.NET Development by Eric

On an initial load of 60000+ files our nServiceBus handler threw an exception

NServiceBus.Unicast.Queuing.FailedToSendMessageException: Failed to send message to address: queue@machine —> System.Messaging.MessageQueueException: Cannot enlist the transaction.

Repro

No repro – no issue. Sleeping for 61 seconds caused the same exception. Complete solution for download at the end of the post.

public void Handle(DoSomethingCommand message)
{
    // wait for the timeout of 1 minute
    log.InfoFormat("Sleeping");
    Thread.Sleep(61000);
    // throws System.Messaging.MessageQueueException:
    Bus.Send<DoAnotherThingCommand>(m => { });
}

Investigation

Looks like a transaction timeout. This is what the MSDTC Transaction Statistics look like

Every transaction is aborted.

Solution

Setting the transaction timeout for MSDTC did not solve this issue. The timeout of 0 (never timeout) still gave the exception. But thanks to Teun we’ve solved it.

Overwriting the transaction timeout in the config did the trick.

<system.transactions>
  <defaultSettings timeout="00:05:00"/>
</system.transactions>

Now the transactions succeed and the DoAnotherThingCommands are send and processed.

References

• Link to blog of Teun
• Complete repro code