Where are my Virtual Directories Physically?
From: H. Dwight Paul <Hollis@outlookbythesound.com>
To: Greg Chapman - MSMVP (E-mail) <greg@mousetrax.com>
Sent: Sunday, November 07, 1999 12:08 PM
Subject: Enabling Discussions per webserver
It has dawned on me that I need to link to the page in which one enables
discussions for a web from a virtual directory on that server. I have
been
able to link to the remote administration pages. But I haven't been able
to
link to the OSE discussion pages. The reason is I can't find them. When
I
open the page from the SBS Start|Programs|MSOSEs|OSE Administrator(HTML)
it says it is at http://localhost/msoffice/msoadmin/ . Where are those directories physically?
What does localhost map to?
Hollis D. Paul [MVP - Outlook]
From: Greg Chapman [greg@mousetrax.com]
Sent: Sunday, November 07, 1999 11:01 AM
To: H. Dwight Paul
Subject: Re: Enabling Discussions per webserver
I think I'll answer this from the bottom up.<g>
Localhost is a carry-over of TCP terminology which refers to the local
machine's IP address. On your NT server, if you examine the contents of
c:\winnt\system32\drivers\etc\hosts (hosts is a file that has no extension
in its name) you should see the following entry:
localhost 127.0.0.1
127.0.0.1 is a reserved IP address that poitns directly to the TCP stacks in
memory, not the network card. If you ping LocalHost from the server's
console, you'll get an echo or reply from 127.0.0.1. Microsoft uses this
value when setting up Web based admin pages for all it's web technology
offered up through IIS. Some of the more common ones are
http://localhost/iisadmin
http://localhost/iishelp
http://localhost/ntadmin
http://localhost/admin
For OSE it's http://localhost/msoffice/msoadmin
Localhost can be replaced by the URL of the machine or its IP address. On
most of the admin stuff (OSE being the exception here), only localhost can
be used because MS sets the admin stuff so that no external IP addresses may
access it. Without modification to the IP security in the MMC, no external
IP address may successfully load the admin pages.
Okay, now, since we're talking about the MMC all of a sudden, you can use
this tool to find out the local drive path that a particular virtual
directory is living under. If, in the MMC (Start, programs, NT Option Pak 4,
Internet Service Manager), you expand Default Web Site, MSOffice and right
click on MSOAdmin and choose properties, A dialog of properties will appear.
On the General tab, there will be a Local Path box that displays almost all
you want to know. By default, the MSOadmin path will be /MSOffice/MSOadmin.
Since there's no more info here, we need to know the local path to MSOffice.
Close this properties sheet and right click on MSOffice and choose
properties. In the Local Path box here, you'll see the default path:
c:\program files\microsoft office\office\scripts1\1033 . If you look up that
path in Windows Explorer, you'll see that there is an MSOAdmin folder in it
which contains the pages displayed by going to
http://localhost/msoffice/msoadmin .
I hope this doesn't sound like I'm talking down. That's not my intent as I
just want to be absolutely clear on the relationship all these systems have
to each other. Virtual paths translated to physical paths can be a real
monster to get a grip on!<g>
Hope that helps!
Greg
