IIS Insider - October 2002

  • Article

By Brett Hill

How To Run Scripts Other Than ASP on IIS

Q: We want to run PHP and Perl on our IIS server but are not able to find a way to get the scripts to work. There are a lot of scripts available, but how do you enable IIS to run scripts besides ASP?

A: Microsoft provides a version of the Perl interpreter in the Windows 2000 Resource Kit, but for the latest and greatest, you should download the updated releases from www.activestate.com. There you will find a package called ActivePerl that includes an installation routine that will create application mappings for .pl and .plx, so be sure you manage those accordingly. In other words, if you intend to you use .pl for all your scripts, you can delete the application mapping for .plx. When possible, use the perls.dll interpreter instead of the perl.exe interpreter for better performance and scalability. You can also find How-To articles on this topic at https://www.iisanswers.com/Top10FAQ/t10-installperl.htm and Knowledge Base article Q245225.

PHP is available as a download from www.php.net where you will also find extensive documentation and on-site resources.

JRun for java applications can be found at https://www.macromedia.com/software/jrun.

ASP.net can be found at https://gotdotnet.com or Windows Update.

How To Detect Which Computers Have IIS Installed

Q: I was wondering if there was a tool that will detect whether or not IIS is installed on a PC or not. We have well over 3,000 uses and we need a way to identify which computers have IIS installed.

A: Microsoft has two tools that you can use to scan a subnet. HFNetChk and the Microsoft Security Baseline Analyzer (MSBA) will identify all systems on your network that are typical in that the Client for Microsoft Networks and File and Print Sharing are installed as well as the Server, Workstation, and Remote Registry services are running. If these won't work for you, you can do port scans with tools like fport from www.foundstone.com which will tell you what ports are open on each system on a network. Of course, this doesn't tell you what is hooked up to each of those ports and certainly IIS can listen to any port the user chooses; however, it is a good bet that if port 80 is available it is probably IIS. Superscan, another free utility from Foundstone, has the added ability of displaying the banner returned when you connect to a service. This little gem can very quickly scan a network and report on the findings.

In addition to the above methods, when users log on to their accounts, you can test for the presence of IIS in the users logon script. With these choices and tools available on the Internet for this purpose, you should have a good start.

Need to Reapply Hotfixes and Service Packs After Adding Internet Services?

Q: We installed IIS on our Windows 2000 server but did not install any other Internet services. Now, we need to add the SMTP service for a web application that sends mail from the server. If we add the SMTP service do we need to reapply the latest service packs and hotfixes?

A: With Windows NT 4.0, any time you added a service such as the SMTP service to the operating system, you needed to reinstall service packs and hotfixes. With Windows 2000, the situation has improved in that you do not typically need to reapply service packs when you install software, services, or updates. For example, you can install Windows 2000 without IIS, apply Service Pack x (where x is the latest service pack number), then install IIS and the binaries (programs) version numbers will be at the level of Service Pack (SP) x. This saves quite a bit of work when you need to add services such as, in your case, SMTP. Hotfixes and roll-ups, however, are another matter. While it is true that your SMTP service will be at the SP x level, you will need to reapply hotfixes and roll-ups related to the service. For example, if you uninstalled or reinstalled IIS, all IIS hotfixes and roll-ups would need to be reapplied since the release of the most recently applied service pack.

The best way to make sure you've got this covered is to use HFNetChk or the Microsoft Security Baseline Analyzer (MSBA) on the system. They are the most reliable means to determine what hotfixes and updates need to be applied to the server. Therefore, install SMTP, then run one of those tools to advise you as to what hotfixes need to be applied.

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