To get an Apache-style access log, complete with referrers and user-agents, I created a directory called /var/log/tomcat writable by the Tomcat process, and I added the following to tomcat/conf/context.xml:

<Valve className=”org.apache.catalina.valves.FastCommonAccessLogValve”
pattern=”combined”
directory=”/var/log/tomcat”
prefix=”access.log”
rotatable=”false” />

This will create a file called /var/log/tomcat/access.log and start logging requests to it. I’m turning off Tomcat’s date stamping and log rotation, since I prefer to use logrotate.