Where I’m @

20071204

ISAPI_Rewrite3 Unattended Upgrade/Install
Our primary webserver at the office needs to rewrite URIs, but runs IIS, which puts mod_rewrite right out. Hence we use ISAPI_Rewrite from Helicon. The new version looks to work better with some WordPress rewriting needs, so we upgraded from v2 to v3. Unfortunately, the install for ISAPI_Rewrite restarts IIS, so — though our server is not the highest trafficked in the world — we have to do the install at off-hours. Server logs tell us the time closest resembling down time is 0400, an hour at which we are not at work. After a bunch of playing around, we found a command line that works to install silently the app to a nonstandard path (another of our requirements): ISAPI_rewrite3_0031.msi /quiet /log path\to\logfile.log INSTALLDIR="non\standard\install\directory with spaces"

To clean up the upgrade, we also needed to migrate the old httpd.ini files for the root and the individual sites to an httpd.conf file and .htaccess files, respectively. (We presume that Helicon changed the files for better compatibility with Apache, because otherwise it’s just annoying.) Using the Helicon Manager, it was as simple as clicking “Migrate from v2.0”, selecting the existing file from the production server (you aren’t doing this import after install, are you?), reviewing the imported content, and clicking “Apply”.

Make sure to test this on a nonproduction server, to read the logfile afterward, and to look at your event log afterward.

Labels: 3rd party tools, development, iis, installation, server management, webservers, windows