Tag: https

Working with IIS lately have brought me a lot of trouble, however it also increased my in-depth knowledge of its working abilities and adaptability.

One loving situation (between the minor ones) appeared after we did transition from http to https. After fixing the minor ones everything was working smooth and groovy except that sometimes the upload of files was broken. Then we realized it was not someTIME, but someTHING or the concrete size of the uploaded file that was causing the problem. Haa, so common problem when setting up Web Server you say, me said also, but this time the workaround was a little more pain in the *ss if you know what I mean.

The response given when uploading was an intelligent block by the Web Server resulting with error 413 – Request Entity Too Large. That doesn’t make a sense, I’m uploading  file that is 100KB but the settings allow max to 100MB file…

So with the help of rogue googling enabled by http://www.startpage.com I set my self digging into the problem overcome. One thing was clear, the trigger for this dysfunctionality certainly was https, since the uploading worked fine on http not secure. That gave me the rough but brilliant idea what https do. It encrypts, keeps extra request data, it certainly enlarges the request payload.

Hmm, OK first lets check the standard file limits in IIS.

Normal setting for max upload file size:

Setting the request limits in the root web.config of the site (default is 30 MB). This can be set in Internet Information Services Manager Program also (MACHINE->Site->IIS->Request Filtering->Edit Feature Settings)

<!– 100 MB . Format uses Bytes –>

<security>

    <requestFiltering>

        <requestLimits maxAllowedContentLength=”102400000″ />

    </requestFiltering>

   </security>

For ASP.NET you have more specific configuration:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/e1f13641%28v=vs.85%29.aspx

Example:

 <system.web>

   <httpRuntime maxRequestLength=”102400000″ executionTimeout=”3600″ />

 </system.web>

For legacy ASP:

<!– This goes under ASP – can be set with IIS Manager also 😉 –>

<limits maxRequestEntityAllowed=”102400000″/>

And here comes our solution:

http://www.iis.net/configreference/system.webserver/serverruntime

What we faced here is a buffer related problem. It’s not about the maxRequestEntityAllowed since the default size is Unlimited , but how IIS handles the request. After some empirics we noticed that the problem was occurring only with files larger or equal to 42 KB. And what is the default value of uploadReadAheadSize? 42 KB.

Then I charged myself to change this property. So I did the following:

Since we need to do section overriding through the means of <location> to change the default values (this configuration is not possible through IIS Manager)

<location path=”SiteName” overrideMode=”Allow”>

  <system.webServer>

   <asp>

    <session />

    <comPlus />

    <cache />

    <limits maxRequestEntityAllowed=”102400000″/>

   </asp>

    <serverRuntime enabled=”true” uploadReadAheadSize=”102400″ />

   </system.webServer>

</location>

However for some God sake reason, this configuration didn’t change the default values, even with overriding enabled for the serverRuntime section in the applicationHost.config . For easy check there is one good friend – the appcmd.

C:\Windows\System32\inetsrv\appcmd.exe list config “SiteName” -section:system.webServer/serverRuntime

And this bring us to the solution. To cut the story:

* Enable the serverRuntime section

C:\Windows\System32\inetsrv\appcmd.exe set config “SiteName” -section:system.webServer/ServerRuntime /enabled:”True” /commit:apphost

* Set the uploadReadAheadSize to 10MB

C:\Windows\System32\inetsrv\appcmd.exe set config “SiteName” -section:system.webServer/ServerRuntime /uploadReadAheadSize:”1024000” /commit:apphost

Restart if required, and that’s it.

Just aside note don’t forget to change the uploadReadAheadSize to something smaller and more realistic since 10MB is huge for a buffer, cause you don’t want to be hit by the nasty bad boyz with their huge payload packets.