Visual Studio Team System (VSTS) Blog - by Neno Loje : TFS 2008 SP1

Recommendations for Virus Scanning on TFS computers

neno — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 11:59:39 GMT

Anti-virus software can badly impact the performance of your Team Foundation Server. Therefore make sure the following folders are excluded from scanning for viruses:

TFS Version Control Cache Folder
Team System Web Access Cache Folder
SQL database folders
SQL backup folders

Additionally Microsoft published virus scanning recommendations for:

(Thanks to Wes to pointing me at those three articles.)

TSWA: Report view not showing all work items

neno — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 10:01:00 GMT

If you have more than 100 work items in a query and you use Tools » Report View to prepare the list for printing you might notice that not all work items are shown on the report.

Here’s what Hakan Eskici, the father of Web Access, has to say about this:

There’s a limit to the number of work items we display in the “report view” for performance reasons. By default, it’s set to 100, but you can increase this by changing the following line in the web.config file:

<maxWorkitemsInReportList count="100"/>

Enjoy!

Hotfix available: The Create Unit Test dialog opens up empty

neno — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 23:02:25 GMT

Did you ever experience one of the following behaviours:

The Create Unit Test dialog opens up empty, and no interfaces are shown in the list
Clicking on the Code Coverage Tab in the .testrunconfig file makes the dialog box disappear.

A hotfix was made available by Microsoft.

Read the KB article 962866.

Discover users without Visual Studio SP1 installed

neno — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 11:30:00 GMT

Far too often people install Visual Studio SP1 before Team Explorer 2008 and therefore TE remains unpatched in the RTM state.

Luckily the ambitious TFS Admin can use the TFS Server Manager from the Power Tools package (TfsServerManager.exe in the Power Tools folder) to find those users without SP1:

Check for VS 2008 SP1 from the server

Open "Completed Requests" in TFS server manager.

Choose "devenv.exe, 9.0.21022.8" (= RTM), devenv.exe, 9.0.30729.1 stands for SP1.

Click "Run Query" and look at the User and Client IP columns to identity your colleagues:

Done!

Visual Studio (devenv.exe) Version Numbers:

devenv.exe 9.0.30729.1 – Visual Studio 2008 SP1
devenv.exe 9.0.21022.8 – Visual Studio 2008
devenv.exe 8.0.50727.762 – Visual Studio 2005 SP1 (?)
devenv.exe 8.0.?? – Visual Studio 2005

Hotfix for Team Build 2008 SP1: Reducing project-to-project references in build log (KB958845)

neno — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 13:10:30 GMT

From Aaron Hallberg blog:

[…] change in TFS Build SP1 which reduced build log noise by cutting out the build steps for project-to-project references […] the fix in SP1 didn't actually fix the problem, at least not completely.

[…] As such, if a project was referenced by 10 other projects the fix in SP1 would reduce the number of spurious build steps from 10*3 to 9*3 rather than removing them altogether.

A hotfix is finally available that will address the remaining parts of the problem […]

VSTS MVP colleague Mathias Olausson reports:

“before SP1 the build time was about 2h 30 min, with SP1 build time in average 65 minutes and with the build hotfix we’re now down to less than 40 minutes. The build log has changed from 5500 lines down to 550.”

Download hotfix: TFSBuild TargetsNotLogged property fails to cut down noisy builds

Additional Info: KB article 958845

Security Update for TSWA 2008 SP1

neno — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 14:47:58 GMT

From Hakan Eskici's blog:

A security issue has been identified with Team System Web Access 2008 SP1 and we have recently published an update that fixes it.

Installation Notice

Please note that this is a full release, so you will need to uninstall any existing versions of Web Access before installing this update.

Update: Instructions to patching your installation without the need to uninstall/reinstall TSWA)

Update #2: KB article 961267 is now available.

Determining if the update is installed

Take a look at the About page (Help > About) in Web Access.
The version number will be 9.0.3275 for TSWA 2008 SP1 Update.

Download: Visual Studio Team System Web Access 2008 SP1 Power Tool

How many users can Team System Web Access support?

neno — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 09:21:31 GMT

A: Microsoft posted a white paper on this.

From the whitepaper:

"Test results indicate that Web Access starts to hit the upper limits once the total number of work item objects in the memory is around 180. This translates to approximately 100 concurrent users with typical usage patterns."

"Test results indicate that Web Access can support up to approximately 500 users." (working with a minimum amount of data)

Download: Team System Web Access 2008 Scalability Limits White Paper

How TFSDeleteProject Works

neno — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 18:42:43 GMT

There are some areas where data may remain behind after you use TFSDeleteProject.

The TFS Warehouse is untouched. In order to remove the data from the warehouse, it must be rebuilt. (It is important to notice that, when the warehouse is rebuilt all the historic build data that has been trimmed from the system will be removed.) Rebuilding the warehouse is accomplished using the command SetupWarehouse. For more information, see SetupWarehouse.
The build drop locations (i.e., the location where the build binaries, build log files, and test results log files are published during the build process) are untouched. Removing the build drops must be done manually.
Any work item tracking metadata that is shared between projects will not be deleted.
The version control shelve set may not be deleted if there is code in the shelve set from multiple projects.

Read the full story by Aaron Block.

Changing TFS emails to link to Team System Web Access – Part 2

neno — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 14:24:29 GMT

If you click on a hyperlink in an TFS notification mail the following (read-only) web page comes up instead of a nice looking Team System Web Access dialog. Let's change that!

Objective

Make sure all links in the notification mails sent by TFS point to Team System Web Access (TSWA) rather than the integrated read-only web pages from TFS.

