Impersonate tag in Web.Config

Question

I'm using impersonate tag in my web.config in Asp.net 4.0 website.

Below is my Web.Config code:

<system.web>
    <authentication mode="Windows">
        <identity impersonate="true"                 
            userName="Administrator" 
            password="LALLA$26526"/>
     </authentication>
</system.web>

When I run app in Visual Studio I get this error:

Parser Error Message: Unrecognized element 'identity'.

Source Error:

Line 50:    <system.web>
Line 51:        <authentication mode="Windows">
Line 52:            <identity impersonate="true"             
Line 53:                 userName="Administrator"
Line 54:                 password="LALLA$26526"/>

Where am i going wrong?

Hospitalet

Answer 1

The identity section goes under the system.web section, not under authentication:

<system.web>
  <authentication mode="Windows"/>
  <identity impersonate="true" userName="foo" password="bar"/>
</system.web>

Inerrable

I highly suspect there's some bad documentation out there in the wild that is causing everyone to make this same mistake; next person that encounters this, what was the bad reference you saw? Let's get it fixed at the source! – Inerrable

Do you mean bad documentation like msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/72wdk8cc(v=vs.85).aspx which says that you can put the identity element anywhere in the config hierarchy – Forthright

Perfect. Left them feedback. Maybe they'll make their docs clearer. What they mean by "config hierarchy" is referring to which type of config files it can appear in, not the location within in the config files. – Inerrable

I know what you mean. At the bottom of the page they specify System.Web.Identity section but for someone comming accros this the first time it's still confusing. Plus now asp.net complains that this element is not supported in the integrated pipeline. – Forthright

6 years later and they haven't fixed it. Feedback clearly ignored :) – Smaragdine

Answer 2

Put the identity element before the authentication element

Dexamyl

The sad thing is that this is actually the correct answer to the question. – Attrition

@Attrition Really ? position matters ? – Nonaligned

If <identity impersonate="true" /> and <authentication mode="Windows" /> are both children of <system.web> how could the order matter? – Gobert

Answer 3

You had the identity node as a child of authentication node. That was the issue. As in the example above, authentication and identity nodes must be children of the system.web node

Rissa