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']
Related
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.
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.
[I'm posting this to record what I actually found out after hours of painful trial-and-error.]
I have a website that I need to be "always running" (because in this case it has a Hangfire job that's responsible for kicking off a scheduled task every 5 minutes), and by default, websites are only started up when the first request is received.
So, how can I ensure that the website is started automatically? And, how can I configure this via the TFS release management tool?
[This answer isn't specific to Hangfire, but see the Hangfire documentation's discussion of this issue for details of how it affects Hangfire, but note that the recommended work-around is somewhat involved, and much more complex than the solution below. See also a separate and quite comprehensive discussion on the Hangfire support forum that gives several alternative solutions.]
In IIS, each website is associated with an Application Pool (App Pool). You can configure your App Pool to start automatically via IIS Manager by changing the "Start Mode" to AlwaysRunning in "Advanced Settings" for the App Pool:
However, starting the App Pool doesn't start the website (or websites) associated with it. The website does not get loaded until the first request is received.
In IIS8 (or IIS7.5 with an extension), a new setting was added that allows us to work around this. You can ensure that the website gets sent a request as soon as the App Pool starts by setting "Preload Enabled" to True in "Advanced Settings" for the website:
The combination of these settings ensure that the website will automatically start up when IIS starts, and immediately after the App Pool is recycled, etc.
But, how can you get those settings applied automatically as part of a TFS release pipeline, rather than having to remember to set them manually?
In your release definition, you presumably have an "IIS Web App Management" task, which sets up the App Pool and the website. In the configuration panel for this step, there should be an "Advanced" box with an "Additional AppCmd.exe Commands" entry field. You can use AppCmd to apply the settings described above.
AppCmd has the most confusing command-line syntax I've yet seen outside of code-golf competitions, but here's the incantation that worked for me:
set config /section:applicationPools -[name='myAppPoolName'].startMode:AlwaysRunning
set app "mySiteName/" /preloadEnabled:true
Note that if you have configuration variables defined for your App Pool name and website name, then you can use those rather than hard-coding the name, such as:
set config /section:applicationPools -[name='$(appPoolName)'].startMode:AlwaysRunning
I hope this helps somebody... Thanks for listening :-)
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?
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.