Cannot start/stop/reinstall Tentacle 3.15.6 (but 3.15.2 works)

After I upgraded all our tentacles to 3.15.6, the tentacle on one of our machines became completely unusable. All commands failed with roughly the same error. I could not start the service, nor reinstall it. I force removed the service and reinstalled, it made no difference. Neither did rebooting.

In the end I downgraded the tentacle to 3.15.2, and that solved the problem. Tried reinstalling 3.15.6 and the same problem immediately appeared.

On other servers, 3.15.6 runs without any problems.

The error that I get is as follows:

Error: Unhandled Exception: System.Exception: Invalid logging configuration: missing target 'stdout'
Error:    at Octopus.Shared.Startup.OctopusProgram.AssertLoggingConfigurationIsCorrect()
Error:    at Octopus.Shared.Startup.OctopusProgram.Run()
Error:    at Octopus.Tentacle.Program.Main(String[] args)
The previous command returned a non-zero exit code of: -532462766
The command that failed was: "C:\Program Files\Octopus Deploy\Tentacle\Tentacle.exe" service --instance "Tentacle" --stop

I saw the same issues on a couple of our tentacles this morning. The issue seems to not be version related, but related to cruft left over from previous Tentacle version pre-upgrade. The non-functional Tentacle dir (C:\Program Files\Octopus Deploy\Tentacle) contained the following files:

AsyncStackTraceEx.dll
Autofac.dll
Autofac.Integration.Mef.dll
Autofac.Integration.Mef.xml
Autofac.xml
AWSSDK.dll
Azure
de
Deploy.ps1
edtFTPnetPRO.dll
edtFTPnetPRO.xml
es
Esent.Interop.dll
Esent.Interop.pdb
FluentValidation.dll
FluentValidation.pdb
FluentValidation.xml
fr
FSharp.Core.dll
FSharp.Core.xml
GeoAPI.dll
Halibut.dll
ICSharpCode.NRefactory.CSharp.dll
ICSharpCode.NRefactory.dll
it
Jint.Raven.dll
Jint.Raven.pdb
ko
Lucene.Net.Contrib.Spatial.NTS.dll
Lucene.Net.Contrib.Spatial.NTS.pdb
Lucene.Net.dll
Lucene.Net.pdb
MarkdownSharp.dll
MarkdownSharp.pdb
MarkdownSharp.xml
Microsoft.CompilerServices.AsyncTargetingPack.Net4.dll
Microsoft.Data.Edm.dll
Microsoft.Data.OData.dll
Microsoft.Threading.Tasks.dll
Microsoft.Threading.Tasks.Extensions.Desktop.dll
Microsoft.Threading.Tasks.Extensions.Desktop.xml
Microsoft.Threading.Tasks.Extensions.dll
Microsoft.Threading.Tasks.Extensions.xml
Microsoft.Threading.Tasks.xml
Microsoft.Web.Infrastructure.dll
Microsoft.Web.XmlTransform.dll
Microsoft.Win32.TaskScheduler.dll
Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Management.dll
Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Management.pdb
Microsoft.WindowsAzure.ServiceManagement.Client.dll
Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Storage.dll
Microsoft.WindowsAzure.StorageClient.dll
Microsoft.WindowsAzure.StorageClient.xml
Mono.Cecil.dll
Nancy.Bootstrappers.Autofac.dll
Nancy.dll
Nancy.Hosting.Self.dll
Nancy.Hosting.Self.xml
Nancy.Serialization.JsonNet.dll
Nancy.xml
NetTopologySuite.dll
Newtonsoft.Json.dll
Newtonsoft.Json.xml
Nito.AsyncEx.Concurrent.dll
Nito.AsyncEx.dll
Nito.AsyncEx.Enlightenment.dll
nl
NLog.config
NLog.dll
NLog.xml
NuGet.Common.dll
NuGet.Core.dll
NuGet.Frameworks.dll
NuGet.Packaging.Core.dll
NuGet.Packaging.Core.Types.dll
NuGet.Packaging.dll
NuGet.Versioning.dll
Octopus.Client.dll
Octopus.Client.nuspec
Octopus.Client.xml
Octopus.config
Octopus.Configuration.dll
Octopus.Diagnostics.dll
Octopus.Manager.Tentacle.exe
Octopus.Manager.Tentacle.exe.config
Octopus.Manager.Tentacle.pdb
Octopus.Platform.Deployment.dll
Octopus.Platform.Deployment.pdb
Octopus.Platform.Deployment.Server.dll
Octopus.Platform.Deployment.Server.pdb
Octopus.Platform.Deployment.Server.xml
Octopus.Platform.Deployment.xml
Octopus.Platform.dll
Octopus.Platform.Documents.dll
Octopus.Platform.Documents.pdb
Octopus.Platform.Documents.xml
Octopus.Platform.pdb
Octopus.Platform.Web.dll
Octopus.Platform.Web.pdb
Octopus.Platform.Web.xml
Octopus.Platform.xml
Octopus.Server.exe
Octopus.Server.pdb
Octopus.Shared.dll
Octopus.Tentacle.nuspec
Octopus.Time.dll
Pipefish.dll
Pipefish.pdb
Pipefish.Transport.SecureTcp.dll
Pipefish.Transport.SecureTcp.pdb
Pipefish.Transport.SecureTcp.xml
Pipefish.xml
pl
PowerCollections.dll
pt
Raven.Abstractions.dll
Raven.Abstractions.pdb
Raven.Abstractions.xml
Raven.Client.Embedded.dll
Raven.Client.Embedded.pdb
Raven.Client.Embedded.xml
Raven.Client.Lightweight.dll
Raven.Client.Lightweight.pdb
Raven.Client.Lightweight.xml
Raven.Client.UniqueConstraints.dll
Raven.Client.UniqueConstraints.pdb
Raven.Database.dll
Raven.Database.pdb
Raven.Smuggler.exe
Raven.Smuggler.pdb
ru
ScriptCS
Scripts
Spatial4n.Core.NTS.dll
Spatial4n.Core.NTS.pdb
Sprache.dll
Sprache.pdb
Sprache.xml
sv
System.IO.dll
System.IO.xml
System.Runtime.dll
System.Runtime.xml
System.Threading.Tasks.dll
System.Threading.Tasks.xml
System.Windows.Controls.Input.Toolkit.dll
System.Windows.Controls.Layout.Toolkit.dll
Tentacle.exe
Tentacle.exe.config
Tentacle.exe.manifest
tentacle.exe.nlog
Tentacle.pdb
Tentacle.runtimeconfig.dev.json
Tentacle.runtimeconfig.json
Tools.exe
Tools.exe.config
Tools.pdb
tr
WPFToolkit.dll

