I'd like to pause a deployment while I do some offline data maintenance. However, I have found no way to do so.
I can temporarily revoke all access rights from the deployment, but it's a bit of a crutch. Is there a switch somewhere that I overlooked ?
Create a variable in_maintenance and when it is true, nothing is done in the app.
You could just put loader.suspendLoad(); in your App startup script, and if anyone tries to access the file, it'll just spin on the loading screen indefinitely.
Related
I have a C# program that uses a SQLite database to read/write data. This program requires UAC elevation and I require it to be running at all times. When I run this program manually, which I have to 'Run as admin', my SQLite database functions normally, able to read/write data to the database file. However, my issue is when I try to have this program execute automatically when the computer starts.
As I mentioned earlier, I require this program to execute at all times. So, I have put a couple things in place that re-executes the program in the event it crashes (which works great). However, I also need this to begin executing when the computer restarts. Normally this isn't a problem, but the program requires UAC and I will rarely be around to click Yes on the UAC dialog, so I read around and it seems the only way to do this was to set up a task in Task Scheduler. So, I have set up a task to run this at startup. Upon testing, the program does execute but not functioning correctly. Upon further debugging, I've found that each time my code reaches a SQLiteDataReader.read() line, it always seems to return false even though I know there are records there, but this only happens when the program is executed thru Task Scheduler. No errors seem to be coming from SQLite. I suspect file permissions to be the issue, but do not know how to resolve.
A couple things to note of what I've tried already.
1) In the Task Scheduler, I've set this up to execute using the same user account as I've been using to run it manually, which is also a Domain Admin, Admin, and a local Admin account.
2) The task is set to "run with highest privileges"
3) I've changed the security permissions to Full Control for just about every object I can think of (Admins, Domain Admins, Users, , Everyone, etc) on both the root folder of the program AND the SQLite database file.
4) I've even tried moving the entire application outside of the Program Files folder in case there was some sort of restricted access involved there as well.
I'm at my wits end trying to figure this out. Any ideas on what to try next? Or other solutions to get this to execute correctly at startup without user interaction?
I'm a bit late on reporting back on this issue. Stupid on my part... The task scheduler simply needed to include the applications file folder path as the Startup path. So it wasn't finding the database file as my path is using relative paths to reference. I personally don't understand why this shouldn't always just default to the app's folder, but you live and you learn and bang your head on everything in between.
A couple of questions:
1) How can I update a Classic ASP website/page without interrupting service (users getting an error or service unavailable message) or shutting the website down temporarily?
2) When updating/restoring a MSSQL DB via SQL Server Management Studio, will the website users get an error message?
Thanks in advance.
A smart practice is to use at least one separate development environment with the same setup as your production environment and debug all changes there to ensure that they work. Once your entire site is running and tested on the other, identical environment to your production environment, you should be able to simply move the files and they should work in production. This model being effective is dependent on actually being able to maintain environments as close to identical to each other as possible.
When updating/restoring a MSSQL DB
Be careful with your terminology; UPDATE and RESTORE are two very different commands.
If the database is locked by the changes being made, then it will be inaccessible to users and may cause error messages depending on your IIS and code setup. Scheduling a maintenance period and blocking user access to any pages that access the database is will help avoid messy errors and revealing any information about your infrastructure while the changes are being made.
It seems like you might want to do some basic research on development and databases both in order to make sure you understand what you're doing and can cover all of your bases. Looking up commands like RESTORE and UPDATE and using them correctly is crucial.
For example, when you rewrite one or more of your website files
via FTP, in that very moment when rewriting is taking place,
users will get a 500 Service Unavailable error. How can I avoid this?
This really shouldn't happen, although you could upload the files to a different folder, avoiding any delay there, and sync the files with a diff tool such as Winmerge (also helping you keep track of changes and revert quickly) when done uploading.
In my ASP.NET application, I have a script that I periodically automatically call to update the database. Due to a bug in this code, several invocation of it entered an infinite loop.
I am on a shared hosting, so I can't just restart IIS. I have tried “stopping” the website from the hosting's management website, but it had no effect.
Since they are running for seveal hours now, I assume there is no timeout configured. So, I would like to kill those “processes” (I assume it's actually just threads), is there a way to do that without contacting my hosting company?
Updating the web.config will stop your application. Assuming you can access the files of the website.
Have you tried stopping the application pool for the website?
I was logging some information from the threads I wanted to kill to a file. The code is able to create the file if it doesn't exists, but the same does not apply, to the folder it's in.
So I temporarily renamed the folder with the log and the threads seem to have stopped.
I don't know much about the .Net environment, so my first idea was to just write a console app that scans the folder for new content, and then emails alerts out. Then put the .exe as a scheduled task on the server, executing every few minutes. This seems pretty archaic to me though. Is there a more elegant way to do this for my website?
No matter what type of application you choose the way to get notifications about folder changes in .NET is through the FileSystemWatcher class. A good approach would be to create a Windows Service which will run in background and listen for notifications.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.io.filesystemwatcher.aspx
You can use the FileSystemWatcher. Create a Windows Service that constantly runs, and attach an Event to the Watcher to send out emails.
Note that this reports every change, sometimes multiple ones (e.g., moving a file is a delete and create I think), so you may want to limit the number of emails you sent. Experiment a bit before sending hundreds of emails or so - been there, done that :)
Is it possible to update the site dll for a precompiled site without stopping IIS.
Currently, if I try to just copy the new file to overwrite the current file, All users receive runtime errors while the file is being copied. Is there a way to avoid this?
even if you don't stop, any change to the web.config file, BIN folder, App_Data or App_Code will force the .NET compiler to perform ...
and you will loose any Session variables in memory.
What I do is to use Session State in SQL Mode and if your system is set up like this, user will remain in the site (after a longer exposition to a page reload)
.NET will still invoke the compiler in order to compile the new set of instructions but soon it is done, all sessions will be read from SQL Server and because they are still there (and not lost with a memory refresh) users will remain in the website with current credentials.
it is a little bit slower than In-Memory Session State, but much more reliable, specially with Shared hosting :) this is the way to increse/decrese the minutes in your session, as Shared hosting do not allow it to change even if you do
Session.Timeout = 5;
their machine configuration will override everything you do, with SQL Session State, you will be able to set your time as this is all made by SQL Server.
Fell free to read this article to know how everything is done.
Hope it helps.