Which Appenders should be used in distributed system? How to configure them?

Question

I am trying to add logging component to distributed system. It is written in AspectJ to avoid chaining current source-code. I use socket appender to send logs, but I'd like to try something more effective.

I've heard I should use JMSAppender and AsyncAppender, but I failed to configure it. Should I create Receiver which gathers logs and pass them to database and to GUI (I use ChainSaw)?

I tried to follow turorial1 and tutorial2 , but they aren't clear enough.

Edit:

In a small demo I've prepared I sent 6 logs for a request (simulation of 3 components)

[2012-08-08 15:40:28,957] [request1344433228957] [Component_A] [start]
[2012-08-08 15:40:32,050] [request1344433228957] [Component_B] [start]
[2012-08-08 15:40:32,113] [request1344433228957] [Component_C] [start]
[2012-08-08 15:40:32,113] [request1344433228957] [Component_C] [end - throwing]
[2012-08-08 15:40:32,144] [request1344433228957] [Component_B] [end]
[2012-08-08 15:40:32,175] [request1344433228957] [Component_A] [end]

Using socket Appender. So my log4j.properties is:

log4j.rootLogger=DEBUG, server

log4j.appender.server=org.apache.log4j.net.SocketAppender
log4j.appender.server.Port=4712
log4j.appender.server.RemoteHost=localhost
log4j.appender.server.ReconnectionDelay=1000

so I run

>java -classpath log4j-1.2.17.jar org.apache.log4j.net.SimpleSocketServer 4712 log4j-server.properties

with configuration

log4j.rootLogger=DEBUG, CA, FA

#
log4j.appender.CA=org.apache.log4j.ConsoleAppender
log4j.appender.CA.layout=org.apache.log4j.PatternLayout
log4j.appender.CA.layout.ConversionPattern=[%d] [%t] [%c] [%m]%n

#
log4j.appender.FA=org.apache.log4j.FileAppender
log4j.appender.FA.File=report.log
log4j.appender.FA.layout=org.apache.log4j.PatternLayout
log4j.appender.FA.layout.ConversionPattern=[%d] [%t] [%c] [%m]%n

Then I send my logs from file to Chainsaw:

It is absolutely basic, but I want to learn how to do it better. First of all, I'd like to send logs asynchronously. Then create very simple Receiver, which e.g. can pass logs to a file.

I tried to follow tutorials I listed above, but I failed. So question is: could you provide some example configuration? Example of Receiver.java and log4.properties files?

Answer 1

I would use NFS or CDFS and mount a drive on all the machines. Have each application instance write to a different file. You will be able to find all the logs in one directory (or drive) no matter how many machines you use.

I wouldn't use NFS or CDFS over a global WAN with a high latency e.g. > 50 ms round trip. In this cause I have used JMS (but I didn't use log4j)