Setting NTFS permissions, the easy way
If you have ever had the pleasure of installing any of our web products, then chances are you know first-hand the work and time involved with properly configuring the NTFS permissions they require.
It used to be that setting permissions involved you going out to Knowledgebase, finding the appropriate solution for your product, and dutifully walking through all of the steps listed to set the NTFS permissions on the necessary folders; double that work if you have more than one web product to install, and triple it if you propagate the permissions for one web product folder to another and accidentally reset its permissions. There had to be an easier way…
The solution to this problem is PermFlashNTFS!
PermFlashNTFS is an application that I wrote, in my spare time, to address this very issue. Simply stated, it is a program which completely automates setting NTFS permissions. Here’s how it works:
When you launch PermFlashNTFS, it prompts you asking which product(s) you would like to set permissions for. Based on the selections you make, it then queries the computer (via registry, environment variables, WMI queries, and direct IIS Metabase access) to determine if those products are actually installed and where they are located. If, for some reason, PermFlash is not able to determine where a web product is located, it will prompt you for the location. PermFlash will then create a file and pass it to a Microsoft utility, called SubInACL, to automatically set the NTFS permissions required for each product (according to the Knowledgebase solutions listed below). Along the way, it produces detailed output logs to let you know exactly what it found and where, what NTFS changes were made, and what NTFS errors (if any) were encountered.
What this means to you is that the NTFS permissions setting process has been reduced to a few simple clicks of a Wizard. Precious time has been saved and frustration averted!
Click here to download PermFlashNTFS (no installation required!)
- Prerequisites: Microsoft .Net Framework 2.0
(PermFlashNTFS was written in VB.Net and is open source! Click here to download its source code.)
Disclaimer: I’m not a Blackbaud developer, so this source code is not a representation of coding practices and procedures used by our programmers. PermFlashNTFS is not supported by Blackbaud, which means our Customer Support analysts will not be able to assist you with this utility, and we cannot be held responsible for any issues resulting from its use. It is released under the GNU Public License Agreement and is provided without any warranty.
Please feel free to add any questions you have about PermFlashNTFS in the comments.
If you want to see what files and folder permissions are being set on, or if you still want to do it the hard way, review the Knowledgebase solutions for your products linked below: