benjy
Posts: 35
Joined: Mon Nov 02, 2009 12:25 pm

Prevent IIS Features Being Installed

Fri May 04, 2018 2:05 pm

Hi,

We are currently developing a web application that will be installed to IIS using an Advanced Installer setup. As this is a public-facing web server, we want it as tied down as possible and only have the specific IIS features that we need installed. However, despite going through all of the options in AI that we can find that we think are related to IIS deployment, we are finding that certain features are being installed that we do not want:

Common HTTP Features
  • Default Document
    Directory Browsing
    HTTP Errors
    Static Content
Health and Diagnostics
  • HTTP Logging
    Request Monitor
Security
  • Request Filtering
    Windows Authentication
Application Development
  • .NET Extensibility 4.6
    ASP.NET 4.6
    ISAPI Extensions
    ISAPI Filters
Management Tools
  • IIS Management Console
    IIS Management Service
Of particular importance is "Windows Authentication"; however, we would like to understand why these features are being installed when we have seemingly not configured the AIP to install them (for example, for our website, I have ensured that the "Allow Windows authentication" option is not selected).

Please can you provide us with some guidance to resolve this problem?

Thanks,

Ben

Antarctica
Posts: 110
Joined: Tue Jul 08, 2014 9:24 am

Re: Prevent IIS Features Being Installed

Fri May 04, 2018 2:10 pm

Our software also requires IIS but does not install all these features.

Please post a screenshot of Requirements -> Prerequisites -> Windows Server Roles -> Web Server (IIS)

Ours is

Image

and as far as I see it, AI sticks to that...

benjy
Posts: 35
Joined: Mon Nov 02, 2009 12:25 pm

Re: Prevent IIS Features Being Installed

Fri May 04, 2018 6:20 pm

Hi,

Thanks for your reply.

We do not have any configuration under Windows Server Roles. All we have done is added a Windows Features Bundle which should install the following features:

- Internet Information Services > World Wide Web Services > Security > IP Security
- Internet Information Services > World Wide Web Services > Security > URL Authorization

That's it; nothing else. As far as I can see, there is no depedency between these features and the ones that are getting installed. We have also double-checked the configuration of our website and we can't see anything there that would explain why these features are being installed; they should not be. Therefore, there must be another explanation as to why these features are being installed and I hope we can get to the bottom of it...

Regards,

Ben

Daniel
Posts: 8237
Joined: Mon Apr 02, 2012 1:11 pm
Contact:  Website

Re: Prevent IIS Features Being Installed

Tue May 08, 2018 1:33 pm

Hello Ben,

Can you please send us the .aip (project file) to support at advancedinstaller dot com so we can investigate its settings? I want to double check this with our development team, but before I will need to have a look on your setup project settings.

All the best,
Daniel
Daniel Radu - Advanced Installer Team
Follow us: Twitter - Facebook - YouTube

Daniel
Posts: 8237
Joined: Mon Apr 02, 2012 1:11 pm
Contact:  Website

Re: Prevent IIS Features Being Installed

Mon May 14, 2018 4:25 pm

Hello Ben,

After further investigating this with our development team we found out the following:

1. The following IIS features are enabled by default by our "IIS" feature during web site installation:
  • WebServer
    WebServerRole
    RequestFiltering
    RequestMonitor
    HttpLogging
    ManagementService
    ManagementConsole
This is our built in implementation and is like so because these are the main IIS sub-features when you enable the "IIS" feature. However, our development team investigated about a possible improvement and they acknowledged that the "IIS" feature could be enabled only with the WebServer and WebServerRole sub-features in order to work properly. Hopefully we will add this improvement in the future.

2. The Application Development (.Net features) are enabled because you have enabled v4.0 of .Net framework to be registered for your app pool. You can go to "IIS" page, select your app pool item and in the right pane set the ".Net Framework version" field to "No managed code" option if you do not need this to be registered.

3. The "Windows Authentication" feature is enabled due to a current bug/limitation in Advanced Installer. You have a web app added under "Default Web Site" in "IIS" page. Our predefined "Default Web Site" entry has by default the "Windows Authentication" option enabled. This is an Advanced Installer issue and a fix will be available in the future, thank you for bringing this to our attention. We will update this thread we a fix will be out.

Until then, as a workaround, you can proceed like this:

a. go to "Table Editor" page and select the "AI_IIsWebSite" table
b. set the "AccessFlags" column of the "APPDIR" row to 0
c. rebuild and test the project again

Let us know if you have any further questions or doubts.

All the best,
Daniel
Daniel Radu - Advanced Installer Team
Follow us: Twitter - Facebook - YouTube

gthomas
Posts: 3
Joined: Fri May 12, 2017 5:07 am

Re: Prevent IIS Features Being Installed

Thu May 31, 2018 3:40 am

Hi,
I have the same issue. My application internally handles Http Authentication, and some versions of IIS interfere with this (by adding additional http headers) when the Windows Authentication feature is installed, even when Windows Authentication is disabled in the IIS Management console.

