I'm automating a job which runs a VbScript that calls an ASP Classic page with WinHttpRequest. When I run this job from the Windows Scheduler (with highest privileges), the ASP page fails with a "Permission denied" error (it tries to copy a file to a different folder). When I run the VbScript file manually, the operation succeeds.
The Web server is IIS7.5 on Windows Server 2008, and anonymous access is enabled, impersonating as IUSR. My theory was that IIS shouldn't care who runs the script, the Scheduler or a human, and giving full access to IUSR should be fine. What is wrong with that?
In addition, when I check the AUTH_USER, LOGON_USER etc variables, they're always empty (both when I run the script manually and from the scheduler).
What am I doing wrong?
Related
Today our HTTP server had been updated with KB5001382, KB5001393 and KB5001403.
It's a windows server 2012R2 with IIS8 installed
But after those updates I started getting an error on one of my classic asp pages.
set xml0 = Server.CreateObject("AspXml.AspXml")
set xml = xml0.HttpGet(XML_File)
xml.FirstChild2() (error on this line)
Error message:
Microsoft VBScript runtime error '800a01a8'
Object required: 'xml'
I tested the XML_file and it loads fine local and on te server (browser).
My hosting provider says its something about case sensitivity but I can't imagine what they mean...
Please make sure IIS and permissions to registry/files/folders related to the DLL involved.
Searched the registry for the Object name. In this case "AspXml.AspXml"
For all registry entries, you should take ownership of the parent registry folders, so please give read access to IIS user account.
Make sure the files/folders had read/execute permission for the IIS user account(s).
Registered the DLL at the command line for good measure.
Rebooted because restarting IIS didn't seem to do it.
im working on a Window server 2008, in this server i developed a vb.net 2008 console application that open a excel 2003 file and use its contents to create a xml file, so i have two situations:
1. Differences in execution of the program: if i run the application from the Visual Studio or directly from the executable it open and process the excel without problems but if i configured a task on the windows task scheduler or in the adtempus that execute this program its failed and throws this exception:
Exception from HRESULT: 0x800A03EC- at Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel.Workbooks.Open(String Filename, Object UpdateLinks, Object ReadOnly, Object Format, Object Password, Object WriteResPassword, Object IgnoreReadOnlyRecommended, Object Origin, Object Delimiter, Object Editable, Object Notify, Object Converter, Object AddToMru, Object Local, Object CorruptLoad)
at .Module1.convertExcelToXmlFile(String excelFile)
i have read alot about this exception, but at the moment im unable to resolved, so I want to know how this program can execute correctly from Visual Studio or directly from the execute but failed when its execute on a task if both situations are in the same server? is there a way to fix this behavior?
2. In the console application when i open the excel file with the open method, the file in excel appears for a few seconds then it closed, is there a way to access the excel file contents but that the file dont show in Ms Excel?
thanks.
You should not be using Office Interop in an unattended process.
Microsoft does not currently recommend, and does not support, Automation of Microsoft Office applications from any unattended, non-interactive client application or component (including ASP, ASP.NET, DCOM, and NT Services), because Office may exhibit unstable behavior and/or deadlock when Office is run in this environment.
If you are building a solution that runs in a server-side context, you should try to use components that have been made safe for unattended execution. Or, you should try to find alternatives that allow at least part of the code to run client-side. If you use an Office application from a server-side solution, the application will lack many of the necessary capabilities to run successfully. Additionally, you will be taking risks with the stability of your overall solution.
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=257757
There are a number of products that will manipulate Excel docs and run correctly unattended.
Is the Excel file you're trying to open on the network?
If so, the problem is most likely because your Task Scheduler service and any jobs it runs are (by default) running under the local SYSTEM account, which is prohibited from network access.
If you change the task to run under a different account (say, for example, a domain account that you have given privileges for the remote fileshare). (Note that this change may effect how other scheduled tasks run, so you'll want to be quite sure of the permissions needed.)
Just in case you have not figured it out yet, the most-likely resolution which worked for me can be found at this URL :
https://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/b81a3c4e-62db-488b-af06-44421818ef91/excel-2007-automation-on-top-of-a-windows-server-2008-x64?forum=innovateonoffice
If your server is a 64-bit one, create a folder named 'Desktop' in the below mentioned path i.e. C:\Windows\SysWOW64\config\systemprofile\Desktop
If your server is a 32-bit one, please make this folder C:\Windows\System32\config\systemprofile\Desktop
Mainly looking to answer my question #1 below, but more knowledge would be appreciated.
