January 18, 2007
(Warning: No one but the geekiest of IT professionals will appreciate this anecdote I am about to share. Prepare to be excited.)
One of the projects I'm involved in at work right now requires the hosting of a number of files on an intranet web server. After going through the proper channels and a considerable amount of red tape, a Windows Server 2003 machine was provided for us. However, it was completely useless for our purposes as it did not have IIS installed. (What use is Windows Server 2003 without IIS?!?)
As the lone resource allocated to the project, I was given admin access to the server so I was able to connect to it remotely. I attempted to install IIS (by adding the Application Server role) but the installation files were not to be found anywhere on the server. I had a choice to make. I could
Method #1 - The brute force approach (Kids, do not try this at home!)
I couldn't find an installation disc for Win2K3 anywhere around the office and I didn't want to download the whole thing off of MSDN. All I needed were the IIS files. So I thought that maybe the installer can use the files off of an existing IIS 6.0 installation.
I had remote admin access to another Win2K3 machine which I knew had IIS installed. This second server was on the same network as the one I was setting up. A file search revealed that most of the files the installer was looking for were to be found in the WINNT folder and its sub-folders. So what I did was point the installer in right direction by telling it to look in the ADMIN$ share (which by default points to WINNT) of the second Win2K3 machine. I had to change the source path from time to time, but it was less of a hassle than the alternative.
I thought it was smooth sailing from there on in, until I reached the halfway point of the progress bar, when the installer started asking for "iis6.cab". But of course, iis6.cab didn't exist on the second machine because it only contains the contents of iis6.cab, not iis6.cab itself because it didn't have the actual installation files. Sadly, I had to abort the operation.
Method #2 - Slightly less brute brute force (Do not attempt without adult supervision)
I was resigned to having the experts install IIS when I realized another resource. I had dabbled a some time ago in researching on BizTalk and for testing purposes, I used a virtual machine which I downloaded from here. I remembered that it had Win2K3 installed, and more importantly, it had all the installation files on disk (for evaluating the different server functions).
I couldn't access the virtual machine from the remote server (VPN reasons) so I first copied all the installation files (around 700 MB) from the virtual machine to a folder on my local machine. I shared this folder over the network and I pointed the installer to this share. Because of the slow connection, I waited half an hour, but it worked! IIS was installed!
Post-installation
One of the requirements for the project was hosting some videos on a website. For this, I decided to use FLVs and FlowPlayer, a free embeddable FLV player. I got the FLVs and FlowPlayer up on the freshly installed web server, but somehow, the FLVs weren't being served and I was getting "Page cannot be found" errors. In another funky solution to a funky problem, the Wikipedia article on FLVs revealed a hint: the MIME type for FLVs was "video/x-flv".
(You can configure MIME types for a website by opening its properties page in the IIS snap-in, going to the "HTTP Headers" tab, and clicking on the "MIME Types..." button.)
I got around to telling the proper channels that their help was no longer necessary and was lauded for my brilliantly creative yet unorthodox solution.
One of the projects I'm involved in at work right now requires the hosting of a number of files on an intranet web server. After going through the proper channels and a considerable amount of red tape, a Windows Server 2003 machine was provided for us. However, it was completely useless for our purposes as it did not have IIS installed. (What use is Windows Server 2003 without IIS?!?)
As the lone resource allocated to the project, I was given admin access to the server so I was able to connect to it remotely. I attempted to install IIS (by adding the Application Server role) but the installation files were not to be found anywhere on the server. I had a choice to make. I could
- Go through the proper channels, get stuck in more red tape, and have the experts install IIS on the server; or
- Be the hero and find my own way to install IIS.
Method #1 - The brute force approach (Kids, do not try this at home!)
I couldn't find an installation disc for Win2K3 anywhere around the office and I didn't want to download the whole thing off of MSDN. All I needed were the IIS files. So I thought that maybe the installer can use the files off of an existing IIS 6.0 installation.
I had remote admin access to another Win2K3 machine which I knew had IIS installed. This second server was on the same network as the one I was setting up. A file search revealed that most of the files the installer was looking for were to be found in the WINNT folder and its sub-folders. So what I did was point the installer in right direction by telling it to look in the ADMIN$ share (which by default points to WINNT) of the second Win2K3 machine. I had to change the source path from time to time, but it was less of a hassle than the alternative.
I thought it was smooth sailing from there on in, until I reached the halfway point of the progress bar, when the installer started asking for "iis6.cab". But of course, iis6.cab didn't exist on the second machine because it only contains the contents of iis6.cab, not iis6.cab itself because it didn't have the actual installation files. Sadly, I had to abort the operation.
Method #2 - Slightly less brute brute force (Do not attempt without adult supervision)
I was resigned to having the experts install IIS when I realized another resource. I had dabbled a some time ago in researching on BizTalk and for testing purposes, I used a virtual machine which I downloaded from here. I remembered that it had Win2K3 installed, and more importantly, it had all the installation files on disk (for evaluating the different server functions).
I couldn't access the virtual machine from the remote server (VPN reasons) so I first copied all the installation files (around 700 MB) from the virtual machine to a folder on my local machine. I shared this folder over the network and I pointed the installer to this share. Because of the slow connection, I waited half an hour, but it worked! IIS was installed!
Post-installation
One of the requirements for the project was hosting some videos on a website. For this, I decided to use FLVs and FlowPlayer, a free embeddable FLV player. I got the FLVs and FlowPlayer up on the freshly installed web server, but somehow, the FLVs weren't being served and I was getting "Page cannot be found" errors. In another funky solution to a funky problem, the Wikipedia article on FLVs revealed a hint: the MIME type for FLVs was "video/x-flv".
(You can configure MIME types for a website by opening its properties page in the IIS snap-in, going to the "HTTP Headers" tab, and clicking on the "MIME Types..." button.)
I got around to telling the proper channels that their help was no longer necessary and was lauded for my brilliantly creative yet unorthodox solution.
welcome to the club!
Cool hack. :)
Ah! Thanks for the FLV mime-type info. That was driving me nuts!
MIME Type .FLV:
flv-application/octet-stream
more info in the following Adobe TechNote
Windows 2003 Server does not stream FLV videos
http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/knowledgebase/index.cfm?id=tn_19439
Just got to the same stuck place almost the exact same way (perhaps even more brutal as I renamed files along the way to get the installer to take them. Then the dreaded iis6.cab of death. Not virtual machine for this play with it til it breaks....so its wait til morning, 'fess up to a limited version of tinights stupidity and fix it when someone 1500 miles from here can stick a disk in the machine. Doh!
Big deal!!
This is nothing. Just logik.