How to delete a Search Service Application in Moss 2010

After I installed Sharepoint 2010, I tried to figure out how certain services work without Search Services Provider. As we already know, there are no SSP's anymore in 2010 architecture.

So I configured  a FAST Search Connector. But It didnt work quite allright so I tried to delete it. No luck! There were no options in Central Administration to delete a Search Service Application after creating it.

After a quick search on the internet I find that you can remove the SSA by using

stsadm -o deleteconfigurationobject  -id *GUID*


command. This command works by using object id(GUID). In order to get the object ID; the GUID of SSA, I just copied it from IE, central administration Search Service Application URL.

How to deal with faulty features

Before upgrading to SharePoint 2010, you should run preupgradechecker and Test:SpContentDatabase..

Preupgrade checker should be run on the 2007 instance and Test:spcontentdatabase should be run on Sharepoint 2010.

After you run the preupgradechecker, it creates an html file containing your farm details. In my case, there were lots of missing features!
The entries were like these:

Name = [Unknown], Feature id = [5ac519ce-6bf2-842c-485c-04efe522a2dc], Reference count = [1], Scope = [Web], Status = [Missing]

Name = [Unknown], Feature id = [c5e293c8-a4c6-8607-5505-7a2a77a9800e], Reference count = [1], Scope = [Web], Status = [Missing]

Name = [Unknown], Feature id = [68f713c6-1fc8-d110-e819-ce7d59518f60], Reference count = [1], Scope = [Web], Status = [Missing]

Name = [Unknown], Feature id = [564a2b98-aec8-e5f5-7e94-8096d64fe16c], Reference count = [1], Scope = [Web], Status = [Missing]

Name = [Unknown], Feature id = [a28a2e77-9525-4c9c-ad79-e0b6252395e8], Reference count = [1], Scope = [Web], Status = [Missing]

While searching on the internet, I found that tool which is very handy to remove problematic features:
http://featureadmin.codeplex.com/

Of course, test it before you try it ;)
In my case I perform a database attach upgrade so it's easier to test.

Page viewer web part problem in Sharepoint 2010

After upgrading SharePoint 2010, the page viewer web parts does not show up. Instead a dialog appears and it tries to download the html file.

This is because of the security settings in Sharepoint 2010
To solve this; you have to navigate to Central administration:

Application Management> Manage Web Applications> select your web aplication & open General Settings

Change "Browser File Handling" to "Permissive.

 

upgrade sp1 content database by adding it with stsadm

If you have a Sharepoint service pack1 content database which you want to move to SP2 environment all you have to do is to run a stsadm command..

stsadm -o addcontentdb -url http://new-site-address -databaseserver your_server -databasename

This will upgrade the SP1 content database to sP2. This is very handy when you want to upgrade a 32-bit SP1 sharepoint 2007 to Sharepoint 2010. First you move it to a sp2 farm by using this command, after upgrade is successful then you detach/attach it again to sql 2008 & sharepoint 2010 backend.

Failure trying to synch web application after attaching new content database to a web application

After restoring a content database from prod to test , and make the web application point to this new database, I started to see errors on Server Event log.



ERROR 1:
Event Type: Error
Event Source: Office SharePoint Server
Event Category: User Profiles 
Event ID: 5555
Date: 06.10.2010
Time: 11:00:03
User: N/A
Computer: xxxxxxxx
Description:
Failure trying to synch web application 7621f35a-0df2-4c88-8f03-0ce546db94bd, ContentDB d9248f2a-523c-4d86-b149-9ccfc08c6466  Exception message was A duplicate site ID e10eb63c-01dd-4227-98db-9fbfa1285ce9(http://xxxxxxx) 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.

ERROR 2:


Event Type: Error
Event Source: Office SharePoint Server
Event Category: User Profiles 
Event ID: 5553
Date: 06.10.2010
Time: 11:00:07
User: N/A
Computer: TUP03SRV74
Description:
failure trying to synch site 1eeae3e9-9412-4f73-a4df-b752d88c0329 for ContentDB 6a7a4d13-adc5-4605-a056-ae5216498ffe WebApp 3b98938e-c823-4c24-a19f-7c60a73bd306.  Exception message was Cannot complete this action.

