Configure diagnostic logging settings (Windows SharePoint Services)

  • Article

Applies To: Windows SharePoint Services 3.0

 

Topic Last Modified: 2008-04-08

In this article:

  • Customer Experience Improvement Program

  • Error reports

  • Event throttling

  • Configuring diagnostic logging settings

Use this procedure to configure the diagnostic logging settings for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0.

You can configure how diagnostic events are logged according to their criticality. Additionally, you can set the maximum number of log files that can be maintained, and you can set how long to capture events to a single log file.

You can also indicate whether or not to provide Microsoft with continuous improvement and Dr. Watson event data.

Customer Experience Improvement Program

The Customer Experience Improvement Program (CEIP) is designed to improve the quality, reliability, and performance of Microsoft® products and technologies. With your permission, anonymous information about your server will be sent to Microsoft to help us improve SharePoint® Products and Technologies.

For more information, see the Customer Experience Improvement Program privacy statement (https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=84784&clcid=0x409).

Error reports

Error reports are created when your system encounters hardware or software problems. Microsoft and its partners actively use these reports to improve the reliability of your software. Error reports include the following: information regarding the condition of the server when the problem occurs; the operating system version and computer hardware in use; and the Digital Product ID, which can be used to identify your license. The IP address of your computer is also sent because you are connecting to an online service to send error reports; however, the IP address is used only to generate aggregate statistics.

Microsoft does not intentionally collect any personal information. However, error reports could contain data from log files, such as user names, IP addresses, URLs, file or path names, and e-mail addresses. Although this information, if present, could potentially be used to determine your identity, the information will not be used in this way. The data that Microsoft collects will be used only to fix problems and to improve software and services. Error reports will be sent by using encryption technology to a database with limited access, and will not be used for marketing purposes.

For more information, see the Microsoft Error Reporting Service privacy statement (https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=85028&clcid=0x409).

If you want to provide error reports to Microsoft and its partners, select the option to collect error reports. Base your decision on your organization's policies about sharing the information collected by error reports, and the potential impact of error collection on users and administrators. Two options are available for error reports:

  • You can choose to periodically download a file from Microsoft that can help identify system problems based on the error reports that you provide to Microsoft.

  • You can change the error collection policy to silently send all reports. This changes the computer's error reporting behavior to automatically send reports to Microsoft without prompting users when they log on.

Event throttling

You can configure the diagnostic options for event logging. Events can be logged in either the Windows® event log or the trace log. You can configure event throttling settings to control how many events are recorded in each log, according to the criticality of the events. To provide more control in event throttling, you can decide to throttle events for all events, or for any single category of events. Several categories of events are available, based on different services and features of SharePoint Products and Technologies.

Categories of events can be defined by individual services or by groupings of related events. Selected event categories include:

  • All

  • Categories defined by product, such as Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Microsoft Office Project Server 2007

  • Administrative functions such as Administration, Backup and Recovery, Content Deployment, and Setup and Upgrade

  • Feature areas such as Document Management, E-Mail, Forms Services, Information Policy Management, Information Rights Management, Publishing, Records Center, Site Directory, Site Management, User Profiles, and Workflow

  • SharePoint Services and other services such as the Load Balancer Service

  • Shared services such as all Office Server Shared Services, Business Data, and Excel Calculation Services

For the selected category, select the least-critical event to record, for both the Windows event log and the trace log. Events that are equally critical to or more critical than the selected event will be recorded in each log. The list entries are sorted in order from most-critical to least-critical.

The levels of events for the Windows event log include:

  • None

  • Error

  • Warning

  • Audit Failure

  • Audit Success

  • Information

The levels of events for the trace log include:

  • None

  • Unexpected

  • Monitorable

  • High

  • Medium

  • Verbose

For more information about the Windows event log or the trace log, see the Windows documentation.

Configuring diagnostic logging settings

Note

Membership in the Administrators group of the Central Administration site is required to complete this procedure.

Configure diagnostic logging settings

  1. On the top navigation bar, click Operations.

  2. On the Operations page, in the Logging and Reporting section, click Diagnostic logging.

  3. On the Diagnostic Logging page, in the Customer Experience Improvement Program section, under Sign Up for the Customer Experience Improvement Program, select one of the following options:

    • Yes, I am willing to participate anonymously in the Customer Experience Improvement Program (Recommended).

    • No, I don't wish to participate.

    If you select Yes, users can decide whether they want to report Customer Experience Improvement Program events to Microsoft.

  4. In the Error Reports section, under Error reporting, select one of the following:

    • Collect error reports.

      If you select this option, you can also select or clear two options to control how error reports are collected:

    • Periodically download a file that can help identify system problems.

    • Change this computer's error collection policy to silently send all reports. This changes the computer's error reporting behavior to automatically send reports to Microsoft without prompting users when they log on.

    • Ignore errors and don't collect information.

  5. In the Event Throttling section, in the Select a category menu, select a category of events:

    1. In the Least critical event to report to the event log menu, select the least-critical event to report to the event log for the selected category.

    2. In the Least critical event to report to the trace log menu, select the least-critical event to report to the trace log for the selected category.

  6. In the Trace Log section, in the Path text box, type the local path to use for the trace log on all servers in the farm. The location must exist on all servers in the farm.

    1. In the Number of log files text box, type the maximum number of files that you want to maintain.

    2. In the Number of minutes to use a log file text box, type the number of minutes to use each log file.

  7. Click OK.

For information about how to perform this procedure using the Stsadm command-line tool, see Listlogginglevels: Stsadm operation (Windows SharePoint Services) and Setlogginglevel: Stsadm operation (Windows SharePoint Services).

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This topic is included in the following downloadable book for easier reading and printing:

See the full list of available books at Downloadable books for Windows SharePoint Services.