User name and password dialog refresh after 3 mins

[Funky]

Hi,

I have developed an ASP.NET application which has been running in
production for around 3 months without any major glitches. Recently, a
user was attempting to upload a rather large CSV file and ran into a
strange problem.

After roughly 3 minutes of processing, the application reprompted the
user for their user name and password (NT authentication). At this
point, the ASP.NET page re-fired the last event that it was processing.

For a bit of more detailed background on the process:

1 User chooses a CSV file to upload
2 User clicks "Upload" and the page reposts.
3 The page saves the CSV file and validates each record
4 Upon validating, the records are created as individual objects, and
added to an ArrayList
5 This ArrayList is then stored in Session.
6 The user clicks "Proceed with upload".
7 The page reposts and submits the records to a backend system via a
web service.
8 At around about 3 minutes, the user is repromted for their username
and password.

Upon investigation, this event occurs whilst the records are still
being processed. The remaining records are sent to the web service, but
then the web service calls begin again from the start, so the records
are added twice. The system is supposed to redirect the users to
another page once the upload has finished.

I have tested if it is the AppPool recycling and junking the Session
data, but it is not since I have set the recycle events to log in the
event log, but nothing appears.

Some other important info:

- Session timeout is 20 mins.
- Script timeouts 10 minutes
- Site uses SSL
- IIS 6.0 on Win Server 2003

Has anyone encountered this error before or get any tips of what might
be playing up?

Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

Cheers,

Rowan.

[Steven Cheng[MSFT]]

Hi Funky,

Welcome to ASPNET newsgroup.
From your description, you are encountering some strange IIS authentication
and asp.net webservice calling behavior in your asp.net web application. As
you mentioned that the whole processing include two main steps:
1. Submit the CSV file to server and parsing the file to store data objects
in session.

2. resubmit the page and transfer the data objects to backend db through
webservice.

If there're anything I misunderstand, please feel free to let me know.

As for the
================
repromted for their username
and password.
================

I'd like to confirm some things:

* What's the authentication setting in your asp.net web.config and your
IIS's application virtual directory?

* Have you checked the IIS log to see whether the request records looks
normal for that page?

* Also, for the problem, is it occured only from a specific client and when
the CSV file's size is very large? I'd suggest you try perform the same
test through local machine ( do the same operation from the local IE client
on the IIS server machine) to
see whether the same problem remain.

Thanks,

Steven Cheng
Microsoft Online Support

Get Secure! www.microsoft.com/security
--------------------
| From: "Funky" <rm*****@consultel.com.au>
| Newsgroups: microsoft.public.dotnet.framework.aspnet
| Subject: User name and password dialog refresh after 3 mins
| Date: 11 Oct 2005 02:12:00 -0700
| Organization: http://groups.google.com
| Lines: 51
| Message-ID: <11**********************@g47g2000cwa.googlegroups .com>
| NNTP-Posting-Host: 203.35.1.78
| Mime-Version: 1.0
| Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
| X-Trace: posting.google.com 1129021925 6771 127.0.0.1 (11 Oct 2005
09:12:05 GMT)
| X-Complaints-To: gr**********@google.com
| NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 11 Oct 2005 09:12:05 +0000 (UTC)
| User-Agent: G2/0.2
| X-HTTP-UserAgent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1;
.NET CLR 1.1.4322),gzip(gfe),gzip(gfe)
| X-HTTP-Via: 1.0 TDCPRX001
| Complaints-To: gr**********@google.com
| Injection-Info: g47g2000cwa.googlegroups.com; posting-host=203.35.1.78;
| posting-account=xXGegQ0AAAASqd3kHIG0JdF6g4XfLq6S
| Path:
TK2MSFTNGXA02.phx.gbl!TK2MSFTNGXA03.phx.gbl!TK2MSF TNGP08.phx.gbl!newsfeed00.
sul.t-online.de!t-online.de!border2.nntp.dca.giganews.com!nntp.gigan ews.com!
postnews.google.com!g47g2000cwa.googlegroups.com!n ot-for-mail
| Xref: TK2MSFTNGXA02.phx.gbl
microsoft.public.dotnet.framework.aspnet:349889
| X-Tomcat-NG: microsoft.public.dotnet.framework.aspnet
|
| Hi,
|
| I have developed an ASP.NET application which has been running in
| production for around 3 months without any major glitches. Recently, a
| user was attempting to upload a rather large CSV file and ran into a
| strange problem.
|
| After roughly 3 minutes of processing, the application reprompted the
| user for their user name and password (NT authentication). At this
| point, the ASP.NET page re-fired the last event that it was processing.
|
| For a bit of more detailed background on the process:
|
| 1 User chooses a CSV file to upload
| 2 User clicks "Upload" and the page reposts.
| 3 The page saves the CSV file and validates each record
| 4 Upon validating, the records are created as individual objects, and
| added to an ArrayList
| 5 This ArrayList is then stored in Session.
| 6 The user clicks "Proceed with upload".
| 7 The page reposts and submits the records to a backend system via a
| web service.
| 8 At around about 3 minutes, the user is repromted for their username
| and password.
|
| Upon investigation, this event occurs whilst the records are still
| being processed. The remaining records are sent to the web service, but
| then the web service calls begin again from the start, so the records
| are added twice. The system is supposed to redirect the users to
| another page once the upload has finished.
|
| I have tested if it is the AppPool recycling and junking the Session
| data, but it is not since I have set the recycle events to log in the
| event log, but nothing appears.
|
| Some other important info:
|
| - Session timeout is 20 mins.
| - Script timeouts 10 minutes
| - Site uses SSL
| - IIS 6.0 on Win Server 2003
|
| Has anyone encountered this error before or get any tips of what might
| be playing up?
|
| Thanks in advance for any suggestions.
|
| Cheers,
|
| Rowan.
|
|

[Funky]

Hi Steven,

Thanks for the reply.