Solution:

C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\12\BIN>stsa
dm -o sync -deleteolddatabases 0

For my case the output was:

Deleted sync information for DB a416fe1d-600d-46ff-a176-8f2fd3f7d454
Deleted sync information for DB 6a7a4d13-adc5-4605-a056-ae5216498ffe
Deleted sync information for DB 208737f0-6795-42ee-badd-dbfcaf0e5d02
Deleted sync information for DB b53fe383-2f27-499b-b612-f09748d90ae2

Then I listed the old databases to make sure that there were none left..


C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\12\BIN>stsa
dm -o sync -listolddatabases 0

Shared Service Provider SharedServices1
No databases match the criteria for this Shared Service Provider

Make your notebook a development platform for SharePoint 2010

For SharePoint 2007 or WSS it is nearly impossible to install on something other than Windows Server ..there were some articles explaining how to install WSS 3.0 on windows 7 by using some tools but honestly, I try and I could not be able to get it work.

When I find out that SharePoint Foundation (the new name of WSS in SharePoint 2010 platform) could be installed on Windows 7 I was very happy. At last I can use my own machine for development purposes without having to use any virtual machine.

What you need is explained detailly over here:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee554869.aspx

Good luck!

How to keep Workflow History data more than 60 days in SharePoint

I am not sure if it is officially declared by Microsoft or not, but SharePoint is set to delete/purge workflow history from database after 60 days. That means you can't find anything more than 60 days old in Workflow history list by default setting.

If you are using custom developed workflows that could be annoying because you'll have to keep approval workflow info vs. more than 60 days according to your company policies etc.

There is a simple way to prevent this behaviour. Just log on to Central Administration and Go to Timer Job Definitions on Operations page.

Find the "Workflow Auto Cleanup" timer job that belongs to the web application you want to preserve.
Disable it, thats it..

Create New item in a custom list leads to "Unknown error"

Last week we had a nasty problem. In a custom list of a custom site, new items were not getting created. The "new form" aspx was customized as well. When you click new item (it was a custom content type also)  SharePoint gave a big nice "Unknown error" screen.

we discovered two anomalies:

1. the first thing I got suspicious was the item count. Sharepoint hard limits are really annoying..I was right about getting suspicioous over item count,  we deleted some of items from the list, the error vanished! But the list had to grow..

2. When you sign on as the "Site Collection Administrator" magically, you have no errors, everything worked fine. It does not even work when you have the full control permission level on list or site..Just being in "site collection administrators" group keeps the error away.

We dig the ULS and found out that kind of errors:

"Application error when access /_layouts/unit/forms.aspx, Error=Must declare the table variable "@_scopeTbl".  Must declare the table variable "@_scopeTbl".  Incorrect syntax near the keyword 'with'. If this statement is a common table expression or an xmlnamespaces clause, the previous statement must be terminated with a semicolon.  Incorrect syntax near the keyword 'with'. If this statement is a common table expression or an xmlnamespaces clause, the previous statement must be terminated with a semicolon.  Incorrect syntax near the keyword 'with'. If this statement is a common table expression or an xmlnamespaces clause, the previous statement must be terminated with a semicolon.  Incorrect syntax near the keyword 'with'. If this statement is a common table expression or an xmlnamespaces clause, the previous statement must be terminated with a semicolon.   at System.Data.SqlClient.SqlConnection.OnError(SqlException exception, Boolean breakConnection)     at..........................."


So after a quick googling, I found that cumulative update: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/973410
(Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Cumulative Update Server Hotfix Package)
Although it seems to be curing the render failed error messages.

I never liked patching my farm on place, if we have custom development on it .. I usually do install a new farm, attach content db, and upgrade. Then  re-deploy the custom solutions on it...

I did this in order again and the Cumulative update really worked for the problem but unfortunately, It caused other things to crash... Now some of the custom built workflows are not working and its a complete pain to seek a way to fix them.

Access is denied. Check that the Default Content Access Account has access to this content, or add a crawl rule to crawl this content.

