How do I turn on debug logging within Yellowfin?

Yellowfin has a number of different logging facilities for different parts of the application. In a standard installation, these are located in the directory: Yellowfin/appserver/logs/

The main Yellowfin application log is named yellowfin.log, and contains error and warning messages and information about what Yellowfin is doing. This can be useful to help diagnose problems. In some cases a finer level of detail is helpful. Yellowfin can be configured to log additional debugging information to this file. 


For Yellowfin 8.0.8, 9.4 and above:

Find the file log4j2.xml, located at:

Yellowfin/appserver/webapps/ROOT/WEB-INF/log4j2.xml

Towards the bottom of the file, find the line:

<Root level="INFO">

And modify the line to the following:

<Root level="DEBUG">

Save this file and Yellowfin will pick up the change and start DEBUG logging in a minute or two. Debugging information will now be logged to yellowfin.log, along with all the information that was previously logged.


For all other versions of Yellowfin:

To do this, find the file log4j.properties, located at:

Yellowfin/appserver/webapps/ROOT/WEB-INF/log4j.properties

Towards the top of the file, find the line:

# uncomment to set everything under com.hof to debug
# log4j.category.com.hof=DEBUG

And uncomment the line by removing the leading :

log4j.category.com.hof=DEBUG

Save this file and Yellowfin will pick up the change and start DEBUG logging in a minute or two. Debugging information will now be logged to yellowfin.log, along with all the information that was previously logged.


Generally you will not need to do this unless directed to do so by Yellowfin support. With debug logging turned on these log files will grow quite quickly, especially on a system with a large number of users. After you are finished debugging your problem, it's best to add the # back to disable debugging.

For Yellowfin 8.0.8, 9.4 and above:

Disable debug logging by returning the Root level to "INFO" and save the file:

<Root level="INFO">

For all other versions of Yellowfin:

Disable debug logging by adding the # back in front of the line above:

# log4j.category.com.hof=DEBUG

Failure to disable this can lead to difficulty in maintaining a good window of logs to diagnose future issues.

*After disabling Debug logging you need to restart Yellowfin Server. If you cannot restart the Yellowfin Server, then instead of commenting the line, replace DEBUG with INFO, this will help to stop the DEBUG logging.

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