Accessing a crystal report from a network drive

[Daspoo]

Hey, I was wondering if anyone could help me with an issue. I am writing a very basic ASP.NET web application (Visual Basic Code), and in it I will attempt to select a Crystal report name from a dropdown list. Once I select that file, and then click the appropriate hyperlink, the report will open in a different browser window. My problem is, I cannot access the network drive containing the file I need to view. The drive is mapped on my local system, but even when I hard-code the physical drive letter and directory where the report exists, I get a message indicating that the file could not be loaded. It works for any reports sitting locally on my C:\ drive, but no network drive reports. Anybody got any ideas? Im assuming this has something to do with "identity impersonation", and Ive tried it, but Im new to ASP.NET and Im more than sure Im doing something wrong, or at least omitting something significant. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

 

[quwiltw]

Does the user thats running IIS/ASP.NET have access to the network drive? Most of the time this is a dumbed up user with little permissions outside the web directory itself so youll need to give them access to the specific directory where the reports reside.

 

[Daspoo]

RE::

quwiltw:
yeah, basically the user is me. Im running on a single machine in an attempt to learn ASP.NET, and Im going through my companys Intranet. I have domain admin access to the drive in question, so its not that. I had our network guy trying to explain some things to me yesterday that I hoped would give me enough info to get through this, but I find myself still stuck. thanks for the reply. any other ideas?

 

[quwiltw]

When you say the user is "you" are you saying that the ASP.NET worker process is running as SYSTEM instead of MACHINE? Im not sure which is the default, but I still suspect this is a permissions issue of some sort. Can you check your machine.config just to make sure?

 

[Daspoo]

RE::

quwiltw:
if im looking in the right place, the <processmodel> tab of machine.config indicates that the userName is "machine"; am i looking at the right thing here? also, the <identity impersonate> tag is set to false, with a blank userName and password.

 

[quwiltw]

Yep. You should have a local user called ASPNET. The ASPNET account will need explicit access to whereever the report files are as this is the user that is actually attempting to access the report files.

 

[Daspoo]

RE::

quwiltw:
ok. i thought i had visited that before, but perhaps theres still an issue with that users permissions on the drive. ill give that another shot. thanks for your help!

 

[Daspoo]

RE:

Ok, Im not sure if anyone else will see this issue, but I did neglect to mention that the network drive Im attempting to access has been configured as a virtual directory for the website, and the ASPNET account has rights to access this directory. Yet it still does not work. If anyone has any other suggestions, Im all ears. Thanks in advance.