Cannot Access http://<tfs-server>:8080 - visual-studio

Question

I've installed TFS 2008, but I can't seem to access the server. When I try to connect to it in Visual Studio, I can't. If I try by browser on a remote PC, I get a generic page cannot be displayed. On the server, I get a 403. Nothing was touched in IIS and the service is running as a Network Service. Any ideas?

Answer 1

try:
http://localhost:8080/Services/V1.0/ServerStatus.asmx. This will tell you if TFS is up and running. If you are getting anything else you need to look into IIS issues.

Answer 2

I wrote a blog post on diagnosing these types of TFS connections.
http://blogs.msdn.com/granth/archive/2008/06/26/troubleshooting-connections-to-tfs.aspx
The very first thing I do is confirm that it works for a known-good configuration – usually my workstation.
Providing that works and the server appears to be functioning, the next thing I do is ask the user to call the CheckAuthentication web service using Internet Explorer.
The URL for this is: http://TFSSERVER:8080/services/v1.0/ServerStatus.asmx?op=CheckAuthentication
By doing this check, I am doing four things:
Eliminating Team Explorer from the picture
Eliminating the .NET networking stack from the picture
Ensuring that Windows Authentication is working correctly (that’s why I say IE)
Ensuring that proxy settings are set correctly
In most cases I’ve seen, the TFS connection issues are because the proxy settings have changed or are incorrect. Because .NET and Visual Studio use the proxy settings from Internet Explorer, it’s important to have them set correctly.
In rare cases it’s beyond this. That’s when I start looking at things like:
Can you resolve the server name?
Can you connect using the IP address?
Are there HOSTS file entries? (see: c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts)
Can you ping the server?
Can you telnet to port 8080?
Does the user actually have access? Run TfsSecurity.exe /server:servername /im n:DOMAIN\User to check their group memberships
Have you changed your domain password lately? In some cases they’ll need to logoff the workstation and log back on again to get a new security token.
Is the computer's domain certificate valid? update the certificate: gpupdate /force
Hope this helps.

Answer 3

Turns out the time and date on my computer was not "close enough" to the time and date on the tfs server. Changed my system clock setting and problem went away.

Answer 4

What happens if you send a simple HTTP request to the server directly?
ie:
telnet 8080 [enter]
GET / HTTP/1.1[enter]
[enter]
[enter]
That might give a hint about whether IIS is actually serving anything. If you can do that on the server, what about from a different machine? If the results are different a good guess is there are some security/firewall issues somewhere. HTH a little.

Answer 5

I went through everything on a similar problem.
I logged onto my tfs server and connected directly there.
I also used a TFS admin tool I downloaded some time ago from Microsoft, and made sure I was in all the right groups and projects.
I then went back to the client PC with the problem, tried the services/1.0/serverstatus.asmx?op=CheckAuthentication Url again, and it worked this time.
AFter that full service was restored to my PC.
So I don't have the exact answer, but I would go through the checklists presented by Grant Holliday in his answer.

Answer 6

Add this to the cases for future users, as i had this issue on server 2016...
if your firewall allow only Domain and Private Network, it may not work on client. make sure you give public permission, if server network is set to public...
The error you may face:
ERR_CONNECTION_TIMED_OUT
for
http://fserver:8080/tfs