Why does the Rational Team Concert client take a long time to connect to the build agent server?

When running BuildLoopTask or "Test Connection" from a Rational Team Concert (RTC) client to connect to the build agents server, the process to get connected to the build server is slow.

Initial assessment

Symptoms

• When you click Test Connection under defined build engine in the RTC Eclipse client, it takes 10 seconds or more for the results to come as a pass.

Impact/scope

• This can also contribute to build requests staying in a pending state for longer.

Data gathering and subsequent analysis steps

• A third party tool can be used to debug this problem (Wireshark)
• Run Wireshark on the build agent machine and the RTC server machine and capture the interfaces that are being used by both machines.
• Run the "Test Connection" from the RTC client.
• Now the network communication between the RTC server and the build agent machine will be captured in Wireshark along with other network communication happening on those machines.
• Look for the TCP communication that is done from the RTC server machine to the build server machine.
• Use Wireshark filter ip.dst == <rtc.server> on the capture of the build machine to filter out unnecessary traces
• Follow the TCP stream of the RTC server and build machine in Wireshark.
• Check all the communication ASCII output.
• Look for any other errors reported while checking the source and destination IP address in Wireshark.

Possible causes

• Following the TCP stream using Wireshark might show the cause of the delay in some cases. The long delay to pass the connection test might be caused by map drives on the build agent machines that were not resolved. Example:

200 HELLO - BuildForge Agent v7.1.2.2-0-0010
cmd ping

username buildadmin

password buildadmin

go

320 AUTH AuthRunningAs["SYSTEM","NT AUTHORITY",*WinSidUser]
320 AUTH AuthPriv["..........................."]
320 AUTH AuthPriv[".................."]
320 AUTH AuthPriv["......................................."]
320 AUTH AuthPriv[".................."]
320 AUTH AuthPriv["....................."]
320 AUTH AuthPriv["........................"]
320 AUTH AuthPriv["..........................."]
320 AUTH AuthPriv["....................."]
320 AUTH AuthPriv["........................"]
320 AUTH AuthPriv["............"]
320 AUTH AuthPriv[".................."]
320 AUTH AuthPriv["..........................."]
320 AUTH AuthPriv["....................."]
320 AUTH AuthPriv[".................."]
320 AUTH AuthPriv["....................."]
320 AUTH AuthPriv["....................."]
320 AUTH AuthPriv["............"]
320 AUTH AuthPriv["................................."]
320 AUTH AuthPriv[".................."]
320 AUTH AuthPriv[".................."]
320 AUTH AuthPriv[".............................."]
320 AUTH AuthPriv["....................."]
320 AUTH AuthPriv[".............................."]
320 MAP MapError[+53,"\\machine.a\d$","W:"]
320 MAP MapError[+67,"\\machine.b\DD1 (E)","X:"]
320 MAP MapOk["Y:","\\machine.c\d$","Microsoft Windows Network"]
320 MAP MapError[+53,"\\machine.e\d$","Z:"]
320 AUTH AuthOk["buildadmin"]
320 SET EnvSet["BF_AGENT_VERSION","7.1.2.2-0-0010"]
320 SET EnvSet["BF_AGENT_PLATFORM","Windows 2003"]
320 EXEC Locale["Chinese_Taiwan.950"]
320 EXEC Locale["Chinese_Taiwan.950"]
300 HEARTBEAT 1
310 PLAT Windows 2003
320 PING PingOk
251 RESULT 0
260 EOR
quit

Possible solutions

• You can see that there are MapErrors reported

  320 MAP MapError[+53,"\\machine.a\d$","W:"]
  320 MAP MapError[+67,"\\machine.b\DD1 (E)","X:"]
  320 MAP MapOk["Y:","\\machine.c\d$","Microsoft Windows Network"]
  320 MAP MapError[+53,"\\machine.e\d$","Z:"]
  

• Remove the mapped network drives that are not getting resolved or fix the mapped drives in question so they are accessible.

Related topics:

• Still need help troubleshooting your integrations issue? Refer to Integrations troubleshooting for additional topics.

External links:

• Wireshark: http://www.wireshark.org/

Additional contributors: ZeeshanChoudhry