Robert McMurray

FTP Clients - Part 2: Explicit FTPS versus Implicit FTPS

2008-11-10T17:46:00Z

In part 2 of my series on FTP clients, I thought it would be best to have a discussion about the differences between Implicit FTPS and Explicit FTPS . In my recent " FTP Clients - Part 1: Web Browser Support " blog post, I referenced Implicit and Explicit FTPS with a link to my Using FTP Over SSL walkthrough. But it occurred to me that some people may not understand the difference between the two, and my upcoming blog posts are going to build upon that knowledge, so I thought that a quick discussion...(read more)

Using Visual Studio 2008 on a 64-bit Computer to edit ApplicationHost.config

2008-10-28T00:49:00Z

Visual Studio 2008 as an XML Editor Everyone seems to have their own favorite XML editor these days, and there are no shortages of XML editors in the marketplace. The being said, I tend to use Visual Studio 2008 for several reasons, and if you're using Windows notepad or some other editor, here are some of my reasons why you might consider switching: I've already bought a copy of Visual Studio for application development, so I don't need to purchase another utility. I'm already familiar with the...(read more)

AppCmd 80070057 errors when configuring site-level settings

2008-10-02T17:20:00Z

I had an interesting question from a coworker who was trying to use AppCmd to set the site-level SSL options for an FTP site. This should have been straightforward, and the syntax that he gave me looked correct: appcmd.exe set config -section:system.applicationHost/sites -[name='Default FTP Site'].ftpServer.security.ssl.controlChannelPolicy:SslAllow /commit:apphost That being said, whenever he or I ran the command we received the following cryptic error from AppCmd: Failed to process input: The parameter...(read more)

'Category does not exist' error when viewing IIS Worker Processes in IIS Manager

2008-10-01T16:45:00Z

I ran into an interesting problem recently when using the new Worker Processes feature in the Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager for IIS 7.0. The Worker Processes feature is a great addition to IIS, and it's used to view practical information about the worker processes that are currently in use on your system; for example: the names of application pools that are associated with worker processes, worker process PIDs, CPU and byte usage statistics, etc. So it's understandable that I was a...(read more)

FTP Clients - Part 1: Web Browser Support

2008-09-25T02:16:00Z

Since we've been testing a lot of FTP clients with our new FTP server for IIS 7 , I thought that it would be a good idea to discuss some of the highlights and pitfalls that we have run into when testing various clients. I thought that I'd begin this series with an examination of several web browsers, which are really not the best FTP clients around - web browsers are mostly just "putting a pretty face" on an FTP site rather than functioning as an FTP client. In any event, here's a summary table of...(read more)

URL Rewrite Module and Digest Authentication

2008-09-19T23:37:00Z

With the Go Live release for the URL Rewrite Module having just been shipped, I thought that I'd address a problem that you might run into if you're using Digest Authentication . RFC 2069 states that a client sends the server a checksum of the username, password, nonce value, HTTP method, and the requested URI. Unfortunately, when rewriting the URL, the client and server have separate ideas of what the actual URL is, so Digest Authentication will fail when authenticating against a rewritten URL....(read more)

Data Mining UrlScan 3.0 Logs using LogParser 2.2

2008-09-10T20:04:00Z

We released a new version of UrlScan recently, and one of the great new features in this version is log files that conform to the W3C Extended Log File Format . What this means to administrators is that they can now parse their UrlScan activity using almost any common log utilities, including Microsoft's LogParser 2.2 utility. For anyone that hasn't heard of LogParser, this is a freeware utility from Microsoft that allows you to write SQL-style queries to extract useful information. Eventually I...(read more)

FTP and ETW Tracing

2008-08-29T22:44:00Z

My good friend Suditi Lahiri has written a terrific blog entry about one of the great new features in the FTP 7 service - which is Event tracing for Windows, or ETW for short. You can read her post at the following URL: http://blogs.iis.net/sudt/archive/2008/08/28/collecting-etw-traces-for-ftp-sessions.aspx Here's where this feature pays off - ETW tracing allows you to see some of the events that are going on inside the FTP service while its running without trying to attach a debugger to the service...(read more)

