Custom logging formatter not used (XML instead).

Question

I use the built in Java logging API to write log messages to a file. As the SimpleFormatter does not quite the format we would like to have, I wrote a custom formatter and set it in the logging properties file:
java.util.logging.FileHandler.formatter = my.LogFormatter
This works well in a standalone application. But using the same in my servlet application, the log fie does not use my custom formatter but the (default?) XML formatter. I multichecked the JAR that is in cluded in the WAR file and it has my custom LogFormatter class (as the JAR is exactly the same that works in the standalone application).
Does the servlet expect a custom logging formatter somewhere else? I tried adding it to the root directory within the WAR but this also doesn't work.

Answer 1

By default, the LogManager reads its initial configuration from a properties file "lib/logging.properties" in the JRE directory.
http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4.2/docs/api/java/util/logging/LogManager.html