Symptoms
An Operations Automation (OA) task to perform provisioning operations on Windows webspace fails with the error message 'The system cannot find the path specified', as in the following example:
Task name: Install FPSE support for virtual web server 1570 on host 'webwin1.hosting.local' (host_id=888).
Last execution output: Exception during execution of MPF request: 'The system cannot find the path specified.
[<response><errorContext description="The system cannot find the path specified." code="0x80070003" executeSeqNo="3">
<errorSource namespace="FPManager" procedure="installFPSE_OnServer"/></errorContext></response>]'.
Task name: Turn off FTP access for Hosted Service User <USER_ID> on host 'pemwinweb03.hosting.local' (host_id=<HOST_ID>, sub_id=<SUB_ID>, wb_id=<WEBSPACE_ID>, user_name=<FTP_LOGIN>).
Destination host 'pemwinweb03.hosting.local' (#<HOST_ID>), IP '<BACKNET_IP>' : Provisioning request failed. The system cannot find the file specified. [<response><errorContext description="The system cannot find the file specified." code="0x80070002" executeSeqNo="7"><errorSource namespace="NTFSManager" procedure="changeFileOwner"/></errorContext></response>]
The operation that fails may be different:
Switch the website application pool in IIS
Turn on/off FTP access to a website
Turn on/off the File Manager service
Change a website location
Turn on/off Frontpage support for a website
- Delete virtual directory
Cause
This problem can be caused when a customer's webspace is absent on a Windows shared hosting server or the server has a deep structure of nested folders and files, so the full path to the file/folder is close to or exceeds the limit of 255 characters.
The Microsoft Provisioning Service NTFS Provider cannot process requests with very long file/folder names (including the full path to it).
- Corrupted files.
Resolution
First of all, make sure that the problem website and webspace exist on the Windows server. The ID of the Windows hosting server and ID of the website are provided in the failed task properties. Log onto the problem server, find the problem website in IIS Manager, and make sure that its root folder does exist.
If the root folder of the problem website does not exist, create it manually.
If the website exists in OA and does not exist in IIS, it may mean that the corresponding OA provisioning tasks were canceled and proper objects were not created on a hosting server. Try to find not provisioned or canceled tasks related to the problem website/webspace in OA Task Manager.
Use the following parameters from the failed task to find tasks related to the problem website/webspace (replace them with the actual values):
Queue name (domain_service5797 in the example above)
- IIS website ID (1570 in the example above)
Process all found background tasks if any are related to the problem website.
If the website/webspace exists, use the following solution for the problem: temporarily move part of the webspace (which contains the file/folder with the too long path/name) to another directory, re-run the failed task in OA, then return the moved files back.
If it is the task "Change virtual directory 'Root' (dir_id=) of virtual web server " that fails with the error, this may be caused by an incorrect location specified in the website settings.
plesk=> select dir_id,dir_name,location,desire_location from iis_webvdirs where srv_id=<virtual web server ID>;
dir_id | dir_name | location | desire_location
--------+----------+-----------------------------+-------------------------------------
79433 | Root | wwwroot\domain.com | wwwroot/googlea94acdcc23abca24.html
(1 row)
In the IIS snap-in, find the site by from task > site properties > Home Directory. It is typically like D:\CustomerData\webspaces\webspace_00140609\wwwroot\domain.com.
In this case, just change the location in Customer Control Panel > Websites > domain.com > Web > Edit from "/googlea94acdcc23abca24.html" to "domain.com".
Then re-run the task.
--OR--
If you find any corrupted files remove that file and then re-run the task.