Trace32 allows you to view and monitor log files, including:

The tool also helps simplify analyzing log files, including highlighting, filtering, and error lookup.

Requirements

This tool supports System Center Configuration Manager 2007.

Menu Options

There are 2 main menu options: File and Tools.

File Menu

There are five File menu options.

Open

Displays the Open File dialog box.

Open File dialog box

This menu option opens a log file. The following options are available:

Option Description

Files of Type

Trace32 provides the following file filters:

  • Log files (*.log)

  • Old log files (*.lo_)

  • All files (*.*)

Ignore existing lines

When selected, Trace32 ignores the existing contents of the selected log file and displays new lines only as they are added. This is useful if you want to monitor only new actions and you do not need the full history of the log file.

Merge selected files

If this item is selected and multiple files are also selected, Trace32 merges the selected logs and displays them as if they are a single log file. The merged log updates and supports all other Trace32 features, as if it is a single log file.

Open on Server

This menu option lets you browse the Configuration Manager logs folder on a site system computer with the standard Browse dialog box. You can also browse the network for a remote computer.

If you select a remote computer to browse, Trace32 checks for the Configuration Manager share. If Trace32 cannot find a share containing Configuration Manager log files, an error message is displayed.

If you want to connect directly to a known computer without browsing, you can click Open to enter a server name and share using the UNC format.

Print

This menu option displays the standard Windows Print dialog box, allowing you to send the current log file to a printer. Output is formatted according to the settings on the Printing tab.

Preferences

This menu option displays the Preferences dialog box. You can configure Trace32 settings on each of three tabs: General, Printing, and Advanced.

The following options are available on the General tab:

General Tab Option Description

Update Interval

Controls how often Trace32 checks for changes to log files and loads new lines.

Highlight

Sets the color that is used when highlighting log lines that you choose.

Columns

Configures the columns that are visible in the log view and specifies the order in which they appear.

The following options are available on the Printing tab:

Printing Tab Option Description

Columns

Allows you to configure which columns are used when printing log files and to specify the order in which they appear.

Orientation

Sets the default print orientation when printing log files. This setting can be overridden in the Print dialog box.

The following options are available on the Advanced tab:

Advanced Tab Option Description

Refresh Interval

Forces Trace32 to update the log view at a specified interval when loading a large number of lines. You can disable this option by entering a value of zero.
Note
In general, you should not modify the refresh interval because it can significantly increase the amount of time it takes to open large log files.

<filename>

Trace32 remembers the last eight files that were opened and displays them on the File menu so you can easily open files that you have recently viewed.

Exit

This menu option closes Trace32.

Tools Menu

There are nine Tools menu options.

Find

This menu option displays the Find dialog box that lest you search the opened log file for a specified text string. The following options are available:

Option Description

Find what

Used to enter the search string. Clicking this option box displays a list of previous searches.

Match case

When selected, causes Trace32 to perform a case-sensitive search.

Direction

Specifies whether to search up or down from the currently selected log entry.

Find

Starts the search.

Find Next

This menu option finds the next matching string, as specified on the Find dialog box.

Copy to Clipboard

This menu option copies the selected lines to the Windows Clipboard as plain text. If you are examining Configuration Manager and CCM log files, columns are copied in the same order as the log view where each column is separated by a tab character. This is useful when copying logs into e-mail messages or other documents.

Highlight

This menu option opens the Highlight dialog box. The following options are available:

Option Description

Text

Enter a text string to that Trace32 can use to search the text of each log entry. Log text that match the text you enter are highlighted using the color specified in the Tools menu Preferences option. Clearing this field turns highlighting off.

If the string entered is a decimal or hexadecimal number, Trace32 tries to match the value to the Thread column. This allows you to easily highlight the processing of a single thread without filtering out other threads that might be interacting with it.

Case sensitive

When selected, Trace32 uses a case-sensitive comparison when highlighting log entries.

Filter

This menu option opens the Filter dialog box. The settings on this dialog box let you show or hide log lines based on criteria that you specify. You can apply filters to columns regardless of whether a column is visible. Filter settings apply specifically to each opened log file. The following options are available:

Option Description

Filter when the Entry Text

Filters log entries based on the contents of the Log Text column.

Filter when the Component

Filters log entries based on the component that logged them.