After Adding a new index server to the farm - made that a dedicated indexer-

after that when I tried a full crawl the crawl stopped immediately and the following error is recorded to crawl log:

Access is denied. Check that the Default Content Access Account has access to this content, or add a crawl rule to crawl this content.

also, on the indexer windows event log there was this warnings:

event id :2436  The start address cannot be crawled. Context: Application 'SharedServices1', Catalog 'Portal_Content'  Details:   Access is denied. Check that the Default Content Access Account has access to this content, or add a crawl rule to crawl this content.   (0x80041205)

So I googled and find this brilliant forum topic on msdn

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/sharepointsearch/thread/52877c8f-ac38-4cd3-813e-87f8f7a6882f

Applied the solution and it worked like a charm.

1.    Click Start, click Run, type regedit, and then click OK.
2.    In Registry Editor, locate and then click the following registry key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Lsa
3.    Right-click Lsa, point to New, and then click DWORD Value.
4.    Type DisableLoopbackCheck, and then press ENTER.
5.    Right-click DisableLoopbackCheck, and then click Modify.
6.    In the Value data box, type 1, and then click OK.
7.    Quit Registry Editor, and then restart your computer.

Can be seen on the screenshot..

SharePoint trying to login deleted SSP database!

Yesterday I realized a very strange issue, on SharePoint Db server event log. Sharepoint admin user was continuosly throwing login failed errors on server event log

See? This event id= 18456 errors were not stopping and "Failure Audit" part  panicked me. But one moment.. Everything was working ok? no service interruption, moss was fine!

So i just logon to SQL Server Management Studio to Sharepoint DB see what was going on on SQL error logs.

Login failed to Genelssp_db!!

But.. Genelssp_db belonged to a Shared Services Provider (SSP)  which we deleted a few days ago!

Then with further investigation, found out that there is a job belonging to those dead and long gone  ssp  which was trying to delete expired sessions. GenelSSp_DB_Job_DeleteExpiredSessions

I disabled it and everything went fine..

The errors are gone.

I dont know why moss orphaned those job because I deleted this SSP via central administration and it was a succesfull deletion.. 

IE 8 Datasheet view problem in SharePoint 2007

On windows 7, with Internet Explorer 8 I was unable to switch the datasheet view in Sharepoint Lists.

When I tried to open the list in datasheet view IE8 crashes, closes the tab and reopens it by declaring "this tab has been recovered". however, it cannot open the url and says "We were unable to return you to the page you were viewing".

I tried several solutions offered on the net -  but they were proposed to different IE8/Sharepoint problems. 

It was obvious that this problem was related with Microsoft Office ...Finally, I tried running Office Diagnostics (which could be found under start menu> programs> microsoft office> tools) and it worked like a charm!  

I cant believe IE8 causing this many problems, if you try googling "ie8 sharepoint problems" you came across a huge pool of unsolved problems, maybe you should think twice upgrading to IE 8 when using SharePoint..

Domain Controller Reboot problem

Yesterday we had a very strange problem.

Last week our dns and DC's were upgraded to Win 2008

Yesterday, After the DC reboot, Sharepoint crashed. trying to understand what happened, I saw that SQL server was unable to accept new connections and was continuously throwing this errors:


Event Type: Error
Event Source: MSSQLSERVER
Event Category: (4)
Event ID: 17806
Date: 6/23/2010
Time: 10:05:26 AM
User: N/A
Computer: SRV29
Description:
SSPI handshake failed with error code 0x80090304 while establishing a connection with integrated security; the connection has been closed. [CLIENT: 10.3.0.49]


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


---

Event Type: Failure Audit
Event Source: MSSQLSERVER
Event Category: (4)
Event ID: 18452
Date: 6/23/2010
Time: 10:05:26 AM
User: N/A
Computer: SRV29
Description:
Login failed for user ''. The user is not associated with a trusted SQL Server connection. [CLIENT: 10.3.0.49]

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

I was panicked, that was really trouble! The first thing I did was to restart the SQL Server service, and an IIS reset on the WFE of Sharepoint side..


But it didnt work. So I reboot both the WFE and SQL Server of Sharepoint farm and everything started to work again.


