rakkimk

MSDEPLOY – Can I use it to migrate my IIS6 to another IIS6? oh yes!

rakkimk — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 14:50:04 GMT

I was working with one of our partner who want to migrate 30+ sites from an existing IIS6 server, to a new IIS6 server. We had an old tool IIS6 Migration Tool which would come handy, but this would be requiring 30 steps to migrate 30 websites one by one. Here comes the new tool which was specifically targeted for IIS6 to IIS7 migration, but it should help people doing a migration from a old IIS6 to a new IIS6.

In this blog, I'm taking a simple scenario where we are going to an offline upgrade.

Read the complete post here http://blogs.msdn.com/rakkimk/archive/2010/03/02/msdeploy-can-i-use-it-to-migrate-my-iis6-to-another-iis6-oh-yes.aspx.

IIS7 - How to configure a custom ISAPI Extension?

rakkimk — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 18:18:00 GMT

This is often a question that has been asked a lot of times, and I couldn’t find an article which outlines the steps to be followed to enable a custom ISAPI extension in IIS7 (and above). You really don’t need to do anything other than the steps below:

Read the complete blog post from the source.

IIS – Getting “Connection_Abandoned_By_AppPool DefaultAppPool” – File Version Mismatch

rakkimk — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 20:24:00 GMT

Today, I was working with a customer of mine who had some problems in configuring a Virus Definitions Distribution Point for Symantec Live Update on IIS. Another module hosted on a different web-server has a button to test this distribution point, and we were seeing that the test on this………………..

Read the rest of the post here.

http://blogs.msdn.com/rakkimk/archive/2009/08/07/iis-getting-connection-abandoned-by-apppool-defaultapppool-file-version-mismatch.aspx

IIS7 – To be noted while using Expression Encoder to upload large files to IIS server

rakkimk — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 23:09:36 GMT

Internet is full of videos, and you have a power packed set of tools for IIS to make media streaming top-notch experience. You have IIS Media Pack enabling intelligent progressive downloads, smooth streaming, throttling, etc. You have tools from Microsoft such as Expression Encoder……..

Read the full post at http://blogs.msdn.com/rakkimk/archive/2009/07/30/iis7-to-be-noted-while-using-expression-encoder-to-upload-large-files-to-iis-server.aspx

IIS7 – Improving ASP.NET performance (concurrent requests) while on Integrated Mode

rakkimk — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 17:58:55 GMT

If you were a ASP.NET 1.1 developer, and faced some performance problems, I’m sure you would have come across the KB 821268 which talks about tweaking maxWorkerThreads, maxIoThreads in the <processModel>, minFreeThreads, minLocalRequestFreeThreads in <httpRuntime>, maxconnection in the <connectionManagement> section. But for ASP.NET 2.0, we have <processModel autoConfig=”true” /> where these settings are tweaked in the runtime……

…………………………………

Read the rest of the blog post here.

http://blogs.msdn.com/rakkimk/archive/2009/07/08/iis7-improving-asp-net-performance-concurrent-requests-while-on-integrated-mode.aspx

IIS7 – Configuring iisClientCertificateMappingAuthentication using appcmd

rakkimk — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 14:07:38 GMT

As you know there is no UI to configure iisClientCertificateMappingAuthentication in IIS7, it takes a little more time to configure the site for the same. Here is an article in the iis.net site which explains the steps one by one……………

Read the rest of the post here

http://blogs.msdn.com/rakkimk/archive/2009/07/08/iis7-configuring-iisclientcertificatemappingauthentication.aspx

URLScan – rejecting the request depending on the User-Agent string

rakkimk — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 20:18:28 GMT

I just learned this now :-) You can now use the URLScan 3.1 with your own custom rules, and it would come handy in situations like rejecting a request based on the User-Agent string.

