The SharePoint Farmer's Almanac : How Do I

Install Guide: SP2 for SharePoint (WSS v3 and MOSS 2007)

Shane — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 03:53:17 GMT

Service Pack 2 was released today (as I am guessing the whole world knows by now). Instead of making that profound announcement I would recommend you check out this post on the SharePoint Team blog for the official announcement. I will spare you the crazy details other than you should install it. J

Just like when the last updates came out I figured I would write a quick guide on the steps I am taking to install. Something to ponder before you get started. When was the last time you did a backup? Knock on wood as you answer.

Start time 11:11 PM
I am checking Windows Update for the latest patches. Looks like SQL Server 2008 SP1, IE8, and a random other Office update is waiting to install. I think I will let them sit for another evening; I have to get up early in the morning.
This environment is a single box with both MOSS Enterprise and SQL Server 2008. MOSS is currently running the February cumulative updates build 12.0.0.6341.
Downloading WSS SP2. 32.9 MB in 29 seconds. Make sure you download the 32bit or 64bit version you need. Both are available from the linked page.
Downloading MOSS SP2. 270 MB in 3 minutes 54 seconds. Make sure you download the 32bit or 64bit version you need. Both are available from the linked page.
Launched the WSS SP2 EXE I just downloaded.
Agreed to the license terms and clicked Continue
Started 11:22 PM. Ended 11:24 PM.
When configuration wizard opens click Cancel and Yes at the warning. We will run config wizard after the MOSS update is installed also.
Launched the MOSS SP2 EXE I just downloaded
Agreed to the license terms and clicked Continue
Started 11:25 PM. Ended 11:36 PM.
Configuration Wizard opens automatically when the update finished installing.
Click Next at the welcome screen
Click Yes to stopping IIS, SharePoint Admin Service, and SharePoint Timer Service
Click Next at the completing screen
You will get a popup warning that you need to install the updates on all servers in your farm before continuing. Be sure to do that if you have multiple servers.
Click OK.
Start at 11:38 PM. About 3 GB of content in this farm. End at 11:48 PM.
Click Finish
Looks like I am left with build 12.0.0.6421

Remember these are the steps I took on my server. They are put here to give you basic guidance, if you feel you want to read about applying updates in excruationing details then check out these links from the Team blog.

Deploy software updates for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc288269.aspx
Deploy software updates for Office SharePoint Server 2007
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc263467.aspx

OK so a question for you. Do you like these update install guides with so many details or would you prefer I leave out everything and just make it quick. You really don't care about my Windows updates or how long it takes to install?

Shane SharePoint Consulting

Fixing MOSS Search

Shane — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 14:56:13 GMT

Had a client today (last week now) who broke search all the way. And in their attempts to straighten it out they changed some pieces that weren't broken. Then while they were in the process of trying to put it all back together I called and said let me at it so they just stopped. Needless to say I picked up the farm in an odd state or more exactly Search was dead.

So the first step always when Search is broke is to go to the SSP Admin and check out things.

Open the SSP Administration page
Click on Search Administration and see what it has to say. (if you don't see Search Administration this means you have not installed the infrastructure update. I would highly recommend at a minimum you have that installed. Get the latest update install guide here)

When I opened the page I saw a Crawl status of Error. That is about worthless.

That is pretty much as generic as they come. You get the same Error when the server is on fire as you do when there is small hiccup. So a much better thing to do is:

Go back to the SSP administration page
Click on Search Settings (which is what we used pre infrastructure update)

This page does a much better job of giving you tangible errors. Here is what I got:

Error: An indexer is not assigned to the Shared Services Provider 'SharedServices1'.

Link to: Configure an indexer and a search database for this Shared Services Provider

Well that is fixable but how did they end up like this? They stopped the Indexing service in the farm by:

Go to Central Admin
Click on Operations
Click Services on Server
They choose their Index server
Then clicked Stop to the right of Office SharePoint Search Service

This doesn't just stop the service. This actually removes the service completely. This also removes the Index server from any SSP configured to use it. Now if you did want to just start and stop the service there is a way to do this:

Open a command prompt
Type net stop osearch and press enter
Type net start osearch and press enter

This will cycle the search service. Usually the only time you need to do something like this is after installing a new ifilter but sometimes it makes you feel better to give it a shot and see if that helps your problem. I do it more often than I should just for that reason.

Back to the task at hand clearing up that error! I double checked and they had already reconfigured the Office SharePoint Search Service on the Index server so all I need to do is go back to the Index server and re-associate the indexer.

From Central Administration click on Shared Services Administration from the left hand side of the page.
Hover over the SSP name, click the drop down arrow and click Edit properties

Scroll to the bottom of the page and select your Index server from the Index Server dropdown. If you see No Indexers in red you need to go back to your Services on Server and make sure you have the Office SharePoint Search service started and configured for the Index role.
Confirm that you have the correct index location. Usually the C: drive is less than ideal.
Click Ok

The SSP is now configured with an Indexer. Let's go make sure Search is happy.

Now click on the Shared Services Provider name to open the SSP admin site.
Click Search Settings

Don't be surprised if you get this error:

Error: The search service is currently offline. Visit the Services on Server page in SharePoint Central Administration to verify whether the service is enabled. This might also be because an indexer move is in progress.

Typically this is because the wheels of Search can move slowly. I have seen this error come up for 10 minutes or so in some farms. What Search is really telling you is it is busy getting the index and the database ready to go so you can start indexing. Be patient grass hopper. At the client this was gone after about 2 minutes.

Once I was able to get to a happy Search Settings page I went ahead and reset the Index back to zero. Not always necessary but they had 33,000 items in the index and 140,000 or errors. I thought better to start everything back to 0.

