The real kicker is:
i've seen iWS (web server!) swallow anything that you try to printout from a
servlet using the very API that you are supposed to use! the
log() method on the GenericServlet !
Other time's I've managed to catch System.out.println()'s from iWS.
They are,of course,completely inaccessible in all cases, but if you go to administer the iWS and you click 'Apply' then select "Start and Stop", it takes you to a page where a few things print out on the webpage... amazingly enough, if you have a few System.out.println's in the init method of a servlet that you have set to load-on-startup.. you will see these messages intermixed with iPlanet's startup messages.
But not in any log files!
And by the way, this is all on NT/2000. It doesn't seem to have these problems on Solaris.