log4j not logging today, worked fine two days ago - log4j

Question

This has been asked multiple times but I have not been able to figure out what is wrong from the past questions that have been answered.
my log4j logging was working fine on Dec 31. Today, Jan 2, my first day back to work nothing is being logged. The data that should have been logged is showing up on the console but not in the log file. My log4j.properties is below. Nothing in it was changed between the last time logging was working and today.
My application is servlet based and I see no errors in either catalina or localhost logs.
I have no idea what could have happened. Does anyone have any ideas?
I just realized that I did an SVN update on the project before starting today. I might have gotten newer version of some jar file. Can a jar 'collision' cause log4j to stop logging?
log4j.rootLogger=DEBUG, A1
log4j.appender.A1=org.apache.log4j.ConsoleAppender
log4j.appender.A1.layout=org.apache.log4j.PatternLayout
log4j.appender.A1.layout.ConversionPattern=%-4r [%t] %-5p %c %x - %m%n
log4j.logger.AppLogFile=DEBUG,AppLogFile
log4j.appender.AppLogFile.File=../logs/dbconnect.log
log4j.appender.AppLogFile=org.apache.log4j.RollingFileAppender
log4j.appender.AppLogFile.layout=org.apache.log4j.PatternLayout
log4j.appender.AppLogFile.layout.ConversionPattern=DBCONNECT %-22d{dd/MMM/yyyy HH:mm:ss} - %m%n
# manage logging for packages
log4j.category.org.springframework=ERROR
log4j.category.org.hibernate=ERROR
log4j.category.com.mchange.v2=ERROR

Answer 1

I'm answering my own question here. After four hours of searching I found the answer.
The problem was a third party jar that came down from SubVersion when I did an update. This jar was added yesterday by a developer working on a different part of the application.
Log4j looks for 'log4j.xml' before it looks for 'log4j.properties'. The third party jar contained a log4j.xml so that one was loaded and my log4j.properties was ignored.
This was pretty easy to find once I added the log4j debug command.
So, here is how to do it if you find yourself in this situation.
Stop Tomcat
In %CATALINA_HOME%/bin create a file called setenv.bat. Add these lines to the file:
REM Use this file to set either or both JAVA_OPTS, CATALINA_OPTS
REM Don't change startup.bat
set JAVA_OPTS=-Dlog4j.debug
Save and Restart Tomcat
Log4j will now log useful information, including what config file it is using, to the console.
When Tomcat starts the app Log4j logs the search for a config file. Here are two excerpts; the first showing what was happening to me the second showing what is normal behavior for my situation.
Case 1: Log4j is looking in the right place, /WEB-APPS/emscribe/WEB-INF/classes, but for log4j.xml not log4j.properties
log4j: Trying to find [log4j.xml] using context classloader WebappClassLoader
context: /emscribe
delegate: false
repositories:
/WEB-INF/classes/
----------> Parent Classloader: org.apache.catalina.loader.StandardClassLoader#1f7fd168
log4j: Using URL [jar:file:/C:/Program%20Files/Apache%20Software%20Foundation/apache-tomcat-7.0.26/webapps/emscribe/WEB-INF/lib/dynamicreports-examples-3.0.0.jar!/log4j.xml] for automatic log4j configuration.
So, here Log4j found log4j.xml in the recently added third party jar and looked no further.
Case 2: With the third party jar removed log4j found the correct config file:
log4j: Trying to find [log4j.xml] using context classloader WebappClassLoader
context: /emscribe
delegate: false
repositories:
/WEB-INF/classes/
----------> Parent Classloader:org.apache.catalina.loader.StandardClassLoader#8b10bd5
log4j: Trying to find [log4j.xml] using WebappClassLoader
context: /emscribe
delegate: false
repositories:
/WEB-INF/classes/
----------> Parent Classloader:org.apache.catalina.loader.StandardClassLoader#8b10bd5class loader.
log4j: Trying to find [log4j.xml] using ClassLoader.getSystemResource().
log4j: Trying to find [log4j.properties] using context classloader WebappClassLoader
context: /emscribe
delegate: false
repositories:
/WEB-INF/classes/
----------> Parent Classloader:
org.apache.catalina.loader.StandardClassLoader#8b10bd5
.
log4j: Using URL [file:/C:/Program%20Files/Apache%20Software%20Foundation/apache-tomcat-7.0.26/webapps/emscribe/WEB-INF/classes/log4j.properties] for automaticlog4j configuration.
log4j: Reading configuration from URL file:/C:/Program%20Files/Apache%20Software%20Foundation/apache-tomcat-7.0.26/webapps/emscribe/WEB-INF/classes/log4j.properties
I eventually replaced log4j.properties with an equivalent log4j.xml, replaced the third-party jar and my log4j.xml was found before the one in the jar.

Answer 2

I had a different issue. I imported a project where log4j.properties was there with everything configured. There was a log file name too in the properties file, but it did not write a log file during running the project in eclipse.
Putting -Dlog4j.debug in the VM arguments in run configuration helped me to analyze, it printed all the configuration log4j doing during initialization of itself, found what I had to change in my properties file.