservice info... why this is like that - I have no idea, anyway I can now try to manipulate the right library

Hi
Logging all SOAP requests/respones can be very usefull in debug or incident managment. But there is hard to read soap messages in console using less/more/cat. I have found OtrosLogViewer on apache license, see video on youtube. It's nice because it can open logs from remote machines (using ssh, sftp or samba/cifs) and have sofisticated search functionlity.

Krzysztof