A360, AutoDesk Desktop App, Fusion 360, Mechanical Customization Sync - ERROR

[rotayc]

I'm on WIN7 64 bit, on domain, behind firewall and proxy servers are in use.

The problem I have is that every web based function works for a while, then slowly account logins and synchronizations start failing.

Normally it starts by A360 Desktop in the Tray will show Service Unavailable.  Then Fusion360 will go from ONLINE to OFFLINE, then it bounces between service unavailable,no connection, or "we are currently updating our services" issues.  Eventually when loading Fusion360, it will fail giving service not available error.  After this failure to finish loading, each new launch of Fusion360 will spawn a new instance/process of Fusion360.exe with a 150Mb running.  In Mechanical, it will synchronize my customization once or so, then sync error pops up.  Eventually when I launch Mechanical it won't recognize my user anymore (displaying "unknown" production something).

The only way to temporarily recover is a long an involved procedure:

1.)  Starting from when everything is failing...

2.)  Go to my home office, log in as usual.  Of course, domain not available but I get to desktop.

3.)  Confirm all ADESK products are still broken.

  3a.)  Do not launch VPN to connect to WORK DOMAIN!

  3b.)  In this situation, no browser proxy server (ie., ZSCALAR) pop ups because I'm using my home internet provider.

4.)  Kill all AdCefWebBrowser.exe, Adsync.exe, acwebbrowser.exe *32, AcWebBrowser.ext *32, everything AutoDesk related kill kill kill. 

4.)  Delete %temp%.

5.)  In CHROME, delete everything in browser cache since beginning of time.  VERY ANNOYING.

6.)  2 hour disable company Symantec firewall and windows firewall if running under it for some reason.  BTW, This is against company policy.

7.)  Launch AutoDesk Desktop App.

8.)  Launch A360 Desktop.

(There have been variations above above that work to greater and lesser degrees.)

Then everything will work fine from home.  Including when the 2 hr firewall turns back on, everything is working and keeps working.

When back on office site, ADESK products will work without issue.  Logs into everything automatically, not a single pop up.  My account is recognized on every web component I've tried.

Usually within hours, first signs of problems arise.  Usually starting with A360 Desktop failing to sync.

I've had the whole IT staff involved, reading all recommendations from ADESK site.  All ports and required URL's are not being blocked.  Proxy server and firewall are not blocking any of the ADESK needed web components, etc.  Note that some of the ADESK urls listed are not reachable.

We have no idea what to do.  The problems seem linked to firewall and domain accounts, but we can't figure out what it is.  

Anybody have any ideas?

THanks,

RotayC 

[paul.clauss]

Hi @rotayc

Thanks for posting! I am sorry to hear that you have been experiencing problems with both A360 and Fusion 360 failing to sync.

I am a little confused - are you experiencing this issue on both the office and home networks? What happens if you connect to a different network - do the issues continue to occur? This may help us confirm if these issues are related to your specific work and/or home networks. Please let me know if signing into your account on a network other than the ones you have been working with allows Fusion and A360 to work properly.

It does sound like something particular with your work proxy network may be the cause of this behavior, but it seems strange that you are required to delete your Chrome browser cache and delete the %temp% folder to get Fusion running at home. To look further into this issue, please gather your diagnostic log files using this procedure and attach them to this forum thread. While this may be an issue that will need to be resolved by your IT department down the road, I am happy to have a look and provide any perspective I can. 

Please let me know if you have any questions!

[rotayc]

Hi Paul,

Right now I cannot launch Fusion 360 to collect the diagnostic files.  It won't even let me run offline.

I have the problem at home only after trying to launch the apps at work.  After I delete %temp% and internet everything works acceptably from home.

I'll try to collect the diagnositics for you.

Thanks and regards,

Craig

[paul.clauss]

Hi @rotayc

Thanks for the response! My apologies - I thought you were able to access Fusion. To manually gather your log files, please use the instructions linked here - I look forward to hearing from you!

[rotayc]

Hello Paul,

I included full directory of Fusion 360 application log files - it seems like there are a lot of strange files that might indicate what's going on.

Same for WebServices Logs, multiple files.

Also the installation log file is included.

I hope you can come up with something.  It's hard for me to believe nobody else is experiencing this problem.

If we need to involve the IT people again, I need some specifics on where they need to look.  Our IT people concluded the problem is not linked to firewall, proxy server or antivirus.  All the required URLs are reachable.

