IIS Caching Problem - Caching when its not supposed to.

[Marc]

OK, I have seen a lot of caching issues discussed, but I don't think
I've seen anything that addresses my specific issue. I will be as
specific as possible and hopefully someone out there can help me solve
this.

Server: Win 2k3, IIS 6.0

--- Server ---
We have an application that generates .html pages based on changing
data on the server. The application will generate multiple pages. All
pages contain a static text clock so each page is updated at least 1
time per minute. So, as data changes the application will regenerate
and overwrite Page1.htm (there are multiple pages).

At least 1 time per minute the following pages are regenerated and the
old version is overwritten. This is verified using the static text
clock.

http://myserver/mysite/page1.htm
http://myserver/mysite/page2.htm
http://myserver/mysite/page3.htm
http://myserver/mysite/page4.htm
http://myserver/mysite/page5.htm

IIS has a virtual directory pointed to the applications output
directory. The pates are set to expire immediately.

--- Clients ---
We have multiple client applications deployed, Lets say you have 5
clients looking at page 1, 5 clients looking at page 2 etc. The We
have a client application with an imbedded browser that will retrieve
the header for the web page every 2 seconds, if it has changed, it will
retrieve the page and update what it is displaying.

--- Here's the problem ---
Everything will run fine for a period of time (1 hour, 20 minutes, 1
day,... time is indeterminate) and then one of the pages will hang.
Page 1, 2, 4 and 5 will all be displaying updated data (static text
clock for example) and page 3 will stop updating. If you refresh the
browser by hitting F5 or "Refresh" the page WILL NOT update. If
you close the browser and re-open it and surf to page 3 you will
display the OLD PAGE. If you go to a computer displaying page 1 for
example, and point it to page 3, it will display the OLD PAGE. Any
browser on the network will show the OLD PAGE. The output file on the
server has the current timestamp so it is the NEW PAGE. If you open
the file by double clicking on it (to launch IE) or open it in IE using
File://... You will get the NEW PAGE. If you then try to surf to it
using http://... You will get the OLD PAGE.

HTTP:// = OLD PAGE
FILE:// = NEW PAGE

The ONLY way to get the browser to show the new page is to restart the
"World Wide Web Publishing" service on the server. Now the page is
fixed and updates just fine for an amount of time, minutes, hours,
whatever and then at some point another of the pages will hang. This
shows that it is a SERVER issue and not a client issue.

All efforts to consistently recreate the problem have failed.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Marc Beeler
IED
Nospam--...@iedaudio.com

[David Wang [Msft]]

Are you saying that randomly, accessing a page will just hang and not return
content -- or are you saying that randomly, a page just stops updating.

During the time period of non-updated pages -- check with perfmon on the
server and check on the "Web Service Cache\Kernel URI cache hits" and see if
it is increasing or not for each of the "old" pages that are served.

You can also disable the StaticFileCache (i.e. turn off the kernel response
cache for static files) and see if that is involved --
DisableStaticFileCache is the metabase property name, and it can be set at a
URL scope (so you should be able to either turn off the kernel cache
completely, or for a particular website, or for a particular vdir, or for a
particular file -- though I would start with disabling it for everything
just to narrow down whether it is involved or not).

Does this happen with SP1 applied?

--
//David
IIS
http://blogs.msdn.com/David.Wang
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.
//
"Marc" <mbe...@iedaudio.com> wrote in message
news:1125348831.5...@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com...

[Marc]

The page will stop returning updated content. I will check out the
items you suggested...

thanks

mb

[Marc]

Thanks for the help.... It looks like DisableStaticFileCache seemed to
help the situation.

Marc