Content Deployment – The complete Guide – Part 6 – Logging

ULS Log

Both Content Deployment and the Content Deployment and Migration API use the ULS log to report problems and progress information using the following categories:

For the WSS Content Deployment and Migration API:

• Category: Upgrade

For the MOSS Content Deployment feature:

• Category: Content Deployment

To troubleshoot, content deployment issues these two categories should be set to Verbose:

This will ensure that the whole progress of content deployment is logged into the ULS logs.

In some situations it might be required to add additional categories (such as “General”) as the content deployment and migration API uses the WSS object model during export and import. If a problem occurs inside the WSS object model the error will show up in the related category first.

Export/Import log

An often requested feature is to get the same log files as you will automatically get them using STSADM -o export/import.

There are two possible ways to get this log file for content deployment:

1. Install October 2009 Cumulative Update for WSS and MOSS

   If you have this patch level or later these logfiles are always automatically generated and can be found on the export server of the source farm. The location of these logfiles can be found in the content deployment job report:

   

   The name in front of the path is the machine name where the logfiles can be found. The logfiles are stored on this server in cab file format.

   The directory will be in the ImportExportLogs directory which will be created in the directory configured as temporary path in the content deployment general settings.

   Starting with October 2009 CU these log files will always be created. [Update Nov 13th, 2009] The number of logs kept is the same as the configured number of deployment reports to keep. It is not necessary to clean the logs manually.

2. The second option is available also with previous builds. If you enable verbose logging for the “Upgrade” category you will find the entries which are usually written to the export/import logs in the ULS log. You only have to filter the logfile for the “Upgrade” category

   The problem with this method is that you will only see the entries AFTER you changed the logging option to verbose. So you will usually not have this information available when the deployment failed the first time.