Enabling new startup logging

Symptoms

Since 2024.12, TeamCity has a teamcity-startup.log file that allows collecting all information related to the startup process. This is important because it contains information about plugins, database, version, OS, etc., that can easily rotate out of the standard teamcity-server.log .

However, this log file may not be available in some installations that were updated to TeamCity versions >=2024.12 from the previous versions.

Cause

This logging is defined in the teamcity-server-log4j.xml file. In some instances, the upgrade process will not modify it, meaning it will never enable the new startup log.

Resolution

TeamCity ships the teamcity-server-log4j.xml.dist with the default settings (including the teamcity-server.log). The preferred approach is to make the dist file the new default settings (by moving out the old file, then renaming or copying over as teamcity-server-log4j.xml), then add any customization to it.