Setting up Debugging ASP (vanilla Active Server Pages, not ASP.NET) has always been tricky. I remember doing it for the first time as early as 1998 or so. It was during MS Visual Interdev launch in Chennai, which happened to be my first presentation for Microsoft India as well. Those days, it was on Windows NT 4.0 SP4 & IIS 4.0. The whole installation normally would take those days (with those ancient hardware) about half a day.

Anyways, today we were setting up a web application that was written by us long time back on ASP. We successfully restored the DB, copied the source into a Windows 2003/IIS 6.0 machine and tried to run. We got strange errors and figured out that if we are going to get this working, we need to debug the application line by line. So started the effort of getting a simple ASP page debugged in Windows 2003. After nearly 4 hours strangely I got it working across 3 different OS configurations!

Before going to the steps, remember that setting up Native Debugging (in fact, any form of Debugging) in a Production Web Server is a big security risk and performance degrade, so please do it only on your Development machines.

Windows XP (32-bit) SP2, IIS 5.1 & Visual Studio.NET 2003

1. Ensure the currently logged in user who is running Visual Studio.NET is a member of the "Debugging Users" group in the computer.
2. Ensure you have IIS 5.1 installed with Frontpage extensions enabled. Try creating a simple Visual Basic.NET ASP.NET Web application and run it. 
3. Once it runs successfully, add a new file into the project and name it "Check.asp" or any other name, but .asp file extension. Then have a simple <% Response.Write ("Welcome") %>  ASP line, setup the breakpoint on this line.
4. Run VS.NET 2003 Setup, and ensure you have either Native Remote Debugging or Full Remote Debugging (as shown below) enabled. I think these features are available only VS.NET Enterprise Editions. If not, have it installed. 
   
5. Then right-click on the VS.NET web project properties, in Configuration Properties -> Debugging, select ASP Debugging  (as shown below)
   
6. Open in Notepad URLScan Configuration file (normally found at C:\WINDOWS\system32\inetsrv\urlscan\urlscan.ini). This comes pre-installed with Windows XP SP2. Add a line in the [AllowVerbs] section, DEBUG. This is to add an allowed Verb, in this case DEBUG, HTTP method.
7. Go to IIS MMC Snap-in. Right Click on Web Sites, go to Home Directory Tab, click on Configuration button. Goto to Mappings tab, select .asp row, click Edit. In that dialog box, select All Verbs (as shown below). Press OK all way down.
   
8. Reset IIS, using IISRESET command from Command Prompt or IIS Snap-In.
9. Go to the VS.NET Web Application, right-click on the ASP file (Check.asp) and Set as Start Page.
10. Run the VS.NET application in Debug mode by pressing F5, you should hit the break point.  Good Luck.

The above steps work only if both IIS and VS.NET are on the same machine and you are also administrator to the box. Both these may be rare (and potential security bad-practise) in a real scenerio.  In that case refer to my general items to check at the bottom.

Windows XP (64-bit) or Windows 2003, IIS 6.0 & Visual Studio.NET 2003

Windows XP 64 bit, ships with IIS 6.0. So remember to Allow the Active Server Pages, in Web Server Extensions page in IIS snap in. Apart from this you should follow all the steps I have told above for Windows XP 32-bit.

Some webpages, talk about running IIS 6.0 in IIS 5.1 mode, I don't think so it is necessary. IIS 6.0 perfectly supports debugging of ASP pages with VS.NET 2003.

