Develop Reference

How to run ftp-deployed exe as admin from web request?

Goal:
I periodically upload new .exe file to windows server 2003 via FTP and I want to run it manually by hitting Url of a web site on same server. Exe needs to be run under an Admin account, and not the NETWORK SERVICE account.
What I achieved so far:
I have been able to successfully run applications like notepad under the Admin account on the server via a web request by using any of these:
PsExec,
.net process.Start() with credentials supplied to process.StartInfo and even
by impersonating admin and then using process.Start without credentials (http://www.f4cio.com/programmatically-impersonate-in-csharp)
The problem:
The above methods run my exe but Task Manager, or a call to System.Security.Principal.WindowsIdentity.GetCurrent().Name shows me that it is running under NETWORK SERVICE.
I suspect that this file has added security constraints because it arrived from ftp link. Checking run-as-administrator in properties of file is not an option because file will be replaced periodically and all needs to be automated. Also manual server configuration should be minimal or ideally non-existent. Code-only single-web-page solution is ideal. Editing both that asp.net web page and exe is ok. (I tried something with exe self-restarting).

Not sure about this, but I suspect this has to do with you website running under the NETWORK SERVICE user. Whatever privileges your website-user has, the same are probably granted / passed on as you try to run your executable.
Is this server on an internal network or protected in some other way? (I should hope so!). If so, you might try changing App Pool that the website is running under to an admin account (in IIS, right click the App Pool running the site, select Advanced Settings, and look for the Identity setting). If I'm right, that will allow you to run your executable as an admin too.
Be aware however, that this may increase the security risk of your setup: Allowing your site to run under an admin account means easier access to your entire server if anyone is able to penetrate whatever security measures you have in place. Make sure access to this server is tightly limited, and preferably, that it in turn does not have access to other systems, since that would in turn make them vulnerable by extension.

Run c# code on client side or make a web session interactive?

I'm making an application on c# for signing PDFs. Its works perfectly on my visual studio web project, but when I publish it on my test server it throws me this Error
In this case I'm trying to execute the code that sign a pdf on the server and the error occurs specifically on the line:
System.Security.Cryptography.Pkcs.SignedCms.ComputeSignature()
It is supposed to throws a window on your desktop asking for your certificate (reading a smart Card) and then asking for your PIN just like this
Windows Security Window but I have the hunch that it's not possible because Its implies that the server have to have the possibility to interact with the client's desktop
Ok, now that I've explained all the enviroment that I'm facing, here are the solutions I've tried until now:
1) Trying to correct the Server Error above: I went in the server to IIS>application Pool>MyPage>Advanced Settings>Process Model>Load User Profile and selected True instead of False (Didn't Work)
2) Still trying to correct the Server Error I Went to Computer Management>Services and Application>Services and turned on the service "Interactive Service Detection" (Still not working and doesn't work even if I do the same on the client computer)
3)Finally, I guess that it's not possible to run the code on the server because the Error line above is a native calling of Windows Security so I thought: what if I try to run the code right from the client?. Like a c# applet equivalent or something, well... there are two ways for do that: ActiveX (old technology) and Silverlight (newer). The thing is that I just can't make a simple Silverlight program start on chrome, it does on firefox and IE but if doesn't work on chrome is a totally waste so my last option is to make it run with an ActiveX, and there is almost none useful information in the internet about that
If someone can tell me what to do, either to correct the error or to make my program run from the client side, I would be so grateful

You can't call the system's api from a Web client as this would break the sandbox. If you must use that system call, create a wrapper on the server that will handle the popup, although this would be a very "hacky" solution. You should really be asking why I am trying to use a Web client interface if I must use said native system call.

