unable to save or publish pages [4.2.1650]

I keep getting an error while trying to save a page, or publish a draft with a clean installation of v4.2. Attached you'll find the screenshots. One's while trying to save/publish the page while in 'edit' mode, the other from the page overview 'more actions>publish' command.

I've tried editing a masterpage, added some generic content and news and that all goes smoothly, just the page saving/publishing is malfunctioning.

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Downloaded the Sitefinity_4.2.1650.0.msi, ran it. Choose upgrade and was left with an empty project manager.
Selected new project, gave it a name, a folder and selected for SQL Server, after install finished ran administration from project manager.

After the errors, deleted the entire project and repeated it with Chrome instead of latest FF, same happens.
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I still have the v4.1 SDK installed on this system in the Sitefinity 4.1 folder in case that might be the culprit....

New day, new energy...

Deleted Sitefinity v4.1 SDK, removed SF v4.2, deleted database and folders, rebooted system and installed the SF4.2 project manager again. Created a new project and chose filesystem and sql server. Entered admin credentials, added a page and same result as yesterday evening.

Opened the project in visualstudio, added a space to the web.config and rebuild it without a problem.
On opening got an error message stating I'm missing the telerik.sitefinity.migration.contracts reference, so added that in VS and rebuild it again.

Sitefinity fired up, logged in, created new page but still unable to save...

J.

wonder if this issue is the same as what I am experiencing.

Can you look for any errors related to workflow?

using chrome I have found an error shown in the screenshot.
 

Dabbled some more with this, and perhaps this might give you guys some clues...

When in page edit, uploading an image works. When in ecommerce> product edit image upload works. 
When go to content > images, the uploaded image is there, but when from there I try to upload an image I get the same error message as the ones when I try and save a page.

Hi Jochem,

Is there a way to provide us with more detailed information about the exception like - log files (located in the folder App_Data/Logs ) , errors in events logs of IIS. We are trying to reproduce the problem locally with no success.

Greetings,
Teodor
the Telerik team

Hey Teodor,

The attachments only allow valid images, so sending you the error.log by mail. But it'll show nothing but file not found errors due to a favicon.ico missing.

I've attached also a screenshot from FF showing the put statements and it's info. The current installation I'm trying to run is on SQL Express. 

As I mentioned earlier I'm able to store images thru ecommerce or inline editing but not by content>image. With pages it only saves the blanc draft.

However, If I'm editing a page (add a content block/image etc) and then just close the browser, the things get stored because if I later come back, the page is naturally locked but when editing my content block is still there.

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Out-of-the-box (project manager install>directly administration) results in these errors.
Rebuilding it through VS2010 gives same errors.
(And as mentioned before, added a manual reference to Telerik.Sitefinity.MigrationContracts from the empty project bin folder)
There are no . / - or other special characters in either proj name or db.
Workflow active or not doesn't change behavior.
Different user (in diff roles) doesn't change behavior.
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I have a v4.1 SP3 project running on IIS on this machine, still functions normally.
Running W7/VS2010/SQL2008R2 with all the latest updates and the latest WCF Ria Services Toolkit.
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Hello Jochem,

Can you add this to the web config and sent us the log files ( .e2e ) .

Hi Teodor,

Sorry I can't :) I was totally fed up with v4.2 so deleted the lot.

Stuborn as I am, I gave it one more try with a fresh and clean install, this time however installing it on IIS and not relying on VS2010 server or the project managers webserver but created an actual named site on IIS7.5.

And that worked like a charm! Tried again to create a site from proj.manager, using filesystem and bang couldn't publish.

After some deeper digging Appfabric seems to be the culprit.
I have Appfabric installed on this system and when running SF v4.2 through IIS it runs smooth, when running through vs2010 or SF proj. manager it bugs.

Maybe the internal webservers aren't supposed to run smoothly with AppFabric, or maybe there's some arcane hidden switch i need to set so it'll work with the internal webservers but never ran into any issues with other VS2010 projects.

And since the error (inability to publish pages or upload images directly) seems to be focused on those two areas alone I'm guessing there's a hick up on the SF side. 

Not to point a finger or blame you guys but pages get saved in automatic draft but can't be saved/published directly and images can be uploaded through eCommerce or editing but not directly. News/content/blog can be saved etc.

So whether in the end it's a WCF or WF issue, it's a quirk :) I've lost nearly the whole day getting SF v4.2 to work properly but I'll in the weekend I'll add the logging for the web.config and follow up ok?

Thanks!

I've never been able to have SF work side by side with AppFabric either FYI... :)  Which is a shame...I love the analytics

Hi Teodor,

Haven't yet done the tracing/logging yet, but came across, which points to a single file at least where the error occures.