Windows 2003/Windows-XP (64 bit), IIS 6.0 & Visual Interdev

1. Ensure your IIS is up and running.
2. Then Allow Active Server Pages, in Web Server Extensions page in IIS snap in.
3. Create a simple ASP page, run it and check that it is working correctly.
4. Have the second CD of Visual Studio 6.0 handy. Launch the setup and select "Server Components", choose "Backoffice Server components", press Install, in that ensure you have Visual Interdev Server and Remote Debugging components selected. Install them.
5. Reboot the machine.
6. Install Visual Studio 6.0 Service Pack 6.0 and Reboot the machine.
7. Create a simple Web project in Visual Interdev and run it. Most probably your Front Page Server extensions will need tweaking, set it up.
8. Create a simple ASP page, name it "Check.asp" or any other name. Then have a simple <% Response.Write ("Welcome") %>  ASP line, setup the breakpoint on this line.
9. Refer and ensure you have all the points mentioned in my section "General Items to check" below, especially #2 & 3.
10. Run it, it should work. If not doesn't worry, normally it takes more than few hours to get this working especially with IIS 6.0.
11. Refer to this support page at Microsoft at "INFO: Visual InterDev 6.0 Debugging Resources", which contains a host of links on this issue. Since many of the contents here are dated and for Windows NT 4.0/9x,

General Items to check

Even with all the above, you couldn't get it working, check out the following:

1. Ensure the currently logged in user who is running Visual Studio.NET is a member of the "Debugging Users" group in the computer. You may also want to add "INTERACTIVE, NETWORK SERVICE, IWAM_MACHINENAME" users into the group for testing and once everything works out, keep removing them one by one.
2. The official pages: Visual Studio Remote Debugging Setup index page and ASP Remote Debugging Setup. The second link talks of adding few registry keys. For convenience, I have saved it as a text file here. Download and save it in your machine with .REG file extension and run it. It will add the necessary registry keys.
3. Check whether you have enabled ASP Server side script debugging enabled. This can be done in IIS Snap In, Web Sites, Right-Click Properties, Home Directory Tab, Click on the configuration button, go to Debugging Tab (as shown below):
   
4. Go to Component Services from Control Panel. Go to Computers->My Computer->DCOM Config, in that select the Catalog Class object. Right Click and go to Security Tab. In that Select Access Permissions area. Select Customize, press Edit and ensure to add all the relevant users (like IWAM_MACHINENAME, NETWORK SERVICE, INTERACTIVE, etc.). NETWORK SERVICE user will exist only on IIS 6.0 (Windows XP 64 bit and on Windows 2003), so if it doesn't exist, it is OK.
5. In the Catalog Class properties dialog, select Identity tab, ensure "The Launching user" is selected.

நேற்று இரவு ஒரு டின்னரை முடித்துவிட்டு, நானும் எனது விருந்தாளியும் காரில் ராதாகிருஷ்ணன் சாலையில் வந்துக் கொண்டிருந்தோம். மணி  சுமார், 11:30pm இருக்கும், நான் தான் ஒட்டுனர். சாலை குறுக்கே பல காவல்துறையினர், வரும் ஒவ்வொரு காரையும் நிறுத்தி சோதனை செய்துக்கொண்டிருந்தனர். எனது காரை நிறுத்திய ஒரு காவலர், மிகப் பவ்வியமாக "சார், கோவிச்சுக்காதிங்க வாய கொஞ்சம் ஊதரிங்களா?". அவர் கேட்டவிதம் எனக்கு அச்சரியம், சென்னை காவலர இவர்!.

கதையை தொடர, ஊதினேன், "ஒன்றுமில்லை, போலாம் சார்" என்று என் காரை அனுப்பிவைத்தார். 

Recently I came across The World Fact Book, this is a US Government's CIA website that provides comprehensive information of all countries - their geography, history, economy, people, culture, concerns and more.  Unlike the popular belief, seeing this site you will get convinced that US Government is well informed about rest of the world!.

Two sites I normally turn to for Encyclopedic content - the first is MSN's Encarta and the other is free Wikipedia. Wikipedia even has a Tamil Encyclopedia (if you notice even this URL has a Tamil folder name!)

In my last post, I mentioned that I am using Sauce Reader to do my postings. Though I managed to do text only posts, I am having problems with posts that include images. Sauce Reader supports two image upload options - MetaWebLog API and FTP. MetaWebLog is not supported in dasBlog 1.7.x and for some reasons (which I am yet to figure out), my FTP server refuses to get connected from Sauce Reader or even from IE. My FTP server gets connected only from GlobalScape CuteFTP, even though the FTP server is Windows Server 2003/IIS.

