FastCGI Extension for IIS6 – GoLive to RTM release upgrade

As it has been already mentioned in download instructions for FastCGI Extension RTM for IIS 6, we do not support in-place upgrade of FastCGI Extension from pre-RTM builds to RTM build. If you have been running pre-RTM build (such as GoLive release or Intermediate release), you will need to uninstall it first and then install FastCGI RTM. This post describes some situations to watch out for during upgrade process.

Un-installing FastCGI Extension may cause other handlers to serve requests that were originally mapped to FastCGI.

When you un-install either GoLive or RTM version of FastCGI Extension, it will remove the FastCGI script maps from IIS configuration (you can recreate previous script maps when you re-install by using fcgiconfig.js -syncini command). This may cause situations when some other handler in IIS may start serving requests that were originally served by FastCGI Extension. For example, if you had a “.php” file extension mapped to FastCGI and also had “*” MIME mapping or “.php” MIME mapping then after you uninstall FastCGI Extension the php specific requests may get processed by static file handler. This may cause the source code of PHP script to be sent as a response to a client.To avoid this situation you need to make sure that you do not have MIME type mappings defined for the same extension that is mapped to FastCGI extension. Also make sure that you do not use “*” MIME type mapping.

Running FastCGI RTM installer without prior removal of previous FastCGI version will not upgrade the fcgiext.dll.

If you try to run FastCGI RTM installer on a machine that already has GoLive or Intermediate releases of FastCGI Extension installed, then the RTM installer will complete successfully, but the actual FastCGI extension binary - fcgiext.dll - will not be upgraded. This is an incorrect behavior that is caused by a bug in RTM installer package.·        

• To avoid this situation – remove the previous version of FastCGI Extension before running FastCGI RTM installation package.        
• To check if your machine is not in this situation – search the machine for all instances of fcgiext.dll and make sure that all of them have the version number 6.1.36.1. If you found fcgiext.dll in %WINDIR%\system32\inetsrv or %WINDIR%\SysWOW64\inetsrv that has any other version number then read on.        
• To fix the installation if your machine has the wrong version of FastCGI binary – go to “Add Remove Programs” UI and remove all instances of FastCGI. After that run the installer for FastCGI RTM version.