Debugging Specified Argument Was Out of Range: utcDate

February 6, 2013
In a production Azure application, our Web roles were repeatedly running into an error in ELMAH that we found nearly impossible to reproduce. It never occurred running in local IIS, IIS Express or anything.

The exact error message was an ArgumentOutOfRangeException:

System.ArgumentOutOfRangeException: Specified argument was out of the range of valid values.
Parameter name: utcDate
     at System.Web.HttpCachePolicy.UtcSetLastModified(DateTime utcDate)
     at System.Web.HttpCachePolicy.SetLastModified(DateTime date)
     at System.Web.UI.Page.InitOutputCache(OutputCacheParameters cacheSettings)
     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.Mvc.OutputCacheAttribute.OnResultExecuting(ResultExecutingContext filterContext)
     at System.Web.Mvc.ControllerActionInvoker.InvokeActionResultFilter(IResultFilter filter, ResultExecutingContext preContext, Func`1 continuation)
     at System.Web.Mvc.ControllerActionInvoker.InvokeActionResultFilter(IResultFilter filter, ResultExecutingContext preContext, Func`1 continuation)
     at System.Web.Mvc.ControllerActionInvoker.InvokeActionResultFilter(IResultFilter filter, ResultExecutingContext preContext, Func`1 continuation)
     at System.Web.Mvc.ControllerActionInvoker.InvokeActionResultWithFilters(ControllerContext controllerContext, IList`1 filters, ActionResult actionResult)
     at System.Web.Mvc.Async.AsyncControllerActionInvoker.<>c__DisplayClass27.b__24(IAsyncResult asyncResult)
     at System.Web.Mvc.AsyncController.<>c__DisplayClass19.b__14(IAsyncResult asyncResult)
     at System.Web.Mvc.Async.AsyncResultWrapper.<>c__DisplayClass4.b__3(IAsyncResult ar)
     at System.Web.Mvc.AsyncController.EndExecuteCore(IAsyncResult asyncResult)
     at System.Web.Mvc.Async.AsyncResultWrapper.<>c__DisplayClass4.b__3(IAsyncResult ar)
     at System.Web.Mvc.MvcHandler.<>c__DisplayClass6.<>c__DisplayClassb.b__4(IAsyncResult asyncResult)
     at System.Web.Mvc.Async.AsyncResultWrapper.<>c__DisplayClass4.b__3(IAsyncResult ar)
     at System.Web.HttpApplication.CallHandlerExecutionStep.System.Web.HttpApplication.IExecutionStep.Execute()
     at System.Web.HttpApplication.ExecuteStep(IExecutionStep step, Boolean& completedSynchronously

Notice anything missing?

Everything is in the “System.Web” namespace, meaning that all of this is framework code and not application code. This begs the question: Why is this happening?

Apparently, something in the framework (which was indirectly affected by our app) was causing this.

After many, many weeks of on again, off again debugging, I finally discovered the problem:

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Identifying a Rogue Azure Web Role Instance

February 1, 2013
When dealing with a web “farm” situation, there are various reasons a developer needs to identify which machine responded to a request, especially when dealing with particularly nefarious bugs.

Recently, an Azure production application I was monitoring was experiencing a problem with stale/old data showing up intermittently as users navigated the website. I began to suspect a single instance of the application did not have a properly updated cache on it. I needed to know which Web Role Instance was causing the problem so I could restart it. Obviously, there was a bug that would need to be tracked down in the future, but the immediate need was to stop the problem.

For lack of other information, I had to restart each instance of the web role individually, waiting for that one to come back up and move on to the next. I couldn’t trust the situation until every single instance was restarted.

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Remote Desktop to Ubuntu in Windows Azure

November 5, 2012
When it comes to Microsoft, people don’t generally think “Open Source” or “Linux Support”. But in recent years, Microsoft has come a long way. They’ve released many of their most commonly used frameworks under open source licenses, including ASP.NET MVC/Web API/Web Pages and Entity Framework!

Additionally, they’ve given first-class support for many non-Microsoft offerings, especially in Azure. Currently, this includes support in Azure for open source gems like Node.js, PHP, and, yes, even Linux. Heck, they even have an Openness logo:

In this post, I’ll walk you through setting up the Ubuntu Desktop on an Azure Virtual Machine and configure it so you can connect to it through Windows Remote Desktop. It’s a lot easier than you think!

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