Using on-prem TFS 2017, I have added an additional agent to an existing pool. The agent is displayed in the pool/queue management pages, is enabled, and is in an idle state. The logs reflect a healthy agent that is listening for work, but the TFS controller won't designate work to it (as far as I can tel). I have tried disabling the other agent as well as stopping the other agent's service. In either situation, the build status states there are no available agents to perform work. I have other agents running in different pools that are all functioning properly, so I am not sure how to determine whats at fault: agent/agent configuration, queue/pool configuration, or the TFS controller it self.
I finally found the issue:
While MSBuild and all the relevant Microsoft SDK's required for my builds were installed and properly reflected in the agent's capabilities, Visual Studio was not installed on the new build server.
I was not able to determine why the agent(s) was rejected for insufficient capabilities; we were running TFS 2015 update 2, but after an update to TFS 2017, the agents are no longer dependent on Visual Studio being installed and work just fine running the same build definitions with the MSBuild step.
So, I tried to upgrade my TFS 2015 to allow project with .NET 4.6.1.
I downloaded the Targeting Pack for .NET 4.6.1, ran it, restarted the server, ran my build configuration for the build agent by overwriting the old settings, and started my builds.
Now non of them will build :(
I think I miss setting a parameter somewhere.
This is my agent, which is registered, but never requested (for some odd reason):
Am I missing something?
According to your agent.version 1.95.3, seems you are using TFS2015 update3 which should definitely support .Net 4.6.1. And the system capabilities of your agent looks okay except the Number_OF_PROCESSOR. Your value is 1, but usually the default is 8. Did you manually change the value during the configure?
Recommend you follow below way to narrow down this issue:
First check in that if the build server is available and enabled in
TFS at https://YOURCOMPANYNAME:8080/tfs/_admin/_AgentQueue, and
your build agent should be “Green”.
Make sure the agent is in interactive mode.
Try to change a domain account which is a member of the Build
Agent Service Accounts group and belongs to "Agent Pool Service
Account" role, to see whether the agent would work or not.
Double check whether there are some Firewall interface block the
build, try to disable all related settings.
If it's still not work, delete that agent and re-deploy a new one following the detail steps in this article. You can also go through below similar questions to check if there is some useful info :
TFS 2015 On-premise issues
TFS 2015 build vNext - hangs with "Waiting for console output from
an agent..."
TFS 2015 Build agent won't start
I'm setting up TFS 2015 for my team to try out, and I'm having trouble getting it off the ground. It sounded straightforward, but things don't work and I can't find any diagnostics, and tutorials don't match what I'm seeing. Some highlights:
When I go to download a Build Agent from the server, I don't get a PowerShell file (ConfigureAgent.ps1), I get ConfigureAgent.cmd.
The images and description of setting up the build controller show me a nice picture of the TFS Admin Console with a Build Controller and Build Agent and their statuses underneath 'Build' (see Team Foundation Server 2015 Builds will not start or https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms181712.aspx.) On my system, I see this display under XAML Build Config (the old way,) but the Build item in the console doesn't have anything like that. It has a link to download an agent, but installing an agent doesn't change this.
Installing the agent appears to work. I get a service that's running, and the web portal agrees that I have an agent in the default queue and pool.
But, queuing a build just sits there. I've found the _diag folder for the agent, which has logs with a bunch of "Message received, no message retrieved" lines. I can't find anywhere else to check if the server knows about this build.
The service account is Network Service, and I've tried putting it in every TFS group mentioned online regarding permissions.
My setup is TFS and VS 2015 installed on our build machine, with it also hosting the build agent. I'm on port 8079, because port 8080 is taken. It's got to be something silly I missed, because everything looks like it's working. Has anyone gotten this beast off the ground without coming from a pre-existing install?
The configureagent.cmd is the correct file (it does pretty much what he ps script did)
Make sure the account that the agent is run under is in the "Agent Pool Service Account" role. It is better to use a domain/machine account not a local service account.
Make sure the queue is provisioned in the collection ( https://your-tfs-server:8080/tfs/your-collection/_admin/_AgentQueue ). If not - select "New queue.." and select the existing queue.
Make sure that when setting up the build through web access, the demands (on the general tab) is met by the capabilities of the agent.
If all this is in place, I have found that it facilitates testing by running the agent in interactive mode (not as a service). This gives you a bit better insight into what is happening. When it is working you can configure it as a service again.
Use an actual service account, not NETWORK SERVICE, and make sure that service account is a member of the Build Service Accounts group in your Team Project.
For me the issue was that the IIS's Team Foundation Server site setting's Authentication, "Windows Authentication" had to be enabled.
I was using a windows user as the log in credentials for the Build Agent running as a service.
Remember this new build system uses all http now.
It does not talk to any tfs build controller.
I am trying to build a project with build server and it keeps giving me the following error:
C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\InstallShield\2013Limited\InstallShield.targets (108): -7159: The product license has expired or has not yet been initialized.
I have added the account used by Build in the build collection administrator group and project collection administrator group. I also activated installshield both through Visual Studio (creating new setup project) and then going in this location
c$\Program Files (x86)\InstallShield\2013LE\System\TSConfig.exe
I have VS 2010 (Shell), VS 2012 and VS2013 installed.
I have also added this user in the administrator group on that server. I have restarted the build server multiple times. I am not sure what else to try. Could anyone please help
Be ensure that the BuildService is not running with a local account such as "NT_AUTHORITY\Network Service". If so, please change it with a domain account and add the user account to the administrator group. Restart TFS build server machine, and re-queue the build.
