Vault client is hanging after moving to W2K3 Server

[thein]

Last week we have moved our Vault installation to a W2K3 Server. IIS and Vault 2.0.2 are correctly installed and all users can connect using the client and VisualStudio plugin ...

BUT:

After about 5-10 minutes the Vault client is hanging (during refresh, check-in, check-out etc.) and VisualStudio complains about the server being busy. The only thing you can do then is to kill the corresponding process using the Windows taskmanager.

We have completely re-installed IIS and Vault several times using different process models but the problem stays the same

What can we do?

Kind regards
Thomas Hein, STOEHR+SAUER GmbH

[jeremy_sg]

Thomas,

Most of the hanging problems that people run into with Vault are network related. In your case, it sounds as if some network piece is timing out the connection which Vault wants to keep open for as long as you're logged in. That network piece that is failing could be a router, a proxy, or a setting in IIS on the server machine. One workaround that has helped is to disable keepalive in the VaultService virtual directory in IIS.

[thein]

Hi jeremy

that's it! After disabling http keepalive everything works fine again. Thanks for that quick response

Because of the iis on that particular server being used only for Vault, we can safely disable the option.
Nevertheless - what's wrong with the iis settings? The server has been setup from scratch last week and Vault is not working without some "finetuning"... Is there anything else we can check?

Thomas

[jeremy_sg]

I'm honestly not sure which IIS setting would cause the machine to tear down the connection after 5 minutes. The most likely culprit is a router, firewall or proxy. Also, there could be a problem with the network card on the server.

[dan]

Win2k3's default timeout settings for IIS are unreasonably low for a true web service. Check the application pool properties and make sure they are what you want them to be.

[CraigNicholson]

Win2k3's default timeout settings for IIS are unreasonably low for a true web service. Check the application pool properties and make sure they are what you want them to be.

Do you have any recommendations on values to change or play with?

[dan]

Look at properties on the Application Pool in IIS manager and there are a bunch of values for Recyling, performance and health that can be configured.

[thein]

The default iis connection timeout on W2K3 server seems to be 120 secs.
After setting this value to 900 secs (the default value on W2K server) Vault works well even with http keepalive enabled!

Thomas

[jbetzold]

... the Vault client is hanging (during refresh, check-in, check-out etc.) and VisualStudio complains about the server being busy. The only thing you can do then is to kill the corresponding process using the Windows taskmanager

I am experiencing this exact behavior. The difference is that it didn't used to happen. The problem started only a few days ago, after having run Vault trouble-free for months. The stickler is that it affects only my computer, which is a notebook running WinXP Pro. The other developer using this Vault installation is running Win2k Pro without any manifestation of the problem whatsoever. We are running version 2.0.2 on Win2k3, and there have been no changes to any server configuration (IIS, Vault, SQL Server, etc.) since the original installation a few months ago. The problem occurs whether I am running locally on our LAN or remotely via the publicly exposed web service (with SSL).

Is there something that I might have installed on by notebook that could conflict with the Vault Client and the MS Dev (VS6.0) integration component?

I have not yet attempted the solutions previously suggested. I question whether a server tweak is needed if only one client is affected. Also, why would the problem suddenly appear when no server configuration has changed?

I am stumped (and frustrated). Vault is a great product. I just can't seem to make it work for me right now. Any insight that anyone would be able to provide would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you,

Jon Betzold

[GregM]

We have this as well. For one machine running XP pro, the client supposedly attempts to connect to the server, but never does. It just sits there showing "retrieving repository structure" (or something like that), and has to be killed with the task manager. The server logs (both Vault and IIS) show that the client never actually contacts the server, or the server doesn't log that connect. We've used the 2.0.5 build with the client side logging, and that hasn't helped isolate the problem.

[dan]

Generally if only one client of many cannot connect, or times out after a short period of time (while other machines are fine), this points to some sort of client side networking software that is preventing the connection.

-The clent might be configured to use a proxy that has different settings than other clients
-Perhaps a client side firewall is install (such Norton Personal Firewall).
-Also, one person had a problem with AdSubtract installed on it: http://support.sourcegear.com/viewtopic.php?t=407
-Sometimes even router software can be the culprit, if the network path is diffferent from other machines that can connect (see http://support.sourcegear.com/viewtopic.php?t=44 )

You can also try http://support.sourcegear.com/viewtopic.php?t=736 if you haven't already seen it, as well as our general index of knowledge base articles at: http://support.sourcegear.com/viewtopic.php?t=792