I tried to use these resources during my investigation, but was unsuccessful:
http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en/sqldatabaseengine/thread/f5eb164d-9774-4864-ae05-cac99740949b (For this error: Failed to generate a user instance of SQL Server due to failure in retrieving the user's local application data path. Please make sure the user has a local user profile on the computer. The connection will be closed.)
http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/forums/en-US/sqlexpress/thread/6dfdcc22-7a81-4e8f-a947-c1ce6982d4b3/ (For this error: CREATE DATABASE permission denied in database master. An attempt to attach an auto-named database for file ? failed. A database with the same name exists, or specified file cannot be opened, or it is located on UNC share.)
Questions
1.) Why does this error occur while running the Telerik Rad Controls for ASP.NET AJAX "Live Demos" project with IIS 7 (Running Telerik Live Demos works fine using ASP.NET Development Server with this connection string)
Failed to generate a user instance of SQL Server due to failure in retrieving the user's local application data path. Please make sure the user has a local user profile on the computer. The connection will be closed.
2.) How is creating a SQL Server Express instances different in IIS 7, from ASP.NET Development Server & SSMSE
3.) Are there certain attributes of a SQL connection string not allowed when running a website on different contexts (based on #2).
Environment:
I'm not running the "Live Demos" .NET 3.5 ASP.NET web application via the ASP.NET Development Server (feature that pops up in your system tray and picks a port for you after clicking play in Visual Studio). That works just fine! I'm running the website on IIS 7. SQL Server Express is using the NETWORK SERVICE user in Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Services > SQL Server (SQLExpress).
Using this connection string provided with the installed "Live Demos" web application demo project:
<add name="NorthwindConnectionString"
connectionString="Data Source=.\SQLEXPRESS;AttachDbFilename=|DataDirectory|Northwind.mdf;Integrated Security=True;User Instance=True"
providerName="System.Data.SqlClient" />
I've tried setting "User Instance=False", but that just throws another error:
CREATE DATABASE permission denied in database master. An attempt to attach an auto-named database for file ? failed. A database with the same name exists, or specified file cannot be opened, or it is located on UNC share.
(where "?" is the path of the *.mdf file - C:\Users\\MyDocuments\Visual Studio 2008\Projects\TelerikDemos\Telerik\RadControls for ASP.NET AJAX Q2 2011\Live Demos\App_Data\Northwind.mdf .. Stack Overflow italics is broken with some of those characters, so I had to remove that path)
Someone answered me on a previous question to set this "User Instance=False", but it appears User instances have nothing to do with whether or not you use SQL Express. User Instances are simply a feature of SQL Express that allows a very unprivileged user to host a database instance in it's own user context.
Note, this Northwind database is stored in an *.mdf file in the App_Data folder (under the "Live Demos" root application directory) along with the *.ldf (log file). I did previously try attaching the *.mdf files as actual databases under the "Databases" folder (in the SSMSE Object Explorer tree), but later removed them.
Web application "Live Demos" root folder (and nested folders/files) have the following users assigned with ALL privileges:
- IIS APPPOOL\Telerik ("Telerik" is the name of my application pool in IIS 7 for this site)
- IUSR
- NETWORK SERVICE
Making a note for myself about this SQLExpress master database query:
SELECT * FROM sys.dm_os_child_instances
Also tried different combinations of *.mdf & *.ldf permissions while also changing the user on the SQL Server (SQLExpress) Windows 7 service (Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Services) .. and also restarted the service after making those changes.
To reproduce:
download the Telerik Rad Controls for ASP.NET AJAX. Set the permimssions I mentioned in the "Live Demos" folder under Program Files\Telerik, change the .NET version of the web application to .NET 3.5, switch out their 3.5 web.config file with the normal web.config file in that folder. You have to use Visual Studio 2010, but I am running this in Visual Studio 2008 (with a little grunt work I did because our company is not yet on VS2010). Also switch out the proper Bin35 assemblies into the "Live Demos" folder Bin folder. Compile the solution. Create an IIS 7 website. Add Windows authentication. Enabled anonymous and Windows authentication.. all others are disabled. Set application pool to use Classic and 32 bit.
Then navigating to this URL and clicking the "First Look" image.
http://localhost/combobox/examples/overview/defaultcs.aspx
====================
More evidence will be provided if requested.
You are using a connection string with trusted authentication = true. This means that the connection uses the security context of the calling process.
