bencoffman.com/blog - .Net

Making Continuous Integration Easier Cruise Control, ccnet, ccnet.config, default.build

Ben Coffman — Sun, 22 Aug 2010 20:53:07 GMT

You wanna set up a continuous integration server for .net and you want to do it fast, problem is learning all the darn elements and what they do for a nant script (default.build) and for the Cruise Control script (ccnet.config), ugg what a pain. Well I'm here to help you. I just created these two scripts on a very basic level to help you get moving quickly, because who honestly wants to waste time setting these things up. I provided plenty of comments too and links in the scripts to websites to make this as painless and as quick as possible.

Feel free to take and use and build upon, but remember to share and certainly don't snip it and play to your friends on how quickly you set it up and not tell them where you went. That's just not cool. Some might even say you're being a poser. :)




Cruise Control config file ccnet.config:

<!--
A great refrence website                                                -->
<!-- http://ilmatte.wordpress.com/2008/06/01/cruisecontrolnet-tutorial-part-1/#ccnettutsourcecontrolblock
--> <cruisecontrol>     <project name="testProject">
        <!-- URL of web interface set
up for cruise
control                    -->
        <webURL>http://localhost:8080/default.aspx</webURL>          
        <!-- Directory of your project checked out from
whatever            -->
        <!-- repository you use and build
script is in                         -->
        <workingDirectory>C:\dev\ccnet</workingDirectory>
                 <!--
Directory of where all the build logs will be placed            -->
        <artifactDirectory>C:\develop\CCnet\project1CCnetArtifacts</artifactDirectory>
                 <!--
Hook for using Subversion
                             
-->                
        <!-- Parameter documentation for sourcecontrol
plugin using svn:   
 -->         <!-- http://ccnet.sourceforge.net/CCNET/Subversion%20Source%20Control%20Block.html        -->         <sourcecontrol
type="svn">
            <trunkUrl>http://win-r7ld6grk131:1234/svn/testproject/trunk/testapp</trunkUrl>              <workingDirectory>C:\dev\ccnet</workingDirectory>
            <executable>C:\csvn\bin\svn.exe</executable>
            <username>admin</username>
            <password>admin</password>
            <timeout>60000</timeout>            
        </sourcecontrol>         
        <!-- Hook for Git:
Didn't spend to much time                         -->
        <!-- setting this up
it may need some more tweeking                    -->
        <!-- and I'm not sure CC supports
it natively yet                    -->
        <!--         <sourcecontrol
type="git">
            <repository>C:\repositories\examplerepository\TestApplication</repository>
            <branch>master</branch>
            <autoGetSource>true</autoGetSource>
            <executable>git</executable>
            <tagOnSuccess>false</tagOnSuccess>
            <tagCommitMessage>ccnet
build {0}</tagCommitMessage>             <workingDirectory>C:\repositories\examplerepository\TestApplication</workingDirectory>
            <timeout>60000</timeout>
        </sourcecontrol>         -->
                 <!--
How often it should check the repository for changes
            -->         <!--
Parameter documenation for triggers
                            -->
        <!-- http://ccnet.sourceforge.net/CCNET/Interval%20Trigger.html
    -->         <triggers>
            <intervalTrigger
name="SVN" seconds="10" buildCondition="IfModificationExists" />
        </triggers>         
                 
        <!-- labels each build with my
name on the front of the project name    -->         <!--
Parameter documenation for labeller
at                                -->    
        <!-- http://ccnet.sourceforge.net/CCNET/Default%20Labeller.html            -->         <labeller
type="defaultlabeller">
            <prefix>Bens-TestProject-</prefix>
            <incrementOnFailure>true</incrementOnFailure>
        </labeller>         
                 
