Ok, this is weird. I installed RC 1892 yesterday, on a brand new server (Windows 2008 R2 datacenter), pointed to a previously used SQL 2008 database. It fired up clean, ran perfectly, but still wouldn't talk to TFS. I deleted the old repository configuration and created a new one. When I hit Validate, it failed, but I saved it anyway so I could hunt down the exact error in the logs. Then the page started refreshing with "Searching for changesets" (or something about changesets) but it did not show an error message.
When I tried to validate again, it failed. So I shut down the server service, un-commented the log file section in the config, and started the service back up. Since then, the service will not start. At all. It takes the full timeout period and then windows reports the service did not respond to the startup request in a timely fashion. Now the service has a status of "Starting", no matter what I do. I uninstalled 1892, deleted all the folders, and installed 1920. Still doing it. Wiped out the database, still doing it.
No log folder is being created, and the website only shows the below. It seems stuck on "Creating Default Entities" every time. Nothing else in any windows logs, and it's not creating a log file either.
Update: The service finally shows as started after more than an hour of "Starting", but now it says there are no LDAP users/administrators (verified the group in the config file), and it's still not logging anything...not to the event viewer (logger set to Debug), not to a file (same).
I've managed to get it logging, but it's still having issues starting. It takes 1 hour and 25 minutes (almost exactly) every time for the server service to enter the running state. I've attached the log file snippet from the most recent startup.
This looks to me like a database issue, the point where the delay occurs is when it first starts querying the database. Check your connection string is correct and that you can connect to the database server from that machine.
Database connectivity is good. The database I was using was on another network segment in another data center, so I changed database servers to see if that would fix the issue. It's still happening.
I've also run SQL profiler on the ContinuaCI database and see no activity during that pause, so I'm pretty sure it's not database. The startup time, however, has dropped from an hour and 20 minutes to about 40 minutes, but it's still doing the same thing, "pausing" on "Creating Default Entities". What is that step actually doing?
I think this is a database issue, we just realised you posted before about the service installing with the LocalSystem user, which would not allow database connection to a remote machine. We just posted a new build which fixes the installer issue, try uninstalling and re-installing with the correct user, I suspect that may resolve this issue. FWIW, the “Creating Default Entities” is usually the first time it tries to connect to the database and query/insert default values.