Deleting an environmental variable for IIS - iis

I've understood that, in order to make IIS read a new environmental variable, I have to reset it via an administrator's command:
iireset /restart
I know that one can also restart IIS from the admin panel at server level.
More context to my complete web app setup in my previous question/answer: in brief it is a Python Flask app running on IIS through WSGI and FastCGI.
What is still surprising me is that now, if I delete a previously created environmental variable, IIS keep seeing it, even after restarting it, as done above.
Why is that possibly happening? And how should I delete the variable for IIS?

If you insist that you want to go with environmental variables (notice that you also have the alternative .env file), then you need to set them via the IIS FastCGI Settings from the IIS admin at server level for your specific application (the one you enabled via wfastcgi-enable).
Edit the specific row as said above and you'll find the Environment Variables collection under the "General" group of FastCGI Properties.
Now you can add and delete any of those variables and it will take effect immediately, without the need of any IIS reboot.

Related

IIS is serving but not executing classic asp script

I wrote a classic ASP script (.asp) for a customer a while back. it was running on IIS v6.1 Windows 2003. The customer contacted me and said they had a catastrophic server failure and restored from backup but my script isn't running now. I logged onto their server to check it out and IIS is serving the file (I am prompted to save when I browse to the script) but not executing the script.
Several people's hands were in the server before they called me, I think this is probably a simple config setting someone tried before they figured out how to enable the "ASP" web server roll feature. But for the life of me I can't figure out how they did it. this is obviously not the default behavior. If I was trying to get this behavior I would add the .asp extension to the MIME types, but I checked and it isn't there.
What could cause IIS to serve the source of the ASP script without executing it?
Based on your question I am assuming your restored server is also windows server 2003 ... in that case you will go to the file\folder and the permissions and select execute permission to enable a server side script processor to handle that request. Been almost a decade that I have touched a 2003 server so I can’t give you the exact steps ... but, you want to enable script permissions on that folder(I think, don’t remember if it’s granular enough to drill down to a file). Also, why on earth are they still running server 2003? Is that version even supported yet?
If it’s IIS 7, you want to make sure your app pool is in Classic ASP mode first off. Then go to site and then the handler mapping section, click edit and configure it that way.

IIS - AddDataProtection PersistKeysToFileSystem not creating

I've developing an asp.net core application to tun on a web far, and I'm using "AddDataProtection" to protect for key encryption at rest like, the documentation recommends, but when I deploy my application and run directly from IIS with AppPool identity, the key is never created and I get errors on the DpapiNG windows logs.
My code is the following:
services.AddDataProtection(opt => opt.ApplicationDiscriminator = ApplicationConfig.dataProtectionApplicationDiscriminator)
.PersistKeysToFileSystem(new DirectoryInfo(encKeyPath))
.ProtectKeysWithDpapiNG(string.Format("CERTIFICATE=HashId:{0}", ApplicationConfig.dataProtectionCertThumbprint),
flags: DpapiNGProtectionDescriptorFlags.None);
Debugging from visual studio, everything runs fine, but I'm running VS under administrator rights, so permission is not an issue here.
I've tried adding permissions to the AppPool App user to the private key it self directly from MMC, but it did not worked, and even gave permission on the full path to the location were the keys should be created like stated here https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/aspnet/core/security/data-protection/configuration/overview (check first comment) but also it did not worked.
I was only able to make it work by setting the AppPool to run with the identity of an Administrator, but clearly this is a no go, I just wanted to make sure this was a permission issue somewhere.
Is anybody facing the same issue that is able to help?
Regards,
André
Most likely your issue is you are trying to store your keys somewhere in a folder path that you are cobbling together (or even by using the default path that AddDataProtection provides) that uses an environment path such as %LOCALAPPDATA%. Example: "%LOCALAPPDATA%\ASP.NET\DataProtection-Keys".
Usually, by default IIS DOES NOT set up your app pool accounts with environment path variables such as %LOCALAPPDATA%. The value ends up being blank and your app then tries to write keys to the wrong folder (such as \ASP.NET\DataProtection-Keys instead of %LOCALAPPDATA%\ASP.NET\DataProtection-Keys).
Fix: Within %WINDIR%\System32\inetsrv\config\applicationHost.config set setProfileEnvironment=true. I think you have to restart IIS as well.

