Server Error in '/Altiris/NS' Application

Products

• IT Management Suite

Issue/Introduction

How to troubleshoot and get more information when the following generic error is received?

              Server Error in '/Altiris/NS' Application

Resolution

Altiris by default, only displays custom ("friendly") error messages. In order to further diagnose the problem, you will need to disable the custom error messages.

Open up the web.config file located under C:\Program Files\Altiris\Notification Server.

Locate this section:

    <customErrors mode="On" defaultRedirect="error.aspx">
      <error statusCode="404" redirect="HttpError.aspx?Error=404" />
    </customErrors>

You will want to edit the customErrors line, and set the mode to "Off". Change the line to read as follows:

    <customErrors mode="Off">
      <error statusCode="404" redirect="HttpError.aspx?Error=404" />
    </customErrors>

Refresh the Altiris Console, and you should receive a more detailed error message.

One known cause of this error, is having a locked out Altiris Service Account. In this case, the error message shown on the Web page is:

Could not create Windows user token from the credentials specified in the config file. Error from the operating system. The referenced account is currently locked out and may not be logged on to.

Once you have resolved the problem, be sure to change the web.config back to the original values. It is usually not desirable to expose this level of error reporting to all users of the NS console.

Resolution:

Console 6.0 failed to open with the Server Error in '/Altiris/NS' Application error for some users but not others.  The Console 6.5 opened fine for all users. Modifying the web.config was not able to provide more information for this case as the error header was only displayed.  The IIS logs showed a 401.5 error when the user tried to open the 6.0 console.  Procmon (from SysInternals) showed that the files being accessed and failiing were:

     console.aspx
     header.aspx
     blank.aspx

Found that the header.aspx file for the 6.0 Console was missing the file systems rights for the local Users group.  Assigning these rights resolved this issue.