Published mvc4 web application re-seeding/erasing db randomly - azure

I have created a website using mvc4, everything working fine in the dev environment.
The site was running for about 6 hours (luckily only a few people had registered) and then the database reverted to the state it would be when the site was first published.
I had made a few changed to the site since it had gone live (just to the views) and those changes persisted, had the site somehow re-published itself, those changes wouldn't have stayed.
The changes I made as to how the db seeds were all from this post; http://kevin-junghans.blogspot.ie/2013/01/seeding-customizing-aspnet-mvc.html .
Any help would be great, I can't pin down the problem and don't want to put the site live again until I know that user accounts won't be deleted.
If there is any more specific information that would be useful for identifying the problem let me know.

I ended up publishing the project including the database, than removing reference to initDb and recreating the database, then re-publishing.. And so far the issue hasn't happened again.

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Releasing new Core Data Schema to iCloud production

I have an app out in the App Store, and I am working on a lightweight migration (adding new attributes and new entities, not deleting anything). From extensive research, I know that I need to add a new version of my current Core Data Model for the local version of the data model. Anyone who updates their app and only uses the local data will automatically be migrated over.
However, I can not find anything about what happens when I update the iCloud schema (from icloud.developer.apple.com). Mainly, I'm concerned about users who are on older versions of the app and are using iCloud. When I update the schema in the iCloud website, will users on an older version of the app lose their current data or not be able to sync their data since their local schema will be different from the iCloud one?
Also, I'm using an NSPersistentCloudKitContainer for syncing the Core Data with CloudKit.
Any help is greatly appreciated as I do not want to mess up anyone's data!
No, their data still be on iCloud and they could continue to use your app.
When your Schema is deployed to the Production environment, you can not change types of Records or delete them, so all your changes will be done only in addition to the current Schema settings and does not affect users, which have not updated the app yet.
I had a similar question previously and was quite anxious about updating my app Schema, but everything went well - no problems for users and no data was lost.
Do not forget to initialize your new scheme from the app and deploy changes to the Production on iCloud dashboard.
You could initialize your scheme in your AppDelegate when you initialize your NSPersistentCloudKitContainer with following code:
let options = NSPersistentCloudKitContainerSchemaInitializationOptions()
try? container.initializeCloudKitSchema(options: options)
After that you could comment out these lines until the next update of Core Data model.
You could check that all changes are uploaded in the iCloud dashboard by clicking on Deploy Schema Changes - you will see a confirmation window with all the changes to the model which will be deployed.
It is also possible to change your Scheme directly in the iCloud dashboard, but it is not so convenient (unless you need to add just one Record type).
Since changes in the Schema are not affecting existing users, I usually move them to Production before I submit the app for review, but after all testing related to new Record types is done and I am not planning to change anything there.

Azure App Services Web App not registering update

I have a Azure App Service app that I'm trying to get deployed.
Today I ran into an issue where .NET informed me (via the yellow screen of death when I browse to the URL of my app) that I had a missing DLL (for the purposes of this question I don't think it really matters).
I used FileZilla to publish my changes in an attempt to do a manual deployment first and then work my way to automate it.
After so many attempts to fix it I later realized that the error message never changed. I did something more severe and renamed my bin folder into something completely different and the exact same error message would appear.
I've stopped the service, restarted it, and as mentioned, renamed folders, etc. and still the exact same error message persisted.
I also decided to open up the Azure Portal Console for my App Service app to browse a bit and to my amazement, nothing seemed to have reflected at all. The FTP shows one thing and the Console shows another.
Would anyone have any idea as to why this is happening?
I eventually got it to work and I will share what I tried.
I deleted the web app and created it again (I found this to be important the first time around). This was quite time consuming and did help but it wasn't long before the same problem happened again.
Then I finally found a solution that seems to give me consistent results:
I kept on editing the Web.config which seems to force a recompile and clear some sort of cache. So each time the web app stopped updating, I would make a slight change in the Web.config, upload it via FTP and the app finally updates.
If anyone has any more details on this, it would be greatly appreciated.

