Problems with Vault and VS.NET2003 - VS hangs

[Domagoj Kovač]

I'm wanna-be customer for Vault, and am more than satisfied with options, way its integrating in VS.NET, and ease of transition from VSS... BUT .... I have been testing Vault on my laptop (client) and on another desktop computer - Vault server. Testing way mainly done with : transition from VSS database (through Vault import utility), trying to refresh solution (3x web project, and 8x class library projects) - looking for performance problems... everything went great.

But, now I'm testing with 4x clients (of whose one is on server computer), and I'm getting VS.NET hangs every... 5-6 minutes of work. As much as I could, this "hanging" is related to Vault, since hangs happen in 50% cases when I'm trying to retrieve new version of solution, and another 50% ones when trying to check out individual files.

I tried to : turn off antivirus protection, erase VSWebCache, remove all plug.ins in visualStudio - on both client and server machines. Nothing helped. This "hangs" happen on random occasions, sometimes VS is working for half hour without "hangs".

On ALL machines, I have following configuration:
Windows 2003 Enterpise edition, 1Gig RAM, VS.NET 2003, ALL service packs (for OS and .NET Framework applied).

I allready have basic go-ahead from management for buying of Vault for our development team, but if I wont be able to remedy this situation, I'm affraid Ill have to go back to VSS or such.... No matter how slow that thing was, it still turns out we are better with such product ((

Domagoj Kovac

[dan]

Is the hanging possibly related to the Vault server timing out the session? Win2k3/IIS6 is very aggressive about recycling users sessions. Have you noticed the GUI client getting timed out over roughly the same intervals? It might be that VS doesn't recover so well from a Vault timeout.

If this seems possible, you can adjust Win2k3 options described at
http://support.sourcegear.com/viewtopic.php?t=1014

You could also temporarily load the Vault server on an OS other than Win2k3 and see if that makes any difference. This is extreme of course but would help us localize the problem.

[Domagoj Kovač]

I'm allready in proccess of moving vault server to dedicated "server" computer - was trying stuff out on development machine (for testing purposes).
After I have moved it there, and adjusted it according to your suggestion, I will post reply here again.

About moving to another OS - basicaly 99% of computers I can install this thing on have W2K3, so it would require much of my time (and we are getting close to our deadlines) - so I will pass that at the moment.

Also, if that helps - IIS is in "native IIS6 mode" - ie, process is running with NetworkService account, and we are running latest of your software (2.06).

Domagoj Kovač

[dan]

OK - one other thing you might try before then is to put IIS 6 into IIS 5 isolation mode. That might cause timeouts to happen less frequently. This can be done in the IIS manager - click on Properties of the Web Sites icon, and go to the Service tab. Let us know if that helps at all.

[Guest]

Hmm, can't do that.
We don't have dedicated server for this - so it happens that on that "real server" there are few dosen web applications that are working now with IIS6 mode, and I don't want to introduce new problems in them.
(I'm talking about "real server" because there was problem on another, development machine, and I'm hoping that now things will work on "real" one).

Anyway, as we speak, I'm importing VSS db in Vault on "real server", and I will let you know how it went.

Domagoj

[Guest]

Ok, situation is like this:
a) Installed VaultServer on Server computer (dedicated server computer, but not only for Vault, but to host few dosen other internal web applications) - we are still talking about W2K3 Ent, fully patched, with SQLServer 2000 Ent - also patched.
b) I have imported VSS db on that machine
c) All users and server have default installation of tools
d) I have version 2.06
e) When having 2 clients talking to web server I could not reproduce behaviour of "blocking"
f) Today, 5 clients are talking to vaultServer, and we have noticed "freezing" - freezing happens (so far) only when retrieveing new version of solution. How its manifesting? Message "Getting latest version(s)" appear in status bar of VS.NET 2003, and whole IDE is non-responsive. Task manager is not displaying "non-responsive" for VS.NET, its just "running". After we kill task and re-run it again, it runs ok for some time.
g) I'm not sure, but I have FEELING that this is somehow connected to clients getting new version in a same time that another client is CREATING solution from SourceRepository (which takes 2 mins aprox) - maybe there is problem there. If so, we can live with it - every time new developer joins team, some other clients might get blockin IDEs, but that is not that often.

I have request if this is possible - can you give me information where to look, in someking of log or something, in order to "catch" what is last thing that happened, etc.

We are crossing our fingers, and trying out our demo version of Vault, and hopefully we can remove this problem in future, or learn to live with it...

Domagoj Kovac

[Guest]

Oh, and just to make a remark - our projects are all done in VB.NET. Maybe some issue with background compile?

(Just thought to give you a hint, probablly its totally off)

Domagoj Kovač

[dan]

You can turn the server's log file to debug mode in the admin tool. Warning though: This will create an enormous log file over time, and you will want to change it back to normal eventually.

However, you could check to see what commands the server is getting. Unfortunately, we won't have client side logging for the IDE until the next release...

[isamu]

Was this ever resolved? I am currently experience EXACTLY the same problems. Hangs after about 10 minutes in visual studio ONLY when hitting vault.

[dan]

isamu - I don't believe they ever got back to us.

There seem to be multiple issues above - which specific ones are you seeing?

I would suggest the same things - check your server log, and also turn on client logging for both the client and the IDE (see http://support.sourcegear.com/viewtopic.php?t=2898 as a starting point) and save them off when you get the hang, and tell us if it has anything interesting in it.

Also, I would suggest upgrading to the latest client, which has a few more output messages on some error conditions.