Had a situation where I was working on a WSS Farm with 2 servers.
1 WFE and 1 App Server
The App Server was a backup domain controller for a domain.
We installed Search Server Express (great low cost search option for WSS) and all seemed to go fine.
That was until I tried to run a search.
I got the following error when I tried to run the search:
The search request was unable to connect to the Search Service
The problem turned out to be related to the SharePoint Search Service Account not having the correct local user rights on the domain controller.
To resolve the problem I added the user to the IIS_IUSRS group which is in the Builtin folder/OU in Active Directory Users & Computers.
Thursday, April 8, 2010
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Something New Personal Product Reviews...
I don't know that anyone intentionally reads my blog versus just stumbling across it when they are searching the web. In either case I have been meaning for a while to post simple articles about products or services that I purchase. These posts won't typically be SharePoint related (could be), but instead will be about general around the house stuff.
My reasoning for wanting to do this is that I have purchased a lot of stuff for my house and family over the years and typically during that process I often wish I had an honest review of the product I was interested in. Sometimes I found them in places like NewEgg, Lowes and Amazon and sometimes I did not.
So I figure I will add my drop of experience/feedback/wisdom to the giant pool of the internet so if someone happens to be thinking about the same product/service they have one more piece of information to evaluate with.
Ok enough with the background on with the first write ups....
Hot Link Pro - Remote Control Extender by Microsmith
I bought this so that we can achieve TV wall hanging nirvana. (aka TV on the wall with no visible cords, input devices, etc.. showing at all despite the TV being hooked to multiple input devices.)
One critical part of the aforementioned goal was hiding all those devices in a closet, but when you do that the remote controls don't work. So that is where the Hot Link Pro comes in...
It has an eye that catches all the remote control signals from your various remotes. It then sends the signal through a single, thin and flexible ribbon of cords. Each cord in that ribbon (6) can then be positioned in front of a devices.
The basic unit (what I have) supports up to 6 devices and that was plenty enough for us.
Opinion
I like this product and it works well although my TV (Samsung LN40B640) puts out a bunch of IR traffic that causes the receiving eye to be "jammed" for a few seconds. Then they eye/TV get in synch (our out?) and everything works well.
I remotely control two devices currently with this unit:
- Tivo HD
- Sony DVD/VHS player
Overall I am very happy with this product and the only downside is that you have to take some time getting the eye in the right spot (with some TVs) so that it does not get false positive IR traffic/noise from the TV itself.
I looked at lots of options (wireless radio remotes, universal remotes, etc..) and settled on this one for it's simplicity, cost and effectiveness and it has worked out well.
My reasoning for wanting to do this is that I have purchased a lot of stuff for my house and family over the years and typically during that process I often wish I had an honest review of the product I was interested in. Sometimes I found them in places like NewEgg, Lowes and Amazon and sometimes I did not.
So I figure I will add my drop of experience/feedback/wisdom to the giant pool of the internet so if someone happens to be thinking about the same product/service they have one more piece of information to evaluate with.
Ok enough with the background on with the first write ups....
Hot Link Pro - Remote Control Extender by Microsmith
I bought this so that we can achieve TV wall hanging nirvana. (aka TV on the wall with no visible cords, input devices, etc.. showing at all despite the TV being hooked to multiple input devices.)
One critical part of the aforementioned goal was hiding all those devices in a closet, but when you do that the remote controls don't work. So that is where the Hot Link Pro comes in...
It has an eye that catches all the remote control signals from your various remotes. It then sends the signal through a single, thin and flexible ribbon of cords. Each cord in that ribbon (6) can then be positioned in front of a devices.
The basic unit (what I have) supports up to 6 devices and that was plenty enough for us.
Opinion
I like this product and it works well although my TV (Samsung LN40B640) puts out a bunch of IR traffic that causes the receiving eye to be "jammed" for a few seconds. Then they eye/TV get in synch (our out?) and everything works well.
I remotely control two devices currently with this unit:
- Tivo HD
- Sony DVD/VHS player
Overall I am very happy with this product and the only downside is that you have to take some time getting the eye in the right spot (with some TVs) so that it does not get false positive IR traffic/noise from the TV itself.
