Some time ago I installed Reporting Services on SQL Server with IIS manager do the site reports. No problem showed up and the site has been used for months. Today I decided to move the site on a web server manager already several independent sites (Sharepoint, intranet ...) to avoid unnecessary use of CPU resources on a server that is supposed to do as SQL. Installing Reporting Services on a Windows 2003 server with IIS 6 is not a concern especially if IIS manages a single website but it is quite different if the server is used as front for a set of sites, the installation can not just not work without a few manual changes (and a number of prints hair and screaming against Microsoft). Despite using the Reporting Services Configuration Manager tool, here's the error I got when I tried to connect to the address http://reporting :
The report server is not responding. Make sure the report server is running and is accessible from this computer.
It is very unclear though how often a grain of truth is hidden inside. There is no error recorded in the event log. The first thing to do is go to C: \ Program Files \ Microsoft SQL Server \ MSSQL.1 \ Reporting Services \ ReportManager and edit the file RSWebApplication.config. The property must contain <ReportServerUrl> http://alias/ReportServer (replacing the alias header used to go to your site reporting) while <ReportServerVirtualDirectory> property must be empty. In my case this is indicated by two lines: <ReportServerUrl> http://reporting/ReportServer </ReportServerUrl> <ReportServerVirtualDirectory></ReportServerVirtualDirectory> Similarly, edit the file rsreportserver.config located in C: \ Program Files \ Microsoft SQL Server \ MSSQL.1 \ Reporting Services \ ReportServer and also indicate http://alias/ReportServer <UrlRoot> in the property. Here is the line in question for my installation: <UrlRoot> http://reporting/ReportServer </UrlRoot> At this stage normally http://reporting should properly display the site. There remains some loose ends. Changes in the configuration files of Reporting Services should cause some DCOM errors in event log:
Event Type: Error
Event Source: DCOM
Event Category: None
Event ID: 10016
User: NT AUTHORITY \ NETWORK SERVICE
Computer: WEBIIS1
Description: The specific permission settings do not grant the application to Local Activation permissions to the COM Server application with CLSID {61738644-F196-11D0-9953-00C04FD919C1} at SID NT AUTHORITY \ NETWORK SERVICE of user (S-1-5-20). This security permission can be modified using the Administration Tool Component Services.
To fix this, go to Start> Run and type dcomcnfg. Right-click Component Services> Computers> My Computer and go to Properties. In the COM Security tab, Permissions section Launch and Activation, click Edit and add NETWORK SERVICE (with emphasis on E!) by giving it the rights and local Running Local Activation.
DCOM security
Last thing, if you try to access the site locally http://reporting the server opens a dialog box asking for your login / password. If you enter a login, no matter where the server again ask you two more times before displaying an error page. This is due to a security of Windows 2003 SP1 which compares the FQDN of the machine with the alias of the site to prevent certain types of attacks. Obviously they are different and suddenly the server requires login information. To remedy this, simply go to the registry with regedit, create the DWORD value HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SYSTEM \ CurrentControlSet \ Control \ Lsa \ DisableLoopbackCheck and give it the value 1 (see the KB 896861 ). Must then reboot the machine for this change to take effect, the site http://reporting can then be viewed locally.
Tags: IIS , Reporting Services , Windows 2003
