No Internet–have network access

After having to crash out of DotTrace profiler I had no internet access, however I could access the network.

I found the following three steps resolved the issue:

1. Go to Settings

2. Type in Internet Options

3. On advanced tab click “Reset” button

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ASP.NET CORE - Uncaught Syntax Error: Unexpected token ‘<’

http causes error when deployed

After getting past the 500 error when deployed to Azure successfully I thought I was out of the woods, however when I deployed to my ISP I got the unexpected token when trying to login; I was able to register without issue.

My goal, which I achieved, was to be able to deploy the same code to both Azure and my ISP.  Once deployed to my ISP I would login and it would loop back to the login screen, emptying out my login/password – no error to let me know something was wrong.  I hit F12 and see I have a 302 error with a “samesite=none”.

Disclaimer: this effort is simply to allow me to deploy and test my code.  When it comes time that I have SSL on both sites I will update the code as required to fully implement security – this is for development purposes.

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Figure 1.


I then configured my web application (ref highlighted in figure 3) so that it emulated a deployed application by setting the environement to “Production” and disable SSL.  Then when I ran the app locally I saw more details in my Visual Studio output window.  It displays more on the “SameSite=None”.  Note: if I click on enable SSL (figure 3) I could run locally – it runs locally in SSL.  The problem is when you are running with http.

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Figure 2


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Figure 3.


To resolve this issue I implemented the extension from the following website:
https://www.thinktecture.com/en/identity/samesite/prepare-your-identityserver/

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Figure 4.


NOTE: that I have one exception to their code [on line 135 below] and that is that I return true.  When false I still had the problem.

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The extension code follows:

namespace MyWebApp.Extensions
{
using global::Microsoft.AspNetCore.Builder;
using global::Microsoft.AspNetCore.Http;
using global::Microsoft.Extensions.DependencyInjection;

namespace Microsoft.Extensions.DependencyInjection
{
public static class SameSiteCookiesServiceCollectionExtensions
{
/// <summary>
/// -1 defines the unspecified value, which tells ASPNET Core to NOT
/// send the SameSite attribute. With ASPNET Core 3.1 the
/// <seealso cref="SameSiteMode" /> enum will have a definition for
/// Unspecified.
/// </summary>
private const SameSiteMode Unspecified = (SameSiteMode)(-1);

/// <summary>
/// Configures a cookie policy to properly set the SameSite attribute
/// for Browsers that handle unknown values as Strict. Ensure that you
/// add the <seealso cref="Microsoft.AspNetCore.CookiePolicy.CookiePolicyMiddleware" />
/// into the pipeline before sending any cookies!
/// </summary>
/// <remarks>
/// Minimum ASPNET Core Version required for this code:
/// - 2.1.14
/// - 2.2.8
/// - 3.0.1
/// - 3.1.0-preview1
/// Starting with version 80 of Chrome (to be released in February 2020)
/// cookies with NO SameSite attribute are treated as SameSite=Lax.
/// In order to always get the cookies send they need to be set to
/// SameSite=None. But since the current standard only defines Lax and
/// Strict as valid values there are some browsers that treat invalid
/// values as SameSite=Strict. We therefore need to check the browser
/// and either send SameSite=None or prevent the sending of SameSite=None.
/// Relevant links:
/// - https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-west-first-party-cookies-07#section-4.1
/// - https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-west-cookie-incrementalism-00
/// - https://www.chromium.org/updates/same-site
/// - https://devblogs.microsoft.com/aspnet/upcoming-samesite-cookie-changes-in-asp-net-and-asp-net-core/
/// - https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=198181
/// </remarks>
/// <param name="services">The service collection to register <see cref="CookiePolicyOptions" /> into.</param>
/// <returns>The modified <see cref="IServiceCollection" />.</returns>
public static IServiceCollection ConfigureNonBreakingSameSiteCookies(this IServiceCollection services)
{
services.Configure<CookiePolicyOptions>(options =>
{
options.MinimumSameSitePolicy = Unspecified;
options.OnAppendCookie = cookieContext =>
CheckSameSite(cookieContext.Context, cookieContext.CookieOptions);
options.OnDeleteCookie = cookieContext =>
CheckSameSite(cookieContext.Context, cookieContext.CookieOptions);
});

