Ever found your self in this helpless situation where you think you have tried every possible suggestion on
the internet to bring
the build server back but it just won’t work. Well some times before hunting around for a solution it is important to understand what
the problem is, if
the error messages in
the build logs don’t seem to help you can always enable tracing on
the build server to get more information on what could possibly be
the root cause of failure. In this blog post today I’ll be showing you how to enable tracing on, - TFS 2010/11 Server - Build Server - Client Enable Tracing on
Team Foundation Server 2010/2011 On
the Team Foundation Server navigate to C:\Program Files\Microsoft
Team Foundation Server 2010\Application Tier\Web Services, right click web.config
and from
the context menu select edit. Search for
the <appSettings> node in
the config file
and set
the value of
the key ‘traceWriter’ to true. In
the <System.diagnostics> tag set
the value of switches from 0 to 4 to set
the trace level to maximum to write diagnostics level trace information. Restart
the TFS Application pool to force this change to take effect.
The application pool restart will impact any one using
the TFS server at present. Note - It is recommended that you do not make any changes to
the TFS production application server, this can have serious consequences
and can even jeopardize
the installation of your server. Download
the Debug view tool from http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896647.aspx
and set it to capture “Global Events”. Perform any actions in
the Team Explorer on
the client machine, you should be able to see a series of trace data in
the debug view tool now. Enable Tracing on Build Controller/Agents Log on to
the Build Controller/Agent
and Navigate to
the directory C:\Program Files\Microsoft
Team Foundation Server 2010\Tools Look for
the configuration file ‘TFSBuildServiceHost.exe.config’ if it is not already there create a new text file
and rename it to ‘TFSBuildServiceHost.exe.config’ To Enable tracing uncomment
the <system.diagnostics>
and paste
the snippet below if it is not already there. <configuration>
<system.diagnostics>
<switches>
<add name="BuildServiceTraceLevel" value="4"/>
</switches>
<trace autoflush="true" indentsize="4">
<listeners>
<add name="myListener" type="Microsoft.TeamFoundation.TeamFoundationTextWriterTraceListener,
Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Common, Version=10.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a"
initializeData="c:\logs\TFSBuildServiceHost.exe.log" />
<remove name="Default" />
</listeners>
</trace>
</system.diagnostics>
</configuration>
The highlighted path above is where
the Log file will be created. If
the folder is not already there then create
the folder, also, make sure that
the account running
the build service has access to write to this folder.
Restart
the build Controller/Agent service from
the administration console (or net stop tfsbuildservicehost & net start tfsbuildservicehost) in order for
the new setting to be picked up.
Enable TFS Tracing on
the Client Machine
On
the client machine, shut down Visual Studio, navigate to C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Common 7\IDE
Search for devenv.exe.config, make a backup copy of
the config file
and right click
the file
and from
the context menu select edit. If its not already there create this file.
Edit devenv.exe.config by adding
the below code snippet before
the last </configuration> tag
<system.diagnostics>
<switches>
<add name="TeamFoundationSoapProxy" value="4" />
<add name="VersionControl" value="4" />
</switches>
<trace autoflush="true" indentsize="3">
<listeners>
<add name="myListener"
type="Microsoft.TeamFoundation.TeamFoundationTextWriterTraceListener,Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Common,
Version=10.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a"
initializeData="c:\tf.log" />
<add name="perfListener" type="Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Client.PerfTraceListener,
Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Client,
Version=10.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a"/>
</listeners>
</trace>
</system.diagnostics>
The highlighted path above is where
the Log file will be created. If
the folder is not already there then create
the folder.
Start Visual Studio
and after a bit of activity you should be able to see
the new log file being created on
the folder specified in
the config file.
Other Resources
Below are some Key resource you might like to review. I would highly recommend
the documentation, walkthroughs
and videos available on MSDN.
Thank you for taking
the time out
and reading this blog post. If you enjoyed
the post, remember to subscribe to http://feeds.feedburner.com/TarunArora. Have you come across an interesting one to one with
the build server, please share your experience here. Questions/Feedback/Suggestions, etc please leave a comment.
Thank You!
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