Motivation
I was running a VPS hosting for a few years. The problem with it is lack of latest technologies I would like to play with. And of course - as we have the hosting mainly for fun, I would not pay a lot.
Originally the VPS was pre installed with .NET 2.0 Framework. During the years, I have upgraded it to .NET 3.5 but at the end I was almost out of free space and I was still missing upgraded SQL Server.
So I was thinking about how to solve it. At home, I had an old notebook with Windows XP Professional installed.
Unfortunately on Windows XP, multiple domains can't be hosted under built-in IIS server.
When I was testing the module, I found that there is a problem with support of multiple cookies set from ASP.NET application. Fortunately, there is also a patch available for it - but you must recompile the mod_aspdotnet module.
Prerequisites
System Setup
- Windows XP SP2
- Microsoft SQL Express 2005
- Apache 2.2
- Mail Enable SMTP server
- 2 domains, 5 subdomains (ASP.NET 2.0 applications and MVC 1.0 applications)
Apache Installation
I installed Apache using its default settings with the only one exception - I enabled development components for installation. It was because I was recompiling mod_aspdotnet module.
Module Compilation
I recompiled the mod_aspdotnet because of a bug in support of multiple cookies. Here is the available patch for this bug, but in the mean time it wasn't integrated into the sources.
Installation is quite simple. In the root of the source tree is available a batch file () which will show you how to manually install the compiled binaries.
Apache Configuration
Apache configuration is very simple and straightforward - an example which allows multiple virtual servers and Microsoft MVC for ASP.NET follows (more information can be found on the module's home page):
LoadModule aspdotnet_module modules/mod_aspdotnet.so
LoadModule rewrite_module modules/mod_rewrite.so
AddHandler asp.net asax ascx ashx asmx aspx axd \
config cs csproj licx rem resources resx \
soap vb vbproj vsdisco webinfo
AliasMatch /aspnet_client/system_web/(\d+)_(\d+)_(\d+)_(\d+)/(.*)
"C:/Windows/Microsoft.NET/Framework/v$1.$2.$3/ASP.NETClientFiles/$4"
<Directory "C:/Windows/Microsoft.NET/Framework/v*/ASP.NETClientFiles">
Options FollowSymlinks
Order allow,deny Allow from all
</Directory>
NameVirtualHost *
<VirtualHost *>
ServerAdmin admin@domain.net
DocumentRoot c:/webroot/domain.net/test
ServerName test.domain.net
ErrorLog "logs/test.domain.net-error.log
AspNetMount / "C:/webroot/domain.net/test"
# folders which shouldn't be handled thru Asp.net
# (see SetHandler in Directory definition)
<Location ~ "/(Content|Scripts)">
SetHandler None
</Location>
<Directory "C:/webroot/domain.net/test">
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
# redirect to the default location
RewriteRule ^$ /Default.aspx [R=301]
# handle all files in directory thru the Asp.Net
SetHandler asp.net
Options FollowSymlinks Indexes
AspNet All
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
DirectoryIndex Default.aspx
</Directory>
</VirtualHost>
References
