When things go wrong during MDT Deployment (Part 3)

Reading the files…

Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2010 writes log files to the bdd.log file in a standardized format use by the SMS team. This log file format looks like XML.

Example:

<![LOG[Property debug is now = TRUE]LOG]!>
<time="00:19:03.000+000" date="10-15-2009" 
component="ZTIWindowsUpdate" context="" 
type="1" thread="" file="ZTIWindowsUpdate">

As you can see, that’s a lot of text to just write out: “Property debug is now = TRUE”.

To assist in reading these log files, I use the trace32.exe program written by Microsoft. You can download this program for free at Microsoft as part of the: “System Center Configuration Manager 2007 Toolkit” This program displays MDT log files in a easy to read format.

Another cool feature of trace32.exe is that it does a good job of monitoring changes to the log files when being written to. You can see the changes being performed in real time within trace32.exe.

Link: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=948e477e-fd3b-4a09-9015-141683c7ad5f&DisplayLang=en

(Updated: 10/26/09 to fix formatting)

Keith

Keith Garner is a Deployment Specialist with Xtreme Consulting Group