Web farm license limitation errors resulting in pagenotfound errors

Jesse V asked on September 24, 2015 16:16

Hi everyone,

I keep getting Webfarm license limitation errors in my log. These errors prevent whole websites to load properly, they instead show the error: "This website does not contain any content... etc".

Facts of the server: * we have no web farm * all webfarm settings are turned off * we started with a fresh install and imported one site into it from another server * we have about 9 websites running on this installation, they had different (default)cultures. I thought this might be the culprit and changed them all to Dutch - Nederlands, rebuild indexes and changed all pages accordingly. * dived into the database but could not find anything hinting towards web farms. * there is one administrator account for all websites and for some sites we have one editor per site.

Unexplainable, some visitors see the websites as should be. Other visitors are greeted with an empty page with the error: "This website does not contain any content... etc". People who don't see one site are not able to see any other website hosted on this kentico installation (url does resolve, that's not the problem).

We have googled and searched this forum intensively, but could not find a working solution. Any help is very welcome!

LOGS:

EventID: 16638 EventType: E EventTime: 9/24/2015 3:43:32 PM Source: Application EventCode: EndRequest UserID: 65 UserName: public IPAddress: 123.456.789

EventDescription: Message: License for feature 'Webfarm' not found.

Exception type: CMS.DataEngine.LicenseException Stack Trace: at CMS.LicenseProvider.LicenseHelperInternal.ReportLicenseError(String redirectUrl, String message) at CMS.LicenseProvider.LicenseService.CheckLicense(FeatureEnum feature, String domain, Boolean throwError) at CMS.DataEngine.AbstractInfoProvider2.GetObjectQuery(Boolean checkLicense) at CMS.WebFarmSync.WebSyncHelper.GetServerTasks(Int32 serverId) at CMS.WebFarmSync.WebSyncHelper.ProcessMyTasks() at CMS.Base.AbstractHandler.CallEventHandler[TArgs](EventHandler1 h, TArgs e) at CMS.Base.AbstractHandler.Raise[TArgs](String partName, List1 list, TArgs e, Boolean important) at CMS.Base.SimpleHandler2.RaiseExecute(TArgs e) at CMS.Base.SimpleHandler2.RaiseExecute(TArgs e) at CMS.Base.SimpleHandler2.StartEvent(TArgs e) at CMS.Base.LockHelper.ExecuteOnceInLifetime(Action action, Object lockObject, Boolean& executedFlag) at CMS.Base.AbstractHandler.CallEventHandler[TArgs](EventHandler1 h, TArgs e) at CMS.Base.AbstractHandler.Raise[TArgs](String partName, List1 list, TArgs e, Boolean important) at CMS.Base.SimpleHandler2.RaiseExecute(TArgs e) at CMS.Base.SimpleHandler2.RaiseExecute(TArgs e) at CMS.Base.SimpleHandler`2.StartEvent(TArgs e) at CMS.Base.ApplicationModule.EndRequest(Object sender, EventArgs e)

Message: License for feature 'Webfarm' not found.

EventUrl: /

EventMachineName: VPS19669

EventUserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_10_5) AppleWebKit/600.8.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/8.0.8 Safari/600.8.9

EventID: 16641 EventType: W EventTime: 9/24/2015 3:53:36 PM Source: Webfarm EventCode: LICENSELIMITATION UserID: 53 UserName: administrator IPAddress: 123.456.789

EventDescription: Feature Webfarm is not available.

EventUrl: /CMSModules/AdminControls/Pages/UIPage.aspx?displaytitle=false&elementguid=e7c58bcc-a132-40cf-b587-c11fbf146963

EventMachineName: VPS19669

EventUserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_10_5) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/45.0.2454.99 Safari/537.36

EventUrlReferrer: http://samenbindend.nl/Admin/CMSAdministration.aspx

Correct Answer

Juraj Ondrus answered on September 25, 2015 13:09

Hi,
You can find the exact version by clicking the question mark icon - http://i.imgur.com/Vdl7GRo.png
In FREE edition, you can have only one culture per site. So, site A can have one culture, Site B also just one culture.

The web farm error is most likely caused by the bug that was fixed in hotfix no.12:

Licensing - Web farm license warnings when using the Free license When using the Free license, web farm related license warnings were registered in the Event log even if the web farm functionality was disabled.

To get rid of this error, you need to apply the latest hotfix.

Edge browser is not supported by Kentico 8 since it was released after Kentico 8. However, Kentico 9 is coming out soon and it should be supported.

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Recent Answers

Brenden Kehren answered on September 24, 2015 16:30

If you've imported the sites, there is a good chance some of the default settings were already set relating to web farms for each site. I'd suggest looking into each of the site specific settings and ensuring there are no web farm setting set. Also look to see if there are any web farm servers set in the web farm app.

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Maarten van den Hooven answered on September 24, 2015 16:37

Hi Jesse, did you checked all settings? for example also the web.config.

See the documentation : Web farm synchronization settings

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Jesse V answered on September 24, 2015 16:40

Thanks Brenden, for chiming in. Your answers elsewhere here have helped me numerous times :) thanks for that!

