aspnet_wp.exe - causing problems..

[Rob Meade]

Hi all,

We have recently adopted to using .net for our web applications which were
previously written in vanilla ASP.

Things have been going ok until recently, or at least its only recently
we've noticed the problems!

It seems that from time to time our .net apps just stop responding, even if
the server is rebooted when its all back up and running the apps will still
not be running, the only solution we have found to this so far is to 'end
process' on the task manager processes for aspnet_wp.exe - as soon as we
then open a web browser and goto one of the apps, it all starts working
again.

The only thing I've managed to find only was an article where the problem
had been identified (kinda) but related to database connections with
Oracle - MS has a fix for this but suggests that its ONLY for the problem in
the article and not a fix for anything else.

I was therefore wondering if anyone else had had the same problem? From
what I've read this thing will stop responding for anywhere up to 3 minutes
before its realises there's a problem stops and starts again - in our
experience here the time has been much longer than 3 minutes and has always
required human intervention.

We are as you can imagine rolling our more and more .net applications
throughout our organisation but this is killing them all, our organisation
is part of the NHS (National Health Service) and therefore some of these
applications are used 24/7 in places such as Accident & Emergency and also
in the Ambulance control centres.

Any help would be appreciated,

Regards

Rob

[Rob Meade]

"John Sivilla" wrote ...

Hi John, thanks for your reply..

Do you have any errors in the Event Log?
Thousands...the y wont let me periodically clear them down here, to the
extent now where often the event log wont load properly because there are
too many, we have had one or two that mentioned the aspnet_wp though (I
think)..
Did you try shutting down the WWW Publishing service in the Services applet in control panel, instead of rebooting? Or ending the aspnet worker
process through the Task Manager?

The latter, this then makes it work again when you browse to it, but alas as
it happens so randomly it makes it a bit of an issue to keep stopping the
process to make all our applications work again (ie, not really a solution).
If you have Windows Server 2003 and IIS 6 are you using Application Pools to separate the processes within your Web Server? Did you try recylcing
these?

Not running 2003 alas - 2000, IIS5, all sp's are installed, all patches
applied.
I find it strange that a reboot does not fix the problem.
It doesnt appear to - we rebooted the server this morning after a problem
where ALL of the websites stopped responding (ASP/HTML/.net) this was
apparantly due to the updates that were applied by the SUS, however, a
reboot resolved all of that, but then we heard from A&E that their tracking
app wasn't running, indeed it wasn't, so we ended the process and opened a
browser to check it, bingo - working again - of course there is the
possibilty that the reboot DID resolve it, then it died again between that
call and the reboot etc...
Are there any processes which start up at boot time,
not sure to be honest...
or is it possible that users are hitting your site as soon as it comes up?
we have 2 servers in our web cluster, however one is currently out of the
cluster whilst its being rebuilt, therefore when this box came back online
after rebooting it earlier YES, all users would have hit it at the same
time.
It may be a single process that hangs your entire system. This is possible if you are not using Application pools, and/or if you are not isolating your
individual web apps.

They are isolated within IIS.
Did you recently install any new application or software?

nope - only the standard windows updates and so on, but we've always done
those pretty much as soon as they've become available, as I mentioned, its
only recently we've been running the .net apps as before that it was all
ASP...

Regards

Rob

[John Sivilla]

It looks to me that there is one single application that may be causing the problem. Everytime this app or a particular function within the app is hit, it causes the hang.

Therefore the solution would be to track this application or function down.

One way is to shut down each app (put an unavailable page so no users can not hit it), and bring each one up one by one. When the hanging occurs you will have isolated the problem.

Another way, as you say you have you apps isolated within IIS. If you had your application protection set to HIGH on each application, you would not have this problem as only the application causing the problem would be affected. You can set them all to high now if you wish, it should be straightforward . Right click each app in the IIS console and in the Directory Tab, set the Application Protection to High.

Also you can back up the Event Log if you need to keep the records. You really should insist on getting this working properly.

hope this helps,
John

"Rob Meade" wrote:

"John Sivilla" wrote ...

Hi John, thanks for your reply..

Do you have any errors in the Event Log?

Thousands...the y wont let me periodically clear them down here, to the
extent now where often the event log wont load properly because there are
too many, we have had one or two that mentioned the aspnet_wp though (I
think)..

Did you try shutting down the WWW Publishing service in the Services

applet in control panel, instead of rebooting? Or ending the aspnet worker
process through the Task Manager?

The latter, this then makes it work again when you browse to it, but alas as
it happens so randomly it makes it a bit of an issue to keep stopping the
process to make all our applications work again (ie, not really a solution).

If you have Windows Server 2003 and IIS 6 are you using Application Pools

to separate the processes within your Web Server? Did you try recylcing
these?

Not running 2003 alas - 2000, IIS5, all sp's are installed, all patches
applied.

I find it strange that a reboot does not fix the problem.

It doesnt appear to - we rebooted the server this morning after a problem
where ALL of the websites stopped responding (ASP/HTML/.net) this was
apparantly due to the updates that were applied by the SUS, however, a
reboot resolved all of that, but then we heard from A&E that their tracking
app wasn't running, indeed it wasn't, so we ended the process and opened a
browser to check it, bingo - working again - of course there is the
possibilty that the reboot DID resolve it, then it died again between that
call and the reboot etc...

Are there any processes which start up at boot time,

not sure to be honest...

or is it possible that users are hitting your site as soon as it comes up?

we have 2 servers in our web cluster, however one is currently out of the
cluster whilst its being rebuilt, therefore when this box came back online
after rebooting it earlier YES, all users would have hit it at the same
time.

It may be a single process that hangs your entire system. This is possible

if you are not using Application pools, and/or if you are not isolating your
individual web apps.

They are isolated within IIS.

Did you recently install any new application or software?

nope - only the standard windows updates and so on, but we've always done
those pretty much as soon as they've become available, as I mentioned, its
only recently we've been running the .net apps as before that it was all
ASP...

Regards

Rob