Thanks and regards,

rotayc

[paul.clauss]

Hi @rotayc

Thanks for sending the logs over! I had a look this afternoon and unfortunately did not find much helpful information in them - I see a lot of generic failure to sign in errors and failures for Fusion to connect to the time.akamai server. An example of this is shown below:

2017-09-12T21:47:20.156Z [AcSettingSync:4264, 6676] [AdWebServicesUI ERROR] Interactive login error: Failed to initiate login. Closing login dialog and showing error dialog.
2017-09-12T21:47:22.685Z [AcSettingSync:4264, 6676] [AdWebServicesUI INFO] Interactive login canceled by user
2017-09-12T21:47:25.103Z [AcSettingSync:4264, 4908] [AdWebServices.TimeService INFO] Check timer restarted with interval 10s
2017-09-12T21:47:25.103Z [AcSettingSync:4264, 4908] [AdWebServices.TimeService INFO] Starting time update. Reason: 5s has passed since last update.
2017-09-12T21:47:25.103Z [AcSettingSync:4264, 4908] [AdWebServices.TimeService INFO] Check timer stopped
2017-09-12T21:47:25.103Z [AcSettingSync:4264, 4908] [AdWebServices.TimeService INFO] Getting time from server https://time.akamai.com
2017-09-12T21:47:25.475Z [AcSettingSync:4264, 4908] [AdWebServices.TimeService INFO] Time query finished. Server response: Http code: 0, Body: , Date header: 
2017-09-12T21:47:25.475Z [AcSettingSync:4264, 4908] [AdWebServices.TimeService ERROR] Failed to get time from server https://time.akamai.com. Will retry next server url in 5s. Http error: 0. Network error: 102 Proxy connection closed prematurely. Proxy info: Host: idpsso.st.com, Port: 443, User: craig rotay

While a failure to access the time.akamai server should not be resulting in the behavior you are experiencing, it may be worth checking with IT to ensure that the *akamai.com domain is whitelisted by your proxy. With that said, the Network error: 102 suggests that the proxy server closed the request before the entire reply was received and processed. Please check this with IT and let me know what you find. As it seems that this issue occurs during and after you are connected to the work network, I do not want to rule out a proxy or network security issue as the root cause.

Have you set your Windows network proxy setting to override, as shown in the Network Preferences in the screenshot below:

If so, this could be the cause of these issues. Will Fusion work correctly if you switch to the "Automatic" setting in this field? 

One other thought is that the loginstate.xml file can optionally contain proxy information, but will always use that specific proxy information, even when you switch networks. We should be able to tell if this is the cause of the behavior you have experienced by deleting the loginstate.xml file from your computer when working on your home computer before clearing the Chrome browser cache or deleting the %temp% folder. Please let me know if deleting only the loginstate.xml file before opening Fusion after switching networks eliminates this problem behavior.

To delete the loginstate.xml file:

Windows
1. (Close Fusion 360) In windows explorer browse to  %localappdata%\autodesk\web services
2. In the Web Services directory, right lick on the LoginState.xml file and select delete
3. Restart Fusion 360

I have reached out to the A360 team to look into this case further and will keep you updated with any new information I have to share. Please let me know if any of this helps and we will continue troubleshooting.

[rotayc]

Hello Paul,

Thanks very much for sticking with me on this.

By closing all instances of Autodesk products, and changing the file LoginState.xml to Paul_LoginState.xml, I got into Fusion 360.

The behavior was very different.  This time when launching, the proxy server window popped up and I entered my credientials.  Some interactions took place, then I got a pop up type window to log into my A360 account.  Then I got into Fusion.  

I launched the diagnostics collector you requested earlier, and also please find the LoginState.xml before and after the above.

Regards,

Craig

[paul.clauss]

Hi @rotayc

Thanks for the response - I am glad to hear that renaming the loginstate.xml file allowed you to access Fusion 360. The loginstate.xml file should be used by a few different Autodesk programs - please let me know if your user data is maintained when you switch between the work network and home networks and if the other programs continue to have difficulties connecting.

I can see in the loginstate.xml files that the new one is clearing accessing your proxy server - the old copy did not make any reference to the proxy server. I am unsure of what may have been preventing Fusion from connecting to the proxy, but have reached out to the A360 team to see if they can provide any perspective on this.

