Working from Home (Using RAS)

VSS 6.0 has been improved for using a RAS connection, however, file transfer over a modem is typically slow.  Here are some tips to speed things up:

• If you are taking files home on a portable disk, copy the vssver.scc file and all the source files into the same directory.  The vssver.scc file helps VSS determine if the latest version is being used, which will minimize network traffic over the phone line.  If you use this tip, you must copy all files to your home machine or VSS may think you have newer versions of files than you do, and fail to do a get for some files.
  
  
• Doing a get over RAS when many files have changed is inherently a slow operation, even after VSS 6.0 performance enhancements.  For the best results, perform a get to a portable disk before you leave work, and only do check in and check out's from home.  Get files over RAS only when you really need to, to save yourself time.  (For example, if you check out the latest version of a file using RAS, the check out operation may copy a file that needs other new files to compile.  At this point, you'd have to do a get of the entire project, extremely time-consuming.)
  
  
• To avoid doing gets over RAS, you can check out old versions of a file from the VSS History dialog box (via Tools, Show History) or from the command line.  Multiple checkouts must be enabled to use this feature.  See your VSS Administrator to enable multiple checkouts.
  
  
• The command line is usually faster to use from home than the GUI.

Here are some ways to configure VSS to run faster over RAS:

• Configure VSS to use a local temp directory.
  
  
• Configure VSS to compare files by Checksum instead of contents (Checksum is the default).
  
  
• Do not use the keyword expansion feature.
  
  
• Change the users.txt file to configure VSS to use a local ss.ini file, as follows:

Note   Make sure you've done a backup first!

Change:USER_NAME=\USERS\USER_NAME\SS.INI

to:USER_NAME=<local drive>\SS\USER\SS.INI

If you work from home often, you may also want to ask your VSS Administrator to configure VSS for faster access over RAS by doing any of the following:

• Turn off shadow directories.
  
  
• Turn off the journal file.
  
  
• Turn off project security.