Search
Welcome to M-Files Empower – our new support experience. We'd love to hear what you think!Give feedback
Home/Support and troubleshooting/Troubleshooting/Gathering logs

How to collect logs related to authentication failures in M-Files

Last updated on 9 December 2024

Admin
Vault Login

Overview

This may be useful in case you have issues with authentication. This logs information about failures(only) in authentication, license use (reserve, release, number of licenses in use…), management of login accounts…

Solution

Open Registry Editor on server and edit registry keys to these following values and reproduce the issue after that (note that it might not exist, so you may have to create it):

 [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Motive\M-Files\<ersion>\Server\MFServer\Logging]

"Enabled"=dword:00000001"

LogDir"="%TEMP%\MFilesLogs"

"FlushIntervalInSeconds"=dword:0000000a

"EnableVerboseLogging"=dword:00000100

"LogCategories"=dword:00120404

"TotalMaxSizeInMB"=dword:000000c8

"DeleteLogsOfOtherInstancesAfterDays"=dword:00000015

"PreserveAtLeastDays"=dword:00000000

All the values are Hexadecimal. There is no need to restart any services after altering these registry settings. By default, the location of these log files is %TEMP%\MFilesLogs (in a standard environment: C:\Windows\Temp\MFilesLogs). 
Remember to change the value for Enabled back to 0 after the issue has been reproduced. 
When you have sent the log files to M-Files, consider deleting the log files to free up disk space.

If you are using Federated Authentication

With Federated Authentication, most of the authentication flow happens with the identity provider. To collect logs about that, do the following:

  • Set the "Enable Logging" setting to "Yes" under both the Server and Client sections of the federated authentication configuration.
  • Collect the Windows Event Log from both the server and the client. It shows redirects and claims that can help you understand the situation.
  • If using the Web client, collect the browser logs from it.

Important Note:

When sending the logs (or any other sensitive data), please make sure to use CryptShare Web application that allows easy and secure exchange of sensitive information. See instruction here: /article/How-to-Send-Files-via-CryptShare-Portal

Still need help?