After a little investigation, we saw that our technician had entered only the first DNS , forgot the second. After he entered both DNS we reboot the DC machines again and everything went fine. -Actually, there was a 5 seconds of interruption, which could be seen on SQL server's event log but it  did not cause any service interruption and SharePoint & other applications was not affected.-


So If you encounter this errors after DC reboots, check if the dns name resolving is working..

Upgrade to MOSS 2010

To upgrade my existing Moss 2007 installation, which is completely sitting on a 32 Bit Windows 2003 system, first step was to install a clean Moss 2007 on Windows 2008 Server (64-bit)

After installing  the brand-new Sharepoint 2007, I simply created a new Web Application and attached my content database to it. (You can find a detailed how-to here.)

After ensuring everything was working on the new installation, I started the SharePoint 2010 installation. Not very suprisingly, it required tones of stuff to be installed on the machine. which are:

- 2007 Office Server SP2 (Its a shame we're still on SP1)
- Windows Identity Foundation (which requires Windows Update service to be started to be installed!)
- Microsoft Sync Framework Runtime v.1.0
- SQL Server Native Client -very simple to install <3
- Enable Windows Server Roles- Features (just enabling Web Server and Application roles should do it)
- MS Filter Pack 2.0 (Which is very annoying to install, because on the net you find Filter Pack 1.0 only. the trick is that the real name of this package is Microsoft Office 2010 Filterpack. you should seek this package for installing Filter Pack 2.0)
- Hotfix KB976394
- PowerShell v.2.0
- Ms Chart controls for .net 3.5

After completing this steps you are ready to run the setup.exe of SharePoint 2010.. But beware the language packs! For example we had Turkish Language Pack installed on our old 2007 system.. But the release of Turkish Lang. pack for SharePoint 2010 will approximately be in July..So the upgrade will fail if you have Turkish Language Package installed on your 2007 SharePoint..

Deleting IIS logs

IIS logs are residing under c:\windows\system32\logfiles  by default. (on windows 2003 server)
It should be named like  W3SVCxxx

I have an internal website, and its used by SharePoint, so I dont really need to store IIS logs older than 1 week. There is no way to automatically delete this logs. They can grow up to 50 gb in 1 year!

Its safe to delete them, just keep the recent.

SQL server Restore Error

I got this error when trying to restorea database from the SQL Server Management Studio..

An exception occurred while executing a Transact-SQL statement or batch. (Microsoft.SqlServer.ConnectionInfo)

------------------------------
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

The media family on device '\\tup03srv32\Backup\SQL\tup03srv06\WSS_Content_backup_201006100000.bak' is incorrectly formed. SQL Server cannot process this media family.
RESTORE HEADERONLY is terminating abnormally. (Microsoft SQL Server, Error: 3241)

For help, click: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink?ProdName=Microsoft+SQL+Server&ProdVer=09.00.1399&EvtSrc=MSSQLServer&EvtID=3241&LinkId=20476

Then I run the restore command via Query Editor and it worked!

RESTORE DATABASE [WSS_Content] FROM DISK = N'\\Tup03srv32\backup\SQL\tup03srv06\WSS_Content_backup_201006100000.bak' WITH FILE = 1, MOVE N'WSS_Content' TO 'c:\evrak\WSS_Content.mdf', MOVE N'WSS_Content_log' TO N'C:\evrak\WSS_Content.ldf', NOUNLOAD, REPLACE, STATS = 10 GO

Add new content database error

I normally prefer to do my operations from central administration. But this morning when I tried to add a new content database to a web application i got the error:


Attaching this database requires upgrade, which could time out the browser session.  You must use the STSADM command 'addcontentdb' to attach this database.

So I connected to the SERVER02 -which is the wfe hosting Central Admin-

And run this command:

C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\BIN>stsadm -o addcontentdb -url http://SERVER02:81 -databasename WSS_Content_01 -databaseserver SERVER01

It worked!

The difference between WFE, Application Server and Database Server in a SharePoint Farm

The Web Front end Server is the server that is hosting IIS and serves the websites.
An Application Server  has services on it, for example, like Excel services, Project server, etc..
A database server simply hosts the SharePoint core db's and the other Content databases.. It just has SQL Server installation on it.