        <!-- Runs the super sweet nant
script you created                    -->
        <!-- there is an
<exec> parameter for nunit
tests OR                -->
        <!-- You can just use <nunit>.....just
saying                        -->
        <!-- Parameter documentation for task                                -->
        <!-- http://ccnet.sourceforge.net/CCNET/Task%20Blocks.html            -->         <tasks>
            <nant>
                <executable>C:\nant-0.90\bin\nant.exe</executable>
                <baseDirectory>C:\dev\ccnet</baseDirectory>
                <nologo>false</nologo>
                <buildFile>default.build</buildFile>
                <buildTimeoutSeconds>1200</buildTimeoutSeconds>
                <targetList>
                    <target>build</target>
                </targetList>
            </nant>
        </tasks>         
        <!-- The directory to copy to.
A subdirectory called the current build's label will -->         <!--
be created, and the contents of sourceDir will be copied to it -->         <!--
http://ccnet.sourceforge.net/CCNET/Build%20Publisher.html
-->         <publishers>             <buildpublisher>
                <sourceDir>C:\dev\ccnet\bin</sourceDir>
                <publishDir>C:\Builds\</publishDir>
            </buildpublisher>
        </publishers>         
    </project> </cruisecontrol>

nant build script default.build:

<?xml
version="1.0"?>
<!-- Good Reference site for the new comers                                    -->
<!-- http://ondotnet.com/pub/a/dotnet/2003/01/27/nant.html
                    --> <project
name="Bens
Test Project" default="run" basedir=".">
<!-- REMEMBER:!! as of
version .90 nant only supporst building of            -->
<!-- Visual Studio 2002 and 2003 Solution files                             -->
    <!-- Builds your code and creates a bin directory to put
your             -->
    <!-- library's (assemblies) in                                            -->
    <target name="library">
        <mkdir dir="bin" />
        <csc target="library" output="bin\testLibrary.LastNames.dll">
            <sources>
                <!--
I used star here to compile all .cs files.             -->
                <!--
Also I put a slash in so
I could put my build file in    -->
                <!--
The root solution folder and have it step into each    -->
                <!--
project file and build all the code it then takes the     -->
                <!--
library's (asseblies) and puts them in the                -->
                <!--
root bin folder                                        -->
                <include
name="testLibrary/*.cs"/>
            </sources>
        </csc>     </target>
    <!-- Builds your code and creates a bin directory to put
your             -->
    <!-- exe in                                    -->
    <target name="build" depends="library">
        <csc target="exe" output="bin\BensTestApplication.exe">
            <sources>
                <!--
I used star here to compile all .cs files.             -->
                <!--
Also I put a slash in so
I could put my build file in    -->
                <!--
The root solution folder and have it step into each    -->
                <!--
project file and build all the code it then takes the     -->
                <!--
exe and puts them in the                                -->
                <!--
root bin folder                                        -->
                <include
name="TestApplication/*.cs"/>
            </sources>
            <!-- classes
I referenced in "BensTesdtApplication" are in        -->
            <!-- this library                            
                    -->
            <references>
                <include
name="bin\testLibrary.LastNames.dll" />
            </references>
        </csc>     </target>
    <!-- Deletes the entire bin folder and all of its contents                -->
    <target name="clean">
        <delete dir="bin" failonerror="false"/>
    </target>         <!--
Executes the exe your program built,                                 -->
    <!-- This will not run if the "build" "target" fails
                    -->
    <!--     <target name="run" depends="build">
        <exec program="bin\BensTestApplication.exe"/>
    </target>     --> </project>

Handler "CCNetHttpHandler" has a bad module “ManagedPipelineHandler” in its module list

Ben Coffman — Sat, 21 Aug 2010 16:16:00 GMT

I recived this error when installing Crusise Control .Net (CCNet)

Error Readout:
Handler "CCNetHttpHandler" has a bad module “ManagedPipelineHandler” in its module list

Fix:
%windir%\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.30319\aspnet_regiis.exe -i
or
%windir%\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\aspnet_regiis.exe -i

Remember in Windows 7 you have to run this in a command prompt with Administrator privileges. The easiest way to do this is click your windows button in the lower left corner, in search type cmd, then right click cmd and select "Run As Administrator."

