VSS database in Novell could not be seen from SOS client

[oliverb]

One of our VSS databases is in a Novell file server. After I added the database in SOS server manager, and restarted the service, I could not view the database in the SOS client. The account I used to start the service has an existing Novell account and has read/write access to the database folders.

[lbauer]

It can be challenging to configure access to a database on a Novell server.

The first suggestion is to use a domain account for the SOS Server Service, one which has access to the machine/drive/directory where the VSS database resides. It sounds like you've tried that.

Another possibility is to create a local account on the SOS Server machine that exactly matches -- username and password, case-- a local account on the Novell machine.

This is generally a permissions issue, so you might need to experiment. The path to the database should be a UNC path.

If all else fails, we do have a version of SOS that works as an application, not as a service, and does not experience the service permissions issues.

[nick finney]

I have had a similar experience. we recently migrated our servers to new novell servers and now i cannot connect. i am using unc paths but get an unable to open database message in the log file.
we are running 3.5.3. i would be very interested in your suggestion of running sos as an application rather than a service.
please advise

[lbauer]

The download package for SOS 3.5.3 contains an app called sossvr95.exe, which is the SOS Server application.

This runs in a DOS window on the SOS Server machine. Running SOS as an app eliminates the problem of SOS Server Service account permissions. Be sure to stop the SOS Server service or there will be a conflict on the ports used for SOS.

SOS 4.0 can be run as an application as well. No separate version is required. To do this:

at the cmd line type:

c:\program files\sourceoffsite server> sosservice.exe 1

Just passing a "1" to the application will allow it to run as an
application.

[nick finney]

Thanks for that. I have looked in our installation folder and cannot find the file sossvr95.exe. Can you point me in the direction where I can get hold of this file please.

[oliverb]

I haven't tried yet using SOS 4.0 and set it to run as an application. What I've tried though is have it running as an NT service. I then included in the database list a sourcesafe database residing in e Novell server. Howeverm SOS 4.0 still wasn't able to connect to the sourcesafe database even if the account that was used to start the SOS service is a domain account with access rights to the Novell server.

When I checked the logs, I found that SOS was trying to connect to this path:

\\\\SERVERNAME\\vss_folder\\srcsafe.ini

It seems that the service doubled every instance of the '\' character. Is this a bug? and is there any patch/workaround for this? This was encountered only for the sourcesafe database residing in a Novell server

The download package for SOS 3.5.3 contains an app called sossvr95.exe, which is the SOS Server application.

This runs in a DOS window on the SOS Server machine. Running SOS as an app eliminates the problem of SOS Server Service account permissions. Be sure to stop the SOS Server service or there will be a conflict on the ports used for SOS.

SOS 4.0 can be run as an application as well. No separate version is required. To do this:

at the cmd line type:

c:\program files\sourceoffsite server> sosservice.exe 1

Just passing a "1" to the application will allow it to run as an
application.

[lbauer]

When you look in the SOS 4,0 Server properties file (sossvr.prp) or in the log file you may see extra slashes in the database pathname: \\\\SERVERNAME\\vss_folder\\srcsafe.ini

However, this does not prevent SOS from accessing the path. The extra slashes are a legacy from SOS 3.x and the way Java parsed out path info.

We'll log a bug to change this in our next release, since it looks like an error and is confusing to users.

So this isn't causing the problem you are experiencing.

As indicated in earlier posts to this thread, it's always been difficult to configure SOS to connect to a VSS database on a Novell system, and with newer versions of Novell, we haven't heard of any success stories.

Try running SOS as an application and let us know the results.

[oliverb]

I've successfully connected to the VSS database hosted in Novell when I used SOS Server as an application and not a service. Thanks for the help! Appreciate it!