IIS application pool identity not allowing the server to start

Question

This question: IIS application pool access to remote directory on network ask how to allow iis to have the ability to access a file on a network drive. The answer is to set up a user with the appropriate rights and set the application pool identity to that user. We've done that and when we restart the app pool we get a 503 error on our web app.

It appears that the app isn't actually starting.

Here are more details which may help you analyze the problem:

This is Windows Server 2008 R2, iis 7

Our username is abc123\\_svc_OSAT (Domain name isn't actually abd123 but I need to obscure it rather than risk publishing internal company information)

As abc123\\_svc_OSAT I can map a drive to \\\\FPIAPPS01\\Logs which is a directory on a network server so we know that this user has network access.

In iis we click on our app pool, select Advanced Settings, select Identity, Select the .. button, select "Custom Account" and set it to the user abc123\\_svc_OSAT and use the proper password. We then stop and start that application pool.

When looking at the app in a browser we get a 503 error. Checking the logs at C:\\inetpub\\logs\\LogFiles\\W3SVC1 we don't see any error. However, the application appears not to have actually started.

1. Does abc123_svc_OSAT need a specific permission which we may be missing?
2. Is there any other place with a log file which we should look to get a better idea of what is causing the problem?

Thank you.

Answer 1

Does abc123_svc_OSAT have access to directory that hosts your ASPX files? The log files you are looking at are only for logging access to your website. You will want to check the event viewer to see the actual IIS error.

Answer 2

We ended up making the user an administrator and that worked. That's probably too broad for sufficient security rights. We'll keep looking. But it does show that the issue was somehow related to user roles rather than a password issue.