HOWTO: Enable Visual SourceSafe Locking

ID: Q167290

The information in this article applies to:

Microsoft Visual SourceSafe, 32-bit, for Windows versions 5.0, 6.0
Microsoft Visual SourceSafe, 16-bit and 32-bit, for Windows, versions 4.0, 4.0a

SUMMARY

Normally, Visual SourceSafe allows the Operating System to handle the file locking. However, if there is a lot of network traffic or high latency, file errors can occur. You can also use the Visual SourceSafe application to handle file locking. When Visual SourceSafe locking is enabled, Visual SourceSafe handles all of the file locking for itself.

MORE INFORMATION

You can use the Visual SourceSafe program called TESTLOCK to check to see if you need to enable Visual SourceSafe locking. TESTLOCK is located in the Dos and Win32 directories under the Visual SourceSafe directory on the server.

After you start TESTLOCK on multiple computers, it will tell you whether it is safe to use native locking. To run TESTLOCK you must give it a parameter of a shared directory on a server or some other computer, however, all the machines that will run TESTLOCK must have full access to the shared location. The command might look like the following:

TESTLOCK F:\VSS\TEMP

If TESTLOCK reports that you must enable Visual SourceSafe locking, you may do so by adding the following to your Visual SourceSafe database's Srcsafe.ini file:

Lock_Mode=Lockfile

Make sure that there is a LOCKS directory in the DATA subdirectory and have all the Visual SourceSafe users restart Visual SourceSafe after you make the change.

It is recommended that if you are using Macintosh and Unix clients and/or servers that you enable Visual SourceSafe locking.

REFERENCES

For more information about TESTLOCK please refer to page 178 of the Visual SourceSafe 4.0 manual, page 221 of the Visual SourceSafe 5.0 manual, or search for TESTLOCK.EXE in the online documentation.

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Keywords : kbSSafe400 kbSSafe500 kbSSafe600
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Issue type : kbhowto