So you have to install Sharepoint to WFE's and App. Servers.. You dont need to install Sharepoint to the database servers on your farms.

Removing an Oracle Database from Windows

If you removed a database  but it's services are still showing up at services.mcsi then;
suppose the database name is demodb

oradim -delete -sid demodb

deletes the services, etc. related to this database.

oradim is an oracle utility for windows only!

Forcing Internet Explorer Language Settings to a certain value

When working on multilingual platforms with browser-based applications, language settings are subject to change frequently..

So we had a problem about moss search and we had to set the language settings of our users to include both english & turkish (as seen in the screen below)

In our environment, the default value was only turkish

 it is very hard to apply this to all users; because there is NO policy setting for this configuration.

this is a nightmare, especially if you have >100 users

moreover, after you set the value the user can reset the IE settings 

so I explored a little bit and found out that this setting has a registry value.

"HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\International"

create a file called langsetting.reg file containing this:

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\International]

"AcceptLanguage"="en-US,tr-TR;q=0.5"

and put it in a bat file which will run during win logon by 

regedit/s  langsetting.reg

and you are done :)

Database Creation Assistant Fails during 2% complete with ora-12560

I was installing Oracle 10g to a Windows 2003 server yesterday and the installation went okay. But at the confuguration phase, dbca failed to create a general purpose database at %2 complete with  tns errors: ora-12560 and ora-12514.


So I cancelled the installation and head through metalink. After a few searches I first tried to remove / comment


SQLNET.AUTHENTICATION_SERVICES= (NTS)

row from sqlnet.ora file. (Note 164930.1)Then tried the dbca again; but no luck.

Then I found another note(Note 747243.1) stating that some policies could prevent the creation of oradba user and ora_dba group on windows. So the note suggested that I should manually create them and give it a try again. That was exciting  because I found out that there was a ORA_DBA group but no ORADBA user. So I immediately created a ORADBA user and add it to administrators group on the server. But unfortunately, this did not change anything, the error was still showing up at the exact same stage..

I hit google search and find that forum post, thankfully..

http://forums.oracle.com/forums/thread.jspa?threadID=317706 (merope is me at that page :))

Finally, changing the Regional settings of the server solved the problem.  To change it, navigate to control panel, regional settings and change the language to US English in the regional options tab.. 

Enable Archive Logging in Oracle 10g

Unlike 9i, log_archive_start does not have a meaning in oracle 10g. You should do the following to enable the archive logs:

Open sql*plus

shutdown immediate

startup mount

alter database archivelog

alter database open

It can be seen on the screen below, sorry that its local language, Turkish but you can still  follow it, though

User profile synchronization problem

This morning I was told that some people's profiles were showing old data in SharePoint.

Ooops! What does that mean: Profiles are not synchronized with Active Directory.

 I immediately checked the Central Administration > Operations > Timer Job Definitions for  profile sync, and saw that the jobs were hourly (by default) and they were all succeeding...

So I did a full import and it worked, the profiles started to show the new-correct data. 

I scheduled the full import to be run every evening.

I know this is not a complete solution but a workaround, but sometimes you have to solve it quickly :)

how to create a new temporary tablespace

First create a new temp tablespace. Yes, unlike the undo tablaspace, you can have more than one temp tablespace -but only one of them could be database default temporary tablespace at once.

CREATE TEMPORARY TABLESPACE TEMP4 TEMPFILE '/oracleAS/TPRS/oradata/TPRS/temp4.dbf' SIZE 5M REUSE AUTOEXTEND ON NEXT 1M MAXSIZE unlimited
EXTENT MANAGEMENT LOCAL UNIFORM SIZE 1M;

 

now change the database default tablespace 

alter database default temporary tablespace TEMP4;

 

get rid of the  the old one!

drop tablespace TEMP1 including contents 

unable to determine local host | Enterprise manager error 10g on windows

After a succesful 10g installation and a dbca assisted db creation, installer complains about "enterprise manager configuration failed ..." and you can retry manually by running emca.

