title: Is it possible to make log4j display which file it used to configure itself?
body: <p><strong>Question</strong></p>
  
  <p>Is it possible to make Log4J display the full path of the file it used for configuration?
  <hr>
  <strong>Background</strong></p>
  
  <p>I have a love-hate relationship with log4j.  In good times, it's great but when it's not working, it can be one of the most difficult things to debug.  I manage all the logging in our application.  As such, I'm very familiar with logging and the <a href="http://logging.apache.org/log4j/1.2/manual.html" rel="noreferrer">default initialization procedure defined in the manual.</a>  Still, it seems that, every few weeks, logging breaks and I spend <strong>a lot</strong> of time sorting out the problem.</p>
  
  <p>This time, it's severely broken. Every single log statement everywhere is being dumped to the console and I can't figure out why.  The same exact code base that used my log4j.xml files last week, is suddenly using some other configuration.  Nothing obvious has changed.  My only guess is, a few dependencies have changed and I suspect Maven has downloaded some evil JAR that's breaking everything.</p>
  
  <p>If I could just figure out <strong><em>which configuration file Log4J decided to use at startup</em></strong>, I could tackle this and most other problems easily.<br>
  <hr>
  <strong>Summary</strong></p>
  
  <p>Is there some way to tell Log4J to print which file it used for configuration? Alternatively, is there a way to break a running application and use the debugger to answer this question (maybe with an expression or by inspecting variables)?</p>