The trace level static flag in the org.jboss.security.SecurityAssociation was being set too early (before the parsing of the conf/log4j.xml) due to the invocation of the setServer method from within the static block of the JaasSecurityManagerService. The result is that trace level logging could not be enabled. The setServer method should not be called until the start method of the JaasSecurityManagerService is invoked.