Question

I have an ASP.Net MVC 3 app that I’ve developed which uses RavenDB Embedded as an integrated backing store for data, I used this tutorial as a basis for getting started creating an MVC app with RavenDB Embedded. I’ve been able to run it fine on my development PC, but when it came time to deploy it on our Windows Server 2003 web server running IIS6 it threw the following error:

Cannot access file, the file is locked or in use Description: An
unhandled exception occurred during the execution of the current web
request. Please review the stack trace for more information about the
error and where it originated in the code.

Exception Details:
Microsoft.Isam.Esent.Interop.EsentFileAccessDeniedException: Cannot
access file, the file is locked or in use

Source Error:

An unhandled exception was generated during the execution of the
current web request. Information regarding the origin and location of
the exception can be identified using the exception stack trace below.

Stack Trace:

[EsentFileAccessDeniedException: Cannot access file, the file is
locked or in use] Microsoft.Isam.Esent.Interop.Api.Check(Int32 err)
in
C:\Work\ravendb\SharedLibs\Sources\managedesent-61618\EsentInterop\Api.cs:2736
Raven.Storage.Esent.TransactionalStorage.Initialize(IUuidGenerator
uuidGenerator) in
c:\Builds\RavenDB-Stable\Raven.Storage.Esent\TransactionalStorage.cs:207

[InvalidOperationException: Could not open transactional storage:
C:\inetpub\wwwroot\MyApp\App_Data\Database\RavenDB\Data]
Raven.Storage.Esent.TransactionalStorage.Initialize(IUuidGenerator
uuidGenerator) in
c:\Builds\RavenDB-Stable\Raven.Storage.Esent\TransactionalStorage.cs:222
Raven.Database.DocumentDatabase..ctor(InMemoryRavenConfiguration
configuration) in
c:\Builds\RavenDB-Stable\Raven.Database\DocumentDatabase.cs:185
Raven.Client.Embedded.EmbeddableDocumentStore.InitializeInternal() in
c:\Builds\RavenDB-Stable\Raven.Client.Embedded\EmbeddableDocumentStore.cs:143
Raven.Client.Document.DocumentStore.Initialize() in
c:\Builds\RavenDB-Stable\Raven.Client.Lightweight\Document\DocumentStore.cs:496
MyApp.CompositionRoot.CreateControllerFactory() in
…\MyApp\CompositionRoot.cs:36 MyApp.CompositionRoot..ctor() in
..\MyApp\CompositionRoot.cs:17
MyApp.MvcApplication.Application_Start() in …MyApp\Global.asax.cs:38

[HttpException (0x80004005): Could not open transactional storage:
C:\inetpub\wwwroot\MyApp\App_Data\Database\RavenDB\Data]
System.Web.HttpApplicationFactory.EnsureAppStartCalledForIntegratedMode(HttpContext
context, HttpApplication app) +3985477
System.Web.HttpApplication.RegisterEventSubscriptionsWithIIS(IntPtr
appContext, HttpContext context, MethodInfo[] handlers) +191
System.Web.HttpApplication.InitSpecial(HttpApplicationState state,
MethodInfo[] handlers, IntPtr appContext, HttpContext context) +325
System.Web.HttpApplicationFactory.GetSpecialApplicationInstance(IntPtr
appContext, HttpContext context) +407
System.Web.Hosting.PipelineRuntime.InitializeApplication(IntPtr
appContext) +375

[HttpException (0x80004005): Could not open transactional storage:
C:\inetpub\wwwroot\MyApp\App_Data\Database\RavenDB\Data]
System.Web.HttpRuntime.FirstRequestInit(HttpContext context) [phone]
System.Web.HttpRuntime.EnsureFirstRequestInit(HttpContext context)
+141 System.Web.HttpRuntime.ProcessRequestNotificationPrivate(IIS7WorkerRequest
wr, HttpContext context) +4782309

The source of the error in the referenced CompositionRoot.cs class is when the initialization of the Embeddable Document Store.

private static IControllerFactory CreateControllerFactory()
{
    var cacheRepository = new EmbeddableDocumentStore();
    cacheRepository.ConnectionStringName = "RavenDB";

    #if DEBUG
        cacheRepository.UseEmbeddedHttpServer = true;
    #endif

    Raven.Database.Server.NonAdminHttp.EnsureCanListenToWhenInNonAdminContext(8080);
    cacheRepository.Initialize(); //Source of Error
    var controllerFactory = new TDRControllerFactory(cacheRepository);
    return controllerFactory;
}

Why is this only happening on the web server and not on my development PC? I’m not sure what the exact cause might be. Any help is appreciated.

Answer 1

This turned out to be a permissions issue, I gave the IIS_IUSRS group modify and write permissions on the root of my application’s folder and that gave it the permissions it needed to initialize the database properly. There’s probably a specific folder within the root that it needs modify/write access to (in my case, probably the App_Data folder, since that’s where I’m instantiating my instance of RavenDB). I’ll have to test as I wouldn’t want any user to have modify/write rights to the entire application folder.