Tag: server

Trivial SMTP ASP.NET Winsock Connectivity Issues

Posted on by M o u s h i g o

ASP.NET C#Lately I have been experiencing issues with running SMTP on ASP.NET 1.1 on a Windows Server specifically the Standard edition. It was a trivial issue and very difficult to trace. The problem would appear in just a day and sometimes will disappear for weeks. The issue has been attributed to a Winsock crash (ASP.NET informs this through the error page). I have not found I have not found any blogs that tackle this issue so I hope this post will help others.

This issues are posted by me in StackOverflow and ServerFault :

The server specifications are below and my notes on the issue:

Windows Server Standard on SP2
IIS 7 with ASP.NET 1.1
IIS 6 for SMTP

The server hosts many websites running ASP.NET 1.1. These websites use the built in SMTP server on IIS6.

The SMTP works fine for a while but after a few weeks or months, It will stop sending emails. I tried sending one via Telnet it seems fine so the SMTP server is not the issue.

I tried restarting the Application Pools but it had not effect whatsoever. I also tried restarting IIS 7.0 and IIS 6.0 it still will not send messages.

The only temporary way we found to fix this was to restart the server.

Is there an ASP.NET cache that we can clear or is causing this issue?

UPDATE:

Got the fix!

It was a hunch but I restarted the Print Spooler and DNS Client services in the server and now emails are sent successfully.

But I still do now know why this happens for ASP.NET 1.1 projects.

UPDATE 2:

Issue appeared again today! I got lucky I thought I had to wait weeks to test it again.

I started by restarting the DNS Client service. No effect still cannot send emails. I then restarted the Print Spooler service and to my surprise it was the culprit! ?????????

How is this even, what, why? huh?

I disabled the Print Spooler permanently. Email still works. I do not think we print anything or if the Print Spooler does any other tasks other than printing.

If it does do anything please comment below.

UPDATE 3:

The fix was temporary. I found out today that WINSOCK refused connections from ASP.NET but accepted connections via telnet mail.

Still trying to find out why this is happening.

UPDATE 4:

Well finally made a reboot with the WINSOCK corruption fixes applied. Hope this holds forever and the bug does not reappear.

FINAL UPDATE:

After a few weeks of debugging and fix finding the only workaround for this would be to either reboot the server regularly, move to System.Net.Mail instead of System.Web.Mail or use Microsoft SQL Server DBMail.

Intel Extreme Motherboard D5400XS (Skulltrail), the Overclocked Server!

Posted on by M o u s h i g o

Intel SkulltrailIntel’s latest top of the line motherboard, the Intel D5400XS, is the only desktop motherboard that I can say can perform as a gaming rig as well as performing the duties of a 24/7 server. It might be a pointless,stupid and unnecessary idea to do so because this would boost the price tremendously so no one will be able buy this board but that is just what Intel is all about.., to be able to balance extreme reliability and extreme performance. I dubbed it as the first ever retail "Overclocked Server" even though it is not a common thing to overclock servers. c(”,).

I am an avid fan of ATI and AMD as gaming platforms but since I work as a Systems Administrator, Software Developer, Web Developer and a hardcore Gaming enthusiast, I will always prefer a motherboard and a processor that can handle such tasks that pertain in each category, power, reliability, speed, efficiency and have good support. Based on my experience maintaining AMD class workstations (use, udpating bios, installing, formatting, bios/OS optimizations etc..), AMD is just not cut out to do this, AMD will always be for extreme graphics games and light computer processing. This is due to some motherboards that support the AMD platform, I will probably write a future article on why this is so. This motherboard however is a supports of all of the above. I was so amazed seeing this board when it first came out in February of 2008. Back then I was expecting if there was ever going to be a Pentium 5. Intel also does not support overclocking in their boards but this board is in the Extreme Series so it can do overclocking as well.

Intel® Desktop Board D5400XS (Retail Edition)
Intel Desktop Board D5400XS

As a Server and Workstation

dbextreme_74.gifThe Intel D5400XS can support 8 cores and is based on a Xeon supporting motherboard, Intel’s Xeon supporting motherboards are the best there is when it comes to reliability, as an example, Xeon class motherboards are used by IBM in its servers. I as a Systems Administrator have dealt with IBM Servers, they are very reliable and can be left on for months without slowing down and in my experience as an Intel user I too know how Intel boards are well built. My previous computer has Pentium 3 motherboard D815EEA2, it lasted me 5 years formatting only twice in that span. Dual booting with Windows 98 and Windows XP, it ran for at least 5-8 hours a days because my sister also uses it in the evening for her school assignments and other online activities, plus I leave it running to do downloads and uploads. I do not even hesitate or get scared in updating Intel’s motherboard BIOS, it’s just that reliable. It was the opposite back then when I still had a motherboard with a VIA chipset running S3… >_<

As a Gaming Platform

Let me just say one thing. Triple-crossfire support I do not know about Quadfire, looking at the board I do not think it will fit. Too bad for NVIDIA though it can only support 2 SLI and not triple. c(”,)

/hmm: It is a bit weird thought though, ATI is owned by AMD but Intel supports ATI over NVIDIA…

All in All

It’s an extremely good board! A bit expensive though but if you need a well balanced computer that will last you a long time, let us say 5 years or more, This motherboard or perhaps any Intel motherboard would be the best way to go.