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.
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.
-PARAMETERNAME PARAMETERVALUE) are:
TraceLevel-
Default value if omitted:
VerboseDescription: The trace level determines how much detail to log.
Values:Value Meaning 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, orAll, meaning all keywords listed below:Keyword Meaning 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:Keyword Meaning 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:Value Meaning 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:
TextDescription: The file format of the log file being produced.
Values:Value Meaning TextPlain-text format EtlMicrosoft Event Trace Log file (binary format). If you use this value, TraceFilemust 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
TraceFileFormatis not set toEtl, or ifMultifileSizeMbis 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
TraceFileFormatis not set toEtl, or ifCircularSizeMbis set at all, this parameter is ignored. Log files are sequentially numbered: for example, if the filename you specify inTraceFileis foo.log, the files will be called foo001.log, foo002.log and so on.Values: any integer larger than 0
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 . Your tracing processes have an ID sdlSession_NUMBER, where NUMBER is a series of digits.
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