Question

We have an application which is set up on IIS7 on Server 2008 R2 x64, using ASP.NET 3.5 SP1.
The default site is currently being loaded off of a UNC on another server, and is working fine.

I now need to add another application underneath that application which points to a different folder on the same UNC share.

I right-click on the website, and click to add an application; I specify the alias and physical path, and click OK, and get the following error:

There was an error while performing this operation.

Details:

Filename: \\?\UNC\wmsclusterfs\wwwroot\applicationHost.config
Error: Cannot write configuration file

(screenie here: http://www.box.net/shared/4pt2lxh7hz )

I have tried the “Connect as…” to specify a user who has writes to the directory, no luck.
I get the same error if I try to create it as a virtual directory.
The UNC is being referenced via a mapped drive.
IIS is “clustered” via MS Cluster Server.

Answer 1

Okay; this was actually a rather obscure problem having to do with IIS being set up to run using a file server “service” (or whatever they call it) in Cluster Server. IIS had originally been set up to refer to the wwwroot share on the cluster service named WMSCLUSTERFS as indicated above. Unbeknown to us, the client’s IT people had changed the name of the file system service in Cluster Services. They didn’t completely disable the old one though, and so when I browsed it it still looked like it was up, except that it was now read-only, which was preventing the server from creating the new application.

On top of that, the person who had set up the IIS shared configuration did not remember the encryption password they had set, and so I could not change the shared configuration location as it prompts for this password (even though the same user has access to the new location.

In the end, I had to go to Start > Run > "inetsrv\config" and change the redirection path in the redirection.config file.