ASP.NET - Deployment Issues - Enabling Stack Trace / Trace Listener Log via the Web.Config to find the cause of Internal Server 500 Error

Question

I am getting a Internal Server 500 error after deploying an application that has compiled without errors on my local machine. The server that the application is deployed on has a ton of security so I need to specify read and write access for every directory. This application uses windows authentication and a web service to populate drop down boxes via a proxy. I think there might be an issue connecting to the web service or an issue with the read/write security on the files, or an issue with the active directory authentication.

I edited the web.config so that it would display more information as to the cause of the error with the following code:

<system.web>
  <customErrors mode ="Off"></customErrors>
  <compilation debug="true" strict="false" explicit="true" targetFramework="4.0" />
  <trace enabled="true" pageOutput="true" />

  <authentication mode="Windows"/>
   <authorization>
    <allow roles="alg\ADMIN_USER" />
    <deny users="*" />        
  </authorization> 

<client>
  <endpoint address="http://63.236.108.91/aCompService.svc" binding="basicHttpBinding"
    bindingConfiguration="BasicHttpBinding_IAcompService" contract="aComp_ServiceReference.IAcompService"
    name="BasicHttpBinding_IAcompService" />
</client>

I am now getting the following Error:

    500 - Internal server error.

    There is a problem with the resource you are looking for, and it cannot be 
    displayed. 

I would like to see the stack trace with the source of the error.

What am I supposed to put in the web.config file so it displays the full stack trace?

What needs to be changed on the website from locally run to deployment?

Update- The deployment guy lifted some security read/write restrictions and now I get

    Parser Error Message: The connection name 'ApplicationServices' was not found in 
    the applications configuration or the connection string is empty. 

To get rid of the error, I removed the AspNetSqlRoleProvider declared on Line 72 and still got an error. I then removed the AspNetWindowsTokenRoleProvider and all the provider info and got the following Error:

    Exception message: Default Role Provider could not be found.  

Our hosting is done all remotely but the server guy can login to the local webserver remotely. It looks like the server guy didn't post the files in the right place. Now, I now get the error:

    There is a problem with the resource you are looking for, and it cannot 
    be displayed.

Any ideas on how to fix these issues?

Thanks for looking!

Answer 1

Do you have a web.config at another location in the application's folder hierarchy that could be overriding the change you're making? I've seen confusion before when devs have copied a web.config up a level to retain a copy of it while making test changes.

That can be a source of much head-scratching.