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== About SpreadAppender ==
SpreadAppender is a log4j appender module that broadcasts log messages over a local multicast network using the Spread API. It is very efficient and perfect for clusters of network applications. Your sysadmin will thank you for it.

== Prerequistites ==
Spread API. Spread 3.17.4 is recommended.
http://www.spread.org/
log4j
http://logging.apache.org/log4j/
spreadlogd
(Optional, but you'll want it)
http://www.backhand.org/mod_log_spread/

== Installation and Use ==

1. Build it. Run the build.xml file included with ant, the build product will be in the build/ directory as SpreadAppender.jar
2. Put it on your classpath.
3. Update your log4j application's logging properties to use it. Here is an example:

log4j.appender.Default=com.mahalo.log4j.SpreadAppender
log4j.appender.Default.group=logs
log4j.appender.Default.port=4803

log4j.appender.Default.layout=org.apache.log4j.PatternLayout

== Using the Spread Appender in a production environment ==

Besides the java appender itself, you do need something listening for the log messages on the Spread network and doing something with them. You can, of course, write a Perl or Python script that listens for messages on the same port and group as your Spread Appenders, but if you just want to write the log messages to a file there is an easier way. Spreadlogd is an application that just writes Spread messages out to a logfile.

You will need to have Spread installed and running on the machine(s) spreadlogd will be running on. Download the source and build spreadlogd according to it's documentation, 2.0.0 has worked well for us in production but requires libevent to be installed.

Spreadlogd is the preferred method of actually writing a log file. 
Spreadlogd homepage: https://labs.omniti.com/trac/spreadlogd
Spreadlogd tarballs: http://www.backhand.org/mod_log_spread/
(last link of the page as of 6/26/07 is a 2.0 release)

The example spreadlogd.conf that comes with spreadlogd is very simple and should be self explanatory.