I am trying to use the <property file="logback.properties" /> tag in my logback.xml file to reference an external settings file. I want to use a relative path and specify the file one level above my application context. For example: <web server root>/apps/myapplication/web-inf/classes/logback.xml I want to put the logback.properties file at <web server root>/apps/. Do you know what relative path I need to use to do this? I've tried everything I can think of, including the following, but they did not work: <property file="../logback.properties" /> <property file="../../../logback.properties" /> <property file="/logback.properties" /> <property file="./logback.properties" /> Please help ... there has to be a way without using an absolute path! Dawson