Knowledge Base

SMS: New Smstrace Allows Searching and Highlighting of Strings

Article ID: 185904

Article Last Modified on 10/27/2006

APPLIES TO

This article was previously published under Q185904

SUMMARY

The Microsoft Systems Management Server allows you to trace the actions performed by the Systems Management Server services. When tracing is enabled, each service creates log entries for actions that it performs or errors that it receives in a log file.

The Systems Management Server 1.2 CD and the Systems Management Server Resource Kit include a Tracer (Smstrace.exe) utility that parses these log files and presents them in a clearer, more user-friendly manner than plain text viewing.

Tracer also allows interactive viewing of the Systems Management Server log files while the services are writing to them.

Unfortunately, searching for keywords or strings is not possible.

MORE INFORMATION

The Tracer utility has been updated with some news features. This file will be available starting with the June 1998 edition of the Microsoft TechNet CD.

New Features

Search for String (Entry Text Column)

Available on the Search menu.

  • Find string
  • Find Next string (F3)
  • Find Previous string (F4)

Highlight and Action

Available on the HighLight menu.

HighLight: Draws a black outline around a row containing the defined string. The last outlined row is the current (selected) row.

This feature is useful to facilitate the reading of the Systems Management Server Logs when looking for occurrences of a specific string. It's also useful for real-time monitoring.

  • Only new, loaded lines are processed.
  • You can not remove the outline from outlined rows.
  • To stop the outline process, set the string to an unexpected value.
Action:

This feature works with HighLight string.

Allows Smstrace to execute a command when the "HighLight" string is found.

The action can be Enabled or Disabled.

IMPORTANT: Microsoft recommends that you use great caution when you define the string that triggers the enabled action, so that you can prevent large numbers of processes from starting up accidentally.

Additional query words: prodsms smstrace

Keywords: kbinfo KB185904


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