Encountered a very similar issue to this ticket: http://help.octopusdeploy.com/discussions/problems/47498-access-denied-for-offline-package-drop
Trying to do an offline package drop. The first time it worked fine, but all subsequent deploys failed with the error:
Failed: Step 3: Create Web Site ==
12:01:48 Fatal | The step failed: Activity Create Web Site on OfflineDeployTarget failed with error ‘Access to the path is denied.’.
12:01:48 Verbose | Create Web Site completed
I noticed that the journal.xml hadn’t been written to in a few days. Also I noticed a number of the following files alongside the journal.xml named journal.xml.temp-.xml
I was able to get past the issue by deleting all the journal files along with the temp files, then the deploy was able to complete. I’m not sure why it couldn’t write to the journal file, I checked the permissions on the file and they looked correct.