In order to reset the Index.

From the SSP admin screen click Search Administration
From the left hand column (quick launch for those who know terminology) click Reset all crawled content
Select Deactivate search alerts during reset
Click Reset now

Now you have a completely blank index. Why did we choose to deactivate search alerts? This is to keep from annoying the users. We don't want them all to get new alerts when new content is discovered when we recrawl in a minute. Once the index is back to normal we will re enable the alerts for them.

Ok so now the next step should be doing a full crawl. So let's try that.

From your SSP Administration home page click Search Administration
From the Quick Launch bar (on the left) click Content Sources
Hover over your Content Source, click the drop down arrow, and select full crawl
Now go back to the home page of Search Administration and watch to see if the crawl is running

Unfortunately in our case after about a minute I was left with 0 items in the index and 3 errors. After checking the errors I got Access Denied. L If you haven't done any monkeying around with changing your default content access account then it should have been automatically granted full access to your content source. You can confirm this by checking your Policy for web application in Central administration. If you forget how to do that check this blog post for a reminder. http://msmvps.com/blogs/shane/archive/2007/01/21/become-administrator-of-the-entire-web-application.aspx

If that checked out ok then the next thing I would check is to make sure your web application is set to integrated authentication and not basic authentication. MOSS will not pass basic authentication by default. So if you changed your web application from integrated to basic, so people users don't have to enter their domain for example, then you need to setup a custom crawl rule to pass basic authentication.

From your SSP Administration home page click Search Administration
In the Quick Launch bar click Crawl rules
Click New Crawl Rule
For path enter your web app URL ex: http://portal.company.com/*
For Crawl Configuration select Include all items in this path
For Specify Authentication select Specify a different content access account
Now fill in username and password remembering your domain\username form. I would recommended using your normal search account as you know it already has read access to the content.
Key step de-select the box to Do not allow Basic Authentication
Now do a full crawl. Also, remember if you have multiple web apps you may need more than one of this rules.

For the client this was not this issue but it is an important and often over looked troubleshooting step so I thought throwing it in here would be helpful.

The next thing I take a look at is the dreaded loopback fix. I showed this one to Todd Klindt one time and he wrote a nice post on the issue and a like to the KB for fixing it. http://www.toddklindt.com/blog/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=107 It is all but a guarantee these days if you have the WFE and Index role on the same server you are going to need to do this. A lot of farms have ran fine for a long time and just recently they have started requiring it. Must have been a Windows update that is causing this to be needed more but I haven't identified it. Another note even though this fix is only listed as applying to Windows 2003 it also applies to Windows 2008, had a different client need it last week. J

Loopback fix in and the server rebooted I tried another Full crawl. Success! Seems this was the root of their issues but as is often the case that happens to all of us, trying to fix it only made the problem worse. LOL

Don't forget to re-enable those search alerts.

From your SSP administration home page click Search Administration
In the System Status section in the center of the page click Search alerts status Enable

Another troubleshooting step I skipped, because the client had already done it was resetting search permissions. Read the blog post John Ross did summing up the steps to get permissions back on the up and up for the Search Service. http://www.sharepoint911.com/blogs/john/archive/2009/04/03/change-to-group-policy-broke-sharepoint-search-–-thanks-conficker-scare.aspx

Something I learned that was new

I am guessing since I didn't realize this is an option (or more probably I knew and forgot) you probably didn't either. So run stsadm –o help like below and take a look at the output.

Use Stsadm.exe from the 12 hive (c:\program files\common files\Microsoft shared\web server extensions\12\). Actually 12\bin to be exact.

C:\ >stsadm -help osearch

stsadm -o osearch

[-action <list|start|stop|showdefaultsspadmin>] required parameters for 'start' (if not already set): role, farmcontactemail, service credentials

[-f (suppress prompts)]

[-role <Index|Query|IndexQuery>]

[-farmcontactemail <email>]

[-farmperformancelevel <Reduced|PartlyReduced|Maximum>]

[-farmserviceaccount <DOMAIN\name> (service credentials)]

[-farmservicepassword <password>]

[-defaultindexlocation <directory>]

[-propagationlocation <directory>]

[-cleansearchdatabase <true|false>]

[-ssp <ssp name>] required parameter for 'cleansearchdatabase'

So really very similar to the options you have available to you from the GUI. The reason I used it was one of the Query servers was stuck in the starting state. In the GUI there is no stop until the service gets too started, not even a reboot will help. With stsadm you can do a stop and get out of the perpetual starting. J A very helpful trick.

If you are still fighting with Search here are couple of other Search troubleshooting things I wrote a while back

Hope you enjoy what feels like a small book

Shane – SharePoint Consulting

Install Guide: February Cumulative Updates

Shane — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 14:29:00 GMT

Whoops... because i am a big dummy I screwed up this post. Sorry, hope you weren't using it. :) Install SharePoint SP2 now instead.

Sorry

Shane SharePoint Consulting

InfoPath Form displayed on anonymous site causes login prompt

Shane — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 01:54:24 GMT

Had this one pop up for a second time today so thought I would blog it this time.

Client created a public website for baseball signups. It was a simply publishing portal with anonymous enabled. He then created an InfoPath form and set it up to generate an email with the info from the form. He published this form to a form library using Forms Services and then embedded the form using a page viewer web part on a new ASPX page so people could just navigate and fill out the page.

The problem – the site would pop up an authentication box every time an anonymous person would visit the site. Even stranger if someone would get the authentication box and then enter proper credentials for the remainder of the day anonymous access worked fine. Then each morning back to the same problem. ODD.

