Web site down after application update

We have an ASP.Net 3.5 web site running on IIS6. The network people changed the IP address of the mail server and emails sent from this site stopped working. We found some code (developed by devs no longer at the company) where the IP address of the mail server was hard coded, changed it, recompiled, then deployed to the local machine.

Back on the server, we copied the entire web site to another folder as backup, then copied the newly compiled site onto the server, stopped and started the site in IIS Manager in MMC. All we got was a cryptic error. We set customErrors mode to RemoteOnly and stopped/started the site and browsed to the site from the server. The message was still cryptic that customErrors needed to be set.

We then copied the original files back into the application folder and tried browsing to the site. The error this time was that web.config was not accessible. What the crap? Just copying files. (turns out, yes...when copying to a folder outside the site hierarchy, the files get the rights of the new folder).

We've tried everything, even giving full rights to the full folder hierarchy to everything IIS and the site use, restarted IIS, rebooted server. We're totally stumped and need some help urgently.

Questions: 1) How do we get decent error message out of this thing? We've tried all the mode settings of customErrors with no luck. I don't like the risk of installing Elmah or something else at this point.

2) What permissions do we need for this thing to run? We've tried everything we can think of.

Thanks

Re: Web site down after application update

Hi there,

please clarify what you mean by "criptic error". What exactly do you see?

some things to consider

1. Yes, pasting folders might reset permissions. Check the site properties in IIS folder to see the user running the app. That guy should have rights.

2. When you copied the modified code, did you paste the whole folder? most of the times some files dont have to be copied from dev environment. Files such as web.config must be kept as most of the times dev and prod have different settings. Make su such .config files are their original non-dev versions

3- remove al "*.pdb" files from BIN folder

Re: Web site down after application update

cryptic, meaning the "yellow screen of death". Default ASP.Net error page that tells you NOTHING. I even changed customErrors.

We've actually made a bit of progress, but now the Windows Event Log gets the error "An error occurred executing the configuration section handler for system.web/identity. I've triple checked the <identity> section of web.config and it is correct.

Re: Web site down after application update

hi craigberg,

Usually, you can get an error message: " An error occurred executing the configuration section handler for system.web/identity" if the ASP.NET version / application pool is incorrect. Please double check