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..