Problem with the Discovery Test Harness

[Rick Palmer]

Hello group!

I have a service provider that I am trying to get compliant with
OExchange. I've created both a XRD file and a host-meta file, but for
some reason both the tests on the test harness say they cannot access
the files.

My Host-Meta: http://machatterbox.marketamerica.com/.well-known/host-meta
My XRD: http://machatterbox.marketamerica.com/oexchange/oexchange.xrd
(assuming you don't want to simply get it from the host-meta)

Do these files need a specific http response-type in order to be seen
by the test harness?
I'm using the ASP.Net MVC framework V1, is there something special
that I need to do to get this to work?
Is there anything else special that I am lacking?

Please help, my boss is being a real demon about this...

[Will Meyer]

Hey Rick. Not sure what about the request the test harness is making
is confusing your server, but your server's giving an error response
when the harness tries to fetch the XRD. It looks like an iis/asp.net
standard error, like below, on
http://machatterbox.marketamerica.com/.well-known/host-meta. If you
turn on that log detail maybe we can figure out what it is. You could
also look at your server logs, or even run it in a debugger or
something, and see what in the request triggers it and what it is.

W

Server Error in '/' Application.
Runtime Error
Description: An application error occurred on the server. The current
custom error settings for this application prevent the details of the
application error from being viewed remotely (for security reasons).
It could, however, be viewed by browsers running on the local server
machine.

Details: To enable the details of this specific error message to be
viewable on remote machines, please create a <customErrors> tag within
a "web.config" configuration file located in the root directory of the
current web application. This <customErrors> tag should then have its
"mode" attribute set to "Off".

<!-- Web.Config Configuration File -->

<configuration>
<system.web>
<customErrors mode="Off"/>
</system.web>
</configuration>

Notes: The current error page you are seeing can be replaced by a
custom error page by modifying the "defaultRedirect" attribute of the
application's <customErrors> configuration tag to point to a custom
error page URL.

<!-- Web.Config Configuration File -->

<configuration>
<system.web>
<customErrors mode="RemoteOnly" defaultRedirect="mycustompage.htm"/>
</system.web>
</configuration>

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[rick palmer]

That's very interesting, I don't get an error when I request that link, after trying on multiple computers, both in my office and at home.

I will do some reconfiguration on my end to get "meaningful" error messages to show for those two pages.  Afterward, would you be willing to request the host-meta and xrd again and send me the error message you receive?

Thanks,

-rp

[Will Meyer]

On Thu, Nov 11, 2010 at 09:06, rick palmer <rick.pa...@gmail.com> wrote:
> That's very interesting, I don't get an error when I request that link,
> after trying on multiple computers, both in my office and at home.

Its probabably UA, headers, something like that. Looking at your
access logs or hitting your server locally on a dev box or something
would prob be the fastest way to figure it out.

> I will do some reconfiguration on my end to get "meaningful" error messages
> to show for those two pages.  Afterward, would you be willing to request the
> host-meta and xrd again and send me the error message you receive?

Yeah def.

[rick palmer]

OK, we have turned off the cryptic error messages on our production server, so if you could give that link a hit and send me the error message it gives you that would be AWESOME!  Thanks...

[Will Meyer]

Here's a new cryptic error message! Can you get the request in your
log or somewhere else in front of your server? I could prob run it
through a tunnel and give you the headers and such to help debug, need
a bit of time for that but will look later. FWIW never seen this
before, and we've def had folks hit it from iss/.net server setups.

W

Fetching host-meta from
http://machatterbox.marketamerica.com/.well-known/host-meta
Fetched XRD:

Server Error in '/' Application.

Object reference not set to an instance of an object.
Description: An unhandled exception occurred during the execution of
the current web request. Please review the stack trace for more
information about the error and where it originated in the code.

Exception Details: System.NullReferenceException: Object reference not
set to an instance of an object.

Source Error:

An unhandled exception was generated during the execution of the
current web request. Information regarding the origin and location of
the exception can be identified using the exception stack trace below.

Stack Trace:

[NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object.]
MVC.Web.Global.Application_BeginRequest(Object sender, EventArgs e) +816
System.Web.SyncEventExecutionStep.System.Web.HttpApplication.IExecutionStep.Execute()
+79
System.Web.HttpApplication.ExecuteStep(IExecutionStep step,
Boolean& completedSynchronously) +170

Version Information: Microsoft .NET Framework Version:2.0.50727.4952;
ASP.NET Version:2.0.50727.4955
Found 0 links in host-meta

No target XRD URLs were found. Are you sure there is a resource at
http://machatterbox.marketamerica.com/.well-known/host-meta with at
least one resident-target relation?

If you need help generating one, try this tool.

[rick palmer]

Actually, that did give me some insight into the problem, would you mind trying it again?

[Will Meyer]

Same issue (below), but I think from a quick trace its because there's
not a User-Agent header sent from the test harness. In other words,
if your server doesn't get a UA, it NPEs (or whatever its called in
.net ;-)). It probably should be setting a user agent, so I'll add
that soon, but in the interim give that a try (if you can).

W

Server Error in '/' Application.

Object reference not set to an instance of an object.
Description: An unhandled exception occurred during the execution of
the current web request. Please review the stack trace for more
information about the error and where it originated in the code.

Exception Details: System.NullReferenceException: Object reference not
set to an instance of an object.

Source Error:

An unhandled exception was generated during the execution of the
current web request. Information regarding the origin and location of
the exception can be identified using the exception stack trace below.

Stack Trace:

[NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object.]
MVC.Web.Global.Application_BeginRequest(Object sender, EventArgs e) +816
System.Web.SyncEventExecutionStep.System.Web.HttpApplication.IExecutionStep.Execute()
+79
System.Web.HttpApplication.ExecuteStep(IExecutionStep step,
Boolean& completedSynchronously) +170

[rick palmer]

That was my assessment as well... We are inspecting the user-agent headers on all requests in order to redirect bots to a specific page, but I put that in a try-catch block in hopes that things would just keep on going.  It seems I will need to try something more targeted than just a try-catch.  Thanks for your assistance!