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Q284930: INFO: Issues Administering IIS 5.0 from IIS 4.0 MMC

Article: Q284930
Product(s): Internet Information Server
Version(s): 4.0,5.0
Operating System(s): 
Keyword(s): kbWinDNA kbGrpDSSIE kbDSupport kbIIS kbiis400 kbiis500
Last Modified: 29-APR-2001

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The information in this article applies to:

- Microsoft Internet Information Server 4.0 
- Microsoft Internet Information Services version 5.0 
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SUMMARY
=======

The Internet Information Server (IIS) 4.0 Internet Service Manager allows you to
connect to a remote Windows 2000/Internet Information Services 5.0 server in
order to perform remote administration tasks. However, unexpected behavior can
occur when you administer IIS 5.0 remotely from the Windows NT 4.0/Internet
Information Server 4.0 Internet Service Manager (and vice versa). Microsoft
recommends that you use the HTML Administration Web site to remotely administer
an IIS 5.0 or IIS 4.0 server.

MORE INFORMATION
================

The following excerpt from IIS 5.0 Help (the path to this information is
Contents, Administration, Server Administration, Web and FTP sites, and
Downlevel Site Administration) describes a problem concerning application
mappings when you are administering IIS 5.0 from the IIS 4.0 Microsoft
Management Console (MMC) snap-in:

  Important! The column entitled Verbs in the App Mappings property sheet lists
  the HTTP verbs that will be run by an application. In IIS 4.0, this column,
  entitled Exclusions, listed the HTTP verbs that would not be run by an
  application. If you perform remote administration tasks between computers
  running IIS 4.0 and IIS 5.0, this column will be incorrectly labeled.

  For more information on application mappings, see Setting Application
  Mappings.

This problem can actually occur in both directions (in other words, the problem
can happen when administering IIS 5.0 from a Windows NT 4.0/IIS 4.0 server and
vice versa).

The following is a detailed description of the problem: If an administrator
double-clicks on a specific application mapping in the IIS 4.0 Internet Service
Manager's Application Configuration dialog box on the App Mappings tab, this
brings up the Add/Edit application extension mapping form. The part of this form
that concerns HTTP verbs is titled "Method Exclusions". On IIS 4.0, the default
behavior for this form is to exclude only the HTTP verbs that you do not want to
allow for a given application mapping (from example, "exclude PUT, DELETE from
.ASP").

This behavior was changed in IIS 5.0. The corresponding form is now titled "Limit
to:" and you type in the HTTP verbs you want to include.

For example, on a Windows 2000 Server, if you use the IIS 5.0 Internet Service
manager to locally edit the application mapping for the .asp extension, the
default behavior for the HTTP verbs is "Limit to: GET, HEAD, POST, TRACE". This
configuration information is then written to the metabase under the ScriptMaps
key as:

  .asp,C:\WINNT\System32\inetsrv\asp.dll,1,GET,HEAD,POST,TRACE

If this same procedure is performed from a Windows NT 4.0/IIS 4.0 Internet
Service Manager while you are remotely connected to a Windows 2000/IIS 5.0
server, the IIS 4.0 Internet Service Manager will read this information from the
metabase and display "GET, HEAD, POST, TRACE" in the form field as "method
exclusions", even though these are really method inclusions. If the IIS 4.0
administrator notices this and changes these values to reflect the proper
default method exclusions for IIS 4.0 ("PUT, DELETE"), these values will be
written back to the IIS 5.0 servers metabase and the ScriptMaps key will appear
as:

  .asp,C:\WINNT\System32\inetsrv\asp.dll,1,PUT,DELETE

IIS 5.0 will then only allow the HTTP verbs PUT and DELETE to be sent to ASP
pages, which causes the Web application to fail.

REFERENCES
==========

IIS 5.0 Help, http://localhost/iishelp/iis/htm/core/ii30adm.htm

Additional query words:

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Keywords          : kbWinDNA kbGrpDSSIE kbDSupport kbIIS kbiis400 kbiis500 
Technology        : kbiisSearch kbiis500 kbiis400
Version           : :4.0,5.0
Issue type        : kbinfo

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