Hi Anthony,

Sounds like your "umbraco.config" has corrupted somehow?  Try deleting it, then restarting Umbraco (either by restarting your AppPool in IIS, or simpily touching the Web.config) ... that should re-generate the XML cache in "umbraco.config".

Let us know how you get on.  Hopefully it's nothing more serious.

Cheers, Lee.

That sounds really odd.

A corrupted umbraco.config file can cause crashes when viewing masterpages from withing Umbraco?

Ahhh sorry, misread your post! Thought you meant on the front-end.

Weird that it throws an XmlException. Would you mind posting the stack-trace from the YSoD?

Cheers, Lee.

The stack trace is at work. I'll post it first thing in the morning.

Another thing which may not be related is that the packages tree would not expand. I checked the response with firebug and it was some internal error with the tree service. Could that be related?

I'll post both errors tomorrow.

Hi Anthony

That seems very odd. Don't know if this could be because the permissions perhaps have been messed up somehow? Have you made any changes to the installation or the server duing the day?

/Jan

Hey Jan

We're still in dev so it's happening on localhost using VS and IIS Express. But the DB is on the dev server. 

We've been making new masterpages, doctypes, macros etc all day. Could it be file permissions with the masterpages? Normally file permissions only result in the inability to save the file right?

Hi Anthony

Ok, then it's probably not a permission issue...I guess it could also return a 404 if you're trying to access something you're not allowed to see.

But maybe some weird characters have been added in a alias name of the template somwhere? This can potentially mess up the template section in my experience.

You could try to have a look in the database to see if some of the aliases looks weird if you can't access them in the template folder in the settings section.

It's hard to tell where things go wrong, so this is just to be considered as a pointer :-)

/Jan

i was hoping i wouldnt have to dive into the db... damn.

but wierd characters does sound plausible.

Hi Anthony

Well, it does not hurt to have a look at the DB - if you need to make changes through the DB then you should of course be certain of what you're doing :-)

/Jan

Ok so it seems there are no crazy characters in the cmstemplate table.

I think I may need to look into the source...

Here is the error:

There are multiple root elements. Line 1038, position 4.

Stack Trace:

[XmlException: There are multiple root elements. Line 1038, position 4.]
   System.Xml.XmlTextReaderImpl.Throw(Exception e) +73
   System.Xml.XmlTextReaderImpl.Throw(String res, String arg) +122
   System.Xml.XmlTextReaderImpl.ParseDocumentContent() +4075852
   System.Xml.XmlTextReaderImpl.Read() +145
   System.Xml.XmlLoader.LoadNode(Boolean skipOverWhitespace) +57
   System.Xml.XmlLoader.LoadDocSequence(XmlDocument parentDoc) +20
   System.Xml.XmlLoader.Load(XmlDocument doc, XmlReader reader, Boolean preserveWhitespace) +131
   System.Xml.XmlDocument.Load(XmlReader reader) +114
   System.Xml.XmlDocument.Load(String filename) +128
   umbraco.cms.businesslogic.skinning.Skinning.StarterKitGuid(Int32 template) +152
   umbraco.cms.presentation.settings.editTemplate.OnInit(EventArgs e) +1874
   System.Web.UI.Control.InitRecursive(Control namingContainer) +140
   System.Web.UI.Page.ProcessRequestMain(Boolean includeStagesBeforeAsyncPoint, Boolean includeStagesAfterAsyncPoint) +480

Hi Anthony,

From looking through the source of the "StarterKitGuid" method, it tries to load in the following XML/config... "~/App_Data/packages/installed/installedPackages.config"

... and that's where its falling over!  Open that config file, go to line 1038 ... see if there's another root <packages> node ... if so, try to merge them - so that there's only one root node.

Good luck!

Cheers, Lee.

That was the problem.

Someone deleted the opening <packages> tag from that file. It caused both issues.

Lee I owe you a beer!

Cool, glad that you've got it sorted!

See you at CG11.

Cheers, Lee.

Lee you just rocks as usual. Saved a lot of my time :-)

is working on a reply...