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Webbatch with NT 4 and IIS

Keywords:     IIS server

Question:

  1. I am trying to run webbatch on a NT4 IIS 3 server. Webbatch is in a virtual directory running on a virtual ip address, I have 7 on one box. Whenever i try and run a script it tries to return the script result on the original server ip address i.e. the physical address as aposed to the virtual one. As all my web servers run on a virtual ip address only...I have a severe problem here!! Any fixes or updates for this.....or am I doing something wrong?

  2. I am using a test intranet site which uses 6 ip addresses on one web server, one is the physical address of 170.1.0.1, the others range from .10 to .15, all ip addresses have their own default web page etc. If I use webbatch on address 170.1.0.10/web-cgi or .14/web-cgi, it will automatically try and create a dynamic return page on 170.1.0.1/web-cgi, unfortunatley this directory doesn't exist. It so happens that it does this from whatever ip address that I use that has a Virtual web site on it. It works fine on my physical ip address if I create the directory etc. but will not work from any of the virtual web sites. My main Web server on the Net uses the physical card ip address for DNS and not as a virtual web site.

  3. I am an ISP and I have NT4 servers that have multiple IP addresses allocated to them. Each IP address is configured through the Network controll panel within NT under the "protocol"-"Advanced" section.These are permanent IP addresses that are used. The main physical IP address is the card address which is allocated to DNS resolution, the other IP addreses are used for Email, FTP and Virtual web sites (these are permanently allocated IP addreses but have no physical card to refference, they are setup within DNS and IIS). Within the management console of IIS, you can configure your web sites by ticking the Virtual IP address box and allocating a home directory for the address. This is the only way ISP's or Corporates can host multiple web and DNS sites on one server. It seems to me that Webbatch is not compatible with this concept, see my previous posting... I only have a limited understanding of webbatch so maybe there is a way round this?

  4. Please can you explain to me how I setup webbatch on a NT4 server, if I am an ISP hosting multiple web sites and ip addreses on one box......so far I cant get it to work! If under NT4 Server using IIS3 you create virtual domains using virtual ip addresses, web batch gets completeley confused as to which ip address it needs to output its data to, it always sends it to the physical network card address even if you send the info to another ip address!!! It is not the webbatch code that is failing....its the way the webbatch executable was created!!! It naturally asumes that nobody who is using webbatch will be using multiple virtual ip addresses but only the physical address on the machine.

Answer:

  1. Obviously you are pulling the IP address out of the environment with something like the WebConData function. It looks like perhaps the server is providing its root address and not the IP address of the conversation.

    I suggest doing a: 

    	http://your.machine.com/webcgi/webbatch.exe?dumpinputdata
    and examining that dump for items that might be useful. You may not be able to pick the ip address up, but should be able to get other information (perhaps the URL field) that you can use to determine which virtual server was accessed.

  2. WebBatch does not care what IP address is used. It makes absolutely no use of IP information except in a few licensing related circumstances. I do not understand what the problem is. I have not seen any code that fails. WebBatch can only work with information provided to it you your Web server. All information available may be examined via the: 
    	../webcgi/webbatch.exe?dumpinputdata
    function.

    If different IP addresses have different webcgi addresses and you need a copy of WebBatch in each separate webcgi directory. This is a security consideration.

    What symptoms do you see? I can believe it does not work, but the problem diagnosis is too detailed. WebBatch does not have a clue as to the network cards that might or might not be installed in the machine. It also does not direct its output to any particular address.

    So.

    1. What happens?
    2. Nothing? It seems ignored.
    3. Some kind of server error message?
    4. Output shows up on wrong browser?
    5. Webbatch.exe itself is downloaded?
    6. CGI Output error in Browser window?

  3. Does the server error log have anything in it? If so what?

  4. Does the system event log application section, security section or anything else have any mention of any error? If so what?

There are people running similiar servers having no problem. I think it is some sort of configuration issue.

Question (continued):

If the IP address of the physical network card is not the same as the Web server then webbatch creates a 401 page not found error. If the web site does have the same ip address as the physical network card then there is no problem.

If you have 2 web sites on one server, one with the same ip address as the NIC and the other not, if you then have webbatch installed in a directory mapped to the webserver with the non nic ip address it tries to send the output to the web site that does have the same physical ip address as that of the nic and then throughs up a error that it cannot find webbatch.exe.....obviuosly not because its the wrong website!

If you install webbatch onto both sites and then run the executable it still sends the output to the wrong website but at least it produces the output. The only problem with this is that at one minute your user is filling in a form on www.pizza.com and then it receives a thank you note from www.hardwareincorporated.co.uk!!!! Great!

Webbatch might not have a clue as to what network card is installed on the server but it does map the default webserver to the default ip address on the server, this is the way NT IIS3 works.

Answer:

We've analyzed the problem and have decided it must be either a bug in your code or a bug in IIS.

One workaround is to change the type of CGI you are running. I don't remember if IIS supports WINCGI, but if it does you might try WINCGI instead of STDCGI.

IIS hands WebBatch a "pipe" to which to send the answering html page. We merely direct the output to the pipe. No addressing information accompanies the pipes. Either in or out.

From the analysis of the situation it is difficult to believe there is a bug of this magnitude in IIS, so therefor your script becomes suspect. We've not seen any of it yet. A current theory is that hardcoded temporary files are overwriting each other. No idea really.

We've tested it with a Netscape server and IIS 4 and don't see any problems. 

Article ID:   W12487

Filename:   Webbatch with NT4 and IIS.txt
File Created: 1999:04:15:16:47:34
Last Updated: 1999:04:15:16:47:34