Solution

Ideally, when the program experiences an error, it raises a popup window that describes what has gone wrong. If the error cannot be handled that way, the following methods are used:

ERR log file

This file is only created at startup and almost always reports that the specified port is already in use, and thus the program cannot start serving. It will be located in the bin or ISAPI folder next to the executable/dll that is being launched. It’s full name will match the executable with the extension “.err”.

User session log

This file is created during the login process. It contains any detected configuration problems identified during login and loading.  Most commonly, it identifies missing .options and missing lookups.  (Environment tab / SessionLog)

Windows Event Log

When the program has launched, but does not yet have access to write to its own log files, it will write to the EventLog.  If properly installed, it will have its own custom log and will have appropriate text lookups in the error description. (/Custom logs/PdMagic)

Status log files

Located in the SYS folder for Crash Magic, these log files are the primary location for both errors and general debug information.  (c:ProgramDataPdMagicCrashMagicOnlineSysDefaultLogsstat.log) These files may be read using the Crash Log File Viewer, installed on the server.  They are ASCII files, and may be read using any text editor as well.  Each log entry will have a category. The categories, in order of importance, are: Detail |Debug |Info |Important |Warning |Error |Exception.  The server maintains a setting that indicates the minimum level it should write to the log file.  The Default is “Important”.  Using Info, Debug, or Detail can quickly fill the log file and are only recommended for debugging purposes.

Exception reports

When an unhandled exception is raised in the program, the user will usually see a white screen with debug information and a message indicating whether the exception report has been sent to Pd’ Programming.  If it has not been sent, then the only access to it will be on that screen in the scrolling error area.  If it has been sent to Pd’ Programming, it may be loaded by looking in the inhouse system, under “Mad Except reports”.  Each report corresponds to a single exception incident, and contains detailed stack information about the crash.

Import errors

During the DBtoXML and XMLtoDB processes, status and errors are logged to a database table.  The contents of that table may be accessed from the XMLtoDB import tab on the Admin User Group panel. This data may also be directly queried from the DB, but it is usually quite a bit easier to simply download the log as a CSV.