How to simulate an HTTP 500 error on my ASP.NET app?

Question

I want to simulate this error so I can check a generic error page is displayed, not the HTTP 500 one, in light of the recent security vulnerability.

We include speci

Answer 1

This generate a custom http error code in classic asp.

<%@language=Jscript%>

<%
    Response.Status = "996 TerraNova GeoWeb Internal Server Error";
    Response.End;
%>

Answer 2

you can break the web.config file. Put a malformed tag for tests

Answer 3

I think you can do this by overriding page init and adding the 500 status code to the response like the following:

protected void Page_Init(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    Response.Clear();
    Response.StatusCode = 500;
    Response.End(); 
}

Enjoy!

Answer 4

Change the name of your dll file. It will crash the app if you ask for a route afterwards because it won't find the controller. I used this to test my logging.

Answer 5

throw new Exception();

This will generate a HTTP 500

Answer 6

Here's a way to do this without modifying your site in any way:

1. From your web browser, open a page on your site that has a postback form.
2. Press F12 to open developer tools.
3. From the HTML tab, search for __VIEWSTATE and change the value in any way.
4. Post to the form

This will cause a "Validation of viewstate MAC failed" ASP.Net Exception, which returns a 500 internal server error HTTP response code.

Breaking the web.config with a malformed tag also works, but defeats the purpose if you are trying to test some settings in your web.config (like Failed Request Tracing).