JBoss Enterprise Application Platform - Fixing common startup issue with WARNING: Failed to load the specified log manager class

In this post, I describe and provide a solution to a common issue that is encountered with JBoss Enterprise Application Platform (which also contains the JBoss AppServer), where-by upon attempting to start-up the standalone App server, it gives a warning that says - WARNING: Failed to load the specified log manager class org.jboss.logmanager.LogManager and then the rest of the startup process fails and ends up with the following stack trace, also shown in the Eclipse IDE screenshot below:

WARNING: Failed to load the specified log manager class org.jboss.logmanager.LogManager
Oct 12, 2014 6:49:18 PM org.jboss.msc.service.ServiceContainerImpl
INFO: JBoss MSC version 1.1.5.Final-redhat-1
Oct 12, 2014 6:49:19 PM org.jboss.as.server.ApplicationServerService start
INFO: JBAS015899: JBoss EAP 6.3.0.GA (AS 7.4.0.Final-redhat-19) starting
Oct 12, 2014 6:49:36 PM org.jboss.as.controller.AbstractOperationContext executeStep
ERROR: JBAS014612: Operation ("parallel-extension-add") failed - address: ([])
java.lang.RuntimeException: JBAS014670: Failed initializing module org.jboss.as.logging
at org.jboss.as.controller.extension.ParallelExtensionAddHandler$1.execute(ParallelExtensionAddHandler.java:111)
... 11 more
Caused by: java.lang.IllegalStateException: JBAS011592: The logging subsystem requires the log manager to be org.jboss.logmanager.LogManager. The subsystem has not be initialized and cannot be used. To use JBoss Log Manager you must add the system property "java.util.logging.manager" and set it to "org.jboss.logmanager.LogManager"
...
Oct 12, 2014 6:49:36 PM org.jboss.as.server.ServerService boot
FATAL: JBAS015957: Server boot has failed in an unrecoverable manner; exiting. See previous messages for details.
Java HotSpot(TM) Server VM warning: ignoring option MaxPermSize=256m; support was removed in 8.0

Fig 1 - Eclipse IDE showing stack trace

As indicated by the warning/error messages, the root cause of the issue is that the Logging subsystem could not be initialized, because the container could not find and load the specified log manager class - org.jboss.logmanager.LogManager.

To resolve this, do the following:

1. Go to the JBOSS_HOME location on the file system e.g. c:\jboss\appserver\jboss-eap-6.3, look in the bin folder and open the configuration file named, standalone.conf, in a text editor.

2. At the top of the file, add the following line - JBOSS_MODULES_SYSTEM_PKGS="org.jboss.logmanager".

3. Scroll-down the file, to where JVM options are specified and add the following two options:

   JAVA_OPTS="$JAVA_OPTS -Djava.util.logging.manager=org.jboss.logmanager.LogManager"

   JAVA_OPTS="$JAVA_OPTS -Xbootclasspath/p:$JBOSS_HOME/modules/system/layers/base/org/jboss/logmanager/main/jboss-logmanager-1.5.2.Final-redhat-1.jar"

Note: You may need to modify the exact path to the logmanager jar file, as the one on your jboss installation may differ from what applies here. The JBoss EAP version being used in this case was 6.3.0GA. A different version may have a different path to the logmanager jar file.

4. Simply save the modified 'standalone.conf' file, with these couple of changes, and re-attempt starting up of the JBoss App server (either on the CLI or within Eclipse).

Note: For fixing the issue for a JBoss EAP appserver instance running just within Eclipse, simply open the server's launch configuration and add the 2 JVM options to the VM arguments of the launch configuration, as shown in the screenshot below:

5. Voila! The startup issue with regards to failure to load the LogManager, is resolved.

Questions? Comments? All welcomed.