Summary

In certain situations, especially during cases with Laserfiche Support, it may be necessary to configure event trace logging for Laserfiche Server and Laserfiche Full-Text Search services in order to capture the processes causing the issue. This article lists the steps to configure, turn on, and turn off event tracing for these services.

More Information

Laserfiche event tracing does not distinguish between various types of processes going on inside the system. It simply captures everything in the log file. For this reason, before event tracing is enabled, you should make sure that no other activity is going on in the system. The best times to take tracing may be during the lunch hour or after work hours when relatively few people will be logged onto the server.

The steps for enabling event tracing are as follows:

Enabling Tracing Via the Laserfiche Event Trace Viewer 8

Note: If you are on version 8.1 Server or later, you can quickly enable and disable tracing from the Laserfiche 8 Event Trace Viewer. Enabling tracing from the Laserfiche 8 Event Trace Viewer only enables tracing for the Laserfiche Server. If you want to enable tracing for the search engine, see the section on enabling tracing through Windows Performance Monitor.

1. Go to Start Menu.
2. Select Programs.
3. Select Laserfiche.
4. Select Laserfiche 8 Event Trace Viewer.
5. Go to File, select Start Tracing.
6. Specify the directory you want the trace log to be saved into, and click Start.
7. When you want to stop the trace, go to File menu and select Stop Tracing.

The trace file will be an .etl file located in the directory you specify.

Enabling Tracing Via the Performance Monitor

In versions earlier than 8.1, tracing can be enabled from the Performance Monitor.

1. Start the Performance Monitor (available under Administrative Tools).
2. Expand the Performance Logs and Alerts node.
3. Right-click on the Trace Logs node and choose New Log Settings...
4. Give the logging configuration any name you like.
5. Choose the Nonsystem providers radio button, and click the Add... button. Do one of the following:
• Choose the Laserfiche Content Repository Trace provider to create a Laserfiche Server trace log.
• Choose the Laserfiche Full-Text Index and Search Engine Trace provider to create a LFFTS trace log.

The Laserfiche Server service and the Search Engine service must be running in order for their respective trace providers to appear in the list. You can also configure tracing for the OS, the HTTP server, and SQL Server from here.

6. Under the Schedule tab, choose the Manually button in the Start log and Stop log groups.
7. Configure whatever other settings you want. Note the directory where the log files will be created and what the names of the log files will be.
8. Choose Ok to close the dialog and create the log configuration.
9. You can start tracing at any time by selecting the log configuration you just created and hitting the start button in the MMC toolbar. The stop button stops tracing.

Enabling Tracing Via the Performance Monitor in Windows Server 2008

1. Start the Performance Monitor (available under Administrative Tools).
2. Expand Data collector Sets, right-click on Event Trace Sessions, point to New and click Data Collector Set to load the Create new Data Collector Set wizard.
3. Give the logging configuration any name you like, select the Create manually (Advanced) option and and click Next.
4. On the Which event trace providers would you like to enable? step, click the Add... button. Do one of the following:
• Choose the Laserfiche Content Repository Trace provider to create a Laserfiche Server trace log.
• Choose the Laserfiche Full-Text Index and Search Engine Trace provider to create a LFFTS trace log.

The Laserfiche Server service and the Search Engine service must be running in order for their respective trace providers to appear in the list. You can also configure tracing for the OS, the HTTP server, and SQL Server from here.

5. Select where you want to save the trace log file.
6. Select the Save and close option and click Finish to close the wizard.
7. You can start tracing at any time by selecting the collector set you just created and hitting the start button in the MMC toolbar. The stop button stops tracing.

After the trace is configured and ready, you can right click on it to start and stop logging. Typically, you will need to start logging, reproduce the error, then wait several seconds and stop logging.

Additional Information

Log files that are of size 5MB or greater are typically difficult to open and navigate by support engineers. For this reason, sometimes it may be necessary to enable rollover trace logs so that each trace log's size is limited to 2MB or less.

The steps to configure rollover trace logs are as follows:

Configuring Rollover Tracing

1. After doing the initial configuration outlined in the above section, go to the Log Files tab.
2. Make sure it is set to Sequential Trace File.
3. Change the file name ending to "mmddhhmm".
4. Make sure "overwrite existing log file" option is unchecked.
5. Click on Configure.
6. In the log file size section, select "Limit of" and select 2MB as the limit.
7. Click OK.

This type of tracing will be required in situations where the errors are intermittent and/or the process that generates them takes a long time (and thus the non-rollover log files would be too large to be of any use).

After starting the trace log, start the process that generates the error. When the error is received, stop the event tracing. Go to your application event viewer (Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Event Viewer) and check its time stamp. Navigate to the location where the event trace logs are stored. Browse through them to find the log file with the corresponding time stamp (which will be in the mmddhhmm format). This trace file, as well as the ones before and after, will need to be looked at by support engineers.