In the verrrrry useful stuff category, today I configured log4j's Chainsaw log exploration tool for my project and it's just great!

(and yes, I know some of you have been using it for a long time ;-)

Basically, you just need to start the org.apache.log4j.chainsaw.Main class in addition to your application, and add this to your log4j config:

# activate this to see when the log4j config is reloaded log4j.debug = true

# this sets a global minimal logging threshold, default=ALL log4j.threshold=ALL

# setup for Chainsaw logging of everything log4j.rootCategory=DEBUG, Chainsaw log4j.appender.Chainsaw=org.apache.log4j.net.SocketAppender log4j.appender.Chainsaw.remoteHost=127.0.0.1 log4j.appender.Chainsaw.port=4445 log4j.appender.Chainsaw.locationInfo=true

And you can stop and restart Chainsaw at will without causing any harm to your running application.

Great Stuff!