Unable to find assembly System.Diagnostics.DiagnosticSource when using Remoting

Question

After adding Application Insights to my ASP.NET application (Standard ASP.NET using .NET 4.5.2) I've found that I get an exception when using .NET remoting. The exception is:

Unable to find assembly 'System.Diagnostics.DiagnosticSource, Version=4.0.2.1, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=cc7b13ffcd2ddd51'

I don't really understand what's going on here (it seems like the tracing is crossing application domain boundaries), but if I add the System.Diagnostics.DiagnosticSource NuGet package to the remote service, the error goes away.

Unfortunately, I just found that I'm also getting this error when trying to use an SqlDependency to trigger a cache refresh. Is there a way to disable this tracing when using remoting, if that's what's actually going on, or is there another way to resolve this issue?

Server stack trace: 
   at System.Runtime.Serialization.Formatters.Binary.BinaryAssemblyInfo.GetAssembly()
   at System.Runtime.Serialization.Formatters.Binary.ObjectReader.GetType(BinaryAssemblyInfo assemblyInfo, String name)
   at System.Runtime.Serialization.Formatters.Binary.ObjectMap..ctor(String objectName, String[] memberNames, BinaryTypeEnum[] binaryTypeEnumA, Object[] typeInformationA, Int32[] memberAssemIds, ObjectReader objectReader, Int32 objectId, BinaryAssemblyInfo assemblyInfo, SizedArray assemIdToAssemblyTable)
   at System.Runtime.Serialization.Formatters.Binary.__BinaryParser.ReadObjectWithMapTyped(BinaryObjectWithMapTyped record)
   at System.Runtime.Serialization.Formatters.Binary.__BinaryParser.ReadObjectWithMapTyped(BinaryHeaderEnum binaryHeaderEnum)
   at System.Runtime.Serialization.Formatters.Binary.__BinaryParser.Run()
   at System.Runtime.Serialization.Formatters.Binary.ObjectReader.Deserialize(HeaderHandler handler, __BinaryParser serParser, Boolean fCheck, Boolean isCrossAppDomain, IMethodCallMessage methodCallMessage)
   at System.Runtime.Serialization.Formatters.Binary.BinaryFormatter.Deserialize(Stream serializationStream, HeaderHandler handler, Boolean fCheck, Boolean isCrossAppDomain, IMethodCallMessage methodCallMessage)
   at System.Runtime.Remoting.Channels.CrossAppDomainSerializer.DeserializeObject(MemoryStream stm)
   at System.Runtime.Remoting.Messaging.SmuggledMethodCallMessage.FixupForNewAppDomain()
   at System.Runtime.Remoting.Channels.CrossAppDomainSink.DoDispatch(Byte[] reqStmBuff, SmuggledMethodCallMessage smuggledMcm, SmuggledMethodReturnMessage& smuggledMrm)
   at System.Runtime.Remoting.Channels.CrossAppDomainSink.DoTransitionDispatchCallback(Object[] args)

Exception rethrown at [0]: 
   at System.Runtime.Remoting.Proxies.RealProxy.HandleReturnMessage(IMessage reqMsg, IMessage retMsg)
   at System.Runtime.Remoting.Proxies.RealProxy.PrivateInvoke(MessageData& msgData, Int32 type)
   at System._AppDomain.CreateInstance(String assemblyName, String typeName)
   at System.Data.SqlClient.SqlDependency.CreateProcessDispatcher(_AppDomain masterDomain)
   at System.Data.SqlClient.SqlDependency.ObtainProcessDispatcher()
   at System.Data.SqlClient.SqlDependency.Start(String connectionString, String queue, Boolean useDefaults)

Answer 1

I fixed it by upgrading to System.Diagnostics.DiagnosticSource 4.5.0

The problem is that Application Insights creates an Instance of System.Diagnostics.Activity and stores it in CallContext (LogicalCallContext). During remoting invocation, the CallContext is marshaled to remote server. Unfortunately, this .dll was not there.

In my case, it's worse, the remote server is a legacy app running on .NET 2.0, copying the dll there didn't solve the problem.

You can find more info about this at https://github.com/Microsoft/ApplicationInsights-dotnet-server/issues/613