DotNetNuke 3.0.x on SQLServer 2005/Net 2.0.Win2003 - possible? - asp.net

I've promised to take a look at an old DotNetNuke installation for a client with the intention of making a few, hopefully minor, changes. The installation is rather old - I believe version 3.0.013 - and the production copy is running against SQL Server 2000, Windows 2003 and .Net 1.1.
As the production server is live and significantly used we need a development installation first. I have attempted to install a copy on my local server - Windows 2003, SQL Server 2005, .Net 2.0, and although with a few tweaks I can successfully get it to display the site, I cannot login, or even access the login module (ie just putting in blank username and password attempting to generate a 'must enter username' type error) without getting the error 'Object reference not set to an instance of an object'
I've spent some time trying to get around this error, without success, although I am hampered by not having used this package before.
So my questions are
Has anyone managed to run DotNetNuke 3.0.x with this configuration (or do I need to setup a box with SQL 2000 and .Net 1.0 to get it to run)?
Any suggestions where I should start looking for this error, or has anyone come across anything similar before?
EDIT: Eventually chickened out and installed in on an old webserver with Win2003/SQL 2000/Net 1.1 and it went in fine on an identical install. So I guess the answer is no, it doesn't work straight out of the box.

My feeling is that you shouldn't have any trouble running in the above mentioned environment. But taking a closer look at the error itself will help us to prove that.
If the error is occurring only when you navigate to the Login module, it may be an issue loading the authentication provider. The best way to find out is to look in the DNN Event Log and take a look at the full error message.
Because you can't login to access the Event Log, you should probably just take a look at the row created in the database when you receive the error. The table is called EventLog and there may be a little bit of friction in parsing the error message out, as all of the details are stored in the database in an XML format.
In general, when moving a site from one environment to another there are only a couple of things that you'd need to do:
make sure you can connect to the database
set the file system permissions
It sounds like you already have database connectivity because you can load the site.
However, you may want to double check (just re-apply) the file system permissions for the root of the website on the machine in question. Make sure the identity of the website (typically ASP.NET Machine Account or Network Service) has 'Modify' permissions on the root website directory. Perhaps the web site can't load a particular assembly due to lack of permissions.

Related

BizTalk CU2 update giving error and not complete properly

Can anyone tell me why I'm getting the following error when installing BizTalk 2013 R2 CU2:
BtsDeploySystemAssemblyTask has stopped working
I might have had this same problem recently and the solution was to run the update as a different user that had more permissions and it worked.
Since the error is coming up through the SqlClient, you need to make sure the running user has high level permissions to all the databases or even the entire SQL Server Instance.
Sorry :( but since it was a single event, we had no opportunity to repro or investigate though the successful user was a fully sysadmin on SQL Server and Domain Administrator.

Java/Websphere NoSuchProviderException: IBMCertPath

I've recently inherited a task at my company that involves implementing an application that has currently been running off an employee's windows desktop, and migrating that code to Unix Server used for the office.
The server also runs IBM's websphere, which contains many of the companies larger web applications and uses java 1.6.
Organizational points aside (this is a huge company and much of the coding looks like a spaghetti western, with old legacy systems I wouldn't be suprised if people don't have any idea about), my plans was simply downgrade the code (which was simple as it was from 1.7 to 1.6), then move this application to a runnable jar, and call it via a shell script.
I, however, realize now why this application was never migrated to our production server, as I can't get the thing to run in the UNIX system.
First, I ran into an issue where (and I may be wrong about this) the SSL connections used as part of the application throws an error (same error as this question: Error accessing a Web Service with SSL) After some reading, it seems that any java application run on a server with Websphere (if the application is not in websphere) cannot be done, and thus you have to manually set some java Security Properties to do this (which i did right at the opening of my main method).
After doing that, I get past the initial error, but I am now getting this error
"com.ibm.jsse2.util.j: PKIX path validation failed: java.security.NoSuchProviderException: no such provider: IBMCertPath"
If this has already been asked, I'm sorry, but I couldn't seem to find it. Please link it here and i will close the question.
You are getting the error because something has specified to use the IBMCertPath provider, but java security doesn't know what that provider is.
You need to ensure that com.ibm.security.cert.IBMCertPath is in the provider list in your java.security file. See:
https://www-01.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/SSYKE2_6.0.0/com.ibm.java.security.component.60.doc/security-component/gen_info_sec_prov.html

