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Application can find 'Downloads' folder when debugging but not on IIS

I have an application that allows the user to upload a file (saving it to in a folder located in the wwwroot of the ASPNETCORE application). From here they can make edits to it and then they can choose to export the file as a csv/ xml/ xlsx which downloads the file to the user's 'downloads' folder.
While debugging in Visual Studio this all works fine however when I publish and deploy the application to IIS I am getting the exception
Error saving file C:\windows\system32\config\systemprofile\Downloads(FILE NAME)
Could not find part of the path C:\windows\system32\config\systemprofile\Downloads(FILE NAME)
This is the current way I am getting the downloads folder:
FileInfo file = new FileInfo(Path.Combine(Environment.ExpandEnvironmentVariables(#"%USERPROFILE%\Downloads"), data.Filename + "." + data.FileType));
However I have also tried the solution that Hans Passant has answered to a similar question here. Both solutions worjk fine while debugging locally however as soon as I publish them, this one produces the exception:
Value cannot be null. Parameter name: path1
Which I presume is thrown at this point here when I try and save the file to the user's download folder.
using (var package = new ExcelPackage(file))
{
var workSheet = package.Workbook.Worksheets.Add("ExportSheet");
workSheet.Cells.LoadFromCollection(exports, true);
package.Save();
}
I don't really know how I would be able to reproduce these exceptions seeing as locally using Visual Studio it all works fine.
Has anyone else came across this issue while trying to download a file?
UPDATE: When the application is running on IIS, it seems to be using that as the user profile instead of the actually user, so when it tries to navigate to the Downloads folder, it cannot find it. How can I force it to use the user's profile?
LoadUserProfile is already set to True.

Web applications have no knowledge of the end-user's computer's filesystem!
So using Environment.GetFolderPath or Environment.ExpandEnvironmentVariables in server side code will only reveal the server-side user (i.e. the Windows Service Identity)'s profile directories which is completely separate and distinct from your web-application's actual browser-based users OS user profile.
As a simple thought-experiment: consider a user running a weird alien web-browser on an even more alien operating system (say, iBrowse for the Amiga!) - the concept of a Windows-shell "Downloads" directory just doesn't exist, and yet here they are, browsing your website. What do you expect your code would do in this situation?
To "download" a file to a user, your server-side web-application should serve the raw bytes of the generated file (e.g. using HttpResponse.TransmitFile) with the Content-Disposition: header to provide a hint to the user's browser that they should save the file rather than try to open it in the browser.

Can't see path to another server in ASP.NET MVC

I have an internal ASP.NET MVC site that needs to read an Excel file. The file is on a different server from the one that ASP.NET MVC is running on and in order to prevent access problems I'm trying to copy it to the ASP.NET MVC server.
It works OK on my dev machine but when it is deployed to the server it can't see the path.
This is the chopped down code from the model (C#):
string fPath = HttpContext.Current.Server.MapPath(#"/virtualdir");
string fName = fPath + "test.xlsm";
if (System.IO.File.Exists(fName))
{
// Copy the file and do what's necessary
}
else
{
if (!Directory.Exists(fPath))
throw new Exception($"Directory not found: {fPath} ");
else
throw new Exception($"File not found: {fName } ");
}
The error I'm getting is
Directory not found:
followed by the path.
The path in the error is correct - I've copied and pasted it into explorer and it resolves OK.
I've tried using the full UNC path, a mapped network drive and a virtual directory (as in the code above). Where required these were given network admin rights (to test only!) but still nothing has worked.
The internal website is using pass through authentication but I've used specific credentials with full admin rights for the virtual directory, and the virtual dir in IIS expands OK to the required folder.
I've also tried giving the application pool (which runs in Integrated mode) full network admin rights.
I'm kind of hoping I've just overlooked something simple and this isn't a 'security feature'.
I found this question copy files between servers asp.net mvc but the answer was to use FTP and I don't want to go down that route if I can avoid it.
Any assistance will be much appreciated.

First, To be on the safe side that your directory is building correctly, I would use the Path.Combine.
string fName = Path.Combine(fPath, "test.xlsm")
Second, I would check the following post and try some things there as it seems to be a similar issue.
Directory.Exists not working for a network path
If you are still not able to see the directory, there is a good chance the user does not have access to that network path. Likely what happened is the app pool running your application has access to the directory on the server. The production box likely doesn't have that same access. You would have to get with the network engineer to get that resolved.
Alternatively, you could write a Powershell script to run as a user who has access to both the production and the development server to copy the file over to the production server if that is your ultimate goal and your server administrators could schedule it for you if that is allowed in your environment.

