Visual-SourceSafe error - unable to finish writing a file

Question

We use Nant to automate our builds. Everything was working fine until about a week ago when the rains caused our power to go out and the build server had to be re-booted. Now, we get the following error whenever we attempt a build:

<internalerror>
        <type>System.Runtime.InteropServices.COMException</type>
        <message><![CDATA[SourceSafe was unable to finish writing a file.  Check your available disk space, and ask the administrator to analyze your SourceSafe database.]]></message>
        <stacktrace><![CDATA[   at SourceSafeTypeLib.VSSItemClass.Get(String& Local, Int32 iFlags)
   at NAnt.Contrib.Tasks.SourceSafe.GetTask.ExecuteTask()]]></stacktrace>
</internalerror>

We ran the Analyze utility on the VSS database and there appears to be plenty of room on the build server, but no luck. Any ideas? I'm at a loss.

Can you access the source safe database through other means, either through the VSS client or maybe through VS plugin? — Mike W., Sep 19 '11 at 21:14
Yes, we can go into VSS directly and we can also get latest through Visual Studio without issue. Thanks for editing the wording in my question. I'm in a rush as we're SUPPOSED to have an emergency deployment tomorrow! — Matt M, Sep 19 '11 at 21:18

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Jul 10 '13 at 08:17

1

My problem was that the current file was empty... I wrote a comment on it and everything worked ok

answered Jul 10 '13 at 08:17

rasputino

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I had the same issue - a backup file was 0kb but had multiple file histories. We were porting VSS to Hg, so my solution was to remove the file from the repository before running the conversion process. – bd33 Jan 21 '14 at 23:14

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered May 20 '16 at 13:47

I had this issue when I tried to migrate a Source Safe database to Subversion, using VSS2SVN.

This error is related to the message

There is a diff chain size mismatch in file '' (bdaaaaaa) at version (versions earlier than that version can no longer be retrieved from the database).

that may be reported by the Source Safe tool analyze.exe.

If you look into the history of the file and try to Get a version that is older than the one reported by analyze.exe, the message of this question is shown.

Microsoft provided hotfix KB927887 for cases where this was caused by XML files toggling BOM inclusion, but I did not try to apply it.

See also Message: SourceSafe was unable to finish writing a file

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Sep 20 '11 at 15:04

Ok, here is the resolution. It turns out that somehow, the version of an app.config file that was referenced in the build script was corrupted (all the previous versions, actually), which caused the VSSGet error. Updating the version to the current version fixed the errror.

Visual-SourceSafe error - unable to finish writing a file

3 Answers3