Visual Studio Online - Build - There are agents that are capable of running the build, but they are not online

Question

When I queue manually a new build in Visual Studio Online, I start to receive a pop up with the following message :

"There are issues with the request or definition that may prevent the build from running:

There are agents that are capable of running the build, but they are not online. If the agent is configured to run as a service, ensure that the "VSO Agent ({agent name})" service is running.

Queue the build anyway?"

If I say yes, I receive this error :

" The working folder C:\a\aea16038...\Homebanking PT is already in use by the workspace ws_aea16038_1;Project Collection Build Service on computer TASKAGENT-0001. The working folder C:\a\aea16038...\Homebanking PT is already in use by the workspace ws_aea16038_1;Project Collection Build Service on computer TASKAGENT-0001. "

I would like to add, that the builds was working fine and suddenly I start to have issue.

Answer 1

This is a known error. What happened was that the team added a check if your Agent is online before queueing a build. However, in Visual Studio Online your Agent is always offline. After the build is queued the system launches an Agent for you.

This means that you can just hit OK and ignore the warning. The build will then eventually start after an Agent has launched.

The workspace error can most of the time be fixed by queueing a new build and just ignoring the error. You can also play with the option to clean the workspace.

This bug will be fixed in one of the coming Sprints.

Answer 2

I had the same issue running the build agent as a service - in fact the agent is marked red in the pool when I can see it running on our domain server.

In my case I think it must be a firewall issue but without knowing where/how the agent status is determined it is had to add an exception for this. My builds start and hang as a result.