Wednesday, June 8, 2011

Digging through log files? SMS Trace is the way to go!

Sometimes troubleshooting is required. This involves digging into all kinds of log files. When a log file isn’t too big, Notepad will do the trick. But when a log file is some MBs in size, Notepad isn’t good anymore. Why?

Two main reasons:

  1. When the log file is opened in Notepad new entries – written to the log file after it has been opened – won’t be shown. Notepad must be closed and the log file reopened, again and again…;
  2. Notepad displays text and no colors. So one has to look for errors him-/herself. Changes are that some crucial information is overlooked.

So how to go about it? Good news! There is a tool – for free – which elevates both mentioned issues. When opened the log file will be refreshed and warnings and errors are automatically color coded: yellow for warnings, red for errors.

This tool – SMS Trace - is part of the System Center Configuration Manager 2007 Toolkit V2 and can be downloaded from here. Install the tool (completely or only the part containing SMS Trace) and be happy.
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Now the log file looks like this:
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1 comment:

Pascal C said...

Thanks for the tip !