### To Search Log Files

1. Select Search Log Files from the right panel of the console.

   You can also access the Logging settings by selecting the Application Server node, selecting the Logging tab, and clicking on the View Log Files button.

2. From the Log Viewer window, define and customize the Log Viewer Search Criteria.

3. From the Search Criteria section of the Log Viewer window, define the following Basic Search fields:

   - Instance Name: Choose an instance name from the drop-down list to view the log for that server instance. The default is the current server instance.

   - Log File: Choose a log file name from the drop-down list to view the contents of that log. The default is `server.log`.

   - Timestamp: To view the most recent messages, select Most Recent (the default). To view messages only from a certain period of time, select Specific Range and type a date and time value in the From and To fields that appear. For the Time value, the syntax must take the following form (SSS stands for milliseconds): hh:mm:ss.SSS.

     For example: `14:13:40.580`

     If the From value is later than the To value, an error message appears.

4. Log Level: To filter messages by log level, choose a log level from the drop-down list. By default, the display includes all messages that appear in the server log at the chosen log level and more severe levels. Select the checkbox labeled "Do not include more severe messages" to display messages at only the chosen level.

   To ensure that the messages you want to view appear in the server log, first set the appropriate log levels on the Log Levels page. See To configure log levels.

   If you choose to filter log messages based on log level, only messages matching the specified filter criteria are shown. However, this filtering does not affect which messages are logged to the server log.

5. Select Search. The most recent 40 entries in the server log appear, with the settings specified on the Logging Settings and Log Levels pages.

6. Click the triangle next to the Timestamp header to sort the messages so that the most recent one appears last.

   To view a formatted version of any message, click the link marked (details). A window labeled Log Entry Detail appears, with a formatted version of the message. At the end of the list of entries, click the buttons to view earlier or later entries in the log file.

7. Click Advanced Search in the Search Criteria area to make additional refinements to the log viewer. Use the Advanced Options fields as follows:

   - Logger: To filter by module, choose one or more name spaces from the drop-down list. Use shift-click or control-click to choose multiple name spaces. Selecting a namespace at a higher level selects all the name spaces below it. For example, selecting `javax.enterprise.system` also selects the loggers for all the modules under that namespace: `javax.enterprise.system.core`, `javax.enterprise.system.tools.admin`, and so on.

   - Custom Logger: To view messages from loggers specific to a particular application, type the logger names in the text field, one per line. If the application has several modules, you can view any or all of them. For example, suppose the application has loggers with the following names:

     `com.mycompany.myapp.module1` `com.mycompany.myapp.module2` `com.mycompany.myapp.module3`

     To view messages from all modules in the application, type `com.mycompany.myapp`. To view messages from `module2` only, type `com.mycompany.myapp.module2`

     When you specify one or more custom loggers, messages from Application Server modules appear only if you specify them explicitly in the Logger area.

   - Name-Value Pairs: To view output from a specific thread, type the key name and value for that thread in the text field. The key name is `ThreadID`. For example: `ThreadID=13`

     Suppose that `com.mycompany.myapp.module2` runs in several threads. To refine the log viewer to show only the output from a single thread, specify that module's logger in the Custom Logger field, and then specify the thread ID in this field.

   - Display: To view more than 40 messages at a time (the default), choose another of the available values from the drop-down list (100, 250, or 1000).

     To view stack traces, deselect the "Limit excessively long messages" checkbox. By default, stack traces do not appear in the viewer; to view them, click the (details) link for a message.