My custom Windows Service is not writing to my custom Event Log - c#-4.0

I have written a custom Windows Service that writes data to a custom Event Log (in the Windows Event Viewer).
For dev'ing the biz logic that the service uses, I created a Windows Form which simulates the Start/Stop methods of the Windows Service.
When executing the biz logic via the Windows Forms, info is successfully written to my custom Event Log. However, when I run the same biz logic from the custom Windows Service, information is failing to be written to the Event Log.
To be clear, I have written a library (.dll) that does all the work that I want my custom service to do - including the create/write to the custom Event Log. My Form application references this library as does my Windows Service.
Thinking the problem is a security issue, I manually set the custom Windows Service to "Log on" as "Administrator", but the service still did not write to the Event Log.
I'm stuck on how to even troubleshoot this problem since I can't debug and step into the code when I run the service (if there is a way to debug a service, please share).
Do you have any ideas as to what could be causing my service to fail to write to the event log?

I use it like this. There can be some typos. Writed it on my phone browser...
public class MyClass
{
private EventLog eventLog = new EventLog();
public void MyClass()
{
if (!System.Diagnostics.EventLog.SourceExists("MyLogSource"))
System.Diagnostics.EventLog.CreateEventSource("MyLogSource", "MyLogSource_Log");
eventLog.Source = "MyLogSource";
eventLog.Log = "MyLogSource_Log";
}
private void MyLogWrite()
{
eventLog.WriteEntry(ex.ToString(), EventLogEntryType.Error);
}
}

To debug a running service you need to attach to the process. See here for the steps.
You could also add parameter checking to the Main entry point and have a combination service and console app which would start based on some flag. See this SO post for a good example but here's a snippet:
using System;
using System.ServiceProcess;
namespace WindowsService1
{
static class Program
{
static void Main(string[] args)
{
if (args == null)
{
Console.WriteLine("Starting service...");
ServiceBase.Run(new ServiceBase[] { new Service1() });
}
else
{
Console.WriteLine("Hi, not from service: " + args[0]);
}
}
}
}
The above starts the app in console mode if there any parameters exist and in service mode if there are no parameters. Of course it can be much fancier but that's the gist of the switch.

I discovered why my service wasn't writing to the Event Log.
The problem had nothing to do with any part of the code/security/etc that was attempting to write to the EL. The problem was that my service wasn't successfully collecting the information that is written to the EL - therefore, the service wasn't even attempting to write the log.
Now that I fixed the code that collects the data, data is successfully writing to the event log.
I'm open to having this question closed since the question was amiss to the real problem.

Related

Finding "Application Stop Events" in Azure Application insights

I have a web application that sometimes undergoes "Platform (Infrastructure Upgrade)" events.
The only way that I can detect these is by going to the Azure portal and drilling down
Diagnose and Solve Problems > Web App Restarted
and looking for errors such as below
My question really, is can I use Application Insights to query Azure to find out when these events happen?
Seems like a simple thing to do, but can't figure it out to do it.
can I use Application Insights to query Azure to find out when these events happen?
No, but your application is maybe able to log an event upon start or close? For example, in a .Net Core app you can listen to stop/start events like this:
// This method gets called by the runtime. Use this method to configure the HTTP request pipeline.
public static void Configure(IApplicationBuilder app, IWebHostEnvironment env, IHostApplicationLifetime hostApplicationLifetime, TelemetryClient telemetryClient)
{
hostApplicationLifetime.ApplicationStarted.Register(() => { telemetryClient.TrackEvent("App Started"); });
hostApplicationLifetime.ApplicationStopping.Register(() => { telemetryClient.TrackEvent("App Stopping"); });
hostApplicationLifetime.ApplicationStopped.Register(() => {
telemetryClient.TrackEvent("App Stopped");
telemetryClient.Flush();
Thread.Sleep(TimeSpan.FromSeconds(5));
});
if (env.IsDevelopment())
{
app.UseDeveloperExceptionPage();
}
app.UseMvc();
}
It uses the IHostApplicationLifetime interface to get notified of application lifetime events.

Making a Azure WebJob run a console application

I'm trying to setup a scheduled WebJob (every minute). I've made a Windows Console Application in VS 2019 like this:
using System;
using System.Net;
namespace EveryMinute
{
class Program
{
static void Main(string[] args)
{
WebRequest request = WebRequest.Create("https://some.url.com");
WebResponse response = request.GetResponse();
}
}
}
The output of this request is not important, I just need the url to be triggered every minute.
I can run the exe on my Windows computer. But when I create a WebJob with this exe attached, I keep getting a [failed] notice every minute.
Can anyone tell me what I am doing wrong?
Thank you for your help.
To make the answer visible to others, I'm summarizing the answer as below:
I don't know if I can send that dll together with other files in the
zip?
Yes, we need to add all the contents under Bin/Debug(/net472) path in a .zip file.
We can also deploy the webjob in vs by clicking publish button.
If your job fails, you can find the detailed error message in the Run Details.

