I work on quite a few DotNetNuke sites, and occasionally (I haven't figured out the common factor yet), when I use the Database Publishing Wizard from Microsoft to create scripts for the site I've created on my Dev server, after running the scripts at the host (usually GoDaddy.com), and uploading the site files, I get an error... I'm 99.9% sure that it's not file related, so not sure where to begin in the DB. Unfortunately with DotNetNuke you don't get the YSOD, but a generic error, with no real way to find the actual exception that has occured.
I'm just curious if anyone has had similar deployment issues using the Database Publishing Wizard, and if so, how they overcame them? I own the RedGate toolset, but some hosts like GoDaddy don't allow you to direct connect to their servers...
The Database Publishing Wizard's generated scripts usually need to be tweaked since it sometimes gets the order wrong of table/procedure creation when dealing with constraints. What I do is first backup the database, then run the script, and if I get an error, I move that query to the end of the script. Continue restoring the database and running the script until it works.
There are two areas that I would look at -
Are you running in the dbo schema and was your scripted database
using dbo?
Are you using an objectqualifier in either your dev or your
production environment? (look at your sqldataprovider configuration
settings)
You should be able to expose the underlying error message by setting the following in the web.config:
customErrors mode="Off"
Could you elaborate on "and uploading the site files"? New instance of DNN? updating an existing site? upgrading DNN version? If upgrade or update -- what files are you adding/overwriting?
Also, when using GoDaddy, can you check to verify that the web site's identity (network service or asp.net machine account depending on your IIS version) has sufficient permissions to the website's file system? It should have modify permissions and these may need to be reapplied if you are overwriting files.
IIS6 (XP, Server 2000, 2003) = ASP.Net Machine Account
IIS7 (Vista, Server 2008) = Network Service
Test your generated scripts on a new local database (using the free SQL Express product or the full meal deal). If it runs fine locally, then you can be confident that it will run elsewhere, all things being equal.
If it bombs when you run it locally, use the process of elimination and work your way through the script execution to find the offending code.
My hunch is that the order of scripts could be off. I think I've had that happen before with the database publishing wizard.
Just read your follow up. In every case that I've had your problem, it was always something to do with the connection string in web.config. Even after hours of staring at it, it was always a connection string issue in web.config. Get up, take a walk and then come back.
If you are getting one of DNN's error pages, there is a chance it may have logged the error to the eventlog table.
Depending on exactly what is happening and what DNN is showing you you might be able to manually look inside the EventLog table, pull out the XML data stored there, and parse it to find the stack trace and detailed information regarding the specific error at hand.
I have found however though that I get MUCH better overall experiences with deployments using backups and restores of my database, that way I am 100% sure that all objects moved correctly, and honestly it works better in my experience.
With GoDaddy I know another MAJOR common issue is incorrect file permissions, preventing DNN from modifying the web.config and other files that it needs to do.
Related
Currently we are subscribed to GoDaddy for their dedicated server lease, and now we are considering just purchasing our own server and just moving off of GoDaddy.
I have no idea how to put all of my source code from one server to another and also move the database and other files. Please explain what process has to be followed for this.
Also wanted to ask if their would be any changed for the third party tools i have used in my application?
To migrate my web application from one server to another I would do following :
Make a list of all transferable which would be:
Latest and running Source code on the server (ideally located in wwwroot)
database back up files (usually .mdb or .bak)
Copy source code and database back up to targeted server. Obviously depending upon type of the server you may need to set up the site in IIS and and point it to new directory
Restore database backup on database server
edit web.config to point to new database server and credentials.
Another important tip: If you have kept domain name with GoDaddy and only changing hosting server you may also need to change namedserver of you domain, without which you will not be able to point your domain to new hosting provider!
You may not succeed on the very first attempt of copying your stuffs to target server. It's always better to maintain back up so that you can copy files again and again in case something goes wrong on the new server.
As long as third party charges are concerned please check with your service providers they may be able to guide you best. For above simple stuff you do not need to worry about license stuff.
All the best!
I had an issue with my server that hosts RavenDB. It was running out of hard drive space. I cleared up some space by deleting a few databases that were no longer in use (through the management portal). I then shut down the RavenDB service. I deleted the data from the "PeriodicBackup-Temp" folder in the directory for one of the databases, and restarted the server. When the server restarted, I was getting errors from any site that tried to connect to any of the databases (503 server error). I debugged the error, and found that it is happening when I create the document store. Specifically:
IndexCreation.CreateIndexes(new CompositionContainer(new TypeCatalog(types)), docStore);
Now, the thing is, I haven't changed any code on these sites in a long time, and I certainly haven't changed anything to do with connecting to RavenDB or creating indexes. Here is what the error said:
A connection attempt failed because the connected party did not properly respond after a period of time, or established connection failed because connected host has failed to respond.
For a while, I was also getting errors in the management portal that said that whichever database I was currently looking at did not exist (which was odd, since I was looking at the documents in the document stores while it was telling me the database did not exist...)
It's now four hours later. I have noticed all of the sites except two have started working at some point. I was hoping that Raven just needed to rebuild indexes, but when I look at the databases that correspond to the sites that are still throwing the error, Raven says that there are no stale indexes.
I am using build 2750. I have been using this build for over a year if I remember correctly.
All of my sites use the exact same code base. They are hosted on different sites and connect to different databases, but other than that they are exactly the same. I'm pretty confident that this issue has something to do with the database server, and not the web server.
Right now, the sites are not getting used, so it's not a load issue. The RavenDB process isn't even using any CPU except occasionally.
Any ideas what could be causing this? I hate to just "hope" that it's going to start working in a few hours, but it's all I have at this point.
After waiting about 8 hours, those two sites were still unable to connect. I restarted those websites, and everything started working again. This is something I had tried earlier, so I don't know exactly what needed to complete before restarting the site had an affect. I am completely up and running again. If anyone can shed some light on why this fixed it, I'm all ears.
We have developed a somewhat diffuse system for handling component installation and upgrades across server environments in an automated manner. It worked happily on our development environment, but I've run into a new problem I've not seen before when attempting to deploy it to a live environment.
The environment in question comprises ten servers, five each on two different geographical sites and domains. Each server runs a WCF based windows service that allows it to talk to each of the other servers and thus keep a track of what's installed where. To facilitate this process we make use of machine level environment variables - and modifying these obviously means registry changes.
Having got all this set up, my first attempts to use the system to install stuff seemed to work, but on one box in particular I'm getting "Requested registry access is not allowed" errors when the code tries to modify the environment variables. I've googled this, obviously, but there seem to be a variety of different causes and I'm really not sure which are the applicable ones. It doesn't help that this is a live environment and that our system has relatively limited internal logging capability.
The only clue I've got is that the guy who did the install on the development boxes wrote a very patch set of documentation on the process. This includes an instruction to modify the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System\LocalAccountTokenFilterPolicy value in the registry and set it to 1. I skipped this during the installation as it looked like a rather dubious security risk. Reading the documentation about this key, it looks relevant but my initial attempts at installing stuff on other boxes without this setting enabled worked fine. Sadly the author went on extended leave over the holidays yesterday and he left no explanation of why this key was needed, so we're a bit in the dark.
Can anyone help us toward the light?
Cheers,
Matt
I've seen this error when code tries to write to the event log using something like EventLog.WriteEntry() and a source that is not a registered event source is specified. When a source is specified that has not previously been registered, it will attempt to register the source, which involves writing to the registry.
I would suggest taking a look at SysInternals Process Monitor:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896645
You can use this to monitor registry access and find out what key you're getting the access denied error on. This may give you some insight as to what is causing the problem.
Essentially he's disabling part of the Remote User Account Control. Without setting the value, Remote UAC strips administrative privileges from account tokens remotely accessing the machine. Yes, it does have security implications. See Description of User Account Control and remote restrictions in Windows Vista for an explanation.
I would like to make a complete backup of my whole joomla 1.5 based site from time to time. How would this ideally be done? Are there any common pitfalls? Not that I only have ftp access to the hosting server. Is there a step by step tutorial somewhere? I am using latest Joomgallery and Kunena 1.0.9 (Legacy mode).
