Error when connecting Visual Studio 2015 to Azure VM's remote debugger

Question

I'm attempting to attach the Visual Studio debugger to an Azure VM. After about a minute of the fetching-processes progress dialog spinning I get the error:

There was a failure to launch the remote debugger.

This is the same error outlined in this stale post from about a year ago. After I ok out of the error dialog the typical attach-to-process dialog is displayed, but the process list is blank.

I have...

• Followed Microsoft's instructions on enabling remote VM debugging to a T.
• Ensured the remote debugging extension and associated endpoints are listed under the VM's portal page.
• Disabled and re-enabled the remote debugging extensions.
• Repeatedly clicked Refresh on the attach-to-process dialog, in hopes of some transitory state issue :-P.
• Looked at the local VS2015 log (devenv.exe /log ). I found nothing interesting.
• Looked at my local machine's Event Viewer. Nothing interesting.
• Looked at the VM's Remote Debugger extension log (C:\Packages\Plugins\Microsoft.VisualStudio.Azure.RemoteDebug.VSRemoteDebugger). Nothing.
• Looked at VM's event viewer. Nothing.
• Rebooted VM after extension installation. No change in error.
• Set in/out traffic on domain/public/private Windows firewall policies to allow all. No change.
• Disabled firewall for domain/public/private Windows firewall policy and rebooted. NO change.

I'm working with...

• Windows Server 2012 R2 Datacenter on the VM
• Microsoft Visual Studio Enterprise 2015 Version 14.0.23107.0 D14REL
• Azure SDK 2.7.1 (released on 8/26)
• VSRemoteDebugger Extension 1.1.2.0

Beyond the normal solutions and suggestions, I would appreciate it if someone could try for a repo. Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

Don't forget, as well as all the usual specific fixes, including changing firewall settings on the affected machines, this kind of issue can just as easily be caused by connectivity restrictions outside these machines. Such as the corporate firewall. Or even an ISP, for that matter.

After spending a day trying all the fixes from internet searches, and going to such lengths as installing the latest Visual Studio plus Azure SDK/Tools on a new VM, which I was sure would fix it, I was still getting There was a failure to launch the remote debugger every time. At this point I thought of the corporate firewall. Tried starting the Azure debug from a machine at home, and it went straight through.

Answer 2

The worst kind of problem - not a helpful error message.

For me the problem was a MSVSMON version mismatch.

On the VM, have a look at:

C:\Packages\Plugins\Microsoft.VisualStudio.Azure.RemoteDebug.VSRemoteDebugger\1.1.2.0\AzureDebug.Connector

I had exceptions logged in there relating to failure to find or obtain a specific version of MSVSMON.

I read elsewhere that the version of MSVSMON on local machine (machine with VS debugger) needs to match the version on the VM.

So I zipped up my local C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 14.0\Common7\IDE\Remote Debugger

and copied to VM folder

C:\Packages\Plugins\Microsoft.VisualStudio.Azure.RemoteDebug.VSRemoteDebugger\1.1.2.0\14.0.24720.0

The version number in the folder name here I obtained from both my local version (msvsmon.exe file properties | details) and it matched the version the VM log file AzureDebug.Connector was reporting it wanted to find)

I then disabled debugging, re-enabled and I am now able to attach. Happy days.

Microsoft, if you're listening, you need to timestamp the AzureDebug.Connector log entries. And you need to feed back the exception info to the client. And you need to make sure your VMs instances can obtain the right version of MSVSMON.