Discussion:
Very few messages in journal
(too old to reply)
ChristerS
2008-09-09 08:06:05 UTC
Permalink
I have enabled journal on one of my queues on an W2k3 MSMQ server. There is
no storage limit set on the server or the queue, but still the journal stops
logging after a few hundred messages. What could be limiting the storage?

There is plenty of disk space available. The msmq storage folder takes up
about 200 MB of disk space and does not grow any larger.

The server is part of a domain. I can see the msmq queues in AD but I cannot
access any settings here. When i right click msmq and select Properties I get
the message "No properties are available on this object.". However, in
Computer Mangement locally on the server I can access all settings.

I do not understand what limits the number of messages logged in the
journal, and I need to increase this.

Any help is deeply appreciated!
John Breakwell (MSFT)
2008-09-09 15:51:14 UTC
Permalink
Hi Christer,

You should be able to right-click the msmq child object and select
Properties to view the Storage Limits on the General tab.
That may be a permissions problem - you will need to have Get Properties on
the msmq object and it sounds like you don't.
I would recommend asking your domain admin to set the permissions on the
object correctly.
At a minimum Everyone should have Get Properties.
Once you have that permission you can check the Storage Limits to see if
they show up differently to what Computer Management shows you.

You can to see the storage files being used specifically by journal
messages - they start with a J (for journal) instead of a P (for
persistent). How many of the 200MB are journal files?

How big are the messages? You say they stop being created after only a few
hundred - are they very large (up to 4MB)?

Note that the journal messages are counted within the system-wide message
limit.
So if you set a message limit but don't set a JOURNAL message limit then you
still have a limit in place.
So are all four quotas blank? That's the system wide message and journal
message limits plus the queue's message and journal message limits.

Have a look in Performance Monitor - MSMQ Service\Total bytes in all
queues - what is the value?

Cheers
John Breakwell (MSFT)
Post by ChristerS
I have enabled journal on one of my queues on an W2k3 MSMQ server. There is
no storage limit set on the server or the queue, but still the journal stops
logging after a few hundred messages. What could be limiting the storage?
There is plenty of disk space available. The msmq storage folder takes up
about 200 MB of disk space and does not grow any larger.
The server is part of a domain. I can see the msmq queues in AD but I cannot
access any settings here. When i right click msmq and select Properties I get
the message "No properties are available on this object.". However, in
Computer Mangement locally on the server I can access all settings.
I do not understand what limits the number of messages logged in the
journal, and I need to increase this.
Any help is deeply appreciated!
ChristerS
2008-09-10 08:38:07 UTC
Permalink
Hi John. Thanks for a very helpful reply. It helped me locate the problem,
which wasn't what I thougt at first.

Looking at the MSMQ performance counters was a very good idea. Among them I
found one called "Messages in Journal Queue". This tells me I actually have
more than 200 000 messages in the journal, and counting.

The problem then is that the computer managemet console doesn't allow me to
veiw all messages. In my first post I said I only saw a few hundred. I didn't
really count them but just made a very quick estimate. I now checked again
and I actually see around 1000 messages. I found a different post in this
forum saying this is a default limit in mmc, so then it all makes sense.

The question then is, how can I view the messages I want, and just not the
first 1000? I know what time span I want to view so I just need to set some
kind of filter or query the journal i some way? How?

By the way, I am domain admin but I am still not able to view properties of
the queues in AD. However, this is not important as I now believe I have full
control over the queue properties locally on the server.

Christer S.
Post by John Breakwell (MSFT)
Hi Christer,
You should be able to right-click the msmq child object and select
Properties to view the Storage Limits on the General tab.
That may be a permissions problem - you will need to have Get Properties on
the msmq object and it sounds like you don't.
I would recommend asking your domain admin to set the permissions on the
object correctly.
At a minimum Everyone should have Get Properties.
Once you have that permission you can check the Storage Limits to see if
they show up differently to what Computer Management shows you.
You can to see the storage files being used specifically by journal
messages - they start with a J (for journal) instead of a P (for
persistent). How many of the 200MB are journal files?
How big are the messages? You say they stop being created after only a few
hundred - are they very large (up to 4MB)?
Note that the journal messages are counted within the system-wide message
limit.
So if you set a message limit but don't set a JOURNAL message limit then you
still have a limit in place.
So are all four quotas blank? That's the system wide message and journal
message limits plus the queue's message and journal message limits.
Have a look in Performance Monitor - MSMQ Service\Total bytes in all
queues - what is the value?
Cheers
John Breakwell (MSFT)
Post by ChristerS
I have enabled journal on one of my queues on an W2k3 MSMQ server. There is
no storage limit set on the server or the queue, but still the journal stops
logging after a few hundred messages. What could be limiting the storage?
There is plenty of disk space available. The msmq storage folder takes up
about 200 MB of disk space and does not grow any larger.
The server is part of a domain. I can see the msmq queues in AD but I cannot
access any settings here. When i right click msmq and select Properties I get
the message "No properties are available on this object.". However, in
Computer Mangement locally on the server I can access all settings.
I do not understand what limits the number of messages logged in the
journal, and I need to increase this.
Any help is deeply appreciated!
Frank Boyne
2008-09-11 01:12:25 UTC
Permalink
Post by ChristerS
The question then is, how can I view the messages I want, and just not the
first 1000? I know what time span I want to view so I just need to set some
kind of filter or query the journal i some way? How?
You can't do what you want using standard MSMQ tools. You really only
have two choices - write a program to do what you want or find someone
else's program that does what you want.

