Controlling log verbosity (troubleshooting technique)

When there is trouble on a system it may be useful to in crease the amount of data that is being sent to the log file. Everserve uses a third party project to enable logging. Verbosity levels are controlled through an xml configuration file to determine what is written to the everserve.log file.

The file, log4j.xml, is found in the /server/config subdirectory of the Everserve installation directory. Most entries in the logger section are commented out. Comments are found between the following characters "<--" and "-->". If these delimiters are removed from the file the logging properties enclosed by the comment will become active.

If there are problems with Everserve and you want to increase the log levels in order to investigate is to open the log4j.xml file and save a copy of the default settings to a backup file. After saving the original file, remove the comment delimiters for any category that will generate useful information. If that is hard to determine you may want to temporarily remove all of the comment delimiters. Save these changes to the log4j.xml file. Everserve will automatically read the changed properties and the log file will begin to record many more entries.

The log4j.xml file looks like this:
l<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<!DOCTYPE log4j:configuration SYSTEM "log4j.dtd">

<!-- Log4J configuration file -->

<log4j:configuration>

<appender name="STDOUT" class="org.apache.log4j.ConsoleAppender">
<layout class="org.apache.log4j.PatternLayout">
<param name="ConversionPattern"
value="%d %-5p [%t] - %m\n"/>
</layout>
</appender>

<appender name="openjms" class="org.apache.log4j.ConsoleAppender">
<layout class="org.apache.log4j.PatternLayout">
<param name="ConversionPattern"
value="%d %-5p [%t] - %m\n"/>
</layout>
</appender>

<category name="exolab">
<priority value="info" />
<appender-ref ref="STDOUT" />
</category>

<category name="com.synchronnetworks" additivity="false">
<priority value="fatal" />
<appender-ref ref="STDOUT" />
</category>

<category name="com.synchronnetworks.util.EverOnException">
<priority value="debug" />
<appender-ref ref="STDOUT" />
</category>

<!--
<category name="com.synchronnetworks.messenger">
<priority value="debug" />
<appender-ref ref="STDOUT" />
</category>

<category name="com.synchronnetworks.transport">
<priority value="debug" />
<appender-ref ref="STDOUT" />
</category>

<category name="com.synchronnetworks.ejb">
<priority value="debug" />
<appender-ref ref="STDOUT" />
</category>

<category name="com.synchronnetworks.nile">
<priority value="debug" />
<appender-ref ref="STDOUT" />
</category>

<category name="com.synchronnetworks.roles">
<priority value="debug" />
<appender-ref ref="STDOUT" />
</category>

<category name="com.synchronnetworks.util.ReconnectManager" additivity="false">
<priority value="debug" />
<appender-ref ref="STDOUT" />
</category>

<category name="com.synchronnetworks.util.ReconnectorThread" additivity="false">
<priority value="debug" />
<appender-ref ref="STDOUT" />
</category>

-->

</log4j:configuration>

<!--

Log4J Configuration Quick Reference:
====================================

Priority order is DEBUG < INFO < WARN < ERROR < FATAL

PatternLayout conversion characters:

%c Category of the logging event
%C Fully qualified class name of the caller
%d Date of the logging event (example: %d{HH:mm:ss,SSS} )
%F File name where the logging request was issued (caution: extremely slow)
%l Location information of the caller (caution: extremely slow)
%L Line number from where the logging request was issued (caution: extremely slow)
%m Application-supplied message
%M Method name from where the logging request was issued (caution: extremely slow)
%n Line separator
%p Priority of the logging event
%r Number of milliseconds since the start of the application
%t Name of the thread that generated the logging event
%x Nested diagnotic context associated with the thread
%% A single percent sign

Format modifiers examples:

%20c Left pad with spaces if category is less than 20 characters long
%-20c Right pad with spaces if category is less than 20 characters long
%.30c Truncate from the beginning if category is more than 30 chars long
%20.30c Left pad 20 chars + truncate from beginning if more than 30 chars
%-20.30c Right pad 20 chars + truncate from beginning if more than 30 chars

Examples: "%r [%t] %-5p %c %x - %m\n"
"%-6r [%15.15t] %-5p %30.30c %x - %m\n"

-->