Exception in ASP.NET When Writing to File-Based Log

[Patrick Skelton]

Hi,

I have just tried to set up NLog in an ASP.NET 4 application.  I followed the tutorial, and have set up what I believe is the simplest example I can.  Now, when I run the application, I get the following exception:

System.Web.HttpException occurred
  Message=Invalid file name for file monitoring: 'D:\Data\Work\Dev\Projects\Live\FourthWish\WritingWebsite\controls'. Common reasons for failure include:
- The filename is not a valid Win32 file name.
- The filename is not an absolute path.
- The filename contains wildcard characters.
- The file specified is a directory.
- Access denied.
  Source=System.Web
  ErrorCode=-2147024809
  WebEventCode=0
  StackTrace:
       at System.Web.DirectoryMonitor.AddFileMonitor(String file)
  InnerException:

The failure is indeed one of the suggested reasons: the file name for monitoring is a directory.  But I have no idea what is trying to make this call.  Even more mysterious is that the directory on which monitoring is being attempted is a subfolder where I store ASP.NET user controls, and I certainly have not used this as a path anywhere in NLog's configuration.

My config is as follows:

<targets>

<target name="Standard" xsi:type="File" fileName="${basedir}/StandardLog.txt" layout="${longdate}|${message}" />

</targets>

<rules>

<logger name="*" minlevel="Trace" writeTo="Standard" />

</rules>

Can anyone offer any advice about what might be going on here and how I can begin debugging it. Any advice at all would be very much appreciated.

Kind wishes ~ Patrick

[Kim Christensen]

Hi Patrick,

What tutorial did you follow? Could you post you're full configuration?

Regards Kim

[Patrick Skelton]

Hi,

The tutorial is the one on here: https://github.com/nlog/nlog/wiki/Tutorial

My full config file contains little more than the bit I already posted.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<nlog xmlns="http://www.nlog-project.org/schemas/NLog.xsd"
      xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" >
 <targets>
 <target name="Standard" xsi:type="File" fileName="${basedir}/StandardLog.txt" />

 </targets>
 <rules>
 <logger name="*" minlevel="Trace" writeTo="Standard" />
 </rules>

</nlog>

The application is ASP.NET 4 and is running on local IIS in a directory where I have full (Administrator) permissions.

Kind wishes, Patrick

[Kim Christensen]

I'll try to reproduce the error

[Kim Christensen]

I tried to create a simple ASP.NET 4 application, but everything works as it should. Could you post a sample project where the error appears on you side?

[Patrick Skelton]

Hi, Kim,

Unfortunately, I have now had to remove NLog from my main project, because I just couldn't spend any more time trying to get it working.

I tried creating a new ASP.NET website, and added NLog to it.  This worked when I had the project configured to debug on the inbuilt IIS server, but failed when I tried to get it to run on my full local IIS, so I am guessing that there is some kind of a permissions problem or some other configuration issue in IIS.  My main problem is that I can't debug this because even when I set internalLogToConsole="true" throwExceptions="true" in NLog, it still fails silently.

Only when I get the debugger to stop on all exceptions can I get some kind of idea what is failing.  Doing this, I have just tried to stop on all thrown exceptions in the new project and I get the debugger stopping to ask the location of the following file: c:\NLogBuild\src\NLog\Internal\FileAppenders\BaseFileAppender.cs.  If I get the debugger to continue, I do indeed get an UnauthorizedAccessException in BaseFileAppender.CreateWindowsFile.  I don't understand this, though, because I have full Administrator privileges in the directory and Visual Studio is running as Administrator.  I can fix this by adding IIS_IUSRS and giving this group full control.  Guess I can do this and simply pray that, when I deploy to the live server, I don't get the same problems.

In summary, I am sure the problem is caused by my lack of IIS knowledge, and not NLog, though it is disappointing that I can't get error information out of NLog without using the debugger in 'big hammer' mode.

Thank you for looking at this for me.

Kind wishes ~ Patrick

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