A few weeks ago my local TFS server stopped responding to Visual Studio because of this error: “TFS Service not available: HTTP Error 503”. So this morning while I was waiting for the kids to finish getting ready for school I uninstalled (yes, I lost my existing repository) and started with scorched earth.
I received a new error during this installation: TF254043. Here’s a link to a post that fixes a few problems if you are upgrading, using SQL R2, or just can’t get Basic to run the verifications before it configures itself.
http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en/tfssetup/thread/f6ad3e84-a9b0-46ca-bf3b-f8a1640d0e53
In my particular case my SQL Server instance was my machine name. So instead of MyMachineName\(local) which tested fine, I just needed to use MyMachineName without any slashes following my machine name.
Even after the reinstall, it still failed on the original error HTTP 503, so it has to be related to auth or the local service account, still digging.
In the mean time I’m going to explore Team City’s offer for hosting a free repository/service for now. My local .NET User Group is also looking for a repo for some community work and it would be nice to get CI working so other folks could jump in and help with a decentralized repository.