IIS 6 - Application pool keeps stopping - iis-6

I am trying to set up a site on a Windows 2003 server running IIS 6. When I start the application, I get "Service Unavailable". I googled this error and most indicated it is an application pool identity issue (wrong user id and password). This is an intranet app and I have a non-expiring user id and password. I tested this user id and password and confirmed it is correct. I also added the user id to IIS-WPG group but it still stops after first request. I disabled Rapid fail Protection in IIS and it doesn't die but it takes a long time to (try to) display the page and then says Page Cannot be Displayed. It does the same thing if I run the application pool under Network Services identity, which is already part of IIS-WPG. I have made sure web application folder has proper ACL.
Is there anything else I can try?
UPDATE:
I noticed in event log that I was getting a DCOM error before the application pool stop error.
I did the following:
go to Admin Tools > Component Services > Computers > My Computer > DCOM Config > IIS Admin Service > Right-Click / Properties
Security Tab - Customize the Launch and Activation Permissions > Edit
Add the Network Service (under which my application pool runs; I removed the custom user id) with Local Launch and Local Activation Permissions.
Now, the application pool does not stop but I get "Internet Explorer cannot display the page" error and no errors in System Event Log.

It seems in IIS 6 on Windows Server 2003, only ASP.Net version 1.1 is automatically added. I had to go to "Web Service Extensions" in IIS, under <server_name> and add support for ASP.Net 2 and ASP.Net 4. After that everything worked as expected. This, of course, only applies to the "Page Not Found" or "Page Cannot be displayed" errors. I still had to modify the DCOM setting to stop application pool from stopping.
Prior to this, however, I uninstalled and reinstalled IIS.

Related

Host .net core app with iis give a database access error

I have a .Net Core 2.0 application that I host in IIS 7.
With IIS Express the application works fine and I'm able to connect to the database successfully. With IIS I get this error:
Cannot open database "Books" requested by the login. The login failed. Login failed for user 'DOMAINNAME\PCNAME$'.
My connectionString in appsettings.production.json file looks like this :
"ConnectionStrings": {
"BooksDatabase": "Server=PCNAME\\SQLEXPRESS;Database=Books;user id=iisAccess;password=iisPassword;Trusted_Connection=True;ConnectRetryCount=0;MultipleActiveResultSets=true"
};
What am I doing wrong and why does it say that the "login failed for 'DOMAINNAME\PCNAME$'" when I put the credentials user id=iisAccess;password=iisPassword; in my JSON file?
You are asking for Windows Authentication:
Trusted_Connection=True
Remove this part of the connection string and give it another try.
The reason for the error goes along these lines:
IISExpress runs as a normal process in your logon session. So it runs with your Windows Credentials. When your app is running inside IISExpress it is actually running under your credential, and when you connect to the database using Windows Authentication, is your login that SQL Server will receive.
The full IIS on the other hand runs as a service under a different session and a different user account. There are the application pools that also play a part and run under yet another account. But the main thing is that those default IIS accounts are local accounts, so they have no "visibility" to another computers. Hence when your app tries to connect to SQL Server, SQL "sees" the machine account, which goes by the name DOMAIN\MACHINE$.
Most likely, ASPNETCORE_ENVIRONMENT is not set correctly on the server (i.e. either not set at all or not set to Production).
On your server, edit the system environment variables and add one (if it doesn't already exist) with the name ASPNETCORE_ENVIRONMENT and the value Production. Also, edit the advanced settings of your app pool in IIS for the application and ensure that the key Load User Profile is set to True.

What permissions/policies are needed to support loadUserProfile=true for new application pools?

