How come logging is so hard? - JDK1.4 Logging API

Question

Have a small project on hand. A standalone java program trigged by unix cron job and do some data cleaning. Need to implement a very simple logger. Tried to use JDK1.4 Logging API, here's my code:
public class MyLogManager {
     public final static String NAME = "mylog";
     public final static String LOG_FILE_NAME = "C:/my.log";
     private static Logger logger;
     static {
          try {
               logger = Logger.getLogger(NAME);
               Handler fh = new FileHandler(LOG_FILE_NAME);
               fh.setFormatter(new SimpleFormatter());
               logger.addHandler(fh);
               logger.setLevel(Level.ALL);
          } catch (Exception e) {
               System.out.println("Unable to initialize logger: " + e.toString());
               System.exit(1);
     public static Logger getLogger() {
          return logger;
and use MyLogManager.getLogger().info("message") to log message.
It works and my.log was generated with log message. However, the problem is everytime a new job (java myprogam ...) runs, it deletes the old log file and create a new one.
I want the message to be appended by the end of old log file. What should I do? Any help?

Answer 1

Use log4j (google for it - it's on http://jakarta.apache.org).
If log4j.jar is in your classpath, the JDK 1.4 logging framework will use it automatically. Then all you have to do is to configure a log4j.properties file in your classpath to log wherever you want it to.
And log4j is sorta-smart about multiple programs logging to the same file.