You can change the default log4j.properties configuration so that messages are logged only to a file or to both the console and a file. For example, you would change the above configuration to a configuration similar to this:

# initialize root logger with level ERROR for stdout and fout
log4j.rootLogger=ERROR,stdout,fout
# set the log level for these components
log4j.logger.com.endeca=INFO
log4j.logger.com.endeca.itl.web.metrics=INFO

# add a ConsoleAppender to the logger stdout to write to the console
log4j.appender.stdout=org.apache.log4j.ConsoleAppender
log4j.appender.stdout.layout=org.apache.log4j.PatternLayout
# use a simple message format
log4j.appender.stdout.layout.ConversionPattern=%m%n

# add a FileAppender to the logger fout
log4j.appender.fout=org.apache.log4j.FileAppender
# create a log file
log4j.appender.fout.File=crawl.log
log4j.appender.fout.layout=org.apache.log4j.PatternLayout
# use a more detailed message pattern
log4j.appender.fout.layout.ConversionPattern=%p\t%d{ISO8601}\t%r\t%c\t[%t]\t%m%n

In the example, the FileAppender appends log events to the log file named crawl.log (which is created in the current working directory). The ConsoleAppender writes to the console using a simple pattern in which only the messages are printed, but not the more verbose information (logging level, timestamp, and so on).

In addition, you can change the component logging levels to any of these:

These levels allow you to monitor events of interest at the appropriate granularity without being overwhelmed by messages that are not relevant. When you are initially setting up your crawl configuration, you might want to use the DEBUG level to get all messages, and change to a less verbose level in production.

Note the default log4j.properties file contains a number of suggested component loggers that are commented out. To use any of these loggers, remove the comment (#) character.