Access Denied to different server on Virtual Directory in IIS - asp.net

I setup an asp.net web application on IIS that I have setup several times for other clients but getting a strange permission issue on this one.
It's setup so the App Pool Identity is NetworkService and the folder being used has Network Service as a permitted user with full permissions. The folder can be browsed from the server the application is on and items added, edited and deleted.
But for a reason I cannot determine any time the application tries to access a file from the virtual directory I get 'Access is Denied'. I have checked permissions on the root folder of the actual application which also has Network Service and checked the virtual directory permissions use the identity as well, not sure what else to try?

Related

Missing site assets when no local\Users permission on the folder

I'm working on the Umbraco site (asp.net MVC) hosted on local Windows Server 2016+IIS10.
During regular template modification, I have experienced strange behavior - the site lost all of the assets hosted from local files. All the requests to cases or images were redirected to the login page. A few people reported similar behavior, commonly resolving it by permission checking. So did I - ensured that my pool user has granted full access to the folder and all its descendants. It was, so I removed it and applied it once again. Still no luck. I have copied the website files and created another web app in IIS - this one worked without any glitch.
Later, my co-worker found that the application folder is missing access permission for the local machine "Users" group. When we added it - the site is served without any issues.
The webserver is part of the corporate domain (AD) and the app pool user is a "service user".
Is it normal that it needs both - pool user and local "Users" permission?
Why is so?
It is normal. When the static file and the application are in same machine, the application needs higher permissions to read the static file.
When the application runs in IIS, it will use the identity of the application pool to read static files, and the default identity of the application pool is ApplicationPoolIdentity, with the lowest permissions.
The test in visual studio does not have this problem because IIS express runs the application with the same permissions as the administrator.

IIS: System.UnauthorizedAccessException: Access to the path

I have a website and it sits on the IIS Server and I have a folder on another server the file server. I have set the Virtual directory to the folder on the fileserver. This application both servers are on the same domain, but in the future I will have serves that are not on the same domain.
I have tried to set up local users on both machines and set up the app pool to use the local accounts and I get
System.UnauthorizedAccessException: Access to the path is denied.
and
401 - Unauthorized: Access is denied due to invalid credentials.
You do not have permission to view this directory or page using the credentials that you supplied.
I have set the virtual to connect as the local user and get the same error.
I have setup a domain user and then set the app pool to use the domain user and set to use pass through and when I test the settings in Directory Browsing it says everything is good but I get the same error from the webpage.
I have setup a domain user and then set the app pool to use the domain user and set to the connect as to the user and when I test the settings in Directory Browsing it says everything is good but I get the same error from the webpage.
I have set the apppool to use my login and it works with pass through permissions.
Is there something I am missing.
You need to set the folder permissions in your separate folder to give access to the "computer$" account of the server where your application is hosted.
See here: https://www.iis.net/learn/manage/configuring-security/application-pool-identities
application pool identities also use the machine account to access
network resources.
So in the server where you have your data files you should set the folder permissions to allow access to the machine name where your website is hosted.
I had this same challenge when deploying a web app using IIS on a Windows 2012 Server.
The issue was the App Pool Account did not have Full rights to the Website Root.
All I had to do was to go to the directory where the Website Root resides and then right-clicked on it. Next, I selected Security and then gave the IIS-Users group full access to the directory.
For me IIS-Users group contains all Users/App Pool Accounts that are created in IIS.
That's all.
I hope this helps
I have created a domain user specifically for the the virtual directory and it appears to work, but is this best practice?

Web configuration file being accessed in the wrong folder

I have deployed an asp.net website on a production server. It is working on my local but on the server I get this error:
An error occurred loading a configuration file: Failed to start
monitoring changes to
'E:\HostingSpaces\xxxxx\xxxxxx.xxxxxx.com\wwwroot\admin\web.config'
because access is denied
This looks to me that the app is looking for the web.config in the admin folder while it is obviously in the root.
How is this possible? How do I solve this problem?
IIS which is hosting ASP.NET is looking for a potential web.config file in every folder of your site, not just in the root folder.
This is because you may want to override certain settings for just one folder.
So you may have a web.config in admin but IIS hasn't got access to it, or IIS hasn't got access to the whole admin folder.
Check the permissions on that directory.
The problem is that the directory it has been deployed to does not have the correct read/write permissions for IIS to read the web.config.
Each website configured in IIS 6+ runs under a specific AppPool. That app pool runs under a specific user account, and it is that user account that needs read/write permissions to this directory.