and after you click ok the explorer opens up in a window  containing something like that in address bar:

http://tup03srv49.tuprasnet.local:%EM_UPLOAD_PORT%/em/

When I explore emconfig.log I saw:

Creating directories...
Setting console properties ...
Setting log and trace files locations for Console ...
Setting log and trace files locations for Agent ...
Service "OracleDBConsoleIZMTPRS" create SUCCESS
Service "OracleDBConsoleIZMTPRS" delete SUCCESS

Mar 29, 2010 8:56:15 PM oracle.sysman.emcp.util.PlatformInterface executeCommand
CONFIG: '\regedit.exe' is not recognized as an internal or external command,
operable program or batch file.
Creating registry entries failed. Aborting...

 first I checked to see if the windows account which I was using is a local administrator. the account was in a group and the group was under the administrators group. I also added the account directly.

after that I executed:  emca -config dbcontrol db


 worked like a charm!

Search results differ from computer to computer in Sharepoint

I encountered a very strange problem in SharePoint last week. The search was working okay in every web application but one.

the indexing process was working all right, the method,  crawler had no errors.

I tried over and over every way I know to make it work. The strange thing was the advanced search was able to return results if you select the file name as a managed property.

I suspected that the problem could be Internet explorer but after getting the same "no results were found" screen with google chrome I stopped suspecting from IE.

It then hit me, that I was able to run the search without problems on the server. At first I thought it was a permission problem and the users were not permitted to see the search results. but nope!

I was able to return search results on the server with my username so I came up to realize that the search results were differing / varying from computer to computer. The first thing I suspected was internet explorer..again!!

and I finally found this brilliant blog post which rescued me from this rumble!
http://excel.shilor.org/2010/03/inconsistent-moss-search-results-in.html

and here is my technet forum post which did not really helped at all :)

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en/sharepointsearch/thread/eef860e8-5eb1-4498-9495-cd0c09e39913

I locked myself out in Windows 7

today, I had to re-enter the domain. While I was trying to re-join the domain I encountered strange errors and find myself in a situation where:

- I cannot run as administrator--nothing!
- the default administrator account was disabled
- The username / password which I typed in when installing windows 7 does not seemed to help me, has no priviliges/permissions to run net user commands

I was completely stuck!

so here is what I did:

• shut down the computer, restart and press F8 to select startup options. select safe mode: it will login as administrator
• Run the command prompt as administrator (by right click-run as administrator)
• I typed net user administrator /active:yes but it complained like "the password does not meet with policy requirements" so
• type net user administrator Password  (password should be the password you desire)
• then net user administrator /active:yes 

Bravo! now after a normal startup enter with your administrator account and do anything you want!

How to shrink log file (ldf) on SQL Server 2005-2008

If you are using Full or Bulk logged recovery model, the log file sometimes grows huge and you have to shrink it once I saw a logfile that is 40 GB !

open SQL Server Management Studio and open a new query window, execute this chunk of t-sql code:


USE [Your_db]
GO DBCC SHRINKFILE(N'Your_db_log', 50)
BACKUP LOG Your_db WITH TRUNCATE_ONLY
DBCC SHRINKFILE(N'Your_db_log', 50)
GO

How to setup & configure a Records Center in Sharepoint 2007

Records Center Template is a powerful content management ability of Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server 2007.

If you need to archive content without coping to create unique directory names or weed out documents to place them to libraries which they should reside; reports center is your simplest solution.

To create a Record Center Site, Navigate to Create Site and select "Records Center" under Enterprise Tab.

Here is a screenshot of Records Center Site:

Now suppose we want to record the employee's expense reports. 

1. Create a new Records Center and name it : Records
2. Create a document library in the Records Site, this will be the place you're going to archive your expense reports.
3. In Records Center, Go to the Records Routing list and create an item called "expense report". Fill in the required areas like in the screenshot below. type the document library's name in step 2 in location text box. 

3.Create a new content type in the root site and name it : Expense Report

4. Navigate to Central Administration>Application Management > External Service Connections > Records Center 

Select "connect to a records center" and type the url as:

http://your-site-url/_vti_bin/officialfile.asmx

your site url should be something like this: http://contoso/records (depends on where you created your records center site)

Type a Display name. This display name will be visible when people select "send to" option from a document library to forward their document to the records site.

click ok to complete.

