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The Content Manager tracing tool

Use PowerShell commandlets to start and stop the Content Manager tracing tool, which return detailed information about the activities of (a part of) Content Manager. This tool is relevant both for Content Manager Explorer, as well as additional features you may have installed on top of it.

Before setting up the tracing tool, be aware that trace collection slows down your system and uses up disk space with the uncompressed logs it produces. To prevent overly large logs, write to a circular buffer instead of an ever-growing series of files.

On your Content Manager server machine, you can log in as an administrator, open a PowerShell prompt and start or stop the tracing tool.

To start tracing, issue the following comment on the PowerShell prompt, adding parameters as needed:
Start-TcmTracing -TraceFile PATH\TO\TRACEFILE

where PATH\TO\TRACEFILE is the full path and filename of the log file you want to write to. Tracing continues until you explicitly stop tracing using the Stop-TcmTracing commandlet.

Further parameters you can specify (always in the format -PARAMETERNAME PARAMETERVALUE) are:
TraceLevel

Default value if omitted: Verbose

Description: The trace level determines how much detail to log.

Values:
ValueMeaning
ErrorTrace level for error traces
InformationalTrace level for informational traces
VerboseTrace level for full traces, including method parameter values
TraceKeywords

Default value if omitted: 'Public, PublicIndirect, Extensions, External'

Description: The trace keywords are a comma-separated list of types of trace events to log.

Values: a comma-separated list (enclosed in single quotes) of one or more of the following, or All, meaning all keywords listed below:
KeywordMeaning
PublicTop-level public operations (such as Core Service or TOM.NET methods)
PublicIndirectPublic operations called within other public operation
DatabaseOperations performed inside the data access layer
ExtensionInvocations of any of the following extensions:
  • Batch Processor
  • Event System
  • Resolver
  • Renderer
  • Mediator
  • Workflow execution
InternalAny Content Manager code not covered by the above
ExternalAny code in your custom extensions added to the code
TraceChannel

Default value if omitted: 'TtmChannel, TcmChannel, DefaultChannel'

Description: The trace channel is a comma-separated list of channels, sources from which events are fired. Only events fired by channels listed here are logged:

Values: a comma-separated list (enclosed in single quotes) of one or more of the following:
KeywordMeaning
TtmChannelEvents fired from Topology Manager
TcmChannelEvents fired from Content Manager
DefaultChannelThe default channel if the name of the existing channel is not preset in the configuration.
ProcessNames

Default value if omitted: (All processes)

Description: The process names are a comma-separated list of specific processes to trace.

Values: a comma-separated list (enclosed in single quotes) of one or more of the following:
ValueMeaning
TcmServiceHostThe SDL Tridion Sites Service Host Windows service (which hosts net.tcp Core Service bindings)
TcmWorkflowAgentThe Workflow Agent
TcmPublisherThe Publisher Service
TcmSearchIndexerThe Search Indexer
TcmBatchProcessorThe Batch Processor
w3wpThe IIS working process (which hosts HTTP-based Core Service bindings)
TraceFileFormat

Default value if omitted: Text

Description: The file format of the log file being produced.

Values:
ValueMeaning
TextPlain-text format
EtlMicrosoft Event Trace Log file (binary format). If you use this value, TraceFile must have a value ending in .etl.
CircularSizeMb

Default value if omitted: 0 (do not use a circular buffer)

Description: The maximum size of the circular buffer to which events are logged, in megabytes. If TraceFileFormat is not set to Etl, or if MultifileSizeMb is set at all, this parameter is ignored.

Values: any integer larger than 0

MultifileSizeMb

Default value if omitted: 0 (do not use a circular buffer)

Description: The maximum size of each file to which events are logged, in megabytes. If TraceFileFormat is not set to Etl, or if CircularSizeMb is set at all, this parameter is ignored. Log files are sequentially numbered: for example, if the filename you specify in TraceFile is foo.log, the files will be called foo001.log, foo002.log and so on.

Values: any integer larger than 0

To stop all tracing processes, run the following command:
Stop-TcmTracing

If multiple tracing processes are running and you want to stop only one or some of them, find the process ID of a specific tracing process in the Windows Performance Monitor tool (which you can open by entering the perfmon command in your Windows Start menu), under Performance > Data Collector Sets > Event Trace Session. Your tracing processes have an ID sdlSession_NUMBER, where NUMBER is a series of digits.

To stop only the process with ID sdlSession_NUMBER, right-click the item in the list and select Stop, then Delete, from the context menu, or alternatively, run the following PowerShell commandlet:
Stop-TcmTracing -Id NUMBER