Firewall problems - how to get ANTS to use "127.0.0.1"

snookerc

I am having some difficulty running the 14-day eval due to the firewall policies here at my company.

It appears that ANTS ASP.NET profiling is not using localhost (127.0.0.1), but rather, using my network IP address (10.100.blah.blah). Unfortunately, the latter is not allowed here at my company.

I only see this single entry in the "hosts" file:
127.0.0.1 localhost

There's nothing in "lmhosts".

At this point our security/networking department is really doubting whether they want to allow us to run this product :x

Thanks for any help you can give me!
Chris

Robert C

Hi,

I assume by this you're trying to profile a web application? You might want to try the beta version of ANTS Profiler 3 - we've changed the way that hostnames and addresses are resolved slightly, so you may have more luck with that.

If you try to use 127.0.0.1 on the current version, what do you see?

Many thanks,
Robert

snookerc

Robert,

Thanks for the reply. Yes, this is a Web Application. I installed ANTS Profiler 3, but am having the same problem.

When I try to profile http://localhost/AdminWeb/default.aspx, ANTS gives me a message box that says "Error stopping IISAdmin".

When I look at McAfee Firewall's log, these are the entries that were just written:

ANTS Profiler v3.0 IIS Profiling Host ... Blocked Outgoing TCP - Source Local: (1751) Destination 10.100.35.102: (8084)
ANTS Profiler v3.0 IIS Profiling Host ... Blocked Outgoing TCP - Source Local: (1752) Destination 10.100.35.102: (8084)
ANTS Profiler v3.0 IIS Profiling Host ... Blocked Outgoing TCP - Source Local: (1805) Destination 10.100.35.102: (8084)
ANTS Profiler v3.0 IIS Profiling Host ... Blocked Outgoing TCP - Source Local: (1806) Destination 10.100.35.102: (8084)
ANTS Profiler v3.0 IIS Profiling Host ... Blocked Outgoing TCP - Source Local: (1814) Destination 10.100.35.102: (8084)
ANTS Profiler v3.0 IIS Profiling Host ... Blocked Outgoing TCP - Source Local: (1815) Destination 10.100.35.102: (8084)

Our IT guys says that if ANTS would look at 127.0.0.1 and not my network address, the firewall wouldn't be an issue. IT temporarily turned my firewall off, and everything worked. However, they won't let me keep it that way :P

Any other ideas??

Thanks!
Chris

Robert C

Hi Chris,

That's truly strange - I've just checked the code, and all the remoting connections explicitly connect to 127.0.0.1, so I'm not sure why that would be doing that.

ANTS uses two ports, 8084 and 8086, both TCP. I wonder if you could beg your IT department for an exception on those ports on the firewall?

Cheers,
Rob

snookerc

Thanks for the reply, Rob.

I thought this was strange, also. I wonder if it has anything to do with the way my IIS is set up?

Here's the ANTS 3 log if that helps at all.

03/15/2007 8:57:09 AM IISProfileHostLog initialized
03/15/2007 8:57:09 AM PID = 2152
03/15/2007 8:57:09 AM Log file name = IISProfileHostLog2152.txt
03/15/2007 8:57:09 AM OS version = Microsoft Windows NT 5.1.2600 Service Pack 2
03/15/2007 8:57:09 AM Machine name = XPCSNOOK
03/15/2007 8:57:09 AM User name = csnook
03/15/2007 8:57:09 AM ANTS Profiler IISProfileHost Start up
03/15/2007 8:57:09 AM Listening on port 8086
03/15/2007 8:57:10 AM StartProfilingIIS currentUserName ITAGROUP\csnook, url http://localhost/AdminWeb/default.aspx, .NET 2.0 OnePointOne, IIS5
03/15/2007 8:57:10 AM Parse IIS metabase
03/15/2007 8:57:13 AM InitServiceList
03/15/2007 8:57:13 AM StartIIS
03/15/2007 8:57:13 AM StopServicesInOrder
03/15/2007 8:57:13 AM Error, unable to stop IISAdmin [ProfileIISController.StopServicesInOrder()]
03/15/2007 8:57:14 AM ENGINE - Received request to close IISProfileHost
03/15/2007 8:57:14 AM IISPROFILEHOST - Exiting due to closing: True and UI Exit: False
03/15/2007 8:57:14 AM Main() exiting


I'm not sure why the log says ".NET 2.0 OnePointOne". My app is .NET 1.1, and I selected that in the profiling wizard.

I'll ask IT about those 2 ports and see if there's any way they'll open them up.

Thanks!
Chris

Robert C

Hi,

The fact that you're getting that much means that ANTS is communicating internally OK. The IISAdmin problem seems to be separate.

The ".NET 2.0 OnePointOne" bit is a slight misnomer - it used to be a boolean, and then got changed into an enum; it should probably be ".NET version".

Can you confirm you have administrative rights on your machine?

Regards,

snookerc

I do have administrator rights.

This problem goes away when IT temporarily disables my firewall, so I'm guessing that "StopServicesInOrder " is blocked by the firewall when it tries to shut down the IISAdmin Windows Service.

Robert C

Could you try running "net stop iisadmin" from a command prompt and see if this succeeds? Beyond that, I'm afraid I'm at a loss.

I can only guess that the Windows service controller infrastructure is using some kind of network-based communications behind the scenes, and I'm not sure that that's something we have any control over.

We use the standard advapi32.dll calls to stop and start services; nothing unusual, I think.

Cheers,
Rob

snookerc

I have no problems running net stop iisadmin. I think you're right - advapi32.dll must be doing something behind the scenes you can't control.

Rats - that may mean I have to look for another product

Thanks for all your help, Rob!
Chris

Robert C

Hi Chris,

Just one final comment - have you tried profiling your application in the ASP.NET Development Web Server (Webdev / Cassini)? That might bring you more joy (assuming you aren't relying on features only available in IIS proper)...

Rob