In addition, please also have a check on this blog for the details on how to work with Installshield with TFS build:
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/girishp/archive/2014/03/04/installshield-and-team-build-on-tfs.aspx
I'm setting up a new build server using TFS 2015 and after I configured the agent, when I tried to queue a build I got this error:
No agent could be found with the following capabilities: msbuild, visualstudio, vstest
How can this be resolved?
Install Visual Studio on your build agent, then restart the build agent. Restarting the build agent will capture the added Capabilities.
Note: First of all, you can do all this with the community edition and TFS Express 2015 on your own server (for free up to five users) - so don't worry about needing to use the Visual Studio online version or paying for Visual Studio Professional.
It is very easy to misinterpret the error message provided and go off on a wild-goose chase trying to debug it.
Unfortunately the message itself is just badly worded and that's the real problem.
Here is what that error message really means:
"No agent could be found with the following capabilities: msbuild,
visualstudio, vstest.
In fact I didn't actually find ANY build agents configured for the selected build queue."
So you're thinking that doesn't apply to you because you just created a build agent?
Well, maybe you did, but here's what probably happened:
You created a new pool (for no reason other than you just thought you ought to).
You then created a queue under that pool.
You ran the PowerShell script to create an agent and you assumed it put it in the pool you just created....
But it didn't - it put it in the 'default' pool which you aren't even using...
Aha!
So here's what happens when you build:
You select a queue from the dropdown.
TFS tries to build by looking for the pool that corresponds to that queue and it doesn't find any agents AT ALL there, so you get a stupid useless red-herring error message.
When I finally realized what happened I just deleted my cutely named pool + queue and just reverted to using the default pool.
Next time I will try to pay more attention to this message during the PowerShell configuration:
Configure this agent against which agent pool? (default pool name is
'default')
You will have to create a queue under the pool, but then your agent should start working.
If you have a genuine with a certain capability being absent from your agent you can check what your agent supports via the 'capabilities' tab shown here. Of course msbuild, visualstudio and vstest are all here :-)
In my case, after installing MSBuild (https://www.visualstudio.com/downloads/, search for "Build Tools for Visual Studio 2017"), I just had to add the path to MSBuild to the PATH environment variable. The agent wasn't detecting MSBuild until I did that.
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2017\BuildTools\MSBuild\15.0\Bin
I did NOT have to install the full Visual Studio IDE. The selected answer for this question is just plain wrong...
By default, when using the new build system on VSO, it doesn't pick the hosted build option, which is how I ended up on this post in Stack Overflow. If you are used to using a VSO build server here's what you need to do:
Create a hosted build by going to the General tab and changing your Default Queue to hosted. More on the restrictions of that and how it works here: https://www.visualstudio.com/get-started/build/hosted-agent-pool
Add them as User-defined capabilities, e.g.:
visualstudio C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio\2022\Community
vstest C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio\2022\Community\Common7\IDE\CommonExtensions\Microsoft\TestWindow
I had initially installed the agent on a machine that did not have Visual Studio installed. However, after installing Visual Studio (and then Visual Studio Build Tools), restarting/recreating my agent, restarting my machine, etc., I could not get the agent to detect the new capabilities automatically, so I added them myself in Azure DevOps as User-defined capabilities.
I had this issue and it turned out being my release process had selected the "wrong" agent. Just edit the release and set the correct agent queue
I was using a Xcode build slave for building an Xcode project.
And the error message I ended up with in TFS 2015 was
"No agent could be found with the following capabilities: xcode"
I registered an OS X on-premise build slave.
In the "Register Agent" step, I named by build agent:
>> Register Agent:
Enter agent pool (press enter for default) > My-Xcode-Agent-Pool
So, I had to select the "My-Xcode-Agent-Pool" as Default queue in the build settings. Source: Microsoft-hosted agents
Although none of previous answers worked for me, the post by Simon_Weaver pointed me in the right direction.
He mentioned that vstest was in his list, but it wasn't in mine. I fixed it by adding a user-defined capability named "vstest" with the full path to vstest.console.exe under Visual Studio 2017.
What ended up working for me was to go to where I downloaded the agent and running:
./config.cmd remove then ./config.cmd to reinstall the agent from the command line inside the directory of my agent.
Download agent
per microsoft https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/ie/bb399135(v=vs.94)
You must install on the build agent the version of Visual Studio that your team uses on its dev machines. See Installing Visual Studio. You must also install any other software and components that are installed on your dev machines and that are required to build your app.
In my case, after installing MSBuild, restart all Azure services (in windows service) and it worked. No need to install full Visual Studio
You have to install the correspondent Visual Studio version on the build machine (where you have installed your agent). This will add the required tools and capabilities to the server.
Visual Studio is required, because it installs all the build targets required to build your projects.
After being installed, you have to restart the agent Windows service so that it refreshes the list of capabilities.
Since you are using the Visual Studio installation on the build machine to build, that installation doesn't count as an additional license.
General solution for TFS:
The common way of resolving most of the issues on the build server is to install Visual Studio & all dependent packages on your build server.
Alternative solution in case of using VSTS
When you choose where to build, use "Hosted"
and then the build will work.
The guide how to make it work may be found here: Deploy an agent on Windows for TFS 2015
Check the agent section which will contain information about capabilities.
Updated:
Once you have the list of capabilities in vsts(azuredevops)
you might need to install the desired software on your build agent machine.
PS Be aware, you might have to license your sw, if required.