Hi Jochem,

     Than you for the reply but this is not helping a lot. The problem seams to be the call of the workflow but there is no additional data why it is failing. We didn't change the way that it is called. It could be environment related issue that we are not aware about. It will be really grate if you provide us with some more additional information like - stack traces , the service logs (IIS,windows you can see them in the windows events viewer) and also if you can say what is the .NET framework that is installed, anything that you think that could be related. Can you confirm that you are not having AppFabric installed on the same machine ? Steve McNiven-Scott say that there is a problem with AppFabric and Sitefinity?

Greetings,
Teodor
the Telerik team

Hey Teodor,

Thanks for the reply. I will do the tracing and logs etc this evening after the webinar. Could you send me an email or care to share your lastname so I drop you a direct email? This way we won't clog up the forum until we've figured out the quirk and post the solution here... 

Since I've been able to circumvent this issue by running it as an IIS site, it's no priority for me but I'll be glad to try and figure this one out.


To address initial questions already:
Yes, I have Appfabric installed. It is turned off for the IIS server and activated for just 2 sites.
Running IIS 7.5 on Win7 32bit, .NET v4.0.30319 with SQL 2008R2.

Problem only occurs on either the integrated SF server or running the VS2010 server, doesn't happen when running through proper IIS and only happens when trying to publish a page or or upload an image through content>images.

(as mentioned when uploading an image through image widget or ecommerce product, it doesn't occur).

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If I don't hear from you tonight, I'll send the stuff through Tsvetana, just like friday and she'll pass it on...

Jochem

After some heavy coffee consumation yesterday evening, I've reinstalled the damn thing from scratch with AppFabric enabled.

The AppFabric dashboard now neatly tells me there are 'postponed instances' (sorry if it's not the exact english translation, I'm seeing them in Dutch). I've attached the screenshot with one of the postponed operations. The error message is 'missing current principal'.

After some googling I end up at the Sitefinity forum (what are the odd's) regarding a couple of forum posts regarding the same issues.

http://www.sitefinity.com/devnet/forums/sitefinity-4-x/general-discussions/workflow-rules-do-not-allow-page-delete.aspx

The problem still exists, publishing still gives me the SF error, but at least the rest of the workflow now operates smoothly in conjunction with AppFabric.

Any word on solving the issues from January ?

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As a final update for now. When AppFabric persistence is activated, WF wipes all authentication information so the Thread.CurrentPrincipal gets removed resulting in the missing principal. Since I'm blonde and wearing a brown belt today, I'm gonna leave it at this and hand it over to regular black belt ninja's...

Hi Jochem,

We were able to reproduce the problem with "Missing current principal." under AppFabric. Currently Sitefinity does not support persistence of workflow instances with AppFabric. Can you disable this persistence in the configuration of AppFabric?

All the best,
Ivan Pelovski
the Telerik team

Hey Ivan,

Yes I've disabled it. All's working smoothly. 

All's running fine through IIS. VS or sitefinity proj manager is troublesome but that's probl because of that machine configuration (IIS/SQL/AppFabric & Dev all running on the same box).

At least we found a solid way to test if people are able to circumvent workflow permissions :)

Did this ever get resolved? I.e. persisted WF in AppFabric?
Thx

Any new information about this?

Hello Andres,

We have plans to support this feature of AppFabric but we cannot commit to any timeframe.

Regards,
Ivan Pelovski
the Telerik team

Thanks for your response. I have voted for this feature request in PITS http://www.telerik.com/support/pits.aspx#/public/sitefinity/7377, so let's hope it will get some attention at some point in time.
Best regards,
Andrés.

Thanks Andres - I voted for that. And thank you Jochem for all the details provided here. I'm experiencing pretty much the exact same problems in another thread here: 
http://www.sitefinity.com/devnet/forums/sitefinity-4-x/bugs-issues/missing-curent-principal.aspx 

Update: I stopped the appfabric workflow services for my specific website in IIS then restarted the website & app pool, but still getting the "Missing Principal" errors. I then completely stopped the 2 appfabric services in Admin Tools > Services, restarted the website and still no good. 

Ben,
  In IIS you need to disable appfabric on the site itself.  Right-click on the site and there should be a WCF menu item there somewhere (don't have it infront of me)

Inside of that dialog go though every screen and turn off\disable every appfabric monitoring option.

Steve

Yeah that's exactly what I did. Still didn't work. Then I shutdown the service and it didn't work either. I recycled the app pool and restarted my site each time to try and make sure it was picking up the settings although I'm using IIS 7.5 so I probably didn't have to do that step. 

I'm also on Sitefinity 4.4 so it's possible it's something else. We're trying to upgrade from Sitefinity 4.0 which incidentally worked fine with AppFabric. 

@Steve,
Man you're fast... page was still loading when your reply came in...

Thanks Steve & Jochem - I found where you are talking about! 

Hi all,

If I remember correctly, we ended up completely uninstalling AppFabric from our dev machine to fix this issue. :(

@Subin,

Well I would have loved to go Ben's route but that wasn't an option.
So I ended up disabling it on the 'server' level and enabling it on the instance level...

Jochem