return services;
}

private static void CheckSameSite(HttpContext httpContext, CookieOptions options)
{
if (options.SameSite == SameSiteMode.None)
{
var userAgent = httpContext.Request.Headers["User-Agent"].ToString();

if (DisallowsSameSiteNone(userAgent))
{
options.SameSite = Unspecified;
}
}
}

/// <summary>
/// Checks if the UserAgent is known to interpret an unknown value as Strict.
/// For those the <see cref="CookieOptions.SameSite" /> property should be
/// set to <see cref="Unspecified" />.
/// </summary>
/// <remarks>
/// This code is taken from Microsoft:
/// https://devblogs.microsoft.com/aspnet/upcoming-samesite-cookie-changes-in-asp-net-and-asp-net-core/
/// </remarks>
/// <param name="userAgent">The user agent string to check.</param>
/// <returns>Whether the specified user agent (browser) accepts SameSite=None or not.</returns>
private static bool DisallowsSameSiteNone(string userAgent)
{
// Cover all iOS based browsers here. This includes:
// - Safari on iOS 12 for iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad
// - WkWebview on iOS 12 for iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad
// - Chrome on iOS 12 for iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad
// All of which are broken by SameSite=None, because they use the
// iOS networking stack.
// Notes from Thinktecture:
// Regarding https://caniuse.com/#search=samesite iOS versions lower
// than 12 are not supporting SameSite at all. Starting with version 13
// unknown values are NOT treated as strict anymore. Therefore we only
// need to check version 12.
if (userAgent.Contains("CPU iPhone OS 12")
|| userAgent.Contains("iPad; CPU OS 12"))
{
return true;
}

// Cover Mac OS X based browsers that use the Mac OS networking stack.
// This includes:
// - Safari on Mac OS X.
// This does not include:
// - Chrome on Mac OS X
// because they do not use the Mac OS networking stack.
// Notes from Thinktecture:
// Regarding https://caniuse.com/#search=samesite MacOS X versions lower
// than 10.14 are not supporting SameSite at all. Starting with version
// 10.15 unknown values are NOT treated as strict anymore. Therefore we
// only need to check version 10.14.
if (userAgent.Contains("Safari")
&& userAgent.Contains("Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_14")
&& userAgent.Contains("Version/"))
{
return true;
}

// Cover Chrome 50-69, because some versions are broken by SameSite=None
// and none in this range require it.
// Note: this covers some pre-Chromium Edge versions,
// but pre-Chromium Edge does not require SameSite=None.
// Notes from Thinktecture:
// We can not validate this assumption, but we trust Microsofts
// evaluation. And overall not sending a SameSite value equals to the same
// behavior as SameSite=None for these old versions anyways.
if (userAgent.Contains("Chrome/5") || userAgent.Contains("Chrome/6"))
{
return true;
}

return true;
}
}
}
}

BlogEngine.net: Startindex cannot be less than zero

Adventures on the edge

Behind the scenes the “default.aspx” is being searched for; if you put a /default.aspx at the end of the URL you will find that the page will load.

The fix is to go into the site settings and set the “Default Doc” to default.aspx.   In my case I had to manually cut the default.aspx from the last position (figure 2) and then paste it above index.aspx.  Once I did this the site started working as expected


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Figure 1.


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Figure 2.

ASP.NET Core - Unexpected character encountered while parsing number:

IdentityServer4.Startup: Information: Starting IdentityServer4 version 4.1.0+5a4433f83e8c6fca7d8979141fa5a92684ad56f6
Exception thrown: 'Newtonsoft.Json.JsonReaderException' in Newtonsoft.Json.dll
Unexpected character encountered while parsing number: �. Path '', line 1, position 1.

You’ll see this error if you are configured with an IdentityServer type=File (figure 1) and your environment is setup to run in “Development”; the fix is to set the ASPNETCORE_ENVIRONMENT=Production (figure 2).  Likewise you can leave the setting at “Development” but will have to copy the appsettings.json “IdentityServer” segment to the appsettings.Development.json file (removing the Key type = Development).

In figure 3 and 4 you can see that it gets confused thinking it is in Development expecting JsonConvert to deserialize the contents when in fact the path is our .pfx file.  By setting it to Production it ignores the appsettings.Development.json (more closely emulating a production deployed environment which can aid with debugging issues).

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Figure 1.

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Figure 2.

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Figure 3.

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Figure 4.