[SOLVED] IIS 7.5 Installation Troubles

I’ve been using MODx for about 9 months. I’ve done clean installs on Linux and had no problems.

Yesterday I tried installing MODx on a friend’s server. He’s running Windows Server with IIS 7.5, with a number of websites currently running. Some of the websites are functional WordPress sites (which I had nothing to do with).

I elected to install the "demo site" for testing purposes. When I go to the URL for the site, all I see is the following:

The service is unavailable.

Which is the only thing I see when I pull up the page source on my browser.

The manager will load the back-end login page. However after I login, it doesn’t display correctly. It’s the System Configuration page, but all I see is partially formatted text and broken images... reminds me of how HTML templates look when you delete the CSS and image files.

When I click on "save" I get the following:

Cannot open file (../assets/cache/siteCache.idx.php)

I suspect it might have something to do with permissions, but I don’t know the first thing about IIS permissions. My friend thinks it’s related to problems with rewrite, but I don’t have friendly URL’s enabled. The only problem I had during installation was that the installer couldn’t write to the config.inc.php file. I just copied and pasted the code in, and deleted the tab symbols at the beginning and end of the file.

Any ideas?

Thanks much...

Hi,

Windows 2008 Server has a tendency to hide the real error to the general public, are you able to log into the server with remote desktop and try and browse to the site directly on the server, if you can it should output more errors for you.

Also check the Windows event logs this should also give some indications to the possible error.

If you could let me know more about your setup we should be able to get this working for you.

Thanks Aaron

Thanks Aaron!

I do have the ability to remote in, but I should caution I’ve been using windows server for less than 24 hours now. I’ve always done everything in Linux. I was asked not to use web browsers on the server, so we’ll have to wait on that one until I hear back.

I found the event logs in administrative tools. In the system logs, I didn’t see any errors around the time I was expecting. But give or take a few hours, I found this:

The application-specific permission settings do not grant Local Activation permission for the COM Server application with CLSID
(long number here)
to the user NT AUTHORITY\NETWORK SERVICE SID (S-1-5-20) from address LocalHost (Using LRPC). This security permission can be modified using the Component Services administrative tool.

Not sure if that’s related. I also looked at siteCache.idx.php, and it had the following:


In my Linux installs, it has a lot more than that.

Hi,

The event log error is unrelated to MODx or PHP on the server, you should be fine to launch the browser on the server to test the local site as long as you don’t use internet explorer on the server to do your web surfing you should be fine.

Let me know once you get the output of the error from IE on the server.

Aaron

Here we go:

Detailed Error Information
Module FastCgiModule
Notification ExecuteRequestHandler
Handler PHP_via_FastCGI
Error Code 0x00000000
Requested URL http://localhost:80/testsite/index.php
Physical Path C:\inetpub\wwwroot\testsite\index.php
Logon Method Anonymous
Logon User Anonymous

Most likely causes:

* An invalid identity in the application pool could cause this error.
* The application pool is no longer running because of configuration or reaching application failure limits.
* The concurrent application request limit was reached.

Things you can try:

* Check the event logs and the HTTP error logs for more information.

Links and More Information This error occurs when the worker process was unable to start. This could be due to an invalid identity or configuration, or because the concurrent request limit was reached.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/943891

Thanks for the info, a couple of questions

1) Do you have any other PHP Based websites working on this server?
2) Is this a newly created domain or folder which you made?
3) On the testsite create a file called info.php with the following contents

<?php
phpinfo();
?>

Does this load in the browser or gives you the same error?

Thanks Aaron

1) Yes, WordPress
2) Yes
3) Loads in the browser

Apparently it was the permissions after all. Last night my friend changed the permissions, deleted EVERYTHING, and re-installed MODx. It (mostly) works now. Don’t know if phpinfo would have worked before the permission changes though.

The only problem I’m having now is the site_url tag. Apparently it’s set to

http://localhost/[folder]
instead of
http://[ip address]/[folder]

Thats good news, I was going to suggest next checking the permissions.

The web user should only have modify rights on the directory.

For the site_url tag try and clean out the MODx Cache in the manager and then access the site via the IP.

Aaron

Hey that worked! I have a functional site now

Thanks so much!