Now modify some library on your root site or anywhere under your root site to accept "expense report" content type. ( you can do so by navigating document library settings>advanced library settings, allow management of content types here. then return to settings page and add "expense report" content type there )

See? now when you select send to option, you see the "expense report" link.

When you click to send it, it is automatically  added to the expense reports document library under records center, under a folder with a unique name.

Create custom permissions in SharePoint 2007

Suppose you want to define a user permission to provide user to create new items and update existing items but prevents to delete anything. Unfortunately, the standart sharepoint permissions does not supply this kind of permission. But you can create custom permissions at site collection level.

Open Sharepoint with the admin user. Navigate to Site Settings > Modify all Site settings (above)

Navigate to  Advanced permissions (above)

Now navigate Settings > Permission Levels

In Permission Levels Screen, you can see all the permission levels that are defined in this Site Collection

To Create a new one, Simply click to Add a Permission Level

For Example if you want to create someone that can add new items, create alerts (for himself) but can not change existing items and delete anything you should create something like that:

how to restore the dump file with ufsdump

# cd /where/to/restore # ufsrestore rf /path/to/file.dump

SQL Server 2005 Standart Edition and Sharepoint Database Mirroring Scenario

No matter how Microsoft offers Database Mirroring scenarios with SharePoint core db's, I was told not to mirror the SharePoint_Config and  Sharepoint_Admin databases, by SharePoint Pros. I am really not sure why that could cause trouble, and how (considering the high protection scenario does not allow commiting on principal before the mirror is committed the transaction), I'd rather not to apply mirroring to sharepoint core db's such as config, admin and SSP db's, I'd prefer to extend the central administration and other web applications by adding new WFE's to farm..

Actually, the ones that is critically important is the content db's, which we focus on not to lose any data. With content Db's in hand, you can simply install a new SharePoint and restore the content db's here in a worst disaster case. Anyway, this post will focus on mirroring the content databases and taking over the mirror when the principal is...long gone!

To start Database Mirroring, You should first 

-take a full backup of the database you desire 

- restore it with NO RECOVERY 

then, go to the Principal server; Principal is the database you want to mirror. 

Right Click the database you want to mirror, Select Tasks & Mirroring.

Now you will see the dialog box above.

Before Starting Mirroring you should first configure security between the principal and the mirror. Click the configure security button.

Skip the first screen, seen above

Now it will ask you to choose a witness server or not. A witness server is a simple server that monitors the mirror and the principal and provides  automatic failover if it decides that the principal is not available. If you really don't need to provide automatic failover, don't choose this. Besides, you should not really be able to provide auto failover, because you should point out the content_db's new location to Sharepoint Central Administration manually.

I choose no Witness so in the next screen, as seen above, just the mirror is selected.

Review the principal's properties and click next (above)

Next, you'll see the mirror properties. (above)

Select the mirror server instance and click connect. Then click next again (screen shot above )

Then it will ask you to enter the service accounts on the principal & mirror. make sure that this accounts have "run as service" permission on the servers. (above)

After clicking next, a summary will be displayed. Click finish.

and then you can start mirroring!

But remember,

SQL Server 2005 Standart Edition supports only Synchronous Mirroring in high protection mode. 

Username / Password Dialog while connecting to Sharepoint (Windows 2003 Server)

If the browser asks username/password to connect Sharepoint ; simply remove Internet Explorer Enhanced Security Configuration from Control panel -> add remove programs->  windows components.  

User Already Exists in the Current Database - after moving databases or deleting users

I have encountered this nasty little error on SQL Server 2005 after moving the database to a new server...
I did not restore the master database, just restored the content db's to the clean installation.

And then of course, I had to create the logins. When I tried to create SQL logins, sql server nagged about
The server principal 'TPG01_reader' already exists.


So here is what i did:

- deleted the user i have created (because even though it give this error , still creates the user)
- removed the user from database permissions: Rigth clicking  database > properties> permissions (screenshot below)

- Remove the user from the related database's security section (screenshot below)
Attention, not the general  security section, this is the database> security.

