CruiseControl.NET no connection can be made?

Question

I am setting up CruiseControl.NET and I get the following error message on the webdashboard:

No connection could be made because the target machine actively refused it 127.0.0.1:21234

The Url it is looking for is: tcp://localhost:21234/CruiseManager.rem
However the ccnet website in IIS has its tcp port set to 82.
So I use the following Url to navigate to the webdashboard http://127.0.0.1:82/ccnet/ViewFarmReport.aspx

I tried changing the Tcp port in IIS to 21234 and I get the following error message on the webdashboard:

Tcp channel protocol violation: expecting preamble.

I have also tried opening the port with the following command:

netsh firewall add portopening TCP 21234 CCNET

When I try and start the CCNET service I get the following message

The CruiseControl.NET Server service started then stopped. Some services stop automatically if they have no work to do....

Can anyone help me with this problem please?

EDIT - Adding config file

<cruisecontrol xmlns:cb="urn:ccnet.config.builder">
<cb:define PublishDir="C:\Deploy\Portal2.0Build"/>

    <project name="Portal2.0">
      <workingDirectory>C:\PortalCruiseControl\Working</workingDirectory>
      <artifactDirectory>C:\PortalCruiseControl\Artifacts</artifactDirectory>
      <webURL>http://192.168.17.59:82/ccnet</webURL>
      <triggers>
        <intervalTrigger name="continuous" seconds="10"
               buildCondition="IfModificationExists"/>                              
      </triggers>
      <sourcecontrol type="svn">                                            
        <trunkUrl>https://portal2003.local:8443/svn/portalv2.0/trunk</trunkUrl>                
        <executable>C:\Program Files (x86)\VisualSVN Server\bin\svn.exe</executable>           
        <username>ccnet</username>                                         
        <password>***</password> 
        <cleanCopy>true</cleanCopy>
      </sourcecontrol>
      <tasks>
        <msbuild>
            <executable>                                                      
                C:\WINDOWS\microsoft.net\Framework64\v3.5\MSBuild.exe                                              
            </executable> 
            <projectFile>Portal2.0.sln</projectFile>  
            <buildArgs>
                /target:build;publish /p:Configuration=Release /p:MSBuildExtensionsPath=C:\Progra~2\MSBuild /p:MSBuildEmitSolution=1 /p:publishdir=C:\Deploy\Portal2.0Build /verbosity:diag
            </buildArgs>                                                      
            <logger>
                C:\Program Files (x86)\CruiseControl.NET\server\ThoughtWorks.CruiseControl.MSBuild.dll
            </logger>
        </msbuild>
      </tasks>
        <labeller type="assemblyVersionLabeller">
          <major>2</major>
          <minor>0</minor>
          <incrementOnFailure>false</incrementOnFailure>
        </labeller>
      <publishers>
        <statistics />
        <xmllogger />
        <package>
          <name>ZipFilePublish</name>
          <compression>9</compression>
          <always>false</always>
          <flatten>false</flatten>
          <baseDirectory>$(PublishDir)</baseDirectory>
          <dynamicValues>
              <replacementValue property="name">
                <format>C:\Deploy\Builds\PortalBuild{0}.zip</format>
                <parameters>
                  <namedValue name="$CCNetLabel" value="Default" />
                </parameters>
              </replacementValue>
          </dynamicValues>
          <files>
            <file>*.*</file>
            <file>**\*</file>
          </files>
        </package>
          <email from="bla" mailhost="bla" port="25" userName="bla" 
                        password="bla"  includeDetails="TRUE" useSSL="FALSE"> 
            <users>
              <user name="User1" group="Portal" address=""/>
            </users>
            <groups>
              <group name="Portal">
                <notifications>
                    <notificationType>change</notificationType>
                </notifications>
              </group>
            </groups>
          </email>
    </publishers>
    </project>  

Answer 1

The first error message is probably caused by CCNET service not running because of which the web dashboard can't connect to it. It should go away as soon as you fix the ccnet.config so that service starts running.

The second problem ("Ilegal characters in path"; you seem to have already figured out the missing nodes part) is caused by msbuild/executable element. It seems that CC.NET doesn't like whitespace and especially new line characters inside it's value. Replacing:

<executable>                                                      
    C:\WINDOWS\microsoft.net\Framework64\v3.5\MSBuild.exe
</executable> 

with:

<executable>C:\WINDOWS\microsoft.net\Framework64\v3.5\MSBuild.exe</executable> 

should fix the problem.

Another hint: when you're having problems with the validity of your ccnet.config file, try using CCValidator.exe (it's in your CruiseControl.NET\server folder). It usually points out the problematic part of the config file quite nicely (although that wasn't the case with "Illegal characters in path" problem - I had to comment out specific parts of the config to find the offending node).