MSDeploy And "site Under Maintenance" Page / Finding Alternatives
Jan 26, 2011
I am new to MSDeploy as well as IIS admin.
In order to show a "site under maintenance" page we are looking at two alternatives.
1) Have an app_Offline.htm page and sync it to the server when maintenance starts.
2) Create a separate folder with a totally different site (which can show a lot more dynamic information than what we can with the app_offline page). During maintenance, it is being that we change the virtual folder mapping of the site to point to this other folder while we work on updating the site.
Is there a way to change the virtual folder to point to another folder using MSDeploy? Is there any other way to do this via a script rather than having to go to each server and manually change the folder ?
In asp.net 3.5, what's the best (most convenient) way to redirect users to a page that informs them the "Site is currently undergoing maintenance. check back later."
Originally, someone recomended setting the starting page in IIS, but I don't have access to IIS (hosting company does) so that's not an option. Another person said to go into visual studio, right-click on the desired starting page, and mark it as "Set as start page", but that would involve recompiling & uploading the website EVERY time I want to perform maintenance & then recompile again once I'm done.
Am I able to specify the start page in my web.config file or something along these lines?
I have an ASP.NET site that I'm going to have to take down to make some major structural updates to, and I was wondering how I should go about it from the client-side perspective. I have heard of an App_Offline.htm file or something like that, but I've never really gotten that to successfully work. Does anyone know how to do this?
EDIT
My app is running ASP.NET 4.0, for what it is worth.
In quite some scenario's, placing app_offline.htm in the root is just right: you do some updates, the message appears while updating, and that's that. The idea is, as Microsoft puts it, that before anything is called, IIS first checks if app_offline.htm is there and if so, it cancels everything and displays it.
So for so good, but in many situations it doesn't work:
When you have a compile error in an ASPX page and a user links directly to it When you have conflicting assemblies When you have a parsing error in your web.config In the midst of removing / uploading the entire site.
A direct link to a static HTML page is still displayed as suchm File-not-founds, access-denieds are thrown before the message is shown Possibly more scenario's exist that fail. My point is: for any serious updating work, app_offline.htm is not suitable. I sometimes create a redirect in IIS, to another site, but another site may not always be available and it can confuse users.
Ideally, I'd want to keep the current location in the url location bar of the end-user, show the message, and have the page auto-refresh each minute to see whether the site is back, so that the user continues where he left of when the site comes back. While technically easy enough with a static page, it will fail for the above mentioned reasons the minute an error is thrown.
In one of our ASP.NET Web site solutions I need to roll out an update that might take reasonable time. It spawns multiple Windows Azure Workers and projects and so simple Deployment Swap is ruled out.
Essentially I'm just thinking about way to redirect all web requests to a "site is under maintenance" page for some time, given the project is under Windows Azure.
I'm aware of the app-offline.htm trick with IIS, but I doubt that Azure Web Role will allow this one to be deployed or run (it spins down the app domain).
How does one put up a server maintenance page or reference..
Do you build a whole separate asp.net project with you basic page and logo and use that on the domain, until your main project is back up and running..
I have a site that the users log into using their windows authentication. I need to give them a way to log off but don't know what the code behind the button would look like.
I am using msdeploy to transfer my changes(via a nant script in Team City) that I make to a site and it is great!! I have just one question, I am using msdeploy with the sync feature to make my life easier.I currently exclude the web.config in my msdeploy because I do not know how to change the web.config on the fly. How do I change the web.config on the destination site if I do a sync?
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On the remote web server I have installed the remote service http://x.x.x.x/MsDeployAgentService.If I use the Web Application Project's Publish command in VS2010 I can successfully publish to this remote web server and update a specific IIS website.
What I want to do now is execute this capability from the command line.I am guessing it is two steps. First build the web application project using the relevant build configuration:
Then issue the MsDeploy command to have it publish/sync with the remove IIS server:
msdeploy -verb:sync -source:package="C:MyApplicationobjReleasePackageMyWebApplication.zip" -dest:contentPath="My Production Website", computerName=http://x.x.x.x/MsDeployAgentService, username=adminuser,password=adminpassword
Unfortunately I get an the error: Error: (10/05/2010 3:52:02 PM) An error occurred when the request was processed on the remote computer.
Error: Source (sitemanifest) and destination (contentPath) are not compatible for the given operation. Error count: 1.
I have tried a number of different combinations for destination provider but no joy .Has anyone managed to replicate VS2010 Web Application Project "One Click" Publish from the command line?
