How to run ASP on the Mac

I have an old web app that’s using Active Server Pages, and I want to run it on my (Intel) Mac. This is basically not a big deal, because you can simply use Microsoft IIS under Parallels.

But I wanted to use IIS only for ASP files, and let Apache handle the rest. And here’s how to make sure IIS only handles what it’s supposed to:

1. Make a share of your Webserver Root directory in Parallels.
2. On the PC, in the IIS Control Panel, click on the default Website, click on Properties, then choose Home Directory, select that the content should come from A Share located on another computer and enter .PSFyoursharename as the network directory.
3. Make sure you allow ASP under Web Service Extensions
4. On the Mac, uncomment the following lines in /private -> etc -> httpd -> httpd.conf (remove the #’s):

      LoadModule rewrite_module
      libexec/httpd/mod_rewrite.so
      LoadModule proxy_module
      libexec/httpd/libproxy.so
      AddModule mod_rewrite.c
      AddModule mod_proxy.c

5. Then you have to add the following code somewhere in your httpd.conf file:

      RewriteEngine On
      RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} .*.asp$
      RewriteRule ^/(.*)$  http://1.2.3.4/$1 [P]

where 1.2.3.4 should be the IP of the windows virtual machine.

6. Run

      sudo apachectl graceful

to restart apache.

Finished! Now you have full ASP support on your Mac!