Log4J2 Programmatic Configuration from XML byte stream - configuration

Question

I am at the end of my tether with Log4J2, hopefully somebody can help. I have the following code to initialize Log4J2, pretty soon after startup:
try (InputStream configStream = new ByteArrayInputStream(writer.toString().getBytes("UTF-8"))) {
ConfigurationSource configurationSource = new ConfigurationSource(configStream);
Configurator.initialize(null, configurationSource);
}
Where writer is a StringWriter and toString() produces the following config (which I have validated is correct through other means):
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<Configuration>
<Appenders>
<Console name="C" target="SYSTEM_OUT">
<PatternLayout pattern="%d{yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss,SSS z} %-5p %m%n"/>
</Console>
<RollingFile name="R" fileName="C:\temp\logfile.log" filePattern="C:\temp\logfile.log.%d{yyyy-MM-dd}">
<PatternLayout pattern="%d{yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss,SSS z} %-5p [%t] %m%n"/>
<Policies>
<TimeBasedTriggeringPolicy interval="1" modulate="true"/>
</Policies>
</RollingFile>
</Appenders>
<Loggers>
<Logger name="somename" level="debug">
<appender-ref ref="R"/>
</Logger>
<Root level="debug" additivity="false">
<appender-ref ref="C" level="info"/>
</Root>
</Loggers>
</Configuration>
As you may have guessed, this does not work and I get no error message other than the expected:
ERROR StatusLogger No log4j2 configuration file found. Using default configuration: logging only errors to the console.
The reason I say this is expected is because I am configuring Log4J2 manually and have not suppressed this message yet.
Unfortunately, I cannot read the config from a file, for legacy reasons.
UPDATE 1 :
After taking Remko's advice, I added the following block before invoking the initialize method:
System.setProperty("log4j2.disable.jmx", "true");
StatusLogger status = StatusLogger.getLogger();
status.clear(); // remove old listeners that may prevent status output
status.setLevel(Level.TRACE);
status.reset(); // I could not see any trace info until I called this
status.trace("Status -- TRACE"); // I added this to prove that trace level logging was working
This gave me the following output:
ERROR StatusLogger No log4j2 configuration file found. Using default configuration: logging only errors to the console.
TRACE StatusLogger Status -- TRACE
DEBUG StatusLogger Stopping LoggerContext[name=sun.misc.Launcher$AppClassLoader#647e05, org.apache.logging.log4j.core.LoggerContext#a3defe]
DEBUG StatusLogger Stopping LoggerContext[name=sun.misc.Launcher$AppClassLoader#647e05, org.apache.logging.log4j.core.LoggerContext#a3defe]...
DEBUG StatusLogger Unregistering MBean org.apache.logging.log4j2:type=sun.misc.Launcher$AppClassLoader#647e05
DEBUG StatusLogger Unregistering MBean org.apache.logging.log4j2:type=sun.misc.Launcher$AppClassLoader#647e05,component=StatusLogger
DEBUG StatusLogger Unregistering MBean org.apache.logging.log4j2:type=sun.misc.Launcher$AppClassLoader#647e05,component=ContextSelector
DEBUG StatusLogger Unregistering MBean org.apache.logging.log4j2:type=sun.misc.Launcher$AppClassLoader#647e05,component=Appenders,name=Console
TRACE StatusLogger Stopping org.apache.logging.log4j.core.config.DefaultConfiguration#1a1440e...
TRACE StatusLogger AbstractConfiguration stopped 0 AsyncLoggerConfigs.
TRACE StatusLogger AbstractConfiguration stopped 0 AsyncAppenders.
DEBUG StatusLogger Shutting down OutputStreamManager SYSTEM_OUT
TRACE StatusLogger AbstractConfiguration stopped 1 Appenders.
TRACE StatusLogger AbstractConfiguration stopped 0 Loggers.
DEBUG StatusLogger Stopped org.apache.logging.log4j.core.config.DefaultConfiguration#9a6398 OK
DEBUG StatusLogger Stopped LoggerContext[name=sun.misc.Launcher$AppClassLoader#647e05, org.apache.logging.log4j.core.LoggerContext#9a6398]...
UPDATE 2 :
I decided to figure out a way to work with a file rather than a ByteArrayInputStream and got it working. FWIW, I think there is a bug in the Log4J2 code, when attempting to initialize using an InputStream, my theory:
In Log4jContextFactory the following method:
public LoggerContext getContext(final String fqcn, final ClassLoader loader, final Object externalContext,
final boolean currentContext, final ConfigurationSource source)
Has the following if statement, which always evaluates to false, which means the default config is always returned...
if (ctx.getState() == LifeCycle.State.INITIALIZED) {
if (source != null) {
ContextAnchor.THREAD_CONTEXT.set(ctx);
final Configuration config = ConfigurationFactory.getInstance().getConfiguration(source);
LOGGER.debug("Starting LoggerContext[name={}] from configuration {}", ctx.getName(), source);
ctx.start(config);
ContextAnchor.THREAD_CONTEXT.remove();
} else {
ctx.start();
}
}

Answer 1

At first glance I don't see why your configuration does not work. (You could try using forward slashes in the paths to make absolutely sure, but chances are that the slashes are not the problem.)
Can you try the following to generate more log4j2 debug output to see where the configuration goes wrong? Please post the result in your question.
import org.apache.logging.log4j.Level;
import org.apache.logging.log4j.status.StatusLogger;
// In an XML configuration you can just use <Configuration status="TRACE"...
// Here we use less elegant code to switch on status logging
// since we're not sure where things break down.
System.setProperty("log4j2.disable.jmx", "true");
StatusLogger status = StatusLogger.getLogger();
status.clear(); // remove old listeners that may prevent status output
status.setLevel(Level.TRACE);
// now configure log4j2...
// This should generate trace-level debug output to the console.
try (InputStream configStream = new ByteArrayInputStream(writer.toString().getBytes())) {
ConfigurationSource configurationSource = new ConfigurationSource(configStream);
Configurator.initialize(null, configurationSource);
}