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Dear developer don’t trust VWD Web Server (of VS.Net 2005)

As we know ASP.NET applications runs under (using) ASPNET special user account, which has restricted privileges for security reasons.

 

But when you are making/developing ASP.NET applications using VS.Net 2005, it’s going to use built-in VWD Web server while testing the pages. This VWD Web server is going to run under NETWORK SERVICE user account while running/testing the pages. Interestingly this is going to use logged in user account privileges. In other words if you logged in as an Administrator, then VWD Web server is going to use administrative privileges for NETWORK SERVICE user account to run the pages.

 

So if you are making any application which needs special privileges, while testing using VWD Web server, it works fine (as it runs using administrative privileges in this case), but when you move your application to IIS, then the pages which needs special privileges many **not work** as the pages running under IIS runs using ASPNET account with restricted privileges!

Moral of the story: When moving application from VWD Web server environment (VS2005) to IIS, please make sure and give necessary permissions to the application it needs.

 

Quote: My dear developer don’t trust VWD Web server  :-)


[Just to feed permissions issue to your permanent part of the brain, I have stated as don't trust VWD Web server, but really VWD Web server is very flexible and useful local server for developers]

 

1 Comment

  • are you absolutely sure about the permissions bit? can you point me to some official Microsoft documentation stating this?



    Any machine running Windows 2003 will run ASP.NET apps under Network Service account, because that's what Win2K3 does.



    What version of Windows are you running this on?

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