Log4net multiple loggers - File logger not working - log4net

Question

Following configuration logs to Eventlog and it works for SmtpSender. But the filelogger does not log, it creates the log file in the path, but does not do any debug logs.
<root>
<level value="DEBUG" />
<appender-ref ref="EventLogAppender" />
</root>
<logger additivity="false" name="SmtpLogger">
<level value="FATAL"/>
<appender-ref ref="SmtpAppender" />
</logger>
<logger name="RollingFileAppender">
<level value="DEBUG"/>
<appender-ref ref="RollingFileAppender"/>
</logger>
But when I change the root logger to RollingFileAppender it logs to file,
<root>
<level value="DEBUG" />
<appender-ref ref="RollingFileAppender" />
</root>
<logger additivity="false" name="SmtpLogger">
<level value="FATAL"/>
<appender-ref ref="SmtpAppender" />
</logger>
<logger name="RollingFileAppender">
<level value="DEBUG"/>
<appender-ref ref="RollingFileAppender"/>
</logger>
Any idea why this happens? How can I get file logger working in this scenario.

Answer 1

You did not post the appender confuriguration, however the easiest way to figure out what goes wrong is enable internal debugging. This will tell you what goes wrong in the rolling file appender:
There are 2 different ways to enable internal debugging in log4net.
These are listed below. The preferred method is to specify the
log4net.Internal.Debug option in the application's config file.
• Internal debugging can also be enabled by setting a value in the
application's configuration file (not the log4net configuration file,
unless the log4net config data is embedded in the application's config
file). The log4net.Internal.Debug application setting must be set to
the value true. For example:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<configuration>
<appSettings>
<add key="log4net.Internal.Debug" value="true"/>
</appSettings>
</configuration>
This setting is read immediately on startup an will cause all internal
debugging messages to be emitted.
• To enable log4net's internal debug programmatically you need to set
the log4net.Util.LogLog.InternalDebugging property to true. Obviously
the sooner this is set the more debug will be produced.
Internal debugging messages are written to the console and to the
System.Diagnostics.Trace system. If the application does not have a
console the messages logged there will be lost. Note that an
application can redirect the console stream by setting the
System.Console.Out. The Trace system will by default send the message
to an attached debugger (where the messages will appear in the output
window). If the process does not have a debugger attached then the
messages are sent to the system debugger. A utility like DebugView
from http://www.sysinternals.com may be used to capture these
messages.
As log4net internal debug messages are written to the
System.Diagnostics.Trace system it is possible to redirect those
messages to a local file. You can define a trace listener by adding
the following to your application's .config file:
<configuration>
...
<system.diagnostics>
<trace autoflush="true">
<listeners>
<add
name="textWriterTraceListener"
type="System.Diagnostics.TextWriterTraceListener"
initializeData="C:\tmp\log4net.txt" />
</listeners>
</trace>
</system.diagnostics>
...
</configuration>
Make sure that the process running your application has permission to write to this file.
log4net faq

Answer 2

I managed to get the logging work, in fact I did this as an experiment and it worked.
Added RollingFileAppender to the root element,
<root>
<level value="DEBUG" />
<appender-ref ref="EventLogAppender" />
<appender-ref ref="RollingFileAppender"/>
</root>
<logger additivity="false" name="SmtpLogger">
<level value="FATAL"/>
<appender-ref ref="SmtpAppender" />
</logger>
<logger name="RollingFileAppender">
<level value="DEBUG"/>
<appender-ref ref="RollingFileAppender"/>
</logger>