How to debug Azure 500 internal server error

Question

My newly deployed site is getting a 500 internal server error. I'm trying to deploy Umbraco to Azure.

I've turned off custom errors but that doesn't help.

Is there anyway to see the error that Azure is throwing?

SOLVED
I was able to edit my configuration and setup RDP into my web role. Once on the box I couldn't go to it via IP because I'm using the umbraco accelerator. There was a binding in IIS to go to 0.mydomain.com. If I used that I could see the page from the server and the error came up.

Solution 1

For 500 errors, one good way is to turn diagnostics on and to look at the logs - both the application event logs and the failed request logs might help. Here's one post about this - http://oakleafblog.blogspot.com/2010/11/adding-trace-event-counter-and-error.html

As Igorek has said, you can also use RDP (remote desktop) to log in and to check the app - here's a good blog post about this - https://blogs.msdn.com/b/jimoneil/archive/2011/04/11/500-and-other-errors-in-azure-deployments.aspx

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My guess is that you might be missing one or more Assemblies from the deployed package

Solution 2

You don't have to use RDP, simply by turning off custom error in Web.Config will do. But make sure you are adding that in the root Web.Config, that will do the trick.

Here is an example of mine:

<system.web>
    <customErrors mode="Off" />
    <compilation debug="true" targetFramework="4.5">
       ........
    </compilation>
</system.web>

Just be aware that there are multiple web.configs in a typical project.. make sure you are adding this in the root web.config (where your Global.asax is) and NOT in Views folder.