I incorporated a few of your changes. In particular, I like the $init_done mechanic; it's much cleaner than what I was doing.

my %paths = ();
my $init_done = 0;
my $base_path = "/my/base/path/"; 
INIT: while ( !$init_done ) {
    $init_done = eval { Log::Log4perl->init($LOGGER_CONF_FILE); 1; };
    if ($@) {
        warn "Logger error was: $@";
        # if we get a missing directory error, try some (sane) recover
+y
        if ( $@ =~ m{Can't\sopen\s$base_path(.+)/[^/]+\s\(No such file
+ or directory\)} ) {
            my $path = $1;
            $path = $base_path . $path;    
            warn "log directory $path does not exist, attempting to cr
+eate it";
            if ( $paths{$path}++ ) {       
                warn "alredy tried to create this path";
                last INIT;
            }
            eval { mkpath($path) };
            warn "unable to create path $path" if ( !-d $path );

        }

        # for other config file errors, throw our hands up in disgust 
+and move on
        else {
            last INIT;
        }
    }
}

# if we couldn't get the config file to initlize, load a blank one and
+ move on without logging
if ( ! $init_done ) {
    warn "Couldn't initilize logger, defaulting to blank config file";
    Log::Log4perl::init(\''); # this will throw a warning, but that's 
+not really a bad thing 
}

[download]

One thing I learned while doing this: Log4perl sets its initialized flag at the beginning of its initialization, not at the end (on line 113 of Log::Log4perl::Config, in _init, on my install at least), so using init_once here is problematic, as it will not reload after the directory is created. I switched over to using init and relying on the $init_done to guard against unintentional reinitialization. Once I did that, it was necessary to put back in the two level error message check (the else last bit), otherwise it infinite loops because it is dieing on an unrecognized message.

Thanks for all your help!

In reply to Re^4: Graceful handling of Log::Log4perl errors by chaos_cat
in thread Graceful handling of Log::Log4perl errors by chaos_cat

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.