The website root path for www.mydomain.com could not be determine with shared folder

Question
1

Hi, I’m using shared folder in my Site Root Directory. (\\somefolder)
It was working before this.
Today I notice there is this error:
“The website root path for www.mydomain.com could not be determined. Request cannot continue.”

What could be the issue? Which users should I give permission to the shared folder?

Thanks.

2

Hi, so something has changed either in your configuration, the settings of Certfy or in the Certify version.

Which version of Certify The Web are you using?

In general a shared web root is not important for certify unless you are specifically trying to do load balanced http validation (where more than one web server has to be able to respond to http validation requests). Is this the case?

3

Hi, my version is 5.1.3 on Windows Server

Yes, I have two windows web servers running IIS.
Basically configured my website’s .well-known as an application to a shared folder.
And configured Certify the Web Root to the shared folder.

Thanks.

4

Ok, make sure the correct site is selected under the Certificate tab > Select Site, then on the Authorization tab set Site Root directory to the UNC Path or leave it blank for it to be automatic. The issue I can see if that the background service runs as the SYSTEM user so using a UNC path may not work. Had you previously configured the background service to run as a different user? If so that would explain why it stopped working after the upgrade.

An alternative to http validation is to use DNS Validation, that way each server can take care of it’s own certificate renewals.

5

I temporary set my shared folder’s permission to Everyone but still got the same error.

6

If your computers are on a domain I think you can allow access to COMPUTERNAME$

7

Note that the file copying part for http validation has not changed in Certify The Web, so that suggests something else in your environment has changed or you previously running the Certify background service as some other user.

I would recommend that you switch to using DNS Validation as we don’t officially support load balanced http validation and therefore the solutions we can provide are limited.

1 Like
8

Hi. I came here with the same issue and realised I should reply here in case this helps someone else.

I have my server set up as IIS, with two servers responding to requests (using Network Load Balancer on the server). The files are on a UNC path, which is actually not a windows server, so I set up a user in Windows that IIS runs as; I just had to make the Certify.Service run as the same user and this resolved the issue with the website root.

Hope this helps someone!