Logging activity in NexJ Server environments

All NexJ applications running on NexJ Server use Apache log4j, a Java-based logging utility, to generate log files.

By default, Log4j uses a configuration file called log4j.properties. It is located in the SERVER_HOME\deploy\conf directory. You can modify the file to customize logging functionality for your specific business needs, such as logging information for individual users or specific components of the model.

Log files are output to a directory specified in the log4j.properties file and can be opened using a text editor. By default, log files output to SERVER_HOME\log\nodename.log, where nodename is the name of the node. A separate log file is output for each node in a cluster.

NexJ Server supports runtime logging changes when it is run in standalone mode.

An alternate configuration file can be specified by passing log4j.configuration as a JVM argument when starting the server. For example:

modeld.bat "-Dlog4j.configuration=C:/log4jdebug.properties"

In this case, log4jdebug.properties will be used to configure Log4j and changes made to the configuration file will take effect every 60 seconds.

Note: When configuration changes are made, the updates are applied incrementally instead of resetting all of the log settings. This means that if a log setting category is set to DEBUG and you want to set it back to INFO, it must be set explicitly to INFO. Commenting it out or removing it from the configuration file will keep the category at a DEBUG level.

Note: For more information about this functionality, see the Apache log4j website.