Whats the root cause of Log4JLogger' cannot be found or is not useable?

Question

I have commons-logging.jar (v1.0.4) and log4j-1.2.8.jar in the classpath and getting following run-time error:

Caused by: org.apache.commons.logging.LogConfigurationException: User-specified log class 'org.apache.commons.logging.impl.Log4JLogger' cannot be found or is not useable.
    at org.apache.commons.logging.impl.LogFactoryImpl.discoverLogImplementation(LogFactoryImpl.java:874)
    at org.apache.commons.logging.impl.LogFactoryImpl.newInstance(LogFactoryImpl.java:604)
    at org.apache.commons.logging.impl.LogFactoryImpl.getInstance(LogFactoryImpl.java:336)
    at org.apache.commons.logging.impl.LogFactoryImpl.getInstance(LogFactoryImpl.java:310)
    at org.apache.commons.logging.LogFactory.getLog(LogFactory.java:685)

This is likely a classpath problem. You probably have another version of log4j in your classpath, possibly hidden inside something else. — Nathan Ryan, May 21 '12 at 21:06
i did find one jar that had a diff version of log4j, however that may not be the last one, still searching... — Debajyoti Roy, May 22 '12 at 14:11
Nathan, put your comment as answer i will accept it. it was another jar with a diff version of hte class in it. you the man ! — Debajyoti Roy, May 23 '12 at 21:32

score 15 · Answer 1 · answered Jun 07 '14 at 08:56

If you using Maven, you must ensure declare commons-logging and log4j in pom.xml

<dependencies>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>commons-logging</groupId>
        <artifactId>commons-logging</artifactId>
        <version>1.1.3</version>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>log4j</groupId>
        <artifactId>log4j</artifactId>
        <version>1.2.17</version>
    </dependency>
</dependencies>

if you declare only commons-logging you with getting error Log4JLogger cannot be found or is not useable

score 5 · Accepted Answer · answered Dec 11 '13 at 20:53

5

This was a classpath problem and we did have another version of log4j in the classpath. Thanks Nathan Ryan !

answered Dec 11 '13 at 20:53

Debajyoti Roy

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score 3 · Answer 3 · answered Dec 11 '14 at 00:25

3

Had this problem using log4j-2.x with commons-logging-1.2. Reverted back to log4j 1.2.x and all is fine with the world.

answered Dec 11 '14 at 00:25

James Boutcher

2,593
1
25
37

As I don't want to revert back to log4j 1.2.X i found another solutions which worked for me. In log4j 1.2.X you used to have the file comons-logging.properties in the classpath with the content: `org.apache.commons.logging.Log=org.apache.commons.logging.impl.Log4JLogger` With log4j2 I only had to remove this file and the error was gone. This simple solution might also help you. – OASE Software GmbH Jun 26 '23 at 08:39

score 3 · Answer 4 · answered Jul 12 '18 at 15:55

3

There is an answer here Commons-logging with log4j2

Include the library:
log4j-jcl
See also:
https://logging.apache.org/log4j/2.x/faq.html#which_jars

answered Jul 12 '18 at 15:55

Max Robbertze

406
4
11

score 2 · Answer 5 · answered Apr 03 '13 at 07:00

I see this error sometimes when I try to run a web application on tomcat 7 in my eclipse 3.6 . It occurs out of nowhere just by restarting eclipse.

After several (!) "clean all projects" and new deployments of the web app on the server the application runs again. Maybe someone else knows the exact "spell" to solve this mystery without trial and error?

score 1 · Answer 6 · answered May 22 '12 at 07:56

If you are providing an implementation for a logger, the implementation must define a constructor that takes a java.lang.String as an argument. Otherwise you get an "org.apache.commons.logging.LogConfigurationException: User-specified log class '...' cannot be found or is not useable." The faq page of the apache wiki states so.

