IIS and Apache, but more generally...

So, most of you know I've been working for another company (CCP Games) for the past about a month and half or something.  Anyway, they are completely a Microsoft shop.  Windows, Exchange, IIS, etc.  No Unix or Macs in site, really.  Even the artists work in Windows.  It's pretty different from what I've learned at Six Apart/Danga.  In fact, you could probably call it the opposite.

All of the Microsoft software seems designed to make things easier at the expense of making it harder to actually dig in and find the things you're looking for.  Notably, I am sorely missing things that might tell me what is going on.  Right now IIS is sitting in the background spinning trying to serve a page.  I'm getting no output.  I'm very unsure as to how to troubleshoot this.

Sometimes when I hit the page it says remote procedure call failed, and sometimes it spins.  Further investigation reveals that it is every other time.  Okay, dig out the Event Viewer, which is Microsoft's way to show what's going on.  Ah, in the System log, there's an error that happens when the page spins:

The application-specific permission settings do not grant Local Activation permission for the COM Server application with CLSID
{0C0A3666-30C9-11D0-8F20-00805F2CD064}
 to the user ...snip....  This security permission can be modified using the Component Services administrative tool.

For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.

Well, if that isn't helpful, I don't know what is.  It wasn't doing this before I went on vacation.  Well, let's take a short trip down the Google path and see if I can find anything useful.  Well, I found some info.  Dug through the registry and found that the above is referring to the Machine Debug Manager.  I pulled up Component Services and am trying to figure out why it can't launch?  It seems like it should work, the various accounts there have access to launch it.

In further exploration, it seems like this is caused by ASPCache expiring.  I had downloaded a demo version because I couldn't find the full one on the internal site.  So now I need to actually take the time to dig it out of the network somewhere and get the real one installed.  Then hopefully things will work again.  Hopefully.

Back to work... exciting!

Comments

[Justin]

Oh good lord - that makes me miss my last job @ PCWorld just this much. It was an IIS shop for a while, and probably my favorite Event Viewer messages were the ones that used to redirect you to a 'Page Not Found' on Microsoft's Support Site.

Those were the good ole' days!

[Papi Chulo]

Don't count on it. IIS problems are the worst thing ever. A lot of them are memory related, so stopping and starting will clear. Permissions are a super pain in the ass. No matter how well you think you have them set up... no matter how correct it all looks, you're wrong. You're wrong now, you were wrong five minutes ago when you thought you may have been right, and you'll always be wrong no matter what you do. I have rebuilt sites in IIS where every single setting matched the broken site and had them work. Sometimes I've had to give up and just make IUSR_WHATEVER (I can't remember what that account is called by default) god on the box.

Use the event logs (system and security, mostly), the log files under \winnt\logfiles or somewhere like that... Turn off all "friendly" error messaging. Test all your external components (DLLs and whatnot) individually (I do this by writing JScripts that exercise the exposed methods I'm using in my site) to make sure that they don't break anywhere.

Good luck, man. I'm not usually one to jump on the Trash Microsoft bandwagon, but when it comes to IIS and/or Exchange Server, I've lost a lot of hours of my life chasing stupid shit.

[Moxie Mouse]

My experience has been that designers that come from the Graphic Design world (and hence the Web design world) tend to use Macs because everyone in their industry used Macs. And that whole thing started from the initial Macs having better monitor and print fidelity. There are some Web designers that use PCs, but I find that their background  doesn't usually stem from Graphic Design. They come at it from more of an HCI direction.

But that wasn't true when the serious video game development started, and it seems the PC domoniates there. There aren't any robust 3D animation tools on the Mac.

But of course, as soon as I post this, someone will probably come by and correct me, and so...whatever...I'll shutup now :)

[jason]

Ahh, welcome to the world of Microsoft troubleshooting.  In my experience I've found that Google is your best friend for open source troubleshooting, while the microsoft KB is far more valuable for MS-specific problems.  As time goes on I find more and more valuable MS troubleshooting info through Google, but I still always go straight to the kb to start.