Tuesday, January 22, 2013

IIS 7.5 application path for web.config problem

A very interesting error is displayed when selecting a WebSite and trying to set its configuration under IIS. If you select a Site under IIS Manager, you should be able to modify configuration from within IIS Manager. For example by selecting 'Error Pages'. But when I tried to click on any of configuration Icons I received a following message: There was an error while performing this operation. Filename: \\?\C:\inetpub\web.config
It was weird because the path for web.config was correct, and IIS process had permissions to access application folder and web.config itself. The error was not meaningful at all. The problem was resolved after installing 'HTTP Redirections' Role Services for IIS.
I had to reboot my machine after that.

In an addition one needs to install a third party software called URL Rewrite (I installed version 2.0) using microsoft platform installer.

My understanding is that IIS Manager w/o some features from HTTP Redirections was unable to parse web.config correctly, and it was raising a weird exception.

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