spring-boot default log location

In a spring-boot application I can specify a custom log file with

java -jar spring-boot-app.jar --logging.file=/home/ubuntu/spring-boot-app.log

But if I don't specify one, where does it go?

I couldn't find it in any of the following folders:

/tmp/
/var/log/
~/

I do not have spring-boot-starter-logging or any additional logging dependencies.

I was hoping to have something similar to catalina.out since the default configuration runs an embedded Tomcat:

INFO 10374 --- [main] s.b.c.e.t.TomcatEmbeddedServletContainer : Tomcat initialized with port(s): 8100 (http)

Spring Boot uses Commons Logging for all internal logging, but leaves the underlying log implementation open.

Default configurations are provided for Java Util Logging, Log4J, Log4J2 and Logback. In each case loggers are pre-configured to use console output with optional file output also available.

From the Spring Boot logging documentation.

The default log configuration will echo messages to the console as they are written. So until you explicitly specify a file as you described, it stays in the Console.


By default Spring Boot does not output logs to any file. If you want to have logs written in a file (in addition to the console output) then you should use either of logging.file or logging.path properties (not both).

In application.properties, just set:

logging.file=/home/ubuntu/spring-boot-app.log

This will create a spring-boot-app.log file under /home/ubuntu.