KB942864 - How to use diagnostic tracing in System Center Operations Manager 2007 and in System Center Essentials 2007

Article
10/11/2007

This KB article is finally available :) https://support.microsoft.com/kb/942864/en-us

The thing to note here is that BID/ETW tracing within OpsMgr and Essentials is currently not customer consumable (sorry). Trace conversion to human readable text requires conversion files (TMF's) that cannot be shipped in these release versions of the product. Additionally the trace content is extremely low level typically needing source code access (CSS escalation teams and product team developers). If you're good at reading between the lines and picked up on my "currently" and "in these release versions", yes things will change in Service Pack 1 (I'm going to leave that tantalizing remark at that. Check back on the blog for future updates on SP1 and tracing)

Here's the KB:

INTRODUCTION

This article describes how to use diagnostic tracing in Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007 and in Microsoft System Center Essentials 2007.
Important We recommend that you perform diagnostic tracing only in association with a Microsoft Customer Support Services (CSS) representative. We recommend this because the generated traces contain no human-readable text. After the traces are converted by a Microsoft CSS representative, human-readable text is available. However, this text contains only low-level information such as source-code file names, locations, source-code functions, and return codes. This information may be helpful if you have to troubleshoot a complex issue.

MORE INFORMATION

System Center Operations Manager 2007 and System Center Essentials 2007 implement a diagnostic tracing method that differs from earlier versions of Microsoft Operations Manager. This new tracing method creates binary files in which to store tracing information. Because this new tracing method is implemented at the Windows kernel level, it is highly efficient, and it can log tens of thousands of trace messages per second.
Trace information contains information about the context of a text-based trace message. However, this trace information is not in a human-readable format. The traces must be sent to Microsoft CSS for conversion. This article discusses the tools that are available to start and to stop tracing if you are asked to do this by a Microsoft CSS representative.

Tracing tools location

The installation folder for each role, such as the Agent role, the Management Server role, or the Gateway role, contains a folder that is named Tools. The following files are located in the Tools folder:

•StartTracing.cmd

•StopTracing.cmd

•TracelogSM.exe

•TracingGuidsBid.txt

•TracingGuidsUI.txt

•TracingGuidsNative.txt

•TracingReadMe.txt

To start tracing

To start diagnostic tracing, follow these steps:

1.On the computer on which you want to start tracing, click Start, click Run, type cmd, and then click OK.

2.At the command prompt, use the cd command to change to the Tools directory. For example, type the following command, and then press ENTER:

cd\Program Files\System Center Operations Manager 2007\Tools

3.Type StartTracing LEVEL, and then press ENTER. In this command, replace LEVEL with the tracing level that you want. You must use uppercase characters to specify the tracing level. The following levels are available :

•ERR

•WRN

•INF

•VER

For example, type StartTracing WRN.

When you start tracing, the trace output is written to the following binary files:

•MOMTraceNative.etl

•MOMTraceBID.etl

•MOMTraceUI.etl

These files are located in the %WINDIR%\Temp folder.

To stop tracing

To stop diagnostic tracing, follow these steps:

1. Click Start, click Run, type cmd, and then click OK.

2. At the command prompt, use the cd command to change to the Tools directory. For example, type the following command, and then press ENTER: