IIS / Tools / Crash & Hang

FAILED REQ TRACING: ASP.net Provider Not Showing

Chris Crowe — Sat, 17 Mar 2007 16:12:00 GMT

I came accross this posting on www.iis.net this morning and thought I should post it here as it could be relevant to someone in the near future.

[ISSUE]
When using Failed Request Tracing, you are unable to configure or use the ASP.Net trace provider (it does not show up in the list of providers to select when creating a new trace rule) even after ensuring that ASP.net & .Net extensibility are installed.

[CAUSE]
This is a known setup timing issue that causes the ASP.net provider definition to get accidentally deleted. It has been fixed in current Longhorn Server & Vista SP1 builds.

[WORKAROUND]
Workaround is to do the following:

Open %windir%\system32\inetsrv\config\applicationHost.config in your favourite xml editor (such as NOTEPAD).
Add the following to <traceProviderDefinitions>
            <traceProviderDefinitions>

       …other providers defined…

                <add name="ASPNET" guid="{AFF081FE-0247-4275-9C4E-021F3DC1DA35}">

                    <areas>

                        <add name="Infrastructure" value="1" />

                        <add name="Module" value="2" />

                        <add name="Page" value="4" />

                        <add name="AppServices" value="8" />

                    </areas>

                </add>

            </traceProviderDefinitions>

Hope this helps you out in the mean time.

-ericde-

-ericdeily
Program Manager - IIS
Release/Proj Mgmt & Support/Health/Instr/Tracing/Logging

Microsoft releases a new download center for IIS (everything in one place)

Chris Crowe — Wed, 31 Jan 2007 23:36:00 GMT

DownloadCENTER for IIS.net has been released!

The DownloadCENTER at IIS.net, is a community hotspot for discovering, sharing, reviewing and promoting IIS-related solutions in a single place. Dozens of existing downloads, for all versions of IIS – both from Microsoft and the community – are already available in DownloadCENTER today.

This new feature of IIS.net is particularly relevant with the release of IIS7 in Windows Vista. The latest release of Microsoft’s Web server has a completely modular architecture which features over forty pluggable components that can be easily added, removed or even replaced with custom implementations.

This powerful extensibility support is available to both .NET and C/C++ developers. In the future, DownloadCENTER is expected to house a large number of IIS7 extensions submitted by not only the IIS team but the developers and partner ISVs of the IIS community as well.

To learn more about the DownloadCenter, read IIS Product Unit Manager, Bill Staples’ blog post about it or check it out yourself today!

VBScript - Check if multiple version of the .NET framework are assigned to an application pool

Chris Crowe — Tue, 15 Aug 2006 02:31:00 GMT

This code will allow you to check if there are IIS applications which are configured to use multiple version of the .NET framework.

The code enumerates all the Application Pools and then find all of the applications in that pool. It then checks for the version of the .NET framework which handles the .ASPX file extension.

It saves the unique versions of the .NET Framework found and if it finds multiple versions installed will list all of the applications using that Application Poll and display the path and the version being used. This will allow you to find a potential problem which could be hard to track down normally.

Calling Usage

cscript CheckForMultipleVersionsOfDotNetFramework.vbs

Example Output

AppPool #1
No applications using this pool!

DefaultAppPool

Warning multiple version of the .NET framework detected!

Found references to v1.1.4322
Found references to v2.0.50727

//localhost/W3SVC/1/ROO                                           - v1.1.4322
//localhost/W3SVC/1198258389/ROO                         - v1.1.4322
//localhost/W3SVC/1280263431/ROO                         - v1.1.4322
//localhost/W3SVC/1388032739/ROO                         - v1.1.4322
//localhost/W3SVC/1849151055/ROO                         - v1.1.4322
//localhost/W3SVC/1957176745/ROO                         - v1.1.4322
//localhost/W3SVC/4/ROO                                           - v1.1.4322
//localhost/W3SVC/415889539/ROO                           - v1.1.4322
//localhost/W3SVC/1/ROOT/Monito                            - v2.0.50727
//localhost/W3SVC/1/ROOT/Monitorin                        - v1.1.4322
//localhost/W3SVC/1/ROOT/NetTracke                       - v1.1.4322

ExchangeApplicationPool
Found references to v1.1.4322

ExchangeMobileBrowseApplicationPool
Found references to v1.1.4322

MSSharePointAppPool
Found references to v1.1.4322

MyAppPool1
No applications using this pool!

Source Code

You can download the source code here.

option explicit
dim AppsInPool, objAppPool, index, IISObj, IISPath, Version, pos
Dim Versions(), objAppPools
function FindASPXScriptMapVersion(ScriptMaps)
 Dim pos, ScriptMap
 for pos = lbound(ScriptMaps) to UBOund(ScriptMaps)
   ScriptMap = lcase(ScriptMaps(POS))
   if (left(ScriptMap, 5) = ".aspx") then
    FindASPXScriptMapVersion = mid(ScriptMap, 42)
    FindASPXScriptMapVersion = left(FindASPXScriptMapVersion, _
     instr(FindASPXScriptMapVersion, "\")-1)
    exit function
   end if
 next 
 FindASPXScriptMapVersion = ""
end function
function AddVersion(Version, Path)
 dim Found, pos
 Found = false
 for pos = lbound(Versions) to UBound(Versions)-1
  if (Versions(pos) = Version) then
   Found = true
  end if
 next
 if (Found = false) then
  redim preserve Versions(ubound(Versions)+1)
  Versions(ubound(Versions)-1)= Version
 end if
end function
Set objAppPools = GetObject("IIS://localhost/W3SVC/AppPools")
for each objAppPool in objAppPools
 Redim Versions(0)
 Set objAppPool = GetObject("IIS://localhost/W3SVC/AppPools/" & objAppPool.Name )
 WScript.echo objAppPool.Name 
 AppsInPool= objAppPool.EnumAppsInPool()
 if (ubound(AppsInPool) = -1) then
  WScript.echo vbtab  & "No applications using this pool!"
 else
  for index = lbound(AppsInPool) to UBound(AppsInPool)
   IISPath = AppsInPool(index)
   IISPath = "IIS://localhost/" & mid(IISPath,5, len(IISPath)-5)
   set IISObj = GetObject(IISPath)
   Version = FindASPXScriptMapVersion(IISObj.ScriptMaps)
   call AddVersion(Version, mid(IISPath,5, len(IISPath)-5))
  next
  if (ubound(Versions)> 1) then
   WScript.Echo vbcrlf & vbtab & _
    "Warning multiple version of the .NET framework detected!" & vbcrlf
   
   for pos = lbound(Versions) to ubound(Versions)-1
    WScript.echo vbtab & "Found references to " &  Versions(pos) 
   next
   WScript.echo ""
   for index = lbound(AppsInPool) to UBound(AppsInPool)
    IISPath = AppsInPool(index)
    IISPath = "IIS://localhost/" & mid(IISPath,5, len(IISPath)-5)
    set IISObj = GetObject(IISPath)
    Version = FindASPXScriptMapVersion(IISObj.ScriptMaps)
    WScript.echo vbtab & mid(IISPath,5, len(IISPath)-5) & _
     space(70 - len(IISpath)) & " - " & Version
   next
  else
   for pos = lbound(Versions) to ubound(Versions)-1
    WScript.echo vbtab & "Found references to " &  Versions(pos) 
   next  
  end if
 end if
 WScript.echo ""
next

Christchurch .NET Users Group Meeting - June 21st, 2006

Chris Crowe — Fri, 23 Jun 2006 01:29:00 GMT

I had the pleasure to present to the Christchurch .NET Users Group ( http://www.dot.net.nz ) last evening. It was a very cold night with hail, sleet, rain and we had around 25 people attend.

I spoke about three topics in my presentation:

IIS Scripting
IIS Diagnostic Tools
IIS 7

IIS Scripting

In the talk on IIS Scripting I discussed the different providers that were available to manage IIS from a command line script or application. These include ADSI and WMI, Admin Base Objects and the new IIS 7 Managed Provider.

References:

ADSI Provider
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/iissdk/html/965cc820-753b-4ab7-b1c4-8ab43d67e410.asp
WMI Provider
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/iissdk/html/8b7799c1-cebc-4b11-b3d5-34ab7b728077.asp
Admin Base Objects
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/iissdk/html/6f6a0cfa-4f2b-4641-88c5-2a1767f6fbc8.asp
IIS7 Managed Provider - Microsoft.Web.Administration
http://www.iis.net/default.aspx?tabid=2&subtabid=25&i=952

IIS Diagnostic Tools

In the discussion about IIS diagnostic tools I presented details on the following tools from the Debug Diagnostic Toolkit for IIS.