Access 2013 web app - restoring previous app snapshot package without reverting data (structured staging environment)

I have a reasonably complex Access 2013 web app which is now in production on hosted O365 Sharepoint. I would like to take a backup (package snapshot) into a test environment, and then migrate this to production once development is complete (I certainly don't want to do development on the production system!). The problem is that the snapshot also backs up all data so uploading the new package over the top of the existing package in the sharepoint app repository reverts the data to the time of snapshot as well. Alternatively, rolling back to the original snapshot if there are issues would lose all data after the new package was applied.
I can easily get a second version of the app going by saving as a new application etc but this creates a new product ID etc in the app store. We also use a Access 2013 desktop accdb frontend to hook directly into the Azure SQL database to do all the stuff that the web app can't provide (formatted reports etc) so I cant just create a new app every time without dealing with all of the credential and database renaming issues.
So my question is, does anybody know how to safely operate a test environment for Access 2013 web app development? One needs to be able to apply an updated version, or rollback to the old one if there are problems without rolling back the data. With the desktop client I can just save a new copy of the accdb file every time obviously. I dont mind creating a new instance or link to the app on sharepoint each time, however this obviously generates a totally new database (server name, db location, login id's etc) as well. You would hope there is a way to upload and replace your app without touching the data, else how else can you develop without working directly in production?
Any answers would be really appreciated.
Thanks.

Drupal menu items and blog entries disappeared for anonymous users

I've been struggling with a problem now for a few hour and I cannot find any answers or anyone with the same problem -
Some menu items are missing on my site www.namhost.com (Drupal 6.22) and when viewing the blog it shows "No blog entries have been created". When I log in as admin everything works fine, so this problem only occurs for anonymous/guest users.
I've changed nothing on the site which may have caused this problem and here comes the really strange part - When viewing a copy of the site locally everything works 100% even for anonymous/guest users.
I've tried:
flushing caches
rebuilding permissions
checked if the "anonymous" user is present in the database
viewing on different browsers
None of these yielded any results.
Because the problem doesn't occur locally I'm starting to believe this could be a problem on the server the site is hosted on (Linux with PHP5.2), but the admins had a look and couldn't find anything.
Any help/insight would be highly appreciated.
================FIXED<<<<<<<-----------------------------
I am not allowed to answer my own question and it was suggested that I edit the question to include my answer so here goes:
Firstly, thanks for all the responses.
I disabled the "ACL" module (http://drupal.org/project/acl) and the problem was solved. It was previously used for our forum which was also disabled a few months back, so it's not needed any more.
I still have no idea why this module caused the site to work locally but not on the server. I will be in contact with the server admins to find out if they changed/updated anything on the server which may have caused this module to cause a malfunction.
Any insight could still be helpful top prevent this from happening again.
Check your Drupal config:
Are you using node_access, content_access, or any other permissions-related addon mods? Disable them and see if the problem persists. If that doesn't work, disable all non-core mods and re-enable them one-at-a-time until you find the offender.
Compare your hosting configs:
If it's not related to Drupal, compare the local and remote server configurations. Do both use the same versions of php, apache, apc, cgi, etc.? A phpinfo(); on both servers should give you the most important details for comparison. Do a similar comparison of the MySQL setup and content. Finally, check for differences in your .htaccess files (if any) between the two locations.
Test another hosting enviornment:
Download a virtual appliance like QuickStart which is already configured to host Drupal sites for development and non-production purposes, and see if the site works correctly in that. If it does, you could do an additional validation by porting to a new host who offers a trial/money-back-guarantee and see if it works correctly there.
If your site works fine elsewhere, give your current host a good thrashing for making you go through all of this to figure out the problem lies on their end.

SharePoint 2010 Web part Deployment Error

When I deploy my web part locally everything is fine. The web part is registered as safe, and is completely usable.
When I deploy the wsp to another server the web part comes back with the following error although everything appears to be deployed correctly (and the SafeControls appear within the web.config). :
Web Part Error: A Web Part or Web Form Control on this Page cannot be displayed or imported. The type XXXXX could not be found or it is not registered as safe.
It is almost the exact same issue as this question. The only difference being that when I look at my web.config on the server I am deploying to I DO see the SafeControls.
Any thoughts on things that I could try to fix the issue? Server settings, how I package or deploy, etc.
I was able to solve my issues by manually removing the solution from the GAC. Then I just tried to add the solution again and everything works well.
I had added the web part in question after the initial upload of the solution (sorry about leaving that part out of the description). Before doing this I was trying to retract and delete from the Central Admin then retry the addition. Apparently this didn't actually delete the solution from the GAC.
The site was using the old version of the solution which did indeed not include a SafeControl for the new web part. Once the old version was removed the addition of the new version went without a hitch and all is well.
Thanks to all for their suggestions.

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