How To: Enable WIF Tracing

Article
03/30/2017

Applies To

Microsoft® Windows® Identity Foundation (WIF)
ASP.NET® Web Forms

Summary

This How-To provides detailed step-by-step procedures for enabling WIF tracing in an ASP.NET application. It also provides instructions testing the application to verify that the trace listener and log are working correctly. This How-To does not have detailed instructions for creating a Security Token Service (STS), and instead uses the Development STS that comes with the Identity and Access tool. The Development STS does not perform real authentication and is intended for testing purposes only. You will need to install the Identity and Access tool to complete this How-To. It can be downloaded from the following location: Identity and Access Tool

Important

Enabling WIF tracing for passive applications, that is, applications that use the WS-Federation protocol, can potentially expose the application to denial of service (DoS) attacks or to information disclosure to a malicious party. This includes both passive RPs and passive STSes. For this reason, we recommend that you not enable WIF tracing for passive RPs or STSes in a production environment.

Objectives
Overview
Summary of Steps
Step 1 – Create a Simple ASP.NET Web Forms Application and Enable Tracing
Step 2 – Test Your Solution

Objectives

Create a simple ASP.NET application that uses WIF and the Development STS from the Identity and Access Tool
Enable tracing and verify that it is working

Overview

Tracing enables you to debug and troubleshoot many types of issues with WIF, including tokens, cookies, claims, protocol messages, and more. WIF tracing is similar to WCF tracing; for example, you can choose the verbosity of traces to display everything from critical messages to all messages. WIF traces can be generated in .xml files or in .svclog files that are viewable by using the Service Trace Viewer Tool. This tool is located in the bin directory of the Windows SDK install path on your computer, for example: C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v7.1\Bin\SvcTraceViewer.exe.

Summary of Steps

Step 1 – Create a Simple ASP.NET Web Forms Application and Enable Tracing
Step 2 – Test Your Solution

Step 1 – Create a Simple ASP.NET Web Forms Application and Enable Tracing

In this step, you will create a new ASP.NET Web Forms application and modify the Web.config file to enable tracing.

To create a simple ASP.NET application

Start Visual Studio and click File, New, and then Project.
In the New Project window, click ASP.NET Web Forms Application.
In Name, enter TestApp and press OK.
Right-click the TestApp project under Solution Explorer, then select Identity and Access.
The Identity and Access window appears. Under Providers, select Test your application with the Local Development STS, then click Apply.
Create a new folder in named logs in the root of the C: drive, like shown: C:\logs

Add the following <system.diagnostics> element to the Web.config configuration file immediately following the closing </configSections> element, like shown:

<configuration>
    <configSections>
        ...
    </configSections>
    <system.diagnostics>
        <sources>
            <source name="System.IdentityModel" switchValue="Verbose">
                <listeners>
                    <add name="xml" type="System.Diagnostics.XmlWriterTraceListener" initializeData="C:\logs\WIF.xml" />
                </listeners>
            </source>
        </sources>
        <trace autoflush="true" />
    </system.diagnostics>

Note

The directory location specified in the initializeData attribute must exist before logging can begin. If the location does not exist, no logs will be created.

The configuration settings above will enable Verbose tracing for WIF and save the resulting log to the C:logsWIF.xml file.

Step 2 – Test Your Solution

In this step, you will test your WIF-enabled ASP.NET application to verify that logs are being recorded.

To test your WIF-enabled ASP.NET application for successful tracing

Run the solution by pressing the F5 key. You should be presented with the default ASP.NET Home Page and automatically authenticated with the username Terry, which is the default user that is returned by the Development STS.
Close the browser window and then navigate to the C:\logs folder. Open the C:\logs\WIF.xml file using a text editor.
Inspect the WIF.xml file and verify that it contains entries starting with <E2ETraceEvent>. These traces will contain <TraceRecord> elements with descriptions for the traced activity, such as Validating SecurityToken.

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