Centralized Binary Logging in IIS 6.0

  • Article

Applies To: Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2003 R2, Windows Server 2003 with SP1

Centralized binary logging is the process by which multiple Web sites write binary, unformatted log data to a single log file. When enabled, all Web sites on your server write log data to a single log file.

Important

You must be a member of the Administrators group on the local computer to run scripts and executables. As a security best practice, log on to your computer by using an account that is not in the Administrators group, and then use the runas command to run your script or executable as an administrator. At a command prompt, type runas /profile /user:MyComputer</STRONG>Administrator cmd to open a command window with administrator rights and then type cscript.exe ScriptName (include the script's full path and any parameters).

Procedures

To enable centralized binary logging for all Web sites on your server running IIS

  1. From the Start menu, click Run.

  2. In the Open box, type cscript.exe adsutil.vbs SET W3SVC/CentralBinaryLoggingEnabled true, and click OK.

  3. The World Wide Web Publishing Service (WWW service) must be stopped and restarted for changes to take effect. From the command prompt, type net stop W3SVC, and press ENTER. The WWW service stops.

From the command prompt, type net start W3SVC, and press ENTER. The WWW service starts and centralized binary logging is enabled.

The binary log file is created in the W3SVC folder located at systemroot\System32\LogFiles\.

  • For more detailed information about centralized binary logging, including information about how to extract data from the raw log file, see Centralized Binary Logging.

  • For more information about W3C centralized logging, see W3C Centralized Logging.

  • For more information about logging, including examples and descriptions of various IIS log file formats and information about HTTP.sys error logging, see Analyzing Log Files.