I cannot use the suggested workaround of the Table Editor, as I don't have the Enterprise version of Advanced Installer.

Until this is fixed, I need to manually uninstall the Windows Authentication feature after I update out software.

Are there any other suggested work arounds or an estimate on the time for a fix?


Thanks
Garry

Daniel
Posts: 8237
Joined: Mon Apr 02, 2012 1:11 pm
Contact:  Website

Re: Prevent IIS Features Being Installed

Tue Jun 05, 2018 4:05 pm

Hello Garry,

We apologize for the inconvenience. Our development team has already started working on a fix and hopefully it will be available in our next AI version. However, unfortunately I cannot give you any estimate for now.

We will update this thread as soon as the fix will be available. Until then you can try to develop your own custom action which will disable the Windows Authentication feature at the end of the installation. The action should be scheduled as a custom action with sequenced after "Install Execution Stage -> Finish Execution" action group.

All the best,
Daniel
Daniel Radu - Advanced Installer Team
Follow us: Twitter - Facebook - YouTube

Dan
Posts: 4513
Joined: Wed Apr 24, 2013 3:51 pm

Re: Prevent IIS Features Being Installed

Fri Jul 13, 2018 12:35 pm

Hello,

This was fixed in version 15.0 of Advanced Installer released on June 28th, 2018.

Best regards,
Dan
Dan Ghiorghita - Advanced Installer Team
Follow us: Twitter - Facebook - YouTube

gthomas
Posts: 3
Joined: Fri May 12, 2017 5:07 am

Re: Prevent IIS Features Being Installed

Sun Jul 29, 2018 12:43 am

Hi Dan,
I can confirm that the issue appears to be fixed.

Thanks
Garry

Daniel
Posts: 8237
Joined: Mon Apr 02, 2012 1:11 pm
Contact:  Website

Re: Prevent IIS Features Being Installed

Mon Jul 30, 2018 7:03 am

You are always welcome Garry.

All the best,
Daniel
Daniel Radu - Advanced Installer Team
Follow us: Twitter - Facebook - YouTube

anreis
Posts: 2
Joined: Fri May 10, 2019 8:44 am

Re: Prevent IIS Features Being Installed

Fri May 10, 2019 9:11 am

Hi,


1. The following IIS features are enabled by default by our "IIS" feature during web site installation:
WebServer
WebServerRole
RequestFiltering
RequestMonitor
HttpLogging
ManagementService
ManagementConsole



Are there any work arounds to prevent installation of ManagementService?

Best regards,
Andre

Catalin
Posts: 6542
Joined: Wed Jun 13, 2018 7:49 am

Re: Prevent IIS Features Being Installed

Fri May 10, 2019 11:50 am

Hello Andre and welcome to Advanced Installer forums,

In order to achieve that, you can simply select all the IIS features that you want to be installed. This can all be done from "Prerequisites" page --> right click on "Windows Features" --> "Add a new Feature Bundle" --> select the "Target Operating Systems".

Please have a look on the following screenshot:
IIS.PNG
IIS.PNG (59.07KiB)Viewed 12497 times
Hope this helps.

All the best,
Catalin
Catalin Gheorghe - Advanced Installer Team
Follow us: Twitter - Facebook - YouTube

anreis
Posts: 2
Joined: Fri May 10, 2019 8:44 am

Re: Prevent IIS Features Being Installed

Fri May 10, 2019 1:52 pm

Hello Catalin,
we are using installer for an installation on Windows Server OS, that's why I use "Windows Server Roles"

PS: "Windows Features" doesn't allow to select ".Net Extensibility 4.x" and some another features if Server 2008 RC2 is selected

Best regards,
Andre
Attachments
iis.png
iis.png (32.7KiB)Viewed 12496 times

Catalin
Posts: 6542
Joined: Wed Jun 13, 2018 7:49 am

Re: Prevent IIS Features Being Installed

Fri May 17, 2019 1:08 pm

Hello Andre,

First of all, please accept my apologies for the delayed reply, but we were quite busy lately.

In what regards your statement, indeed, you are right, "Windows Features" does not allow you to select ".NET Extensibility 4.x".

However, I am not quite sure I understand your scenario here. What is the issue that you are confronting with? Could you please give me some more details about it?

Looking forward to hearing from you.

All the best,
Catalin
Catalin Gheorghe - Advanced Installer Team
Follow us: Twitter - Facebook - YouTube

codesynergy
Posts: 100
Joined: Fri Nov 14, 2014 10:29 pm

Re: Prevent IIS Features Being Installed

Thu Feb 20, 2020 5:26 pm

It appears this is still an issue in Advanced Installer version 16.7.

First screenshot are the features I select in AI:
SelectedFeatures.PNG
SelectedFeatures.PNG (20.04KiB)Viewed 11476 times
Second screenshot is what is enabled in Windows after running my install:
InstalledFeatures.PNG
InstalledFeatures.PNG (47.87KiB)Viewed 11476 times

You can see there are a lot more features installed than I had selected. None of these additional features appear to be dependencies of the features I selected, so they shouldn't be installed.

Return to “Common Problems”