git-ecosystem/git-credential-manager · error · Trace2Exception

Failed to find location service

Error message

Failed to find location service

What it means

GetIdentityServiceUriAsync throws this Trace2Exception when it cannot locate the Azure DevOps location service for the given organization URI. The location service is the discovery endpoint used to find the identity service URI; without it, PAT creation cannot proceed. This usually means the organization URL is wrong or the server did not return the expected location service resource.

Solutions

  1. Verify the organization URL is a valid Azure DevOps endpoint (https://dev.azure.com/<org> or a valid Azure DevOps Server URL)
  2. Open the organization URL in a browser to confirm the org exists
  3. Check for proxy/firewall interference with the discovery request
  4. If using Azure DevOps Server, confirm the server version is supported by this GCM version

Example fix

// before
await repo.Fetch(remote); // remote: http://git.internal.example/scm/proj/repo
// after
await repo.Fetch(remote); // remote: https://dev.azure.com/myorg/proj/_git/repo (valid Azure DevOps URL)
Defensive patterns

Strategy: validation

Validate before calling

// C#
var candidate = new Uri("https://dev.azure.com/myorg");
if (!candidate.Host.Equals("dev.azure.com", StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase) &&
    !candidate.Host.EndsWith(".visualstudio.com", StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase))
    throw new ArgumentException("URL is not an Azure DevOps endpoint");

Try / catch

try {
    var identityUri = await api.GetIdentityServiceUriAsync(orgUri, token);
} catch (Trace2Exception) {
    // prompt user to verify org URL / connectivity before retry
}

Prevention

When it happens

Trigger: Calling GetIdentityServiceUriAsync (via CreatePersonalAccessTokenAsync) when iterating the location service resources for the organization URI yields no valid identity service — e.g. the API returns success but no matching location service entry.

Common situations: Typo'd or malformed organization URL (not an Azure DevOps host); self-hosted Azure DevOps Server instances exposing a different API surface; proxies or firewalls stripping the discovery response; org renamed/deleted.

Understand the failure class

Background: 'Could not be found', 'does not exist', 'not found in database': the resource-not-found family when an ID, slug, key, or URI lookup comes back empty — this error's family across 20 libraries.

Related errors

AI-assisted analysis of git-ecosystem/git-credential-manager@e8ce762cd0 (2026-09-11). Data as JSON: /api/errors/2bfec0d12f917785. Report an issue: GitHub.

Appendix: source

Thrown at src/Microsoft.AzureRepos/AzureDevOpsRestApi.cs:184

            _context.Trace.WriteLine($"HTTP: GET {requestUri}");
            using (HttpRequestMessage request = CreateRequestMessage(HttpMethod.Get, requestUri, bearerToken: accessToken))
            using (HttpResponseMessage response = await HttpClient.SendAsync(request))
            {
                _context.Trace.WriteLine($"HTTP: Response {(int)response.StatusCode} [{response.StatusCode}]");
                if (response.IsSuccessStatusCode)
                {
                    string responseText = await response.Content.ReadAsStringAsync();

                    if (TryGetFirstJsonStringField(responseText, "location", out string identityServiceStr) &&
                        Uri.TryCreate(identityServiceStr, UriKind.Absolute, out Uri identityService))
                    {
                        return identityService;
                    }
                }
            }

            throw new Trace2Exception(_context.Trace2, "Failed to find location service");
        }

        #endregion

        #region Request and Response Helpers

        private const RegexOptions CommonRegexOptions = RegexOptions.Compiled | RegexOptions.CultureInvariant | RegexOptions.IgnoreCase;

        private HttpClient _httpClient;

        private HttpClient HttpClient
        {
            get
            {
                if (_httpClient is null)
                {
                    _httpClient = _context.HttpClientFactory.CreateClient();

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