Activity Logging

Activity Logging

The logging system is found using Menu -> Link -> Debug / Trace File Generation

Thinstall provides a sophisticated activity log system that can be used to help diagnose problems locally or remotely.

When logging is enabled, Thinstall generates ".trace" files for each application it runs. .trace files can be converted into a text readable format using a utility shipped with Thinstall called "log_monitor".
Thinstall is able to log a large amount of data about application execution with only a small performance impact allowing post-execution studying of real-time behavior. A few things which are recorded at runtime include:

·	Summary information: all files & registry accessed

·	Summary information: expert system diagnostic which points to potential application errors

·	Summary information: timing information for the slowest 50 API calls and slowest 10 instances

·	All Win32 API calls made by the application, with detailed parameter information for many API calls

·	All DLL and OCX files loaded by the application, load addresses, and loader flags

·	Stack trace at the point of exception (.Windbg .dmp files)

·	C++ and .NET exception detail information

For best results, we recommend enabling "Just-in-time logging" or "Log Everything". Expert users may also want to enable "Generate stack/memory dumps".

Location of .trace files and security access

By default, .trace files will be created in the TEMP directory. This location is typically a safe place to create new data files even on restricted and lock-down accounts. If you wish to have the trace file generated to the same directory as the EXE, you can change the Log Output Location to %InstallPath%\thinstall.log. Thinstall generates .trace files based on the process ID of the running process and trace files are not deleted by Thinstall, so the amount of disk space consumed can easily grow large. If you plan to use logging extensively, you should be prepared to cleanup files. The simplest way to cleanup trace files is delete thinstall.log* from the TEMP directory. A trace file cannot be deleted while a process generating it is still running, so failures to delete a file should be ignored.