Why attach debugger to IIS instance

It may be a silly question but why one would like to attach debugger to IIS instance?
These SOs
Attach Debugger to IIS instance
How do I attach the debugger to IIS instead of ASP.NET Development Server?
show you how to do it but could you let me know what are the benefits of doing this?
One time, in my entire career, we had a web app that started getting strange errors that had us baffled. We tried a dozen things to try and figure out what was wrong, but we were panicking and needed an answer immediately. So, we attached a debugger to the production instance and set up a few watch/break points. It helped us track down the errors and fix the problem.
Naturally, it hung the server during our debugging session, and made people mad, but no more mad than they already were, because of the problem we had.
It would not have been necessary if the code had been written better, with error logging and diagnostic points. I don't expect to ever do it again.
Apart from TimG's post a couple of reasons I can think of are:
To debug the application in a closer representation of its
production environment
To debug on a remote machine
Example, like #TonE #1 -- in order to test a deployed website (with web.config transformations) locally, like if you can't remote debug a live website or just need to test config transforms (since you can't run them in-place):
Open site project from C:\Dev\AwesomeWebSite\AwesomeWebSite.sln
Publish the site to a local folder C:\Webs in Release mode (or Whatever mode)
Set up a local IIS website pointing at the published project
Do stuff on the locally-deployed version (e.g. browse pages, make webservice calls, etc)
Attach VS to w3p.exe (appropriate instance) in order to debug the deployed version
You might be able to effectively do the same thing by instead pointing the Project at your IIS website per this answer.

SQL Server 2005 Express - error after cloning machine

In order to help out one of our departments here I've cloned a machine that was on its last legs and is actually hosting some important data. The plan is to migrate to a VMware VM as soon as possible, but in the meantime I cloned the machine onto another PC for testing among other things.
I've renamed the original machine's hostname,
so the new machine is running ASP.NET and SQL Server 2005 (Express)
and the database-driven website (Intranet-only) is now back up and running but we're getting an error 4200 with ODBC about a login failed.
On checking the event viewer there's the following message:
However it seems that SQL server still sees the local accounts as being under a much older hostname (see below:)
If I try to add the user "CURRENTHOSTNAME\ASPNET" to the database in question it only sees the old hostname. Is this what's causing my problem ? I'm not sure.
I do know that to get IIS working in the first place I had to do "aspnet_reg.exe -ga CURRENTHOSTNAME\ASPNET" and that fixed my first problem but this second one has me stumped.
The third party company that supply the software are being very slow to help on this. I usually do PHP & MySQL so I've little to no knowledge of Microsoft SQL. If anybody can help me you'd really be saving my bacon as this is dragging on a couple of days now.
Thanks in advance!
Renaming a machine with a SQL server instance on it can be tricky. My guess is that you get the old machine name when you run this query:
SELECT ##SERVERNAME
If you do, the old computer name is still stored in the sys.servers table. You might be able to simply follow Microsoft's instructions at renaming, which is just running a couple of stored procedures:
sp_dropserver 'old_host_name'
GO
sp_addserver 'new_host_name', local
GO
By cloning a machine you're opening a big can of worms. My suggestion would be to backup data only and restore it to new computer with fresh installs of everything. But in your case, there are two things that I'd try:
after cloning you must reset SID - check this link
sql recognises users by their id/guid, so delete all users from sql server/database and add them from scratch
Okay it seems to be fixed now - I re-added the NEWHOSTNAME\ASPNET to Security\Logins under "Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio Express" and then it appeared under Databases\MyDatabase\Security\Users" or I was able to add it anyway (can't remember which) - not sure if renaming the server that shows up under SELECT ##SERVERNAME makes a difference, but this error is fixed now anyway

Replicate IIS setup from one machine to another

Looked for an answer to this and didn't see it.
This is for IIS 6.0 / Windows Server 2003.
I'm working with an extremely large ASP/ASP.NET application and I'm trying to get my development environment to match my team members environment. This process is basically trial and error: get an error, go into IIS, make a change, hope the error is fixed. Ugh. I'm hoping to find a way to replicate a set of IIS directories and their configurations on one machine onto my machine.
I did find a script that will iterate through and give me a list of all virtual directories on a machine. It helped, but not a lot since I still have to go in and set up all those virtual directories (I think there are like 20 of them ballpark). The whole process is complicated by the fact that we're mixing ASP and ASP.NET applications in the same application which spans many solutions and projects. Getting the whole thing up and going seems like way too much work but I've never heard of a real solution to this.
Would Powershell be helpful here?
You should export and import IIS metabase.
These might help:
IIS Settings Replication
IIS Metabase Backup and Restore
Fortunately, in IIS7, ASP.NET config is integrated with IIS config so the job is done by copying Web.config.
Here's Microsofts' documentation for iiscnfg. iiscnfg documentation
When I ran it the first time, I got an error that said "This script does not work with WScript." If that happens to you:
1. Click OK.
2. At the "Would you like to register Cscript as your default host for VBscript?" click Yes.
3. At "Successfully registered Cscript" click OK.
4. Run the command again

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