Creating a Dedicated BigPicture Log File

How to set up a separate log file for BigPicture debug data.

If you get a sizeable amount of BigPicture debug data sent to atlassian-jira.log but would instead divert it to a dedicated log file, you can do it by manually changing the configuration of Jira’s log4j file.

Here’s how to do it:

1. Add the following snippet to your log4j.properties* file:

log4j.appender.bigpicture=com.atlassian.jira.logging.JiraHomeAppender

log4j.appender.bigpicture.File=bigpicture.log

log4j.appender.bigpicture.MaxFileSize=20480KB

log4j.appender.bigpicture.MaxBackupIndex=5

log4j.appender.bigpicture.layout=com.atlassian.logging.log4j.NewLineIndentingFilteringPatternLayout

log4j.appender.bigpicture.layout.ConversionPattern=%d %p [%X{jira.mailserver}] %t %X{jira.username} %X{jira.request.id} %X{jira.request.assession.id} %X{jira.request.ipaddr} %X{jira.request.url} %m%n

log4j.logger.com.softwareplant = INFO, console, bigpicture

log4j.additivity.com.softwareplant = false

2. Restart your Jira instance.

This will create a separate bigpicture.log file for all logs from our app or com.softwareplant package specifically.

Where to find the log4.properties file?

The log4.properties is located in "WEB-INF/classes/log4j.properties." You can find this path by going to your Jira Administration > System > Logging and profiling, and scrolling down to the "Default Loggers" section:

You can further configure the granularity of the log file and choose the desired logging levels:

This is it. You've just set up a separate log file for BigPicture debug data.