Life after FPSE (Part 4)

2008-07-01T02:14:00Z

In continuation from my previous blog posts on on the subject of migrating from FPSE to WebDAV, today's blog post will address a combination of issues that I've run into and some implementation ideas. Listing content in virtual directories One different that I ran into rather quickly after I migrated a couple of web sites from FPSE to WebDAV was that suddenly my virtual directories were visible in my web authoring tool, which is Microsoft Expression Web. By default, virtual directories didn't show...(read more)

Life after FPSE (Part 3)

2008-05-02T00:09:51Z

In continuation from on my blog posts on April 17th and April 23rd , today's blog post will continue to examine moving from the FrontPage Server Extensions (FPSE) to WebDAV, and today I'm going to address a combination of issues that I've run into and questions that I've received from customers. WebDAV Authoring Rules versus FPSE Roles FPSE had a variety of built-in roles defined that have no replacement in a WebDAV world, but in all actuality most of those roles have no meaning in a WebDAV world...(read more)

Life after FPSE (Part 2)

2008-04-23T21:56:57Z

Following up on my last blog post , today's blog post will discuss some of the highlights and pitfalls that I have seen while transitioning from using the FrontPage Server Extensions to publish web sites to WebDAV. It should be noted, of course, that FTP still works everywhere - e.g. Expression Web, FrontPage, Visual Studio, etc. As the Program Manager for both WebDAV and FTP in IIS I can honestly say that I love both technologies, but I'm understandably biased. <grin> That said, I'm quite...(read more)

Life after FPSE (Part 1)

2008-04-17T17:59:00Z

Today's blog post will be the first in a series of blog posts that I intend to write about my experiences with putting together a Windows Server 2008 machine without using the FrontPage Server Extensions (FPSE) for any web publishing. The main goal of this series is to describe some of the highlights and pitfalls that I have run into while transitioning away from FPSE. Over the years I've seen the users of FPSE broken down into two groups: those that love FPSE and those that hate FPSE. So before...(read more)

WebDAV Extension for Windows Server 2008 RTM is released!

2008-03-12T22:45:00Z

Earlier today the Microsoft released the RTM version of the new Microsoft WebDAV Extension for IIS 7.0 for Windows Server 2008! Listed below are the links for the download pages for each of the individual installation packages: 32-bit Installation Package : WebDAV (x86) Extension Module for IIS 7.0 64-bit Installation Package : WebDAV (x64) Extension Module for IIS 7.0 We've loaded this version with many great new features such as: Integration with IIS 7.0 : The new WebDAV extension module is fully...(read more)

FREB: LOG_FILE_MAX_SIZE_TRUNCATE

2008-03-08T22:36:00Z

OK - I have to admit that one of my favorite features for IIS 7 is " Failed Request Tracing ", otherwise known as " FREB ". I've taught breakout sessions about FREB at Microsoft TechEd , and IT administrators love it. (By the way - FREB was originally called " Failed Request Event Buffering ", in case you're wondering why the acronym doesn't match. ;-] ) Anyway, FREB is designed as "no repro" tracing, where you can set up tracing rules for specific conditions and IIS will generate log files if those...(read more)

Automating IIS 7 Backups

2008-03-08T21:40:00Z

Many years ago I wrote the following KB article: How To Schedule Metabase Backups Using WSH Truth be told, I wrote the script in that article to help me manage several servers that I controlled. Once I finished the script, I found myself routinely giving it out to customers in order for them to automate their backups, so I decided to turn it into a KB. When IIS 6 came out, Microsoft shipped the IIsBack.vbs script to help customers automate backups. One of the great things in IIS 7 is the deprecation...(read more)