I looked at lots of options (wireless radio remotes, universal remotes, etc..) and settled on this one for it's simplicity, cost and effectiveness and it has worked out well.
Sunday, February 7, 2010
Windows Vista/Windows 7 Prompting from Office when Opening Files from SharePoint
This one has been posted elsewhere but I feel like it is worthy of posting again as it is one of those little annoyances.
The Problem
You have Windows Vista/Windows 7 as an OS you have a SharePoint web site (web application for you SharePoint nerds) you access via Integrated Windows authentication (NTLM). You have the website listed in your Local Intranet Zone in Internet Explorer and when you browse the site from the web browser it automatically logs you in using your windows domain credentials. So far so good all is working as expected.
Here are the negative symptoms:
- When you attempt to edit/open a Word, Excel, PPT, etc... file for the first time from the browser you get prompted for authentication even though Word/Excel etc... should automatically log you in.
- In Windows 7 you attempt to use one of the handy new jump list recent file shortcuts (is that the feature name?) from the task bar for a file from SharePoint and it does not load the application/file.
Solution
Follow the steps in KB http://support.microsoft.com/kb/943280 to create a registry entry that will allow the web client service (used by Office applications) to pass your credentials to SharePoint for authentication.
It seems there are lots of these little work arounds these days as more security lock downs are affecting SharePoint communications. They are a necessary evil I just wish that they were publicized better by Microsoft.
Side Note
Another very frequent issue I run into in a simliar vein is with Denied Access messages on the SharePoint servers when you attempt to browse or programatically access SharePoint Web Applications whose names are not the same as the NETBIOS or FQDN of the host server. Which is quite common. For example from the server you can browse to RICDXX01.yourdomainname.com just fine but if you attempt to browse to customportalname.yourdomain.com it is blocked because of a security patch to prevent malware spoofing of FQDN addresses. I have seen this on Windows 2003 & 2008... For more information see this KB http://support.microsoft.com/kb/926642 which I know seems like it is unrelated but it is not.
Also please heavily consider using the BackConnectionHostNames option as a preferred (more secure) way to go. The other option (disable loop back check) is referenced in lots of SharePoint blogs but it turns off all the good checking aspects of the security patch. Applying the BackConnectionHostNames registry setting has become a standard part of my SharePoint setup instructions these days as the issue is almost bound to creep up if you don't.
Almost forgot one final point where this issue will really bite you is in the Indexing (and perhaps other) server run web traffic browsing programattic jobs. I mention this because you can be experiencing this issue and not know it because hitting the site from a web browser not on the server will complete just fine. Meanwhile every time your search & indexing process wakes up (since it runs it's requests from the server) it is failing to crawl content for any of the web applications whose FQDN names (url) are not the same as the machine.
The Problem
You have Windows Vista/Windows 7 as an OS you have a SharePoint web site (web application for you SharePoint nerds) you access via Integrated Windows authentication (NTLM). You have the website listed in your Local Intranet Zone in Internet Explorer and when you browse the site from the web browser it automatically logs you in using your windows domain credentials. So far so good all is working as expected.
Here are the negative symptoms:
- When you attempt to edit/open a Word, Excel, PPT, etc... file for the first time from the browser you get prompted for authentication even though Word/Excel etc... should automatically log you in.
- In Windows 7 you attempt to use one of the handy new jump list recent file shortcuts (is that the feature name?) from the task bar for a file from SharePoint and it does not load the application/file.
Solution
Follow the steps in KB http://support.microsoft.com/kb/943280 to create a registry entry that will allow the web client service (used by Office applications) to pass your credentials to SharePoint for authentication.
It seems there are lots of these little work arounds these days as more security lock downs are affecting SharePoint communications. They are a necessary evil I just wish that they were publicized better by Microsoft.