When you run with the development server you are running in the security context of the logged in user, so every thing works fine.
When you run in IIS you are in the security context of the application pool process, which is NETWORK SERVICE, which does not have a user profile, therefore it crashes.
You can fix it by either:
Change the identity of the application pool to a normal user with access to the database
Use a connection string with user name and password
IIS doesn't load the Windows user profile, but certain applications might take advantage of it anyway to store temporary data. SQL Express is an example of an application that does this. However, a user profile has to be created to store temporary data in either the profile directory or in the registry hive. The user profile for the Network Service account was created by the system and was always available. However, with the switch to unique Application Pool identities, no user profile is created by the system. Only the standard application pools (DefaultAppPool and Classic .NET AppPool) have user profiles on disk. No user profile is created if the Administrator creates a new application pool.
However, if you want, you can configure IIS application pools to load the user profile by setting the LoadUserProfile attribute to "true".
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/iis/manage/configuring-security/application-pool-identities
So here's a bit of context for the horror story:
Win 2003 SP2 64bit running on a VM exposed to outside world for web access.
SQL Server 2008 Std SP2 64bit with Reporting Services (RS) installed for native mode (i.e. not sharepoint mode).
IIS 6 .NET 3.5 web site app written to use the web services from RS. The site has been set to use Windows Authentication and nothing else.
To save writting custom authentication since I don't need it for this demo I have set-up a local account in Win 2003, i.e. servername\myDemoUser, effectively allow fake Windows Authentication.
Default.aspx lists folders on RS and the reports from each folder. It also has a link to the Report Builder 2 on the server.
The rsreportserver.config has been changed so that the only <AuthenticationType> is <RSWindowsNTLM> since <RSWindowsNegoiate> can't work since it's across the internet and users will not be on the same network (hence the local account myDemoUser).
The web site app has url of the form: http://mysite.mydomain.co.uk/ and the link on it to the Report Builder is of the form: http://mysite.mydomain.co.uk/services/reportbuilder/reportbuilder_2_0_0_0.application, in this case RS has been configured so the Web services virtual directory is "services".
The web.config for the website app has been set to <identity impersonate="true /> for <locations> for the ASPX pages that access the RS webservice. I even added a <location path="services/reportbuilder"> with the same thing and also to allow anonymous users.
So after all the above I go to the site from a machine that isn't on the network, I get prompted by IE8 for username/password and I enter servername\myDemoUser and the correct password. The homepage is displayed and correctly shows the list of folders and reports from RS. HOWEVER if I click the RS report builder link I get the pop window saying it's doing it's clickonce verfication stuff but after a couple of seconds it shows simple message box saying there was an authentication error. The details button then shows a text file with a bunch of stacktrace stuff in which eventually says that the server returned 401 while accessing the .application file mentioned above.
I turned on failure auditing for logins on the Win 2003 VM and I can see that when the clickonce fails it is trying to use the local machine account I logged into on the external (to my network) machine instead of the credentials I entered into the browser on that machine when testing it.
Much Googling and granting of permissions to Network service, everyone etc... on various folders involved later nothing the Report Builder bit just won't install via clickonce due to permissions or the incorrect use there of.
I'm looking into maybe changing something in the RS to try and grant permissions to the report builder to anonymous but at this point I'm pretty pessimistic that I'll actually find anything. The annoying thing about this is that this a test that doesn't represent the final thing (we'll be using custom authentication in RS) but unfortunately I have to do it, 8(.
Any ideas would be most appreciated.
It turns out that when using fake Windows authentication in this way when the machine you are accessing the site from a machine where you have not logged into the domain then clickOnce won't work because it won't pass the details you enter into the browser as found.
So the solution is to:
1) Log into a (any) domain on the machine that is going to access the clickonce link on your site.
2) In Control Panel go to User Accounts (XP)/Store Users and Passwords (Win 2003), and manage the network passwords for a user (XP) and add in the URL, username and password.
Whenever clickonce fires up for this URL it will pass the username/password specified as opposed to the local machine account.
Either of the above will solve this problem.
How can I stop and then restart an IIS 7 application pool from an MSBuild script running inside TeamCity. I want to deploy our nightly builds to an IIS server for out testers to view.
I have tried using appcmd like so:
appcmd stop apppool /apppool.name:MYAPP-POOL
... but I have run into elevation issues in Windows 2008 that so far have stopped me from being able to run that command from my TeamCity build process because Windows 2008 requires elevation in order to run appcmd.