Explanation:
Apparently a glitch somewhere caused .net to not be registered with iis. I'm running windows 7 with iis 7.x. This glitch really didn't make itself visible too well, but hey when you are having a problem with .Net and all else fails, reboot or reinstall .Net. It's the Microsoft way. :) And now Crusie Control .net should finally run on your machine.

These dudes posted the fix first. Thanks Fellas
http://wishmesh.com/2010/08/iis-7-5-error-handler-pagehandlerfactory-integrated-has-a-bad-module-managedpipelinehandler-in-its-module-list/

This configuration section cannot be used at this path. This happens when the section is locked Cruise Control

Ben Coffman — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 14:35:17 GMT

Error Readout:
"This configuration section cannot be used at this path. This happens when the section is locked at a parent level. Locking is either by default...

Fix:
Change the following values located in the applicationHost.config file located in Windows\system32\inetsrv\config.

<section name="handlers" overrideModeDefault="Deny" /> change this value from "Deny" to "Allow"
<section name="modules" allowDefinition="MachineToApplication" overrideModeDefault="Deny" /> change this value from "Deny" to "Allow"

Explination:
This error came up when I was setting up cruise control on windows 7 with iis 7. Cruise control sets the platform for creating custom handlers for their applicaiton in the future. Digging a little deeper you can see they set their custom handles to ".aspx" which means they aren't changing anything, but they do give a good explanation in the web.config file comments.

" "

The discussion for this error is here
http://forums.asp.net/t/1220987.aspx

How To Test With A Web Service

Ben Coffman — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 22:55:34 GMT

In work the other day we started to debate the best way to "mock" a web service. The two ideas we boiled down to were either to create another web service exactly the same as the original, except have it consume the data from a text file or to have a flag in the existing data layer, trigger the code to read data from a text file locally, thus removing an additional dependency created by making a second web service

What I came up with was this. We needed to decide what we were testing?

Are we testing
1. To make sure the code can deal with the data correctly?
Or
2. Are we testing to see if our code can connect to the web service?

Since we would like to specify our own data, I believe this makes it pretty clear. We are testing to make sure we can deal with the data correctly.

The first argument stated, that by making a new web service, in which we specify the data, you are not only testing that the web service can connect but it can consume it correctly. I believe this is where their thinking was different than mine.

In most web best practices you create a “N-Tier” architecture. Meaning that one of the tiers is dedicated to connecting to the database and returning a data-dump. The reason this is done is because most programming architects like to believe they can sub in one data consumption tier with another, example, getting data from Oracle as opposed to DB2 or getting data from a web service as opposed to a MSSQL database, without causing any issues in the logic of the code. Thus, how the data is retrieve is of little importance, but how it’s processed is where the real brains are and have high importance. All of this being the point of separating this data layer tier from the business logic tier. Now understanding this aspect you also have to think in the mind of a tester. Testers want to remove as many external dependencies on the code as possible. Testers don’t care about the connection a web service makes, they only care about the data it returns. Testers want to control that data and put in their own to test for every scenario and they want to do it with as few dependencies as possible. Therefore introducing a new web service that sits on some other server is not favorable. Now in order to test code you have to maintain another server, another web service and worry about any network issues between the tester and that web service. However most would feel best practice would be to inject the data right into the code nearly removing the data layer. This removes numerous external dependencies and makes the code easier to maintain as it gets passed from generation to generation of developer that comes and goes from the company.

The next question is, what would be the best way to inject this data? To make the example easy I just added some additional code in the data layer where we consume the web service and made it look at a flag I set in the web.config. If it says true, it hits the web service, if the flag says false it consumes a local text file, the path of which is also specified in the web.config. This is a down and dirty way of doing it. There are more elegant ways such as using “Constructor Based Dependency Injection,” and using nMock.