Something happened on my development workstation (Windows 8.1) in the last few weeks which require me to either run my App Pools with the "Load User Profile" setting at False or not run with the identity set to ApplicationPoolIdentity. If I were to create a new app pool, using ApplicationPoolIdentity as the identity and with loadUserProfile=true, the following happens when trying to load the application in a browser:
A number of errors in the Windows Event Log (both System and Application types):
Warning event 1509 - Windows cannot copy file \\?\C:\Users\Default\AppData\Local\Microsoft\VSCommon\12.0\SQM\sqmdata-7236-039-00000.sqm to location \\?\C:\Users\[Name of App Pool]\AppData\Local\Microsoft\VSCommon\12.0\SQM\sqmdata-7236-039-00000.sqm. This error may be caused by network problems or insufficient security rights.
Error event 1511 - Windows cannot find the local profile and is logging you on with a temporary profile. Changes you make to this profile will be lost when you log off.
Another 1509 warning
Error event 1500 - Windows cannot log you on because your profile cannot be loaded. Check that you are connected to the network, and that your network is functioning correctly. DETAIL - Only part of a ReadProcessMemory or WriteProcessMemory request was completed.
5 x event 5022 warnings - The Windows Process Activation Service failed to create a worker process for the application pool '[App Pool Name]'. The data field contains the error number.
Finally an error 5002 - Application pool '[App Pool Name]' is being automatically disabled due to a series of failures in the process(es) serving that application pool.
The App Pool is shut down, as the error 5002 said
"HTTP Error 503. The service is unavailable." is then seen in the browser. Any further requests are met with the same (which makes sense since the app pool is shut off).
I've seen a common "fix" for this here and here which basically say to turn off profile loading. Yes it makes the problem go away, but this doesn't get to the root cause. I know that it is possible to run with this configuration as a I have a Windows 2012 machine which supports the configuration just fine. In this case, hitting an app with a new app pool set to ApplicationPoolIdentity and loadUserProfile=true actually creates the new user profile (I can watch as the profiles folder is created in C:\Users) and the app runs merrily. What's worse is I know this configuration worked on the problem machine just a few weeks ago. I have a number of App Pools I created which have their own profiles and folder under the C:\Users folder. These app pools work just fine NOW with the ApplicationPoolIdentity and loadUserProfile=true settings. It's just that NEW app pools refuse to run and load a user profile.
Does anyone have any insight to what might be going on?
Edit: I read the bottom of this recent article. It's a bit contradictory in saying that the setting can be turned on, but also says:
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".
I'm very confused.
The SQM file listed in the event log warning was created by a Windows or Visual Studio update. When the user profile service or application pool runs and tries to create a new profile, it tries to copy the file to the profile. The SQM file requires administrator permissions to copy. The user profile service or application pool does not have sufficient permissions to copy the file, an error is generated, and the user profile is not created. Without a user profile, the application pool cannot run because it doesn't have an isolated secure place to store data.
Remove or delete the SQM file from the source directory, and the user profile will be created successfully when the app pool is initialized. You can also change the permissions on the SQM file, but I'm not sure what the appropriate permissions should be. The user profile service runs as "LocalSystem Account". See its documentation for permission info. It's unclear to me whether the application pool identity itself is being used to perform the copy operation, or the local system account.
If you remove the file from the source directory, you could also manually copy the file where it was trying to go as well.
After a very brief search about what SQM is, it seems like it is traditionally used as "service quality management". Usually it would contain information to send back to the program authors with metrics, logs, or somesuch. I don't know if this is the case with this file or not. So it doesn't seem like it's important to include it in the new profile.
I can't take 100% credit for this answer, as I was tipped off by a comment attached to an answer on some other question. I can't find the link to it in the 50 browser tabs open for troubleshooting this. That guy deserves a thank you, because I believe this is a much better solution than compromising the security of a server by pooling all the resources together like in IIS 6.
P.S. As noted in your comment, a bug report has been filed.

IIS 6 Application Pool inconsistently is disabled Automatically

I have a MVC Web Application deployed to a 2003 Server running IIS 6. There is an inconsistent behavior that started this week when we created a new Domain service account with God rights to be used as the identity for the Application Pool and the Anonymous User for the Website with Integrated Authentication set. This Service account has also been added to the SQL users with full rights to the data.
The inconsistent behavior is that the Web Application will run fine, hitting the data, etc..., then out of the blue the Application Pool gets automatically disabled. I check the event logs on the server and sure enough I see two warnings and an error saying that the Identity is INVALID and that the pool was disabled.
I turn it back on and then try to browse to the Website again and BOOM! It does it again. We finally after three attempts lock the account out and have to unlock it. Then it spirals back to the same issue.
Any ideas? Because I'm at my wits end!
This problem might be solved because the question is old, but anyway.
Try manual login with username and password, then
reapply the identity on the application pool, answer yes to apply user rights if questioned, restart the application pool and check the eventlog for errors.
Make sure the useraccount has the appropriate user rights , there will be complaints in the eventlog otherwise. Also make sure allow login to on the user account has the server entered or allow any.
Thanks
Andreas

SQLExpress connection fails in IIS 7 w/ user instance error - "Failed to generate a user instance

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

Permissions issues with SQL 2008, Report Builder 2.0

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.

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