rakkimk : ASP.NET

IIS7 – Improving ASP.NET performance (concurrent requests) while on Integrated Mode

rakkimk — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 17:58:55 GMT

If you were a ASP.NET 1.1 developer, and faced some performance problems, I’m sure you would have come across the KB 821268 which talks about tweaking maxWorkerThreads, maxIoThreads in the <processModel>, minFreeThreads, minLocalRequestFreeThreads in <httpRuntime>, maxconnection in the <connectionManagement> section. But for ASP.NET 2.0, we have <processModel autoConfig=”true” /> where these settings are tweaked in the runtime……

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Read the rest of the blog post here.

http://blogs.msdn.com/rakkimk/archive/2009/07/08/iis7-improving-asp-net-performance-concurrent-requests-while-on-integrated-mode.aspx

ASP.NET 2.0 x64 – You may get HTTP 400 Bad Request or Error as mentioned in KB 932552 or 826437

rakkimk — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 02:24:32 GMT

I’m sure you already know about this fix for ASP.NET which fixes an issue of “not a valid path” exception, and this fix for ASP.NET 1.1 for the same reason. If you receive this error now on your application, you might not need to apply the hotfix because your ASP.NET version might be higher than the one available with this hotfix, so verify the DLL versions before even requesting the hotfix from Microsoft.

So, after installing the hotfix, you should do the below registry changes (not sure if the hotfix does this automatically – I haven’t tested this):

DWORD HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\ASP.NET\VerificationCompatibility = 1

as mentioned in the KB article 932552. But, you might see that this doesn’t work if you run the application pool under 32-bit mode on a x64 Windows Server 2003 or 2008. That’s just because, the ASP.NET reads this key from a different location as below:

DWORD HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\ASP.NET\VerificationCompatibility = 1

I’m sure you doesn’t want me to explain why ASP.NET reads from this location instead of above. If you want, please drop a note.

In IIS 7.0, you would get the below error message while running under Integrated mode:

“HTTP Error 400.0 - Bad Request
ASP.NET detected invalid characters in the URL”

Hope this helps!

.rm

Microsoft Web Platform Installer Beta

rakkimk — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 01:11:50 GMT

If you are a web deployment guru, and looking to reduce your burden of downloading lot of software, configuring them and if you didn’t check Bills’ blog earlier, you better do check it right now.

The new ‘Microsoft Web Platform Installer Beta’ gives you an easy way of configuring the ASP.NET/IIS stack along with tools needed for development all in one go.

1. Select the IIS components you need to install

2. Select the tools, .NET SP

3. Download and Installation

You can get it from here. Happy Deployment (with less hassles)!

.rm

ASP.NET - Using the same encryption method used by ActiveDirectoryMembershipProvider to encrypt secret password answer and store it in AD

rakkimk — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 00:26:29 GMT

Okay, this is an interesting stuff. MembershipProvider automatically encrypts most of the sensitive information such as password, secret-question-password. What if you want to use the same encryption method yourself to encrypt data?

Before continuing reading, You need to understand and keep in mind that your <machinekey> section is the one which would be used for the encryption / decryption by the MembershipProvider. If you change it after encryption, your decryption may fail. So, please be careful while modifying anything on <machinekey> section in your web.config.

I've just created a class inheriting from MembershipProvider. I've implemented all the methods of it (just a dummy implementation - VS would be more than happy to do that for you - if you find difficulty in this, write to me; I'll help you). I've also created another new method called EncryptMe which takes a string and returns me a string which is in fact the encrypted string. This method just gets the string in bytes with RNGCryptoServiceProvider and just call the function EncryptPassword of the MembershipProvider class to do the encryption.

In fact, the EncryptPassword method is a protected method of the MembershipProvider class, and by using it, we have just achieved the same encryption which is used by the MembershipProvider class (which our ActiveDirectoryMembershipProvider also uses to encrypt your secret-password-answer). Since it is protected, you can't access it anywhere outside, but inside a derived class.

Source of my EncryptMe Function

    public string EncryptMe(string s)
    {
        byte[] bytes = System.Text.Encoding.Unicode.GetBytes(s);
        byte[] data = new byte[0x10];
        new System.Security.Cryptography.RNGCryptoServiceProvider().GetBytes(data);
        byte[] dst = new byte[data.Length + bytes.Length];
        Buffer.BlockCopy(data, 0, dst, 0, data.Length);
        Buffer.BlockCopy(bytes, 0, dst, data.Length, bytes.Length);
        byte[] b = EncryptPassword(dst);
        return Convert.ToBase64String(b);
    }

Now, you can just store the encrypted string to the active directory property which you've mapped to the Secret-question-password. Check this knowledge base article which explains how to modify an attribute of an user in active directory. It just talks about the properties needed by the FTP user isolation, just modify the code to use your own attribute.

Again, please make sure you do not alter your <machinekey> section which has all the information needed to encrypt and decrypt data.

Hope this helps!

ASP.NET - Enabling PasswordReset functionality when using ActiveDirectoryMembershipProvider

rakkimk — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 22:59:00 GMT

If you want to use ActiveDirectoryMembershipProvider on your website to manage users specially the password reset functionality, you will also need to create few attributes in the active directory schema for the "USER" object. You can check this MSDN article to know more about this, but again, it doesn't list how to create the needed attributes, but it tells you what are all the attributes needed if you are considering "Password Reset" functionality.