If you would like more information on the correct way to test a web service this blog post provides some very solid and good examples.

System.IndexOutOfRangeException: with a datareader

Ben Coffman — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 04:14:10 GMT

Error Readout:
System.IndexOutOfRangeException:

Fix:
I encountered the above error when I tried to run the query,

SELECT MAX(expression
)

FROM tables

WHERE predicates;

and then loop through the results using a datareader with code like this,

while(rdr.Read())

{

someLabel.Items.Add(rdr["ColumnName"].ToString());

}

I got the error above, because when you do a "max" sql query it doesn't return any column header.

All you need to do is give the sql result set a column header.

SELECT MAX(expression) as "ColumnName" 


FROM table 


where predicates;

Explanation:
This is another one of my bone head mistakes. It's such a simple little thing I overlook, and gets me so disappointed in myself when I realize I spent time trying to figure this out. It's generally followed by me looking over my shoulder and seeing if any of my peers saw it. I'm mostly blogging this in hopes I won't make a silly mistake like this again.

Why is it always the baby errors that hang me up the most? It can never be something deep in the CLR, or possibly find a mistake in .Net. Nope, noway, not gonna happen .Net is pretty solid...for the most part.

Debug: Double Backslashes In String, 2 Backslashes in String

Ben Coffman — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 19:10:24 GMT

Error Readout:
None, it's not an error silly.

The Problem:
When I debug, and look at a string that contains my file path I see 2 backslashs (escape characters) in my string when I only wanted 1.

The Solution:
It's nothing, don't worry about it, that's just the way Visual Studio "debug" shows your path when you catch it while debugging. When the path is used in the code for the file system there will only be 1 backslash and it will work correctly.

This is such a stupid little thing, but for some reason every once in a blue moon, I forget and freak out on why it's doing this, thus wasting a solid five minutes of my life. I put this post up in hopes I will never forget again and that if someone happens to Google this, my post will pop up and help them move on quickly....maybe only wasting 1 to 2 minutes. :)

When to use the * (star) with Objective C

Ben Coffman — Sat, 12 Jun 2010 15:59:04 GMT

It's a good question.

There are some types that are not derived from NSObject, these types are called "Primitive Types." Some examples of these types are

int
bool
short
long
double
char

Sooooo basically any type that is not derived from the NSObject class is a Primitive type and does not require a "*".

Now I bet you are wondering how do I figure out if it's a primitive type or not.

An easy way is to look at the color of the syntax in xCode, is it deep blue or a sky blue? Deep blue = primitive type, but this is not entirely reliable as the standards for coloring syntax can fluctuate or change.

You can option-click on the object after you have typed it in xCode, click the little book in the upper right hand corner, when the class reference viewer comes up, look and see if it inherits from NSObject. If it doesn't it's Primitive and you don't need a "*".

Note:

int

NSInteger,

Just for fun:

value types

int i = 5;

System.Int32 i = new System.Int32(5);

Falling Upstairs

Ben Coffman — Thu, 20 May 2010 02:34:04 GMT

What a wild month! London, Paris (loved Paris), and Barcelona, followed up with a gig in Philly working for the second biggest software developer in the world on their up front website, SAP.com. Before I dive into the limited aspects I can speak about SAP.com's technology I would like to point out the facet of SAP that has had, and will have, a lasting effect on me, the cafeteria. These people (SAP) treat their people good! Made to order sushi, made to order Thai, a Philly cheese steak that will challenge South Philly's finest and a Starbucks that feels like it was made just for me, all this within a short walk from my desk. Really, next to the BMW the Germans know how to do it.

Lets dive into my first day. I was sitting at my desk, after enjoying my oh-so-delicious lunch of Alaskan Cod; I hear this loud noise getting louder. Turns out it was a helicopter flying in with the American Co-CEO. As he gets out, much like a scene you might expect to see from Iron Man, he has a dream effect on me. He waves at the people there to greet him and follows up with a mock gun shot (I can only hope he made the clicking sound that goes with the mock gun shot) at one of the security guards as he steps into the Escalade, in my mind I say YES, awesome! I know right then and there I'm going to love it for my limited time here.

