Finished up coding Version 2 of the Log Launcher in readiness for a weekend release. Weekends are not the best time to release tools I’ve found, but heck why sit on it a whole weekend waiting for Monday 
I wrote this tool for the primary reason that I get tired of tapping in paths to get at logs in different locations, when I am on-site with a Customer I often have to navigate around logs looking things up, and I waste time trying to recall paths and punching them in.
Put simply LogLauncher retrieves logs from a variety of ConfigMgr-related locations and presents them in an easy to use interface, from which you can launch the logs using CMTrace (if you have it), or just sit there and watch the logs activity represented visually using a colour gradient.
The built-in log locations are all dynamically checked, so if you’ve installed to custom path locations, LogLauncher should still be able to find logs.
Now all you need to do is run this on the device you want to view logs for, or run it and connect remotely to a device.
Before I proceed with the shots and feature call-outs I’d like to thank the tool testers who helped find bugs and suggest ideas for Version 2 of LogLauncher, they are, in no particular order:
Due to these folks I was able to commit to a heavy re-write of the tool, which resulted in some funky ‘issues’ here and there. Thanks for all the back and forth over email as you tested it!
Ok onwards with the tool review.
The tool is located on the TechNet Gallery where I store all my tools:
Features:
- Automatically scans the local device when started up
- Selectable colour gradient applied to logs that have changed
- Show\Hide Archive logs (*.lo_)
- Open multiple logs in a single CMTrace
- Add your own custom log locations
- Connect to local or remote devices (Remote Admin and Remote Registry required for remote usage)
- Right-click Context menu available in Log list view for opening a single or selection of logs or log folders
- Detection of a variety of available logs:
- ConfigMgr Agent, Server or Site
- SQL Server
- IIS Server
- Windows Logs
- ConfigMgr vendors
- 1e
- Adaptiva
- 2Pint
- WSUS Server
- Any log location you care to add
- Preferences stored in HKEY_CURRENT_USER (Software\SMSMarshall\LogLauncher) and used on launch
- Launch LogLauncher with the name of a device, and it will automatically scan the device on start-up (LogLauncher.exe DeviceName)
One of over 70 awesome sayings shown whenever a scan is performed, adding what could be a high note to the sessions log browsing!
This is what you’ll see when pointing the tool at a device running the ConfigMgr Agent with the ConfigMgr Console installed:
And here is a Site server, Current Branch Build 1610:
The built-in log locations not enough? Need to add more? Simple, add them as Custom Locations!
And here is the monitoring running with a custom colour gradient showing which logs were last modified:
I’ve also added a diagnostics page showing what went wrong, and what wasn’t found:
I’m absolutely sure the tool will be of use to you, as it was designed to join my tooling kit that I use when visiting customers for the particular purpose of reducing the amount of time it takes me to be looking at logs!
The soure code for the tool can be found here (C#, Visual Studio 2015 project)
Enjoy – Robert Marshall – Enterprise Mobility MVP - @RobMVP