Upgrading DotNetNuke from 4.4.1 to 4.8.4

Upgrading DotNetNuke from one version to another is fairly simple other than the fact that the changes in the web.config file need to be made by hand (although this is not true any more). I recently upgraded my system from 4.4.1 to 4.8.4 and faced a couple of issues that I have listed below.

Before you read any further, I would like to advice you to take a back up of your database and file system. I cannot emphasize enough on how important this is. I had to restore both of them several times in my beta environment during the recent upgrade as I worked through the issues.

Since I was skipping multiple versions, I decided to use the 4.8.4 install version of DotNetNuke.

Problem 1: Installing Package File OpenID_01.00.00_Install: Error

This was the first issue I faced. Because I do not need the provider I could continue ahead. I restored the database and file system. But before re-running the installer I removed the files

• Install\Package\LiveID_01.00.00_Install.zip
• Install\Package\OpenID_01.00.00_Install.zip

I have Googled for this error and am unable to find a solution for this problem.

Problem 2: Redirect Loop: Firefox has detected that the server is redirecting the request for this address in a way that will never complete

After the installation is complete, I tried to browse to the home page in Internet Explorer. It kept trying to load the page for 5 minutes, but never timed out. So I tried it in Firefox and that's when I got the message. If in your web.config the trust level is set to Medium, change it to Full. That should fix this problem. If you were already at Full trust, compare the code in Default.aspx with the version of the file in the installation package. If they differ, then replace the file on your system with the file from the installation package.

CodeSmith 5.0 Beta released

If you use the popular code generation tool CodeSmith, you'll want to download the latest beta release. It adds support for .NET 3.5. So now you'll be able to use LINQ in your templates. There are also some code generation performance improvements. Read more about it here.

(Via Rob Howard's blog)

Anti-virus and search indexing programs can affect Visual Studio build performance

On Scott Guthrie's blog, he has mentioned how sometimes anti-virus and search indexing programs can affect Visual Studio's build performance.

One issue I've seen reported several times are cases where virus scanners, spy-bot detecters, and/or desktop search indexing tools end up monitoring a directory containing a project a little too closely, and continually change the timestamps of these files (they don't alter the contents of the file - but they do change a last touched timestamp that VS also uses).  This then causes a pattern of: you make a change, rebuild, and then in the background the virus/search tool goes in and re-searches/re-checks the file and marks it as altered - which then causes VS to have to re-build it again.

Such programs are known to cause problems on production systems too.

(via: Visual Web Developer Team Blog)

Chance to win free .NET eBooks

Manning.com is giving away one free .NET eBook every day starting tomorrow until July 17, 2008. You can sign up for the lucky draw here.

Listed below are links to some of their books on Amazon:

• ASP.NET AJAX in Action
• ASP.NET 2.0 Web Parts in Action: Building Dynamic Web Portals
• C# in Depth: What you need to master C# 2 and 3
• LINQ in Action

One lucky guy will win the entire catalog of all Manning .NET  eBooks.

Sys.WebForms.PageRequestManagerParserErrorException

Recently I inherited a ASP.NET project from a colleague, who left the company. Call it Murphy's law or whatever, but the very first time I tried to make changes I got the following exception at run time: Sys.WebForms.PageRequestManagerParserErrorException. After a little bit of Googling I found out the cause. I was using the UpdatePanel and using a Response.Write in my PageLoad. Eilon Lipton's blog post has more details.