Log4j is not reliable as per the following faq: http://logging.apache.org/log4j/1.2/faq.html#a1.2 "No. log4j is not reliable. It is a best-effort fail-stop logging system."
Is Logback more reliable? Is it possible that when 1000 log messages (for example) are written using logback in a very short span of time, it might silently miss a few messages. Thanks, Sunil
I think that Logback is also a best-effort fail-stop logging system. Run this snippet:
for (int i = 0; i < 8; i++) { System.out.println("log " + i); logger.info("log {}", i); Thread.sleep(2000); } with a FileAppender:
<appender name="file" class="ch.qos.logback.core.FileAppender"> <file>/mnt/logtest/testlog.log</file> <append>false</append> <encoder> <pattern>%d [%thread] %level %mdc %logger{35} - %msg%n</pattern> </encoder> </appender> on a disk which has no free space. Then it runs without any errors. A few seconds later I've deleted some files from the disk. The contents of the testlog.log file was that:
2011-10-07 08:19:01,687 [main] INFO logbacktest.LoopLog - log 5 2011-10-07 08:19:03,688 [main] INFO logbacktest.LoopLog - log 6 2011-10-07 08:19:05,688 [main] INFO logbacktest.LoopLog - log 7 There is no log 0 - log 4 lines in the file. I wouldn't think that other appenders more reliable.
In normal operating conditions (e.g. system has enough disk space) I've never seen that Logback lost a message. In that meaning I think it's reliable. But if you want to do audit logging I think you should use something else, not a best-effort fail-stop logging system. (If an attacker found a way to disable the logging by filling the disk space he can do everything on the user interface without any audit log and notice that the disk was full.)