Many thanks for all your feedback.

I'm sorry to hear this is still effecting a few users. Bare if you have some time this week prompt me via our live chat as i'd love to have a chat again and see if we can't track this down. Pease be assured i'm fully aware of this problem and it's high on the list of issues to address for the next update.

As this does not effect all users it suggests a server issue as opposed to a code problem. I'm confident we'll track this down and will be able to offer a reliable fix. The technique used by the forum to clear the who's on list, send bulk email's, run scheduled tasks etc will be critical to our forthcoming InstantKB.NET v2.0 release so please rest assured this will be thoroughly investigated.

I sincerely appreciate all feedback and i'm sure this thread will help towards resolving the problem. If you have any further information you feel we may find useful don't hesitate to respond.

Sorry we can't provide an immediate fix for this. We are doing some work with InstantForum.NET for the v4.1.5 update to improve support for Visual Studio.NET 2005 and integration with IntantKB.NET v2.0. Our local code has been through several check-ins with no proper testing at this point.

I'll ensure we install a base v4.1.4 installation this week locally to see if we can't replicate the problem and offer a work-around whilst we prepare our v4.1.5 update.

I'll certainly try to keep you all updated on this. If you have any questions or concerns in the meantime don't hesitate to respond or look out for me on our live chat 10am-7pm GMT  Mon-Fri.

I'd be delighted to answer any further questions.


Kindest Regards,

Ryan Healey
Director / Developer

Explore our products...
http://demos.instantasp.co.uk/

Explore our products...
http://demos.instantasp.co.uk/

I'll be online this afternoon and tomorrow... when I see your "chat" thing is online, I'll contact you.

Thanks for the response... although, this probably is something on the server side, your help would be appreciated.

We've spent quite some time investigating this issue today. I've personally tried various configurations on Windows XP, 2000 and 2003 and can't seem to replicate the problem. The tasks always appear to run as expected.

Email's, who's on list, scheduled tasks etc all depend upon a timercallback within each HttpModule responsible for the task. The methods each timer calls all run on separate threads within the pool asynchronously. This lead my investigating to the thread pool and trying to determine if restricting the available threads could stop just the background tasks running. We restricted various options (minFreeThreads, maxIOThreads, maxWorkerThread etc) but it was quite obvious when we reached a limit here as the entire application stopped responding.

We've also been looking at various application pool configurations on windows 2003 but again have not been able to replicate this problem.

A few things to consider if the background tasks are not executing and your seeing any long delay with email's in the queue, who's on list not clearing or scheduled tasks not running...

- Is the application being recycled before the tasks have time to run? You'll need to ensure the application pool is not being shut down after a short period of inactivity the timer may not get called if the inactivity threshold is shorter than the period between tasks. This is highly unlikely however as tasks are typically ran every couple of minutes. 

- Ensure you've included all httpmodules within your web.config as shown below...

<httpModules>
<!-- HttpModule used to manage user authentication -->
<add type="InstantASP.Common.HttpModule.SecurityModule, InstantASP.Common" name="SecurityModule"/>
<!-- HttpModule used to perform dynamic URL rewriting -->
<add type="InstantASP.Common.HttpModule.RewriterModule, InstantASP.Common" name="RewriterModule"/>
<!-- HttpModule used to manage general tasks within all InstantASP applications -->
<add type="InstantASP.Common.HttpModule.ServiceModule, InstantASP.Common" name="ServiceModule"/>
<!-- HttpModule used to manage application generated email's -->
<add type="InstantASP.Common.HttpModule.EmailModule, InstantASP.Common" name="EmailModule"/>
<!-- HttpModule used to monitor and handle any application exceptions -->
<add type="InstantASP.Common.HttpModule.ExceptionModule, InstantASP.Common" name="ExceptionModule"/>
<!-- HttpModule used to manage scheduled tasks specific to InstantForum.NET -->
<add type="InstantASP.InstantForum.HttpModule.ForumModule, InstantASP.InstantForum" name="ForumModule"/>
</httpModules>

Also if you have the option and your experiencing this problem on Windows 2003 try moving the application to the default application pool or one with a similar configuration to the default pool.

Check if email's are being sent or monitor your SQL Server using SQL Profiler to determine if the stored procedures for the tasks are being executed periodically.

We will continue to look at this issue. In the meantime if your experiencing any of the problems mentioned within this topic please respond with as much information about your installation as possible (OS, .NET Version, IIS/AppPool Settings) this will certainly help us track this problem down.

Again i'll try to keep you all updated - you know we always appreciate your support


Kindest Regards,

Ryan Healey
Director / Developer

Explore our products...
http://demos.instantasp.co.uk/

The "Who On" list is not clearing on my forum. Did you ever get to the bottom of this issue?

I've done this. I can't do most of the other items as we're on a hosted environment (DiscountASP).

Thanks,
John.

In DiscountASP's control panel, you can "Recycle the App Pool"... This corrects my Who's Online list issue, within 5 or 10 minutes.  It's a work around, but it has been working

Hi

Can you identify where this "Recyle the App Pool" is in the forum software, as am experiencing this all of a sudden after running a repair on .NET which fixed a private message attachment issue I was experiencing.

Who's On list is piling up, and queued emails are not being sent.

Have rebooted the server completely - and still occurring.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

- Joyce