Turns out the issue was the lockdown feature used with the publishing portal. Not everyone realizes it but when you create a site collection using the publishing portal there is a hidden feature that fires called ViewFormPagesLockdown. This feature, among other things, sets it so /_layouts directory is not available to the anonymous user. For more details see the ECM Team blog post. So we simply deactivated the feature and reset the anonymous permissions and life was good again.

One thing to pay particular attention to with this feature every time you toggle this feature on or off you need to disable and enable anonymous access for the new settings to take effect. That part can drive you bonkers.

Shane – SharePoint help

Windows Server 2008 WFE will not allow large file uploads

Shane — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 18:51:35 GMT

I had a client a couple weeks ago who upgraded from SPS 2003 to MOSS 2007 using the database attach method. This means the MOSS farm was built on new hardware which we chose Windows Server 2008 for. This was a very challenging upgrade for several reasons but primarly because the 2003 site database was in bad shape. Once we worked through the issues and got things up we noticed strange behavior. When uploading a large file (anything larger than 28 MB) the browser would instantly come back with a 404 error. So our first thought was check the three normal settings for large uploads.

Central Admin > Application Management > General web application settings. By default this is 50 MB. You can increase to 2 GB.
Then you can go into IIS. Find your web application and go to properties. Then change the IIS timeout from 120 seconds to a much larger setting.
Upload.aspx is an application page. Application pages have their own web.config which controls their timeout. The default for these pages is 360 seconds. You need to increase this.

All of these settings apply whether you are using w2k3 or w2k8 and are covered in this kb http://support.microsoft.com/kb/925083

We made all of those changes and no change in behavior. And besides we didn't have a timeout issue because on a 27 MB file is processed for a few seconds and then uploaded no problem. On a 30 MB or greater file it failed instantly.

Todd Klindt to the rescue he pointed me at this KB944981 - You cannot upload files that are larger than 28 MB on a Windows Server 2008-based computer that is running Windows SharePoint Services 3.0

So I gave it a try and it actually made things worse. What the heck? Well then I reread it. They tell you to make a change to the web.config and say just put the change in the <configuration> section. WRONG! Well kind of. You need to make the change in the <configuration> section but it has to be after the </configSections> tag. So I recommend you paste their change between </configSections> and the <SharePoint> tag.

Now everything works great. Do note their change only allows you to upload files with a size of 50 MB. If you want larger you will need to increase the maxAllowedContentLength=.

If you are going to be playing with Windows Server 2008 and SharePoint I recommend you go poke around the SharePoint and w2k8 resource center at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/office/sharepointserver/bb735844.aspx. Thanks to Emily Schroeder for the tweet on that page which she runs. J

Even better yet Todd and I have some fun new stuff coming on Windows Server 2008 and 64 bit before the end of the year.

Shane – SharePoint Consulting

Installer/Uninstaller help

Shane — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 15:45:08 GMT

This isn't just SharePoint but just general server/pc help.

Way to often people call/email/IM me about problems uninstalling software, usually after the uninstaller crapped out half way through the process or they hit cancel because it was taking too long to run. Or the reverse of that the install went belly up. They then end up in some limbo state of the software is only kind of there and they can't remove it. Well my first advice is format the box but, nobody likes that. So the second piece of advice is to run the Windows Installer CleanUp Utility. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/290301 This awesome little tool will show you everything that has been installed by the Windows installer and will allow you to remove any of those files. Not the actual program but all of the behind the scenes files that make the install possible. With those out of the way you can typically rerun your installer/uninstaller and do the job right.

I know when alpha/beta testing Office and SharePoint in the past this tool was a must.

Shane – SharePoint Consulting

A free admin webcast by me

Shane — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 14:53:00 GMT

Just click on the pretty link of me. You do have to register to see the webcast. The description is:

At a recent SharePoint conference, Bill Gates claimed that "SharePoint is the fastest-growing server product Microsoft has ever had." What about your organization? Is SharePoint beginning to get out of control? Some of the most common challenges administrators face today include: poorly managed permissions, uncontrolled growth of sites and site collections, limited visibility into user activity, depleted or poorly utilized SharePoint resources, and the need to centrally control users, sites and site collections. In this hands-on webcast, Microsoft SharePoint MVP Shane Young will discuss the top ways to manage a rapidly growing SharePoint deployment so you can help manage to your organization's governance policies. Topics covered include: permissions management and analysis, log files, monitoring and analyzing drive space, trend analysis, database maintenance, solution packages, data management and rearrangement, and activity monitoring and analysis.

Sounds like fun? i thought so. It is the quickest rundown of all of these things you will find.

Let me know what you think.

Shane - SharePoint Consulting

Whole farm is down because timer jobs are not running

Shane — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 19:50:04 GMT

One of my clients this week managed to take his entire farm offline this week by upsetting the timer service. First a little background – currently they are scrambling to get SharePoint back to a happy state. Why? Well, as happens with lots of customers, SharePoint is too successful. When we originally setup their farm and upgraded from SPS2003 to MOSS 2007 they had about 20 GB of content that was growing at a very controlled pace. Fast forward a little more than a year and their content database is about 320 GB. YIKES! Even scarier most of their data is in one site collection. This is bad, very bad! Typical guidance is your content databases should be less than 100 GB.

