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February 2009

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Deploying IIS dlls, part 2

Following up on my previous post about copying some CRM Plugin DLLs after a build ( http://arkesystems.com/blog/post/2009/02/Recycling-IIS-app-pools.aspx ):

It turns out that the error checking in post-build events isn't reliable (it only checks errorlevel at the end of the script), and apppools don't stop instantly even when told to stop instead of recycle. 

So if my xcopy encounters a "sharing violation" (errorlevel 4) then the post-build event isn't smart enough to notice by default.

Luckily, it's just a bat file, so we can add some checking ourselves.  This is getting more complicated than I would like, but at least I build reliably now.

"sleep" isn't necessary, but it's a useful command to have around.  It comes with Windows 2003 Server Resource Kit: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=9d467a69-57ff-4ae7-96ee-b18c4790cffd&DisplayLang=en ; restart visual studio after installing the kit.

A note on checking return codes in batch files: Equality checks are actually 'greater than or equal', so you will see people checking if errorlevel eq 1 often.  However, this only catches >= 1 error levels, and the occassional program that returns negative error codes will slip past.  Accordingly, always check "neq 0" instead of "eq 1".  Also, using "SETLOCAL ENABLEDELAYEDEXPANSION" and !ERORRLEVEL! is not strictly necessary in this script, but it's good practice to just always use delayed expansion when checking return values in batch files so that you don't screw up one day when you write an error check inside a loop.

So, hopefully my final iteration of a post-build script that needs to update some IIS dlls:

SETLOCAL ENABLEDELAYEDEXPANSION 
net pause KeepAliveService 
cscript /nologo "$(ProjectDir)\iis_stop_app_pool.vbs" "CRMAppPool" 
if !ERRORLEVEL! NEQ 0 GOTO FAIL 
set CRMDIR=C:\Program Files\Microsoft Dynamics CRM 
set loop=0 
:TRYCOPY 
set /a loop=%loop%+1 
xcopy "$(TargetPath)" "%CRMDIR%\Server\bin\assembly" /i /d /y 
if !ERRORLEVEL! NEQ 0 GOTO COPYFAIL 
xcopy "$(TargetDir)$(TargetName).pdb" "%CRMDIR%\Server\bin\assembly" /i /d /y 
if !ERRORLEVEL! NEQ 0 GOTO COPYFAIL 
cscript /nologo "$(ProjectDir)\iis_start_app_pool.vbs" "CRMAppPool" 
if !ERRORLEVEL! NEQ 0 GOTO FAIL 
net continue KeepAliveService 
GOTO OK 
:COPYFAIL 
if %LOOP% LEQ 10 GOTO TRYCOPYSLEEP 
goto FAIL 
:TRYCOPYSLEEP 
sleep 1 
goto TRYCOPY 
:FAIL 
echo "Failed with errorlevel !ERRORLEVEL!" 
exit 1 
:OK 
echo "OK" 

Edit 3/30/2010: For a 64 bit system, you can get silently redirected to SysWOW64 when a 32 bit process is trying to run something in system32.This causes iisapp.vbs to fail when run as a post build event. In Visual Studio, it shows as an exited with code 1 error. If you manually go to the [windows]\SysWOW64 folder and run iisapp.vbs, you can get an error like:Could not create an instance of the CmdLib object.Please register the Microsoft.CmdLib component.

One solution is to copy the necessary files to the SysWOW64 folder and reregister the dlls:
cd c:\windows\SysWOW64
copy ..\system32\iisapp.vbs .
copy ..\system32\IIsScHlp.wsc .
copy ..\system32\cmdlib.wsc .
regsvr32 cmdlib.wsc
regsvr32 IIsScHlp.wsc

 

Posted by David Eison on Friday, February 27, 2009 5:23 AM
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Recycling IIS app pools

When developing for Sharepoint or working on CRM DLLs, you need to recycle the IIS app pool a fair bit.

 

Maybe I’m late to the party and everyone already knows this, but just in case, this utility for resetting iis app pools rocks: http://www.harbar.net/articles/APM.aspx 

 

You can also recycle an app pool in a script with

cscript c:\windows\system32\iisapp.vbs /a "CRMAppPool" /r 

But, for my CRM DLL, I need a post-build event that stops the app pool before I copy a DLL.  I tried simply using iisapp.vbs to recycle, but this failed sometimes because the DLL can still be in use after the restart (I'm not sure if it restarts too fast, or if it due to overlapped recycling).

Based on posts from http://mscrm4ever.blogspot.com/2008/12/expediting-plug-in-development-using-vs.html and http://www.experts-exchange.com/Programming/Languages/Visual_Basic/Q_21362452.html , I ended up with the below.

My post-build event:

cscript /nologo "$(ProjectDir)\iis_stop_app_pool.vbs" "CRMAppPool"
set CRMDIR=C:\Program Files\Microsoft Dynamics CRM
xcopy "$(TargetPath)" "%CRMDIR%\Server\bin\assembly" /i /d /y
xcopy "$(TargetDir)$(TargetName).pdb" "%CRMDIR%\Server\bin\assembly" /i /d /y
cscript /nologo "$(ProjectDir)\iis_start_app_pool.vbs" "CRMAppPool"

 

The stop and start scripts: 

iis_stop_app_pool.vbs:

Option Explicit
Dim apool, strComputer, objWMIService, colItems, objItem
apool = WScript.Arguments.Item(0)
strComputer = "."
Set objWMIService = GetObject _
    ("winmgmts:{authenticationLevel=pktPrivacy}\\" _
        & strComputer & "\root\microsoftiisv2") 
Set colItems = objWMIService.ExecQuery _
    ("Select * From IIsApplicationPool Where Name = " & _
        "'W3SVC/AppPools/" & apool & "'")
 
For Each objItem in colItems
  Wscript.Echo "Stopping " & objItem.Name    
  objItem.Stop
Next

iis_start_app_pool.vbs:

Option Explicit
Dim apool, strComputer, objWMIService, colItems, objItem
apool = WScript.Arguments.Item(0)
strComputer = "."
Set objWMIService = GetObject _
    ("winmgmts:{authenticationLevel=pktPrivacy}\\" _
        & strComputer & "\root\microsoftiisv2") 
Set colItems = objWMIService.ExecQuery _
    ("Select * From IIsApplicationPool Where Name = " & _
        "'W3SVC/AppPools/" & apool & "'")
 
For Each objItem in colItems
    Wscript.Echo "Starting " & objItem.Name
    objItem.Start
Next

Posted by David Eison on Friday, February 27, 2009 1:09 AM
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Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 rsLogonFailed

Problem:

Web service request SetParameters to Report Server /reportserver">http://<machinename>/reportserver failed with SoapException. Error: Logon failed. (rsLogonFailed)

image

 

Fix:  Turn off the Execution Account.  Yes that’s correct, having the Yellow Warning sign is the correct setting.

image


Posted by Trenton Adams on Tuesday, February 3, 2009 7:24 PM
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