Throttling SharePoint 2007 Logs

If you have ever developed on SharePoint, there's gotta be at least once when you came across the superbly detailed error message:

"Unknown error" ...and its likes.

That's when we have to start ploughing through the humungous amount of log entries in "%programfiles%\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\12\Logs". Well, but there's an easier way - the log files doesn't have to be humungous!

We can throttle the log file outputs, depending on which area of SharePoint that we are working on. From the SharePoint Central Administration, navigate to Operations and Diagnostic Logging.

Turn off every type of log entries by setting the trace log entry to "None" for "All" categories.

When I'm working with MOSS workflow, I'll set the log entries to "Unexpected" for "Workflow Infrastructure". If I'm working with Forms Services as well, then I'll do the same for Form Services.

We can also set the number of log files to a smaller number, for a shorter period of time. Typically I will have 5 log files, each log files recording up to 5 minutes of activities.

Smaller, fewer log files - with throttled verbosity; translates to faster debugging - and I do suspect there's also a slight performance advantage, without all the unnecessary messages logged :)

Comments

• Anonymous
  March 02, 2008
  Body: The SharePoint 2007 logs are by default found in the 12 Hive: C:Program FilesCommon FilesMicrosoft