KB168906 - XCON: Setting up Advanced Logging on the Exchange 5.0 and 5.5 MTAs

SUMMARY

There are times when it may become necessary to enable advanced logging on the Microsoft Exchange Message Transfer Agent (MTA) in order to diagnose a problem. This is in addition to the logging provided in the Windows NT application log.

The logs must be removed from the MTADATA directory prior to restarting the MTA or they will be reset to zero and no information will be saved.

To enable the advanced logging, start the Windows NT Registry Editor and go to the following key:

   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\MSExchangeMTA
                     \Parameters

Find Text Event Log and set it to 1 (the default is 0).

Add the following DWORD values, entering the names EXACTLY as shown:

   Unbounded Event Log
   Unbounded APDU Log
   Unbounded Interop Log

These write to the Ev0.log, Bf0.log, and Ap0.log files, respectively.

To enable the logging operation, start the Microsoft Exchange Administrator program, open the MTA Properties page, click the Diagnostics Logging tab, and set the desired logging level on the categories in question.

During normal operation, the value for the above 3 entries should be 0. However, when a problem arises, setting any one or all of these to 1, along with setting the Text Event Log to 1, will start writing the logs to the Exchsrvr\mtadata directory.

MORE INFORMATION

This enables uninterupted logging to the Ev0.log file. This is basically a text version of the Windows NT application log and will log every event that is in the application log.

This enables uninterupted logging to the Bf0.log file. This log is enabled by setting X.400 Service and APDU logging to maximum in the MTA Properties page, Diagnostics Logging tab. The APDU log is a binary trace of all the ASN.1 activity within the MTA. This data can be viewed with the ASN.1 viewer (Aspirin) located on the BackOffice Resource Kit 2 compact disk.

This enables uninterupted logging to the Ap0.log file. This log is enabled by setting Interoperability logging to maximum in the MTA Properties page, Diagnostics Logging tab. The Interoperability log is a text 'sniff' of the incoming and outgoing transport activity for the subject MTA.