Too Many Include Files causing IIS 500 Error

[Chad Scharf]

I have a legacy ASP application running on IIS 6.0 (Windows Server 2003 Web
Edition) that is throwing an error when processesing a certain asp page that
has about 200 or so include directives.

We've checked the spelling, paths, include directives, and files
individually and all of them work.

We have also commented out random ones (4 or so at a time) and then the page
works. It doesn't matter which ones we comment out, just so long as we reduce
the number of pages by 3 or 4, sometimes 5.

The page worked just fine before one of our developers had to add a few new
include files. Now it seems we've reached some sort of ceiling on the number
of include files or the response / processing buffer that IIS will allow for
the asp page.

We've checked pretty much all of the IIS MetaBase property settings for
cache control and buffer limits and so forth but to no avail.

Is there some hidden or conveluded setting in IIS to allow more than a
certain number of include files or preprocessing directive that limits the
amount of memory a page may take up after combining all of its include files?
This is a very frustrating problem and I have not been able to find any
documentation on it.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks

 

[Aaron [SQL Server MVP]]

a certain asp page that has about 200 or so include directives.

Wow!

Anyway, maybe you could include the actual error, or else we could guess all
day what the error is...

 

[Chad Scharf]

That's the problem. The only error returned is the IIS 500 Internal Server
Error. We checked the logs, the avtivity logs, and the InetSrv logs for that
site, and could not get an actual error code other than that.

We also tried running the site from IE on the actual server machine with
friendly errors off and it did not return anything (blank page).

I don't know where else to look for logs or error codes as far as IIS goes
with ASP.

 

[Aaron [SQL Server MVP]]

http://www.aspfaq.com/2109

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http://www.aspfaq.com/
(Reverse address to reply.)

 

[Jeff Dillon]

You can always "hard code" include files inline....as a last resort possibly

I've NEVER seen more than 5-6 includes in my years of ASP coding though.

Jeff

 

[Chad Scharf]

By inline I assume that you mean all on one line:
<%#include "file.asp", "file2.asp", "file3.asp" %>
or
<%#include "file.asp" #include "file2.asp" %>
or
<%#include "file.asp"%><%#include "file2.asp"%>

none of these work in the fashion expected (less lines of code = correct
processing)

- Chad

 

[Aaron [SQL Server MVP]]

I think he meant taking the code out of 5 include files and combining them
into one.

What possible use could you have for 200 distinct #include files, other than
making anyone [who maintains it] want to quit?

 

[Jeff Dillon]

Almost what Aaron said...I meant not using a few include files altogether,
but put the code they contain inline

Jeff