Updated: Was a bit misinformed, this blog posting now reflects the new information I got... (and of course my web hotel went bonkers as I was editing this post...)

OK, here's some really great news for those of us who can fiddle with advanced computer settings our selves.

Last thursday I was contacted by as systems developer from Birdstep Technology called Magnus. He told me that Birdstep is aware of the problem with the excessive logging, but that they couldn't give me exact info on when it would be fixed. However, what Birdstep Technology could gladly supply was instructions on how to change the logging level, among other things, by changing values in the windows registry.

A big thanks to Birdstep Technology, Magnus and of course "3" for letting me post this information to the 3Connect user community. Very cool, very customer service oriented!

The following walkthrough is fairly advanced, and if you're not sure of what all this means, you should not continue (or a least seek help from someone who does know). Changing values in the windows registry can seriously cripple your computer, if you don't do it right. It's like spicing up your mothers stew - don't do it unless you're absolutely sure of what you're doing! ;)

Before you start
You might want to check if you are affected by the logging problem or not. I suggest you try out our new free Mobile Broadband Logging Monitor tool.

Walkthrough
This walkthrough explains how to set the logging level down, so only errors are logged. Se further below on different levels of logging.

First of all, you place the registry values under this registry path: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Birdstep Technology\Alice Connection Manager

In the registry (regedit.exe) under the path mentioned above, create a new DWORD value. Name it LogLevel. Make sure it is hexidecimal.

Set the value to 1.

Restart 3Connect.

Voila! It's actually that simple. You now have critical logging only. No more massive logging every second.

The walkthrough above only changes logging. You can change the following Log-related things in 3Connect through registry settings:

* LogLevel = Configures the type of information to be logged.
* LogClass = Configures what parts of the program that may log to the file.
* LogColumns = Configures which data (columns) that shall be logged.
* LogMaxSize = Configures maximum size of the log file.

All of these registry values must be defined as DWORD values.

Level, Class and Columns are bit flags and can be combined. To turn of logging completely, set the value to 0. Birdstep Technology recommends to set it to 1, so that at least you'll see critical errors in the log file (sounds reasonable, I think).

These are the possible values:
== LogLevel ==
0x00000001 = Log errors
0x00000002 = Log warnings
0x00000004 = Log information helpful when you debug
0x00000008 = Log large data blocks
0x00000010 = Log major function calls
0x00000020 = Log minor function calls
0x00000040 = Log spam

== LogClass ==
Birdstep Technology recommends not changing this.

== LogColumns ==
0x00000004 = The time, format: hh:mm:ss.nnn
0x00000010 = The Id of the thread
0x00000020 = The log class.
0x00000040 = The log level of this log entry
0x00000100 = The file name
0x00000200 = The method
0x00000400 = The log description text
0x00000800 = The sequence number
0x00001000 = Only file name not path
0x00002000 = Name of thread
0x00004000 = Name of class
0x00008000 = Name of level
0x00010000 = The system tick count

(For all articles related to 3Connect click here.)