Below is a sample rule for the same:……………

Read rest of the blog here - http://blogs.msdn.com/rakkimk/archive/2009/06/12/urlscan-rejecting-the-request-depending-on-the-user-agent-string.aspx

IIS7 – (my) Improved Backup Restore Tool, and a UI Module

rakkimk — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 15:28:15 GMT

NOTE : Before you even read about this module, I want to mention that I do not work for IIS product team at Microsoft, but in Product Support for IIS and ASP.NET. This module/application is purely out of my interest, and this is not an official release by Microsoft and hence NOT supported by Microsoft Services.

When I wrote my BackupRestore module UI module a while back, many people asked for few modifications, with the ability to take a complete backup of all the IIS configurations – because some of the IIS configurations can now lie within the individual web.configs of the applications…

Read the rest of the post here - http://blogs.msdn.com/rakkimk/archive/2009/06/08/iis7-improved-backup-restore-tool-and-a-ui-module.aspx

IIS7 - Getting HTTP 500.19 while accessing the website

rakkimk — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 18:07:23 GMT

I recently worked with one of my customer who was getting “HTTP 500.19” error while browsing the website.

Server Error in Application "application name"
HTTP Error 500.19 – Internal Server Error
HRESULT: 0x8007000d
Description of HRESULT
The requested page cannot be accessed because the related configuration data for the page is invalid.

Err tool showed “STIERR_INVALID_HW_TYPE” for 0x8007000d error code.

With further troubleshooting found that he had a virtual directory configured for a UNC share, and had a wrong password mentioned. Entered the proper credentials, and the problem went away.

This error message is a generic error message which would occur when the site configuration data present in the applicationHost.config has a malformed entry, or not a valid data (in our case it was the wrong password for the UNC connection, and the IIS cannot read its web.config file to check if there is any system.webserver setting mentioned)

IIS7 Tweet #2: Modifying an existing binding for the website

rakkimk — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 23:21:58 GMT

appcmd.exe set config -section:system.applicationHost/sites /[name='Default Web Site'].bindings.[protocol='http',bindingInformation='*:80:'].bindingInformation:"*:80:www.test.com" /commit:apphost

IIS7 Tweet #1 : Setting UploadReadAheadSize

rakkimk — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 15:18:00 GMT

appcmd.exe set config -section:system.webServer/serverRuntime /uploadReadAheadSize:"49152" /commit:apphost

Problems with rendering the "Design" View for a simple asp.net website from Visual Studio 2008

rakkimk — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 19:36:00 GMT

I recently worked with one of my customer who when clicking on the "Design" view of an ASPX page, the designer window doesn't appear - blank page appears. And if you minimize the VS window, and maximize it again - we will see the desktop background in the place of the Designer surface.

Verified that neither the "Microsoft Visual Studio Web Authoring Component" nor "Microsoft Web Designer tools" was installed on the machine (Control panel --> Add/Remove window components).

Ran the file [Path to the Installation DVD]\WCU\WebDesignerCore\WebDesignerCore.EXE

NOTE : This exe doesn't have a UI, so watch the Task Manager to know when this exe completes its installation.

Reference : http://forums.asp.net/t/1167590.aspx

Keywords : Visual Studio 2008 blank Design View hang

IIS7 – Search the complete IIS configuration store – in which web.config is your attribute configured

rakkimk — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 20:49:00 GMT

As you know IIS 7.0 configuration system is huge, broad, or whatever you feel like calling it. It no longer just exist in its main configuration file applicationHost.config (like Metabase.XML in IIS 6.0). It can be widely spread in any of the web.config files in the virtual directories, or applications.

Today I had an interesting chat with my colleague on finding a tool to list down what are the web.config files available in a given website. I was suggesting the below code using MWA to just parse the configuration, and print if any VirtualPath of an application (virtual directory) has a file named web.config.

Update: The below sample doesn't list down the web.config's which are there in any physical folder which is not configured as an Application. So, you need to tweak your code a bit. Thanks to Vijay pointing this out.

