# Failed to load appender in elasticsearch - logging yml syntax

**URL:** <https://discuss.elastic.co/t/failed-to-load-appender-in-elasticsearch-logging-yml-syntax/45553>\
**Category:** Elasticsearch\
**Created:** [March 28, 2016, 4:55am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/failed-to-load-appender-in-elasticsearch-logging-yml-syntax/45553 "2016-03-28T04:55:35Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![esdata](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/ecc23a/32.png) [@esdata](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/esdata)\
**Post date:** [March 28, 2016, 4:55am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/failed-to-load-appender-in-elasticsearch-logging-yml-syntax/45553/1 "2016-03-28T04:55:35Z")

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I am looking for the help with elasticsearch logging.yml. I don't have much experience with Java. Any help would be appreciated.

I tried to add roller-log4j ([https://github.com/lieharn/rollbar-log4j](https://github.com/lieharn/rollbar-log4j)) into my elasticsearch. I built roller-log4j with maven and place the built jar file into elasticsearch lib directory. When starting Elasticsearch get `log4j:WARN Error during default initialization`.

My logging.yml looks like:

rollbar:  
`type: com.github.rollbar.log4j.RollbarAppender layout: type: org.apache.log4j.PatternLayout ConversionPattern: "%d{yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss} [%t] %-5p %C:%L - %m%n"`  
The console output from Elasticsearch:

`log4j:WARN Continuable parsing error 19 and column 16  
log4j:WARN The content of element type "appender" must match "(errorHandler?,param\*,rollingPolicy?,triggeringPolicy?,connectionSource?,layout?,filter\*,appender-ref\*)".  
`log4j:WARN Error during default initialization java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: org/apache/log4j/AppenderSkeleton at java.lang.ClassLoader.defineClass1(Native Method) at java.lang.ClassLoader.defineClass(ClassLoader.java:800) at java.security.SecureClassLoader.defineClass(SecureClassLoader.java:142) at java.net.URLClassLoader.defineClass(URLClassLoader.java:449)`

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**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/original/3X/1/a/1ac57faf039f6b580b3f104ef42a2a89e41014de.png) [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)\
**Post date:** [July 5, 2017, 11:04pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/failed-to-load-appender-in-elasticsearch-logging-yml-syntax/45553/2 "2017-07-05T23:04:48Z")

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