Hi!

...
Someone else might have an application that they would like to send
DEBUG messages to the FileAppender
even though my application may only send FATAL
...

this is, why you have different logger.
from your first post:

<logger name="Invoicing">
...
</logger>

<logger name="Invoicing">
...
</logger>

this makes no sense. You configure the logger 'Invoicing' and later
you configure the SAME logger with different properties. How do you
want to access these 'two' loggers from your code?
LogManger.GetLogger("Invoicing, but please first version") ? ;-)

You can do this:

  <appender name="consoleTestAppender" type="log4net.Appender.ConsoleAppender" >
    <layout type="log4net.Layout.PatternLayout">
      <conversionPattern value="%date %-5level %logger - %message%newline" />
    </layout>
  </appender>

<logger name="Invoicing.Application1">
 <level value="ERROR" />
 <appender-ref ref="consoleTestAppender" />
</logger>

<logger name="Invoicing.Application2">
 <level value="WARN" />
 <appender-ref ref="consoleTestAppender" />
</logger>

now you have two different loggers  (one for each app), using the same
appender. And you can set the Level per Logger.

Perhaps you want to define another one:

<logger name="Invoicing">
 <level value="ALL" />
 <appender-ref ref="consoleTestAppender" />
</logger>

now you have also the root logger (Invoicing). So you can configure
global settings for all Invoicing loggers or for every single one ...


have fun!

Daniel

>
> log4net is intelligent enough to handle this.
>

thx for pointing this out.


what about this:

<appender name="FatalSmtAppender" type= ...>
<threshold value="WARN"/>
</appender>

<root>
        <appender-ref ref="FatalSmtAppender" />
</root>


this will deliver all Messages to the appender, but only fatals are delivered...

I did some research about this

I checked the log4net sources. The error is thrown in
AppenderSkelleton (the base class of all appenders).
public void DoAppend(LoggingEvent[] loggingEvents)  {
..
if (m_closed)
  {
    ErrorHandler.Error("Attempted to append to closed appender named
["+m_name+"].");
    return;
  }
}

m_closed in only set in
public void Close()

it reads in code docu:
It is a programming error to append to a closed appender.

Perhaps this is really a bug in one of the log4net appenders.

Can you post a simple as possible config, that reproduces the error on
your system? I will try to reproduce this and debug into log4net to
see whats going wrong with the appender.

Hallo again ...

I was not able to reproduce your problem. The config runs without
errors on my system.

But I had some time to study the log4net sources and can tell you,
that there is totaly no way to configure 2 Loggers  with the same
name.

The reason: The Repository stores all Logers in a Hashtable; the
logger name is used as the key for this table, so it's impossible to
store two loggers with the same name. What happens in XmlConfig is
like this:

It loops through root xml elements. For every Logger element, it calls
getLogger(Name) to get the logger (wich will create a new logger or
return the allready created if exists). Level is set/overriden,
AppenderRefs are erased, and recreated.

In the end, your Logger is allways configured like the last definition
in configfile.

You can profe this very simple for yourself:
[assembly: log4net.Config.XmlConfigurator(ConfigFileExtension = "log4net")]
namespace ConsoleApplication1
{
   class Program
   {
       static void Main(string[] args)
       {
           foreach (log4net.Repository.Hierarchy.Logger  curLog in
log4net.LogManager.GetRepository().GetCurrentLoggers())
           {
               Console.WriteLine("logger {0} - level {1} ",
curLog.Name,curLog.Level);
               foreach (log4net.Appender.IAppender curAppender in
curLog.Appenders )
               {
                   Console.WriteLine("{0} - {1}", curAppender.Name,
curAppender.GetType().FullName);
               }
           }
           Console.ReadLine();
       }
   }
}

Hard to say why your FileAppender crashes. Are you using the target
file in other processes? Perhaps log4net is not able to open the
FileHandle and runs into the 'cannot write to closed appender'
exception?