Inheriting permissions from "web site" folder in IIS 6

Question

In trying to configure a new website, I am running into a problem managing IIS 6.0. I use the wizard to create a website. I set the Web Site permissions to read and point it to the folder that contains all the pages and folders with icons.

The website is created but unless I add IUSR to each file and folder, the page will not load. This would take hours to do one by one. I have spent hours going through setting trying to get this simple inheritance to work. What am I missing?

Added:

THe only way I could find that did not require adding IUSR to each directory and .html file one by one, was to select them all and then add IUSR to all of them. I am sure there is a better way...

Answer 1

I think you can set the permissions for all files and folders by going to the directory and then use the security tab to set the permission so it will set it to the folder,subfolders and files..

Answer 2

It sounds awfully like you could have, or have had, FrontPage Server Extensions (FPSE) installed on the website (look for _vti_* hidden folders).

If you install FPSE the folder permissions are changed drastically and from my own observations any account not nominated as the FPSE login has all modify permissions removed. On top of that permissions seem to be applied explicitly to each file or folder and ACE inheritance is effectively blocked.

If this is the case you'd need to remove FPSE. Then using the folder security tab reset the NTFS permissions on the website root folder to replace/inherit to all children via the advanced options button.