SP2010 Crawl Log Detail

Topic: SharePoint 2010, FS4SP and delayed Crawl Log Report detail

Subject:  SharePoint 2010, FS4SP and Crawl Log

Problem: Whenever I crawl content is seems like I have to wait forever for my Crawl Log to populate when I didn’t with MOSS.

Response: It is surprising how many people complain about this.  There is a simple solution.  SharePoint 2010 has been revamped to use a web services model approach which allows for greater scalability. I can have multiple Search Service Applications. With this is mind the reporting of Crawl log data has also changed.  The Crawl Log report is now populated through a timer job.

Solution:

1)      Run a crawl with significant content.  (100-500 docs will suffice)

2)      During the Crawl or immediately after the crawl completes view the crawl log.  You will usually get the high level numbers for Successes, Warnings, Errors, Top Level Errors, and Deletes.   When looking for the detail it may only be partially there or completely empty.

3)      Click on Central Administration

4)      Click on Monitoring

5)      Click on Review job definitions under Timer Jobs

6)      Find and click on the “Crawl Log Report for Search Application <your SSA Name>

7)      You will notice the Report is scheduled by default to run every 5 minutes.  Click “Run Now”

8)      By the time you get back to the Crawl Log Report in your Content SSA the crawl log details should be generated.

Conclusion:  Depending on when you run the crawl, how quickly you crawl and where in the Timer Job Crawl Log Report cycle you are when you started you may end up waiting 5 minutes before the full details are populated.  Change the frequency (but this adds more overhead to the Farm as the job will run more frequently) or simply go to the job definition and “Run Now”

kor