DotNetNuke 3.0.x on SQLServer 2005/Net 2.0.Win2003 - possible?

Question

I've promised to take a look at an old DotNetNuke installation for a client with the intention of making a few, hopefully minor, changes. The installation is rather old - I believe version 3.0.013 - and the production copy is running against SQL Server 2000, Windows 2003 and .Net 1.1.

As the production server is live and significantly used we need a development installation first. I have attempted to install a copy on my local server - Windows 2003, SQL Server 2005, .Net 2.0, and although with a few tweaks I can successfully get it to display the site, I cannot login, or even access the login module (ie just putting in blank username and password attempting to generate a 'must enter username' type error) without getting the error 'Object reference not set to an instance of an object'

I've spent some time trying to get around this error, without success, although I am hampered by not having used this package before.

So my questions are

Has anyone managed to run DotNetNuke 3.0.x with this configuration (or do I need to setup a box with SQL 2000 and .Net 1.0 to get it to run)?

Any suggestions where I should start looking for this error, or has anyone come across anything similar before?

EDIT: Eventually chickened out and installed in on an old webserver with Win2003/SQL 2000/Net 1.1 and it went in fine on an identical install. So I guess the answer is no, it doesn't work straight out of the box.

Answer 1

My feeling is that you shouldn't have any trouble running in the above mentioned environment. But taking a closer look at the error itself will help us to prove that.

If the error is occurring only when you navigate to the Login module, it may be an issue loading the authentication provider. The best way to find out is to look in the DNN Event Log and take a look at the full error message.

Because you can't login to access the Event Log, you should probably just take a look at the row created in the database when you receive the error. The table is called EventLog and there may be a little bit of friction in parsing the error message out, as all of the details are stored in the database in an XML format.

In general, when moving a site from one environment to another there are only a couple of things that you'd need to do:

1. make sure you can connect to the database
2. set the file system permissions

It sounds like you already have database connectivity because you can load the site.

However, you may want to double check (just re-apply) the file system permissions for the root of the website on the machine in question. Make sure the identity of the website (typically ASP.NET Machine Account or Network Service) has 'Modify' permissions on the root website directory. Perhaps the web site can't load a particular assembly due to lack of permissions.