Part of this growth has forced some moving of the databases to different drives and a database restore to deal with another issue. Well, anytime you want to move SharePoint databases around you should run the command stsadm –o preparetomove as documented by Cory Burns in the post Detaching databases in MOSS. If you didn't you will start getting sync errors once an hour such as:

Failure trying to synch web application 09a21da5-4485-4b00-8268-772aea7fea12, ContentDB 65301403-c277-4b4c-ad5a-e822572d10ea: A duplicate site ID 3b3a4372-aa91-4e0c-ba57-2567958d81bb(http://portal/sites/test1) was found. This might be caused by restoring a content database from one server farm into a different server farm without first removing the original database and then running stsadm -o preparetomove. If this is the cause, the stsadm -o preparetomove command can be used with the -OldContentDB command line option to resolve this issue.

Cory then goes on how to fix it using stsadm –o sync. This is where my client was. He ran this command but for some reason (possible him specifying the wrong switches and accidently deleting a content db) the command hung up for a long period of time, and the portal users were unable to access the environment. So he killed the stsadm process. From that point all hell broke loose.

For several hours they attempted a lot of fixes found on the web. One of the fixes had them rename the folder located at C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Microsoft\SharePoint\Config\<guid>\. This was a bad option. The folder contains XML files for all of the timer job definitions that need to be ran and the idea was renaming the folder would cause SharePoint to create a new empty copy of the folder and then it could start creating the xml files again and get back to work. Nope, that isn't how it works. What they needed to do was delete all of the XML files and leave the folder alone. Then when they restarted the timer service the proper XML files would have magically reappeared.

Hope this helps you

Shane

SharePoint Consulting

Another Error Message – Access Denied on Profile Import

Shane — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 15:56:31 GMT

I noticed the error message below repeatedly in event viewer and realized it was happening every time a profile import was happening.

Event Type: Error

Event Source: Office SharePoint Server

Event Category: Office Server General

Event ID: 7888

Date: 6/27/2008

Time: 11:37:17 AM

User: N/A

Computer: ServerName

Description:

A runtime exception was detected. Details follow.

Message: Access Denied! Only site admin can access Data Source object from user profile DB.

Techinal Details:

System.UnauthorizedAccessException: Access Denied! Only site admin can access Data Source object from user profile DB.

at Microsoft.Office.Server.UserProfiles.SRPSite.AdminCheck(String message)

at Microsoft.Office.Server.UserProfiles.DataSource._LoadDataSourceDef(IDataRecord rec)

at Microsoft.Office.Server.UserProfiles.DataSource._LoadDataSourceDef(String strDSName)

at Microsoft.Office.Server.UserProfiles.DataSource..ctor(SRPSite site, Boolean fAllowEveryoneRead)

at Microsoft.Office.Server.UserProfiles.DataSource..ctor(SRPSite site)

at Microsoft.Office.Server.UserProfiles.UserProfileConfigManager.GetDataSource()

at Microsoft.Office.Server.UserProfiles.BDCConnector.RefreshConfiguration(String sspName)

For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.

Turns out that on this server they had a least privileged install done. In this case you need to make sure that within the SSP you have granted your default content access account and your SSP application pool account the manage profile permission. If you need help with that check out this article I wrote on SSPs and their rights. http://msmvps.com/blogs/shane/archive/2007/08/06/give-a-user-access-to-the-ssp.aspx

Shane – SharePoint Consulting

List Size Reporting

Shane — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 11:53:00 GMT

Updated 7/27/08 - I realized the pictures didn't show up the first time.

Have you ever used the feature Storage space allocation from the site collection administrator's menu?

That is a pretty nice view of all of the document libraries in my site collection and their size. You can also click the drop down for show only and get a couple more choices.

How fun. Finding large lists or documents in the site collection is easy as pie now!

Enabling this feature

As you excitedly clicked into site collection administration you probably found you don't have this as an option.

Why not? These menus only show up when you have site collection quotas enabled. Kind of a bummer. Typically what I will do if I want this reporting is enable an arbitrary site collection quota. This is done from Central Admin > Application Management > Site Collection quotas and locks.

Shane SharePoint Consulting

What makes a “good” SharePoint consultant?

Shane — Wed, 21 May 2008 17:20:00 GMT

In the TechNet forums there is a thread that got off topic and somehow came to this question. "What makes a good SharePoint consultant?"

Since I felt the answer to the question and the tone of the conversation were so off base I started to write a reply. I also had another well respected SharePoint consultant tell me they thought someone should bring some clarity to the thread. Well, after beating up my keyboard for several minutes I thought I would take my reply to my private little soap box, my blog. So here goes.

The basic concept of the thread is that a good SharePoint consultant would need to know a bunch of administrator stuff. Active Directory, SQL, Windows Server, etc. Interesting idea I guess? Joel Oleson does a thorough job of laying it all out in the SharePoint Architect Skill Set post.

The big issue I see with this all being advertised as what you should be looking for in a "Good SharePoint Consultant" is I don't think any of this is as nearly important as the "Soft Side" of SharePoint. There is no mention of the key things like Usability? Design? Taxonomy? Planning? Rollouts? Search? Branding? Custom apps? Business analysis? User adoption? Discovery? Etc. These are the things that will decide if you have a successful deployment or not. Poorly setup hardware can cause you issues but can be fixed by someone like myself in hours. A poor taxonomy can take 6 months and a complete redesign to fix.

I got into SharePoint as the guy who knew all of the server stuff. I was an MCSE and all of that jazz. Guess what? For most SharePoint projects I was useful for about 2 days. Once the hardware was built and rock solid I went home and the real work was begun by the "good SharePoint Consultants". I have since spent a great deal of effort learning the "human" side of SharePoint. That is the hard part. I can teach anyone to install the software in a couple of hours. If you give me a couple of days I can teach you to make it rock solid. But then what? You need content. That is where you get into the black arts that are portal planning and design. That is the hard part. Once you design what needs to be built in SharePoint you are back to the easy stuff. Clicky, clicky and the thing is deployed. One project I am on we are paying a high school kid to build it and bring in the data. He just follows the directions we laid out. And it only took 3 months and a couple of dozen meetings with a few hundred decisions to get to that. ;) Of course that is just phase one.