John Breakwell's blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/johnbreakwell/ is a good
place to start, you could try his 'Tools' tag. If that doesn't help,
try some of the other MSMQ related blogs that John lists. IIRC Yoel
Arnon wrote an alternative MSMQ Explorer, I'm fairly sure some of the
other bloggers have too.

For quick one-off things it may be quicker and easier just to write a
piece of VBScript (or Javascript) to peek down the queue looking for
whatever you are interested in.
John Breakwell (MSFT)
2008-09-11 11:19:07 UTC
Permalink
Hi

Yes, the Computer Management snap-in has a fixed limit on displaying
messages of about 1,000.
This is partly because of the MSMQ API functionality at the time it was
originally designed (Windows 2000).
If the Computer Management snap-in was re-written today (using LookupIDs,
for example) then it could have a lot more functionality.

To view more messages you will need to go with a 3rd party queue manager or
produce something yourself.
But from what you plan to do I can see you are starting to use MSMQ as a
database for querying.
Why not bulk read all the journal messages and write them to an SQL
database?
Then you can query the data every way you could want.

Cheers
John Breakwell (MSFT)
Post by ChristerS
Hi John. Thanks for a very helpful reply. It helped me locate the problem,
which wasn't what I thougt at first.
Looking at the MSMQ performance counters was a very good idea. Among them I
found one called "Messages in Journal Queue". This tells me I actually have
more than 200 000 messages in the journal, and counting.
The problem then is that the computer managemet console doesn't allow me to
veiw all messages. In my first post I said I only saw a few hundred. I didn't
really count them but just made a very quick estimate. I now checked again
and I actually see around 1000 messages. I found a different post in this
forum saying this is a default limit in mmc, so then it all makes sense.
The question then is, how can I view the messages I want, and just not the
first 1000? I know what time span I want to view so I just need to set some
kind of filter or query the journal i some way? How?
By the way, I am domain admin but I am still not able to view properties of
the queues in AD. However, this is not important as I now believe I have full
control over the queue properties locally on the server.
Christer S.
Post by John Breakwell (MSFT)
Hi Christer,
You should be able to right-click the msmq child object and select
Properties to view the Storage Limits on the General tab.
That may be a permissions problem - you will need to have Get Properties on
the msmq object and it sounds like you don't.
I would recommend asking your domain admin to set the permissions on the
object correctly.
At a minimum Everyone should have Get Properties.
Once you have that permission you can check the Storage Limits to see if
they show up differently to what Computer Management shows you.
You can to see the storage files being used specifically by journal
messages - they start with a J (for journal) instead of a P (for
persistent). How many of the 200MB are journal files?
How big are the messages? You say they stop being created after only a few
hundred - are they very large (up to 4MB)?
Note that the journal messages are counted within the system-wide message
limit.
So if you set a message limit but don't set a JOURNAL message limit then you
still have a limit in place.
So are all four quotas blank? That's the system wide message and journal
message limits plus the queue's message and journal message limits.
Have a look in Performance Monitor - MSMQ Service\Total bytes in all
queues - what is the value?
Cheers
John Breakwell (MSFT)
Post by ChristerS
I have enabled journal on one of my queues on an W2k3 MSMQ server. There is
no storage limit set on the server or the queue, but still the journal stops
logging after a few hundred messages. What could be limiting the storage?
There is plenty of disk space available. The msmq storage folder takes up
about 200 MB of disk space and does not grow any larger.
The server is part of a domain. I can see the msmq queues in AD but I cannot
access any settings here. When i right click msmq and select
Properties I
get
the message "No properties are available on this object.". However, in
Computer Mangement locally on the server I can access all settings.
I do not understand what limits the number of messages logged in the
journal, and I need to increase this.
Any help is deeply appreciated!
Dejan Grujic
2008-09-11 17:13:23 UTC
Permalink
Post by ChristerS
The question then is, how can I view the messages I want, and just not the
first 1000? I know what time span I want to view so I just need to set some
kind of filter or query the journal i some way? How?
I apologize for promoting my product here, but I think it's relevant for
mentioned problem. QueueExplorer can display more than 1000 messages. On
bad side, it doesn't (yet) have any search or filter, so you'll have to
manually find messages you need. You can freely use trial version to
solve any immediate problem you have.

Dejan
--
Find out how QueueExplorer makes MSMQ more manageable
http://www.cogin.com
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