Application Pools not starting after iisreset - asp.net

Before I start, I know using iisreset is considered bad practice, but this shouldn't happen anyway..
What we have:
Several machines with IIS6 on Windows Server 2003 R2 (both 64 and 32 bits)
Several WCF webservices (.NET runtime 2.0) deployed in several applications, each with it's own application pool, each application pool running under an other windows account.
What happens:
All appPools are started, all services operational
IISReset is executed (or the machine is rebooted)
IIS comes back up, but not all application pools start properly. Sometimes they all come back up, sometimes one or more pools won't start. They can be started manually however.
Is this "normal" iis behavior and should I just avoid using iisreset, or are we doing something wrong in our .NET code?

The application pools should restart on an iisreset, but they do run outside of iis (in COM+) for reliability. This mean they may may not come back if the application is misbehaving, but IIS and the other apps will(should) come back. So yes, This is "normal".
P.S.
I would also like to "OUT" myself as a proud user of iisreset. Bad practice? Bah! ;D

IIS does not immediately start ASP.NET worker processes (w3wp.exe) until the first request comes in. When you say "not started", does it mean you attempt to access some WCF web services (after iisreset), and you get a Service Unavailable error because the appPool cannot be started? Do you see any IIS W3SVC related entries in the Event logs?
If there are, they may be able to clue you in why they cannot start; post them up here.

Reason:
IIS does not immediately start ASP.NET worker processes (w3wp.exe) until the first request comes in. When it says "not started" it mean you attempt to access some WCF web services (after iisreset) failed due to object was holding some space in memory, and you get a Service Unavailable error because the appPool cannot be started.
Workaround:
Create Batch file with following commands & schedule it.
net stop 23svc
net stop msftpsvc
net stop smtpsvc
net stop PleskControlPanel
net stop HTTPFilter
iisreset /restart
net start w3svc
net start msftpsvc
net start smtpsvc
net start PleskControlPanel
net Start HTTPFilter

Had similiar issue - after IIS has been restarted, DefaultAppPool was stopped.
In application event logs found an error:
Windows cannot log you on because your profile cannot be loaded. Check that you are connected to the network, or that your network is functioning correctly. If this problem persists, contact your network administrator.
DETAIL - Access is denied.
Fixed by setting in DefaultAppPool Advanced Settings option Load User Profile to False.
Hope it could be usefull.

In a prior support role, I managed several IIS servers running all kinds of .NET mess. When an AppPool failed to start, it was usually a bad login credential.

Re-setting the identity (auth credentials) via advanced settings of the Application pool worked for me.
Earlier I changed my active directory password and as the app pool was already running, it worked fine until I performed IISRESET.

Related

Visual Studio 2013 debug session stops 1 minute after logging in with AspNet Identity

Maybe the answer is trivial, but I couldn't find the exact same behavior in other threads.
I have an MVC 5 web application. I implemented custom identity database with Asp.Net Identity 2 (Owin). I have only external login (facebook, google...etc). The login works fine. The users got authenticated with roles and everything.
After one minute of inactivity, my Visual Studio 2013 debug session stops. Sometimes the application remains available (so IIS App Pool is not stopped) sometimes it recycles IIS as well.
I also implemented logging in Application_End Global.asax method in order to have the shutdown reason, but in these cases there is no info in the logs. In other cases, when the App pool is recycled due to web.config change I do have info in the logs.
I suspect timeout, however I have no clue what kind of timeout it could be. Where should I look?
Thanks in advance.
I ran into the same problem, and found out how to set the timeout for IIS Express:
On the command window, navigate to the folder where IIS Express is installed, and execute the following appcmd command:
c:\Program Files (x86)\IIS Express> appcmd set config /section:applicationPools /[name='Clr4IntegratedAppPool'].processModel.idleTimeout:0.00:00:00
(scroll right to see the whole line)
Open IIS, find your application's AppPool, then:
Right click on the app pool and select Advanced Settings
Under "Process Model" set Idle Time-Out (minutes) to 0.
For reference, the only non-default (non-bold) settings in my "Process Model" and "Recycling" section are:
Identity : NetworkService
Idle Time-out (minutes) : 0
Ping Enabled : False
And with these settings, I can start up the debugger and it never seems to automatically time out or recycle.
Daniel I have had this exact same issue for a few months now and was about to go crazy about it. But I stumbled on a suggestion to run visual studio as administrator and that seems to have worked.