There are fourareas to look at:

Work Item notification mails (has already been discussed here)
Build notification mails
Check-in notification mails
Mails sent by Team Explorer (feature of TFS 2008 SP1)

Area 1 is part of a separate blog post, for Area 2 there are currently no equivalent steps (as stated in KB956761). Areas 3 and 4 can be accomplished through the following steps:

Step 1: Specify TSWA Uri using tfsadminutil

Set TSWA uri (as described on MSDN):

tfsadminutil configureconnections /TSWAUri:http://MyTFS:8090/

Verify URIs:

tfsadminutil configureconnections

From now on all your check-in notification mails as well as mails sent via Team Explorer link to TSWA.

Unfortunately there's one problem if we look at the check-in notification mail we'll read:

"Details about his check-in were not available when this alert was prepared.
Select the link above to view more details about the check-in."

Microsoft released a hot fix to correct this behavior.

Step 2: Install hot fix

The hot fix is publically available at: http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/KB957196

Result

Way better, don't you think?

Q: How do I switch Team System Web Access back to English?

neno — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 09:10:10 GMT

Team System Web Access 2008 SP1 comes equipped with 10 languages for its UI that will be displayed depending on your Internet browsers regional settings.

You can set a language - independently what your browser settings by opening the Options dialog from the Settings menu.

and choosing your preferred language on the "Regional settings" tab.

Turn off label deletion when deleting builds

neno — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 00:50:10 GMT

By default a build label is deleted when the corresponding build gets deleted.

In TFS 2008 SP1 you can change that behavior by modifying the web.config file (on the TFS AT in folder %ProgramFiles%\Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Team Foundation Server\Web Services) to:

<appSettings>
<add key="PreserveLabelsOnBuildDeletion" value="true" />
</appSettings>

(Thanks to Buck Hodges for this tip).

Workaround for TF30207 when creating a new team project and red X on Reports in Team Explorer

neno — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 22:45:12 GMT

Problem description:

You can't create new team projects.
You see a red X on Report in Team Explorer, which you are sure is not related to permission issues (as described here).
Using tfsadminutil.exe configureconnections /view you discover that the ReportServerUri looks similar to:

http://myTFS/ReportService.asmx

It should look something like:

http://myTFS/ReportServer/ReportService.asmx

Cause:

What happened? Looking at the MSDN docs I found this notice:

Workaround:

Specify the full path (including the trailing "/ReportService.asmx"), like this:

TfsAdminUtil ConfigureConnections /ReportServerUri:http://myTFS/ReportServer/ReportService.asmx

More information

There is an official KB article by Microsoft available .

You're done!

How to fix TF53010: Create OLAP failed

neno — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 20:47:23 GMT

Problem description:

After a clean install of TFS 2008 SP1 I was wondering about this message in the event log telling me there was a problem with the cube:

TF53010: The following error has occurred in a Team Foundation component or extension:
Date (UTC): 08.01.2009 19:51:18
Machine: MYTFS
Application Domain: /LM/W3SVC/2102708728/ROOT/Warehouse-5-128759178428736686
Assembly: Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Warehouse, Version=9.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a; v2.0.50727
Process Details:
Process Name: w3wp
Process Id: 3516
Thread Id: 3396
Account name: DOMAIN\TFSSERVICE

Detailed Message: Create OLAP failed
Exception Message: Interner Fehler: Der Vorgang wurde erfolglos beendet.
Interner Fehler: Der Vorgang wurde erfolglos beendet.
OLE DB-Fehler: OLE DB- oder ODBC-Fehler : Login failed for user 'DOMAIN\SQLSERVICE'.; 42000.
Fehler im relationalen Modul. Mit der Datenquelle mit dem DataSourceID-Wert 'TfsWarehouseDataSource' und dem Namen 'TfsWarehouseDataSource' konnte keine Verbindung hergestellt werden.
Fehler im OLAP-Speichermodul: Fehler beim Verarbeiten des dimension-Objekts mit der ID 'Load Test Scenario' und dem Namen 'Load Test Scenario'.
Fehler im OLAP-Speichermodul: Fehler beim Verarbeiten des Load Test Scenario-Attributs der Load Test Scenario-Dimension aus der TfsWarehouse-Datenbank.
Server: Der Vorgang wurde abgebrochen.
(type OperationException)

How to fix:

Thanks to this thread and this excellent blog post I discovered that my SSAS service account was not granted permissions to access the TfsWarehouse database.

Step 1: Create a database user for your SSAS service account as member of the role TfsWarehouseDataReader:

Step 2: Create a database login

Step 3: Run cube processing

More information

There's a KB article by Microsoft available describing the issue.

Q: Can I install SP3 for SQL Server 2005 on my TFS?

neno — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 07:08:21 GMT

Answer: Yes, you are free to do so.

Microsoft has done "functional, perf and stress testing" on TFS 2008 SP1 on SQL Server 2005 SP3 to ensure it works properly.

Additionally we installed and tested it on our TFS instances without any issues.

Note: Be aware that the installation takes some time (~ 10-25 minutes depending on your hardware) and it requires a reboot.

Download: SP3 for SQL Server 2005

VS & TFS SP1 - What to apply on which machine

neno — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 14:50:43 GMT

Often the questions is raised which service pack applies to which VSTS/TFS component:

Machine	TFS SP1	VS SP1
TFS single server / TFS Application Tier	Yes	Yes, if Visual Studio is installed. Install this prior to TFS SP1.
TFS Data Tier	No	No
Team System Web Access (on separate machine)	No	Yes
TFS Build Server	Yes	Yes, if Visual Studio is installed. Install this prior to TFS SP1.
TFS Proxy	Yes	No
Visual Studio User	No	Yes
Office User	No	Yes