So, what do these three topics in the title have in common? Some might read that and think, "well, nothing". But indeed its not the case. Microsoft has kicked an open source project and one of the first tools to go into that process is a Group Polic y tool. If you are running Vista yet, then you know that the new Vista event log now provides additional application specific channels where various Windows or application components can send logging information. In terms of Group Policy, there is now the new Vista Operational Log that provides detailed Group Policy. Essentially this log replaces the userenv.log that we’re used to using for troubleshooting GP prior to Vista. The GP Operational Log in Vista provides a lot of step-by-step GP processing detail in a more readable format than the userenv.log file, but it isn’t necessarily as easy to view at-a-glance, like you can do with the text file-based userenv file.

To make reading of the Operational log easier, Microsoft has provided the GPLogView utility. This is a free command-line tool that lets you grab GP Operational log data and spit it out into text, HTML, etc. You can also subscribe to the Operational Log event channel and get events in real-time appearing in your console, which is kinda cool. Now, this is where the Open Source part comes in. The GPLogView source has been made available to the general public as part of a community called Codeplex. If you visit the site, you’ll see a number of Open Source projects related to Microsoft technology, that you can participate in. The GPLogView project is at http://www.codeplex.com/gplogview, and I’m one of the coordinators for the project. So if you’re interested in taking the GPLogView code and enhancing it or just seeing how it works, check it out!

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Open Source,Group Policy, GPLogView, CodePlex