Logging the SMTP on Windows Server

SMTP logging helps troubleshoot various things, such as server communication with various sources, helps find lost emails and answer questions "Where's my email?". To enable the service, do the following:

Open System Manager. Go to "Administrative Groups" -> "first administrative group" (on small business server) -> "Servers" -> "<SERVER NAME>" -> "Protocols" -> "SMTP"
Right click on "Default SMTP Virtual Server" and select "Properties"
Once inside, under "General" tab, put a checkbox beside "Enable logging" (Leave at it or select "W3C Extended Log File Format". It can also write the log files to a SQL database using ODBC allowing integration of SMTP logging and general monitoring software.
Click "Ok" and close everything.

smtp-logging

smtp-logging-1

smtp-logging-2

Unless you've specified a different path, the logs will be here: %systemroot%\system32\LogFiles\

usually under the folder SMTPSVC1

Last Updated on Tuesday, 15 September 2009 10:26

Windows

Comments (2)

re: Rolling logs

2 Tuesday, 22 September 2009 05:46

A-man

I'm not sure how to rotate the logs using windows tools, but you can put together a script that will delete logs that are older than a day/week/month, etc and run it as a scheduled task. I can't find it right now, but if I will I'll post it.
A.

Rolling logs

1 Sunday, 20 September 2009 10:10

Thanks that worked, but the logs are just accumulating. Is there any way to rotate them, so I doesn't fill up the disk space?

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