Side Note
Another very frequent issue I run into in a simliar vein is with Denied Access messages on the SharePoint servers when you attempt to browse or programatically access SharePoint Web Applications whose names are not the same as the NETBIOS or FQDN of the host server. Which is quite common. For example from the server you can browse to RICDXX01.yourdomainname.com just fine but if you attempt to browse to customportalname.yourdomain.com it is blocked because of a security patch to prevent malware spoofing of FQDN addresses. I have seen this on Windows 2003 & 2008... For more information see this KB http://support.microsoft.com/kb/926642 which I know seems like it is unrelated but it is not.
Also please heavily consider using the BackConnectionHostNames option as a preferred (more secure) way to go. The other option (disable loop back check) is referenced in lots of SharePoint blogs but it turns off all the good checking aspects of the security patch. Applying the BackConnectionHostNames registry setting has become a standard part of my SharePoint setup instructions these days as the issue is almost bound to creep up if you don't.
Almost forgot one final point where this issue will really bite you is in the Indexing (and perhaps other) server run web traffic browsing programattic jobs. I mention this because you can be experiencing this issue and not know it because hitting the site from a web browser not on the server will complete just fine. Meanwhile every time your search & indexing process wakes up (since it runs it's requests from the server) it is failing to crawl content for any of the web applications whose FQDN names (url) are not the same as the machine.
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
SharePoint Large Farm Upgrading From 2003 to 2007 gotchas...
Recently when working with a SharePoint migration project from WSS 2003 site collections to WSS 2007 we ran into several undocumented limitations.
First if the content database you are trying to migrate has more than 15,000 site collections you will end up with a problem. When you run the upgrade process site collections will be missing.
Long story short the reason is that the SharePoint 2007 upgrade process generates your destination 2007 content databases for you including setting the site collection limit.
So if you have a 2003 content database with 18,000 site collections and then you run a side by side upgrade to SharePoint 2007 it will only migrate (recognize) 15,000 site collections.
How do you resolve this problem?
Well it's not easy but you will have to move site collections to a new content database in 2003. Basically rebalance so that no content database has more than 15,000 site collections. WSSSplit is a tool to help you with that task but it will take some time to run for thousands of site collections.
We were lucky in that we were able to identify several thousand site collections that we could delete and that let us slide under the limit. (it was close)
First if the content database you are trying to migrate has more than 15,000 site collections you will end up with a problem. When you run the upgrade process site collections will be missing.
Long story short the reason is that the SharePoint 2007 upgrade process generates your destination 2007 content databases for you including setting the site collection limit.
So if you have a 2003 content database with 18,000 site collections and then you run a side by side upgrade to SharePoint 2007 it will only migrate (recognize) 15,000 site collections.
How do you resolve this problem?
Well it's not easy but you will have to move site collections to a new content database in 2003. Basically rebalance so that no content database has more than 15,000 site collections. WSSSplit is a tool to help you with that task but it will take some time to run for thousands of site collections.
We were lucky in that we were able to identify several thousand site collections that we could delete and that let us slide under the limit. (it was close)
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Content Query Web Part Not Showing Events and other List Types...
You have to enable the Team Collaboration Lists feature on a WCM site in order to get a fully populated Show Items From This List Type drop down when using the Content Query Web Part. If you don't have that feature enabled then the Content Query Web Part only shows you a subset of list types to pull from and that does not include calendars & etc...
Friday, May 9, 2008
InfoPath Publishing To Form Server Disabled...
THE PROBLEM:
I ran into an issue a few weeks back that had me puzzled. I was attempting to publish some InfoPath forms to a demo MOSS site as browser based content type InfoPath Forms. When I fired up the publishing wizard the option to publish them as browser enabled forms to SharePoint was disabled. I could not figure out what was wrong and it took me a while to realize the cause.
THE CAUSE:
It turns out I had deleted a necessary form library on the SharePoint server in my desire to "clean" up my demo server. Without that library's existence the InfoPath client will not allow the publishing options to be enabled.
THE SOLUTION:
So the lesson here is that InfoPath Forms Server requires a form library called "Form Templates" on the top/root site of the destination SharePoint Site Collection in order to support publishing. Fortunately I was able to recover mine from the Recycle Bin.
Hope this helps someone else...Saturday, April 12, 2008
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)