Why does my ASP.NET MVC application work from a virtual directory, but not from a website?

Question

I created an ASP.NET MVC application on my local computer under IIS 7.5 (Windows 7 RC) in a virtual directory (like http://localhost/MyApp).

Now that I'm trying to deploy it to a remote server I get strange results. The application seems to route every request to the Forms Authentication login form, and requests for static content (from the /Content directory) result in exceptions for not being able to create a controller.

When I deploy the same application to a virtual directory on the remote server, everything works as expected.

I was expecting some small problems like url's not pointing correctly and other minor fixups, but not this.

Any idea as to why this is happening and what I can do to diagnose the problem is welcome.

Update:

For some reason, it works now, and I can't figure out what I did to make it work. This bothers me, not only because now I can't investigate further what went wrong. Also because now I have no answer to this question. I'm going to leave it open so that anyone can still make suggestions.

Answer 1

I had to deploy an ASP.NET MVC site to a remote server that did not have ASP.NET MVC installed once and had to do the following to get it to work:

• bin deploying the ASP.NET MVC dll files
• Changing my routes to use {controller}.aspx (as the aspx file extension was already registered to process ASP.NET requests and I didn't have access to the actual server)

Hope this helps in some was - although obviously your situation might be completely different and the above might be no help whatsoever :-)

Answer 2

You likely need to grant read/execute permission to the files/folder that you are deploying to for the windows account that the App Pool of the website on the remote server is running under.