Maybe there is a good way to automate this?
There's two parts of the backup you have to worry about, the database and the files.
The first part is the database. It can be backed up using something like phpMyAdmin. If you don't have this available on your server already, it's not too hard to upload and get it going yourself. From there, you can just Export the entire database to a gzip file.
The second part is the code and uploaded files. The code base shouldn't change too often, so you could probably just make one backup of this. There's a number of ways. The simplest is to just download the entire folder via FTP, though if you're Linux, I'm sure someone will know a single command line to get all the changed files (rsync?).
The database is the main thing you have to worry about though: everything else should be able to be rebuilt just by reinstalling.
I think this: http://www.joomlapack.net/ is what you need. I use it myself and it works like a charm. Both for backups and for moving my Joomla installations from developer sites and to the real site.
get an FTP synchronisation tool and keep an up-to-date copy of your site locally. Then you could run the batch script
mysqldump -hhost -uuser -p%1 schema > C:\backup.sql
to create a backup of your mysql tables at various points in time.
edit
you would have to have MySQL Server installed on your local machine and path to its bin directory in you PATH, in order to run the mysqldump command without much hassle. -p%1 would take the command-line provided password, as you wouldn't want to store passwords in your batch script.
If you only have FTP access you are in a bit of a problem, as beside all files you'll also have to backup the database. Without accessing the database, a full-backup won't do you any good.
Whatever backup strategy you choose - be sure it can handle UTF-8 correctly. Joomla 1.5 stores all content with UTF-8, even when the database charset is set on 'iso-5589-1' - so when the backup solution is detecting the database charset, some characters like € or é will result in "strange" ¬ / é - not really what you'll want.
I absolutely endorse using Joomlapack - it works great. The optional remote tools allow you to initiate the backup from a Windows desktop machine - it performs the backup and downloads it. The remote has a scheduler, and you can also set it off to backup and download a list of sites.
Joomlapack also provides a file "kickstart.php" which you copy to your empty server account along with the backup, which automates the restore procedure. You do have to create an empty database with PHPMyAdmin or similar, and you are given the opportunity to supply the database parameters (host, database, username, password) during the process.
One pitfall I did run into with this though is that some common components can have absolute URLs in their configuration - e.g. SOBI2, Virtuemart. It's then just a matter of finding the appropriate configuration file, editing it and re-uploading it.
Another problem was one archive file (either ZIP or their JPA format) got a filename with a "?" character in it (from a Linux server) and this caused a bit of a problem trying to install it locally on a Windows WAMP stack - the extract process on the ZIP file failed, and it stopped the process completing cleanly.
I suggest using automatic backup service by http://www.everlive.net
Update:
Ok, here is some more information. EverLive.net is a website where you can create a free account. Enter your website details and you are ready to take your backups withe just one click. Restore is also possible in the same way.
Further you can use automatic backup option to take automatic backups at defined intervals. Other than that, you can use the website health check service to inform you if your website is not available.
Where would you write an error log file, say ErrorLog.txt, in Windows? Keep in mind the path would need to be open to basic users for file write permissions.
I know the eventlog is a possible location for writing errors, but does it work for "user" level permissions?
EDIT: I am targeting Windows 2003, but I was posing the question in such a way as to have a "General Guideline" for where to write error logs.
As for the EventLog, I have had issues before in an ASP.NET application where I wanted to log to the Windows event log, but I had security issues causing me heartache. (I do not recall the issues I had, but remember having them.)
Have you considered logging the event viewer instead? If you want to write your own log, I suggest the users local app setting directory. Make a product directory under there. It's different on different version of Windows.
On Vista, you cannot put files like this under c:\program files. You will run into a lot of problems with it.
In .NET, you can find out this folder with this:
Environment.GetFolderPath(Environment.SpecialFolder.LocalApplicationData)
And the Event Log is fairly simple to use too:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.diagnostics.eventlog.aspx
Text files are great for a server application (you did say Windows 2003). You should have a separate log file for each server application, the location is really a matter of convention to agree with administrators. E.g. for ASP.NET apps I've often seen them placed on a separate disk from the application under a folder structure that mimics the virtual directory structure.
