Question

I am developing a C# .NET application. In the app.config file I add trace logging as shown,

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<configuration>
  <system.diagnostics>
    <trace autoflush="true" />
        <sources>
            <source name="System.Net.Sockets" maxdatasize="1024">
                <listeners>
                    <add name="MyTraceFile"/>
                </listeners>
            </source>
        </sources>

        <sharedListeners>
            <add
              name="MyTraceFile"
              type="System.Diagnostics.TextWriterTraceListener"
              initializeData="System.Net.trace.log"
            />
        </sharedListeners>

        <switches>
            <add name="System.Net" value="Verbose" />
        </switches>

  </system.diagnostics>
</configuration>

Are there any good tools around to analyse the log file that is output? The output looks like this,

System.Net.Sockets Verbose: 0 : [5900] Data from Socket#8764489::Send
    DateTime=2010-04-07T03:22:40.1067012Z

System.Net.Sockets Verbose: 0 : [5900] 00000000 : 4D 49 4D 45 2D 56 65 72-73 69 6F 6E 3A 20 31 2E : MIME-Version: 1.
    DateTime=2010-04-07T03:22:40.1067012Z

System.Net.Sockets Verbose: 0 : [5900] 00000060 : 65 3A 20 37 20 41 70 72-20 32 30 31 30 20 31 35 : e: 7 Apr 2010 15
    DateTime=2010-04-07T03:22:40.1067012Z

System.Net.Sockets Verbose: 0 : [5900] 00000070 : 3A 32 32 3A 34 30 20 2B-31 32 30 30 0D 0A 53 75 : :22:40 +1200..Su
    DateTime=2010-04-07T03:22:40.1067012Z

System.Net.Sockets Verbose: 0 : [5900] 00000080 : 62 6A 65 63 74 3A 20 5B-45 72 72 6F 72 5D 20 45 : bject: [Error] E
    DateTime=2010-04-07T03:22:40.1067012Z

System.Net.Sockets Verbose: 0 : [5900] 00000090 : 78 63 65 70 74 69 6F 6E-20 69 6E 20 53 79 6E 63 : xception in Sync
    DateTime=2010-04-07T03:22:40.1067012Z

System.Net.Sockets Verbose: 0 : [5900] 000000A0 : 53 65 72 76 69 63 65 20-28 32 30 30 38 2E 30 2E : Service (2008.0.
    DateTime=2010-04-07T03:22:40.1067012Z

System.Net.Sockets Verbose: 0 : [5900] 000000B0 : 33 30 34 2E 31 32 33 34-32 29 0D 0A 43 6F 6E 74 : 304.12342)..Cont
    DateTime=2010-04-07T03:22:40.1067012Z

Is there anything that can take the output shown above (my output is a text file 100mb in size), group together packets, and help out with finding particular issues I would like to hear about it.

Thanks.

Answer 1

I didn’t really use any particularly special tools in the end on this one. I analysed the log files a bit with notepad++, and then realised that these logs were not going to solve my problem, and moved on.