DNN or IIS 401 Unauthorized error and some failed attempts to diagnose

Question

I'm doing a first time install of DNN, following the tutorials at dotnetnuke.com, and I keep getting stuck. I have Windows 8 so I'm having trouble getting answers from Google, so here's my problem...

When I launch the install wizard for dnn it looks like this:

The stylesheet and images are clearly not loading, and the error console looks like this:

So alright, maybe it's a permissions thing. I check the properties of the folder tied to IIS and I see it's Read Only:

But the setting is stubborn and no matter how many times I uncheck the setting and apply to subfolders/files

It always goes back to saying it's Read Only. I even tried forcing the change from the command line:

This morning I started to think maybe I'm chasing the wrong lead. Maybe there's some IIS or DNN setting I've overlooked. Unfortunately I'm out of my depth. I'm trying to install DNN so I can learn it, so this is all new ground for me. This is where you, the great people of Stack Overflow, come in. Please halp! Thanks.

Answer 1

You need to get the IIS Authentication -> Anonymous Authentication -> "Anonymous user identity" to match up to the file directory permissions. This is to allow the DNN code to execute within your file system. The recommended setting is to use "Application pool identity" to limit your IIS server/web site into other parts of your server environment.

From IIS management console or the wwwroot\yourDNNinstalllocation folder set the permissions to "IIS AppPool\ApplicationPoolName" to MODIFY. Note: the windows permission will require the Location to be "your-IIS-Server-or-PC-name" rather than any Domain location.

If you did want a domain role and integrated SQL Security on your database server, then you would need to

1. create a domain\user e.g. "yourDomain\dnn_yourCustomer" then
2. add that user to your SQL security for the DNN database AND
3. change your IIS anon identity to use the domain\user AND
4. set the permissions on the www folder to MODIFY to match your domain\user.