While using Sauce Reader I noticed that its UI looks sharp and clean; curious on the 3rd Party controls they could be using I went into the "C:\Program Files\Synop\Sauce Reader" folder and I noticed they used a handful of third-party components (a combination of free/commercial). I found the list of components impressive, so giving them below:

1.  .NETXP  - This is a set of free packages that include lots of Windows XP like controls, Alerts, Reusable forms, Wizards, FTP Client, MSN Messenger/Outlook style alerts and more. Check it out. [Free & Commercial]
2. .NET Components from Chilkat - Seeing their website this company seems to make lot of email, HTML related components for .NET & ActiveX. [Commercial]
3. XML-RPC.NET from Cook Computing. [Free]
4. esellerate - A Software commerce Provider. [Commercial]
5. NET Html Agility Pack from Simon Mourier - An agile HTML parser that builds a read/write DOM and supports plain XPATH or XSLT [Free]
6. SharpZipLib - A Zip, GZip, Tar and BZip2 library written in .NET. [Free]
7. Infragistics Windows UI Development Tools [Commercial]
8. Apache log4net - A tool to help the programmer output log statements to a variety of output targets. [Free]
9. Lucene.net  - Lucene.Net is a byte-to-byte port to .NET of Jakarta Lucene a high-performance, full-featured text search engine library written entirely in Java. Now it is commercially available as Search Black Box.  [Free & Commercial]
10. NetSpell SpellChecker  - A free .net Spell Checker. [Free]
11. Microsoft Application Block [Free]

Since I do little printing on paper and I have a variety of printers available in my office, I have so far resisted the idea (mine and my wife's) of buying a printer for my Home PC. Though my Home PC is fully loaded (P4 HT, 1GB RAM, 180GB x 2, DVD-RW, CD-RW, TV Tuner, 17" LCD, DSL, FireWire, USB) , till now I only had a scanner for emergency scan and email.

This week, when I wanted to scan and email an important document, the scanner decided to die. Frustrated, the next day as soon as I went into to office, I ordered for a top of the art, HP All-in-One Home device. Yesterday, the vendor delivered HP PhotoSmart 2608, which is a Colour Photo Printer (meaning it can print photos on special paper), Scanner, Fax & Copier. It includes a LCD Display for settings and Photo viewing, USB & Ethernet Interface & multiple memory card slot readers. In Chennai it costs Rs.14,600/-. I installed it today morning and so far happy with the print and scan quality.

Previously whenever I got to install any new device on my home PC (my Systems guys don't let me do it in the office ), I go straight ripping the package, connecting the power, installing the software and after few hours, turn to the manual. Today, I decided to act wise, I first read everything in the box, including the instructions on how to open the box and remove the printer. Then once I found the setup instructions, I went through it religiously one-by-one, all the way through the 20 odd steps and got the printer installed. It turned out to be good idea, as without the proper steps, this could have taken me hours to figure out. 

The first time the software installation failed with some crazy MSI error. It offered to uninstall and reboot. I did that and reinstalled the software, everything went fine this time. During the software installation I noticed two things, that it required Microsoft .NET Framework (and installs it, if it doesn't find one) and it took more than 30 minutes to complete it (probably on my machine, Windows XP itself doesn't take this long). When I say 30 minutes on installation, I meant purely the file copy/settings time it took and it doesn't include the waiting for user-response time or detecting the printer, etc. Definitely a long time...

I have been using Sharp Reader for reading all my subscriptions and  using the Web UI of dasBlog to do my postings. Though I love Sharp Reader for its simplicity, lately I was feeling down because an update for it is long overdue.

Anyways, after trying out Newsgator, FeedDaemon and others now I am using Sauce Reader. I like the neat Interface, especially the clear, legible fonts (I guess enhanced by Clear Type). I will likely stick with this, will keep posted on how my trial goes.

This posting is posted from the WebLog feature of Sauce Reader - hope it comes out clean.