Log File Investigation Part 1 (CMTrace Tool Introduction)

A lot of time SCCM administrator face a daunting task software distribution related task. So I thought, it would be nice to share my log reading experience (you might probably know it already) here, and this will also act a constant reminder for myself to follow the steps. 

But in this first part of the blog, let us just have a fairly short introduction of the things we need for a typical troubleshooting process. You might already know, but I will list it anyway: 

1) CMTrace executable: This is a must have and most administrator would have know it by know. Use to be SMS Trace: 

So the useful part of this utility that I often use most is highlight and error lookup tool: 

Select the option "Highlight" under Tools, and think of a keyword to put in. 

For this example, I used "program" and CMTrace will highlight any line that contains the keyword "Program" as shown here

This will actually help you to zoom in the log file faster. 

Next will be the error lookup option (CTRL+L) this serves as a error code dictionary however base on personal experience not ALL the error codes can be found here, but this is a good place to start with: 

Not all error codes are reflected here, I am showing you the common ones, some description are very generic, like the one you see above is 1603, fatal error could be anything, you will need to source for the root for the error, chances are, corrupted installation files or in my experience the machine did not meet the software installation pre-requisites thus you see this error. 

To finish off part 1. Here is a place you cannot afford to miss: 

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-sg/library/hh427342.aspx

Yes, that's right, after all it is log file we are after. Over the years, MS has done a great job in categorising the logs, in SCCM 2012, they categorise the logs in server and client portion and so on. 

But there is this mind boggling question. Look at the client side log files. Client side alone is around 57 log files. So erm...which file do we start with to look at? 

Till then, part 2 will explain more....:) 

SY