Configuring OpenLM EasyAdmin with IIS 10 on Windows Server 2016 – KB801

OpenLM’s EasyAdmin interface is delivered via LightHTTPD: a built-in web server that starts as a service. If users would like to configure EasyAdmin with IIS 10 on Windows Server 2016 instead, this guide will explain how to do so.

Note: If you’re looking to configure IIS on Windows 10, please follow this guide instead.

This guide consists of two parts: installing IIS and configuring IIS 10 to work with EasyAdmin.

 

Installation

Check to see if IIS is not already installed. Open the localhost URL in your browser where the Server is installed (by default: http://localhost). If you’re not seeing the default IIS “Welcome” screen as below, then it means that you have to install it.

Installing IIS 10 on Windows Server 2016

1. Open the Start Menu and click on Server Manager. If you can’t locate it, click on the Search icon in the taskbar and type “Server Manager”.

2. Click on “Add roles and features”.

3. On the “Before you begin” screen, click “Next”.

4. Leave the “Role-based or feature-based installation” option selected and click “Next”.

5. As we’re installing IIS on the local machine, leave “Select a server from the server pool” with the current machine selected and click “Next”.

6. Check the “Web Server (IIS)” box. A pop-up window (see below) may appear asking if you want to include management tools. These will be required later to configure IIS. Leave the box checked and click on “Add Features” to continue. If you plan to use Windows Authentication for the EasyAdmin interface as described here, you will also need to expand the node Web Server (IIS) → Security → check “Windows Authentication”

Once you have done this and you’re back on the “Select server roles” screen, click “Next”.

7. At this point, we won’t be needing any additional features, so simply click “Next”.

8. Click “Next” on the “Web Server Role (IIS)” window.

9. On the “Role Services” window, scroll down and expand “Web Server” → “Application Development” → check “CGI” then click “Next”.

If you’re planning to use EasyAdmin with Windows Authentication as described in this guide, you will also need to add “Web Server” → “Security” → check “Windows Authentication”.

10. Click “Install” once on the confirmation screen. For a standard IIS installation, no reboot should be required.

11. Once installation has succeeded, you can click the “Close” button. To check if IIS is up and running on your server, open up your browser and go to http://localhost/ to confirm. You should see the default “Welcome” screen.

 

Enabling URL Rewrite

The URL Rewrite extension is required for running EasyAdmin with IIS 10 on Windows Server 2016. To install:

1. Get the URL rewrite extension from Microsoft’s website.

2. You should now have a “urlrewrite2.exe” file. Double-click on it to start the installation then click “Install” on the initial screen.

3. Click “I Accept” to begin the install.

4. Once installation has succeeded, click “Finish”, then click “Exit” on the “Web Platform Installer 5.1” screen.

 

 

Configuring EasyAdmin with IIS 10 on Windows Server 2016

1. Open the Internet Information Services Manager by either searching for “IIS” in the Search bar,

or by pressing Windows + R, typing inetmgr in the Run box and clicking “OK”.

2. Once the IIS manager is open, expand the top server and “Sites” node until you see the “Default Web Site”. Right-click on it and select “Add Virtual Directory…”.

3. In the “Add Virtual Directory…” box, fill in the text fields as follows then click OK.

Alias: EasyAdmin2

Physical Path: this should point to where EasyAdmin is installed (typically this is “C:\Program Files (x86)\OpenLM\OpenLM Server\WebApps\EasyAdmin2”).

4. Right-click on the newly created “EasyAdmin2” site and then “Convert to Application”. The “Add Application” window will open. Leave everything as-is and click OK.

5. Now we will need to enable the CGI module for EasyAdmin. With the EasyAdmin2 node selected, double-click on the “Handler Mappings” icon.

6. On the right-hand side of the screen, you should see “Add Module Mapping…” option. Click on it.

Fill in the following details:
Request Path: *.php
Module: select “FastCgiModule”
Executable: type in the path where your php-cgi.exe module is located (with quotation marks). The typical path is “C:\Program Files (x86)\OpenLM\OpenLM Server\WebServer\PHP\php-cgi.exe”. If you’re browsing for another location, make sure to select “(*.exe)” in the lower right corner of the “Open” window so you can see executable files
Name: type in “FastCgi”

7. Before closing this window, click on “Request Restrictions…” . Select the “File or Folder” option in the Mapping tab. Click OK.

Now you can finally click OK. You should see a dialog window asking to confirm. Click Yes.

