VS2005 website deployment problems with EFS

  • Thread starter Thread starter JeffDotNet
  • Start date Start date
J

JeffDotNet

Recently we were required to install EFS on our machines.

Ever since the installation of EFS I have been unable to successfully us the
publish website or copy website deployment methods without manually
decrypting the files first.

Dev laptop: Win XP SP2 (Machine I am deploying website from)
Visual Studio 2005 SP1
Dev Server: win2003 (Destination of the website)

“Publish websiteâ€
Publish website will exit with Publish Succeeded but will not publish any
files that have been encrypted by EFS. (This leaves me little more than a
set of empty directories)

“Copy Websiteâ€
Using Visual studio “copy website†takes forever and in the end fails and
the log reports it was unable to encrypt files.

If I manually decrypt the files before using “Copy Website†visual studio is
able to properly send the files to the server. However this manual
decryption causes the source file timestamps to be modified and this is very
undesirable.

Manual Copy (Without “Copy Websiteâ€)

If I manually copy the files to my development server it takes an extremely
long time. (between 15-45minutes for a small intranet application) I assume
this is due to the decryption being done just prior to moving the files.

If I manual decrypt the files then the manual copy the files it is quick as
ever.


The helpdesk has recommended moving my projects outside of my documents to
avoid the EFS encryption. Is there a way to configure VS2005 to work around
EFS? I would really prefer not to move my VS projects outside of my
documents.
 
I am not reallly too worried about moving projects outside of my documents.
I do this all the time. In fact, my normal location for projects is
c:\projects (or d:\projects when I have a second drive). It is just another
backup location for me. And, since I have projects in source control, it is
not an issue. If help desk thinks this will help, I am all for it.

As for deploying sites, can you publish to a local directory? If so, you can
then xcopy the bits out to the server. I prefer this method over publishing
directly, esp. to production, as it gives me a chance to test the published
site prior to going live.

We use PointSec. It is not WIndows EFS, but it does encrypt. I state this,
as I have had no problems with encryption, but I am not using the exact type
you are.

--
Gregory A. Beamer
MVP; MCP: +I, SE, SD, DBA

Blog:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/GregoryBeamer

*********************************************
| Think outside the box |
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Gregory,

Thanks for your quick response. However, I am still interested in getting
vs2005 to work with Microsoft’s EFS without having to move my documents out
of My Documents.

• Since posting I have moved this particular project outside of my
documents and it everything appears to work.

Goals:
• Use all the VS2005 and EFS as expected by the Microsoft (Things tend to
work best when you are using them they way the maker expects)
• Keep all of my documents that I would like backed up under My Documents.
(Anytime my laptop is backed by IT all of my documents will archived. My
source code is under source control but I would like it backed up here as
well)
• Try to leave my documents encrypted if the intent of using EFS is to have
my documents encrypted. (Even if the help desks recommendation for use
VS2005 is to move the files outside of the EFS territory)

If anyone is aware of a way to configure VS2005 to allow Publish Website and
Copy Website to work properly with EFS and still achieve the goals listed
above please let me know.

Thanks,
Jeff
 
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