IIS application pool crashes several times a day

I have an application that has a application pool that shuts down a couple of times a day and I can't figure out why. the website is hosted on a VM with SQL Server R2. the version of IIS is 7 and the website has a dedicated application pool using .NET framework v4.0.30319.
At the application level the website is using a target framework of 4.5 and seems to run just fine for a 24-48 hour period and then for some reason the application pool just stops. We do have other .NET 4.5 applications running on this machine and their application pools do not have this problem. The only thing slightly different about this application is that we initiate a separate thread to send a order confirmation email when an order is completed. We average about a couple of hundred orders a day for this website.
According to the event log the error reported prior to the shutdown is
"A process serving application pool 'RetailSupport' suffered a fatal communication error with the Windows Process Activation Service"
Please help
I would check, if your code could hit under some circumstances an endless loop or a recursive
call of methods. This is often the reason for this error.
What always helps me in such cases is to add debug logs (e.g. log4net) in your case especially before the email is sent, status info about resources, etc. They can be more informative then the IIS logs.
If this does not help, check http://support.microsoft.com/kb/919789/en how to use the debug Diagnostic tool, to get more details for the error.
Look also for IIS: Web Application hangs periodically needs system reboot it could help you.
Also: what recycle strategy on IIS do you have?

View state errors in development but not production

I have two websites which are more or less identical, both running on the same server, but under different app pools. The app pools are both configured to run with "NETWORK SERVICE" credentials.
On one website - call this the development copy, I receive the infamous "validation of view state MAC failed" error. This happens when a postback occurs after the page is idle for 20 minutes. I've been informed this is because I don't specify the machine key in the web.config or the machine config file. Manually recycling the app pool reproduces the error as expected. So my question is not about how to stop the issue, but rather I want to know why the error happens in dev but not production. The only difference between the setup of the two sites is the authentication method.
In the "basic settings" section of the IIS config, the dev version of the site is set to connect using a service account, while the production version is using "application user" (pass through authentication). Under authentication settings, both pages are configured with impersonation and windows authentication.
This is the only difference I can see. My knowledge of how IIS handles authentication at the site and app pool level is fairly limited. Is there a specific reason why one setup should result in the machine key being refreshed but the other does not?
After installing .NET 3.5 SP1 you may get Validation of viewstate MAC failed exceptions when doing post backs on ASP.NET pages.

iis7 application pool hanging

I have a .net 4.0 website that was running on physical Windows server 2003 boxes on IIS6 32bit just fine. We have migrated to new virtual servers running Windows Server 2008 32 bit with IIS7. The application pool is running in classic mode.
Since the move, I at random get a situation where the application hangs. The request queue rockets and then I get 503 errors. If the application pool is recycled, then the error goes away till the next time it occurs.
There are no entries in the event logs relating to it except that it notes when the application pool took to long to shut down during the recycle process. I have reporting in my .net application that logs to a DB and sends me errors but it sends me nothing when this application is hanging.
What tools can I use to diagnose the problem and figure out what is causing it?
In opinion, whatever the structure of application is, if you're pretty sure that there is no bug, changing sort of properties on the application pool might solve the problem.
First on the 'Advanced Settings...' menu of the application pool change the 'Enable 32-Bit Applications' to the relevant value. If the platform used for building application is x86 then the value should be 'True'.
Second if your application demands to access disk resources, also you should the relevant security context for running the application pool in the 'Identity' property. The identity should access all the directories that your application wants to change or list.
After doing all the things, in case the problem existed, you should let me know about the platform of your application. Is it .NET or ISAPI?
Cheers

ASP.NET Application Goes to 500.21 ... until IIS Reset + Clear Tempoary ASP.NET Cache

