after creating an application pool in IIS(8.0) using Release Management 2013 Update 4, I need to customize the predefined action.
I would like to set Load User Profile in the advanced application pool settings true instead of false. I assumed I could use -loadUserProfile as an argument in Release Management.
Apparently the arguments are not similar to the parameter names in IIS. The release was rejected and the log file showed: ERROR: loaduserprofile : Unknown Option.
Release Management is using IISConfig.exe to execute the arguments. Even knowing that, I was unable to find a list of arguments or "Options" which can be used for the IISConfig.exe.
I would be glad to know how to solve that Problem. Not only in that specific case but in general.
Find the details of the IIS tool here:
https://msdn.microsoft.com/library/vs/alm/release/overview
Scroll to IIS Deployment Agent.
There does not seem to be any way to change the Load User Profile. You can write your own tool to accomplish that (and share it here :))
Related
Noticed that Azure DevOps is no longer showing the menu options in Project Settings for the Extensions.
Does anyone else see this or know why?
I am unable to update settings for the installed extensions.
You can manage the installed extensions in the Organization settings.
Go organization settings--> Extensions under General. See document here for more information.
I have seen the same thing, and it only occurred recently. Yes, the org level extension management is still there, and that only allows for managing which extensions are available to use.
The configuration for the extension usage within each project was a separate section in the project settings - this is missing entirely. We have need to modify one of our extension configs and can no longer access it to do so.
I believe this must be an Error of type PEBKAC coming from a recent MS update to DevOps.
I have a web application project in VS2012 which I'm publishing using a "Web Deploy Package". I want this package to include app-pool settings, specifically creating an IIS app-pool and assigning the newly created application to it.
I'm familiar with the option "Include application pool settings used by this Web project" available when the project is configured to use an IIS instance (not IIS Express), but IIS configuration is not part of the project file, and thus not source controlled. What happens when somebody builds a deployment package on a machine that hasn't had IIS meticulously configured? Not ideal.
How else then, can I go about getting AppPool settings into my web deploy package? I understand that the appPoolConfig provider is IIS7+ only, I'm fine with that limitation. I've banged my head against this issue in the past and never found a solution. 18 months later, we've got a new VisualStudio version, and a new web-publishing-pipeline, are there new options to address this? Or maybe something I missed when I first tackled this problem?
Edit
OK, I'm seeing the following as options:
Configure my project to sync settings from an IIS instance. As mentioned, I'm not a fan of this given that it puts settings outside of the project, meaning the environment has to be meticulously configured to build + publish. Plus it drags along other IIS settings I don't want included.
Inject something into the web-publishing-pipeline (WPP) to modify the archive.xml. I've toyed with this in the past and had limited success. One problem is the pipeline isn't exactly co-operative with working directly on the archive.xml file, another problem is some of the more cryptic attributes involved, like MSDeploy.MSDeployProviderOptions which appears to have some Base64 encoded binary? No idea what to put in there.
Find an existing "provider" that can do what I want. I might be out of luck here, the appPoolConfig provider only seems to want to read / write IIS, not, say, an XML file of settings. Does anybody know otherwise?
Write my own "provider" to produce manifest output entries. I'm not sure, is it possible to write a custom provider that writes to a manifest using the name of an existing provider? As in, MyCustomPoolProvider writes appPoolConfig sections into a manifest? This sounds like a potentially painful exercise that may or may not work. Would I still need to figure out the encoding of whatever is going into MSDeploy.MSDeployProviderOptions?
I get the feeling that the fundamental obstacle with Web Deploy for what I'm trying to accomplish, is how strictly it leans on "providers". The pre-existing providers are largely designed for IIS synchronisation, not primary development and publication. It so happens that some of these providers can be relatively easily hooked into via MSBuild, but the majority insist on pulling data from IIS, and that's that.
You are correct in your understanding of the appPoolConfig provider, in that it can only sync between App Pools and can't be provided with the configuration directly. What you could potentially do is keep a copy of the appPool in question in package form (ie. msdeploy -verb:sync -source:appPoolConfig=PoolName -dest:package=apppool.zip) and attempt to hijack the pipeline so that the MSDeploy call adds the application content into the package, leaving the existing content there.
Alternatively, you could always keep the packages separate and deploy them with different calls to MSDeploy.
FYI, MSDeploy.MSDeployProviderOptions is simply an encoded version of the parameters supplied to the provider when it was packaged. For example, -source:dirPath=c:\,ignoreErrors=0x10293847 -dest:package=package.zip would package the ignoreErrors value.
I have a 3rd party web page screen capture DLL from http://websitesscreenshot.com/ that lets me target a URL and save the page to a image file. I've moved this code into my Azure-based project and when I run it on my local sandboxed dev box and save to the Azure blob, everything is fine. But when I push the bits to my live server on Azure, it's failing.
I think this is because either MSHTML.dll and/or SHDOCVW.dll are missing from my Azure configuration.
How can I get these libraries (plus any dependent binaries) up to Azure?
