Commerce Server Blog

I faced a strange issue during commerce site unpacking in test environment. The site packager shows the following error.

and the same error is logged in pub.log file – “Unable to access IIS.  Either it is not installed, not running, or the user does not have sufficient priviledges”

I’m running as an Administrator on the box. I believe it is due to specific sites in IIS. I removing all the sites from IIS and when re-running the site packager, I am able to install the commerce server site without issue. Removing my existing IIS sites will work fine in local machines but will not work if we try to do the same in preproduction or production machines. This has triggered me back to do research on this issue.

I binged/googled, but the solutions I find online will not solve the problem. After investigation, I found that commerce server site packaging tool is parsing all web sites one by one before installing the site. Some where the tool fails to ready IIS metadata and start throwing the error. I found that it is happening if the server has any websites which are running on https (i.e., certificates installed).  I am able to figure out the fix for this issue and the fix is assigning port 80 (with different host headers) to all the websites which uses https. After doing this change, the packager/CS 2009 site wizard is working fine. I following below approach in production environment (which may or may not work for you).

1. Create port 80 binding (with different headers) to all websites where Https is used.
2. Create the commerce site.
3. Once our site started working, remove the bindings we have created from the websites.

Not sure whether there is any other better approaches available but this procedure has fixed my problem.

One of my fellow project team members have faced very strange problem. Whenever they are executing basket update/performing checkout the total pipeline is not called but surprisingly basket and checkout pipeline is called resulting the total always be at zero.  I followed below steps to cross check whether all settings are correct.

1. Settings in web.config and channel confirmation are properly set.
2. Enable pipeline logging (under the logs directory, I can able to see values in other log files but not in total log file).

Thought of environment issue, started checking the problem in other development machines. Then we moved the sequence of pipelines like commenting basket pipeline or keeping only total pipeline to execute (if frustration comes, man doesn’t know what is doing) but no luck, total pipeline is not executed. Finally I have decided to check what is happening in CS2009 assemblies. With the help of reflector tool, I start going through the commerce server methods and found the root cause for the problem.

Total pipeline is executed only if the basket status is “ReadyForCheckout” and line items shipmentmethodIDs  doesn’t have empty GUID. Unfortunately for the application we don’t have shipment methods so if condition never is true and total pipeline never executes.

The temporary fix is change the below setting

<Pipeline name=”total” type=”Total” />

To

<Pipeline name=”total” type=”Custom” />

After that the total pipeline is executed without any problem. Now I started thinking why Microsoft has kept this condition. I feel, the application will gain performance by not calling Total pipeline in initial stages and only be called once basket status is set to “ReadyForCheckout” and shipping details are added but MS team forgot that few of the projects doesn’t use shipping methods.

Nice to see old errors back on the screen and we can fix them fast as we already know the remedy. One of my team member was getting “Loading Editor” error on click on site editor or profiles in commerce server manager. She was not able to proceed with her work and the error she is getting is not new to commerce server resources but when we bing/google, you may not find a remedy nor you don’t see any entry in the event log.

Couple of alternative solutions to fix this issue.

1. Uncheck “Enhance security configuration” components under IE. To do this, follow these steps:

1. Click Start, click Settings, click Control Panel, and then double-click Add or Remove Programs.
2. In Add or Remove Programs, click Add/Remove Windows Components.
3. In the Windows Components Wizard, click to select the Internet Explorer Enhanced Security Configuration check box, and then click Details.
4. Click to clear the For administrator groups check box.
5. Click to clear the For all other user groups check box, and then click OK.
6. Click Next, and then click Finish.

2. Add the name of the computer to the trusted sites. To do this, follow these steps:

In Internet Explorer, click the Tools menu, and then click Internet Options.
In the Internet Options dialog box, click the Security tab.
Under Select a Web content zone to specify its security settings, click Trusted sites, and then click Sites.
In the Trusted sites dialog box, type http://<ComputerName>, click Add, and then click OK two times.

Note: adding localhost will not fix this issue – you should add computer name.

Once the above changes are done, we are able to see the profiles/site terms. After fixing the issue, I am able to find the same has been documented in support article and the url is http://support.microsoft.com/kb/937764.

After successfully installing commerce server site, when you try to open the website, you may encounter following error.

Recently, I fixed database authentication problem by applying a hot fix released by Microsoft.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/975603

Seems somewhere I have missed the steps mentioned in the document (drop the Microsoft.CommerceServer.Runtime.dll that’s supplied in that hotfix in GAC) and after installing the hot fix, the site started working fine . Thought of sharing the same to fellow commerce server developers.

After deploying couple of pages/web parts/user controls, the site stopped working. I am getting wired error “An unexpected error” on the screen and the event log is clear – no events.

Its very strange to found that SharePoint will hide debugging information and all commerce server developers know that debugging is not easy in commerce server 2009. First my concentration went on WSP package – thinking that there might be some problem with WSP package which is leading some UI problem and SharePoint is not logging any events. But, I have managed to get rid of that error screen completely. The solution is to change a couple of entries in website web.config file. Modify the line <SafeMode MaxControls=“200“ CallStack=“false“… /> to <SafeMode MaxControls=“200“ CallStack=“true“… />

and also we have to set custom errors to ‘Off’ .
<customErrors mode=“Off“/>

That’s it, I stopped getting fancy ASP.NET custom page and able to see full stack trace and also errors in the eventlog. Now my development has got little bit easier!!