View and Analyze Log Files

All MicroStrategy log files are stored in the log file location. This location is set during installation and cannot be changed.

On Windows, all log files are stored in C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\MicroStrategy\Log\.
On Linux, all log files are stored in /opt/mstr/MicroStrategy/log

These log files are plain text files and can be viewed with any text editor.

The MicroStrategy Web server error log files are in the MstrWeb/WEB-INF/log/ directory. These log files can be viewed from the Web Administrator page, by clicking View Error log on the left side of the page. For more information about viewing log files in MicroStrategy Web, see the Web Administrator Help (from the Web Administrator page, click Help).

Anatomy of a Log File

Non-error messages in the log files have the same format. Each entry has the following parts:

Date Time [HOST:MACHINE_NAME][SERVER:SERVER_DEFINITAION_NAME][PID:PROCESS_ID][THR:THREAD_ID][MODULE_NAME][TRACE_TYPE]message

Section	Definition
Date Time	Date and time at which the action happened
HOST	The name of the machine you are running
SERVER	The server definition name
PID	Numeric ID of the process that performed the action
THR	Numeric ID of the thread that performed the action
MODULE NAME	Name of the MicroStrategy component that performed the action
trace type	Type of the log file entry
message	Message about the action

Error messages in the log files have a similar format, but include the error and the error code in the log files:

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Date Time [HOST:MACHINE_NAME][SERVER:SERVER_DEFINITAION_NAME][PID:PROCESS_ID][THR:THREAD_ID][MODULE_NAME][Error][ERROR_CODE]message

Working with Exceptions

When Intelligence Server encounters an error, it "throws an exception." Not all exceptions are fatal; in fact Intelligence Server uses some of them internally. Fatal exceptions cause Intelligence Server to shut down and they are logged in the DSSErrors.log, often as "unknown exceptions."

Fatal exception messages by themselves are not sufficient for accurate diagnosis. Intelligence Server includes a built-in mechanism to capture structured exceptions and generate a dump file that has more information in it. You may need to do this for MicroStrategy Technical Support specialist.