Can anyone suggest reasons as to why the default Build Agent would be unavailable in TeamCity?

Question

I'm in the process of setting up a proper CI environment and am currently evaluation TeamCity. (So my TeamCity experience is non-existent.).

I've performed a default install of TeamCity 5.0.1 Professional in a clean Windows XP (for now) VM.

I've created my project and pointed it to my source repository and queued up a build.

However, I don't see any Build Agents installed/available via the Team City web interface. I've checked and there is a 'Team City Build Agent' service installed and it's running. I've also reviewed the log files in the buildAgent folder and don't see anything that would lead me to an error.

Is there a step or concept that I'm missing here on getting the default Build Agent to become available to Team City? I'm not trying to do anything complicated with the build. (at this point, I just want to pull my source down from the repository)

Afterbody

Check firewall settings perhaps? I've never had a problem with TC and the default build agent not talking to each other. Also, note that with the free version you can still have 3 build agents total. Also, note that both are running as services, perhaps you need to check which user you're running them under. Since my agents needs to be able to talk to network shares, I've always run them under a named domain account, instead of "LOCAL SYSTEM", perhaps that's it. If you want a second pair of eyes on it, I have a crossloop account and could take a peek, if all hope is lost that is. – Objurgate

As noted below, I've since switched to Hudson as my CI environment rather than Team City. If I get some spare cycles, I may reinstall TeamCity to verify whether or not it was simply a faulty installation. – Afterbody

Answer 1

Right after a clean install you should see one build agent - the local machine. I don't think this has anything to do with you even having to have a project defined. IMHO you something went wrong with the installation.

Filip

Earthshaker

I'm going to accept this since I'm assuming that something went wrong with my initial installation. Rather than fighting with TeamCity to resolve this, I gave Hudson a shot and am going to use that for my CI solution instead. – Afterbody

Answer 2

I had exactly the same problem. After going through settings, reinstalling the agent etc, I found that the problem was rather simple - the TeamCity agent placed a wrong teamcity URL in it's property (and other paths as well).

Find the buildagent.properties file ( buildAgentInstallDir\conf\buildagent.properties), and you'll probably see that all of the lines have 'escape' characters in them (e.g. serverUrl=http://localhost:8090/ )

Modify the file to remove escape chars (i.e. links should be plain like: serverUrl=http://localhost:8090/ , env.TEAMCITY_JRE=C:\Program Files\TeamCity\BuildAgentInstalled\jre and similar)

Hope this helps...

Armandinaarmando

The escape characters do not need to be removed (however, they can). They are part of the Java Properties File format. – Bergin

Answer 3

If your server is running on a machine with multiple IP addresses, the agent may fail to identify the correct IP address. You can explicitly set the IP address in the buildAgent/conf/buildAgent.properties file. You should see a section that is optional to set the IP of the buildAgent and the IP of the Teamcity server. I recommend trying both.

Thomajan

Answer 4

If you've changed the TeamCity server port in conf/server.xml like:

<Connector port="8222" protocol=".."/>

You should change the default agent configuration in buildAgent/conf/buildAgent.properties

serverUrl=http://SERVER-IP-HERE:8222/

Bracknell