How to deploy WCF service on IIS 6.0

Question

I have IIS 6.0 on Windows Server 2003.

I installed .NET 3.5 and 4 beta 2. "Normal" ASP things are working (perfect). But when I try to navigate to my service (/myServer/MyService.svc) I get a 404. Page not found.

To be exact, I got a 404 2 "Web service extension lockdown policy prevents this request."

I used ServiceModelReg.exe /ia to make sure that the extension I known and I checked the configuration using:

admin-Tools, iis, home-tab, configuration, executable-box, and there:

Extension: .svc, path: c:\windows\microsoft.net\framework\v4.0.210..., verbs: all verbs.

So everything seems OK. But I still get a 404-2.

Answer 1

Can you show us your server-side web.config (just the <system.serviceModel> section)? Where on your server does your service live?

When hosting in IIS, your service address is defined by:

• server name (or IP address)
• name of the virtual directory (plus any subdirectories under that) in which your *.svc file lives
• the *.svc file itself

So it would be something like:

http://YourServer/YourVirtualDirectory/MyService.svc

You don't seem to use a virtual directory in the path you mention - is your *.svc file really in the root of the web server, or did you forget to add the virtual directory to your path?

Answer 2

The information in this blog post proved invaluable to getting this to work.

http://xamlcoder.com/blog/?p=7

I am not sure about IIS6 but I created a new website in IIS7 (I could not get things to work under a virtual directory but that is probably my lack of IIS knowledge) I put my .svc file in the root directory and in ~/Services/

Everything started working great.

The blog mentioned that IIS should look in ~/Services/ automatically anytime a .svc file is served up but that was not working. That is why I simply copied the .svc file to my website root.

Hope this helps.

Answer 3

Your "web service extension lockdown policy" is preventing the ASP.NET 4.0 ISAPI extension from processing your request. It happened to me, check it out:

C:\>cscript c:\WINDOWS\system32\iisext.vbs /ListFile
Microsoft (R) Windows Script Host Version 5.6
Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation 1996-2001. All rights reserved.

Connecting to server ...Done.

Status / Extension Path
------------------------
0  C:\WINDOWS\system32\inetsrv\httpodbc.dll
0  C:\WINDOWS\system32\inetsrv\ssinc.dll
0  C:\WINDOWS\system32\inetsrv\asp.dll
1  C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\aspnet_isapi.dll
0  *.exe
0  C:\WINDOWS\system32\inetsrv\httpext.dll
0  *.dll
1  C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\v2.0.50727\aspnet_isapi.dll
1  C:\WINDOWS\system32\MQISE.DLL
0  C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\v4.0.30319\aspnet_isapi.dll

Do you have a "0" next to the v4.0 aspnet_isapi.dll like I did? There's your problem. You need to enable it:

C:\>cscript c:\WINDOWS\system32\iisext.vbs /EnFile C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Frame
work64\v4.0.30319\aspnet_isapi.dll
Microsoft (R) Windows Script Host Version 5.6
Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation 1996-2001. All rights reserved.

Connecting to server ...Done.
Enabling extension file complete.

For more info on the iisext.vbs tool: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/328419/

Answer 4

Thank you very much for this!

iisext.vbs worked for me on IIS6, Windows Server 2003 and .NET 4.0.30319. Exactly the same issue, browses but errors under .NET 2.0 but when the virtual dir is set to .NET 4.0 I get the mysterious 404, like .NET 4.0 wasn't installed properly. regiis did nothing and I got no error when installing/re-installing.

This worked though, made my day too!

Thanks again,

Matt