Set write permission on folder create

Hi I have been trying to properly configure IIS 6 to give write permisiosn for about 2 days now and I can't seem to find any good resource on this.I am a bit new to ASP.NET and until now I never had to work with IIS.
What I am trying to do is upload a file to the server.Each user on the server will have his own special folder witch will be created automaticly via C#.Now when I try to upload the file I get this error:
Access to the path 'D:\Projects IDE\Visual Studio\MyWork\Websites\Forum\Images\avatar\userAvatars\aleczandru' is denied
This is my code for creating the folder for each user and saving the file:
private void addImageToApp()
{
string path = "~/Images/avatar/userAvatars/" + User.Identity.Name;
createPath(path);
if( Directory.Exists(HostingEnvironment.MapPath(path)))
{
try {
UploadImage.SaveAs(HostingEnvironment.MapPath(path));
MultiViewIndex.ActiveViewIndex = 0;
}catch(Exception ex)
{
AvatarDetails.Text = ex.Message;
}
}
}
private void createPath(string path)
{
string activeDir = HostingEnvironment.MapPath("~/Images/avatar/userAvatars");
if( !Directory.Exists(Server.MapPath(path)) )
{
string newPath = Path.Combine(activeDir, User.Identity.Name);
Directory.CreateDirectory(newPath);
}
}
All I could find on the internet is that I have to add write permision via folder/properties/security/... while that is all good and fine I can not do this for each folder.
Up to this point I am not really sure that IIS is the one I need to configure I am a bit lost at this.
What do I have to do to give folders write permisions automaticly on folder create?
And if anyone has a good article or tutorial that shows how to do this please share it with me all the info I could find were very basic.
EDIT
I have added the network service account to the Images folder with full permision and have set the application's pool Identity to NetworkService but I still get the same error
EDIT
I have messed around with SQL-SERVER for the last couple of days in order to make this work so I might have missconfigured something form what I understand NETWORK SERVICE is stored in SQL-SERVER master.db database.I seem to be having two network service logins may this be the problem?I remember when I first checked it I had none now I have two:

Simply, when your asp.net application running you can open Task Manager and find process w3wp.
W3wp process like any other has user identity (by default - application pool identity - DefaultAppPool(like application pool name)).
And if it so, you should add write permissions for user named DefaultAppPool. To do it you should open security tab in folder's properties window, then change->add and type IIS AppPool/DefaultAppPool and choose local machine.
This post should help you!

This has nothing to do with IIS, brother. All you need to do is, open your IIS. Go to Application Pool. Right click on the Application Pool your website is running with. Select "Advanced Settings" and see the entry made against IDENTITY. Change it to use NetworkService. This will mean that you will be running your website under NETWORK SERVICE account now on.
Now right-click your root images folder, i.e., "Images". Select PROPERTIES. Select SECURITY. Add user NETWORK SERVICE, and give it FULL RIGHTS permissions on the folder.
Now whenever you create a folder and file under this "Images" folder through your code, it will automatically inherit permissions from its parent and you will allow you to do whatever you want (Add/Delete).
I hope this answers your question. If yes, then please mark it as "answered".

Run process.start() in a network

I have written a win application that works on a network.
In one of its forms user can browse and select file from local computer and add it to a list, so the application copies these files to a folder in My Network Places that no users can access to it but one that i have created already for my application so i have his username and password.Every things works fine up to here.
In this form user can also open a file by select it and press open button, so the file should open in an application that relates to its extension(for example test.xlsx should open in Exel.exe).I have used Process.Start() to do this but for each extension i receive an individual error(for example "Access is denied" for NotePad and "RunTime error" for AdobeReader and "Not enough memory" for Excel).
What is my mistake?
Note : I have used ImpersonatUser to logon that user in my application.
Edit : I have used following code to open the file :
Using(WindowsImpersonationContext impersonateUser = LogonMethod())
{
ProcessStartInfo pInfo = new ProcessStartInfo(filePathWithExtension);
pInfo.Domain = MyDomainName;
pInfo.UseShellExecute = false;
Process.Start(pInfo);
}
Note : My LogonMethod uses LogonUser method of advapi32.dll.

The behavior you are seeing is almost expected.
it looks like you are not launching application directly, but rater using association by file name. I don't believe you'll get application launched under account you want. You can check what account application is run unrder using task manager.
Most application are not tested to run in "run as" context, so they may work correctly or fail randomly.

I could not solve this problem, so i have used another way.I have copied the file to a temp folder and then used Process.Start to open this new file.

Change Browser download folder using C#

Is there a way I could change the download folder of the default web browser using c#.

Concurring with other's comments, you can only do it in a desktop app if you have the right permissions.
Here's some sample code to find out the default browser of the system (from this post):
private string getDefaultBrowser()
{
string browser = string.Empty;
RegistryKey key = null;
try
{
key = Registry.ClassesRoot.OpenSubKey(#"HTTP\shell\open\command", false);
//trim off quotes
browser = key.GetValue(null).ToString().ToLower().Replace("\"", "");
if (!browser.EndsWith("exe"))
{
//get rid of everything after the ".exe"
browser = browser.Substring(0, browser.LastIndexOf(".exe")+4);
}
}
finally
{
if (key != null) key.Close();
}
return browser;
}
However, things get tricky from here. Different browsers have different ways of saving the default location.
E.g.,
IE may store it in registry (usually under HKEY_CURRENT_USER\ Software\ Microsoft\ Internet Explorer)
FF stores it in prefs.js in Profile folder (checkout this post to get to it via code)
Not sure about Chrome and Safari
but you get the idea.
Not sure what your end goal is, but from a UX standpoint, I think the best thing to do would be to ask user to specify the Download directory (in other words, you expose a Setting in your App for the default download location).

To expand on Ash's comment - if you're within a web app, no. If you're a desktop app, and you have sufficient permissions (i.e. running as Administrator), probably. But you'd need to find the default browser (from the registry presumably) and know how to set the download folder for each popular browser, or every browser you want to work with.

Where are you trying to do this from? If you mean "someone hits our website and ...", the answer is no, as anything you run is in a security context. You can certainly suggest the user changes the folder, but you are stuck.
Assuming you are not a web application, you have options. The main user download directory is located at X under the key {374DE290-123F-4565-9164-39C4925E467B}. Yeah, that sounds like a lot of fun. You can learn how to hack the registry programatically here. But, the user can specify a specific folder in the browser, as well. This means you have to know what browser the user is using and hack it, or you can attempt to hack all.
The bad news is the app, running (most likely) in the user context, may not have administrator rights and be able to whack the registry keys to change the folder.