Filter when the Thread

Filters log entries based on which thread they occurred.

Filter when the Time

Filters log entries based on the date and time that they occurred.

Error Lookup

This menu option opens the Error Lookup dialog box. This dialog boix displays a description of an error when you type or paste an error code in either decimal or hexadecimal form. Possible sources include:

  • Operating System

  • Windows Management (WMI)

  • Winhttp

The following options are available:

Options Description

Error Code

A text box for entering the numeric error code in either decimal or hexadecimal form. In most cases, Trace32 can determine which form the error is in but it also supports the 0x hexadecimal prefix, if you want to enter a hexadecimal error code explicitly.

Lookup

Looks up the error code that you specified in the Error code box and displays the description and source of the error. If the tool fails to find a matching description, an error message is displayed informing you that the lookup failed.


Pause

This menu option suspends or restarts log monitoring. This is useful if log file information is being displayed too quickly. Pausing log monitoring ensures that the log file information is not lost if the log rolls over. You can also pause log monitoring if you want to stop new data from being displayed while you examine a log file.

Show/Hide Details

The menu option shows or hides all details other than log text and expands the log text column to the width of the window. This is useful when you are viewing logs on a computer with low display resolution because this option allows you to see more of the log text.

Note
While viewing plain-text files, Trace32 automatically hides details columns because they are always empty.

Show/Hide Info Pane

This menu option shows or hides the Info pane. This is useful when you are viewing logs on a computer with low display resolution because this option allows you to see more logging details.

Log Pane

The Log pane displays lines from log files. Items displayed in the Log pane can be highlighted as described above. Errors and warnings are displayed prominently.

Selected items are marked using the Windows selection color scheme, as defined in Control Panel.

Highlighted items in the Log pane are those items that match the highlight criteria as defined in the Highlight dialog box. The background of these items uses the color selected in Preferences.

Items with errors are displayed using a red background and yellow text color. In CCM-format logs, log entries have an explicit type value that indicates whether the entry is an error. For other log formats, Trace32 performs a case-insensitive search in each entry for the text string matching "error".

Items with warnings are displayed using a yellow background. In CCM-format logs, log entries have an explicit type value that indicates whether the entry is a warning. For other log formats, Trace32 performs a case-insensitive search in each entry for the text string matching "warn".

Info Pane

The Info pane displays details about the currently selected log entry. It also provides a large text box displaying the log text. Carriage returns are also displayed so that formatted text is easier to read and it is possible to read long entries that are not fully visible in the Log pane.

You can show or hide the Info pane by selecting Show/Hide Info Pane on the Tools menu or by clicking Toggle Info Pane on the toolbar. The Info pane is automatically hidden if it takes up more than half of the log window.

The Info pane displays the following details:

Item Description

Date/Time

The date and time that the log entry occurred.

Component

The component that generated the log entry.

Thread

The thread on which the log entry was generated.

Source

For CCM-format logs, the source file and line that generated the log entry.

Progress Bar

When a log file is first opened, the Info pane is replaced by a progress bar indicating how much of the existing file contents have been loaded. When this reaches 100 percent, the progress bar is removed and replaced with the Info pane. This provides feedback to you when you load large files, providing an indication of how long the load might take.

Status Bar

For Configuration Manager-format and CCM-format log files, the status bar displays the elapsed time for the selected log entries. If a single entry is selected, the tool displays the time from the first log entry to the selected entry. If multiple entries are selected, the time is calculated from the top-most selected entry to the bottom-most selected entry. This information is formatted as:

Elapsed time is <hours>h <minutes>m <seconds>s <milliseconds>ms (<seconds+milliseconds> seconds)

Windows Shell Integration

Trace32 supports file associations and drag and drop..

File Associations

Trace32 can associate itself with .log and .lo_ file name extensions. When the program starts, it checks the registry to determine whether it is already associated with these file name extensions. If Trace32 is not already associated with any file name extensions, you are prompted to associate the file name extensions with Configuration Manager Trace. You are also prompted to be asked again. If you select Do not ask me this again, Trace32 skips this check whenever it is run.

Drag and Drop

Trace32 supports basic drag-and-drop functionality so you can drag a log file from the Windows Explorer into Configuration Manager Trace. When you do this, the log file is opened.

See Also