Scott Forsyth's Blog

IIS, Windows Authentication and the Double Hop issue

2008-08-22T20:33:00Z

In IIS, you run into an interesting situation when you need to access another resource off of the IIS server and certain fairly common situations occur. When using Integrated Security, anonymous access is disabled, and impersonation is turned on, a security measure kicks in and doesn't allow your site to access resources on any network servers. This includes access to a UNC path directly from IIS or SQL Server using Windows authentication. The reason is because of a 'double hop' that authentication...(read more)

Application Pool Recycles from IIS 7 Setting Changes

2008-08-11T14:37:00Z

I've written a couple times about what configuration changes cause AppDomain recycles. Most recently how the ASP.NET tab causes a server-wide AppDomain recycle , and previously about changes in ASP.NET 2.0 . Here I'm going to cover things that, when done in IIS 7, will cause a full application pool recycle. I obtained the following list from the Microsoft.com folk at Microsoft. They worked with the IIS team during IIS 7 development to get a complete list of all settings which cause full app pool...(read more)

ASP.NET tab in IIS, more dangerous than it first appears!

2008-08-01T14:49:00Z

This blog post was a long time coming and fortunately doesn't apply to IIS7, but I thought I would finally take a few minutes and cover this shortcoming with the ASPNET tab that ASP.NET 2.0 introduced into IIS 6 and IIS 5. As I've covered in a previous post , only 1 version of ASP.NET can run at a time in each IIS Application Pool. When you want to target a newer or older version of the ASP.NET framework for a particular site or application, you must update that website or application. When ASP.NET...(read more)

Breaking changing in IIS 7.0 and ASP.NET

2008-07-11T17:32:00Z

This quick post is for my own sake so I can find it again later. :-) I refer to the following link often. Mike Volodarsky has put together a detailed list of breaking changes in IIS 7.0 and ASP.NET. For the most part IIS 7 has great compatibility with IIS 6 apps. The httpModules and httpHandlers section are two important web.config sections that need to be migrated from system.web to system.webServer in Integrated mode, but most other things will work without changes. There are exceptions though,...(read more)

Graffiti CMS - VDirs - ISAPI Rewrite and Partial Trust

2008-06-05T19:10:00Z

I thought I would spend a few minutes today testing out Graffiti from Telligent . Graffiti is a fairly new blogging and content management system (CMS) which is meant to be very easy to install and setup. True to its word, it is impressively easy to get up and going. There are a few things that I found that are worth noting. I wanted to install this in a VDir on a shared server here at ORCS Web and use ISAPI Rewrite to make it appear to run in the root folder with its own domain name. In brief terms...(read more)

Upcoming Speaking Engagements

2008-05-06T03:47:00Z

There are some exciting events coming up around the Charlotte area which I'll be speaking at. Next weekend is the Charlotte Code Camp Spring 2008. I'll be speaking on what is currently fresh on my mind, and what I believe is very applicable to developers today. The session is titled "What every developer needs to know about IIS 7". Here's the Code Camp agenda: http://www.developersguild.org/Default.aspx?tabid=248 For anyone in the area, I encourage you to register before it fills. IIS 7 has many...(read more)

Enabling XP and Windows Server 2003 to Search All Files Types

2008-04-04T14:34:00Z

Searching for file content on your computer or server is a common task and one where you would expect accurate results. You, like so many of us, may have assumed that but found different results. Within Windows 2000 Server, if you entered something in the windows search dialog and clicked "Find", it would find it. But, with Windows Server 2003 or Windows XP, there are a lot of searches that would come up empty, even if you were sure that you had files with the words in them that you were searching...(read more)

tsadmin command change in Windows Server 2008

2008-04-03T16:18:00Z

I use Remote Desktop all the time to manage servers remotely, and often I join other people's sessions to troubleshoot something with them, or walk through something or other. In Windows Server 2003 (and Windows 2000 Server), the easy way to start up Terminal Services Manager is Start -> Run -> 'tsadmin' -> [Enter]. This calls us Terminal Services Manager where I can right-click on a user and click 'Remote Control', and if they approve, I can join their session. This doesn't work in Windows...(read more)

IIS7 blocks viewing access to files in bin and other asp.net folders

2008-03-05T21:31:00Z

I was just asked to help someone troubleshoot a site that worked fine on Windows Server 2003 / IIS6 but didn't work on Windows Server 2008 / IIS7. A file was in a folder under the bin folder on the site and displayed an error when trying to view the page. The path looked something like this: http://www.sitename.com/subfolder/bin/debug/file.xml The subfolder wasn't marked as an application, although that doesn't really matter. The point is that since /bin/ was in the path somewhere, IIS7 wouldn't...(read more)

Professional IIS 7 - Best IIS 7.0 book

2008-02-18T17:41:00Z

The title is a bit biased since I co-authored the book, but Professional IIS 7 will be out in print within a couple weeks and I highly recommend picking up a copy! I've had my head buried in this book for months — spending more time that I realized possible, but learning IIS 7 inside out and ultimately enjoying it. (Although I have to admit that sometimes at 4:00 in the morning, trying to hit deadlines, I'm not sure that I realized that I was enjoying it. :)) The book will be in bookstores and shipping...(read more)

Application vs. AppDomain

2007-09-02T14:21:00Z

A question was asked on a forum that I frequent which I thought was worth writting a blog about. Q: What is the difference between an application and an Appdomain? I understand from my research so far that an Appdomain is a container within which ASPX runs and that Apppool is a process that starts the w3wp.exe worker process within which ASP applications run. A: That's a good question. Here are some key differences: An application is an IIS term, but it's one that ASP.NET utilizes. Essentially it...(read more)

VS 2008 and .NET 3.5 Beta 2 released

2007-07-26T21:42:00Z

Beta 2 of VS 2008 and .NET 3.5 which was just released a few minutes ago and is available for download. I know I've been really quiet on my blog for a while. I'm still around, just haven't freed up my time enough to do the blogging that I know I should. I figured I would break my silence and mention this release. http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2007/07/26/vs-2008-and-net-3-5-beta-2-released.aspx Scott Guthrie's blog post is a must read. Some key features in VS 2008 and .NET 3.5 are: - LINQ...(read more)

Registry change for perfmon and PID data

2007-03-20T02:34:00Z

Perfmon is a great tool for mining performance data on a server and has a slew of objects and counters to expose most any type of data. As nice as it is, there is one thing that can be difficult to do, and that is to view data for temporary objects. For example IIS worker processes only live until the next recycle or restart. If there are many worker processes on the server, the default view doesn't allow you to tell which is which. Notice in the screenshot that there are three w3wp.exe worker...(read more)

1000MB is not 1GB

2007-02-27T14:12:00Z

I had an interesting situation come up yesterday that I thought would be worth writing about. As a web host here at www.orcsweb.com , we offer disk space, but obviously need to set some type of limits. One of our clients had an allotment of 1,140 MB. (That is an odd number, but that's what it worked out to.) While working with him a couple of weeks ago, I checked his disk usage by right-clicking on the folder in windows explorer and clicking on properties. The space that it told me was 1.14GB,...(read more)

PowerShell Cheat Sheet

2007-01-25T21:50:00Z

Here's a must-have cheat sheet for PowerShell. Jeffrey Snover has put together an excellent doc that is well worth printing off and keeping handy for anyone working with PowerShell: http://blogs.msdn.com/powershell/archive/2007/01/24/powershell-cheat-sheet.aspx...(read more)