Configure ULS Logs for Troubleshooting SharePoint

Here is the quick tip on how to turn on & off ULS Logs for Troubleshooting. This is mostly self-reminder note for me.

• Download ULSLogViewer from MSDN, this is one of my all time favorite tool which doesn’t install anything on the SharePoint servers  – http://archive.msdn.microsoft.com/ULSViewer/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ReleaseId=3308
• To ensure you can start tracing errors for troubleshooting, You must enable logging. By default you may have been logging Errors but plan to configure Verbose logging to ensure you have all the detailed information your would need for troubleshooting. Please note that verbose would fill up the disk space. Plan to disable as quickly as possible after troubleshooting is completed. To enable logging, Go to Central Admin – Monitoring -> Diagnostic Logging -> Select All categories or whatever you are interested -> Select “Verbose” in both least critical event to report event log & trace log. Although event log is not required, I prefer to log into event logs as well to ensure I have more than one tool for troubleshooting.
• As soon as you would turn on Verbose logging, it should start logging C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\15\LOGS (if that’s your default directory, plan to offload logs on the production environment).  You should see logs are filling up fast as soon as you turn on the Verbose logging.
• To view the errors, Open the logs from File-> Open From -> ULS for real time feed => C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\15\LOGS\
  • You can find error & correlationid => Edit -> Find
  • You can filer log with correlationid => Edit -> Modify filter
• Plan to disable verbose logging or reset to Error logging once troubleshooting is done. To disable logging, Go to Central Admin – Monitoring -> Diagnostic Logging -> Select All categories or whatever you are interested -> Select “None” in both least critical event to report event log & trace log. It should stop filling up logs in the LOGs folder

Hope this helps both newbies and veterans out there. Enjoy!!!!!