How to add EventSource to a web application

We finally got EventSource and ElasticSearch correctly configured in our service fabric cluster. Now that we have that we want to add EventSources to our web applications that interact with our service fabric applications so that we can view all events (application logs) in one location and filter / query via Kibana.
Our issue seems to be related to the differences between a service fabric app which is an exe and a .NET 4.6 (not .net CORE) web app which is stateless. In service Fabric we place the using statement that instantiates the pipeline in Program.cs and set an infinite sleep.
private static void Main()
{
try
{
using (var diagnosticsPipeline = ServiceFabricDiagnosticPipelineFactory.CreatePipeline("CacheApp-CacheAPI-DiagnosticsPipeline"))
{
ServiceEventSource.Current.ServiceTypeRegistered(Process.GetCurrentProcess().Id, typeof(Endpoint).Name);
// Prevents this host process from terminating so services keeps running.
Thread.Sleep(Timeout.Infinite);
}
How do I do this in a web app? This is the pipeline code we are using for a non ServiceFabric implementation of the EventSource. This is what we are using:
using (var pipeline = DiagnosticPipelineFactory.CreatePipeline("eventFlowConfig.json"))
{
IEnumerable ie = System.Diagnostics.Tracing.EventSource.GetSources();
ServiceEventSource.Current.Message("initialize eventsource");
}
We are able to see the pipeline and send events to ElasticSearch from within the using statement but not outside of it. So the question is:
how/where do we place our pipeline using statement for a web app?
Do we need to instantiate and destroy the pipeline that every time we log or is there a way to reuse that pipeline across the stateless web events? It would seem like that would be very expensive and hurt performance. Maybe we can we cache a pipeline?
That’s the jist, let me know if you need clarification. I see lots of doco out there for client apps but not much for web apps.
Thanks,
Greg
UPDATE WITH SOLUTION CODE
DiagnosticPipeline pipeline;
protected void Application_Start(Object sender, EventArgs e)
{
try
{
pipeline = DiagnosticPipelineFactory.CreatePipeline("eventFlowConfig.json");
IEnumerable ie = System.Diagnostics.Tracing.EventSource.GetSources();
AppEventSource.Current.Message("initialize eventsource");
}
}
protected void Application_End(Object sender, EventArgs e)
{
pipeline.Dispose();
}
Assuming ASP.NET Core the simplest way to initialize EventFlow pipeline would be in the Program.cs Main() method, for example:
public static void Main(string[] args)
{
using (var pipeline = DiagnosticPipelineFactory.CreatePipeline("eventFlowConfig.json"))
{
var host = new WebHostBuilder()
.UseKestrel()
.UseContentRoot(Directory.GetCurrentDirectory())
.UseIISIntegration()
.UseStartup<Startup>()
.UseApplicationInsights()
.Build();
host.Run();
}
}
This takes advantage of the fact that host.Run() will block until the server is shut down, and so the pipeline will exist during the time when requests are received and served.
Depending on the web framework you use things might vary. E.g. if the one you use offers "setup" and "cleanup" hooks, you could create a diagnostic pipeline during setup phase (and store a reference to it in some member variable), then dispose of it during cleanup phase. For example, in ASP.NET classic you'd put the code in global.asax.cs and leverage Application_OnStart and Application_OnEnd methods. See Application Instances, Application Events, and Application State in ASP.NET for details.
Creating a pipeline instance every time a request is served is quite inefficient, like you said. There is really no good reason to do that.

Add WebRole.cs - and have it called - in an existing ASP.NET MVC site converted to web role