Creating Microsoft Word objects in an ASP.NET Application

I have an IIS 7.5 on a 2008 R2 server running an application using ASP.NET with framework 4.0. The application creates a word report, first it opens an HTML web page, selects all of the content and copies it to a word template and then it saves it in a location. If I run the application form Visual Studio Express 2010, the application runs fine and does everything it should. But when I run it from IIS the application hangs. I have the InternetExplorer object and the Word object set to visible so I can see what's happening (normally is set to false), and no Internet Explorer is visible or Word even though I can see in the task manager that the processes are up and running. If I let it run an exception will be thrown that says:
"This command is not available because no document is open"
When the first action is made with the code is a word.ActiveDocument.Select(); this is after word.Documents.Open(); If I put a word.Activate(); before a word.Documents.Open();another exception will be thrown that says:
"Cannot activate application"
our AppPool is set to our local user with Super Admin rights, the folders have both users, the AppPool and the local user, with all rights, I have done the DCOM Setting to defaults and added missing users. I do know that Microsoft advises against Office Automation but for now we are using this.
I guess the problem is with some permissions but I don't know where else to look. Also it's very strange that the applications are set to visible and the processes are shown in the Task Manager to be up and running but not even the IE window is shown.
EDIT :
I will change the code to use OpenXML SDK as all the information that I've encountered and comments leads to this, but I will leave the question open to see if anyone has more information. Also the other part of the question was that the IE Object is created, initialized and the process is up, but no window is visible even though the object is set to visible anyone can shine some light on this?
I'm using the
InternetExplorer Class.

troubleshooting a website that doesn't give errors

I have an asp.net web forms, web application that I am working on where the user fills out a form that is currently a paper form and we are trying to get it on an ipad. The form is filled out and then using a .net windows form webbrowser control and bitmap library, I take a screen shot of the form and save it to a server on the local network. The applications works 100% of the time when I run it in debug mode out of visual studio 2013, regardless of web browser. As soon as I publish to IIS 7.5 running on the same machine I am developing on to test it out, it stops working. Everything returns 200 codes like it should but the image of the form does not get saved and I get no errors. I added a console property to the class I'm using to create the image of the form that adds statements after each line of code that I then write to the web browser console and all lines of code are being executed. I don't know what to do next to try and figure out why this isn't working. Any suggestions?

My gut tells me this may be a permissions problem. Have you ensured the security context under which your IIS app domain is running as write permissions to the folder in which you are storing the files? In 'debug' mode, your user account may already have permissions, but not so with the IIS security context. You may be getting access denied errors that you are somehow swallowing in your code. Just a hunch. Post more details for better diagnosis.

Opening a text file on the local system from an asp.net web application

OK to add clarification after the comments posted and the fact I realise my original question was massively confusing. This is what I am trying to achieve....
This will be an web application running on a local intranet and not over the internet. Ultimately I want to be open a network folder location from within the the web application. So for example the web application creates folders on the file server with a set structure i.e:
\server\jobnumber\exhibitreference\image1
\server\jobnumber\exhibitreference\image2
I want the user to be able to navigate to the record and click a link to open it's matching folder location. The users, web server and file server are all on the same domain.
The code below was just used as an example to try and get it working for a file/folder on my local machine before I moved off to trying a remote folder. I appreciate this was confusing.
Original question
I have created .Net/C# web application and I want to open a text file at a specified location. The code below is working fine when run on IIS Express but once published to IIS it does not work.
At present IIS Express and IIS 7 are running on my local machine. The IIS application pool is configured to run under my domain account (had to do this as we have a double hop issue of authentication to SQL server) So far I have the following code:
ProcessStartInfo processStartInfo = new ProcessStartInfo();
processStartInfo.WorkingDirectory = #"C:\Users\pcustance\Desktop\";
processStartInfo.FileName = #"notepad.exe";
processStartInfo.Arguments = "test.txt";
processStartInfo.WindowStyle = ProcessWindowStyle.Maximized;
processStartInfo.CreateNoWindow = true;
Process process = Process.Start(processStartInfo);
Watching the system processes through task manager I can see that the process "notepad.exe" gets created successfully but no window opens. It says the process is running under "pcustance" account but I can only see it when I select "show processes from all users" in task manager.
Is the window not launching because somehow it is being run under the wrong account?
I have also tried:
Process.Start("C:\Users\pcustance\Desktop\test.txt");
As before, this works in IIS Express but not on IIS7.
Any help is greatly appreciated.
Solution
At the moment I have had to resort to using Internet Explorer which supports the use of local links out the box. The browser can be pointed at a network location with the following:
file:///\\server\folder\location
or
file://///server/folder/location

