Andrew Whitten's .NET Blog

Asp.Net install blues

Installing our new server product onto a new machine should be a piece of cake, right? You install Sql Server 2000, give it a nice Service Pack (3), make sure IIS (5 or 6) is up and running, installing .Net Framework 1.1... make sure Asp.Net is running, and if not use aspnet_regiis.exe in C:\WINNT\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v1.1.4322... then you are just about ready to start installing our product. Two MSI install packages, one of which installs some web services to a virtual directory, and likewise for a web application comprising of Asp.Net pages.

Our last server product required one install, and no pre-requisites. It could also only handle a maximum of 7 TCP-IP requests at any one time.

Therefore, for our new server, we have a detailed install guide, but with all these extra steps, the things that can go wrong are multiplied accordingly.

Yesterday, one of our implementors couldn't install on site... and he was unable to get the web services running, even though the Asp.Net pages were fine and dandy. He wasn't able able to send screen shots, so in the end he brought the box down for examination.

The problem was that the Asp.Net user could not write its assemblies to the c:\windows\temp directory.

There is a detailed fix for this problem on the MSDN site.. however, I couldn't access the access permissions tag in the properties dialog. The reason for this was the presence of a Novell Network client, although I have no understanding of Novell networks, and couldn't say why this would be a problem.

Until I find out why, I cranked up Asp.Net's user to 'administrator'... just like in IIS 5, and it works fine.

I guess this goes to show, that no matter how well you test something on your own network, things are very different out there in the wild.