Reading Files On Network From IIS7.5

Question

I have a WCF Service running on Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise. The IIS Version is 7.5. One of the methods in the service reads from a file on the network. It's failing when it tries to do this, but I can't log a proper error to find out why. My guess is that this is a permissions issue, but not being savvy with IIS, I don't know where to start.

The site running my service is using an App Pool with NetwrokService as the Identity. I have tried other built-in accounts, but I get the same problem. When looking at the running processes in Task Manager, I see w3wp.exe is running under the NetworkService account - which is how the App Pool is configured.

I'm trying to reach a share such as: \\Machine1\\SharedFiles\\MyFile.txt. I can access this same share easily from file explorer so I know it's valid. Every other part of the service runs as expected which leads me to believe my IIS configuration is fine - other than possibly a permission setting that allows reading of files on other machines.

Anyone have any idea what I am doing wrong?

Thanks,

Answer 1

Start here: http://learn.iis.net/page.aspx/624/application-pool-identities/

It is a permission issue. The share, and the files within it, need to grant access to the IIS servers machine account.