All your code runs within asp.net which is hosted in a server (via IIS).
The code you have written will execute in the context of where your asp.net app is hosted.
While doing web development using visual studio, the "server" and the "client" (i.e. the browser) is usually the same computer. The code executes in the context of a localized development server. Your browser will make requests to "that" server. Therefore the code you wrote is bound to give you the illusion that you've started the process - notepad.exe
The stuff you've actually implemented about doesn't apply for web applications in general. It isn't even feasible. Since the "server" and "client" are two different machines now. The closest you can get into implementing this requirement is serving up the file as response. To the end user, this is equivalent to downloading (in most cases).
Edit:
Your options are serving up the file as-is shown in the code:
Response.ContentType = "application/octet-stream";
Response.AddHeader("Content-Disposition", _
"attachment; filename=""" & filename & """");
This will force user to download the file on the client with a default name as specified by value in filename. Actually you can vary the Content-Disposition part to instruct the browser how to load. However, it depends on the target browser. Here is a small example:
FileStream MyFileStream = new FileStream(#"d:\inetpub\wwwroot\small.txt", FileMode.Open);
long FileSize;
FileSize = MyFileStream.Length;
byte[] Buffer = new byte[(int)FileSize];
MyFileStream.Read(Buffer, 0, (int)MyFileStream.Length);
MyFileStream.Close();
Response.ContentType="text/plain";
Response.AddHeader( "content-disposition","inline; filename=sample.txt");
Response.BinaryWrite(Buffer);
You should research a few articles and experiment. Here are some links to start with:
Content-Disposition:What are the differences between "inline" and "attachment"?
http://www.nullskull.com/articles/20011006.asp
http://www.windowsdevcenter.com/pub/a/dotnet/2002/04/01/asp.html

The intent of your question is still not clear.
Are you...
A. trying to connect to a web application (hosted with IIS) from a client browser and access a file from a network share (relative to the server) for the client to consume?
B. trying to connect to a web application (hosted with IIS) from a client browser and have the application access a file from the network to be used by the server (like a .txt file containing information that the application needs for some processing)?
C. trying to connect to a web application (hosted with IIS) from a client browser and have the hosted application access a file from a network share (relative to the client) for the server to consume?
My assumption is you are attempting (B) and if so, you should use System.IO and access your files programmatically instead of trying to launch a process.
UPDATED BELOW
If you are trying to connect to a web application, and launch a local process (such as notepad.exe) on the client you cannot do so by launching a process. Otherwise MyVirus.com could launch local processes on my machine and that would be a nightmare. The web application is only going to launch processes on the server, never the client.
The best you can do is open the file (from the server) and send a Response back to the client with the contents of the file or send the path and file name to the client and open it via javascript or an HTML5 FileReader.
ADDITIONAL UPDATE
You should be able to open an image (or other content consumable in a browser) from a UNC path as long as you are your Application Pool Identity has permissions and also, are you using impersonation (identity impersonate="true" userName="someaccount" password="somepassword")?
ONE LAST UPDATE
Unfortunately even opening a folder location requires a local process to launch (explorer.exe). That's simply not going to happen with modern browsers for security reasons. You could cook up something wonky like a local windows service on each client machine that checks a database and if it finds x it launches the local explorer.exe to the path stored in the database... but it would have to be checking every second and that sounds like a really bad idea.
Other than that maybe something like this File Explorer Control from Telerik or this File View Control would serve your purposes. (Disclaimer, I don't know anything about either of these controls just thought they might help).

please see this page
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/58wxa9w5(v=vs.100).aspx
Most importantly this line
Use when you are working with an existing project or your site targets an older version of IIS, such as IIS 6, and it is not very important that your testing environment match the production environment closely. This server option is the default in Visual Studio. However, the Visual Studio Development Server runs in a different security context than full IIS, and may fail to reveal errors that can occur when you deploy to a production version of IIS.
The issue is that IISExpress and the local dev server run under your security context. This allows them much more freedom to start processes and have access to files on the local system.
IIS however runs in a much stricter security context and has a limited access to the machine at hand. Imagine if IIS could do what you are proposing above. you could basically run any arbitrary code on the webserver.