Umbraco fails to Publish! We get an exception within a load balanced environment.

After a deployment to our live servers which are load balanced we could not Publish. We could Save but not right-click publish or by clicking on the icon.

This was the error:

ERROR Umbraco.Web.UmbracoApplication - [Thread 36] An unhandled exception occurred
System.Web.HttpUnhandledException (0x80004005): Exception of type 'System.Web.HttpUnhandledException' was thrown. ---> System.TypeInitializationException: The type initializer for 'umbraco.presentation.cache.dispatcher' threw an exception. ---> System.NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object.
   at umbraco.presentation.cache.dispatcher..cctor()
   --- End of inner exception stack trace ---
   at umbraco.presentation.cache.dispatcher.Refresh(Guid factoryGuid, Int32 Id)
   at umbraco.library.UpdateDocumentCache(Document doc)
   at umbraco.cms.presentation.editContent.Publish(Object sender, EventArgs e)
   at System.Web.UI.WebControls.ImageButton.OnClick(ImageClickEventArgs e)
   at System.Web.UI.WebControls.ImageButton.RaisePostBackEvent(String eventArgument)
   at System.Web.UI.Page.ProcessRequestMain(Boolean includeStagesBeforeAsyncPoint, Boolean includeStagesAfterAsyncPoint)
   at System.Web.UI.Page.HandleError(Exception e)
   at System.Web.UI.Page.ProcessRequestMain(Boolean includeStagesBeforeAsyncPoint, Boolean includeStagesAfterAsyncPoint)
   at System.Web.UI.Page.ProcessRequest(Boolean includeStagesBeforeAsyncPoint, Boolean includeStagesAfterAsyncPoint)
   at System.Web.UI.Page.ProcessRequest()
   at System.Web.UI.Page.ProcessRequest(HttpContext context)
   at System.Web.HttpApplication.CallHandlerExecutionStep.System.Web.HttpApplication.IExecutionStep.Execute()
   at System.Web.HttpApplication.ExecuteStep(IExecutionStep step, Boolean& completedSynchronously)

This seemed to be an error with the distributed call from server 1 to server 2 in the load balancer.

1. First I thought it might be a rewrite rule in \config\UrlRewriting.config - it wasn't
2. Then I recycled the app pools - this didn't help
3. I then made sure I could access the Umbraco web service on both servers:
1. http://serverip1/umbraco/webservices/CacheRefresher.asmx - worked
2. http://serverip2/umbraco/webservices/CacheRefresher.asmx - worked
4. I disabled distributed calls and then Publish worked, but this wasn't a solution
5. Finally the solution was due to incorrect config in \config\umbracoSettings.config. I somehow didn't have the <user>0</user> tag:

<distributedCall enable="true">

    <user>0</user>

    <servers>

      <server>serverip1</server>

      <server>serverip2</server>

    </servers>

</distributedCall>

These are some of the very useful posts I read, but config was my solution:

http://our.umbraco.org/forum/ourumb-dev-forum/bugs/3140-Type-Initialization-Error

http://our.umbraco.org/forum/ourumb-dev-forum/bugs/12909-Error-with-Publish-at-and-Distributed-calls-bad-match

https://github.com/umbraco/Umbraco-CMS/blob/4.11.7---ITask-updates/src/Umbraco.Web/umbraco.presentation/umbraco/cache/dispatcher.cs

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/19131915/umbraco-content-syncing-issue-error-refreshing-a-node-in-the-distributed-list

How do I copy files after Publish to the Publish folder using Visual Studio 2010 with MSBuild?

My web project in Visual Studio 2010 has post-build events that copies files from a folder into the bin directory of the web project. But when I publish my site, MSBuild seems to ignore the post-build events and these files are NOT copied.

The solution is to create a BAT file that executes from a MSBuild Target. I called my BAT file PostBuildEventPublish.bat and it lives in my solution folder. This is the BAT file contents:

xcopy "%1References\UmbracoCourier.lic" "%2" /y
xcopy "%1References\jumps.umbraco.usync.dll" "%2" /y

The parameters %1 and %2 are input from the MSBuild csproj file. In VS2010 unload your web project and edit the project then insert this Target (at the bottom):

<Target Name="AfterPublish" AfterTargets="CopyAllFilesToSingleFolderForPackage">    
    <Exec Command="$(SolutionDir)References\PostBuildEventPublish.bat &quot;$(SolutionDir)&quot; &quot;$(ProjectDir)obj\$(Configuration)\Package\PackageTmp\bin&quot;" />
    <Message Importance="Normal" Text="Finished PostBuildEventPublish.bat" />
 </Target>

Obviously change to the paths you want to use.

As you can see parameter %1 = $(SolutionDir)
and parameter %2 = $(ProjectDir)obj\$(Configuration)\Package\PackageTmp\bin

You will notice that my Target always gets executed before the actual publish files are copied. 

C:\Dev\Puma\Main\References\PostBuildEventPublish.bat "C:\Dev\Main\" "C:\Dev\Puma\Main\Web\obj\Debug\Package\PackageTmp\bin"
C:\Dev\Puma\Main\References\UmbracoCourier.lic
1 File(s) copied
C:\Dev\Puma\Main\References\jumps.umbraco.usync.dll
1 File(s) copied
Finished PostBuildEventPublish.bat
Publish Pipeline Deploy phase Pre-Deploy CopyAllFilesToOneFolder Stage
Deleting existing files...
Publishing folder /...
Publishing folder App_Browsers...
Publishing folder App_Data...
Publishing folder App_Data/packages...
Publishing folder App_Data/packages/created...

Publishing folder App_Data/packages/installed...
...
Publishing folder uSync/Template/ZMag...
Publishing folder Views...
========== Build: 5 succeeded or up-to-date, 0 failed, 0 skipped ==========

========== Publish: 1 succeeded, 0 failed, 0 skipped ==========

So parameter %2 is where the magic happens. Here we copy the files into the temp publish folder and when Publish completes copying the files to the actual Publish folder these post-build files will also be copied.

Publish in Umbraco 4.11.4 load balanced environment doesn't refresh the umbraco.config file

I has running into this issues when publishing content on my staging site. Nothing would refresh the umbraco.config file except manually deleting it. Until I discovered that our live server settings for load balancing was effecting the publish.

In the /config/umbracoSettings.config file on staging I set:

<distributedcall enabled="true"></distributedcall>

The moment I did this my publish started working as it wasn't attempting the load balance on a non-load balanced environment.

Visual Studio 2010 publish failing with error Unable to add XYZ to the Web site. Access is denied (550).

I started receiving this error when trying to publish through Visual Studio 2010:

Unable to add XYZ to the Web site. Access is denied (550).

The reason being someone had manually FTP-ed files to the website and they had read-only set to true.

Resolution:

Make the folders/files not read-only - easy :)