For client apps, one disadvantage of text files is that a user may start multiple copies of your application (unless you've taken specific steps to prevent this). So you have the problem of contention if multiple instances attempt to write to the same log file. For this reason I would always prefer the Windows Event Log for client apps. One caveat is that you need to be an administrator to create an event log - this can be done e.g. by the setup package.
If you do use a file, I'd suggest using the folder Environment.SpecialFolder.LocalApplicationData rather than SpecialFolder.ApplicationData as suggested by others. LocalApplicationData is on the local disk: you don't want network problems to stop you from logging when the user has a roaming profile. For a WinForms application, use Application.LocalUserAppDataPath.
In either case, I would use a configuration file to decide where to log, so that you can easily change it. E.g. if you use Log4Net or a similar framework, you can easily configure whether to log to a text file, event log, both or elsewhere (e.g. a database) without changing your app.
The standard location(s) are:
C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\MyApp
or
C:\Documents and Settings\%Username%\Application Data\MyApp
(aka %UserProfile%\Application Data\MyApp) which would match your user level permission requirement. It also separates logs created by different users.
Using .NET runtime, these can be built as:
AppDir=
System.Environment.GetFolderPath(Environment.SpecialFolder.CommonApplicationData)
or
AppDir=
System.Environment.GetFolderPath(Environment.SpecialFolder.ApplicationData)
followed by:
MyAppDir = IO.Path.Combine(AppDir,'MyApp')
(Which, hopefully, maps Vista profiles too).
Personally, I would suggest using the Windows event log, it's great. If you can't, then write the file to the ApplicationData directory or the ProgramData (Application Data for all users on Windows XP) directory.
The Windows event log is definitely the way to go for logging of errors. You're not limited to the "Application" log as it's possible to create a new log target (e.g. "My Application"). That may need to be done as part of setup as I'm not sure if it requires administrative privileges or not. There's a Microsoft example in C# at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307024.
Windows 2008 also has Event Log Forwarding which can be quite handy with server applications.
I agree with Lou on this, but I prefer to set this up in a configuration file like Joe said. You can use
file value="${APPDATA}/Test/log-file.txt"
("Test" could be whatever you want, or removed entirely) in the configuration file, which causes the log file to be written to "/Documents and Settings/LoginUser/Application
Data/Test" on Windows XP and to "/Users/LoginUser/AppData/Roaming/Test on Windows Vista.
I am just adding this as I just spent way too much time figuring how to make this work on Windows Vista...
This works as-is with Windows applications. To use logging in web applications, I found Phil Haack's blog entry on this to be a great resource:
http://haacked.com/archive/2005/03/07/ConfiguringLog4NetForWebApplications.aspx
%TEMP% is always a good location for logs I find.
Going against the grain here - it depends on what you need to do. Sometimes you need to manipulate the results, so log.txt is the way to go. It's simple, mutable, and easy to search.
Take an example from Joel. Fogbugz will send a log / dump of error messages via http to their server. You could do the same and not have to worry about the user's access rights on their drive.
I personally don't like to use the Windows Event Log where I am right now because we do not have access to the production servers, so that would mean that we would need to request access every time we wanted to look at the errors. It is not a speedy process unfortunately, so your troubleshooting is completely haulted by waiting for someone else. I also don't like that they kind of get lost within the ones from other applications. Sure you can sort, but it's just a bit of a nucance scrolling down. What you use will end up being a combination of personal preference coupled along with limitations of the enviroment you are working in. (log file, event log, or database)
Put it in the directory of the application. The users will need access to the folder to run and execute the application, and you can check write access on application startup.
The event log is a pain to use for troubleshooting, but you should still post significant errors there.
EDIT - You should look into the MS Application Blocks for logging if you are using .NET. They really make life easy.
Jeez Karma-killers. Next time I won't even offer a suggestion when the poster puts up an incomplete post.