How do I debug Web Apps on a remote machine ?

Hi,

I am trying to develop a web app that uses COM objects that only reside on a server where I cannot install VStudio. I have, however, installed .netFW 2.0 Beta and the remote debugging tools.
Now I cannot find a way to tell VStudio to run the app on the remote machine when pressing F5. Is this by design
The samples for remote debugging don't touch web apps, and the settings for web apps don't let me specify remote debugging.
A little hint would be appreciated.

Guenter

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How do I debug Web Apps on a remote machine ?

Zaph0d
The Standard Edition does *not* support remote debugging. Remote debugging is supported in the Professional Edition (and above).

Habib Heydarian (habibh@microsoft.com)
Program Manager
Visual Studio Debugger
gorden

When I try to attach to the ASP.Net worker Process I can't find w3wp.exe neither aspnet_wp.exe.

Do I have to install the .net framework on the remote machine
Tika
i guess this is the right place to find out if the same process works for debugging windows service running on a remote machine A little help would be appreciated.

Thanks,

mark
Jams1999
You need to install the remote debugger on the remote computer. The remote debugger can be installed using rdbgsetup.exe which is the self-extracting installation program. You can find it on your dev workstation in the Visual Studio directory. Run this setup on the remote computer and follow the setup instructions.

Habib Heydarian (habibh@microsoft.com)
Program Manager
Visual Studio Debugger

Gordon Pollokoff

I'd like to use this thread to ask another question, because it seems like the right place.

Habib Heydarian MSFT wrote:
You need to install the remote debugger on the remote computer. The remote debugger can be installed using rdbgsetup.exe which is the self-extracting installation program. You can find it on your dev workstation in the Visual Studio directory.

Is the remote debugger program (for ASP.NET) included with Visual Studio 2005 Standard Edition We need to know before we buy, otherwise we have to get the Professional Edition for remote debugging ASP.NET

JDanon
OK. I grabbed my chair and copied msvsmon.exe over to the server and started it. It's running, I'm looking at it's gui in remote desktop. So, I Start Debugging on my workstation and get the same error message that msvsmon.exe is not running.

What's going on There has to be a way to use a server for development. That was what was wrong with 2002 & 2003, you had to have the stupid code on the blasted workstation to do anything.

Would some Microsoftie please answer me
naveen73
I've gotten the error message about msvsmon.exe not running on the remote machine. In fact that file is not even present on the remote machine and I've installed the .Net Framework 2.0 SDK on the server. Where does it come from I searched msdn & kb for that file name and only got one hit with no hint about where to get it.

I've got it on my dev workstation along with it's companion .config. If I just copy them over to the server and run it will it work

I really don't want to install the complete VS dev environment on the server.
drgonjo
Thanks. Now it's working. I just wish it wasn't so hard to find info about the thing. A search for msvsmon should turn up some reference to rdbgsetup.

Thanks again.
MalcolmB
Yes, I agree with you. I'm going to review our documentation to find out how/if this is covered.

Habib Heydarian (habibh@microsoft.com)
Program Manager
Visual Studio Debugger
Ramcat
I think the right place to put the information on setting up remote debugging is in the readme for VS2005, (just like VS2003).
shuai
I'm assuming that you are using Visual Studio 2005. In order to debug a remote web application, you can manually attach to the ASP.NET Worker Process. Here are the steps:

1) On the remote machine, run msvsmon.exe
2) On the local machine (where VS is installed), launch the "Attach to Process" dialog (Debug->Attach to Process)
3) In the Attach to Process dialog, do the following:
- If the web app is running on IIS 6.0, select the w3wp.exe process
- If the web app is running on IIS 5.x, select the aspnet_wp.exe process

From here on, you can set breakpoints in your application and break in your application.

HabibH.
Aibo
Apparently the aspnet_wp.exe is not running on the machine running VS 2005. How can it be started automatically

More detail:

the error received when trying to debug from VS2005 is: (abbriviated)

Unable to start debugging on the web server. ... the monitor does not appear to be running on the remote computer. Get help...

From what I can tell from reading MSDN documentation is that this error is supposed to be a port issue.

The debugger is running on the console of a Windows 2000 server, which is the PDC, with IIS 5.0 operating the web site being edited directly. This site runs normally from a browser.

The login on the VS2005 machine is part of the domain and has been added to the MSVSMON.EXE permission list of users via the Options menu.

The msvsmon.exe is running on the console session logged in by the Administrator.

The firewall has been setup to forward port 135 to the W2K server running msvsmon.exe.

Thanks,

RobGMiller...
Umut Alev
I'm having the same problem but for me the problem is that the remote PC is in a workgroup and my PC is in a domain. I created an account on the remote PC with the correct permissions but I didn't found a way to connect to the remote pc with that account.

Is there a way to pass the account/credentials to the debugger

Thanks in advance !
Jovo Filips
Hi,

I am running the production version of Visual Studio 2005 on Windows Server 2003 (64 AMD) as my development machine. I am working with a "part" converted application which runs both ASP pages and ASPX pages.

I have opened the application from the filing system (e.g. C:\Application\Web\). Unfortunately, I cannot debug the it using the "internal" web server for two reasons. i) I cannot get it to execute the ASP pages and ii) it runs the site using the URL http://localhost:3222/web/ so all absolute hrefs fail.

To overcome this problem, I access the site using and IIS Web site configured on Windows 2003. This site is mapped to the same area of the file system as the Visual Studio project. (e.g. C:\Application\Web\)

The problem I am having is that I do not appear to be able to force the debugger to break either in the APS or APSX.VB pages. I have used the instructions above to attach to the w3sp.exe process, using the Debug Script Explorer window, I can see the scripts but opening the file in Visual Studio and setting a break point has no effect. This affect both the ASP and ASP.VB applications.

Please could you advise.
How do I debug Web Apps on a remote machine ?

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