Authentication and Access Control Diagnostics

Authentication and Access Control Diagnostics (Authdiag) Version 1.0 allows you to review, test, and correct problems with Internet Information Services (IIS) authentication and authorization. You can use Authdiag to check settings on Web sites, FTP sites, virtual directories, Web directories, and files. Authdiag can help you troubleshoot the following types of issues:

SSL Diagnostics

It provides a centralized location to display all relevant SSL configuration information. Most of this information is stored in the metabase, which is the main IIS configuration file. Information related to certificates is also stored in the Windows registry.

SSL Diagnostics checks for the correct configuration of SSL objects and settings. These include client and server certificates, ports, private keys, and Web site states.

Administrators can test whether their current server certificate is working properly by temporarily replacing the current certificate with a self-signed certificate. Administrators are able to test their certificates with a single click of the mouse.

Administrators can use SSL Diagnostics to quickly simulate the connection, or handshake, between the server and browser, and review the response from the server. This is very helpful for determining where in the SSL handshake process the connection is breaking down.

Debug Diagnostics

Debug Diagnostics (DebugDiag) 1.0 is a comprehensive tool designed to help IIS administrators or developers determine why a IIS worker process is crashing, hanging, or memory leak. It offers a simple User Interface to build rules for capturing these common problems with web applications and also offers a built-in analysis system

References:

IIS Debug Diagnostic Tool Kit (6 MB)
http://www.iis.net/default.aspx?tabid=3&subtabid=31&g=5&i=895
Microsoft Log Parser 2.2
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=890cd06b-abf8-4c25-91b2-f8d975cf8c07&displaylang=en
www.logparser.com
Fiddler - HTTP Debugging Proxy Server
www.fiddlertool.com

IIS7

In the IIS 7 section of the presentation I discussed some of the benefits of the new server and its new modular architecture, new UI, new extensibility, and diagnostics functionality.

I showed a number of demos of IIS 7 including a custom Basic Authentication module, a custom Directory Browsing Module, Tracing Features, Debugging a crashing application pool with Debug Diag and some features of the new User Interface.

References

The new official IIS Community Home
www.iis.net
Try IIS7 today in your web browser
http://www.microsoftvirtuallabs.com/iisnet/

My presentation was made on the Beta 2 build of Vista Ultimate and most of the tools worked fine on Vista and IIS 7 even though they are not designed to. As far as I know no body left early - a good sign.... IIS can be a dry topic to developers but I hope they learned something useful about the new product and of course scripting and diagnostics that they may not have known previously.

IIS 6 - Downloads being terminated by HTTP.SYS

Chris Crowe — Thu, 09 Mar 2006 14:23:00 GMT

At work we came across a situation on a Windows 2003 Server IIS 6 machine where people downloading one specific file were finding that it was being terminated during the transfer. Those people who had file download managers or web browsers with resume did not notice the problem but Internet Explorer would just terminate the download.

This Windows 2003 Server machine did not have Service Pack 1 installed
The particular download was approx 20MB.

This machine was located in the United States and users in the United States did not notice and could not reproduce the problem.

In the httperr.log file in c:\windows\system32\logfiles\HTTPERR we would find entries like the following

date	time	c-ip	s-ip	c-port	cs-version	cs-method		cs-uri	sc-status	s-siteid	s-reason
2006-02-22	5:52:53			80	HTTP/1.1	GET	-	DataTransfer120/DataTransfer120.exe	-	19499532	Timer_MinBytesPerSecond

The reason given for the termination of the download was Timer_MinBytesPerSecond which Microsoft states as the following

The connection expired because the client was not receiving a response at a reasonable speed.
The response send rate was slower than the default of 240 bytes/sec.

The strange thing was we were getting around 30KB/S and then the download would terminate so we were getting a faster response than 240 bytes per second.

The fix

The fix to the problem was to install Service Pack 1 for Windows 2003 Server. I received a response from a Microsoft employee that stated "There are many bugs in http.sys timeout logic fixed in SP1 - one bug regarding send-size being more than 15270*MinBytesPerSecond - this was not released as a qfe, your only option is to upgrade to SP1."

Installing Service Pack 1 has indeed cured this problem....

Additional References

Error logging in HTTP API
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=820729

Microsoft IIS tools have been updated...

Chris Crowe — Wed, 18 Jan 2006 12:39:00 GMT

Microsoft has released the January 2006 IIS toolkit.

