JBoss: A Developer's Notebook

Chapter 6. Logging

Note

In this chapter:

• Configuring log4j

• Adding a Logging Category

• Configuring the Log Format

• Creating a New Logfile

• Rolling Logfiles

• Adjusting Logging from the JMX Console

• HTTP Access Logs

• Logging Generated SQL for CMP

In this chapter, we are going to look at how JBoss handles logging. JBoss integrates the log4j logging framework as a core service of the application server. This means that JBoss provides not only extensive information about what the application server is doing at any given moment, but also the ability to centrally manage logging for all the applications in the server.

Centralizing log management has several nice benefits. It means that your applications don’t need to worry about incompatible logging libraries. You also don’t have to worry about application-specific logging configurations, or monitoring multiple application-specific logfiles. As a core JBoss service, you also gain the ability to dynamically reconfigure logging in a running server.

Let’s get started and see what log4j can do.

Configuring log4j

The log4j.xml file in the conf directory controls all the logging for the server. This file has the definition of all the appenders that specify the logfiles, the categories of messages going to those logfiles, the layouts (formats) of those messages, and any filtering that will be done on those messages.

Note

For further information on log4j, see http://logging.apache.org.

JBoss keeps two logs. The first is the core ...