[thelist] IIS Nightmare

[Ken Schaefer]

Hi Jeff,

Backups can help you with the metabase problem. Either you can backup the
metabase manually, or backup System State instead. IIS6 helps you when you
haven't explictly configured a backup plan by keeping copies of the last 10
versions of the metabase in a \history folder. Also, because it's a typed
XML file, it's harder to corrupt, and easier to find corruption if it is
present.

As you note, the IISState tool is only helpful if the inetinfo.exe process
is up. If you can't get it running, or it crashes straight away, then I'd
definately look at metabase corruption. In your original post you weren't
sure when the server was going down. If it was crashing in response to some
kind of user request, then IISState can help you there.

Cheers
Ken


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
From: "Jeff Howden" <jeff at jeffhowden.com>
Subject: RE: [thelist] IIS Nightmare


: Ken,
:
: ><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><
: > From: Ken Schaefer
: >
: > If indeed the metabase is corrupt, then one solution
: > maybe to uninstall IIS, delete the metabase.bin file
: > (which is where the metabase resides), and then
: > reinstall IIS. You'd need to recreate your settings
: > etc however.
: ><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><
:
: Indeed, the metabase *was* corrupt and a reinstall, check that it's
working,
: restore of previously backed-up settings, and check to see that it crashes
: proved to me that it was the metabase.  So, another uninstall, reinstall,
: and recreation of settings by hand had me back in business.  *Now*, if I
: could just identify what is corrupting the metabase, life would be much
: better.
:
: ><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><
: > Another possible troubleshooting step might be to use
: > the IISState tool from:
: > http://www.iisfaq.com/default.aspx?view=P197
: > which you'd need to attach to the inetinfo.exe process
: > to see what's causing W3WSC service to crash.
: ><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><
:
: The catch-22 with this tool is inetinfo.exe has to be running long enough
to
: get the PID from Task Manager, run IISStat from the command-line with that
: PID, crash, and then read the debug output.  Unfortunately IIS was
crashing
: when trying to start the service so it never was resident in memory long
: enough to accomplish and, of course, the PID changes every time you try to
: start it.
:
: Thanks,
:
: Jeff