In Moodle how can we see external database connection problems?

Please answer this if you can, and then edit the tag.

We’ve set up a test server with an external enrollment database and we see no errors, but it doesn’t auto-create the course, nor does it connect the student to the course. Where can we look to see some of the following?

• connection response or error message from external database
• auto-create log? Is there one?
• user-login matchup with courses log? Is there one?