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.
Related
Microsoft Visual Studio Team Foundation Server - Version 16.131.28106.2
Agent.OS Windows_NT
Agent.OSVersion 6.3.9600
Agent.Version 2.136.1
My TFS build agent is not identifying Visual Studio 2017(Enterprise) as a capability while running as a service(under a service account on my primary domain). That same agent does identify Visual Studio 2015 as a capability while running as a service under the same account as above.
I've updated the agent, removed and reconfigured the build agent in question, restarted the agent-service, and restarted the OS. I did notice that when this agent is first configured, the capability is briefly identified while the agent runs under the individual running the configure script, but when the agent switches over to running under the service account, the VS2017 capabilities disappear.
After noticing this, I gave the service account in question read and execute privileges on the root Windows install dir, 'Program Files (x86), and all directories and files associated with the VS2017 install, but this didn't help.
If I run a different build agent interactively(same version as listed above), VS2017 is identified as a capability, so I'm assuming there is something I need to do in regards to the service account I'm attempting to use.
For good measure, within the Visual Studio build task, I tried using the 'latest' option and the 'Visual Studio 2017' options. I also tried adding '/p:VisualStudioVersion=15.0' to the MSBuild args for this task.
Update: I also tried explicitly specifying the capabilities directly in the 'User-Defined' section, and I tried adding the capabilities through the use of environment variables on the agent host.
Have you ensured that the service account user is added as the role service account on the pool the agent is running on?
Also ensure that the service account is able to do the following in these Local Security Policies: "logon as a service", "act as part of the operating system", "Manage auditing and security log"
I can't say that this will be able to solve your problem, but I just know that these are necessary in the setups I handle.
You could also for quick and easy test add you service account as an administrator on the machine and test if it finds VS 2017 then. If it does, then you know you need to set some specific groups and permissions.
I think something in my TFS 2017 is locked. The builds will no longer be assigned to the build agents.
Build not starting:
Agents available:
Information:
- TFS2017 running on Windows 10.
- Build agents running on same machine.
- SQLEXPRESS Database was full (10G cap), since then no more builds.
- I backed the database up and migrated to SQL Standard to solve the full database.
What I tried:
- Unconfigured the agents and reconfigured them.
- Deleted the default agent pool and got a new one, reconfigured the agents again.
Problem:
- Though two build agents are available, the builds are still not getting build.
Any suggestions, please?
I can reproduce this issue when stop the service "Visual Studio Team Foundation Background Job Agent"
So, please check if the service "Visual Studio Team Foundation Background Job Agent" is running on TFS app tier.
If it's not running, just start it.
Did you reconfigure the capabilities of your new Agents so that the Demands can be met ?
The error seems German, so would be great if you can translate that.
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 would like to upload on my TFS 2015 some of the build tasks that are available here https://github.com/Microsoft/vso-agent-tasks.
I do have a problem with certain task as they do require a minimum agent version of 1.89.0. My build agents are 1.83.2 version.
Now, the question is, how do I update my agents for a given pool? If I do right click the agent pool on my TFS and choose update all agents option, nothing happens. I suppose because the latest version of my agent available on TFS is the 1.83.2.
Where can I find the latest version of it and how do I update it?
Note I'm working on premises TFS 2015 and not VSO.
Thanks
If you right-click the agent pool and choose "Update all agents", it will upgrade the agents to the version of the on-premise TFS server. For instance, if you initially installed some RC, and upgraded the server to RTM later, some agents might have lower version. Otherwise, as you mentioned, nothing will happen because all agents are up to date.
VSO has a different release model and updates/fixes to its agents are continuously delivered. That's why the version is constantly growing.
Technically it might be possible to grab the source code of the latest VSO agent tasks, and push it to the on-premise version of TFS 2015. However, it is considered an anti-pattern, and the behavior is undocumented and unsupported.
Let me quote build vNext developers from this discussion (see the bottom of the thread):
That is not a supported option. It is very likely that the agent we
have in VSO will not work with the on-prem server. You must use the
version of the agent that ships with your server.
And:
The behavior is undefined/untested. It may work, may not. The design
is for agents to get pulled forward via an auto update process
downloaded from your service. The auto update process may alter
configs/layout on disk, whatever. That future agent might call REST
apis that don't exist, etc... The primary focus for agents is on
forward compat so they can lazily get upgraded (via task minimum agent
demand, on restart or eventually a scheduled job).
Same answer as #Yan, but putting this here because the following error came from nowhere - so I think Microsoft updated the minimum requirements this week.
No agent found in pool Default which satisfies the specified demands:
msbuild
visualstudio
Agent.Version -gtVersion 1.95.0
For your own hosted agent just right click on the queue, or click the ... icon.
I had to restart the agent service after a few minutes as it didn't seem to want to by itself. Give it a chance to update properly before doing this.
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.