Thursday, September 24, 2009

What happened to my SharePoint Usage Analysis Logs?

Recently, I went to check my usage analysis logs and noticed that they were practically empty. No new data in weeks. I know that it was working before, but what changed? What's going on here?

I double checked that everything was enabled in CA, the SSP and in the site settings, and everything was still good. I also noticed that my Log location was D:\UsageLogs. I remember setting that up, so i went and looked at the logs. There was data, but only for the CA site. After some checking, I realized what was going on.

Make sure that all your App Pool accounts have Access to write to that location. For me, only CA had the correct rights. After giving the WSS_WPG and WSS_RESTRICTED_WPG and WSS_ADMIN_WPG groups Write permission to that folder, the logs immediately started filling up. No errors in the event logs were being created for me, or else I would have noticed this a long time ago.


Conclusion: Just give all your SharePoint accounts Admin access on your servers, it'll save you a LOT of headaches. Or, even better, just run everything under one account! HAHA, no, don't actually do this, but always check permissions when things aren't working as you expect.