Windows – Turn IIS7 HTTP Error Handling Off

iis-7windowswindows-server-2008

I just got setup on my first Windows Server 2008 / IIS7.5 server for a contest I am participating in. I can't for the life of me figure out how to turn OFF error handling COMPLETELY. The only options I see are:

Custom
Detailed
Detailed Local, custom for remote

I want to turn the feature off completely, and I don't see any way to do that. Am I missing something?

My Situation:

I have a RESTful PHP framework that catches exceptions and emits an HTTP 500 status if the exception has not already been handled. It then puts the specified exception message in the response body and sends it to the browser. This works fine in Apache – the correct headers are sent and the message is displayed to the user. In IIS, however, the response for 4xx and 5xx HTTP status codes is always intercepted and injected with some other prepared message or HTML file, and that's exactly what I don't want it to do anymore. Please help!

Best Answer

After some more extensive searching, I found the answer here:

http://blogs.msdn.com/webdevelopertips/archive/2009/08/24/tip-93-did-you-know-php-and-custom-error-pages-configuration.aspx

The solution is to manually edit your web.config file with this custom "httpErrors" entry:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<configuration>
    <system.webServer>
        <httpErrors existingResponse="PassThrough" />
    </system.webServer>
</configuration>

However, due to IIS 7.0 "lockdown" feature you might get a "This configuration section cannot be used at this path. This happens when the section is locked at a parent level." error. To solve that, execute the following in the command prompt:

cd C:\Windows\System32\inetsrv

appcmd unlock config /section:httpErrors

Related Solutions

Xml – IIS7: HTTP->HTTPS Cleanly

I think the cleanest way is as described here on IIS-aid.com. It's web.config only and so if you change server you don't have to remember all the steps you went through with the 403.4 custom error page or other special permissions, it just works.

<configuration>
  <system.webServer>
    <rewrite>
      <rules>
        <rule name="HTTP to HTTPS redirect" stopProcessing="true">
          <match url="(.*)" />
            <conditions>
              <add input="{HTTPS}" pattern="off" ignoreCase="true" />
            </conditions>
            <action type="Redirect" redirectType="Permanent" url="https://{HTTP_HOST}/{R:1}" />
        </rule>
      </rules>
    </rewrite>
  </system.webServer>
</configuration>

Windows – How to shutdown, restart, or log off Windows via a bat file

The most common ways to use the shutdown command are:

shutdown -s — Shuts down.
shutdown -r — Restarts.
shutdown -l — Logs off.
shutdown -h — Hibernates.

Note: There is a common pitfall wherein users think -h means "help" (which it does for every other command-line program... except shutdown.exe, where it means "hibernate"). They then run shutdown -h and accidentally turn off their computers. Watch out for that.
shutdown -i — "Interactive mode". Instead of performing an action, it displays a GUI dialog.
shutdown -a — Aborts a previous shutdown command.

The commands above can be combined with these additional options:

-f — Forces programs to exit. Prevents the shutdown process from getting stuck.
-t <seconds> — Sets the time until shutdown. Use -t 0 to shutdown immediately.
-c <message> — Adds a shutdown message. The message will end up in the Event Log.
-y — Forces a "yes" answer to all shutdown queries.

Note: This option is not documented in any official documentation. It was discovered by these StackOverflow users.

I want to make sure some other really good answers are also mentioned along with this one. Here they are in no particular order.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Xml – IIS7: HTTP->HTTPS Cleanly

Windows – How to shutdown, restart, or log off Windows via a bat file

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