I've been logging to a database, and sometimes the database connection would drop and I'd send mails instead. The code grew into a bit of a mess over time, and I just decided to clean that up; one of the components that fell out is the FallbackAppender: configured with a list of appenders, and if one fails, shut it down and use the next one on the list. Would such a contribution be welcome? Here's the Javadoc, find an outline of the implementation below that. -- An appender that delegates to one of a list of configured appenders. If an appender fails, it will never be used again and the next appender in the list is used. Typical Usage: <appender name="APPENDER1" class="..."> ... </appender> <appender name="APPENDER2" class="..."> ... </appender> <appender name="APPENDER3" class="..."> ... </appender> <appender name="SOME_APPENDER" class="de.hennig_fahrzeugteile.lib.logging.FallbackAppender"> <appenders>APPENDER1,APPENDER2,APPENDER3</appenders> </appender> If all appenders fail, stderr is used as an appender of last resort. If you need specific formatting or encoding on the appender, finish the list off with a stderr appender to your liking. This appender does not use any formatters or encoders. -- The code isn't ready yet, what I have looks up all appenders in the context, puts them into a list, and iterates over the list as appenders fail. It also reports any problems via addInfo() and addWarn(); I hope that that's enough to play nice with logback's normal mode of operation. Currently it's 136 LoC, including boilerplate.