Therefore I've provided my adoption for logstash, which has an increased stability when it comes to longer messages. logstash-gelf provides implementations for:

• log4j (1.2.xx)
• Java Util Logging
• JBoss7 Logging

and is available from Maven Central. You can either use it in your Maven/Ivy/Gradle-enabled projects, download it as Jar or download it as JBoss7 module. Find the code at https://github.com/mp911de/logstash-gelf.

Maven

<dependency>
    <groupId>biz.paluch.logging</groupId>
    <artifactId>logstash-gelf</artifactId>
    <version>1.0.0</version>
</dependency>

jar

http://search.maven.org/remotecontent?filepath=biz/paluch/logging/logstash-gelf/1.0.0/logstash-gelf-1.0.0.jar

You need json-simple in order to use the jar: http://search.maven.org/remotecontent?filepath=com/googlecode/json-simple/json-simple/1.1.1/json-simple-1.1.1.jar

JBoss 7 Module

http://search.maven.org/remotecontent?filepath=biz/paluch/logging/logstash-gelf/1.0.0/logstash-gelf-1.0.0-logging-module.zip

Ivy

<dependency org="biz.paluch.logging" name="logstash-gelf" rev="1.0.0" />

Gradle

repositories {
    mavenCentral()
}
dependencies {
    compile group: 'biz.paluch.logging', name: 'logstash-gelf', version: '1.0.0'
}

logstash setup

Setting up logstash is straight forward and short. Create a config file, named logstash.conf with following content:

input { 
    gelf {
		port => 12201
    }
}

output { 
	elasticsearch {
	    embedded => true 
	}
}

Now start your logstash

java -jar /opt/logstash/logstash-1.2.1-flatjar.jar agent -f logstash.conf

And your logstash server is up and running

log4j setup

Now let's go for log4j (you'll find more documentation at http://maven.paluch.biz/logstash-gelf/). All you need is to include the gelf appender into your log4j config. You can do it either using log4j.properties or log4j.xml. Below you'll find the xml code.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<!DOCTYPE log4j:configuration SYSTEM "log4j.dtd">
<log4j:configuration xmlns:log4j="http://jakarta.apache.org/log4j/">

    <appender name="sysout" class="org.apache.log4j.ConsoleAppender">
        <layout class="org.apache.log4j.PatternLayout">
            <param name="ConversionPattern" value="%d{ISO8601} %-5p [%t] %c: %m%n" />
        </layout>
    </appender>

    <appender name="gelf" class="biz.paluch.logging.gelf.log4j.GelfLogAppender">
        <param name="GraylogHost" value="udp:localhost" />
        <param name="GraylogPort" value="12201" />
        <param name="Facility" value="java-test" />
        <param name="ExtractStackTrace" value="true" />
        <param name="FilterStackTrace" value="true" />
        <param name="MdcProfiling" value="true" />
        <param name="TimestampPattern" value="yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss,SSSS" />
        <param name="MaximumMessageSize" value="8192" />
        <param name="AdditionalFields" value="fieldName1=fieldValue1,fieldName2=fieldValue2" />
        <param name="MdcFields" value="mdcField1,mdcField2" />
        <param name="Threshold" value="INFO" />
    </appender>

    <root>
        <priority value="INFO" />
        <appender-ref ref="sysout" />
        <appender-ref ref="gelf" />
    </root>
</log4j:configuration>

And now have fun with your logger. Support for log4j2 is already in the GitHub repo https://github.com/mp911de/logstash-gelf but not yet released.