Resolving a Misleading "Could not load file or assembly" Error in .NET Framework 4.8

Keeping NuGet packages up to date is a recommended practice for most development teams. Package updates can provide security fixes, bug fixes, performance improvements, and new features. However, updating NuGet packages can sometimes introduce assembly version mismatches or missing dependencies, which may only become visible at runtime.

In this blog, we will look at one such issue that occurred in a .NET Framework 4.8 application hosted in IIS, where the error message pointed to the missing assembly.

Prerequisites:

The issue described in this blog occurred in,

.NET Framework 4.8

ASP.NET application hosted in IIS

NuGet packages updated to newer versions

IIS application configured for application auto-start/preloading

Resolving New Chef Licensing Warnings During Bootstrap

Desired State Configuration (DSC) is a well-known concept used to manage larger amounts of infrastructure. Chef is one of the tools commonly used to implement this approach.

Recently, Chef has changed its licensing model and downloading and using Chef software now requires a valid license. As a result, you may see licensing warnings when bootstrapping new nodes using the knife bootstrap command.

In this blog post, we’ll discuss what needs to be done to get rid of the licensing warning that appears during the knife bootstrap process and how to provide a valid Chef license when installing Chef Infra Client on a new server.