When you set a web directory property "AuthNTLM" using the DirectoryEntry object, what IIS setting are you actually changing?

Question

I'm in task of migrating our product's installer from InstallShield to WiX.

To deploy web applications, the previous developers used Custom Actions (written in C#) in InstallShield. In Wix, this is no longer necessary because wix supports IIS deployment.

Anyway, one of the code in the Custom Action uses the DirectoryEntry object to set the property of a Web Directory:

DirectoryEntry.Properties["AuthNTLM"][0] = true;

What does this setting do? I know it has something to do with security/permission, but what setting does it actually set in IIS? Does it enable one of the following:

• Integrated Windows Authentication
• Digest Authentication
• Basic Authentication
• .NET Passport Authentication

Thanks!

Answer 1

This article should help you understand this.

Answer 2

A while back I provided an answer to a similar question:

Setting NTAuthenticationProviders at an Application level in IIS 6

AuthFlags (not AuthNTLM) is a flag value. You can set this without using an indexer, for example:

int MD_AUTH_ANONYMOUS = 1;
int MD_AUTH_BASIC = 2;
int MD_AUTH_NT = 4;

using(DirectoryEntry w3svc = new DirectoryEntry(@"IIS://Localhost/W3SVC"))
{
  using(DirectoryEntry webSite = w3svc.Children.Add(iisNumber, "IIsWebServer"))
  {
    // Configure website settings here...
    ....
    webSite.CommitChanges();

    using(DirectoryEntry siteRoot = webSite.Children.Add("root",
                                        IISSchemaClasses.IIsWebVirtualDir))
    {
      // Configure root application settings...
      ....
      // Only allow Basic and NTLM authentication
      siteRoot.Properties["AuthFlags"].Value = MD_AUTH_BASIC | MD_AUTH_NT 
      siteRoot.CommitChanges();
    }

  }
}

Answer 3

Actually it probably wasn't needed in InstallShield either. Currently, InstallShield actually has better built-in IIS support then WiX and this type of setting can be done declaratively without writing a custom action. Also the InstallShield UI that collects this information looks pretty much just like the IIS MMC Snap-In so that it's intuitive how the data maps.