The Realm of the Verbal Processor

WSUS on Server 2008

As part of my installation of SCCM on Server 2008, I have needed to install WSUS on Server 2008 as well. Being the good little engineer that I am, I looked at the WSUS Release Notes to ensure that I knew about any issues with installing WSUS on Server 2008. When I did so, I discovered that there is a typo in the Release Notes. At the bottom of the Release Notes is a section labeled “WSUS 3.0 on Windows Server 2008” that lists two issues…only one of which applied to my scenario.

Issue 1: The IIS 7.0 configuration file must be updated before running WSUS 3.0

Before running WSUS 3.0 on Windows Server 2008, the IIS configuration file must be updated. You will need to take the following steps:

1. Open the IIS configuration file: %WINDIR%\system32\inetsrv\applicationhost.config

2. In the <System.webServer><modules> tag, remove <add name=”CustomErrorMode”> if it exists.

3. In the <System.webServer><modules> tag, add <remove name=”CustomErrorMode”>.

The resulting tag should look like this:

      <System.webServer>
<modules>
<remove name="CustomErrorMode">
</modules>
</System.webServer>

So, I went into the applicationhost.config file and made that modification. The “add name” tag wasn’t there, so all I had to do was add the “remove name” tag. After adding it exactly as the release notes listed, I went into my WSUS setup. When it got to the section where it would ask about whether to use the Default IIS website or a custom website, I got an error message instead. It stated:

“The wizard could not detect any existing Web sites. To try again, verify that IIS is running, use IIS Manager to resolve the problem and then click Next.”

When I opened up IIS Manager I got this error message:

There was an error when trying to connect. Do you want to retype your credentials and try again?

 

Details:

 

Filename:

\\?\C:\Windows\system32\inetsrv\config\applicationHost.config

Line number: 844

Error: Configuration file is not well-formed XML

When I looked at line 844 (which was easy to find in EditPlus), that was the “</modules>” line from above. That line is fine. However (knowing that sometimes the error is earlier in the file than where it shows up as an error to the application)…line 843 does have an error in it…an error straight out of the release notes. The “remove name” tag is missing a forward slash. It should be:

<remove name=”CustomErrorMode”/>

After making that change and starting IIS, WSUS was much happier when it installed.

May 29, 2008 - Posted by Jarvis | ConfigMgr | Server 2008, WSUS