Since I posted this I have tested the issue a whole lot further and
resolved that the issue lies not with the application - but with the
ISA proxy server. Bascially the upload works fine when the site is NOT
accessed via the proxy server, but stuffs up when it IS run through the
proxy server.

Wierd behaviour I know. One of the network guys thinks it might be
something to do with Proxy exclusions or something (I'm not familiar
with ISA that much).

To answer your questions anyway:

The authentication in web.config is set to Windows, whilst IIS is set
to NT Integrated with Basic authentication. I noticed something
interesting during testing this morning too. If I turn off NT
Integrated authentication and leave Basic authentication on then the
authentication dialog doesn't reappear, but the "re-post" still occurs
in the background without the users knowledge!

What led us to the proxy issue was that the site worked fine on an
identical test server, but not on the production server. Once we
removed the proxy settings from our browsers, the site worked fine for
the Production server (where the original issue was).

In the interim, we can get around the issue by introducing a Session
variable flag that is set to True when it begins the web service calls,
and is set to False when it displays the confirmation page. If the
submit event occurs again, it detects a True value for the Session
variable and automatically redirects to the confirmation page.

I'll post up the resolution (hopefully there is one) in relation to
proxy server when the network guys get back to me.

Thanks again for the help.

Cheers,

Rowan.

[Steven Cheng[MSFT]]

Thanks for your quick followup Funky,

Glad that you've found the cause of the problem. IF there're any further
finding or anything else
we can help, please feel free to post here.

Regards,

Steven Cheng
Microsoft Online Support

Get Secure! www.microsoft.com/security
(This posting is provided "AS IS", with no warranties, and confers no
rights.)
--------------------
| From: "Funky" <rm*****@consultel.com.au>
| Newsgroups: microsoft.public.dotnet.framework.aspnet
| Subject: Re: User name and password dialog refresh after 3 mins
| Date: 11 Oct 2005 21:00:22 -0700
| Organization: http://groups.google.com
| Lines: 43
| Message-ID: <11**********************@g47g2000cwa.googlegroups .com>
| References: <11**********************@g47g2000cwa.googlegroups .com>
| <Wy*************@TK2MSFTNGXA02.phx.gbl>
| NNTP-Posting-Host: 203.35.1.78
| Mime-Version: 1.0
| Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
| X-Trace: posting.google.com 1129089627 22490 127.0.0.1 (12 Oct 2005
04:00:27 GMT)
| X-Complaints-To: gr**********@google.com
| NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 12 Oct 2005 04:00:27 +0000 (UTC)
| User-Agent: G2/0.2
| X-HTTP-UserAgent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1;
..NET CLR 1.1.4322),gzip(gfe),gzip(gfe)
| X-HTTP-Via: 1.0 TDCPRX001
| Complaints-To: gr**********@google.com
| Injection-Info: g47g2000cwa.googlegroups.com; posting-host=203.35.1.78;
| posting-account=xXGegQ0AAAASqd3kHIG0JdF6g4XfLq6S
| Path:
TK2MSFTNGXA02.phx.gbl!TK2MSFTNGXA03.phx.gbl!TK2MSF TNGP08.phx.gbl!newsfeed00.
sul.t-online.de!t-online.de!border2.nntp.dca.giganews.com!nntp.gigan ews.com!
postnews.google.com!g47g2000cwa.googlegroups.com!n ot-for-mail
| Xref: TK2MSFTNGXA02.phx.gbl
microsoft.public.dotnet.framework.aspnet:350182
| X-Tomcat-NG: microsoft.public.dotnet.framework.aspnet
|
| Hi Steven,
|
| Thanks for the reply.
|
| Since I posted this I have tested the issue a whole lot further and
| resolved that the issue lies not with the application - but with the
| ISA proxy server. Bascially the upload works fine when the site is NOT
| accessed via the proxy server, but stuffs up when it IS run through the
| proxy server.
|
| Wierd behaviour I know. One of the network guys thinks it might be
| something to do with Proxy exclusions or something (I'm not familiar
| with ISA that much).
|
| To answer your questions anyway:
|
| The authentication in web.config is set to Windows, whilst IIS is set
| to NT Integrated with Basic authentication. I noticed something
| interesting during testing this morning too. If I turn off NT
| Integrated authentication and leave Basic authentication on then the
| authentication dialog doesn't reappear, but the "re-post" still occurs
| in the background without the users knowledge!
|
| What led us to the proxy issue was that the site worked fine on an
| identical test server, but not on the production server. Once we
| removed the proxy settings from our browsers, the site worked fine for
| the Production server (where the original issue was).
|
| In the interim, we can get around the issue by introducing a Session
| variable flag that is set to True when it begins the web service calls,
| and is set to False when it displays the confirmation page. If the
| submit event occurs again, it detects a True value for the Session
| variable and automatically redirects to the confirmation page.
|
| I'll post up the resolution (hopefully there is one) in relation to
| proxy server when the network guys get back to me.
|
| Thanks again for the help.
|
| Cheers,
|
| Rowan.
|
|