Voila!

now you can create your user ;)

how to copy a directory and keeping permissions in Solaris

cp -r -p /dir/dir2  /newdir/newdir2

-r  provides copying recursively all the child directories & files
and p keeps permissions.

Notes for Configuring SQL Server 2005 database mirroring for SharePoint

You have to use synchronous mirroring for SharePoint's own databases (Sharepoint_admin, config vs.)

But you can use both async and sync for Content Databases.

Orainventory permission problem when installing a second database on same server

You do not have sufficient permissions to access the inventory 'you directory'. Installation cannot continue. Make sure that you have read/write permissions to the inventory directory and restart the installer.

If you're getting this error while you are trying to install a new database on a server which already has another database on it, run the runinstaller with -invPtrLoc like below:

runInstaller -invPtrLoc /test/oraInst.loc

how to change directory of (rename) datafiles in oracle 9.2

shutdown the instance. copy the datafiles to the place you desire.

mount the  database  with sys user

SQL> startup mount;
ORACLE instance started.

Total System Global Area 1075808408 bytes
Fixed Size                   731288 bytes
Variable Size             738197504 bytes
Database Buffers          335544320 bytes
Redo Buffers                1335296 bytes
Database mounted.

SQL> alter database rename file '/izmir2/oradb/dbf01.dbf' to
  2  '/izmir1/oradb/dbf01.dbf';

Database altered.

Rename each datafile by using the command above with your directory and datafile names

 

If you  want to make  sure that the db is pointing to the new place you can rename your datafiles at operating system level

 

then

alter database open

and its done!  

crontab basics

Crontab is the scheduler in Solaris

crontab -l  allows you to see scheduled jobs

crontab -e  allows you to edit crontab add/remove new jobs etc..

How to modify permissions in Solaris

subfile ve subfolderlara da permission degistirmek için

 

chmod -R 1777 /foldername

 

1777, properties permissions kısmından bakınca gorunen permission level in numerik hali.

 

2- recursive olarak owner degistirmek için

 

chown -R user:group /klasor_adı

 

mesela

 

chown -R oracle:dba /sun2int1

sun2int1 altındaki tüm dosya ve klasorlerin ownerını user oracle ve group dba yapacaktır

Switching Log levels in Sharepoint 2007

Sometimes developers request you to  change log level settings to obtain more detailled logs, they need to address the errors they have etc. more efficiently.

In Central Administration,  under Operations >  Event Throttling
you have to change
"Least critical event to report to the event log " and "Least critical event to report to the trace log " settings in order to achieve the desired logging levels.

But I came across a few situations where it did not apply the logging level although you change the settings!
If you encounter such situations, just restart the Windows Sharepoint Services Tracing service and its done!

How to: Change a Web Applications Content Database in SharePoint

Suppose you have a content database(lets say OLDDB to this) but you're not happy with it, ie. somebody corrupted it and you want to return a recent backup by replacing it with a new content db. This might not be a recommended way but I use this all time and did not have any difficulties. just make sure you back up!  ^_^

First of all, you have to create a new database:
The only thing you have to be careful about is the Collation. You have to use the *exact* collation of the content database that you want to change.

if it is Latin1_General_CI_AS_KS_WS -which is in my case- make sure that you create the new db with this collation.

After the db creation (lets say NEWDB to this), Restore a recent backup of OLDDB to newdb.

AT THIS POINT,TAKE A BACKUP OF OLDDB AND PUT IT TO SOME SAFE PLACE

After backing up the old db, open to  Central Administration, look at the screenshot below: navigate to

Application Management > Content Databases

Select by clicking the old content database (screenshot below)

Now Click "Remove content database" check box, it will produce a dialogbox like below, click ok to close the dialog box, and click ok in the form to remove the content database

Now you removed the old Database.

Now return to the Manage Content Databases Screen for your application.

Click add a content database link (Screen below)

Now, enter the details for your new database (i marked the textboxes with orange below)

Click ok, and you're done!

**If you're new To SharePoint make sure that you select the right Web Application  at the top right of the pages! **