8. Select the “CGI-exe” entry which shows as Disabled and click on “Edit Feature Permissions” in the right-side panel.

Check the “Execute” box and click OK.

9. The final step is to restart the server. Select the primary server node (with your domain/hostname/userid). On the right-hand side you should see the option to “Restart”.

 

Deleting Old Log Files

It is recommended that the old “openlm_proxy.log” file be deleted.

Typically it is located in the “C:\ProgramData\OpenLM\” folder or it can be accessed by pressing Windows + R and typing %PROGRAMDATA%/OpenLM/, then clicking OK.

 

Setting Proper Permissions for IIS

Now you will need to set proper read/write/execute permissions for the IIS_IUSRS group on the %ProgramData%/OpenLM/ folder.

1. Right-click on the OpenLM folder found in ProgramData (Type Windows + R, then %ProgramData%and click OK to open it). Click “Properties”.

2. Select the “Security” tab. Then click on “Edit…”. The “Permissions for OpenLM” window should open. Click on the “Add…” button to add a new group.

3. Fill in the object name as “IIS_IUSRS”. All other options should be as in the screenshot below. Location should point to the local server machine you’re configuring this on, so if you’re not seeing your machine name click on “Locations” and select it, then click OK.

4. On the “Permissions for OpenLM” window, select the newly added “IIS_IUSRS” group and check the read/write/execute options as below. Click Apply then OK.

Click OK to close the Folder Properties window.

 

Verifying EasyAdmin functionality

If you have successfully completed the steps above, you should now be able to access OpenLM’s EasyAdmin interface through the IIS web server.

To verify that everything is working properly, open your web browser and access the following URL:

a. If you’re accessing EasyAdmin from the same machine that the Server is installed on: http://localhost/EasyAdmin2/index.html

b. If you’re accessing EasyAdmin from any other device on the same network: http://<Server IP or hostname>/EasyAdmin2/index.html

You should now be able to access EasyAdmin with IIS 10 on Windows Server running on port 80 (by default).

 

Adding New MIME Types

Please note that for previous versions of Windows, this procedure was mandatory. This step can be skipped altogether when using EasyAdmin with IIS 10 on Windows Server 2016 because IIS includes by default all of the required MIME types. 

OpenLM Version 4.5 requires adding MIME types to support additional file extensions. To do so you need to:

1. Open the IIS manager. Select the “EasyAdmin2” virtual directory you have created. Double-click on the “MIME Types” icon

2. Once on the “MIME Types” screen, click on “Add…” on the right-side panel.

Add the following extensions. You will need to repeat this step for each extension you add.

Woff
File extension: woff
MIME type: application/font-woff

Woff2
File extension: woff2
MIME type: application/font-woff2

JSON
File extension: json
MIME type: application/json

SVG
File extension: svg
MIME type: image/svg+xml

 

Configuring File Fetching With IIS

Some EasyAdmin capabilities involve the OpenLM proprietary “File Fetching” mechanism. This includes EasyAdmin’s feature of exporting to CSV files and the fetching of License Server Options files, License files, logs and so on.

This mechanism requires defining a virtual directory that points to the physical directory where the CSV file will be downloaded. With the default LightHTTPD web service, these settings are already implemented. When using EasyAdmin with IIS 10 on Windows Server, this link needs to be added in the IIS Manager manually and the port number changed in EasyAdmin’s options.

To do this:

1. In EasyAdmin, go to Start →  Administration →  File Fetching

You should see a screen similar to the one below

The “OpenLM server download directory” is where the CSV files will be downloaded to. The default is “C:\ProgramData\OpenLM\Downloads”

The “File fetching URL” should point to a virtual directory, linked to the physical download directory. You must remove the “:7019” port number manually from the URL, so it should look like this:

2. In the IIS manager, expand the top server node → ‘Sites’ node → right-click on “Default Web site” → click “Add virtual directory”.

Fill in the text boxes as follows:

Alias: openlm_downloads

Physical path: where the “OpenLM Server download directory” from the previous screen is pointing to (typically this is “C:\ProgramData\OpenLM\Downloads\”)

With the new “openlm_downloads” virtual directory selected, double-click on the “MIME Types” icon, then click on “Add…” located at the top of the right-side panel.

Configure as follows:
File name extension: .*
MIME type: application/octet-stream

Click OK to add, then close the IIS manager.

This will enable download of exported CSV files from EasyAdmin as well as fetching of various License Server files onto the machine when running EasyAdmin with IIS 10 on Windows Server.