Undefined Value

(Nobody else will care about this. Move along. Nothing to see here now. Maybe I'll clean this up for public consumption later.)

After spending way too much time figuring out how to change the name of a custom event log my .NET-based service was writing messages to, I decided I need to save the snippet of code that finally worked.

For more info about the confusing world of .NET's EventLog class, see http://www.informit.com/guides/printerfriendly.aspx?g=dotnet&seqNum=238.

namespace BlahBlahBlah
{
    class Log
    {
        // Lots of stuff left out here.
        // ...

        private static EventLog eventLog = null;

        private static readonly string eventSource         = "My Service";
        private static readonly string eventLogName        = "My Log";
        private static readonly string eventLogMachineName = ".";  // local

        /// 

        /// Initializer for Log class
        /// 
        static Log()
        {
            // Register this event source if necessary
            try
            {
                bool needCreate = false;
                if (EventLog.SourceExists(eventSource))
                {
                    string logName = EventLog.LogNameFromSourceName(eventSource,
                                                                    eventLogMachineName);
                    if (logName != eventLogName)
                    {
                        EventLog.DeleteEventSource(eventSource);
                        needCreate = true;
                    }
                }
                else
                {
                    needCreate = true;
                }

                if (needCreate)
                {
                    EventLog.CreateEventSource(eventSource, eventLogName);
                }
            }
            catch
            {
                // Ignore failure
            }

            // Initialize our EventLog instance
            try
            {
                eventLog = new EventLog(eventLogName, eventLogMachineName, eventSource);

                // Ensure our event log has the "overwrite as needed" setting
                eventLog.ModifyOverflowPolicy(OverflowAction.OverwriteAsNeeded,
                                              eventLog.MinimumRetentionDays);
            }
            catch
            {
                // Ignore failure
            }
        }

        // Lots more stuff left out
        // ...
    }
}