What I'm looking to do is lock the application so the admin can do maintenance for however long. All i want to do is be able to click a button on a "maintenance" page and it makes it so anyone who attempts to use the system and anyone who is already in the system is redirected to a page, if they try to do anything, that says the site is down for maintenance.
on postback, on redirect, etc. No Access until that button is clicked again to unlock.
I want to put website in maintenance mode, so i can rollover my new stuff. How can i keep users away from loging into my website and i will test my website live.
App_offline.html takes admin away as well. Is there any logical way of doing this?
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A web application works with the database. Once a day, the database should be scanned and alerts should be sent to users. From what I've seen out there, additional project has to be created which will be installed on the server and will work with the same database. Executable created by this project has to be installed in Windows scheduler to be activated once a day.This seems complicated and inefficient: starting additional executable and working on the same database.
I have been tasked with producing a web application for a new client. What they're looking for requires a Gridview with slave Detailsview within an Update Panel.
I produced this, including the Gridview in markup, as follows:[Code].... [Code]....
However, although it works, it's been requested that I move most of this to code behind (for easier maintenance), which is causing me a few headaches.
What is the correct option here, since I see many potential methods?
Should I create an instance of the Gridview and Update Panel in markup, then define all events and columns in code behind? Create a new Gridview entirely in code behind and place it within the Update Panel? Create both in code behind?
I am trying to automate our build/deployment process.
So far I am using:
a Visual Studio 2010 solution with a main Web Application project (and dependent projects) MSBuild MSDeploy CruiseControl.Net
So after much wrangling and gnashing of teeth, I now have CCNet kicking off an MSBuild script to build, package and deploy the website. The MSBuild script is below:
[code]....
This all works fine as long as on the target machine there is already a website configured in IIS. This doesn't need to be an existing "real" site (it could just be a shell).
I have a codebehind.vb for a master page from which I'm trying to find a hiddenfield in the content page. I was finding it like this without a hitch...
I need to maintain daily attendance of every employee ...
Salary is given on 1st of every month , minimum CL for an employee is 12 days in a year. After 12 days , if he or she absent more than 12 days of CL , then deduct from his or her salary amount to be paid next times.
I have a control in a content page that I want to find the width and left attributes of the style. I am trying to find this from Javascript code that exists on the Master Page. How do I do that?
I am using VS2005 and I have a solution file (.SLN) which has 8 projects. I moved the solution file to a different path on a shared folder to have better organization of my projects and to allow access to the solution/projects from any computer on the network. After that, I edited the .SLN file so that the path of the projects in the solution file are correct (all on shared folders).
After that, I opened the .SLN and everything seemd to be working fine. However, I notcied that the "Start Options" of the website part of the solution file is missing the "Start Options", ie, the Start Options are reset to default values. I think also, but not sure, some other settings of the Solution/Projects have been reset.
Questions:
1. Where the Web Site "Start Options" are stored ?
2. How I can maintain the Start Options and similar settings if the .SLN file is moved or opened from different computers on the network ?
3. I am not using an team development tools, only plain (vanilla) VS 2005 Prof. Edition. Is it possible to have 2 or more developers work on the same solution/projects (shared on the network), if both developers will coordinate manually simultanous access to the porject files/resources/source code ?
Im looking for some input on a validation problem i have. My demands for validation are:
1. Able to do database checks
2. Error messages are custom and imported from other localized source as stringvariables(NOT resource files).
3. DRY serverside and clientside validation.
As far as ive seen data annotations dont work well under these cirumstances, custom attributes are needed just to be able to output the strings(wonder why this wasnt thought of). This isnt a dealbreaker but as ive tested sofar custom attributes must be added in the global.asax wich i 1. cannot get to work in the CMS im building this on and 2. i dont want to have to edit the global.asax everytime the scripts are implemented. Serverside this solution works fine though. From what ive read IDataErrorInfo should not be used? So havent really checked how to get this rolling with client-side either.
My thought was using custom service layer validation with xval but documentation is very poor to the extent i could find any(couldnt find any real nfo on how to implement xval with your own code, ie not using the autgened client-side metadata wich leads to the annotation problem described above). So i have a hard time finding any working solution other than to build something 100% custom.
Do anyone have a solution or perhaps some information or can steer me in any direction on the best way to getting this done in a good fashion other than building custom?
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I am looking for an alternative to using UDP multicast on the .NET Framework and am looking for suggestions.I need to send messages to several web servers running quite a few ASP.NET applications. These messages would be one-way only, coming from several different machines. UDP multicast would be perfect except that I can't use it due to it requiring administrative rights. Seehttp://stackoverflow.com/questions/1941463/asp-net-multicast-udpclient-problems for details as to why.Is there something else that would work in a similar manner, allowing multiple applications to receive broadcast-type messages?
