Setup local IIS7 for testing websites - iis

Is there an alternative, other then modifying HOSTS to setup temp domains when testing websites locally? I'm using IIS7 on Win7.
I don't want to use /localhost/domainname. I'd rather do /domainname so i don't have to worry about paths to files, etc. My websites are setup so that paths to files are relative to the root folder and not to the page.

Unless your code explicitly checks the domain name, you should be able to deploy on II7 and test through http://localhost.
There are few caveats with this approach, though:
if you are using third-party API that requires a key tied to the domain name of you app, you might have to request two keys - one for the domain name (for PROD purposes) and one for localhost (for DEV purposes). I do that with both Google Ajax API and Facebook Connect keys.
http://localhost is in different security zone in IE than regular internet sites, so if your app uses any AP that requires cross-domain communication (like Facebook Connect), you might have problems testing on IE7. Works like a charm on Chrome and seems to work properly on IE8.
if you are working on multiple apps at the same time, you can't have all of them listen on port 80 at the same time. SO, some of the apps will have to be moved to http://localhost:8080 or another port.
My approach is to run the VS Dev WebServer (Cassini) on ports 808x during developing and to deploy to the local IIS7 (using CruiseControl.Net) on ports 888x. This allows me to debug easily with VS while working on the code, yet still have the site set under medium trust on IIS7.
I also have a host name on the target domain pointing to my dev machine, so the IIS7 instances are available both as http://localhost:888x and http://dev.domain.com:888x, which allows me to also test the domain integration with Google Ajax and Facebook Connect APIs. Of course, this requires control over the domain DNS and the ability to add an A record to it.
However, note that nothing in this setup requires actual testing on the domain URL.

Related

Apache Webserver - getting security risk error on local network but not on public domain

I have an asp.net core MVC website running with an asp.net core Rest API on the same server. It was a bit tricky to set up the Apache2 configuration, but I finally got it working.
From the outside, everything works perfectly. I can access https://{domain}.com and it works, and I can access https://{domain}.com/api and it works too. I was getting a weird error, the MVC project couldn't find the api project even though I could find it from the outside.
In the same network, I have a linux machine with a GUI so I can browse to the internet from there. I discovered that https://{domain}.com gives a security error, and that is probably why the two projects can't communicate with each other.
In above screenshot ou can see what I get when going to that website. It works fine from a different network.
The server is configured with SSL using LetsEncrypt. The SSL is fine from outside, but apparently not from inside.
Here you can see my apache2 configuration.
My goal is that I can access https://{domain}.com from the internal network, I think that will solve my issue.

Unable to host Blazor application

I am unable to get a Blazor app working while hosting the application as an IIS application on my local Windows 10 machine. The app is very simple, with just one page with minimal components - even simpler than the default Blazor app provided.
These are my steps:
Click on publish app
Select Folder, note it's going to ...\bin\Release\net5.0\browser-wasm\publish\
Open IIS, navigate to Default Web Site
Right-click Default Web Site and select Add Application
Select physical path as the path above, and host at www.NAME.com
Click Browse.. to view the app at www.NAME.com on *:80
Page displayed is the welcome page of IIS
Attempted Solution 1: Install URL Rewrite
Attempted Solution 2: Go to Hosts (in System32) and tried adding 127.0.0.1 or 127.0.0.1::80 followed by www.NAME.com
Attempted Solution 3: In index.html, edit the base element to include the link <base href="/NAME/" />
Attempted Solution 4: Instead of adding an application under Default Website in IIS, add it as a website instead
Attempted Solution 5: Gave IIS_IUSRS full permissions to web.config (Image)
None of the attempted solutions worked. I just started using Blazor yesterday and I am very new to this. Am I doing something wrong? Thank you!
Please refer to this tutorial, I think is one of the best tutorial to achieve your goals:
https://blog.medhat.ca/2020/08/deploy-client-side-blazor-web-api-to.html?m=1
Remember that the configuration of the hostname in your hosts file is related to your machine only
So, in order to allow the students to access your IIS published site you need:
Register a hostname in a DNS server that all the computer of the students will use to resolve your machine name. I.e. if your machine should be accessible with www.name.com you need your DNS server resolves this name with your local IP address
To use the https protocol you need a certificate on your local machine, loaded in your IIS configuration, but the same certificate has to be available to every computer of your students.
I think the better and simpler solution is to use your local machine name, probably using your full DNS name, and allows the students to access the site using this name on their browser.
In this case you can use your local development certificate to allow https connection
This certificate is already installed on your machine for development purpose.
Every concept I've described is well documented on the web and here on the SO.

How can I set up multiple ColdFusion test sites on my local machine using IIS?