I've looked at all websites specifically, but none has web farms enabled. The web farm app is not visible at all in Configuration, probably because it is the free edition.

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Jesse V answered on September 24, 2015 16:45

@Maarten

Also thanks for your help, I forgot to mention that we looked at the web.config indeed, the word web farm is nowhere to be found, not even a hint. It leaves me puzzled.

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Maarten van den Hooven answered on September 24, 2015 16:59 (last edited on September 24, 2015 17:04)

Your welcome :-) But what a strange problem. If you go to the module "web farm" what do you see there?

Do you have the message "Web farm is enabled on current server.", and do you see server names?

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Jesse V answered on September 24, 2015 17:05

The only mention of web farms I can see is in Configuration > Settings > Versioning & Synchronisation > Web farm. (there is no Web Farm app available in Configuration) Enable web farms is OFF (no checkmark), saved, reset windows application and rebooted the whole server to make sure no cache is in the way.

The one imported site did not came from a web farm enabled server, just from stand alone to stand alone.

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Maarten van den Hooven answered on September 24, 2015 17:09

Hi Jesse, probably web farm is disabled, but you have web farms in the instance.

Do you acces to the database, if so can you look in the [CMS_WebFarmServer] table if there are servers?

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Maarten van den Hooven answered on September 24, 2015 17:11

If you don't want web farms you can delete the records in the following tables:

CMS_WebFarmServer   
CMS_WebFarmTask 
CMS_WebFarmServerTask

Good luck!!!!

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Jesse V answered on September 24, 2015 17:22

Hi Maarten, I'm in the db @ WebFarmServer. How can you see if there's a server? Everything I see looks default.

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Maarten van den Hooven answered on September 24, 2015 17:27

If you don't use web farms these database tables needs to be empty:

CMS_WebFarmServer   
CMS_WebFarmTask 
CMS_WebFarmServerTask

If this is not the case then you can delete all entries from these tables, but if these tables are already empty then I am empty with ideas and I suggest to send an email to support@kentico.com.

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Brenden Kehren answered on September 24, 2015 19:30 (last edited on September 24, 2015 19:32)

Understand you're using the free addition. When you built the sites initially, were you on a different license or started from a different template other than the blank template? My guess is there are some hidden settings enabled causing this error because of this. Did you get any errors when you imported the sites? You might want to check a site when you're importing and see if there are any web farm features being imported or that weren't deleted. I've come across this a lot when moving from one instance to another with different license keys.

Another option would be to generate an ultimate license with the localhost domain and then see what you find.

BTW, what version?

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Maarten van den Hooven answered on September 25, 2015 10:29 (last edited on September 25, 2015 10:31)

Hi Jesse, Another last try :-) You can disable all settings for WebFarms with this SQL statement.

  UPDATE [CMS_SettingsKey] 
  SET KeyValue = 'False'
  WHERE KeyName LIKE '%farm%' and KeyValue = 'True'

After this DB changes it also recommended to restart the application (system -> restart application)

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Jesse V answered on September 25, 2015 11:23

@Brenden @Maarten,

We decided to start with a clean installation. We had some import errors (not related to web farms). Before the move the domain name had changed and therefore got a new license. I strongly believe this is the culprit. Building this website new from the ground up PLUS a fresh install will iron out a lot of trouble and save us all precious time.

Thanks guys for the swift replies and wonderful help. Much appreciated!

@Maarten, the SQL statement worked like a charm but did not resolved the problems I encountered.

FYI a screenshot of the import: Image Text

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Juraj Ondrus answered on September 25, 2015 11:37

Hi,
What is the exact Kentico version you are using? Regrettably, in the past there were some license checking bugs that were already fixed.
Regarding the empty site - what are the culture settings and does it happen in all browsers? For example, IE is pretty strict about the cultures and for example your browser culture is set to culture A, then the browser is asking for this culture. If the site culture, content culture and default culture for the user (in this case the public user) is not set, Kentico tries to server that culture but it is not found. I would check the cultures too.

What are the export and import settings? Are you exporting and importing all the objects?

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Jesse V answered on September 25, 2015 11:53

@Juraj Thanks for chiming in! We are on 8.2 (could not find build version anywhere). Most problems were on Safari (but not Chrome) and Edge. Changing the site default cultures solved the problems for the most of Safari users, but not for Edge. Web farm license errors keep coming.

Is it possible on the free edition to have site A on culture US-EN and site B on NL-NL for instance without running into license limitations?

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Jesse V answered on September 25, 2015 16:12

Thanks for pointing out where to find the version number in Kentico 8. We have applied the latest hotfix, and... FIXED! No errors what so ever. Thank you very much.

Note to myself: apply hotfix before thinking of technical solutions. Sometimes the answer is just an inch away...

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Brenden Kehren answered on September 25, 2015 19:07

Jesse, unfortunately you cannot always apply a hotfix that easy. Although Kentico makes it easy to do, sometimes the politics around getting it implemented are much greater than the task itself...

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