When you publish a service using ArcGIS Desktop, both a draft service definition file and a service definition file are created and temporarily stored in a staging folder locally on disk. The default staging location is a temporary folder in your Windows user profile. For example, on Windows 7, this location is C:\Users\<user name>\AppData\Local\ESRI\Desktop10.7\Staging. The staging directory contains separate folders for each server connection. If you saved a draft service definition using a connection to a GIS server, you will find the service definition or draft under the server connection folder.
The Windows file system has limits to the number of characters that a path can accommodate. A warning message appears when the combination of the path to the staging folder and the server connection exceeds the size supported by the operating system. The same is true for the input directories on the ArcGIS server. If the directory structure for service resources on the server exceeds operating system limits, the service cannot publish successfully.
If your staging and server connection path exceeds the operating system path limit, you can do the following to reduce the number of characters used for this path:
- Change the location of the staging folder to a location
closer to the root directory, C:\temp, for example.
For more information, see Change the default service definition staging folder in ArcGIS Desktop.
- Change the server connection name so that it uses fewer characters. To rename the service connection, right-click the service connection in the Catalog window, and choose Rename from the menu.
For more information, see Connect to ArcGIS Server from ArcGIS Desktop.
- Shorten the service name.
Note:
Any draft service definitions existing under the original path are not automatically copied under the new path structure. You need to move these files manually.