As part of assisting a colleague with a customer today, I needed to figure out how to enable the debug logging for Microsoft AutoUpdate. For Mac admins with a similar need, please see below the jump for details.
Microsoft AutoUpdate (MAU) sends its logs to the following location:
/Library/Logs/Microsoft/autoupdate.log
By default, this is INFO level logging and usually appears like this.
To start debug logging, you need to enable MAU’s Extended Logging using the following procedure:
1. Quit Microsoft AutoUpdate (if running.)
2. Open Terminal and run the following command:
defaults write com.microsoft.autoupdate2 ExtendedLogging -bool true
3. Launch Microsoft AutoUpdate.
4. Run whatever process is needed.
5. Check /Library/Logs/Microsoft/autoupdate.log for the results.
The additional logging should be marked with the Debug tag:
For those who want to enable MAU’s ExtendedLogging setting using management profiles, I’ve created a .mobileconfig file and posted it here on Github:
https://github.com/rtrouton/profiles/tree/master/EnableMicrosoftAutoUpdateExtendedLogging