<RANT> Now here comes the part that annoys me the most. If you don't know most everything SharePoint can do out of box then don't speak to another customer until you do! Seriously! I can't tell you what percentage of my business is cleaning up other so called "consultants" but it is a big part. People who walk in the door with their army of .NET developers and start building the functionality the customer is asking for. This would be great except for one small detail. 9 times out of 10 what they are building is already included out of the box. Do you know how many times I see things that are the content query web part recreated? Or they wrote custom navigation because they couldn't figure out how to use the one that comes with SharePoint? It drives me bonkers. They hard wire in these things and then guess what? You can't upgrade later or the latest service pack breaks something. Why? Because that is your punishment for reinventing the wheel. This may be a great model for the consulting company but really sucks for the customer footing the bill for the never ending cycle of maintenance. </RANT>

Now don't get me wrong not all SharePoint Consultants are evil. There are a lot of very talented ones, some are even developers ;), (I love you guys) but development is not the first answer when it comes to SharePoint. Squeezing as much as you can out of the box is. If I was looking for a SharePoint consultant I would use SharePoint911 they are the best. (Oh yeah, in case you didn't know I own the company. So take that with a grain of salt.)

So my questions I would ask a potential SharePoint consultant are:

List your last 10 projects? (If more than 5 aren't SharePoint be scared)
What was your favorite solution you came up with? (Hopefully something like well we combined the BDC, Forms Server, and a custom workflow. Then we setup a KPI for the data with Excel Services. But any real solution will do.)
What is your favorite feature? (This gives you insight into the person. If they don't have an answer RUN.) My answer is search.
What type of Taxonomy would you suggest? (Kind of a trick question. If they list one immediately ask them for a second one to make sure they aren't just using buzz words. They should really answer with well it depends. If they say they already paid their taxes RUN)

I welcome comments. Though I fear I may be opening that darn box of Pandora's again. And yes, I really don't hate developers.

Shane – SharePoint Consulting

Change the port for central admin

Shane — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 03:30:16 GMT

This came up in class today and one my students Eric knew the answer off the top of his head. It was so simple I thought I would share.

Stsadm –o setadminport –port 5555

This command will change SharePoint Central Administration v3 to run on port 5555. Even cooler? Didn't take a reboot or iisreset to take effect, it just worked.

Shane – SharePoint Consulting

How to install WSS and MOSS SP1

Shane — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 03:50:00 GMT

Service Pack 1 for SharePoint is here. The SharePoint Team blog has a great full length article on all of fixes and tweaks. You can read it here Announcing the Release of WSS 3.0 SP1 and Office SharePoint Server 2007 SP1.

This post is just meant to give you the easy version of the install instructions. If you have complex scenarios or have issues I highly recommend you read Planning and deploying SP1 for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server instead of my instructions. Cool?

Ok here is my setup that I am about to patch. Server 1 is the SQL 2005 SP2 database box. Server 2 is a Windows Server 2003 SP2 with MOSS 2007 Enterprise installed. I am doing everything on Server 2. I give you run times on the longer parts for reference points. Your times will vary!

Backup SharePoint! Seriously handy little paper here if you need help.
Download the software you need. For my servers I downloaded the 32 bit editions. You must install BOTH the WSS and MOSS update if you have MOSS installed.
1. WSS SP1 downloads
2. MOSS SP1 downloads
Stop the World Wide Web Publishing Services to keep your users off the server.
1. Start > Administrative Tools > Services
2. Scroll to the bottom of the list, click World Wide Web Publishing Service
3. Click the Stop button
Install the Windows SharePoint Services Service Pack (total time less than 2 minutes)
1. Find the downloaded file. For me this was wssv3sp1-kb936988-x86-fullfile-en-us.exe
2. Double click to run the file
3. Read the license terms, click accept
4. Click continue
5. At the reminder message click OK
6. Now it starts processing the update.
7. At the installation complete message click OK
Now if you have just WSS skip to step 8
If the configuration wizard opens close it.
Install the MOSS update (total time less than 2 minutes)
1. Find the downloaded file. For me this was officeserver2007sp1-kb936984-x86-fullfile-en-us.exe
2. Double click to run the file
3. Read the license terms, click accept
4. Click continue
5. At the reminder message click OK
6. Now the update processes…
Run SharePoint Configuration Wizard (15 minutes)
1. Start > All Programs > Microsoft Office Server > SharePoint Product and Technologies Configuration Wizard
2. Click Next at the Welcome screen
3. Click Yes at the warning about restarting services
4. Click Next at the Completing the SharePoint Product and Technologies Configuration Wizard
5. Your server is now processing step 1
6. You will be prompted to now install the updates on other servers in your farm. Click OK since you only have 1 SharePoint server.
  1. NOTE: If you did have multiple servers you would repeat all of the above steps on each of those servers before moving on. Also, if you are wondering you should probably start with the server that host central admin.
7. Now your server is processing steps 2 through 9.
8. Speaking of step 8 it took my server approximately 13 minutes to process 4.4 GB of content. I am sure your times will vary. Just don't panic on this step if it takes a while. It is essentially touching all of your content.
9. At Configuration Successful click Finish
Check out Central Admin
1. Restart the World Wide Web Publishing service you stopped in step 2. If you had to reboot this is not necessary.
2. Click Operations tab
3. Under Topologies and Services click Servers in farm
4. Next to your server you should see Version 12.0.0.6219 not 12.0.0.4518. If you do you should be good to go.

