Metabase is NOT such a Meta Headache
I may be late to the party (and not for the first time!), but I just came across the Edit-While-Running feature for the IIS 6 Metabase -- no reboots or service stops-and-starts required. I'm not in our Network Admin team, but even they weren't aware so I thought I'd share this way to modify the IIS Metabase while IIS is running.
From TechNet:
- In IIS Manager, right-click the local computer, and then click Properties.
- Select the Enable Direct Metabase Edit check box. Enabling Direct Metabase Edit changes the EnableEditWhileRunning property from 0 (FALSE) to 1 (TRUE).
The Metabase.xml file controls IIS settings; for example, there is a setting for the maximum size of a file that can be posted to the site -- I speak to another way to fix it here, but the Metabase works for all IIS instead of just an individual application (so beware when you adjust the Metabase because you are impacting every app hosted on that server!).
Also, when editing the Metabase, stick with Notepad; I used WordPad and learned the hard way that WordPad introduces some non Metabase.xml friendly characters into the file. Thankfully, IIS 6 rolls back to the previous “good” Metabase.xml file.
Happy .Netting!