I am currently setting up a development machine at my company and I would like to be able to set up a few local sites on this one machine for testing. In order to do so, I am running the following software:
ColdFusion Server 10 (Developer's Edition)
IIS
Everything is installed and I am able to run the default site (from localhost) but I can't figure out, nor can I find how I can set up other sites on this system. I have the files for each site on the local machine. Ideally, I would like to be able to call up each site using a subdomain, such as (http://site1.domain.com, http://site2.domain.com, http://site3.domain.com) where each one points to a separate file base on the local machine.
Can anyone point me in the right direction?
Create the sites in IIS for each site, pointing to its respective web root. Then run the web server configuration tool to hook up the connectors for the sites.
You can find that under {ColdFusion root}/cfusion/runtime/bin/wsconfig.exe (on windows - not sure of the file extension on non-windows machines)
From there you can run the connector for each individual site or you can set it to run the connector for every site.

Creating Web-Site and Web Application in IIS

Till date, I was thinking that we always create/host web-site in IIS.
But I was going through powershell tutorial today which says it is different to create web-site and a web application.
This is the tutorial link (check different section on creating web site and application) -
http://learn.iis.net/page.aspx/433/powershell-snap-in-creating-web-sites-web-applications-virtual-directories-and-application-pools/
Can please guide what is the difference between the two.
Any example will be really helpful.
Thank you!
A web site in IIS is the top level under Sites. The default one that is normally automatically created for you when installing IIS is named "Default Web Site".
This is the "root" that runs on port 80.
Under that, you can create virtual directories, which is basically sub-levels under the root web site, or you can create separate web applications that lives as separate applications under the root level.
A web application must live under a web site.
It is possible to create other web sites that can either be set up to run on other ports (i.e. 81), or to be named with a different host name which enables multiple sites to run on same port number. If named with a different host name, this name must be registered in a DNS server somewere to point to the IP address for your server. A workaround is also to to add it as an entry in the hosts file on the client computer that should access it.
This is example on how it looks in IIS Manager:
I have a script I use when creating a website and AppPool in IIS 7+, .net4, Integrated pipeline and thought you might find it useful.
Use it as so:
CreateSite.ps1 [WebsiteName] [AppPoolName] [Port] [Path]
If you are reinstalling the site, you will need to Stop it first. That is done as so:
StopSite.ps1 [WebsiteName] [AppPoolName]
you can grab the scripts from my gist
Update I have added/extended the scripts and put them in their own Github repository
Here is my CreateWebsite PowerShell script: http://www.zerrouki.com/create-website/

One server out of three losing session using State Server in web farm

In short, I have three servers in a web farm, one of which is configured as a State Server. Two of the servers (including the State Server) are correctly sharing session state, but the other server is holding it's own session still.
Here's what I've done:
I have modified the web.config.comments file on all three servers so that they have the same machineKey entry.
On the State Server, I have changed the AllowRemoteConnections registry entry to 1. I then set the ASP.Net State Service to start automatically and switched it on.
The web site is configured on all three servers and the root site shares the same Identifer in IIS. Each configuration is identical. The website itself is contained on a network share, so the same web.config file is used on all three servers. I changed the sessionState entry in the web.config to point to Web3.
So Web2 and Web3 are able to set/modify/destroy the same session, but Web1 is still running with it's own.
I'm at a loss here after hours of Googling, so any help is greatly appreciated.
This application is configured a few subdirectories into the root site. Is there a separate AppID at this level? If so, how can I find it?
Thanks,
Aaron
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/325056
To maintain session state across different Web servers in the Web farm, the application path of the Web site (for example, \LM\W3SVC\2) in the Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS) metabase must be the same for all of the Web servers in the Web farm. The case also needs to be the same because the application path is case-sensitive.
On one Web server, the instance ID of the Web site where the ASP.NET application is hosted may be 2 (where the application path is \LM\W3SVC\2). On another Web server, the instance ID of the Web site may be 3 (where the application path is \LM\W3SVC\3). Therefore, the application paths between Web servers in the Web farm are different. For additional information about how to check the application path of the Web site, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:
240225 Description of Adsutil and MetaEdit Used to Modify the Metabase
This is not really answering your question, but in my experience the ASP.NET session state service is not something you should scale to more than one server. It doesn't perform very well (especially under load) and is difficult to configure. I found that a distributed cache such as memcached is much simpler and faster for this purpose.
Have a look at this project.
matthewk's answer actually turned out to be almost the correct one. Over a year later I've returned to this and found the answer. Though probably correct, I felt that if the answer above had been more specific I would have solved this!
I searched through the MetaBase.xml file (C:\WINDOWS\system32\inetsrv) for the web application. After a game of spot the difference I noticed that there was a slight difference in the following line:
<IIsWebVirtualDir Location ="/LM/W3SVC/103071637/root"
AccessFlags="AccessRead | AccessScript"
AppFriendlyName="Default Application"
AppIsolated="2"
AppRoot="/LM/W3SVC/103071637/Root"
...
Specifically, the AppRoot (not the Location) on Server 1 had a Proper-Case "Root" whereas Server's 2 and 3 had "ROOT" all in caps. I updated Server 1 to match and restarted IIS and it works a treat.
ie.
AppRoot="/LM/W3SVC/103071637/Root"
AppRoot="/LM/W3SVC/103071637/ROOT"

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