Database is read-only or asp.net account has not write permission

A week ago I faced with a problem.  I published my asp.net website on IIS6 and the connection with Sql Server  didn’t work properly.

After a lot of  googling and asking on forums I found a  solution.

I’ll tell you now what was the problem:

Firstly I had a website which worked properly in Visual studio! , it had a connection with Ms Sql Server database, connection string and other properties was set correctly. After copying  this  website on local IIS  (Windows XP, IIS6 )  when user was performing some action and application tried to connect to database there was an error:  “Database is read-only or asp.net account has not write permission”.

It is easy to make file not to be read-only, you can just right click on file(or folder) than properties and  uncheck read-only checkbox.

I tried this but it didn’t work.

Then I tried to grant access permissions to  asp.net  account. It is also easy to do this: just  right click  on web application folder in IIS manager and properties/ Directory security/ edit /browse/ advanced /search and than select asp.net account and OK.

I did all this  but still this error.

I had no idea what the  hell  was going there  :D

I asked about this problem on asp.net forum: http://forums.asp.net/p/1417250/3149474.aspx#3149474

There was a good answer which partly helped me:

If we deploy website on the IIS, this website is running under IIS account (in your case, it is ‘GABEDAVA\ASPNET’), which does not have permission to log in your Sql Server by default.

To use Windows Authentication correctly, we need to add this account to new login and set SQL Server to either Integrated authentication or Mixed-Mode authentication.

For more information, see http://www.asp.net/learn/whitepapers/aspnet-and-iis6/ (Section: Supporting integrated authentication with SQL Server).

We also can use SQL Server Authentication to login server. To do so, we need UserID and Password to connect database. The connection string should look like
“Server=YourServerAddress;Database=YourDataBase;Uid=YourUsername;Pwd=YourPassword;”

For more information, see http://www.connectionstrings.com/?carrier=sqlserver2005 and http://devilswork.wordpress.com/category/sql/

(Thomas Sun – MSFT)

This is good explanation but it isn’t the exact answer.

Solution:

Then I found out that in windows tools/ folder option /view   there is  option  “use simple file sharing” you should uncheck this checkbox and after this action  when right click and properties on folder(or file)  you have a new security tab where  you can  add  user and set permissions and this isn’t  the same,  as action in IIS manager. You should  grant full control of asp.net account on the folder and everything will  be  all right.

Yeh my web application   works now on the server, IIS6 account (asp.net account) has  permissions to access Sql server database (whew).