Roger Dickey Jr

After deploying multiple websites to a production server, the following events were occurring very frequently, filling my Application log: 

#1

Event Source: Enterprise Library Instrumentation
Event ID: 0
Description:
Failed to create instances of performance counter ‘Total Command Executions’ - The requested Performance Counter is not a custom counter, it has to be initialized as ReadOnly..

#2

Description:
Failed to create instances of performance counter ‘Average Command Execution Time’ - The requested Performance Counter is not a custom counter, it has to be initialized as ReadOnly..

#3

Description:
Failed to create instances of performance counter ‘# of Commands Executed/Sec’ - The requested Performance Counter is not a custom counter, it has to be initialized as ReadOnly..

and #4

Description:
Failed to create instances of performance counter ‘# of Connections Opened/Sec’ - The requested Performance Counter is not a custom counter, it has to be initialized as ReadOnly..

Rather than installing Enterprise Library on the Production server, I found an easy solution to the problem and start providing Perfmon statistics.

To Fix this, just run:

%windir%\Microsoft.NET\Framework\<version>\installutil.exe <asp.net website>\bin\Microsoft.Practices.EnterpriseLibrary.Data.dll

After that, you should get the following event log message indicating everything’s fine:

Event Type: Information
Event Source: LoadPerf
Event Category: None
Event ID: 1000

Description:
Performance counters for the Enterprise Library Data Service (Enterprise Library Data Service) service were loaded successfully. The Record Data contains the new index values assigned to this service.

I am in the middle of deploying a new product to our production server but 2 websites are crashing whenever I attempt to access them. Yet, the same code works fine (of course) on my local development pc and staging server.

Here are the event details: 

Event Source: ASP.NET 2.0.50727.0
Event ID: 1310

Description:
Event code: 3007
Event message: A compilation error has occurred.
Event time: 6/5/2007 4:18:33 PM
Event time (UTC): 6/5/2007 8:18:33 PM
Event ID: 8155195f68f9454f97ab73ee83689f86
Event sequence: 8
Event occurrence: 1
Event detail code: 0
Application information:
Application domain: /LM/W3SVC/1252183813/Root/admin-1-128255483127749852

Trust level: Full
Application Virtual Path: /admin
Application Path: D:\foo\websites\admin\
Machine name: xxxxxx
Process information:
Process ID: 2376
Process name: w3wp.exe
Account name: NT AUTHORITY\NETWORK SERVICE
Exception information:
Exception type: Exception
Exception message: (0): error CS0016: Could not write to output file ‘c:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\Temporary ASP.NET Files\admin\16994e73\70d74143\App_Web_masterpage.master.cdcab7d2.gl-cyqs4.dll’ — ‘The directory name is invalid. ‘
Request information:
Request URL: http://foo/admin/Default.aspx
Request path: /admin/Default.aspx
User host address: xx.xx.xx.xx
User:
Is authenticated: False
Authentication Type:
Thread account name: NT AUTHORITY\NETWORK SERVICE
Thread information:
Thread ID: 1
Thread account name: NT AUTHORITY\NETWORK SERVICE
Is impersonating: False
Stack trace: at System.Web.UI.TemplateParser.ProcessException(Exception ex)
at System.Web.UI.TemplateParser.ProcessMainDirective(IDictionary mainDirective)
at System.Web.UI.TemplateControlParser.ProcessMainDirective(IDictionary mainDirective)
at System.Web.UI.PageParser.ProcessMainDirective(IDictionary mainDirective)
at System.Web.UI.TemplateParser.ProcessDirective(String directiveName, IDictionary directive)
at System.Web.UI.BaseTemplateParser.ProcessDirective(String directiveName, IDictionary directive)
at System.Web.UI.TemplateControlParser.ProcessDirective(String directiveName, IDictionary directive)
at System.Web.UI.PageParser.ProcessDirective(String directiveName, IDictionary directive)
at System.Web.UI.TemplateParser.ParseStringInternal(String text, Encoding fileEncoding)
Custom event details:

The unique aspects of this error are:

Event message: A compilation error has occurred.

Exception message: ‘The directory name is invalid. ‘

Thread account name: NT AUTHORITY\NETWORK SERVICE

and that this is ASP.NET 2.0 on Windows 2003 R2.

This MSKB Article was the closest thing I could find describing the error but it only applies to .NET 1.0 & 1.1. There are also several other forum threads describing similar issues, but the “The directory name is invalid.” part of the error makes this different.

As it turns out, since the Application Pool for these websites are running as the Network Service user, which doesn’t have a HOME directory, there wasn’t a Temporary directory to be found in which to compile these pages at runtime. The default TEMP & TMP values are set to %USERPROFILE%\Local Settings\Temp.

Also, don’t let the Temporary ASP.NET Files path in the error confuse you, that’s not the source directory that it’s complaining about.

So… to fix the problem:

1. Set the TEMP & TMP System Environment Variables to: %windir%\Temp

2. Run: iisreset

3. Now refresh the web site and hopefully everything works since the Network User has a temporary directory to compile the pages then copy to Temporary ASP.NET Files.

Good Luck!