Log4j will attempt to establish the JMS appender as soon as the Log4j system is initialized, and as far as I know there is no way to tell Log4j to ignore an appender that is not yet available. However, JBoss AS periodically re-reads the jboss-log4j.xml file and if it sees changes it resets the Log4j system. So later, when you notice that the JMS system is running, you could at that point "touch" the jboss-log4j.xml file and the JMS appender should be established on the next Log4j reset. View the original post : http://www.jboss.org/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=4238565#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.org/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...