in reply to logging and cron jobs

As I understand, the log4perl will open a file handle to a log file and write into it. Some of the scripts, are run frequently and there might be cases of same script running as more than one process. In case of multiple processes, I fear the log file will be corrupted. Are my fears unfounded ?

If you use Log::Log4perl::Appender::Synchronized then you shouldn't have any problems - it solves exactly this problem.