That is it. :)

Shane – SharePoint Help

Finding My Links in the Database

Shane — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 12:44:18 GMT

If someone asked you where My Links were stored what you say?

First guess? They are part of My Sites right? I mean that is where you go to manage them and such. Nope. They are actually stored in your profile.

The reason I found out? A couple of my customers did some work around creating a new SSP and moving My Sites. When they got the My Sites moved over to the new location to their displeasure they found My Links missing. So they called me. Long story short I will tell you how to figure out what database they are in and how to read them out.

As always! Modifying a SharePoint Database is NOT SUPPORTED. Some would even argue running this select query against a database is not supported. In a perfect world ok, but sometimes people want info out of the DB not excuses. So don't shoot the messenger, I am just telling you how to get to it. If you do it or not is up to you.

So the first thing you need to do is figure out what profile database you need information out of. To do that you go to Central Admin.
Now Click Shared Services Administration from the quick launch.
From this screen hover over the appropriate SSP name, click the drop down arrow, and choose Edit Properties.
Now find where it says SSP Database. This your Database Name.
Now you need to open a SQL Query Window using the SQL Management tools
Then run the query below – Remember to replace the Use statement with your database name from step 4

Use SharedServices1_DB

Select

UP.NTName,

UP.PreferredName,

UP.Email,

UL.Title,

UL.URL

From

UserLinks UL inner join UserProfile_Full UP on UL.recordId = UP.recordID

You should then get a nice table of your results back.
In the case of Kenny and Dave they will be emailing each user a report of their links so they can set them up again. Not saying you couldn't find a different way to do this. J That is just the best solution for them.

Special thanks goes out to Kenny T and Dave E for their help with getting this information out there. They have inspired other blog post in the past but this time they actually wrote the SQL query so they get their names up in lights. Thanks guys!

Enjoy Turkey Day!

Shane – SharePoint Help

Please install the SharePoint updates on your server

Shane — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 04:22:23 GMT

Seriously, you should install the updates before you have to set those clocks back an hour. Heck, if I am having to remind you this then I should also remind you to check the batteries in your smoke detectors. J

This is a security update! Yes, I know it fixes the annoying day light savings issues it also fixes some important security issues. Read the security bulletin. Does your server face the internet? Maybe as an extranet? Then you should of installed this yesterday.

Here are my brief yet kind of helpful instructions. There is nothing earth shattering here. I just know people like to know exactly what they are in for before doing an update. These instructions are only right if you are running One SharePoint Server. If you have multiple SharePoint servers you need to read these instructions. For WSS update and MOSS update. These instructions cover how to verify if you already have installed the patches, known issues, secure and farm scenarios, still in the middle of an upgrade from v2, how to use the updates folder for a fresh install, how to detach your content databases to speed up the update, and how to verify the install was successful.

If you have any issues after you install the updates then check out Bill Baer's post http://blogs.technet.com/wbaer/archive/2007/10/15/kb934525-troubleshooting.aspx It fixed one of my customer issues and some post on the MSDN Forums. But don't tell Bill it helped you, his head is getting too big already. ;)

You will have downtime while installing these updates! Plan accordingly. Some servers will even have to reboot, others will not. (I have been exactly 50-50 on this.)

Backup SharePoint!
Download the software you need. For my servers I downloaded the 32 bit editions. You must install BOTH the WSS and MOSS update if you have MOSS installed.
Stop the World Wide Web Publishing Services to keep your users off the server.
1. Start > Administrative Tools > Services
2. Scroll to the bottom of the list, click World Wide Web Publishing Service
3. Click the Stop button
Install the WSS update (total time less than 2 minutes)
1. Find the downloaded file. For me this was wssv3-kb934525-fullfile-x86-glb.exe
2. Double click to run the file
3. Read the license terms, click accept
4. Click continue
5. At the reminder message click OK
6. Now it starts processing the update.
7. At the installation complete message click OK
Now if you have just WSS skip to step 7
Install the MOSS update (total time less than 2 minutes)
1. Find the downloaded file. For me this was Officeserver2007-kb937832-fullfile-x86-glb.exe
2. Double click to run the file
3. Read the license terms, click accept
4. Click continue
5. At the reminder message click OK
6. Now the update process…
7. At the end of my update I was greeted with a REBOOT message. If you are then click Yes to reboot. If not click OK at the installation complete message.
Run SharePoint Configuration Wizard (15 minutes)
1. Start > All Programs > Microsoft Office Server > SharePoint Product and Technologies Configuration Wizard
2. Click Next at the Welcome screen
3. Click Yes at the warning about restarting services
4. Click Next at the Completing the SharePoint Product and Technologies Configuration Wizard
5. Your server is now processing step 1
6. You will be prompted to now install the updates on other servers in your farm. Click OK since you only have 1 SharePoint server.
7. Now your server is processing steps 2 through 9.
8. At step 8 I noticed this error. Best I can tell nothing bad happened. If you see this makes sure search still works. The install doc above covers how to restart search if you do have issues.
9. Speaking of step 8 it took my server approximately 13 minutes to process 4.4 GB of content. I am sure your times will vary. Just don't panic on this step if it takes a while. It is essentially touching all of your content.
10. At Configuration Successful click Finish
Check out Central Admin
1. Restart the World Wide Web Publishing service you stopped in step 2. If you had to reboot this is not necessary.
2. Click Operations tab
3. Under Topologies and Services click Servers in farm
4. Next to your server you should see Version 12.0.0.6039 not 12.0.0.4518. If you do you should be good to go.

