Where is the “server log” for Tomcat when running

Question

When running my Vaadin app on Tomcat 8.5 externally from IntelliJ Ultimate 2017.2 on macOS Sierra, I get an error message:

Artifact timepiece-ui:war exploded: Error during artifact deployment. See server log for details.

➠ Where is this ‘server log’?

When I look in apache-tomcat-8.5.20 > logs, the folder is empty. Indeed, I cannot find any trace of my app being deployed within apache-tomcat-8.5.20.

➠ Is there some other place where IntelliJ+Tomcat is placing my app and the server logs?

Answer 1

IntelliJ IDEA shows the log files you configure in the Run/Debug configuration settings as the separate tabs in the Run or Debug tool window.

For Tomcat the actual logs are placed under CATALINA_BASE/logs directory. The value of the CATALINA_BASE set by IntelliJ IDEA will be printed in the console of the Run or Debug tool window.

You can also find the log files under idea.system.path/tomcat/<configuration name>/logs/.

Answer 2

IntelliJ displays Tomcat logs

The accepted Answer by CrazyCoder is correct.

In addition, as commented by Jerry06, IntelliJ Ultimate does automatically display the logs as tabs in the server output pane.

The files backing those logs are stored in the CATALINA_BASE as explained in the other Answer.