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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