logback specify the location of the default configuration file as a system property not working

Question

export logback.configurationFile=123 on mac os x got this: "-bash: export: `logback.configurationFile=123': not a valid identifier"

Tried export logback_configurationFile=123 that worked. but logback does not seem to recognize that env variable. Any suggestions?

Does logback even look for that variable? I thought it looked for logback.xml on the classpath? — Peter Svensson, Feb 10 '12 at 20:44
it does. if I do java -Dlogback.configurationFile=whatever, it will work. — Bobo, Feb 10 '12 at 21:59
nice, I'm pretty sure that bash won't allow dots in env variables (bash being the default in OsX if I remember correclyt). There are shells that support this like csh and tcsh... — Peter Svensson, Feb 10 '12 at 22:06

Peter Svensson · Accepted Answer · 2012-12-01T15:35:16.150

-Dlogback.configurationFile is not the same as setting it as an Environment variable.

The -D flag is a Java parameter to your program (accessible by System.getProperty()) while the environment variable defined by export will be accessible by System.getenv(). Looking at the Logback code it looks like it uses System.getProperty() to read the logback.configurationFile value.

So in reality you have to pass the parameter to the JVM on startup, this means that you can set the environment variable to whatever you like and then just use it in when you start the JVM.

export LOGBACK_CONFIG_FILE_LOCATION=/tmp/logback.conf
java -Dlogback.configurationFile=${LOGBACK_CONFIG_FILE_LOCATION}

You can also use `System.setEnv(...` FWIW https://stackoverflow.com/questions/21885787/setting-logback-xml-path-programmatically — rogerdpack, Feb 01 '19 at 17:26

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Jul 12 '12 at 08:38

2

I guess that also that way should work. But I did not realy try it by my own.

export JAVA_OPTS="$JAVA_OPTS -Dlogback.configurationFile=123"

Then you would not need to set the opt on the call of your app. But the drawback would be that all running Java programs would use this setting.

answered Jul 12 '12 at 08:38

Robert

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1

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Speculating does not help anybody. Try it out or don't answer. – johannes Oct 11 '12 at 10:44

score 1 · Answer 3 · answered May 20 '13 at 08:40

You can also do the following Export your JVM arguments with logback configurationFile.

export ALC_JVM_ARGS="-Dlogback.configurationFile=logconfig.xml"

Export other things you need like main class and it's arguments

export MAIN_CLASS="Spring"
export MAIN_CLASS_ARGS="beans.xml"

Then execute your program

exec java $ALC_JVM_ARGS $MAIN_CLASS $MAIN_CLASS_ARGS

logback specify the location of the default configuration file as a system property not working

3 Answers3