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Configure CAS logging

The Log4J configuration file included with the Gradle WAR overlay template will attempt to write the CAS server log files to /var/log. This is an improvement from CAS 5 where it wanted to default to using the Tomcat directory, but I still prefer to have CAS logs in a separate directory of /var/log/cas.

I'd also recommend altering the log rotations so that you have a single file each day instead of it being split by size.

These steps are recommended but not required.

Change CAS log directory (optional)

Make a copy of the file etc/cas/config/log4j2.xml in the cas-overlay-template directory from your build server, and copy it into the files subdirectory of your CAS Ansible role. Find the line that defines the cas.log.dir property (around line 5) and change its value from /var/log to /var/log/cas.

Initial config: 

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<!-- Specify the refresh internal in seconds. -->
<Configuration monitorInterval="5" packages="org.apereo.cas.logging">
    <Properties>
        <Property name="baseDir">/var/log</Property>

        <Property name="cas.log.level">info</Property>

Altered config with /var/log/cas as the directory: 

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<!-- Specify the refresh internal in seconds. -->
<Configuration monitorInterval="5" packages="org.apereo.cas.logging">
    <Properties>
        <Property name="baseDir">/var/log/cas</Property>

        <Property name="cas.log.level">info</Property>

You'll also need to ensure that /var/log/cas exists, and is owned by tomcat (though you can skip this as our Ansible playbook will handle this):

mkdir /var/log/cas
chown tomcat:tomcat /var/log/cas
chmod 750 /var/log/cas

Alter the log file rotation strategy (optional)

  1. Look for the RollingFile configuration for cas.log (around line 23), and change the variable part of the filePattern attribute to remove the -%i portion. This is the hour and sequence number, which is unneeded if we're only at one file per day.
    • filePattern="${baseDir}/cas-%d{yyyy-MM-dd-HH}-%i.log">
    • filePattern="${baseDir}/cas-%d{yyyy-MM-dd-HH}.log">.
  2. Remove (or comment out) the OnStartupTriggeringPolicy element (around line 27).
  3. Remove (or comment out) the SizeBasedTriggeringPolicy element (around line 28).
  4. Add the attributes interval="1" modulate="true" to the TimeBasedTriggeringPolicy element (around line 29).
  5. Repeat steps 1-4, but for the cas_audit.log config - right after the cas.log config.

When done - the cas.log and cas_audit.log sections of log4j2.xml will look like the following: 

<RollingFile name="file" fileName="${baseDir}/cas.log" append="true"
                filePattern="${baseDir}/cas-%d{yyyy-MM-dd-HH}-%i.log">
    <PatternLayout pattern="%d %p [%c] - &lt;%m&gt;%n"/>
    <Policies>
        <!-- Not using OnStartupTriggering or SizeBasedTriggering Policies
            <OnStartupTriggeringPolicy />
            <SizeBasedTriggeringPolicy size="10 MB"/>
        -->
        <TimeBasedTriggeringPolicy interval="1" modulate="true"/>
    </Policies>
</RollingFile>
<RollingFile name="auditlogfile" fileName="${baseDir}/cas_audit.log" append="true"
                filePattern="${baseDir}/cas_audit-%d{yyyy-MM-dd-HH}.log">
    <PatternLayout pattern="%d %p [%c] - %m%n"/>
    <Policies>
        <!-- Not using OnStartupTriggering or SizeBasedTriggering Policies
            <OnStartupTriggeringPolicy />
            <SizeBasedTriggeringPolicy size="10 MB"/>
        -->
        <TimeBasedTriggeringPolicy interval="1" modulate="true"/>
    </Policies>
</RollingFile>

These changes have been incorporated into our ansible playbook - as you'll see in the next section.