MaxBack Logging Settings

MaxBack uses the Windows Event Log for warnings and errors, and detailed text log files for full diagnostics. Both the VssWriter and the Watchdog service follow this pattern.

Log file locations

VssWriter

Each database instance writes log files to:

C:\ProgramData\dbosoft\MaxBack\VSSWriter\<DatabaseName>\logs

MaxBack writes two log files:

• log.txt — Information level and above
• debug.txt — Verbose/Debug level (all messages)

Log files are automatically archived and deleted.

Watchdog

The watchdog service writes log files to:

C:\ProgramData\Dbosoft\MaxBack\Watchdog\logs

• watchdog.txt — Daily rolling log files (retained for 30 days)

Windows Event Log

Both the VssWriter and the Watchdog write warnings and errors to the Windows Application Event Log. This makes critical events visible in the Windows Event Viewer and accessible to monitoring tools.

Only messages at Warning level and above are written to the Event Log. For detailed diagnostics, use the text log files.

Log level

Logging is configured via Serilog JSON configuration. The default settings are in defaultsettings.json in the installation directory (default: C:\Program Files\dbosoft\MaxBack\VssWriter).

To override logging settings for a specific database instance, create or edit appsettings.json in the instance data folder:

C:\ProgramData\dbosoft\MaxBack\VSSWriter\<DatabaseName>\appsettings.json

This file supports hot-reload — changes take effect without restarting the service.

For example, to change the minimum log level, add a Serilog section to appsettings.json:

{
  "Serilog": {
    "MinimumLevel": {
      "Default": "Verbose"
    }
  }
}

To also control log levels per sink (e.g. change what gets written to each log file), include the WriteTo section:

{
  "Serilog": {
    "MinimumLevel": {
      "Default": "Debug"
    },
    "WriteTo": [
      {
        "Name": "File",
        "Args": {
          "path": "log.txt",
          "restrictedToMinimumLevel": "Information"
        }
      },
      {
        "Name": "File",
        "Args": {
          "path": "debug.txt",
          "restrictedToMinimumLevel": "Verbose"
        }
      }
    ]
  }
}

Supported log levels (from most to least detailed):

• Verbose
• Debug
• Information
• Warning
• Error
• Fatal