IIS executable not executing - iis

I have been looking at an issue for a week straight and have been unable to figure it out and I am desperate for the fix.
On a client site, we have two environments: UAT and PROD. UAT works perfect (Please keep this in mind). We are now trying to deploy the solution to PROD but certain parts of the solution are not working.
We have developed an asp.net application that we provide to clients to allow them to invoke SSIS packages (there are a couple of drop downs that they first select then click a button named "invoke").
When the user clicks the Invoke button, a batch file named InvokeSSIS.bat is called that assembles a command line call to dtexec with the appropriate parameters.
I'm having a problem with a particular package that is responsible for calling an executable which generates a spreadsheet that i will be importing into my system.
The executable is on an mapped H:\ drive.
I have modified the InvokeSSIS.bat batch file to capture the command the batch file is generating. If I execute this command from the command line, it works perfectly. From the webapp Invoker, it executes the package but the tasks responsible for calling the executable doesn't execute as the entire package takes only 1 second to complete (whereas it should take about a minute.)
The executable DOES have a GUI, but it is NOT interactive. This is because when you call the GUI with specific parameters, it automatically runs in batch mode and executes a macro used to generate the desired spreadsheet.
I know this is ok because it works on the UAT server AND it works from the command line!
I have checked the permissions on the executable (bu right-clicking the executable and clicking properties.) I have granted Full Control on the executable to the same user specified as the identity tab of the application pool i am using.
Can someone please help me? As I said I am dying over here!
Please let me know if you have any ideas or what other info you need.
Environment (both UAT and PROD)
OS: Windows Server 2003
IIS 6
asp.net 2.0
SQL Server 2008
Thanks!
Steve

You can't use a mapped drive with IIS.
You must use the \\servername syntax to reach files on other systems.

I agree with user544284 that this is at least in part a mapping issue. I'll ignore for a minute the complete insanity of having a web application call a batch file to start an executable that's on a remote network drive through a drive letter mapping.
Most likely the UAT box has something set up that maps that drive letter for you which Prod is missing.
The only other possibility is a security violation is occurring. Running .exe's from a network drive is generally frowned on. Do the two environments have the exact same version of windows? Are they configured the same with regards to UAC? Any differences here are going to be important.
Which brings up an interesting thought. I wonder if someone logged in to the UAT server using the same account credentials the app pool is using and added the ip address of the machine where the exe lives to the list of "Local Intranet" sites... Or, if they installed SSIS on the UAT server itself.
Just because YOU can log in to the server and run it on the command line means nothing. You have to find out if the drive letter is mapped at all for the user that the web app is running under and whether that user has the required security bits and whether the local OS will allow it regardless.
Okay, I can't ignore it: hairbrained is the nicest adjective I can come up with for this "architecture". Do yourself a favor and go back to the drawing board on this one. It has the word "brittle" written all over it, as you have already found. Instead of building out a batch file to call dtexec, just do it directly either by something like this or this.

Related

Inno Setup slow startup [duplicate]

I find that under certain conditions my signed, inno created installer.exe takes about 10 minutes to open or view properties. When I run as administrator it is immediate, so it seems obvious that the UAC is somehow related. The size of the exe is around 13 MB.
If I copy the file via thumb drive to the target machine, there is no wait. If the same file is downloaded through a browser, there is the 10 minute wait, with explorer going into la la land doing who knows what. After the 10 minute or so wait, the file opens normally with no wait on all subsequent openings.
I am using ksign + commodo to sign the inno exe, and an internal dotnet exe within the inno setup, although I don't think that is a factor.
Windows 10 has the 10 minute wait even running as administrator.
This action is happening for most versions from win 7 on up. There seems to be some change in the exe contents that triggered it, but I haven't found the reason.
Edit 1: I previously contacted ksign, they don't seem to have any issues with my exe, it opens without lag in their environment. This isn't typical however, as many installations face this lag issue. I also tried making some sense out of process monitor monitoring explorer, but there is too much information going on with explorer to pick out the hanging process, unless I a looking in the wrong place.
Edit 2: MsMpEng.exe, which is microsoft security essentials, seems to running amok. This goes on almost endlessly.
Try steps described here: Offline Environment and Authenticode:
To work with UAC-enabled Windows, winsw ships with a digital
signature. This causes Windows to automatically verify this digital
signature when the application is launched (see more
discussions).
This adds some delay to the launch of the service, and more
importantly, it prevents winsw from running in a server that has no
internet connection. This is because a part of the signature
verification involves checking certificate revocation list.
To prevent this problem, create myapp.exe.config in the same
directory as myapp.exe (renamed winsw.exe) and put the following
in it:
<configuration>
<runtime>
<generatePublisherEvidence enabled="false"/>
</runtime>
</configuration>
See KB 936707 for more
details.
Note, this may not work, if your installer already has embedded manifest (more details). In this case you should try to modify your embedded manifest instead.

