Exception during Login: User "suredh01" not found

[MarkFry]

My company, Nielsen, has SOS 4.2 installed on a Windows 2000 server at our Oxford office. It is installed in C:\Program Files\SourceOffSite Server with 5 permanent licences. We installed it in June 2007.

VSS 6.0 is installed on a different drive on the same server, in D:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio\VSS\win32. SSAPI.DLL is Version 6.0.81.69.

There is 10.9 GB free on C: and 11.1 GB free on D: C:\Program Files\SourceOffSite Server\temp was empty when I checked a few minutes ago.

I am based in the Oxford office and use SOS across our LAN. A colleague signs in over a VPN from rural Oxfordshire, and until recently, two other colleagues signed in across a VPN from India. The fifth licence has remained unused. SOS has been working well for all of us for two years.

However, our old Indian colleagues have been replaced by a new team, working for the same sub-contractor in a different office in the same city (Mumbai). A member of the new team has installed the SOS client and tried to log in, but without any success yet.

The log file looks like this after each failed attempt (though the "accepted from" address varies each time):
===========================================================
30/06/2009 13:30:06 - Connection accepted from 10.47.16.197:1931 on local address 10.64.5.43:8080, session id is 13.
30/06/2009 13:30:21 - 13: Exception during Login: User "suredh01" not found
30/06/2009 13:30:21 - 13: User "suredh01" not found
===========================================================

The user's log-in name is suredh01. When the first few attempts failed, I added the user through SOS Server Manager and restarted the SOS 4 Service. This was accepted, but the user still could not log in and the log.txt messages were just the same.

The user appears to have an account in VSS. I have found a directory called D:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio\VSS\users\suredh0 containing one file, ss.ini. Since "suredh01" is only 8 characters, I'm concerned that VSS has truncated it. The directory was created on 18/6/2009 at 08:38:43, which does not coincide with any activity in SOS log.txt. This user's first attempt to log in was 2nd June at 11:07. (We can trust the time-stamp because VSS and SOS are running on the same server.)

I have just increased the error-logging level to "3 - Info", which is producing more information. For example, I have just tried to log in as "suredh0":

===========================================================
30/06/2009 16:54:53 - Connection accepted from 10.64.8.137:3174 on local address 10.64.5.43:8080, session id is 1.
30/06/2009 16:54:53 - 1: Connection from: oxf-12667.ukire.enterprisenet.org (10.64.8.137)
30/06/2009 16:55:03 - 1: User 'suredh0' requesting to login to database '\\acn044oxfapp09\vss\srcsafe.ini'
30/06/2009 16:55:03 - 1: Client is speaking protocol version 2.0

30/06/2009 16:55:03 - 1: Exception during Login: User "suredh0" not found
30/06/2009 16:55:03 - 1: User "suredh0" not found
30/06/2009 16:55:03 - 1: User suredh0 disconnected from oxf-12667.ukire.enterprisenet.org.
===========================================================

And then as myself, "fryma01":
===========================================================
30/06/2009 16:56:41 - Connection accepted from 10.64.8.137:3179 on local address 10.64.5.43:8080, session id is 2.
30/06/2009 16:56:41 - 2: Connection from: oxf-12667.ukire.enterprisenet.org (10.64.8.137)
30/06/2009 16:56:44 - 2: User 'fryma01' requesting to login to database '\\acn044oxfapp09\vss\srcsafe.ini'
30/06/2009 16:56:44 - 2: Client is speaking protocol version 2.0

30/06/2009 16:56:44 - 2: 'fryma01' connected to database \\acn044oxfapp09\vss\srcsafe.ini
===========================================================

What else can I add to help diagnose the problem?

[lbauer]

There's some sort of problem with that account in VSS. Try deleting the user in the VSS admin client, and re-creating the account. Also be sure that when the user logs in, they are logging in to the correct VSS database.

[MarkFry]

Thanks for the hints - spot on. An incorrect VSS account had been created for the user, pointing to the wrong database. There was confusion about the correct directory path. It looks like an alias had been created to D:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio\VSS\srcsafe.

[lbauer]

Thanks for the update. That's good news. : )