Enable TRACE in custom DFS application (DfLogger, log4j)

Question

Summary

We're struggling with enabling log4j's TRACE level in a custom Documentum DFS application. The application runs on Tomcat 7.0 and uses Log4j 1.2.13, and is packaged as a WAR archive.

We have an appender called CustomServiceAppender that works just fine with all the other levels, i.e. DEBUG and upwards. During development we have this appender configured for the DEBUG level, and for production we change it to INFO or WARN. The logging then behaves like we expect (it limits the logging).

However we have written some code that logs at the TRACE level that we want to see in our logs. We've tried restarting, redeploying, deleting cache, checking log4j and commons-logging versions (they are 1.2.13 and 1.1.1, respectively). Also, there is no XML configuration file, and we know that our properties file is being picked up.

We use the default logger from DFS, namely the DfLogger class.

---

Changing the configuration - why doesn't it work?

In log4j.properties we change the following line from

log4j.logger.com.mycompany.services=DEBUG,CustomerServiceAppender

to

log4j.logger.com.mycompany.services=TRACE,CustomerServiceAppender

... which does not work! However, the following does work:

log4j.logger.com.mycompany.services=INFO,CustomerServiceAppender

What's happening here? Why can't we enable TRACE?

---

log4j.properties

For reference, here's our complete configuration file (identifying names altered):

#------------------- COMMON LOGGING LEVELS --------------------------
log4j.logger.com.emc.documentum.fs.rt = WARN, A1, F1
log4j.logger.com.emc.documentum.fs.datamodel = WARN, A1, F1
log4j.logger.com.emc.documentum.fs.services = WARN, A1, F1
log4j.logger.com.emc.documentum.fs.tools = WARN, A1, F1
log4j.logger.com.documentum.debug=ERROR, A1, F1
log4j.rootLogger=ERROR, A1

#------------------- CONSOLE LOG --------------------------
log4j.logger.com.mycompany.services=ERROR,A1
log4j.appender.A1.Threshold=ERROR
log4j.appender.A1=org.apache.log4j.ConsoleAppender
log4j.appender.A1.layout=org.apache.log4j.PatternLayout
log4j.appender.A1.layout.ConversionPattern=%d{ISO8601} %5p [MYCOMPANY-SP] %c - %m%n

#------------------- ALL --------------------------
log4j.appender.F1=org.apache.log4j.RollingFileAppender
log4j.appender.F1.File=E\:/Documentum/logs/dfs-runtime.log
log4j.appender.F1.MaxFileSize=10MB
log4j.appender.F1.layout=org.apache.log4j.PatternLayout
log4j.appender.F1.layout.ConversionPattern=%d{ISO8601} %5p [MYCOMPANY-SP] %c- %m%n

#------------------- ASPECT_TRACE --------------------------
log4j.logger.com.emc.documentum.fs.tracing = DEBUG, ASPECT_TRACE
log4j.appender.ASPECT_TRACE=org.apache.log4j.RollingFileAppender
log4j.appender.ASPECT_TRACE.File=E\:/Documentum/logs/dfs-runtime-trace.log
log4j.appender.ASPECT_TRACE.MaxFileSize=10MB
log4j.appender.ASPECT_TRACE.layout=org.apache.log4j.PatternLayout
log4j.appender.ASPECT_TRACE.layout.ConversionPattern=%d{ISO8601}  %5p [MYCOMPANY-SP] %m%n

#------------------- Customer TBO --------------------------
log4j.logger.no.customer=DEBUG,CustomerTBOAppender
log4j.appender.CustomerTBOAppender=org.apache.log4j.RollingFileAppender
log4j.appender.CustomerTBOAppender.File=E\:/Documentum/logs/CustomerTBO.log
log4j.appender.CustomerTBOAppender.MaxFileSize=10MB
log4j.appender.CustomerTBOAppender.layout=org.apache.log4j.PatternLayout
log4j.appender.CustomerTBOAppender.layout.ConversionPattern=%d{ISO8601} %5p [MYCOMPANY-SP] [%t] %c - %m%n

#------------------- Customer Service --------------------------
log4j.logger.com.mycompany.services=TRACE,CustomerServiceAppender
log4j.appender.CustomerServiceAppender=org.apache.log4j.DailyRollingFileAppender
log4j.appender.CustomerServiceAppender.File=E\:/Documentum/logs/CustomerService.log
log4j.appender.CustomerServiceAppender.Append=true
log4j.appender.CustomerServiceAppender.layout=org.apache.log4j.PatternLayout
log4j.appender.CustomerServiceAppender.layout.ConversionPattern=%d{ISO8601} %5p [MYCOMPANY-SP] [%t] %c - %m%n

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