If I do not stop the application pool before I copy my files to the web server my MSBuild script is unable to copy the files to the server.
Has anybody else seen and solved this issue when deploying web sites to IIS from TeamCity?
This article describes using an htm file named App_offline.htm to take a site offline. Once the IIS detectes this file in the root of a web application directory,
ASP.NET 2.0 will shut-down the application, unload the application
domain from the server, and stop processing any new incoming requests
for that application.
In App_offline-htm, you can put a user-friendly message indicating that the site is currently under maintainance.
Jason Lee shows the MSDeploy calls you need to use (plus much more about integrating these steps in your build scripts!).
MSDeploy
-verb:sync
-source:contentPath="[absolute_path]App_offline-Template.htm"
-dest:contentPath="name_of_site/App_offline.htm",computerName="copmuter_name",
username=user_with_administrative priviliges,password=passwort
After deployment you can remove the App_offline.htm file using the following call:
MSDeploy
-verb:delete
-dest:contentPath="name_of_site/App_offline.htm",computerName="computer_name",
username=user_with_administrative_priviliges,password=passwort
The msbuild community tasks includes an AppPoolController that appears to do what you want (though as noted it is dated and at present only supports IIS6.) An example:
<AppPoolController ApplicationPoolName="MyAppPool" Action="Restart" />
Note that you can also provide a username and password if necessary.
Edit: Just noticed that the MSBuild Extension Pack has an Iis7AppPool task that is probably more appropriate.
this is the fairly hackey workaround I ended up using:
1) Set up a limited-access account for your service to run as. Since I'm running a CruiseControl.NET service, I'll call my user 'ccnet'. He does NOT have admin rights.
2) Make a new local user account, and assign to the Administrators group (I'll call him 'iis_helper' for this example). Give him some password, and set it to never expire.
3) Change iis_helper's access permissions to NOT allow local login or remote desktop login, and anything else you might want to do to lock down this account.
4) Log in (either locally or through remote desktop) as your non-admin user, 'ccnet' in this example.
5) Open a command terminal, and use the 'runas' command to execute whatever it is that needs to be run escalated. Use the /savecred option. Specify your new administrative user.
runas /savecred /user:MYMACHINE\iis_helper "C:\Windows\System32\inetsrv\appcmd.exe"
The first time it will prompt you for 'iis_helper's password. After that, it will be stored thanks to the /savecred option (this is why we're running it once from a real command prompt, so we can enter the password once).
6) Assuming that command executed OK, you can now log out. I then logged back in as a local admin and turned off the 'ccnet' user for local interactive login, and remote desktop. The account is only used to run a service, but no real logins. This isnt a mandatory step.
7) Set up your service to run as your user account ('ccnet').
8) Configure whatever service is running (CruiseControl.NET in my case) to execute the 'runas' command instead of 'appcmd.exe' directly, the same as before:
replace:
"C:\Windows\System32\inetsrv\appcmd.exe" start site "My Super Site"
with:
runas /savecred /user:MYMACHINE\iis_helper "\"C:\Windows\System32\inetsrv\appcmd.exe\" start site \"My Super Site\""
The thing to note there is that the command should be in one set of quotes, with all the inner quotes escaped (slash-quote).
9) Test, call it a day, hit the local pub.
Edit: I apparently did #9 in the wrong order and had a few too many before testing...
This method also doesn't completely work. It does attempt to run as the administrative account, however it still runs as a non-escalated process under the administrative user, so still no admin permissions. I didn't initially catch the failure because the 'runas' command spawns a separate cmd window then closes right away, so I wasn't seeing the failure output.
Its starting to seem like the only real possibility might be writing a windows service that will run as admin, and its only purpose is to run appcmd.exe, then somehow call that service to start/stop IIS.
Isn't it great how UAC is there to secure things, but in actuality just unsecures more servers, because anything you want to do you have to do as admin, so its easier to just always run everything as admin and forget it?
You can try changing the Build Agent Service settings to log-on as a normal user account instead of SYSTEM (the default), this can be done from the services control panel (Start | Run | services.msc).
If it doesn't help, you can also try configuring the appcmd to always run elevated, refer to this document for details.
In case such option is not available for appcmd or it still doesn't work, you can disable UAC completely for this user.
Here you go. You can use this from CC.NET with NAnt or just with NAnt:
http://nantcontrib.sourceforge.net/release/latest/help/tasks/iisapppool.html