Oxite - Discussions - Hosting Considerations

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Wiki Link: [discussion:41875]

Hosting Considerations

kingdango

Dec 9 2008 at 4:02 PM

Getting systems such as Oxite LIVE in a shared hosting environment can be difficult. But a large portion, if not majority share, of the potential oxite community will be using shared hosting.

I use DiscountASP.NET hosting as recommended by www.ASP.NET. So, will Oxite run smoothly in that environment?

Duncanma

Coordinator

Dec 9 2008 at 5:15 PM

We are working to make this run in medium trust right now, which is a common setting for shared hosting, but Linq to SQL has special requirements as documented here http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb907622.aspx and those might be a problem in some environments. We are busy right now trying to get it to run on our own various hosts, but if you get it running on any specific hosts please post information here on any issues you ran into (or if it just worked).

ErikPorter

Coordinator

Dec 9 2008 at 5:53 PM

I use Discount ASP.NET and will be moving to Oxite for my own blog soon. I will let you know what it takes to get it running (or that I switched hosts). :)

kingdango

Dec 10 2008 at 2:22 AM

I will be working to setup an Oxite site on Discount ASP.NET so I too will post my experience (success or failure).

As a side note, to the authors, a quick way to gain visibility would be to coordinate with GoDaddy on making Oxite one of the Community Applications that can be installed in a GoDaddy shared host with the click of a button.

Duncanma

Coordinator

Dec 10 2008 at 2:35 AM

I don't think we are ready to be included in the GoDaddy community apps yet, but it is a good idea... thanks.

I expect DiscountASP.NET should work for you, I sent them email today and they thought it would. I haven't had a chance to try it out though.

skewed

Coordinator

Dec 10 2008 at 7:18 AM

Server Intellect is another option. They'll hook you up with full trust, to let LinqToSql do its thing, if you just ask for it.

I'm still working on getting my blog up and running with them. I'm just holding out for the legacy (IIS6) routing solution Erik's working on so I don't have to muck with the route URLs. Something you'd need to do if going the wildcard mapping route (http://blog.codeville.net/2008/07/04/options-for-deploying-aspnet-mvc-to-iis-6/) isn't an possible.

babernethy

Dec 10 2008 at 2:23 PM

I am trying to get things working at webhost4life with limited success - still working on it.

1) Make sure you have the beta MVC .dll references set to copy-local (i.e. most shared hosts won't have the beta MVC bits in the GAC)

2) Trying to get the local SQL Express database to work (don't think they have SQL Express on the shared boxes), or looking for a script to generate the tables on a shared instance of SQL Server 2008 (or 2005 if necessary). There is a lot of helpful stuff in the DB project, just trying to separate out what is needed. This is harder to do when you aren't sa/dbo on the database and don't have access to the system tables. It'd be nice if there was one script that would generate the tables and insert the seed/lookup data that would run inside a single database that you had dbo rights on.

babernethy

Dec 11 2008 at 6:48 PM

Got it working

1) Generated the CREATE scripts from the local SQL Express DB instance for all the tables
2) Even if you can't open the database project, the folder still has this file "Oxite.Database\Scripts\Post-Deployment\DefaultValues.sql" - run that on your new tables and that seeds the DB
3) Make sure you update your Connection String and the Site information for your new site

Working without errors in shared hosting.

Now to figure out more about customizing it and meshing it into some existing MVC stuff.

Duncanma

Coordinator

Dec 11 2008 at 6:51 PM

That's good to here babernethy! Good job figuring all that out, we'll be trying to improve the database deployment side of the project ... mostly with additional instructions... so I appreciate you working hard to get it working.

Also good to hear that you have it up and running under shared hosting. Post a link to your site when you are ready for folks to check it out!

dasp

Dec 12 2008 at 6:23 PM

I work for DiscountASP.NET. We got oxite working on DiscountASP.NET. We posted in our blog (daspblog.com) about it.

ErikPorter

Coordinator

Dec 12 2008 at 6:26 PM

Thanks, dasp!

I've also successfully migrated my own blog to run Oxite on DiscountASP.NET :)

midas79

Dec 15 2008 at 6:22 PM

Has anyone tried any of the BackgroundServices stuff on shared hosting? I see that it uses TransactionScope, and since that involves DTS I would think it would not work in medium trust.

ErikPorter

Coordinator

Dec 15 2008 at 6:25 PM

I could be wrong, but my understanding was that DTS is only used when the transaction occurrs across multiple connections. There shouldn't be any place in Oxite (if there is, it's a bug) that does work across multiple connections.

That said, I'll be trying out the background services on DiscountASP.NET soon (running on their Medium-Trust + ReflectionPermssion [for LINQ to SQL]) so we'll see. :)

midas79

Dec 15 2008 at 6:35 PM

A little digging and it looks like you are right: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms973865.aspx

It uses the Lightweight Transaction Manager unless it needs to be promoted to DTS, and that is when it demands DistributedTransaction permission. Sorry for my ignorance; I have never tried to run TransactionScope in medium trust and I must admit that I have never paid attention to the internals of its magic.

ErikPorter

Coordinator

Dec 15 2008 at 9:56 PM

No worries. :) Only reason I knew that was because of a bug we found a while back where we were doing work off of two different datacontexts and it freaked calling DTS.