In tomcat6, System.err.println or System.out.println don't seem to work

[anw]

I know I'm bound to be doing something stupid. This is code I haven't worked on in about two years, then on tomcat 5, and I set up a brand new tomcat6 server and began to work on it again.

Note the log.write's in here, and the initDB, initAppInfo, etc.:

public class AppInitializer implements ServletContextListener
{
public void contextInitialized(ServletContextEvent e)
{
log.write("\n************\nAppInitializer::ContextInitialized entrance");

ServletContext sc= e.getServletContext();
log.write("AppInitializer::ContextInitializer: context name='" + sc.getServletContextName() + "'");
log.write("AppInitializer::ContextInitializer: context path='" + sc.getContextPath() + "'");

// Order is important!! Need the database
initDB(sc);
initAppInfo(sc);
initXRef(sc);

log.write("AppInitializer::Seems to have run OK\n*******************\n");
}

Here is log.write:

public void write(String msg) // Need to do more with this later
{ // (e. g., timestamp, logging levels, etc.)
System.out.println("\n************ In write **************\n");
System.err.println("\n************ In write **************\n");
if(msg == null || msg.length() == 0)
{
System.err.println("<null>");
return;
}
if(msg.substring(0, 1).equals("\n") || (msg.length() > 5 && msg.substring(0, 4).equals("****")) || !AddTs)
System.err.println(msg);
else
System.err.println(getTimestamp() + ": " + msg);
System.err.flush();
}

And, here's catalina*.log:

Aug 4, 2009 9:03:34 PM org.apache.coyote.http11.Http11Protocol init
INFO: Initializing Coyote HTTP/1.1 on http-8080
Aug 4, 2009 9:03:34 PM org.apache.catalina.startup.Catalina load
INFO: Initialization processed in 753 ms
Aug 4, 2009 9:03:34 PM org.apache.catalina.users.MemoryUserDatabase save
WARNING: User database is not persistable - no write permissions on directory
Aug 4, 2009 9:03:34 PM org.apache.catalina.core.StandardService start
INFO: Starting service Catalina
Aug 4, 2009 9:03:34 PM org.apache.catalina.core.StandardEngine start
INFO: Starting Servlet Engine: Apache Tomcat/6.0.18
Aug 4, 2009 9:03:35 PM org.apache.catalina.core.StandardContext listenerStart
SEVERE: Exception sending context initialized event to listener instance of class utils
.AppInitializer
java.lang.NullPointerException
at dbMgr.dbUtils.dbGetMaxSessions(dbUtils.java:99)
at utils.AppInitializer.initAppInfo(AppInitializer.java:92)
at utils.AppInitializer.contextInitialized(AppInitializer.java:38)
at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardContext.listenerStart(StandardContext.java:
3843)
at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardContext.start(StandardContext.java:4342)
at org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase.addChildInternal(ContainerBase.java:7
91)
at org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase.access$000(ContainerBase.java:123)
at org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase$PrivilegedAddChild.run(ContainerBase.
java:145)
at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method)
at org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase.addChild(ContainerBase.java:769)
at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardHost.addChild(StandardHost.java:525)
at org.apache.catalina.startup.HostConfig.deployDescriptor(HostConfig.java:627)
at org.apache.catalina.startup.HostConfig.deployDescriptors(HostConfig.java:553
)

You can see that it got an exception in initAppInfo (third line into exception print), but none of the prior System.err.println or System.out.println's printed.

TIA,
anw

[anw]

New data point: when I set the handler in my logging.properties file thusly,

org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase.[Catalina].[info-dev].[/infoisland].level = ALL
org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase.[Catalina].[info-dev].[/infoisland].handlers = java.util.logging.ConsoleHandler

I get 0 bytes in the info-dev log (which used to have the aforementioned expception in it). Where is my console going?