Login failing on live server - asp.net

Question

Hi All,

I am new to asp.net and am trying to test my first site on a production server.

What I have is a login control "login.aspx" that after successful login redirects the user to an admin area of the site. When I test the site using VS2008 on my Windows XP machine all works well and I can login and administer the site. I am using Forms authentication to process the login.

When I upload the site to the production server it is a different story. I can access the login.aspx page. When I enter my login details and click "Login" it takes a really long time to process the page and eventially the page fails.

This is the error that I am getting:

A network-related or instance-specific error occurred while establishing a connection to SQL Server. The server was not found or was not accessible. Verify that the instance name is correct and that SQL Server is configured to allow remote connections. (provider: SQL Network Interfaces, error: 26 - Error Locating Server/Instance Specified) 
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. 

SQLExpress database file auto-creation error: 


The connection string specifies a local Sql Server Express instance using a database location within the applications App_Data directory. The provider attempted to automatically create the application services database because the provider determined that the database does not exist. The following configuration requirements are necessary to successfully check for existence of the application services database and automatically create the application services database:


If the applications App_Data directory does not already exist, the web server account must have read and write access to the applications directory. This is necessary because the web server account will automatically create the App_Data directory if it does not already exist. 
If the applications App_Data directory already exists, the web server account only requires read and write access to the applications App_Data directory. This is necessary because the web server account will attempt to verify that the Sql Server Express database already exists within the applications App_Data directory. Revoking read access on the App_Data directory from the web server account will prevent the provider from correctly determining if the Sql Server Express database already exists. This will cause an error when the provider attempts to create a duplicate of an already existing database. Write access is required because the web server accounts credentials are used when creating the new database. 
Sql Server Express must be installed on the machine. 
The process identity for the web server account must have a local user profile. See the readme document for details on how to create a local user profile for both machine and domain accounts.

Can anybody please help me on this issue.

Answer 1

Umm, have you actually read the error message? It says exactly what is wrong, and how to fix it :-)

It clearly states "The connection string specifies a local Sql Server Express instance using a database location within the applications App_Data directory. The provider attempted to automatically create the application services database because the provider determined that the database does not exist."

Ergo, the databased that is referenced (and probably used to store logins and passwords perhaps?) in the web.config file was not uploaded to the production site.

Upload it to App_Data, and get back to us.

-Oisin

p.s. the connection string is in Web.config.