That is it. :)

If you have question not covered contact me or check out Joel's Update FAQs

Shane – SharePoint Help

Typical problem with a least privileged install

Shane — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 03:51:48 GMT

If you are keeping with best practices and doing any type of install where security is important (shouldn't it always be) then you have probably done a least privileged install. Probably using these instructions Least-privilege administration requirements when using domain user accounts.

One of the challenges of this type of install is things don't always work as expected. Take for example the RADEditor for SharePoint 2007. This handy little tool allows cross-browser rich text edit. Huh? These lets your users with FireFox (or the other 2^nd tier browsers) go from an experience like this when editing a wiki

To something very similar to what the Internet Explorer users see

That is pretty cool huh?

The way it works is you download their WSS Solutions Package (WSP) and deploy it to your web application. Then you have a feature named Use RadEditor to edit List items available at the Web (single site) level. The first time you activate the feature it attempts to copy RadEditorList.ascx from c:\program files\common files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\Template\Features\RadEditorFeature\ to c:\program files\common files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\Template\ControlTemplates. The only problem is it requires administrator rights on the server to move the file. And the account that it is attempting to use to move the file is your application pool account. And if you did a "proper" install that account does not have local administrator permissions on the SharePoint Server.

The problem? You never get an error message to let you know the copy failed. :( So you are left guessing. Once you discover this problem simply move the file over to the proper directory. Now do an IISReset.exe and your non-IE users will be happy.

The main reason I bring up this issue is it is very common. Often when you do a least privileged install you will find little issues like this, so be prepared.

Shane – SharePoint Help

Give a user access to the SSP

Shane — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 15:00:54 GMT

This can be slightly more daunting and confusing to a SharePoint rookie than it should be. So I thought I would drill through the process and see if I can help someone out. The story usually goes something like this.

You are the IT guy. You got a request to install this MOSS thing so people could make web sites or something like that. Ok. After a couple of tries no problem. You got the darn thing installed for them. You create them a site collection and set them on their marry little way. No problems. Then the following week you get another call. "We need to configure search and import some profiles. We need to access the Shared Service Provider to do this. Can you let us in?" OK. Now what?

You could do it the lazy way and cross your fingers they don't break anything by granting access to the whole web application. That was detailed in my post Become Administrator of the Entire Web Application. But even if you do this you will find they still can't manage profiles , audiences, permissions, or usage analytics. Bummer. So what should you do?

Start off by logging into the SSP admin site.
Now you need to add the user just like you would to any other site. Click Site Actions > Site Settings
Under Users and Permissions click Advanced permissions
Click New > Add Users
Enter your user and put them in a group. Normally I just place them in the Viewers group and hit OK

Now your user can log into the SSP and manage search settings, the Excel Service Settings, and can view the various links list. So how do you give them more permissions? Well in order to do that you need to give them some more access.

Under User Profiles and My Sites click Personalization services permissions.
Click Add Users/Groups
Enter your users name select which permissions you would like to bestow upon them and click Save.

What are all of these different permissions? I am glad you asked. J

Create personal site gives the user the capability to create and use a My Site. Going deep here will have to be saved for another day but if you want to make that My Site link disappear take away this right from the users. But you didn't give it to them. Why do they have it? Go back to the manage permission screen. All authenticated users were given this right by default.
Use personal features is another topic for another day. Essentially though this provides the My Links functionality and allows users to manage their Colleagues.
Manage user profiles this allows your user to do just that. Get in there and modify the profiles for this SSP. Give them this right and now they can access the links: User profiles and properties, Profile services policies, and My Site Settings.
Manage audiences you guessed it but now you can click that handy little Audiences link. Once you are there you can set the schedule or define the rules for building those global audiences.
Manage permissions this will let that user modify Personalization services permissions (the stuff we are doing right now).
Manage usage analytics this gives the user access to make changes to Usage reporting. Small bug here but if the user doesn't have this right they can still open up the screen. Then if they make a change and hit ok they get a 403 forbidden error. Reminds you of SPS 2003 doesn't it. J

So now if you have given the user all of those permissions they should be a happy camper? Depends. If you have MOSS Enterprise then probably not because they still can't manage the BDC. Yikes! More to do.

Click Business Data Catalog permissions from the main screen of the SSP
Click Add Users/Groups
Enter your user, select their permissions and click Save

Since I will not even claim to understand the BDC I will leave you to use the included explanations on the screen to figure out what to give your users.

Anyway, hopefully this will help you out.

Shane – SharePoint Help

A very common prescan problem that stops you from doing your upgrade

Shane — Sun, 15 Jul 2007 19:30:00 GMT

I have gotten the same email from several people and the fix has been the same just about every time so I thought I would publish the conversation here. Hopefully some searching of the web will help save a couple of email stamps. ;)

Mr. Pugglesworth: What should I do if I want to find out if my SharePoint (WSS v2 or SPS 2003) is ready to be upgraded?

Shane: Use my post here to Download Prescan.exe and then use Joel Oleson's post for the exact syntax.

Mr. Pugglesworth: I ran prescan.exe and then I get these error messages in my prescan log. Can you help?

07/05/2007 15:16:32 Skipping virtual server: http://portal.company.com/. Server

state = NeedUpgrade. Most likely this virtual server is not extended

with WSS v2.

07/05/2007 15:16:32 Scan finished without failure.