Please let me know if this seems to have resolved the issue as you continue to work with Fusion and the other programs - I am happy to continue troubleshooting!

[paul.clauss]

Hi @rotayc

I heard back from some internal resources on network connectivity and cloud sync issues and wanted to provide some more information.

It appears that the proxy settings for the previous session of Fusion 360 are being applied when Fusion and the other Autodesk cloud applications are opened. This may be due to the stale proxy settings in the loginstate.xml files. Running Fusion should prompt for credentials (if necessary on the current network) and use those credentials in the current session. The credentials, however, will not be persisted in the loginstate.xml file (because the AdWebServices did not do the prompting for credentials). Once another cloud application that does use AdWebServices to prompt for credentials (like A360 Desktop) is run, the proxy settings will be persisted in the loginstate.xml file. As long as everything is running on the same network after this point, there should not be a problem. But you may run into failures when moving to a different network, as the proxy information from the previous network is being persisted.

Unfortunately, the current workaround for this is to simply exit all Autodesk Applications (anything that hosts AdWebServices), delete the loginstate.xml file, and restart the applications. This seems to follow the workaround that you found in your initial post. Our development team is aware of this issue and I apologize for any inconveniences this has caused you. Please let me know if you have any questions - I am happy to help!

[rotayc]

Hello Paul,

Perhaps I can confirm what your team is saying.  Since I could not go on my workstation from home last night, Fusion 360 was able to launch today on my work site.  Also ACAD Mechanical logged me in and recongized me, so I could access online help without issues.  I did not have to delete the loginstate.xml for these to work.  

However, in Fusion 360 the session is offline and it will not go on line.  It says services are being updated/maintenance, but the services are online so it's having a problem.  In connection with this, A360 Desktop and the Autodesk Desktop app will not connect, giving the usual A360 - Service Unavailable Requested service not available error.

Note to your team that the A360 and Autodesk Desktop App launch upon login and are in the tray.

After closing all autodesk apps and loginstate.xml, Fusion 360 would still not go online.  I decided to kill everything again and loginstate.xml, then I launched A360 Desktop which gave me a popup and let me log in to my ADESK account.  I then launched Fusion 360 and got in and now I'm online.  There was an error logged and this file is attached.

Note to your team that our particular proxy server requires at least once a day login.  On IE11 this is an automated procedure.  On Chrome it is not automated and 2 different servers require login.  This could also impact some of what you mentioned, perhaps corrupting the LoginState.xml.  This is really something your web team should look into and fix.

Perhaps I do not know all of the autodesk process names and I'm not terminating all.  What are all the processes?  

 I can adopt the following procedure:

1.)  Do not launch any ADESK apps on startup.

2.)  Delete loginstate.xml after booting into windows from any network.

3.)  Launch A360 Desktop and follow login requests.

This is more convenient than deleting internet history, but still not very convenient.  Do you know when this will be resolved?  Could they make a new app that runs on windows startup to take care of this issue?

Thanks and regards,

rotayc

[paul.clauss]

Hi @rotayc

Thanks for the response - I'm glad you will be able to adopt the procedure outlined in your previous post to work around this issue. I agree that this is not an ideal solution - the web team will be looking into a fix for this behavior. They have logged an improvement ticket (CPIDSDK-65) to address this issue in the Adwebservices component. Because this is a shared component across a few different Autodesk products, it will require an update to multiple applications. 

While I cannot give a specific date on when this fix will be released, it has been marked as a high priority issue and should be addressed in the near future. I am happy to keep you updated on this forum thread when the fix is released.

We appreciate you bringing this to our attention and helping us work through troubleshooting! Feel free to let me know if you have any further questions.

[rotayc]

Hello Paul,

Just to inform you:  The procedure I proposed is not successful when moving between networks (ie., between home and work).  Mechanical takes many minutes to launch on my home network, no matter what I do.

Additionally I found that, from home, the ONLY way I can connect to Web dependent apps is to disable the Symantec firewall protection, which is not allowed by company standards. Also, when the 2 hr disable of firewall expires, the connections start failing again.  Last point is if I connect to work network by VPN from home to access my files, then immediately the web apps break.  

I don't know why the behavior of the firewall is different between home and work networks.  If someone on your teams has an idea about this, it would help me explain to our IT people who insist there is no difference.