I digress lets talk about a website that needs to address more nations than a senator trying to get votes in NYC. In short, because this is all I will say and feel comfortable, they follow a Model View Presenter (MVP) development process in making their site. SAP's site addresses content based on what nation/region you are coming from all while maintaining a similar look and feel for every end user. Think localization is easy with .Net...not on this scale boys and girls! Now add a level complexity comprising of several teams in more countries than you can count on one hand, developing for this one site. To create a level of consistency across so many sites a template format was built and an engine on top of the .Net engine to address what should be displayed....this is all I will give up, but I can say it's fun and challenging.

Thanks to VML for making this small yet, incredible contract, possible.

Make Powershell run a batch script

Ben Coffman — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 21:47:22 GMT

The Problem:
Getting a Powershell script to run a batch script.

The Solution:
powershell.exe -noexit d:\<path to my batch script>\Reporting_Code_Load.bat

Explanation:
All you need to do is add the line above as is to your Powershell script. The "-noexit" tells the command prompt to stay open, simply remove it if you don't want the command prompt to open.

NUnit, NUnit Mocks, NMock2, DotNetMock, and Selenium : Pragmatic Unit Testing In C# with NUnit

Ben Coffman — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 21:12:32 GMT

If Scott Hanselman lives and die's by unit tests, why don't we all just fall in line? It seems the nerd community, has an uncanny ability to adopt silly things quickly. Things like xkcd.com or the idea of ninja's. I have yet to laugh at one xkcd or understand how ninja's are relative in any shape or form, because of this I felt I needed to read up on unit tests, specifically for C#, to find out if it's just hype or this is something development shops with a strong QA team really need to look at.

I read two books that covered the topic of unit testing. The first book was Foundations of Programming (recommended by Scottie H. himself and is free) and the second is Pragmatic Unit Testing In C# with NUnit. Both of them start off with the same old song and dance on how you might have up front costs of introducing unit tests to your code, but the stability these tests provide over the duration of your codes lifetime will cause such dramatic cost savings for the company, it would be foolish not to explore the idea. What a compelling sales pitch, a pitch salesmen, for just about any technology, have used since the beginning of technology in businesses. I'll cut all the used car salesman tactics out and state the most intriguing argument to unit test. It increases code stability and it's easy.

The next question I asked myself: What do I exactly test in the code-base I am working on? In Pragmatic Unit Testing (PUT) they give us an acronym to use in order to answer this question. BICEP.

BICEP, breaks down as such.

Boundary Tests

Inversion Tests

Cross Check Tests

Error Tests

Performance Tests

These are the 5 major aspects one should test, according to PUT and it provides unit testers with a place to start. The next major topic in discussing how to test code is decoupling one piece of code to another. Does your code talk to a middleware? How do you test if middleware is not done creating your service to consume or if middleware is down? In steps NUnit Mocks, NMock2, and DotNetMock. These 3 mock frameworks provide the developer with the ability to feed your tests predefined values, values decided by you. Without going into how to use these mock frameworks, I believe that outside of a few isolated situations they should not be used. The entire purpose of testing your code is to test that you are getting information back that fits the criteria you are looking for. If this information, that is beyond your control, changes on whatever level for whatever reason, you as a developer need to know. Putting in mock objects hides this.

Since I work for a web shop, the topic of web UI unit tests interested me. PUT recommend using Selenium. This makes sense because it still uses the nunit style of testing keeping all your tests to one testing style. Selenium seems a bit cumbersome in comparison to WaitN or iMacro, but I feel keeping all your testing in the same style outweighs the cons of not using Selenium. The more desperate testing sources you introduce, the more confusing it is for an outsider to step in and see the whole picture when learning the code, especially when it's not contained in a single solution.

