System errors and farm issues

Use the Manage System Logs dashboard to create, edit and start system logs to assist in troubleshooting system errors and farm issues. You define which events are logged for each service. Each definition is called a log filter.

The Log Filters widget lists preconfigured system log filters. These system filters are available for each farm component:

  • [Component] Service Manager Errors
  • [Component] Service Traffic Manager Errors
  • [Component] Service Worker Errors

You cannot edit the system log filters.

The widget also lists log filters that you have created. You create log filters if you require greater detail than is provided by the system log filters or if you require logging at a different level, such as [Component] Service Manager Information.

Each log filter has one of these logging levels:

  • Critical
  • Error
  • Warning
  • Information
  • Debug
Note: Logs at the Critical and Error levels are available immediately. Logs at other levels are queued and, by default, become available 5 minutes after the actions that cause them occur. Five minute default is the maximum delay and a shorter time can be configured for each service.

If you create a filter, select the lowest level at which to log. For example, if you select Error, then events at the Error and Critical levels are logged. To log events at all levels, select Debug.

For log filters that you create, you can specify for how long log entries are stored, and clear log entries. By default, the log lifetime is 1hour. The maximum is 24 hours. For the system log filters, the log lifetime is Infinite.

When you clear log entries you can clear all entries, or only entries older than a number of days, hours, or minutes that you specify. Click Clear All Logs in the Log Filters widget.

Log entries are cached and saved to the server in batches. The size of the cache is specified, for each service, in the Log Queue and Loq Queue Lifetime fields of a service. Select Dashboards > Farm Administration > Services and click the Settings icon of a service in the Services widget.

You view and administer log entries in the time specified in the user interface, which is typically your local time. The times are translated to Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) when they are saved to the server. For example, a log generated at 4pm Central European Time is stored as 3pm GMT.

In the Status of [service name] widget you can stop or start a selected log filter, and edit the definitions of log filters that you have created.

For logs that you create, you can define these options:

  • Name
  • Description
  • Logging level
  • Farm component for which to log events
  • Service instances to log
  • Event IDs to log
  • Component IDs to log
Note: Specify logs in as much detail as possible. For example, do not leave the Event IDs field blank if you know the IDs of the events you want to log.

Run logs for the shortest time possible to help maintain system performance.

To delete a log that you have created, click the Delete icon in the Log Filters widget.

During periods when the log service is unavailable, such as during startup, Critical, Error and Warning, events are logged to the Windows event log.