Setting up SharePoint? Accounts need their domain.

Shane — Wed, 07 Mar 2007 17:11:00 GMT

I have been meaning to post this forever and keep forgetting. A very common issue I am seeing people have when setting up and configuring SharePoint is the way they are specifying account names. You must always specify domain\username. Even though SharePoint will never tell you this is the problem it is. Many users are tempted to just type in username for a service and then the password then they are greeted with a random/cryptic error message. After about an hour (or a day of reinstalling) they realize it was because they forgot to specify the domain name.

I will attempt to compile a list of error messages that have been caused by this issue and post them here. If you have one please post it in the comments and I will update the post. Thanks

Sample Error:

An unhandled exception occurred in the user interface.Exception Information: OSearch (SPSearchAcct)

Anyway, just a heads up!

Shane – SharePoint Help

NT4 domain and SharePoint 2007 don’t play nice

Shane — Thu, 25 Jan 2007 02:53:09 GMT

So after really beating my head on the table for a while my conclusion is you cannot install MOSS 2007 or WSS v3 in an NT 4.0 domain as anything but a single server. If you choose multiserver you will get the error below. I got this error while trying to connect to the SQL Server using windows authentication in the configuration wizard. :(

01/09/2007 10:36:27 10 ERR Exception: System.Security.Principal.IdentityNotMappedException: Some or all identity references could not be translated.

at System.Security.Principal.NTAccount.Translate(IdentityReferenceCollection sourceAccounts, Type targetType, Boolean forceSuccess)

at System.Security.Principal.NTAccount.Translate(Type targetType)

at Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPProcessIdentity.GetMachineRelativeSecurityIdentifier(SPServer server, Boolean& isMachineAccount)

at Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPProcessIdentity.GrantIdentityDatabaseAccess()

at Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPProcessIdentity.Update()

at Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPWindowsService.Update()

at Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPFarm.CreateBasicServices(SqlConnectionStringBuilder administrationContentDatabase, IdentityType identityType, String farmUser, SecureString farmPassword)

at Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPFarm.Create(SqlConnectionStringBuilder configurationDatabase, SqlConnectionStringBuilder administrationContentDatabase, IdentityType identityType, String farmUser, SecureString farmPassword)

at Microsoft.SharePoint.PostSetupConfiguration.ConfigurationDatabaseTask.CreateOrConnectConfigDb()

at Microsoft.SharePoint.PostSetupConfiguration.ConfigurationDatabaseTask.Run()

at Microsoft.SharePoint.PostSetupConfiguration.TaskThread.ExecuteTask()

Now this is my professional opinion because as best I can tell there is no official Microsoft position on this. If you are on an NT4 domain and really want to try using 1 SharePoint server and 1 SQL server you may be able to use SQL authentication but no promises there. It seems that SharePoint considers NT4 to be the same as a workgroup.

Hope this saves someone some grief.

Shane – SharePoint Help

The SharePoint Farmer's Almanac : Error Messages, Install

Setting up SharePoint? Accounts need their domain.

NT4 domain and SharePoint 2007 don’t play nice