I have an ASP.NET MVC 4 site running perfectly well in an Azure WebRole. The ASP.NET MVC project was started on its own, after which I added an Azure Cloud Service project to the solution and added the ASP.NET project/site as one of the 'roles' of the service (so it shows up in the 'Roles' folder).
My problem is that I would like to have working a WebRole.cs file within the ASP.NET MVC project, but no matter what I've tried to do, it appears that when deployed, it just never gets called. OnStart and the override of Run (which I know, must never leave the loop) -- these just apparently never get called.
But if you startup a new CloudService project and add, at that time from the start, an ASP.NET MVC project, it automatically has a WebRole.cs file in it, so my guess is that I need to configure something somewhere for the WebRole.cs (actually speaking, the WebRole class, which inherits RoleEntryPoint) to get called. What might that be?
using System;
using System.Web;
//using Microsoft.WindowsAzure.StorageClient;
using System.Diagnostics;
using System.Threading;
namespace Us.WebUI
{
public class WebRole : Microsoft.WindowsAzure.ServiceRuntime.RoleEntryPoint
{
public override bool OnStart()
{
return true; //return base.OnStart(); // CALL THIS???
}
public override void Run()
{
while (true) {
Thread.Sleep(TimeSpan.FromSeconds(30));
try {
EmailFuncs.SendEmailToUs("An email from our WebRole?????", "Email me this, email me that.");
}
catch { }
}
}
}
}
UPDATE: Thanks, the question has been answered. But I will add: On doing this, while it clearly was working (fully deployed and in emulator), that suddenly I was having problems doing a full publish of the site. After a azure publish took 3 hours:
Verifying storage account 'xyz'... > Uploading Package... > - Updating... [stayed here for 3 hours], it failed with this error: The server encountered an internal error. Please retry the request. So one thing I was wondering is, did I need to override OnStop in WebRole.cs?
UPDATE 2: Those previous problems were fixed, and had nothing to do with this issue. Actually, I've learned this: If you ever have any warnings generated in your build, Azure often will not work with them even when they don't cause problems locally or in other hosts. Since then, I've been much more studious to tackling build warnings (but critical to this is turning off with warning codes the many warning types you want to ignore!).
Adding a class to your Web Project which inherits from RoleEntryPoint is sufficient, it should just work. Did you try setting a breakpoint in the emulator?
What you might be experiencing is that EmailFuncs.SendEmailToUs requires info from the app/web.config and that this info is not available. You need to know that your WebRole class runs in a different process (not your web application), meaning it's not using your web.config. If you want the WebRole.cs to read info from the configuration file, you'll need to add these settings in WaIISHost.exe.config

Ninject dependency injection in SharePoint Timer Job

I have successfully implemented an enterprise SharePoint solution using Ninject dependency injection and other infrastructure such as NLog logging etc using an Onion architecture. With a HttpModule as an Composition Root for the injection framework, it works great for normal web requests:
public class SharePointNinjectHttpModule: IHttpModule, IDisposable
{
private readonly HttpApplication _httpApplication;
public void Init(HttpApplication context)
{
if (context == null) throw new ArgumentException("context");
Ioc.Container = IocContainerFactory.CreateContainer();
}
public void Dispose()
{
if(_httpApplication == null) return;
_httpApplication.Dispose();
Ioc.Container.Dispose();
}
}
The CreateContainer method loads the Ninject modules from a separate class library and my ioc container is abstracted.
For normal web application requests I used a shared static class for the injector called Ioc. The UI layer has a MVP pattern implementation. E.g in the aspx page the presenter is constructed as follows:
presenter = Ioc.Container.Get<SPPresenter>(new Ninject.Parameters.ConstructorArgument("view", this));
I'm still reliant on a Ninject reference for the parameters. Is there any way to abstract this, other than mapping a lot of methods in a interface? Can't I just pass in simple types for arguments?
The injection itself works great, however my difficulty comes in when using external processes such as SharePoint Timer Jobs. It would obviously be a terrible idea to reuse the ioc container from here, so it needs to bootstrap the dependencies itself. In addition, it needs to load the configuration from the web application pool, not the admin web application. Else the job would only be able to run on the application server. This way the job can run on any web server, and your SharePoint feature only has to deploy configurations etc. to the web apllication.
Here is the execute method of my timer job, it opens the associated web application configuration and passes it to the logging service (nlog) and reads it's configuration from the external web config service. I have written code that reads a custom section in the configuration file and initializes the NLog logging infrastructure.
public override void Execute(Guid contentDbId)
{
try
{
using (var ioc = IocContainerFactory.CreateContainer())
{
// open configuration from web application
var configService = ioc.Get<IConfigService>(new ConstructorArgument("webApplicationName", this.WebApplication.Name));
// get logging service and set with web application configuration
var logginService = ioc.Get<ILoggingService>();
logginService.SetConfiguration(configService);
// reapply bindings
ioc.Rebind<IConfigService>().ToConstant(configService);
ioc.Rebind<ILoggingService>().ToConstant(logginService);
try
{
logginService.Info("Test Job started.");
// use services etc...
var productService = ioc.Get<IProductService>();
var products = productService.GetProducts(5);
logginService.Info("Got products: " + products.Count() + " Config from web application: " + configService.TestConfigSetting);
logginService.Info("Test Job completed.");
}
catch (Exception exception)
{
logginService.Error(exception);
}
}
}
catch (Exception exception)
{
EventLog.WriteError(exception, "Exception thrown in Test Job.");
}
}
This does not make the timer jobs robust enough, and there is a lot of boiler plate code. My question is how do I improve on this design? It's not the most elegant, I'm looking for a way to abstract the timer job operation code and have it's dependencies injected into it for each timer job. I would just like to hear your comments if you think this is a good approach. Or if someone has faced similar problems like this? Thanks
I think I've answered my own question with the presenter construction code above. When using dependency injection in a project, the injection itself is not that important, but the way it changes the way you write code is far more significant. I need to use a similar pattern such as command for my SharePoint timer job operations. I'd just like the bootstrapping to be handled better.

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