ASP.NET VirtualDirectory app and website's /bin

Question

After quite a bit of searching I think my situation is different enough I have to actually ask a question!

I have a website for public consumption and a maintenance site for the data in a virtual root beneath the website. I would like for them to both use the same /bin folder but I can't get that to work. The virtual root has different (more restrictive) IP access controls. IIS sees this:

www.abc.com ->      C:\Website
    /Maintenance -> C:\Maintenance

www.abc.com has a C:\Website\bin and C:\website\web.config.

I would like /Maintennace to also use C:\Website\bin. They seem to 'cascade' web.configs - C:\Website\web.config defines some things and refers to assemblies in its bin folder. When /Maintenance fires up I get errors about not being able to resolve assemblies referenced in C:\Website\web.config. C:\Maintenance\web.config also gets processed.

IIS6, ASP.NET 3.5, Win2k3

Is this doable?

Answer 1

You can un-register DLL files from C:\Maintenance\web.config. I used to do so when I created a sun virtral directory under a DotNetNuke root website. For Example, if you are referencing a HTTP Module in your C:\website\web.config:

<httpModules>
  <add name="ScriptModule" type="System.Web.Handlers.ScriptModule, System.Web.Extensions, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31BF3856AD364E35"/>
</httpModules>

You can remove the reference from C:\Maintenance\web.config:

<httpModules>
      <remove name="ScriptModule"/>
</httpModules>

Answer 2

You'll have to create a separate bin inside your virtual directory / app.

Answer 3

I'm slightly unclear as to what the objective is from your question, but if you're looking to process other directories outside of the bin directory for assembly references for your Maintenance site, you may be able to make use of the <probe> element of the web.config runtime configuration.

It allows you to specify additional paths to resolve references, rather than just "bin". Since this is very similar to this question asked earlier today, I'll just link it so you can review the examples and answers there. Hopefully it helps you.

Answer 4

What I ended up doing was moving /Maintenance underneath C:\Website and getting rid of the virtual directory altogether. This allows them to share the same /bin and I end up with the same URL's anyway.