Very big offline.mcdf2 file size in some user profiles

Why do they grow so much in size?
No clue, it is not normal. We will instigate.

Can the maximum size be configured somehow?
No, we will look at the possibility to auto-shrink the file. The offline.mcdf2 file is a Microsoft Compound Document Format document same as the old Word file format or the thumbs.db file.

Can an automatic "Cleanup" be configured?
You could try to change the file format to SQLite. File > Options > Advanced > Offline engine > SQLite. The offline files will now be called offline.db and be a SQLite data file.

Is it safe to delete them?
Yes, close RDM, delete and start RDM the file will be recreatedm but much smaller.

Offline mode is available even though rarely used - but should stay available nevertheless.
Keep in mind the offline file serves dual purpose. Allow offline read or read/write and as a local cache. Sessions are first loaded from the cache and then updated with the changes from the server.

Out of curiosity how many sessions do you have in the data source?

Best regards,

Well, that was easy. Looking at the code, we were using the following flags:CFSConfiguration CFS_CONFIGURATION = CFSConfiguration.EraseFreeSectorsNow I've changed it for this:CFSConfiguration CFS_CONFIGURATION = CFSConfiguration.SectorRecycle | CFSConfiguration.EraseFreeSectors
Apparently you can't free sectors from the file if you don't first recycle. Odd but hey it works much better now.



Will be in the next beta.

Best regards,

Thank you Stefane!

So I'll delete whatever bigger Offline files I find in all user profiles for the time being until you release a version which includes your fix.

Is there any disadvantage to using the SQLite format? Or what's the reason you default to the MCDF format?
If there's no disadvantage, I'd rather switch to SQLite - only problem I see that this is probably a per-user setting? And there's no way for me to change that globally?

BTW: It's 8371 sessions

The stability of SQLite on some systems is the only reason it is no longer the default engine.

The SQLite library is dependent upon the C++ runtime installed on your machine. We have had many cases where the version of C++ runtime and version of the SQLite library doesn't "play well" together. This results in constant corruption of the offline.db file and the inability to actually go offline or read from the local cache.

MCDFv2 & MCDF have been written to alleviate this. Each offline engine (SQLite, MCDF & MCDFv2) has its pros/cons. Some use more memory others more IO. MCDFv2, which is our current default, is the best option for must of our clients. The other engines there so that, with certain specific situations, we have the option to try/use a different engine.

It is never a bad idea to try out the other engines for a few days to see how things behave in your environment.

As for changing the offline engine for all users, we currently don't have an option for that. We do, however, have the option of "pushing" a new default.cfg file to each user. This only works in very specific cases. More info here:
https://help.remotedesktopmanager.com/index.html?installation_terminalservices.htm

Again, thanks for the insight. I'll stick with the MCDFv2 format then as it's the preferred one by you and I don't want to go back and forth and annoy my users with testing the SQLite format which might turn out incompatible in the end ;)

btw I've used exact the approach for deploying the config file to all new users as mentioned in your help link. I could've sworn that part about updating the config wasn't there before, but at least it's an option for now. The alternative would be to copy the config using a powershell script to all user profiles.

So I'll keep wainting for the update which fixes the unneccessary MCDFv2 growth