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1. Rewrite the JMX logging utilities (kafka.utils.Log4jController) in Java, and move them from kafka-core to clients (the org.apache.kafka.common package in clients module), which holds other common utilities including but not limited to ConfigDef, Exceptions and Metrics. 
2. Kafka and Connect will initialize this module on startup, and invoke helper functions to add "List Log Levels", "Set Log Level" and "Get Log Level" functionality into their JMX interface. 

Public Interfaces

Expose the following new operations via the kafka.connect.Log4jController mbean:

• getLogLevel: that accepts a classname, and returns the effective log4j log level.
• setLogLevel: that sets the given log level for a class.

Since there are standard tools to interface with JMX, we will not be adding any new tools or scripts to access the proposed functionality. The existing kafka.Log4jController mbean will not be modified.

Rejected Alternatives

• Changing log levels in a single node of a component will affect other nodes in the cluster (for example, changing log level of a class in one Connect worker will update levels in all workers in a Connect cluster) and this new level will be persisted across node restarts. This is beyond the scope of this proposal.
• Rest extensions were rejected, as Kafka doesn't offer a REST server and we are aiming for a consistent experience across Kafka and Connect in this proposal.