07/05/2007 15:16:32

===============================Logs===============================

07/05/2007 15:16:32 Log file:

C:\DOCUME~1\puggle\LOCALS~1\Temp\3\PreupgradeReport_633192453889379947_L

og.txt

07/05/2007 15:16:32 Summary file:

C:\DOCUME~1\puggle\LOCALS~1\Temp\3\PreupgradeReport_633192453889379947_S

ummary.xml

07/05/2007 15:16:32

==============================Totals==============================

07/05/2007 15:16:32 Number of sites skipped (already scanned): 0

07/05/2007 15:16:32 Number of sites scanned: 0

07/05/2007 15:16:32 Number of broken sites: 0

07/05/2007 15:16:32 Number of webs scanned: 0

07/05/2007 15:16:32 Number of broken webs: 0

07/05/2007 15:16:32 Number of webs using custom template: 0

07/05/2007 15:16:32 Number of pages scanned: 0

07/05/2007 15:16:32 Number of unghosted pages: 0

Shane: Usually that message only shows up when WSS truly isn't installed or your virtual server didn't get upgraded after you installed WSS SP2. Try this to confirm my suspicions:

Go to v2 central admin. Then click on Windows SharePoint Service on the left:

Now click on Configure virtual server settings.

Now please take a screenshot of the screen that looks like this and send it back to me.

This will help me tell you what to do next.

Mr. Pugglesworth: Here is what I get. Please help. :)

Shane: You have some form of this problem http://msmvps.com/blogs/shane/archive/2005/11/02/74038.aspx

Essentially, you need to run stsadm.exe –o upgrade –forceupgrade from the 60 hive before you will be able to do an upgrade to MOSS. While this command is running your SharePoint will be unavailable so plan accordingly. Also, please make sure you have a backup before you start running stsadm commands. They are safe but very powerful.

The End

Hopefully this will help you out also. If nothing else I don't have to have this email conversation too many more times. ;)

Shane Young – SharePoint Help

What is a Shared Service Provider?

Shane — Fri, 29 Jun 2007 01:45:48 GMT

For those of you who don't know what I am talking about a bit of overview. In MOSS 2007 there is this new concept of Shared Services Providers(SSP). The idea being that there are certain services that really make sense to centrally manage and share. A good example being profiles. With a SSP we can import all of the profile information from AD once and then our various web applications can consume the data. So maybe we have http://marketing and http://accounting it doesn't make sense for each one to maintain identical profile information, they should share.

The major services that are handled by the SSP are:

Profiles and Audiences
My Sites
Search
All of Excel Services
All of the BDC (Business Data Catalog)

Below is an example screen shot from MOSS 2007 Enterprise:

Sometimes the easiest way to think of Shared Services is the Parent vs. Child relationship. The Parent (your SSP) goes out and does all of the work (pulling BDC data, indexing content, hosting My Sites) and the child (your web applications) come to the parents to ask for $5 (request data from the BDC, or view a calculated Excel sheet). Does that help?

Multiple SSPs

One of the most overwhelming things about SSPs for some people planning is how many should I have? It is easy to see from the interface that you are given the opportunity to create more than one. When should you do this?

As a general rule of thumb most companies will use one SSP. This is my default answer. So why do they give you the ability to run multiple SSPs? There are cases where you want separate search or profiles. The most common? Extranet/internet scenarios. Maybe your SharePoint farm hosts two primary web applications. http://portal for your intranet and http://ourcustomers for your extranet. In this scenario you probably want separate search and profiles. And now you have found the reason to have multiple SSPs. You don't want to share information you want unique information for both.

Another advantage of SSPs

Separation of roles. In some medium and large environments it is not uncommon to have one group administering the physical server farm while another group needs to just maintain search. Well the SSP concept makes this very easy. Since the SSP is its own SharePoint site collection you can define a users access so they can NOT access central administration but they CAN access the SSP. And once they get into the SSP you can even limit them. Once inside the SSP you can determine if they can:

Manage user profiles
Manage audiences
Manage permissions
Manage usage analytics

Best I can tell if you give them access to the SSP all of the other SSP functions they will have rights to. Guess it needs more testing.

Still this separation of services from the actual administration of the server can be quite useful. Epically in companies where the less access I give a user the better.

Moral of the story

SSPs are very helpful and important to understand. They should be part of your initial planning. They can be secured at a very granular level or they can be give broad access. Just mark this topic down as something else you need to full think through before you start rolling out SharePoint. And when all else fails just have one SSP.

Shane –SharePoint Help

Change what Page Layout you are using

Shane — Thu, 31 May 2007 16:09:07 GMT

Boring Story

http://www.sharepoint911.com was hosted on a WSS v2 Team Site with a custom site definition. Since RTM I have wanted to make the switch to the site running on MOSS 2007. I purchased new hardware and made some plans. Like every non customer project it kept getting pushed further and further down the To-Do list. The v2 site was working fine and driving business. Then Monday happened. We originally thought the server it was hosted on had just drank too much at the Memorial Day party and had a hangover. A quick reboot and it would be back in business. Wrong answer. Server was dead. :(

So instead of rebuilding a v2 box and recovering from the backups we decided to expedite our move to MOSS. If you take a look at the site now you can see it is still a little rough around the edges but at least it is up. We have lots of plans for making the site look better and adding some new functionality. (Wonder how long that will take?) Anyway, had a problem that was bugging us so I thought I would post a quickie.

Technical details

When you create a page in a publishing site you have to choose what page layout you want to use. Well, what happens if you chose wrong? How do you change the page layout your page is associated with? It is actually pretty simple if you know where to look.

Browse to the page
Click Site Actions, Edit Page
From the tool bar click Page
In the drop down list click Page Settings
Now pick your Page Layout
Click OK

I looked everywhere for this setting. I knew it had to be simple and it was. Hopefully this blog post saves someone else lots of hunt and clicking.

Shane