Appsense - Internal Server Error

01/07/09

I have been having fun trying to get Appsense 8.2 to work following the database being accidentally deleted by a colleague. Despite the Management configuration utility providing a facility to create a new database it refused to use its new database and kept trying to use old settings. I gave up and reinstalled.
The reinstall did not fix the initial problem I was seeing with loading the Management Console. Basically it reported that the server returned HTML instead of XML. When I went to the Management Server website directly it returned a 501 error, specifically related to custom HTML error pages using explicit paths. I opened all the web.config files (there are about six of them under the Appsense installation directly) and deleted the CustomErrors sections. All then worked.
I have no idea why and when this issue started. All I can imagine is that it is related to the installation of Windows 2008 SP2.

02/07/09

The very efficient chaps at Appsense spotted this blog entry and sent me the following link:

https://www.myappsense.com/content/knowledgebase/solutionDetails.aspx?sid=50120000000EW3dAAG

You will need a MyAppsense account to get to this, but as an Appsense customer you should have one. That will teach me for not checking the knowledge base articles before upgrading!

Anyway the issue is related to a Windows 2008 SP2 security change. The advice given in the article as the same as the way I fixed and problem. Importantly it does state that you should not change the %PROGRAMFILES%\AppSense\Environment Manager\Personalization Server% and PROGRAMFILES%\AppSense\Performance Manager\Central Statistics\Incoming web.config files (I better go and fix mine). It also states that the issue is fixed in v8 SP2, but I don't seem to be able to download that just yet.

Now onto why my upgraded v7 App Manager config causes my server to go totally nuts and stops a number of core services from starting and even entirely kills the network connection! I quess I'll be creating that from scratch :-).