How to backup and restore IIS configuration from script

I'm writting a script that sets up a lot of different applications in Windows (mainly svn and open source servers for http, dns, mail, ftp and db). This script is intended to be executed in new/clean Windows workstations for new developers, it automatically sets everything up to create an environment very similar to the one in production. After it's executed, everything runs locally and the developer can start working right away.
This not only helps new developers, but all existing developers whenever there are changes in the whole system, everything is replicated locally.
The one thing I'm still not able to do is making some kind of backup of an IIS server that is running a web app (it's in the Prod server) and restoring it automatically to the new developer's machine so he doesn't have to install/configure IIS locally.
I've read about using appcmd.exe to create and restore backups, but that works only for the same machine (it uses encryption keys and those keys change between computers).
Is there a way, a scriptable way, to take everything IIS related from one server and restore it on another server, without user intervention and having the restored IIS run exactly as the original?
Thanks in advance!
Francisco
Just putting this here so anyone who comes across this will have an understanding as to why this wasn't answered. A website has a massive amount of variables associated with it that prevents any easy methods to copy all of its configuration through one or even just a few cmdlets.
To get started though you would want to become very familiar with the applicationHost.config file and how you access the properties within it using the Get-WebConfigurationProperty. One way to get familiar with how to script against webconfiguration properties is to use the Configuration Editor in IIS. Whenever you make a change in the Configuration Editor, before commiting the changes there is a nifty little link titled Generate Script, which will have a Powershell tab you can use to help you gather the proper Get/Set commands for the configuration elements within the applicationHost.config file.
I've created something almost exactly like what the OP is looking for and it spans 4 modules (over 20,000 lines of code) and has a SQL backend that holds all of the configuration elements.
When a website has everything from underlying DLLs that may need registered, IsapiCGI Restrictions and IsapiFilters, accounts that are tied to the AppPool that may need added to certain local groups on the server, to secure bindings that require a certificate to be loaded on the server. You can see that this isn't a simple undertaking. (and these are just a small portion of the variables that a website may contain)
There is however a large chunk of cmdlets that Microsoft provides you out of the box that you can leverage to aid you in developing something like this inside the WebAdministration module. I know this is four years old but hope anyone who stumbled on this will find the above useful.

Does process have permission to view files on azure?

I have recently deployed a fubu mvc application to windows azure. Everything works except when the pipeline tries to find the view to render. This all works correctly on my local machine.
So I am wondering: does the process on the Azure box have rights to read/scan files on disk?
Any suggestions to fix it are welcome though.
EDIT:
As part of the deployment there is a stage that azure goes through called "Preparing files for eployment". I checked on the log and my view was not in there
So I changed copy to output as true and it worked
It depends a bit on where you are trying to read and how you have configured your roles. By default, the code will run as a very low privilege user that only has R/W to the code directory (and any LocalResource(s) defined by the user). However, you can run your code as SYSTEM, in which case you can R/W anywhere (you might still have to take ownership, but you are all powerful as SYSTEM).
If your views are defined as part of your package and uploaded, the code should have permission to view it. I am curious as why you think this is a permission issue right now. Do you see an error that indicates that, or are you guessing it? If I had to guess, my first thought would be your views didn't get packaged correctly and are not on the VM. You can confirm they are there either by RDP or by cracking open the package and snooping around.

How to turn off Internet Explorer enhanced security settings in Azure

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 ...

Is it possible for a team to use Eclipse installed on a shared network drive?

Our lead programmer likes to install tools on a shared network drive to minimize effort when updating. He recently installed Eclipse to the network drive, but when I run it, I get a window that says Workspace in use or cannot be created, choose a different one. After clicking OK, I get a window that gives me a drop down menu with only one item, the workspace on his machine. I can then browse to the workspace on my machine, click OK, and Eclipse continues to start up and run just fine. There's a check box in that second window that says Use this workspace as the default that I've checked after browsing and selecting my workspace, but the next time I start up Eclipse, it reverts back to the lead's workspace.
Are we violating some assumption that Eclipse makes about the install? We're on a Linux network, if it makes a difference.
Setup the shared eclipse such that it can not be modified by the users accessing it. This should (if I recall correctly) force eclipse into a "Shared User, Hands Off" mode and default to storing settings per user account.
Do not share Workspaces (or Projects) -- this will only break things horribly -- use a different strategy such as a proper revision control system.
Perhaps this documentation will be helpful.
"""The set up for this [shared] scenario requires making the install area read-only for regular users. When users start Eclipse, this causes the configuration area to automatically default to a directory under the user home dir. If this measure is not taken, all users will end up using the same location for their configuration area, which is not supported."""
I would try to run Eclipse locally as well as over the network. Using a shared network drive may make Eclipse more painful than it sometimes is. A development environment should work for the developer, even at the expense of a slightly more complicated setup.
Eclipse stores a lot of settings, including the workspace list, in it's installation directory (especially the "configuration" directory). It's hard to say how well sharing the installation will work, but I wouldn't be surprised if there were a number of issues caused by "fighting" between Eclipse instances running on different developer's workstations.
To fix the particular issue you're having, you could set up a separate startup script that passes your workspace as a command-line argument to Eclipse, bypassing the workspace selection dialog you're seeing.

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