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I've got a CCNet build script that runs fine, with the exception of every now and then an MSBuild task times out. I've gone in and increased the timeouts from 600 to 900 to 1200. No dice, so I'm lead to believe it has something to do with what MSBuild is building; a big old web application project. I've looked on the google for any indication of issue here, but have turned up nothing.

Has anyone experienced this problem before? More generally, what steps do you take to diagnose a timeout in CCNet?

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3 Answers

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Try creating a batch file that only runs the msbuild project on the command line and use MsBuild Profiler to see where all the time is being spent.

C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v3.5\msbuild.exe Build.proj /l:MSBuildProfileLogger,MSBuildProfiler,Version=,Culture=neutral,PublicKeyToken=09544254e89d148c

Good 'ol process of elimination

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+1 for the link to MsBuild Profiler, I didn't know the project existed! I'll definitely try this out. –  Gavin Miller Oct 2 '09 at 18:05
Oddly enough, attaching the profiler seems to have stopped the build process for timing out. Go figure. –  Gavin Miller Oct 14 '09 at 22:11
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I had a similar experience. After debugging and running at cmd prompt I found out the issue was with the writing permissions.

You should check the Network permissions where the output folder is pointing to. Usually Vista/Windows 7 all have net work permission issues.

Try giving full permissions to the out put folder and see what happens. And also try to see Reference path is correctly picking up or not.

From VS it will build fine but when you try from CC.net we may have to give reference path.


Hope this will be helpful.

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I've experienced something similar a number of times where a local build was quite fast but the task was timing out on cruise control.

It always cooked down to pulling down stuff (maybe a whole branch of your code) from some network location and the cruise control task timing out for that reason.

Other option, you build machine could be very low on spec, but you would have noticed that!

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The funny thing is that it sometimes borks on nightly builds with no source changes. –  Gavin Miller Oct 2 '09 at 17:20
in my case case on a forced build - source changes or not - it'll wipe the repository on the build machine and pull down everything, so it would fail even without source changes in case of network bottlenecks –  JohnIdol Oct 3 '09 at 9:44
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