VFS Troubleshooting
Find troubleshooting information for the VFS.
VFS is not available after starting the censhare Client
Run the Client/Render Client Installer again if the VFS was not detected immediately after the Client was started. The Windows installers also offer a Repair and Uninstall function that you should use before re-installing.
Special case Windows
In mixed operation with test and production systems, different VFS versions are often used in parallel. Since the Windows installer of the censhare (Render-)Client removes older VFS versions, the VFS must be reinstalled on older clients using the VFS stand-alone installer. VFS stand-alone installers install only the version included in the installer. They do not remove any other VFS versions.
No versioning for placements without plugin
Summary
When placing an asset in an image or a layout within an application program using the VFS, there is no version-dependent relation. The path for the placed asset always points to the current version of the asset. At the latest, when you open the asset again, the application displays the changed new version. The issue relates to applications without censhare plugin support for macOS and Windows.
Description
On macOS with censhare, you can place assets into graphics or layout applications using drag-and-drop. With the VFS, censhare provides a path to the current version of the master file of the asset in censhare. The master file is placed using this VFS path as a link.
If the master file changes, the link points to the current, changed version of the master file. The versioning of the file that censhare provides does not apply here. censhare internally stores the changed master file as a new version but the linked VFS path always points to the latest version of the master file. Therefore, this link does not contain any information about a specific version number.
Therefore, it is fully up to the user to determine whether the linked file has changed since the placement.
This problem is visible when using Adobe Illustrator CC 2015, for example. A user places an Illustrator file stored in censhare into another Illustrator file in censhare using drag-and-drop. A second user changes the placed Illustrator file in censhare. If the first user opens the Illustrator file he has created, the changed version of the placed Illustrator file displays without further warnings.
As a workaround, you can at best duplicate the asset which you want to place. You can use the other asset to edit or adapt it for other purposes.
However, this approach has a drawback in that two independent versions of the same content are created. A user may later have to replace the placed version with the edited version.
VFS name in specific situations
Generally, you do not need to pay attention to the choice of VFS name. However, when two or more Render Clients are running on the same Windows system, you must ensure that problems with third-party software do not affect the operation of censhare. for more information, see VFS Configuration.
Multiple Render Clients on a Windows computer
Whenever you export an asset from the client using drag and drop, a REST URL is created and applied as a directory structure in the VFS.
This VFS path will be saved as a link in the layout when you drag and drop an asset into an InDesign layout. It doesn't matter here if an image is placed in a Windows environment and the layout is then later edited in a Mac OS X environment.
Problems may occur with regard to resolving the VFS path in conjunction with products from third parties for multiple Render Clients on a Windows computer.
The problems caused by the first two constellations can be solved by selecting the appropriate VFS name. This is part of the VFS path and is determined in the "hosts.xml" file in the entry for the server in question. For more details on the setup see the section "Configuring the VFS name".
Symptom
With Adobe InDesign Servers problems may occur in Windows. The following system constellation is a prerequisite: multiple Render Clients are running simultaneously on a Windows computer and each is using the same VFS name.
Every Render Client is using a different censhare Server. For heavy workloads, a Render Client may access outdated assets and the rendering process then delivers the incorrect content.
Cause
The problem occurs because, in Windows, all Render Clients with the same VFS name access the VFS volume of the same censhare Server. But in actuality, every Render Client should be accessing the VFS volume of the server it is connected with. This is also the case on Mac OS X with the same VFS names. As a result, the problem of having incorrect InDesign documents doesn't happen on Mac OS X.
censhare uses the CBFS Connect™ (CBFS) from callback Technologies for the VFS in Windows. In this setup, different volumes can't be mounted with the same VFS name, like they can be on Mac OS X. Instead, the following happens: using the CBFS, the first Render Client mounts the VFS volume for Server 1. The second Render Client wants to mount a VFS volume with the same VFS name.
But because a volume with the desired name already exists, the second Render Client uses this one instead. It thus does not create its own volume for accessing the associated censhare Server.
This results in an incorrect InDesign document. For example, a censhare Server 1 and a censhare Server 2 both exist. Every Server has a censhare database (cdb) for searches and for read access. Server 2 synchronizes cdb 2 with cdb 1 via the Oracle database. For heavy workloads, it can happen that both CDBs are not synchronized for a brief moment.
A new version of a layout asset has now been saved. In the cdb 1, the "Current version" link already leads to the new version. In the cdb 2, the current version is still the previous version. This wouldn't be a problem if Render Client 1 would access the volume from Server 1 and Render Client 2 would access the volume from Server 2. Because both clients are using the same VFS name, however, both access volume 2, for example.
Render Client 1 now requests the current version of the layout asset. If it were connected to volume 1 it would also get the current volume. But now the Render Client 1 is accessing volume 2 at the moment the cdb 2 is still not synchronized with the cdb 1. But the current version in the cdb 2 is still pointing to the previous version of the layout asset. Render Client 1 is therefore editing a layout with the incorrect content.
Solution
Normally, this problem does not occur because the censhare databases are only unsynchronized for very short times when workloads are particularly heavy. To avoid that this situation is leading to an error, every Render Client on the same Windows computer has to be configured with a different VFS name. This will ensure that every Render Client accesses the volume of the associated server and thus always the correct version.