I found the following advice on an MSFT forum but haven't tried it yet. http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/windowsazuredevelopment/thread/0344dcff-6fdd-4479-a3b4-3e89750a92f4/
Hello, I haven't tried mshtml in the cloud. But generally speaking, to
use a native dll in a Web Role, you add the dll to the Web Role
project just like adding a picture (choose add existing items). Then
make sure the Build Action is set to Content. This tells Visual Studio
to copy the dll file to the output package.
Also check dependencies carefully. A lot of problems related to native
code are caused by missing dependencies, such as a particular VC++
runtime dll.
Thought I'd ask here first before I burn a day or two on an unproven solution.
EDIT #1:
it turns out that our problem was not related to MSHTML.dll or SHDOCVW.dll missing from the Azure server. They're there.
The issue is that by default new server instance have the IE security hardening feature enabled, and this was preventing our 3rd party dll from executing script. So we needed to turn off the enhanced IE security configuration settings. This is also a non-trivial exercise.
In the meantime, we just created a server-side version of the feature on our site we need to make screen captures from (e.g. we eliminated JSON-based rendering of UI on the client), and we were able to proceed.
I think the solution mentioned in the MSDN forum thread is correct. You should put them as part of your project files, so that the SDK will package and deploy them to the VM on the cloud.
But if they are COM and need to be registed you'd better call the register command via the Startup feature. Please check http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/hh351539
HTH
My site is hosted on Azure. I need to programmatically turn off Internet Explorer's default enhanced security configuration settings whenever I repave or redeploy a new box on Azure.
How do I do this?
I found this article on another site http://jetlounge.net/blogs/teched/archive/2009/10/25/fix-ie-esc-won-t-turn-off-internet-explorer-enhanced-security.aspx. It included the following command line syntax, but on my local box I couldn't find the IEHARDEN.INF file it referred to. I also don't think this solution is Azure-specific.
rundll32.exe setupapi.dll,InstallHinfSection IESoftenAdmin 128 %windir%\inf\IEHARDEN.INF
I need to turn off these default hardening settings under Azure because I have a 3rd party IE screen capture DLL that needs to execute Javascript on webpages.
I think that this approach, shaped in a Windows Azure StartupTask running in Elevated execution context will help you.
Just remember that the .bat or .cmd file you create needs to be UTF8 encoded. There used to be some issues with the batch files if they are not UTF8.
UPDATE
I decided to update the answer, because it would have been too long for a second comment. I want to first make clear that I do not intend to offend anyone and the next is just mine personal view and thoughts.
Well, I mine vision might be (is) distorted through mine prism. But, I think that these specifics has nothing to do with Windows Azure itself.
These are OS related configuration specifics and the approach would be one and the same (with some variations) regardless of a (hosting/cloud) provider. If you had to deploy your solution to a dedicated (or virtual) server, you would had to create some kind of scheduled task, or startup task to make these configuration changes. Or even interactively login to make these changes.
Since Windows Azure offers the StartUp Task, it is up to us (developers) to decide what to do and how to shape the OS according to our needs.
The OS configuration changes that one can possibly need are only limited by the total ammount of all available Windows Server 2008/R2 configuration options. I personally do not believe that these needs to be reflected in Windows Azure documentation by any means. They have their place in Windows Server documentation. It is arguable which are "commonly used", because what might be common for one, might also be "never needed" for others ...
Apparently the management piece of IIS - the IIS WMI provider - is installable separately from the IIS runtime.
I'd like to produce an installer for an add-on to IIS, and I know how to check for the existence of the IIS runtime in the WIX project. But, the installer needs to do various management things, WMI things, and for that it needs not only IIS, but the WMI Provider for IIS. Which as I said, may or may not be present.
In a WIX project, How do I check for the existence of the IIS WMI Provider, and how do I present a reasonable dialog to the user if the IIS WMI Provider is not present?
The installer already has a few MSI Custom Actions implemented in Javascript, and I can use
var iis = GetObject("winmgmts:root\WebAdministration");
...to check for the existence of the WMI Provider. It will fail (throw) if no WMI Provider is there. I suppose I could use this to set a Property, and then check that Property in a Condition early on in the Product.wxs file.
is this going to work? any other suggestions?
I suppose the better way for this is still to browse the registry for appropriate setting. Another question is it's not always easy to find the right one. :)
For instance, my installer needs IIS6 compatibility to be enabled (for IIS 7 machines), in particular, IIS 6 WMI compatibility. This setting is located under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\InetStp\Components, in a value called WMICompatibility. So, everything I should do is to author a RegistrySearch element to search for this value and check if it's 1.
In order to find the correct setting, I would search for the key all IIS parameters reside under (it might differ for each version of IIS, I'm not certain here), enable IIS WMI provider you need and see what was changed in registry. I suspect registry monitor software can help here a lot.
Yes, testing instantiation of the object via the moniker is going to work. It's a reasonable strategy, better than spelunking around in the registry. It delivers the right result, all the time. Just catch the exception that occurs if the WMI provider is not available.