The issue is able to reproduced consistently in our test environment and we have isolated the issue down to the virtual directory.
To reproduce the issues seen in production we performed the following tests
1. Test One – Verify system updates properly without virtual directory for Portals
a. Installed Novus site to current production configuration
b. Upgraded versions with no virtual directory
c. All upgrades were successful and linkclick.aspx was operating properly
d. This was successful across multiple incremental upgrades all the way to 5.4.4
2. Test Two – Verify upgrade fails when using virtual directory for Portals
a. Installed Novus site to current production configuration
b. Immediately established Portals folder as virtual directory
c. Verified site operated at version 5.1.2 with virtual directory
d. Conducted upgrade to version 5.2.3
e. Verified linkclick.aspx failed after upgrade with 404 error
3. Test Three – Update install with no virtual directory and then move updates site Portals folder to virtual directory
a. Installed Novus site to current production configuration
b. Upgraded to version 5.2.3 with no virtual directory
c. All upgrades were successful and linkclick.aspx was operating properly
d. After upgrade was complete we configured the Portals directory as a virtual directory
e. At this point the linkclick.aspx stops working and returns 404 error
f. Removed the virtual directory and restored Portals folder to DNN install folder
g. The linkclick.aspx immediately began functioning again
We will be working to test and see if the upgrade will work properly with the entire install as virtual directory. Our results will also be posted to the DotNetNuke user forums to continue support there and hopefully prompt a fix from core team. All other options for upgrade will be reviewed as I know you are looking to upgrade to Pro shortly. Our final results and recommendations should be ready tomorrow and will follow up further at that time.
We have our hosting environment set up in a unique way i guess. The DNN core and module files are located on two separate servers. The Portals directory is located on a file share. This spreads the applications files accross two nodes for better performance, reduced I/O, load balancing, and scalability.
From the DNN Documentation I have seen it show the Web Farm as 2 servers running IIS and all files(core, module, application, portals, etc) on a central file share. The two server access the same filesets but this places all files on a single server which could have I/O issues under high load. Does anyone have any thoughts on Web Farm configuration?