"A process serving application pool '...' suffered a fatal communication error with the Windows Process Activation Service."

Question

Hi,

We recently started using AppFabric 1.1 and now want to host a WCF service in IIS/WAS with a MSMQ endpoint.

Configuration and code appear to be correct as the same bits and configuration sometimes work, sometimes doesn't. When it doesn't work we get this warning in the EventLog:

A process serving application pool 'Kaplan.****' suffered a fatal communication error with the
Windows Process Activation Service. The process id was '5564'. The data field contains the error number.

The data contains the error 0x80070218 which means ERROR_PIPE_LISTENING.

I've seen on another thread that may be an issue with the fact that AppFabric services have no dependencies on WPA service, which could cause some problems. I tried restarting the services in order but it doesn't help.

A bit of the background scenario.

- Private queue in localhost/private/Kaplan.Our.Web.Site.Name/ServiceName.svc

- WCF service configured with the correct address (net.msmq://localhost/private/Kaplan.Our.Web.Site.Name/ServiceName.svc) and the default binding configuration except exactlyOnce which is set to false for now.

- Service activated without the .svc file (File Less Activation)

Note: All our code and configuration appears correct. Hitting http://ourwebsite.local/ServiceName.svc in the browser displays the default WCF page and activates the service, making it process existing messages in the queue. So this leads me to believe that is something on Microsoft side.

Does anyone have any idea of what this might be, or at least how to gather more information about the error (log, tracing, etc)? (Note, enabling WCF tracing in the server doesn't help, because the service is not activated when the apppool starts).

Thanks

Answer 1

This article mentions that error constant - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa365605(v=vs.85).aspx. The article gives an overview on Named pipes and it mentions the error happens when waiting for a connection.

I would check the IIS logs too. I am trying to find out if there is anywhere else to look in the logs. I can also reach out to the Microsoft support team to see if they have seen this error. This might be an item you would need to contact Microsoft support about.

Thanks,

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