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

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.. 

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.

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 :)

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

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:

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.  

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.

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! **