Sample code snippet in C# listing down all applications, virtual directories available

ServerManager sm = new ServerManager();

foreach (Site s in sm.Sites)

    Console.WriteLine(s.Name + "\n");

    foreach (Application a in s.Applications)

        foreach (VirtualDirectory v in a.VirtualDirectories)

try

                string[] files = Directory.GetFiles(v.PhysicalPath);

                for (int i = 0; i < files.Length; i++)

                    if (files[i].EndsWith("web.config"))

                        Console.WriteLine(a + " has " + files[i]);

            catch (Exception e)

                // invalid physical path, so ignore :)

    Console.WriteLine("\n");

But, I wasn’t really thinking that there is a powerful module “Configuration Editor” which gives you an easy way to search for attributes, and know where they are configured (physical path of the web.config file). Below is a sample screenshot which shows the use of Search feature.

So, next time when you want to know where all the given attribute is configured, consider using Configuration Editor. Hope this helps!

Configuring IIS to advise the browser render on different IE modes

rakkimk — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 12:11:00 GMT

You would have already read IIS support team’s blog about configuring IIS to send an additional header to the client which would make IE to run under EmulateIE7 mode. I would also suggest you to read this MSDN article which talks about the various IE8 display modes available, and their corresponding functionality.

Here are the possible display modes and their corresponding value to be set for the “X-UA-Compatible” meta element (or for the same custom HTTP Header)

Emulate IE8 mode           -->   IE=EmulateIE8
Emulate IE7 mode           -->   IE=EmulateIE7
IE5 mode                         --> IE=5
IE7 mode                         --> IE=7.5
IE8 mode                         --> IE=8
Edge mode                      --> IE=Edge

Check this blog to know the syntax to add to your IIS6/IIS7 web servers. Make sure you read this MSDN article to understand the differences between the EmulateIE7 and IE7 mode – they are not just the same. There is an additional <!DOCTYPE> which will come to decide which mode to display when you use EmulateIE7 mode. This understanding is more important before you go ahead and make the changes to your web servers. So, make sure you know what you are doing!

Hope this helps!

IIS7 and Twitter – a love story

rakkimk — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 16:55:13 GMT

It is a while that I wrote something as crazy as this one is. This is basically a windows service running in your web server which would tweet often about the heart beat of the web server and posts its status messages. For example, v1.0 of this application will tweet the below (you can configure the time interval on the config file):

Total number of requests executing per application pool
Each Application pool Private bytes, and Virtual bytes memory usage
Server’s available Physical memory, and Virtual memory
Momentary Ping to a configured URL (example – http://localhost) (it will tweet only if it fails – for the moment I’m just checking if the HttpWebResponse.StatusCode != HttpStatusCode.OK. If time permits, I’ll try to add more granular control for the error codes)
If a request takes more than specified time limit to get served

There is a configuration file in which you can specify the Twitter Username, and password, time interval for each set of tweets, the URLs you want to monitor, and option to turn off the tweets.

For example, if a request is taking more than the configured time limit, it will tweet “Alert > /Default.aspx is being processed for 79s spending 79s IsapiModule | AppPool : Default Web Site” which will just say the URL, the time taken, which Module currently processes it, and the application pool serving the request.

Get IIS7TweetService to your server

Download the Service EXE, and a sample config.xml which are inside the IIS7TweetService.zip file.
Extract the contents to C:\IIS7TweetService (this location cannot be changed as I’ve hard coded the config file path. I’ll be allowing you to place it in some other folder in the future versions)
Install the IIS7TweetService.exe as a Windows Service (from your Visual Studio Command Prompt run “installutil /i C:\IIS7TweetService\IIS7TweetService.exe”

Feel free to leave your comments in this blog, and your feature requests for the future versions if you like this one.

PS : I’ve only done a very limited testing on Vista and Windows Server 2008, so use it with caution. If I find time, I’ll try doing more testing and improve its efficiency. In case if you find a problem using this, please let me know. Your comments, and suggestions are most welcome.