Fetch 1.4: Remove the browser from scenario and make raw custom HTTP/S requests to your IIS Web Server
Debug Diagnostics 1.0: Track down problems with IIS Crashes, Hangs, or Memory Leaks using this tool
Trace Diag: This is a combined toolset aimed at helping users of Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1’s tracing easier. It includes IISREQMON, IISTRACE for the command-line and IIS Request Viewer (User Interface) and installs only on SP 1 and higher versions of Windows.

This release also included some updates to SSLDiag to version 1.1. This included support for the following:

Service Pack 1’s Host Header support for SSL
SelfSSL complete functionality on the command-line (ssldiag /selfssl)
Limit diagnostics with User Interface to single site (for use on large or specific diagnostic situations – ssldiag /s:<siteid>)

**Important: Log Parser 2.2, SMTPDiag 1.0, and AuthDiag 1.0 were unchanged in this release.

For details about each platform, please use the following URL:

(x86) Landing: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=9BFA49BC-376B-4A54-95AA-73C9156706E7&displaylang=en

(x64) Landing: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=7e42b310-b2d1-496b-8005-9d91782b9995&DisplayLang=en

(ia64) Landing: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=13c1c5e5-592c-45bc-b5bb-c486b43eb539&DisplayLang

IIS Guard - [Beta] Easily see all requests that are made to your IIS web server and find the sites and scripts that are causing problems

Chris Crowe [IIS MVP] — Wed, 21 Sep 2005 07:31:00 GMT

The IIS web server can easily stop working due to corrupted or poorly written web scripts. There’s no monitoring tool included in the IIS web server itself, which makes it hard, if not impossible, to find and solve problematic sites or scripts.

With IISGuard, this is a problem of the past. Now you can easily see all requests that are made to your IIS web server and find the sites and scripts that are causing problems.

These are some of the problems that IISGuard can help you find in the IIS:

High CPU load or memory consumption.
Denial of Service attacks.
Attacks by worms and viruses.

There’s no need to fumble in the dark any more, IISGuard lets you find what you’re looking for in no time.

Features

Live Monitor. Watch requests to your IIS web server in real-time. It’s possible to both view currently active request and finished request. Requests that last a long time are marked.
Logging. IISGuard logs all requests and features an extensive built-in search function.
Configurability. IISGuard can be configured with various options. You can choose to monitor all file types or set up a filter that monitors only certain file types (e.g. asp, php, exe, dll).
Web interface. All features of IISGuard are accessible through a web interface.
Own web server. IISGuard contains a web server of its own, which makes it work independently of the IIS server. This means that when you need IISGuard the most, when the IIS server is experiencing problems, you’ll still be able to access it.
Performance. IISGuard has proven to perform extremely well in a real server hosting environment, with thousands of heavily loaded sites.
Ease of use. IISGuard is set-up within minutes. The web interface is both simple and intuitive.

Note: This product is currently in Beta

For more details see - http://www.troxo.com/products/iisguard/

IIS Diagnostics Kits

Chris Crowe [IIS MVP] — Mon, 12 Sep 2005 18:16:00 GMT

The IIS Diagnostics Toolkit is a combined release of popular tools used by today's IIS users. These tools include tools aimed at resolving problems related to Secure Socket Layer (SSL) issues, permission or security problems, gathering data for your SMTP server included with IIS, as well as the famous Log Parser utility used to sift through hundreds or thousands of log files very quickly.

The toolkit consolidates all the tools into a convienant download and is supplemented by updates every 90-days to ensure that users have the most current diagnostics tools at their fingertips.

For more details see:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=9bfa49bc-376b-4a54-95aa-73c9156706e7&DisplayLang=en

Authentication and Access Control Diagnostics 1.0 (more commonly known as AuthDiag) is a tool released by Microsoft aimed at aiding IT professionals and developers at more effectively finding the source of authentication and authorization failures.

These users have often seen behavior from Internet Information Services (IIS) that doesn't seem appropriate or random when users authenticate to the IIS server. The complex world of authentication types and the various levels of security permissions necessary to allow a user to access the server causes many hours of labor for those tasked with troubleshooting these problems.

AuthDiag 1.0 offers a robust tool that offers a efficient method for troubleshooting authentication on IIS 5.x and 6.0. It will analyze metabase configuration and system-wide policies and warn users of possible points of failure and guide them to resolving the problem. AuthDiag 1.0 also includes a robust monitoring tool called AuthMon designed at capturing a snapshot of the problem while it occurs in real-time. AuthMon is robust and specially designed for IIS servers removing any information not pertinent to the authentication or authorization process.

