IIS 6.0 receives 404 error on files with a “.” extension and nothing else

Question

I have an issue where I am reverse proxying from an IIS 6.0 server to an apache server which is serving PNG files with no extension. Strangly it serves files with a "." but nothing else, for example:

"http://internalserver/proxy/image."

I tried adding the MIME type "." and even ".*" to the IIS virtual directory and the server (via IIS MMC snap-in) but this hasn't seemed to solve the issue. Adding the mime type worked when testing other obscure extensions e.g. image.x, image.] etc, but if you have the filename and the "." and nothing else after it, it seems to fail with 404.

Any clues?

Answer 1

Try adding an entry called * with application/octet-stream as the MIME Type.

Answer 2

If I remember correctly, the Win32 subsystem that all applications use, strips off the trailing . from all file paths - so IIS might try to be smart and do it itself.

Is the . present in the real file name? If yes, does it have to be? (Usually files without extension don't have the . either.)