Note for instance the presence of Raven.Smuggler.exe - there seems to be a lot of stuff left over from earlier versions.
A working 3.15.6 Tentacle on a different machine contained a lot fewer files:

AsyncStackTraceEx.dll
Autofac.dll
FluentValidation.dll
FluentValidation.pdb
Halibut.dll
Microsoft.Win32.TaskScheduler.dll
Nancy.dll
Nancy.Serialization.JsonNet.dll
Newtonsoft.Json.dll
Nito.AsyncEx.Concurrent.dll
Nito.AsyncEx.dll
Nito.AsyncEx.Enlightenment.dll
NLog.dll
NuGet.Common.dll
NuGet.Frameworks.dll
NuGet.Packaging.Core.dll
NuGet.Packaging.Core.Types.dll
NuGet.Packaging.dll
NuGet.Versioning.dll
Octopus.Client.dll
Octopus.Configuration.dll
Octopus.Diagnostics.dll
Octopus.Manager.Tentacle.exe
Octopus.Manager.Tentacle.exe.config
Octopus.Manager.Tentacle.pdb
Octopus.Shared.dll
Octopus.Time.dll
System.Windows.Controls.Input.Toolkit.dll
System.Windows.Controls.Layout.Toolkit.dll
Tentacle.exe
Tentacle.exe.config
Tentacle.exe.manifest
tentacle.exe.nlog
Tentacle.pdb
Tentacle.runtimeconfig.dev.json
Tentacle.runtimeconfig.json
WPFToolkit.dll

Replacing the contents of the Tentacle folder (which, presumably ends up the same place as uninstalling/deleting the folder and reinstalling 3.15.6) made the faulty Tentacle work again.

Thanks! I deleted (well, renamed) the Tentacle folder and reinstalled the tentacle, and it now works as expected.

Hi,

Glad to hear you got it working and thanks for the troubleshooting Michael. I have created an issue to fix this: https://github.com/OctopusDeploy/Issues/issues/3740

Cheers,
Shane