Are you creating any specific project like web-services or spring, etc? If yes, then please analyze the project specific property files which would have a property in reference to the Logger, something like

<property name="logger">javax.servlet,org.apache.commons.logging</property>

if you have a java project with servlets.

we don't have our implementation of Logger so eliminate that being the issue. its a core-java application running in its own jvm — Debajyoti Roy, May 22 '12 at 14:10
ok. Please give more info about your problem the stack-trace, minimal working code, etc — mtk, May 22 '12 at 15:09

score 1 · Answer 7 · answered Mar 08 '13 at 18:27

1

I received this same exception.

I do have an implementation of logger.

It did not have a constructor that takes a String as an argument.

I implemented such a constructor and that solved the problem for me.

answered Mar 08 '13 at 18:27

Tom W

31
5

score 1 · Answer 8 · answered Oct 18 '13 at 08:41

1

I was getting this error when apache commons logging jar was there in my classpath but log4j jar was somehow missing. Once I added log4j jar to my class path, this error was gone.

answered Oct 18 '13 at 08:41

Shiv

21
2

score 1 · Answer 9 · answered Dec 04 '18 at 17:29

This error seems to be pretty generic. To get more details, start up the JVM with this option:

-Dorg.apache.commons.logging.diagnostics.dest=STDOUT

In my case, found some missing dependencies.

[LogFactoryImpl@929338653 from sun.misc.Launcher$AppClassLoader@1442407170] Attempting to instantiate 'org.apache.commons.logging.impl.Log4JLogger'
[LogFactoryImpl@929338653 from sun.misc.Launcher$AppClassLoader@1442407170] Trying to load 'org.apache.commons.logging.impl.Log4JLogger' from classloader sun.misc.Launcher$AppClassLoader@1442407170
[LogFactoryImpl@929338653 from sun.misc.Launcher$AppClassLoader@1442407170] Class 'org.apache.commons.logging.impl.Log4JLogger' was found at 'jar:file:/home/mcadiz/NetBeansProjects/LogFilter/dist/lib/commons-logging-1.2.jar!/org/apache/commons/logging/impl/Log4JLogger.class'
[LogFactoryImpl@929338653 from sun.misc.Launcher$AppClassLoader@1442407170] The log adapter 'org.apache.commons.logging.impl.Log4JLogger' is missing dependencies when loaded via classloader sun.misc.Launcher$AppClassLoader@1442407170: org/apache/log4j/Priority
Exception in thread "main" java.lang.ExceptionInInitializerError
Caused by: org.apache.commons.logging.LogConfigurationException: User-specified log class 'org.apache.commons.logging.impl.Log4JLogger' cannot be found or is not useable.
    at org.apache.commons.logging.impl.LogFactoryImpl.discoverLogImplementation(LogFactoryImpl.java:804)
    at org.apache.commons.logging.impl.LogFactoryImpl.newInstance(LogFactoryImpl.java:541)
    at org.apache.commons.logging.impl.LogFactoryImpl.getInstance(LogFactoryImpl.java:292)
    at org.apache.commons.logging.impl.LogFactoryImpl.getInstance(LogFactoryImpl.java:269)
    at org.apache.commons.logging.LogFactory.getLog(LogFactory.java:655)
    at com.oracle.logfilter.LogEntry.<clinit>(LogEntry.java:19)

Adding the log4j.jar to the classpath fixed the issue.

score 0 · Answer 10 · answered Apr 18 '19 at 11:27

I was facing this problem and found out that it was due to a classpath conflict related to log4j jar. As I was using maven in my project, the fix was to add a dependency management for log4j as below.

<dependencyManagement>
    <dependencies>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>log4j</groupId>
            <artifactId>log4j</artifactId>
            <version>1.2.17</version>
            <type>jar</type>
            <scope>compile</scope>
        </dependency>
    </dependencies>
</dependencyManagement>

Whats the root cause of Log4JLogger' cannot be found or is not useable?

10 Answers10