Geoserver Audit Logging stopped working - ubuntu-14.04

Question

Problem: The Geoserver (2.8.0) which is installed in an Ubuntu 14.04 VM stopped creating the audit logs suddenly.
Background: A couple of months ago I followed the instructions at Geoserver Training - Logging all requests on Geoserver to enable audit logging in Geoserver. The process was successful allowing me to parse the logs using ElasticSearch, Logstash, and Kibana to get insights on service usage. Reviewing the analytics recently showed no Geoserver activity for a significant amount of time which suggested that the audit logs had potentially a problem. I checked the audit log generation which showed that no logs had been created for a significant amount of time (i.e. weeks).
Audit logs configuration:
The configuration that I included in the monitor.properties file is following:
audit.enabled=true
audit.path=/var/lib/tomcat7/webapps/geoserver/data/logs
audit.roll_limit=100000
The configuration that I included in the header.ftl file is following:
# start time,url,error flag,total time,response length,services,version,operation,resources,query,response content type
The configuration that I included in the content.ftl file is following:
${startTime?datetime?iso_utc_ms},${remoteAddr!""},<#if error??>failed<#else>success</#if>,${totalTime},${responseLength?c},${service!""},${owsVersion!""},${operation!""},${resourcesList!""},${queryString!""}",${responseContentType!""}
Has anyone had a similar issue in the past?
I appreciate your time and effort.

Answer 1

This did not have to do with Geoserver functionality after all. The solution was to change the privileges (i.e. provide writing privileges to the user writing the logs (tomcat)) for the folder where the audit logs are created. Somehow (under investigation...); the privileges had been changed.