Also, can you provide me with a list of all possible processes and .exe needed for ADESK products that I need to kill?  I think I am not killing all the processes.  Also I can tell our IT people to check if all of these process are allowed through the firewall.  Perhaps there are other .xml files that need to be cleared, other than LoginState.xml?

 I'm sorry I am not a software tester, so surely I am not providing you with all needed data.  I will continue to update with observations because I really need this fixed.

Regards,

rotayc

[paul.clauss]

Hi @rotayc

Thanks for the response!  I have reached out to development for a list of all the Autodesk processes to kill - unfortunately I am unsure of what A360 desktop and Mechanical may use as my focus is Fusion 360. For Fusion, you correctly identified the .exe processes in your initial post on this thread.

It certainly seems like the company firewall may be blocking Fusion 360. I would think that the work network is acting differently than your home network because it includes extra security measures, but your IT department would know better. Have you confirmed that your IT department has added the exceptions at this link to the Symantec firewall software? Please have them check and confirm that the domains are being allowed by your firewall.

It also sounds like the your VPN connection could be the cause of this issue. You mentioned that if you connect to the work network from home by VPN the web apps immediately break - this clearly shows that, when connected to the VPN or the work network, there is some difference from the home network - does your IT staff know this bit of information? 

Hopefully this helps! As it seems that Fusion works fine from the home network when the Symantec firewall is disabled, I believe that the firewall or VPN is blocking access. Please have your IT department confirm that Fusion is allowed by the firewall using the link above and that Fusion is allowed by the proxy by setting the URLs in this article to not use the proxy.

[rotayc]

Paul,

I will have IT check again, but it would be best to have a full list of all the processes before I ask them to check again.  They have already spent a considerable effort diagnosing and troubleshooting.

I agree there seems to be interactions with corporate security going on, but at the same time I would expect the AUTODESK teams to anticipate these issues and take them into account, given that your applications seem to be heavily dependent on Web apps.  I would especially expect that any impact of switching between networks would be addressed on the developer side.

Thanks and look forward to the team's feedback.

Regards,

rotay

[paul.clauss]

Hi @rotayc

Thanks for the response! The full lists of proxy and antivirus/firewall exceptions are linked in my previous post - please share those links with your IT team and have them confirm that the corporate security is not blocking Fusion 360.

Our development team does try to ensure that there are no issues when switching between networks or when working on a corporate network with additional security, but, with the wide variety of network options available, we cannot guarantee that Fusion will work with every network. If the only way to connect the web dependent applications is to disable the Symantec firewall, it must be that the Symantec firewall is preventing Fusion from connecting. It is possible that your corporate network will not be capable of running Fusion 360 - unfortunately we cannot guarantee that Fusion will run on every network.

It may be that your IT department needs to look at the failing calls (likely due to the Symantec firewall protection) in order to find out where your network is blocking Fusion. Unfortunately, I cannot provide much more perspective on this issue - it may be due to a process used by a different program than Fusion, which I an unfamiliar with and do not support. Modifying the corporate proxy and firewall based on the instructions in this article should allow Fusion to run properly - if you continue to have problems with other apps you may need to start a support case with the teams for those apps. 

[gpermar]

Hi, Trying to solve problem similar. My 2017 ACA has been warning about replace upgrade the Desktop sync (2013 maybe-dont use) Would this issue with A360 Desktop app and Autocad Desktop Fusion app trying to sync be causing browser image to lag, double image, (basically unable to use browser to even send emails due to image issues) in addition to ACA issues working to resolve. Please tell me no one has the browser issue via autocad products. Thank you

[paul.clauss]

Hi @gpermar

Thanks for posting! When you use the acronym "ACA" - are you AutoCAD Architecture? 

I have not seen this issue trigger double images and browser lags - so I wonder if you should try uninstalling the Desktop Sync if you do not use it. It sounds like the issues that you are experiencing may be due to AutoCAD Architecture (as it is showing the warning), so I would recommend beginning to troubleshoot by posting over on that forum, as the resources there will be better able to look into the root cause of this behavior. It also seems like this behavior could be related to your web browser itself.

[gpermar]

could you move this to Autodesk Architecture. Thanks

[paul.clauss]

Hi @gpermar

Thanks for the response - unfortunately because you replied on an existing thread instead of creating a new one, I cannot move your post. Please create a new post in the Architecture forum - the link is in my previous post. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.