This one always gets me… There’s a few things that need to be done in order to better debug SharePoint.
- Custom Errors Off
- Enable Call Stack Trace
- Debugging Mode
- ASP.Net Tracing
…and the big one.
- Multiple web.config files.
OK, to break it down. First, know what Web Application you want to debug. This might sound silly but I’ve been caught out a few times with a couple of (not straight forward) sp farm setups.
SharePoint web.config files
Make sure you are looking at the right Virtual Directory. Also, as mentioned as the last bullet, there are multiple web.config files that might need modifying. Below is a scrape from a good article by Daniel on blogspot (thanks)
The web.config files are genearally found in the following locations:
- web.config file in the root folder of each virtual server / IIS Application.
Local_Drive:\Inetpub\wwwroot
This is the usually the file that contains most of the web configuration of a SharePoint site collection. To display full errors you would need to modify this web.config file. There may be one for each of the SharePoint applications running in some cases (MySites, Multiple Portals or Instances of SharePoint, Central Admin, etc.). If this is the case, you will only need to modify the web.config file which is in the root of the virtual directory for the instance of SharePoint which you using. To find out which directory is used by various SharePoint applications/websites, view the properties of the SharePoint website in IIS and from the "Home Directory" tab, the value in the "Local path" field will take you to the directory where the web.config file is for the specific instance of SharePoint / Application in IIS.
- web.config file used in Web Part resources for the Global Assembly Cache (GAC)
Local_Drive:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\wpresources
- web.config configuration file(s) for extending other virtual servers
Local_Drive:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\60\CONFIG
- web.config file which defines configuration settings for the /_vti_bin virtual directory
Local_Drive:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\60\ISAPI
- web.config file which defines configuration settings for the /_layouts virtual directory
Local_Drive:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\60\TEMPLATE\LAYOUTS
- web.config configuration file for Central Administration pages.
Local_Drive:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\60\TEMPLATE\ADMIN\Locale_ID
Now that you know what config files to modify, here are the key parts that need modification.
Custom Errors Off
Set the customErrors mode to "Off"
Find:
<system.web> ...
<customErrors mode="On" />
Change To:
<system.web> ...
<customErrors mode="Off" />
Enable Call Stack Trace
Set the CallStack value of the SafeMode element to "true"
Find:
<SharePoint>
<SafeMode ... CallStack="false" ... >
<SharePoint>
Change To:
<SharePoint>
<SafeMode ... CallStack="true" ... >
</SharePoint>
Debugging Mode
Set batch and debug to "true"
Find:
<compilation batch="false" debug="false">
Change To:
<compilation batch="true" debug="true">
ASP.Net Tracing
Include the following line in the <system.web> element of the web.config file.
<system.web> ...
<trace enabled="true" pageOutput="true"/>
And that’s about that. I will post a bit about debugging via log files soon.
