Contents of the logs

This topic provides examples of information that you might find in a log:

The following example contains a LOG EVENT message that occurred on August 07, 2012, at 11:22:14 A.M. with a severity level of CONFIG from an InstallationTask source class:
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The general format of all the log messages in the text file format is:

(<timeOfEvent>),<severityOfEvent>,<sourceOfEvent>,<eventMessageContent>

The severity levels from highest to lowest value are:

• SEVERE (appears in red)
• WARNING (appears in yellow)
• INFO
• CONFIG
• FINE
• FINER
• FINEST

The following table describes the main log message types:

Example LOG EVENT messages

The following examples show LOG EVENT messages.

• The start and end of installation tasks (installer logic and behavior) and installation panels
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  This type of message tells you which tasks ran and when they ran. For example, suppose an installation contains several features that you can select to install. Each task encapsulates logic about one feature, so you can see one or multiple tasks that hold all of the logic related to each feature.

• The setting of installation properties
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  This type of message supplies the user inputs and variables from the properties that control the infrastructure of the overall installer. A subset of the properties relate to the user inputs entered during the installation.

• General informative data
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  This type of message describes significant actions that occurred during the installation (for example, important executables that were invoked, significant changes that occurred, and the starting or stopping of Windows services).

Example PROGRESS EVENT message

The following example shows an example PROGRESS EVENT message:
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This type of message identifies the progress of tasks. A task encapsulates a chunk of related logic. Some tasks execute logic that can run for hours. Progress messages give a relative measure of how much of a task has been completed. If no progress messages occur for a long period of time, it might indicate that an installation has stopped responding.

Example THROWABLE EVENT message

The following example shows an example THROWABLE EVENT message:
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This type of message records exception stack traces. For example, suppose an installation runs 100 SQL commands against a database and halfway through the installation, the database goes down. These messages provide runtime information about the exception that occurred.

Example summary section

The following example shows an example summary:
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This type of message appears at the end of an installation, upgrade, or uninstallation. It gives a log-file equivalent of the final summary panel, indicating whether the overall installation succeeded, failed, or finished with warnings. It provides a quick summary of whether the installed product is in a working or broken state.