Firstly, ActiveDirectoryMembershipProvider does not support retrieving the password, but you can reset the password by providing secret-question, and secret-answer. You may also need to create few more attributes in the active directory schema associated with this. Below are those attributes:

Password Question - Unicode String
Password Answer - Unicode String
Failed Answer count - Integer
Last time at which the user supplied an invalid answer - Large Integer/Interval
Account locked out time - Large Integer/Interval

These are the 5 new attributes which you need to add in the active directory schema for the "USER" object. I will explain how to add new attributes and associate them to an existing object.

You need to first install the schema snap-in by registering schmmgmt.dll (regsvr32 schmmgmt.dll)
Now, open an MMC, and add "Active Directory Schema" snap-in
Expand the Active Directory Schema, and right click on Attribute, and select "Create Attribute"
Enter the common name, LDAP name, other fields for the attribute you are creating. For example, "PasswordQuestion" - this would be having its type as Unicode String. See the above list of attributes and its types appropriately. If Integer, enter minimum/maximum values too.
For the OID, you need to check this MSDN article.

Now follow the above steps to create all the 5 attributes which are needed. After creating these attributes, we need to attach them to the "USER" object.

In the same MMC, Expand "CLASSES" and select user object.
Right click on user and select properties
Go to its attributes tab, and click Add
Select the attributes that you've created one by one and click on OK

That's it. Now, your user object would have all those attributes, and you can store values using any method you like. If you create an user using CreateUser wizard control, it would populate and store the values of the secret-question, answer automatically. ActiveDirectoryMembershipProvider would take care of storing, retrieving values of these attributes itself, you no need to program anything for them.

But, there would be some situation the users have been already created, but you need to attach these attributes to them. Follow the above methods to add attributes to the user object. And, now open the particular user's properties in ADSIEDIT.msc, and add values to them.

After following all the above steps, follow the other steps mentioned in this article to configure your web.config sections to map the attributes you've created in AD.

NOTE: Password-answer is the only one attribute out of these 5 which would be stored in an encrypted format. <machinekey> section would be used for the encryption of this, if you create an user using the CreateUser wizard. But, if you have already created the user in the AD, and you want to just store the secret-question and password, you may want to check my next blog where I'll explain how to use the same encryption method used by the MembershipProvider to store the secret-password in the active directory for the user.

AJAX - Calling PageMethods defined on a UserControl

rakkimk — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 08:19:42 GMT

I recently worked with one of my customer, asking for help to migrate his application to AJAX.NET. He had some UserControls which had few methods which needs to be called (ScriptMethods).

If you have a [ScriptMethod] defined in your user control, you cannot call that from your .aspx page using PageMethods.functionname(). Only ScriptMethods defined in the same .aspx page can be called.

A simple workaround would be to have another page method inside the page which in-turn would call the ScriptMethod on the UserControl. Remember all the methods should be public static to be used as a PageMethod.

Below is an example:

UserControl's ScriptMethod:

        1: [WebMethod]

       2: [ScriptMethod(UseHttpGet = true)]

       3: public static string MyUserControlPageMethod()

       4: {

       5:     return "Hello from MyUserControlPageMethod";

       6: }

ASPX page:

       1: <asp:ScriptManager ID="ScriptManager1" runat="server" EnablePageMethods="true" ScriptMode="Auto">

       2: </asp:ScriptManager>

       3: <uc1:WebUserControl ID="WebUserControl1" runat="server" />

       4:  

       5: <script type="text/javascript" language="javascript">   1:            2:       3:      function callbackFunction(result) {   4:         $get("WebUserControl1_Label1").innerText = result;   5:      }   6:         7:      function CallUserControlPageMethod()   8:      {   9:         PageMethods.ForwardingToUserControlPageMethod(callbackFunction);             10:      }  11:     </script>

In ASPX .cs file:

       1: [WebMethod]

       2: [ScriptMethod]

       3: public static string ForwardingToUserControlMethod(string ddlValue)

       4: {

       5:     return WebUserControl.MyUserControlMethod(ddlValue);

       6: }

Hope this helps!

IIS 6.0 - Disabling ASP.NET on all virtual directories, but one?

rakkimk — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 07:52:47 GMT

One of my customer running IIS 6.0 had this special scenario where he would like to run ASP.NET 2.0 applications only on a single virtual directory on the entire server. He would like to isolate his Virtual Directory alone to have the ScriptMaps of ASP.NET, but not any other website or virtual directory or a folder.

The ScriptMaps for a virtual directory would generally come from the master level properties. To get this in IIS manager, click on the "Web Sites" folder and get its properties, under home directory -> configuration, you will find the script maps configuration. Remove everything regarding ASP.NET.

Now, none of your web sites, virtual directories would have ASP.NET script maps (unless you've specifically added them there).

So, now what? How to add the script maps for a specific virtual directory alone? Run aspnet_regiis with below options:

aspnet_regiis -s "<PATH">

e.g: aspnet_regiis -s "W3SVC/1/Root/MyVDir"

By the above command, the ASP.NET script maps would only be registered to MyVdir virtual directory under the web site with identifier 1.

Hope this helps!