Was getting the stacktrace below when starting up Crowd. To fix it, I had to specify the full path to the location where I wanted the log to be written. Thankfully SO came to the rescue:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10682130/error-setfilenull-false-call-failed-when-using-log4j

Please fix this so it mirrors the functionality shipped with Crowd (which doesn't require configuration and writes to the data directory by default) or update the documentation indicating that the full path to the log directory for the log4j.appender.filelog.File property needs to be set in

/crowd-openidserver-webapp/WEB-INF/classes/log4j.properties

Full stack trace:

log4j:ERROR setFile(null,true) call failed.
java.io.FileNotFoundException: atlassian-crowd-openid-server.log (Permission denied)
at java.io.FileOutputStream.open(Native Method)
at java.io.FileOutputStream.
<init>(FileOutputStream.java:206)
at java.io.FileOutputStream.<init>(FileOutputStream.java:127)
at org.apache.log4j.FileAppender.setFile(FileAppender.java:294)
at org.apache.log4j.RollingFileAppender.setFile(RollingFileAppender.java:207)
at org.apache.log4j.FileAppender.activateOptions(FileAppender.java:165)
at org.apache.log4j.config.PropertySetter.activate(PropertySetter.java:307)
at org.apache.log4j.config.PropertySetter.setProperties(PropertySetter.java:172)
at org.apache.log4j.config.PropertySetter.setProperties(PropertySetter.java:104)
at org.apache.log4j.PropertyConfigurator.parseAppender(PropertyConfigurator.java:842)
at org.apache.log4j.PropertyConfigurator.parseCategory(PropertyConfigurator.java:768)
at org.apache.log4j.PropertyConfigurator.configureRootCategory(PropertyConfigurator.java:648)
at org.apache.log4j.PropertyConfigurator.doConfigure(PropertyConfigurator.java:514)
at org.apache.log4j.PropertyConfigurator.doConfigure(PropertyConfigurator.java:580)
at org.apache.log4j.helpers.OptionConverter.selectAndConfigure(OptionConverter.java:526)
at org.apache.log4j.LogManager.<clinit>(LogManager.java:127)
at org.slf4j.impl.Log4jLoggerFactory.getLogger(Log4jLoggerFactory.java:66)
at org.slf4j.LoggerFactory.getLogger(LoggerFactory.java:270)
at org.slf4j.LoggerFactory.getLogger(LoggerFactory.java:281)
at com.atlassian.crowd.openid.server.bootstrap.BootstrapLoaderListener.<clinit>(BootstrapLoaderListener.java:30)
at sun.reflect.NativeConstructorAccessorImpl.newInstance0(Native Method)
at sun.reflect.NativeConstructorAccessorImpl.newInstance(NativeConstructorAccessorImpl.java:62)
at sun.reflect.DelegatingConstructorAccessorImpl.newInstance(DelegatingConstructorAccessorImpl.java:45)
at java.lang.reflect.Constructor.newInstance(Constructor.java:408)
at java.lang.Class.newInstance(Class.java:433)
at org.apache.catalina.core.DefaultInstanceManager.newInstance(DefaultInstanceManager.java:138)
at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardContext.listenerStart(StandardContext.java:4854)
at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardContext.startInternal(StandardContext.java:5434)
at org.apache.catalina.util.LifecycleBase.start(LifecycleBase.java:150)
at org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase.addChildInternal(ContainerBase.java:901)
at org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase.addChild(ContainerBase.java:877)
at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardHost.addChild(StandardHost.java:633)
at org.apache.catalina.startup.HostConfig.deployDescriptor(HostConfig.java:656)
at org.apache.catalina.startup.HostConfig$DeployDescriptor.run(HostConfig.java:1635)
at java.util.concurrent.Executors$RunnableAdapter.call(Executors.java:511)
at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask.run(FutureTask.java:266)
at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor.runWorker(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:1142)
at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:617)
at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:745)