How to setup IIS Express from a script the way Visual Studio does it?

When we configure a web application to run in IIS Express there are certain things VS does, like:
Creating the application host configuration file in the IISExpress subfolder of the user documents folder.
Creating a dedicated site section for each web application in the solution, including ours.
Maybe more things are done, which I am unaware of.
I would like to replicate the same process from a script, so that running the web application from the script would be equivalent to running it from VS. Including for the very first time.
Right now I start IISExpress with the /port and /path flags, because this is how I used to run Cassini. However, Cassini supported an additional flag - /vpath. They removed it from IISExpress, meaning I have to use another set of flags - /config, /site, /siteid. But I suspect it must be done in conjunction with the Appcmd.exe utility.
This second approach is still something I haven't managed to master. So, my question is this - suppose I am given the port, path and vpath of a web application (i.e. no need to read them from the web application's csproj file, like VS does). What command sets up the right application host configuration file and how do I run IISExpress to take advantage of it?

IIS Shared config - applicationHost.config Error: Cannot write configuration file due to insufficient permissions

I've setup a UNC share for IIS shared config using a specific AD service account and set to FULL CONTROL. I've also exported the config from one IIS server and set-up an additional IIS server to point to the share. When I open the applicationhost.config for example on the UNC share and remove an application pool, I can see the entry also remove in both IIS servers.
So I know:
1) I can export to the share with the specific service account
2) Both IIS servers can read the config when I edit manually
3) However when I remove an app pool from one of the IIS servers through the manager I get the above error.
I've tried using the process monitor utility to see what account is being used to write to the config and it seems it is my own AD user account rather than the shared service account. I know IIS Manager has my username e.g. ROOT\MYNAME logged on, but I wouldn't have thought it would use this to write changes to the shared config. Surely it would use the service account?
Does anyone know how to prevent this error? Why does the shared config and tied service account not come into play when making changes on one of the servers?
So, IMHO, this error is a red herring. I was publishing to a server and got a message saying I was out of space. So, I logged in, realized there was a bit of cruft in extra apps published in IIS, we didn't need. I right clicked and tried to remove one. I got the same error as you.
Having done some manual changes to applicationHost, I thought it "might be me" but it seemed very odd that editing this file would cause such a thing. However, I had recently learned that windows does some funky 32 vs 64bit machinations with this file (google it).
Deciding I had better things to do, I asked our IT to add space to the VM and guess what? I am no able to remove these apps. My guess is that I was at the end of the line on space and the backend management of these special files was not completing and throwing this not-so-helpful exception.
I'm not a 100% about this. For full disclosure, I will add that updates had been applied recently, but I'm pretty confident that this is a possible solution.

Config IIS handler mapping using C#

I am trying to deploy a PHP application to azure web cgi role. I set my web.config and web.roleconfig correctly, I believe. Since when I remote to the machine, I set the fast cgi handler in IIS manually to the same value. It works. However, it doesn't work after the package is deployed, even if the value is the same! I have to manually reset it to the same value! Sounds weird?
So I am thinking to write a piece of code in role start event to reset the mapping. Does anybody knows how to do it in C#?
Thanks
KAO!
Setting up the handler mapping has two phases:
1. setup web.config
2. create application
I only did first one. By clicking the OK on the popup window on UI will set the second. So if I want to deploy to Azure on a side website (which mean the website is not linked with the web role), I have to do the second setup myself, by either manually or runing a command line: %windir%\system32\inetsrv\appcmd set config /section:system.webServer/fastCGI /+[fullPath='XXXX\php-cgi.exe']

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