No longer able to enable remote debugging on my Web Apps in Azure

Question

This is occurring on all of my web apps across all app service plans in my subscription. I am no longer able to connect to my web apps with Visual Studio 2022 for debugging. If I go to settings>configuration on my web app(s), I can see that debugging is disabled. I click to enable it and debugging in VS 2022 appears. I save the configuration. A few seconds later when I reload the configuration page, the debugging option is disabled. This is consistent behaviour across all web services and web apps.

If I try to "Attach debugger" from VS 2022, it goes through the process of enabling remote debugging, finding process to attach to and then attaching the debugger... After some time, I get the following error message:

The Visual Studio 2022 Remote Debugger (MSVSMON.EXE) does not appear to be running on the remote computer. This may be because a firewall is preventing communication to the remote computer. Please see Help for assistance on configuring remote debugging.

at Microsoft.WebTools.Azure.VS.Operations.IDebuggerInternal120.ConnectToServer(String szServerName, VsDebugRemoteConnectOptions[] pConnectOptions, CONNECT_REASON ConnectReason, Int32 fIncrementUsageCount, IDebugCoreServer3& ppServer)

at Microsoft.WebTools.Azure.VS.Operations.RemoteDiagnosticsSessionBase`1.ConnectToServer(String hostNameWithPort, String user, String password)

I have disabled firewalls on my local PC and still get the same error.

Can someone advise how I can fix this issue?

Answer 1

Hello @nick evans

Thanks for contacting MS Q&A. I will be able to help you with resolving your issues.

Can you confirm the version of App Service you are currently using?

Remote debugging is only supported on Basic, Standard, Premium, PremiumV2/V3, and Isolated tiers.

If you're using Free or Shared, remote debugging will silently disable itself even if you enable it.

To check:

Go to your App Service → Scale up (App Service plan) → Confirm the tier.

If it's on Free/Shared, upgrade to at least Basic.

If the answer is helpful, please click "Accept Answer" and kindly upvote it. If you have extra questions about this answer, please click "Comment".

Siri

Answer 2

Thanks for your response.

I am not sure what you mean by the version of the App Service I am currently using. Can you advise how I can get you that information?

This web app was indeed part of an app service plan that is on the Free tier. However, I have never had problems debugging this app in the past. As per your advice, I have scaled up the app service plan to B1. With that move complete, I have downloaded a publishing profile, re-imported that profile to Visual Studio 2022 and re-published the web app successfully from VS 2022.

In the web app>settings>configuration, I have enabled remote debugging and VS 2022 is selected. I can see that this configuration now appears to stick. However, when I try to attach the debugger from VS 2022, I still get exactly the same error.

Please note that other than the above, I have made no changes to the code or VS 2022 configuration and I have been debugging this code with no problem for many months.

Thanks again.