Lighttpd + Mono ASP.Net : The right configuration

May 18, 2009 — Florent Clairambault

As I already told before, I love the Mono project. It enables to run the powerful Microsoft .Net Framework on UNIX/Linux/BSD systems.

I recently wanted to test a very cool feature of ASP.Net on a mono server. So I did a little

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apt-get install lighttpd mono-fastcgi-server2 -y

The feature I wanted to try was a web scripting method ( with the “[WebMethod]” attribute) exporting some JSON directly from your method return value.

Here is the web scripting method declaration :

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[ScriptService]
public partial class _Default:Page {
 
	[WebMethod]
	[ScriptMethod( ResponseFormat = ResponseFormat.Json, UseHttpGet = false )]
	public static String TestMethod() {
		return DateTime.Now.ToString();
	}
}

And here is the javascript / JQuery code that gets the data :

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<div id="toto"></div>
 
<script type="text/javascript">
    function doIt() {
        $(document).ready(function() {
            $.ajax({
                type: "POST",
                url: "/Default.aspx/TestMethod",
                contentType: "application/json; charset=utf-8",
                data: "{}",
                dataType: "json",
                success: AjaxSucceeded,
                error: AjaxFailed
            });
        });
        function AjaxSucceeded(result) {
            document.getElementById("toto").innerHTML = result.d;
        }
        function AjaxFailed(result) {
           document.getElementById("toto").innerHTML = "Error : "+result.status + ' ' + result.statusText;
        }
        setTimeout("doIt()", 1000);
    }
    doIt();
 
</script>

In my /etc/lighttpd/conf-enabled/10-fastcgi.conf file, I had this :

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server.modules   += ( "mod_fastcgi" )
fastcgi.server    = (
        "" => ((
                "socket" => mono_shared_dir + "fastcgi-mono-server",
                "bin-path" => mono_fastcgi_server,
                "bin-environment" => (
                        "PATH" => "/bin:/usr/bin:" + mono_dir + "bin",
                        "LD_LIBRARY_PATH" => mono_dir + "lib:",
                        "MONO_SHARED_DIR" => mono_shared_dir,
                        "MONO_FCGI_LOGLEVELS" => "Standard",
                        "MONO_FCGI_LOGFILE" => "/var/log/lighttpd/mono.log",
                        "MONO_FCGI_ROOT" => mono_fcgi_root,
                        "MONO_FCGI_APPLICATIONS" => mono_fcgi_applications
                ),
                "max-procs" => 1,
                "check-local" => "disable"
        ))
)

Everytime I launched a call from javascript, I got (with JS) I got a “405 Method not allowed”. Well, that was pretty disturbing. Mostly because a google search on this didn’t give me anything.
My first thought was that mono didn’t react the same way the .Net framework does. But this isn’t it. It came from my crappy lighttpd config file. It didn’t search for the Default.aspx file but for the Default.aspx/TesMethod.
What you need to do is set :

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fastcgi.server    = (
        ".aspx" => ((
            # Everything you have in your file (like my file above)
        )
 
fastcgi.map-extensions = (
        ".asmx"   => ".aspx",
        ".ashx"   => ".aspx",
        ".asax"   => ".aspx",
        ".ascx"   => ".aspx",
        ".soap"   => ".aspx",
        ".rem"    => ".aspx",
        ".axd"    => ".aspx",
        ".cs"     => ".aspx",
        ".config" => ".aspx",
        ".dll"    => ".aspx"
)

And that will even improve your performances because any other file will be handled directly by lighttpd.

One quick note : There’s something weird with VS2008 WebDev.WebServer.Exe, the WebMethod request takes at least 1.0s to complete. On the same host with XSP, it’s around 15 ms. And on the Celeron 2.6Ghz linux server with lighttpd it’s around 12 ms. And on a IIS 7 server (bundled with Windows 7), it takes 12 ms. So why is the Visual Studio’s WebDev.WebServer so slow ?

By the way, why should we use a Linux + lighttpd + Mono server when we can use a Windows + IIS + ASP.Net server ? The reason is mainly that for the same usage, Linux consumes less resources and it’s easier to customize to suit your needs.

An other question you might have : Why use JQuery + JSON when you can use everything in the Microsoft AJAX Framework ? The main reason is that I really have the feeling to lose control with Microsoft AJAX Framework, I don’t like the huge automatically generated code. And it doesn’t make really fast web interfaces. With JQuery, everything goes faster and it’s way more simpler to understand (and debug).

Related :
- Using JQuery with ASP.Net

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Posted in English. Tags: , , , , , . 3 Comments »

3 Responses to “Lighttpd + Mono ASP.Net : The right configuration”

  1. Evgeni Golov (evgeni) 's status on Saturday, 17-Oct-09 09:33:02 UTC - Identi.ca Says:
    October 17, 2009 at 11:33 am

    [...] also here: http://florent.clairambault.fr/lighttpd-mono-asp-net-the-right-configuration, but i guess THIS will kill the [...]

  2. ASP.NET Ajax Error 405 on Nginx « TechCrawler Says:
    February 14, 2011 at 4:04 pm

    [...] just threw an Error 405 back to me instead of the requested data. After reading a tip in Florent’s Blog it was clear that the request from the Nginx server sent to the mono-server did not contain the [...]

  3. ASP.NET Ajax Error 405 with Nginx | Nginx Lighttpd Tutorial Says:
    August 25, 2011 at 3:40 pm

    [...] just threw an Error 405 back to me instead of the requested data. After reading a tip in Florent’s Blog it was clear that the request from the Nginx server sent to the mono-server did not contain the [...]

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