Getting an exception when site is pushed to production

Question

This is probably a shot in the dark but here goes nothing...

I have a Sitecore 6 site that I am developing locallty. When I pushed it to the production server, I now get an exception when trying to access the site. I had done an upgrade of the Sitecore version, and added the Forms module, among some other minor edits. So I moved everything to production, changed the connection strings, and changed the directory references in the web.config, but I still get this error.

My local machine still works fine, and even my staging server (hooked up via SVN and Cruise Control) works fine, but I can't fix this error on production.

At the bottom of the stack trace (below), it looks like it is trying to instantiate the search manager. Maybe that has something to do with it?

Or maybe I missed a setting when I moved everything? What settings need to be changed when the environment changes?

Here is what I've tried so far:

1. Re-copied all of the files and databases.
2. Gave full control permissions to the worker process, ASPNET, and Network Service users.
3. Double checked the directory paths in the web.config that needed to be configured.
4. Double checked the connection string in the connectionstring.config.
5. Recycled the App Pool
6. Stopped and started the site
7. Cleared my local browser cache (as they instruct you to do in the upgrade docs)

This is the exception that is being thrown when I try and access any page:

Thread information: Thread ID: 1 Thread account name: 180716WEB1\testcom_web Is impersonating: False Stack trace: at System.RuntimeMethodHandle._InvokeMethodFast(Object target, Object[] arguments, SignatureStruct& sig, MethodAttributes methodAttributes, RuntimeTypeHandle typeOwner) at System.RuntimeMethodHandle.InvokeMethodFast(Object target, Object[] arguments, Signature sig, MethodAttributes methodAttributes, RuntimeTypeHandle typeOwner) at System.Reflection.RuntimeMethodInfo.Invoke(Object obj, BindingFlags invokeAttr, Binder binder, Object[] parameters, CultureInfo culture, Boolean skipVisibilityChecks) at System.Reflection.RuntimeMethodInfo.Invoke(Object obj, BindingFlags invokeAttr, Binder binder, Object[] parameters, CultureInfo culture) at System.Reflection.RuntimePropertyInfo.SetValue(Object obj, Object value, BindingFlags invokeAttr, Binder binder, Object[] index, CultureInfo culture) at System.Reflection.RuntimePropertyInfo.SetValue(Object obj, Object value, Object[] index) at Sitecore.Reflection.ReflectionUtil.SetProperty(Object obj, PropertyInfo property, Object value) at Sitecore.Reflection.ReflectionUtil.SetProperty(Object obj, String name, Object value) at Sitecore.Configuration.Factory.AssignProperties(Object obj, Object[] properties) at Sitecore.Configuration.Factory.AssignProperties(XmlNode configNode, String[] parameters, Object obj, Boolean assert, Boolean deferred, IFactoryHelper helper) at Sitecore.Configuration.Factory.CreateObject(XmlNode configNode, String[] parameters, Boolean assert, IFactoryHelper helper) at Sitecore.Configuration.Factory.GetInnerObject(XmlNode paramNode, String[] parameters, Boolean assert) at Sitecore.Configuration.Factory.AssignProperties(XmlNode configNode, String[] parameters, Object obj, Boolean assert, Boolean deferred, IFactoryHelper helper) at Sitecore.Configuration.Factory.CreateObject(XmlNode configNode, String[] parameters, Boolean assert, IFactoryHelper helper) at Sitecore.Configuration.Factory.GetInnerObject(XmlNode paramNode, String[] parameters, Boolean assert) at Sitecore.Configuration.Factory.AssignProperties(XmlNode configNode, String[] parameters, Object obj, Boolean assert, Boolean deferred, IFactoryHelper helper) at Sitecore.Configuration.Factory.CreateObject(XmlNode configNode, String[] parameters, Boolean assert, IFactoryHelper helper) at Sitecore.Configuration.Factory.CreateObject(XmlNode configNode, String[] parameters, Boolean assert) at Sitecore.Configuration.Factory.CreateObject(String configPath, String[] parameters, Boolean assert) at Sitecore.Configuration.Factory.CreateObject(String configPath, Boolean assert) at Sitecore.Search.SearchManager..cctor()

Custom event details:

For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.

Answer 1

It turned out to be that when I restored the database to production, it didn't re-associate the database user with it!!! Stupid me! For whatever reason, that causes this error to occur. I'm guessing that the SearchManager is setup as some sort of external service or something, to abstract things.

Answer 2

I got this error after moving a site between environments. The cause was the path for the sc.variable named dataFolder was incorrect. The value was a full file path and the site was in a different location on the new server.

<sc.variable name="dataFolder" value="c:\www\website\data\" />

Updating the web.config with the correct path fixed the problem.

Answer 3

It seems that there's something wrong with rights. Make sure that you run the right identity(NETWORK SERVICES) in your AppPool and that you follow the Sitecore Installation instructions which can be found on SDN:

Kind regards,

Alex de Groot

Sitecore Solution Architect