How to trace MSMQ?

Question

I have an agent and a server in different domains. The server acts as an MSMQ server and the agent acts as an MSMQ client. I am using the mqsender utility, which is part of the MSMQ tools.

My problem is that a message is not delivered when using the HTTP:// format string (the MSMQ is installed with HTTP support). Using the OS: format string works fine.

When using HTTP the messages are immediately moved to the Dead Letter queue and the Class is set to Unknown, so I do not know the reasons for this behaviour.

So, this works:

mqsender.exe /c:10 /j:dead /f:Direct=OS:il-mark-w2k3\private$\test

And this does not:

mqsender.exe /c:10 /j:dead /f:Direct=http://il-mark-w2k3/msmq/private$/test

I checked that MSMQ virtual directory exists. How can I trace the MSMQ operation to try and understand what is going on?

Thanks.

EDIT

1. All the commands work as expected when ran locally on the server.
2. Navigating to http://il-mark-w2k3/msmq/private$/test in the browser on the agent (and the server) results in 501 - Header values specify a method that is not implemented. The same error is received when navigating to http://il-mark-w2k3/msmq. I suppose that is OK, after all it is not 404 - Not Found, right?

EDIT2

I have succeeded to resolve the issue. IIS lacked Anonymous Authentication, it became obvious from observing its log - 401.2 HTTP error was there. All worked well after it was enabled. The mistery remains why did MSMQ display Class Unknown on the dead messages? On other machine the same setup produces Error : 401, which makes much more sense.

Answer 1

The logging for MSMQ is internal so you won't easily be able to see exactly why the message didn't get delivered without raising a support case with Microsoft.

I have a few blog posts on solving various MSMQ/HTTP issues.
The 17 entitled "MSMQ messages using HTTP just won't get delivered" may help.

Also make sure you check the IIS logs for information.

Cheers

John Breakwell