IIS forgets virtual directory permissions - An error occurred loading a configuration file: Failed to start monitoring changes

I have a website with a virtual directory that contains PDFs.
Users access the PDFs by using a URL such as http://myApp.com/PDFs/12345678.pdf, where PDFs is a virtual directory mapped to \\\actualPhysicalServerName\PDFsDirectory\.
This works.
I routinely re-deploy the application. Once the application is redeployed and the website restarted, users can no longer access the virtual directory until IIS is restarted.
Accessing the above URL gives the following error:
An error occurred loading a configuration file: Failed to start monitoring changes to \\\actualPhysicalServerName\PDFsDirectory\web.config because access is denied.
at System.Web.FileChangesMonitor.FindDirectoryMonitor(String dir, Boolean addIfNotFound, Boolean throwOnError)
at System.Web.FileChangesMonitor.StartMonitoringFile(String alias, FileChangeEventHandler callback)
at System.Web.Configuration.WebConfigurationHost.StartMonitoringStreamForChanges(String streamName, StreamChangeCallback callback)
at System.Configuration.BaseConfigurationRecord.MonitorStream(String configKey, String configSource, String streamname)
at System.Configuration.BaseConfigurationRecord.InitConfigFromFile()
Restarting the application pool does not help.
I have to restart IIS.
Once IIS is restarted, the virtual directory can be accessed as expected.
Is this expected behavior? Have I set up my virtual directories incorrectly?
I am using IIS 7.5, Windows 7 server, and .NET 4.5.
I solved this problem this way:
Created new pool with "No managed code" and "Classic" settings.
Converted virtual directory to application, connecting with a user account with permissions on the share
Have application use the new pool
For anyone else frustrated with the same issue - while I did not find the crux of the problem, I did figure out that this problem was related to the Identity of the Application Pool that the website was running under.
In my case, the solution was to change the App Pool identity from the ApplicationPoolIdentity Built-in account to a custom account that is an administrator on all of the machines involved.
To do this
Right click on the application pool in IIS, Choose Advanced Properties.
Under ProcessModel->Identity , choose Identity. Choose Custom Account (Built-in account, Application Pool Identity is the default in IIS 7.5)
Switch to using a Custom Domain account, that is an administrator on this machine, as well as the machine where the virtual directory is hosted.
Restart the Application Pool.
I had a Virtual directory pointing to images on UNC share. All was working fine until we updated parent app to .NET 4.5.
We had to convert the VirDir to Virtual Application with 4.0 Integrated Application Pool.
Old topic but I was able to solve it by following these instructions (basically add ASPNET and IUSR to permissions:
In Windows Explorer, browse to the application folder or to the virtual directory that contains the content (for example, c:\inetpub\wwwroot\xx).
Right-click the folder, and then click Properties.
On the Security tab, click Add.
On the "Select Users or Groups" window, click on Advance
Click on Find Now button, you will see List of users
Select ASPNET and IUSR_(machinename) then click OK to close the"Select Users or Groups" window
Allow the following permissions for the ASPNET and IUSR_(machinename) account:
-Read & Execute
-List Folder Content
-Read

IIS HTTP Error 403.1 - Forbidden: Execute access is denied

I have a ASP.NET 1.1 application running on IIS 6 / Windows Server 2003.
It's our application, but we're trying to specifically replicate a customer's installation so the app folder has been copied entirely from their production server onto our test machine, and then we've created the Virtual Directory and Web Application for IIS manually.
Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager:
Application Pools
Web Sites
Default Web Site
xxxxx (Virtual Directory)
yyyyy (Web Application)
Web Service Extensions
The problem I have is that when we access the app, we get the standard IIS security error message:
The page cannot be displayed
You have attempted to execute a CGI, ISAPI, or other executable program from a directory that does not allow programs to be executed.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Please try the following:
•Contact the Web site administrator if you believe this directory should allow execute access.
HTTP Error 403.1 - Forbidden: Execute access is denied.
Internet Information Services (IIS)
Now this is pretty standard, except as far as I can see it's not anything so simple.
I have checked:
IIS user has read access to the directory
IIS user and Network Service users have read/write access to the Temporary ASP.NET Files folder
Virtual directory is set to the correct version of ASP.NET
ASP.NET 1.1 Web Service Extension is allowed
Virtual directory has the correct mappings of file extensions and all verbs to the aspnet 1.1 DLL
Virtual directory properties allow Scripts and Executables to be run
Anonymous access is turned on and the username and password is correct
What am I missing?
When you did create an application on IIS did you check allow script execution ? You need to turn two first choices on in order to execute anything from this application including virtual directory you have made.
Right click on parent application > Home Directory tab > Executive Permissions set to Scripts only...
You might also need to check the "Edit Feature Permissions..." button on the right pane of the Handler Mappings settings for the specific application and enable "Execute". This is what held my co-workers and I for 3 hours with otherwise pretty identical symptoms.

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