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.