We're seeing an odd pattern in our QA Lab. We have two ASP.NET applications, each deployed on the same Windows 2008 SP2+ box. We have our App Pool running in a Domain Account, and set to never re-cycle. The same 1 App Pool is used by both applications.
After several hours of running fine, new users surfing to a page in our application get the IIS7 Error Page, with a 500.21 error.
If we do nothing but:
1) IISRESET
2) Change folder to c:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\v2.0.50727\Temporary ASP.NET Files and "rd" the 2 applications.
And then surf to our web applications, all is fine.
Then several hours later, however, the 500.21 errors return.
What strikes me as odd is the seeming relationship between clearing the "Temporary ASP.NET Files" folders and the problem going away. I've a practice of clearing the "Temporary ASP.NET Files" folders when installing a new version of our application(s), but not otherwise.
Does this relationship ring familiar to anyone? Is there some new-ish IIS7 feature at work here?
Text of Error:
Server Error in Application "DEFAULT WEB SITE/PAIS"
Internet Information Services 7.0
Error Summary
HTTP Error 500.21 - Internal Server Error
Handler "PageHandlerFactory-Integrated" has a bad module "ManagedPipelineHandler" in its module list
Detailed Error Information
Module IIS Web Core
Notification ExecuteRequestHandler
Handler PageHandlerFactory-Integrated
Error Code 0x8007000d
Requested URL http://localhost:80/PAIS/Admin.aspx
Physical Path C:\0_Georgia\GA_IS_100142\PortfolioArchiveImageServer\Admin.aspx
Logon Method Anonymous
Logon User Anonymous
Most likely causes:
• ASP.NET is not installed or incompletely installed.
• A configuration typographical error occured.
• Unfavourable pre-condition evaluation exists.
Things you can try:
• If ManagedPipelineHandler is missing, ensure that:
o ManagedEngine is in .
o ManagedPipelineHandler is in , with correct pre-conditions.
• Install ASP.NET.
• Ensure all system.webServer/handlers#modules are in system.webServer/modules#name.
• Review pre-conditions in the and sections.
Links and More Information IIS core does not recognize the module.
View more information »
Thanks in advance,
Howard Hoffman
Faced the same problem and the fix was easy.
1) Open visual studio 2010 command prompt.
2) Run the command aspnet_regiis.exe -i
We found the actual problem, with MS ASP.NET support's help. It's pretty subtle. I think MS has said they will fix the issue in a follow on to the App Fabric release (which is now RTM). Fingers crossed.
The problem consistently occurs in this scenario:
1) ASP.NET web application not yet running. It includes WCF Net.Pipe and / or Net.Tcp bindings. I think the same would occur for NetMsmq but did not try it.
2) An inbound NetPipe or NetTcp WCF Windows Activation Service request is the initial request that starts the App Domain.
3) Application uses an 'Integrated' IIS App Pool (IIS7 or IIS 7.5)
4) The application uses HttpServerUtility.Execute during that 1st request.
It turns out that our application was firing an ASP.NET Health Monitoring event during the very 1st WCF operation -- the very operation that caused Windows Activation Service (WAS) to start our application. Our Health Monitoring configuration includes the TemplatedMailWebEventProvider.
Our application is using an 'Integrated' IIS App Pool.
The TemplatedMailWebEventProvider is implemented to create an email message body as HTML. It uses the System.Web.HttpServerUtility.Execute(string, TextWriter, Boolean) overload.
For this use case that overload does the wrong thing -- it initializes a 'Classic' IIS App Pool based HTTP pipeline. Because that's the wrong pipeline for an 'Integrated' IIS App Pool the pipeline gets corrupted with the next HTTP request -- which is actually the first inbound HTTP request.
So you get the 500.21 error for all future HTTP requests until the application is re-cycled. You don't need to perform the relatively drastic steps of IISRESET, clearing Temporary ASP.NET cache to clear up the error -- just restart the app via saving web.config and avoid the particular startup path that causes the error.
MS suggested a workaround for us -- use the SimpleMailWebEventProvider instead of the TemplatedMailWebEventProvider. That does work, since it takes HttpServerUtility.Execute out of the code path for the first request.
I'd suggested that MS introduce a new web.config <system.web> boolean setting -- UseIntegrated -- that let's the application specify the typeof App Pool to initialize with. Evidently IIS does not forward the App Pool type to ASP.NET, so my sugggestion is a work-around to that.
The TemplatedMailWebEvent provider is much more user friendly than the SimpleMailWebEventProvider, and we do hope MS addresses the issue.
Thanks all for reading,
Howard Hoffman
1. IIS 7 throws an exception as shown in below
2. Open visual studio 2010 command prompt in Administrator mode and execute aspnet_regiis.exe -i
3. Problem fixed, as shown below ASP.Net Application and ASP.Net MCV Application are running smoothly.
The problem more likely is in the application code. The Temporary ASP.NET Files folder contains pre-compiled copies of your app and will be refreshed every time the applications files are accessed. You can pre-compile these files with aspnet_compiler.exe in the \Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\ folder. Use the -errorstack option allow for more information to be generated about the error you are getting. Long running applications that don't recycle will run into problems if they use a lot of memory or retain large amounts of data in an inproc session state. if your sessions contain large amounts of information, consider using a sqlserver-based session manager.

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