How do I set log4j level on the command line?

As part of your jvm arguments you can set -Dlog4j.configuration=file:"<FILE_PATH>". Where FILE_PATH is the path of your log4j.properties file.

Please note that as of log4j2, the new system variable to use is log4j.configurationFile and you put in the actual path to the file (i.e. without the file: prefix) and it will automatically load the factory based on the extension of the configuration file:

-Dlog4j.configurationFile=/path/to/log4jconfig.{ext}

log4j does not support this directly.

As you do not want a configuration file, you most likely use programmatic configuration. I would suggest that you look into scanning all the system properties, and explicitly program what you want based on this.

These answers actually dissuaded me from trying the simplest possible thing! Simply specify a threshold for an appender (say, "console") in your log4j.configuration like so:

log4j.appender.console.threshold=${my.logging.threshold}

Then, on the command line, include the system property -Dlog4j.info -Dmy.logging.threshold=INFO. I assume that any other property can be parameterized in this way, but this is the easiest way to raise or lower the logging level globally.

With Log4j2, this can be achieved using the following utility method added to your code.

private static void setLogLevel() {
  if (Boolean.getBoolean("log4j.debug")) {
    Configurator.setLevel(System.getProperty("log4j.logger"), Level.DEBUG);
  }
}

You need these imports

import org.apache.logging.log4j.Level;
import org.apache.logging.log4j.core.config.Configurator;

Now invoke the setLogLevel method in your main() or whereever appropriate and pass command line params -Dlog4j.logger=com.mypackage.Thingie and -Dlog4j.debug=true.