For more details see:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=e90fe777-4a21-4066-bd22-b931f7572e9a&DisplayLang=en

A common problem for administrators of IIS servers is configuring and troubleshooting SSL enabled websites. To assist in administrators efforts, Microsoft has designed a tool - SSL Diagnostics - to aid in quickly identifying configuration problems in the IIS metabase, certificates, or certificate stores.

This tool allows users to review configuration information in a easy to read view mode or to run the tool silently with only the creation of a log file. During use, administrators can simulate the SSL handshake to find errors. They can also quickly "hot swap" certificates for testing purposes.

These packages come in two forms: Express and Full. The express will only give the pertinent tools for administrators to use SSL Diagnostics while full install installs the same files with the appropriate documentation. Included in the full install is a SSL Frequently Asked Questions that can assist in the learning of SSL for administrators

For more details see:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=cabea1d0-5a10-41bc-83d4-06c814265282&DisplayLang=en

The IIS 6.0 Resource Kit Tools can help you administer, secure, and manage IIS. Use them to query log files, deploy SSL certificates, employ custom site authentication, verify permissions, troubleshoot problems, migrate your server, run stress tests, and more.

The following tools are available in this package:

IIS 6.0 Migration Tool Version 1.0 Version 1.1 Now Available!
Apache to IIS 6.0 Migration Tool Version 1.0
CustomAuth Version 1.0
IISCertDeploy.vbs Version 1.0
IIS Host Helper Service Version 1.0
IISState Version 3.0
Log Parser Version 2.1 Version 2.2 Now Available!
Metabase Explorer Version 1.6
Permissions Verifier Version 1.0
RemapUrl Version 1.0
SelfSSL Version 1.0
TinyGet Version 5.2
Web Capacity Analysis Tool Version 5.2
WFetch Version 1.3

For more details see:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=56fc92ee-a71a-4c73-b628-ade629c89499&DisplayLang=en

IIS - Server Application Unavailable

Chris Crowe — Tue, 30 Aug 2005 05:17:00 GMT

I had a most interesting issue occur this morning on my work pc with IIS 5.1

Background

I zipped up a web site I was working on last night and sent it home as an Email message. I then extracted it and worked on it at home without issues. I then used WinRAR to rar it up and sent it back to work. I then extracted the files (by drag & drop from within WINRAR) and went to run the application. I instantly received the following message in my web browser.

Server Application Unavailable

The web application you are attempting to access on this web server is currently unavailable. Please hit the "Refresh" button in your web browser to retry your request.

Administrator Note: An error message detailing the cause of this specific request failure can be found in the application event log of the web server. Please review this log entry to discover what caused this error to occur.

The message came up instantly as soon as I hit refresh - no delay!
There was this message in the Windows Event Log each time I refreshed the page.

Event ID : 1088, Failed to execute request because the App-Domain could not be created
Error: 0x80070005 Access is denied

I did a couple of things most people do in this situation:

Performed an IIS Reset - Same problem!
Rebooted the PC - Same problem!
Verified the services were all working - all ok!
Checked the event log again - same messages!

I then thought about requesting a static file:

This worked fine

I then renamed web.config to web.config1 and copied my original web.config file from the original zip over the current one!

The web application was working again

So I renamed the web.config files around the other way so that the now working web.config was called web.config1

Web application was again failing!

I then checked the permissions on the web.config files

Caused the Error Did not cause the error

As you can see from the above permissions there was no permissions defined for the ASP.NET machine account or the IUSR_ and IWAM_ accounts.

Now more investigating into WinRAR.

I had dragged my files from within the WinRAR window to the folder directory without using the Extract To option!

I assume that this actually extracts the file to a temp folder and then moves the file to the actual folder where it is dragged to. This causes the following scenario.

The file is extracted to a temp directory - the file inherits the security settings of that directory
The file is then moved to the final directory where I dragged it to - this causes the file to retain the security settings it originally had in the temp folder.

Using the Extract To option in WinRAR however correctly extracts the file to the correct folder where it inherits the security settings of the folder.

Just something you should watch out for if you see a similar issue.

IIS - IIS Request Processing

Chris Crowe [IIS MVP] — Fri, 26 Aug 2005 02:07:00 GMT

Ken Schaefer [IIS MVP] has produced a very useful flow chart of how IIS 6 handles requests, this flow chart can be very useful in diagnosing 401 and 403 status codes.

For more details see Ken's site at http://www.adopenstatic.com/faq/IISRequestProcessing.aspx