Finally, I recommend reading both of the books mentioned, but lets be honest most of us care so little about unit testing we'll be lucky to read all of 1 of these books let alone all of both. If this is the case I recommend PUT, while the first few chapters read like the high school teacher striving to gain his students social acceptance, it's an easy read and you can jump into the book at nearly any chapter and get the exact information you are looking for on unit testing. This is something I wish all programming books could achieve.

1) If this is a cluster, edit configuration so all servers use the same validationKey ...

Ben Coffman — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 17:30:38 GMT

Error Readout:
Exception: System.Web.HttpException
Message: Authentication of viewstate failed. 1) If this is a cluster, edit configuration so all servers use the same validationKey and validation algorithm. AutoGenerate cannot be used in a cluster. 2) Viewstate can only be posted back to the same page. 3) The viewstate for this page might be corrupted.
Source: System.Web
at System.Web.UI.LosFormatter.Deserialize(String input)
at System.Web.UI.Page.LoadPageStateFromPersistenceMedium()

Fix:
I encountered the above error the other day. Since the server wasn't on a web farm I was a little confused. The fix I ended up using was updating the web.config key to

requiressl=true

Explanation:
The next thing I asked myself was how can that key affect the viewstate. With some serious investigation into viewstate and best practices I finally made the link of how our applications viewstate is tied to session state which is tied to SSL when the session cookies are encrypted manually, a step (encrypting our own session cookies manually) we did because we are still running asp.net 1.1.

How to manually encrypt the sessionid in a cookie
Response.Cookies["ASP.NET_SessionId"].Secure

Lets dive right into how session state and viewstate work to get a better understanding of the solution. ASP.NET session state lets you associate a server-side string or object dictionary containing state data with a particular HTTP client session. A session is defined as a series of requests issued by the same client within a certain period of time, and is managed by associating a session ID with each unique client. The ID is supplied by the client on each request, either in a cookie or as a special fragment of the request URL.
[http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc163730.aspx]

In .net 1.1 there is a property called "ViewStateUserKey" located in the viewstate, this key adds user-specific information to the view state. When the request is processed, ASP.NET extracts the key from the view state and compares it against the ViewStateUserKey of the running page. If the two match, the request is considered legitimate; otherwise an exception is thrown. In our application we use the Session.SessionID to set the property. This is where my problem starts.

When a user fills out a form utilizing viewstate to create an account to login to our system the user establishes a viewstate in their asp.net page. In order to make the view state slightly more secure we give the viewstateuserkey the same value as the session ID. The session ID is a much better fit because a session ID is unpredictable, times out, and varies on a per-user basis
[http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms972969.aspx]

Once the user has completely filled out the form, we authenticate them. This is where my error occurs [See beginning of post].

The error is caused because the session id is now encrypted. It's encrypted because our security team said, all information stored in cookies is to be secured. Our team consequently set up a flag in the global.asax file that states if this flag is set to true it should grab the session id out of each cookie and encrypt it. The reason we did this by hand is because asp.net 1.1 does not offer secure cookies with one easy key change in the web.config [NOTE: In asp.net 2.0 all you have to do is have the requiressl=true and you are done].

Now understanding that our session ID is tied to our viewstateuserkey you can understand the viewstateuserkey is now invalid because the session ID is a different value, simply because it's encrypted and the server does not know to decrypt it. [NOTE: The session ID may still be the same value, it's just encrypted.] Now asp.net states the viewstateuserkey is invalid and pumps out the error you have seen above.

To fix this I simply change requiressl=true in the web.config. How does requrie ssl affect an encrypted session id within a cookie that I set to encrypt? Well, when requiressl is not on but you are sending the server a secure cookie value, which we did since we created our own secure cookies in asp.net 1.1 the server doesn't know to decrypt the cookie because requiressl is not turned on [apparently you have to send secure cookies over ssl in asp.net 1.1 and possibly other run times, I didn't know this] which in turn invalidates the viewstateuserkey because the viewstateuserkey uses the session ID which is encrypted in the secure cookie.

