Hacktoberfest 2026: the issues maintainers tagged for October, open and beginner-friendly. Browse Hacktoberfest issues

The behavior of the server shell scripts in unsetting LOG_DIR env var is unexplained

Open
  • Is something wrong?
#6,391 8 comments 1 reaction 0 assignees View on GitHub

Maintainers usually reply within 1 day

Nobody has claimed this yet.

Assessment

Difficulty
3/5
Estimated time
1-2 days
Newbie friendliness
35/100
Issue type
Documentation
Clarity
Mostly clear
Activity status
Stale
Tech stack
shell
Domain
documentation

Research direction

Start with the log-trace configuration documentation and the server script at dev/com.ibm.ws.kernel.boot.ws-server/publish/bin/server, especially lines 580-588. Verify how LOG_DIR from server.env is transferred to X_LOG_DIR and review the linked Stack Overflow use case. Done means the documentation explains whether and how X_LOG_DIR can be referenced, or briefly rationalizes the behavior and alternatives.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

On the one hand we do a fine job explaining how the LOG_DIR env var will configure the location of the Liberty logs, (see: https://openliberty.io/docs/latest/log-trace-configuration.html#settings).

What we don't explain is that a LOG_DIR env var supplied in server.env can not be referenced as an environment variable. It is unset in https://github.com/OpenLiberty/open-liberty/blob/d4d2cad32f282fa48b0f9b8db36a234f32a96fa5/dev/com.ibm.ws.kernel.boot.ws-server/publish/bin/server#L580-L588 and the values are transferred to an X_LOG_DIR.

So if a user wants to use/reference their LOG_DIR value in some other context, they don't have an easy way of doing so.

Of course, they could consider using another approach like the bootstrap.properties in some use cases. But in this use case from StackOverflow, using SpringBoot application properties, this wouldn't be an option.

Is it doc'd that they could use X_LOG_DIR in this fashion?

Should this be explained or rationalized briefly?

Dominant language
No language data
Stars
14
Forks
58
Avg merge
1h 4m
Merged PRs (30d)
21

Getting set up

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

More from OpenLiberty/docs

All issues in OpenLiberty/docs

Similar issues

More Documentation issues

Get new issues in your inbox

A short digest of beginner-friendly GitHub issues.