VSS Import appears to hang on prescan

jmercker · Post by **jmercker** » Mon Aug 09, 2004 7:25 am

I've had the VSS Import running for about 3 days and it looks like it's stalled in the prescan phase. It's been working on the same project/file since Friday.

I've followed all of the guidelines for a successful import. Analyze doesn't show any errors in the VSS db. The database is around 2GB on disk and has many projects with many files shared among those projects (e.g. in some cases, a file is shared over 100 times). We need to retain the shares once the VSS db is migrated into Vault.

I'm currently running VSS Import on a P4 box w/512 MB memory on Windows XP SP1. The SQLServer/Vault web services are also running on a P4 box with 512MB memory on Win2k server SP4. Both boxes are dedicated to the VSS import operation and are connected via a 1 gig network connection.

At the current time, the VSSImport process is using about 374MB of memory.

Any ideas on what I can do?

Thanks in advance,
Jeramie

Post by **jeremy_sg** » Mon Aug 09, 2004 9:07 am

Often, if the VSSImport hangs, it is due to running out of memory. How much memory is still free on te machine? Does your import log have anything useful in it? You can find it in the Program Files\Sourcegear\VSS Import Tool directory.

jmercker · Post by **jmercker** » Mon Aug 09, 2004 10:04 am

Hi Jeremy,
I checked the log file and it is empty. I checked memory and the box has around 60MB memory free. The file that the import is currently on is one of the files that is share over 100 times (it contains a very small piece of localized ASP/VBScript code).

Also - I checked processor usage for the import process and it's been at zero for quite some time. One of the other guys on my team called me on Friday to let me know that it was hung up, so I'm guessing that it's been at zero since Friday. At this time, the box is completely idle.

Thanks in advance for the help,
Jeramie

Post by **jeremy_sg** » Mon Aug 09, 2004 10:32 am

This will probably be easiest if you email me your email and phone number. We'll probably have to try several different things.

dimzon · Post by **dimzon** » Fri Oct 29, 2004 3:58 am

jeremy_sg wrote:This will probably be easiest if you email me your email and phone number. We'll probably have to try several different things.

Hi!
I have absolutely same problem wih such exceptions:
Our VSS DB Size is near 8.5 GB on HDD
I'm running import under 2 CPU @ 1.6GHz 2GB RAM (both VSS Import tool and VSS Itself at one box)

At the current time, the VSSImport process is using about 1.4GB of memory.

jmercker · Post by **jmercker** » Fri Oct 29, 2004 7:32 am

Get in touch with Jeremy @ SourceGear. The latest version of Vault may have the fix that he had forwarded me to solve my problem. The issue that I was having was related to the extremely large number of shares that I had in VSS between projects and the way that VSSImport was managing shared files. The Vault version that I was importing into was 2.0.5. After the fix, I was able to successfully complete the import using 2 P4 machines with 512MB each and a 1 gig network connection. The import took a little over 7 days to complete, but finally did complete + we were able to reconcile it against the original VSS database (e.g. all went over clean).

Post by **jeremy_sg** » Fri Oct 29, 2004 7:49 am

jmercker is right, contact me, and I'll point you to a fixed build. The fixed version hasn't shipped with any of the 2.0.x releases, but it will ship with 3.0.

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Fri Oct 29, 2004 9:56 am

jeremy_sg wrote:jmercker is right, contact me, and I'll point you to a fixed build. The fixed version hasn't shipped with any of the 2.0.x releases, but it will ship with 3.0.

my email is dimzon@list.ru

George Mills · Post by **George Mills** » Fri Jan 14, 2005 10:44 am

I'm having a similar problem with import from VSS.

Our database is also on the order of 8gig and 4 years old.

At the rate it is prescanning it will take week to import.

Each file takes 1 minute or so. We have 1000's of files in there.

One option that would be nice is to NOT import history.
Or in other words "Just the current state" of a fresh get.

At least we'd get all the shares and branches which is better than doing a "get" on VSS and "Add" on Vault which looks like the only hope of getting it in Vault.

Or I may copy the VSS Archive to a temp. Then purge it, then import that.

Post by **jeremy_sg** » Fri Jan 14, 2005 11:46 am

Other users have also requested a feature along the lines of "Only import history after a certain date", which would be save import time. I've added your vote. Your best bet for now would probably be to archive and purge, as you noted.