Clarity Requires Tomcat Logging Level to be Set to "ALL"

Products

Clarity PPM On Premise Clarity PPM SaaS

Issue/Introduction

Customers or security auditors may request that Tomcat logging levels to be restricted to `FINE` rather than the Broadcom-mandated `ALL` to comply with internal corporate logging standards.

catalina.org.apache.juli.AsyncFileHandler.level = ALL
localhost.org.apache.juli.AsyncFileHandler.level = ALL
java.util.logging.ConsoleHandler.level = ALL

In terms of logging severity, FINE would cover all except FINER and FINEST hence can you advise

In what way Clarity uses the logs created based on FINER and FINEST?
Articulate the risk to Clarity if level may be changed to FINE?

Resolution

Broadcom cannot certify or support environments with restricted logging levels. If an issue occurs, administrators will be required to revert to `ALL` and reproduce the issue before a technical investigation can proceed.

Broadcom requires ALL (which encompasses FINER and FINEST) for the following reasons:

Internal Component Handshaking: Clarity relies on various integrated components (e.g., JasperReports, Schedule Connect for MSP/OWB, and various background processes). FINER/FINEST logs capture the raw data exchange between these components, which is often necessary for Engineering to diagnose "silent" failures where a process hangs without a SEVERE error.
Performance Diagnostics: According to KB 124243 (Performance troubleshooting - info Clarity Support needs), detailed logs are essential for analyzing slowness. FINER levels track the execution time of internal threads and specific request thread names (using %I patterns in the Tomcat Access Log Valve, as mentioned in KB 51115).
Stack Trace Correlation: Without the detailed handler levels set to ALL, stack traces generated during unexpected VM options or application startup failures (referenced in KB 124909) may be truncated, losing the "caused by" root context that only deep-level logging provides.

The change to Tomcat log levels SEVERE (highest) > WARNING > INFO > CONFIG > FINE > FINER > FINEST come with it is own risks and is something that we would not be able to certify. Here are some potential risks:

Reduced Root Cause Analysis (RCA) Capability: Loss of diagnostic visibility in app-access logs and may lead to a "could not reproduce" status for reported bugs.
Incomplete Performance Monitoring: As noted in KB 124243 (Performance troubleshooting - info Clarity Support needs), The Log Analysis portlets (`Administration > Security and Diagnostics > Log Analysis) may show incomplete or misleading data if internal performance metrics are suppressed.
Troubleshooting Integration Failures: For integrations like Jaspersoft or Rally KB 197057(Debugging/logs for troubleshooting Clarity issues), many debug logs rely on the container's ability to pass through detailed messaging. Restricting the AsyncFileHandler or ConsoleHandler can suppress the granular exception details needed to fix connection timeouts or authentication handshakes.