What made this confusing for me is the first part of the form worked without a hitch. It's when the user authenticates when the error arose. The reason for this being that the requiressl key is not applicable until authentication happens. If you'll notice the requiressl key is nested in the authentication element in the web.config file. Additionally we don't encrypt the cookie until the user is authenticated. Sooo, the first few postbacks for our page were just collecting information. It wasn't until we authenticated the user to our system that requiressl actually cared if we had secure cookies or not.

Overview
Viewstateuserkey is set to the session ID.

Session ID is encrypted and the updated value is set to the viewstateuserkey

requressl being turned on tells the server to decrypt session id in which case allows the viewstateuserkey to remain valid with the server.

DasBlog, instructions for the rest of us.

Ben Coffman — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 20:39:00 GMT

Jumping right in. The instructions on the dasBlog website of how to install dasBlog on a shared hosting environment are close to zero. The discussion boards offer some insight but in order to get some real feedback you had to post the question, wait and hope they reply soon...if ever.
I will start by showing you the painful way of installing dasBlog on a shared hosting environment and end with showing you the painless way on Godaddy.

Painful starts Below:

Getting the Code and Getting it to Your Hosting Provider (Godaddy)

Get the code from dasBlog. Download the "web files" unless you want to tinker with the source, a topic I don't cover.

Unzip the code and pull out the "dasblogce" folder. I renamed this folder to "blog." Next I uploaded the folder to my hosting service at Godaddy

Permissions and Config's

Edit the web.config and siteSecurity.config according to the instructions on the website. You will also need to change the permissions on three folders logs, content, siteconfig to have read/write access.

I will discuss the web.config edits a little because it seems there is a bit of ambiguity on the web with how the trust should be set up.

The out of the box setup of the web.config trust elements:

<trust level="Full" originUrl="" />

I simply removed <trust level="Full" originUrl="" /> so all I had was the commented out  element. I have heard some talk to just remove  all together and others saying if you un-comment the element the blog should work. For Godaddy removing the one line and commenting out the other is what worked for me. I always like to leave configuration setting in the file and just comment them out. I will forget about them if I don't....I blame college.

Adding Virtual Directories and Changing Settings

This is the part which slowed me down. You will need to not only create a virtual directory the same name as the folder that holds the content for your blog, in this example that directory is named "blog", but you will also have to create 3 sub virtual directories under the "blog" virtual directory on Godaddy called "logs," "content," and "siteconfig." Notice the virtual directories are the same name as the folders within the "blog" folder.

Next, you will need to change the settings on all four virtual directory folders to have "anonymous access" and "application root." Finally you will need to change IIS7 from integrated mode to classic mode. (Update: i've been told that if you use the web.config file that is meant for IIS7 integrated you will not have to make this change. For right now the standard package with dasblog is the web.config which requires you to use classic mode).

Once you have followed these steps and followed the steps provided by dasBlog you should be good to go on installing dasBlog on a hosting provider the hard way.

Some of the problems I ran into.

The first error I was recived was a "HTTP Error 500 - Internal server error." This error really tells you nothing and was quite frustrating. I eventually fixed the error by switching IIS7 to classic mode on godaddy.
The second error I encountered was "System.Security.SecurityException: Request for the permission of type 'System.Security.Permissions.SecurityPermission," This was due to the fact I did not have the 3 virtual directories set up under my "blog" virtual directory in IIS7.

Painless way

Click "Your Applications" from the home screen of your "Hosting Control Center"

Select "blogs" from the left hand menu
Select "dasBlog" from the list of blogs
Select "Install Now"

If by chance Godaddy states your hosting plan is not supported for this product. You have to have .net and IIS. If you have IIS7 make sure you have it on classic mode. Without classic mode, .net, and IIS, Godaddy tells you your hosting plan is not compatible.