Open Abstracts

Restoring Site Collections in WSS 3.0

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 02:57:00 -0500

One of my clients recently needed help with restoring a WSS 3.0 site collection to a separate content database in order to migrate it (via detach-attach method) to a new SP Foundation environment. This obviously could be achieved by splitting the content database if the site collection already exists in one. However, if you are trying to work with a site collection that has been previously backed up, then you would have to resort to restoring the site collection to a new content database.

Microsoft has a very detailed Technet article that outlines how to perform a backup and restore of site collections in WSS 3.0. While my client was following the steps outlined in it, he still ran into an Access Denied error while trying to perform the restore via STSADM.

Microsoft clearly states the following as the only requirement to perform a site collection restore (Apart from returning the site lock setting to its pre-backup status).

Membership in the Administrators group on the local computer is the minimum required to complete this procedure.

However, turns out this is not the case. After digging into ULS logs and going over permissions in Central Administration, I was able to figure out that in order to successfully restore a site collection, the current user has to be a site collection administrator for the particular site collection. This is obviously an oversight from Microsoft’s part (probably due to the fact that, in most cases, the admin account ends up being a site collection admin. But not in this scenario).

Even though WSS 3.0 is slowly going into extinction, I hope this will be useful for someone who runs into the same issue.

Term Store Manager cannot find MMS

Wed, 10 Nov 2010 10:30:00 -0500

Deployed SharePoint 2010 using least privileged method? If you created a Managed Metadata Service Application and try to access the Term Store Management Tool you might run into the following error.

Managed Metadata Service or Connection is currently not available. The Application Pool or Managed Metadata Web Service may not have been started. Please Contact Your Administrator.

You will also notice the Event ID 8077 logged in your application log with the following description.

There are no instances of the Managed Metadata Web Service on any server in this farm. Ensure that at least one instance is started on an application server in the farm using the Services on Server page in Central Administration.

The most common cause for this error is due to the service account that’s running the Managed Metadata service does not have enough permissions to do so on the machine that’s running the service. To resolve this you will have to grant the service account the log on locally right via Group Policy or Local Security Policy on that machine.

Security Settings -> Local Policies -> User Rights Assignment -> Allow Logon Locally
Add the Managed Metadata Service account
Run gpupdate to refresh policy change
Log off and log back on to apply the changes

Go back to the Term Store Management Tool and it should be able to find the service application now.

Binding Properties in Workflow Templates with STSDEV

Thu, 20 May 2010 12:54:10 -0400

If you are using STSDEV to create your workflow templates, I bet you’ve run into errors (Most common being “Could not resolve field type”) when executing workflows that reference the workflowProperties object. Turns out that STSDEV does not bind the workflowProperties object to the SPWorkflowActivitationProperties object during activation.

In order to resolve this problem, simple add a OnWorkflowActivated event control to the workflow (if not already present) and under Properties, bind the workflowProperties object (member in your workflow class) in to the WorkflowProperties property (control in workflow) as show below.

(Click image for full size)

Office Server 2010 RTM Downloads

Mon, 26 Apr 2010 11:54:07 -0400

SharePoint 2010 RTM English bits went live last week (official launch on May 12). Though it will only be available for general use somewhere in June, you can try out SharePoint Foundation (previously WSS) and SharePoint Server using the links below.

SharePoint Server 2010 (Requires MSDN subsription).
SharePoint Foundation 2010 (x64 | Free)
SharePoint Designer 2010 (Free) - x64 | x32

Application Server Errors

Fri, 23 Apr 2010 15:16:35 -0400

I recently went through the event log on one of my dev servers running 2008 R2 and realized that the Application Server has been quite active in logging errors about not being able to start the following services.

NetTcpPortSharing
NetTcpActivator
NetPipeActivator
NetTMsmqActivator

The errors were along the lines of what’s shown below.

Error: Installation of [Application Server] TCP Port Sharing failed. Attempt to install TCP Port Sharing failed with error code 0x80070002. The system cannot find the file specified

It turns out that when I updated .Net Framework 4.0 to the latest version, windows did not automatically change the location of the service libraries to reflect the updated version.

To fix this, open the the registry (regedit) and go the following location.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services

Select the Services listed above and make a not of the file path for the Description, DisplayName and ImagePath keys.

Now open up windows explorer and navigate to,

C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\

and copy the latest version number of the .Net framework (mine was v4.0.30128). Change the version number in the registry keys to match this number and try starting the services manually.

That’s it! The next time you restart the server, your Application Server should be running without any errors!

VSeWSS Post-Installation Configuration

Tue, 02 Mar 2010 20:34:00 -0500

If you have tried to develop custom definitions/features for SharePoint in Visual Studio (using VSeWSS) and have run into one of the following errors, it’s most likely you have not completed the post-installation checklist.

The content type text/html; charset=utf-8 of the response message does not match the content type of the binding (text/xml; charset=utf-8).

This error is mainly due to the WCF HTTP Activation feature not being enabled. Go to you’re Server Manager (or Control Panel -> Add Windows Features) and Install the WCF HTTP Activation feature under .Net Framework 3.0 Features.

After enabling the WCF HTTP Activation feature, if you run into the following error, chances are the service account running the SharePoint Central Administration v3 Application Pool does not have local admin access to the machine you’re trying to deploy to.

VSeWSS Service Logging Error: Access to the path ‘C:\Windows\system32\config\systemprofile\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\VSeWSS 1.3’ is denied.

Logging failed attempting to write to C:\Windows\system32\config\systemprofile\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\VSeWSS 1.3\VSeWSS1.3 service.log. This may occur because the VSeWSS WCF Service does not have local administrator permissions.

To fix this error, you need to provide admin access to the service account running the application pool. Most folks have suggested the use of Network Service to run SharePoint Central Administration which is not a good practice (and should be avoided, specially in a production environment). The best way to workaround this is to create a new Application Pool called “VSeWSS” in IIS. Go to Advanced settings in the AppPool and set the Identity to your local admin account. Now, under Sites, select “VSeWSS” and click on Advanced Settings. Change the Application Pool from “SharePoint Central Administration v3” to “VSeWSS” and perform an IISRESET.

You should now be able to deploy your custom features within Visual Studio without a problem.

I guess people are causing too much havock in Twitterland.

Thu, 25 Feb 2010 10:03:57 -0500

I guess people are causing too much havock in Twitterland.

VS2010 RC and .NET 4.0

Fri, 19 Feb 2010 11:42:00 -0500

I upgraded Visual Studio 2010 from Beta to RC along with the .Net Framework 4.0 and oh my, I’m very impressed by the performance improvements. If you haven’t got it yet, here are the download links.

Happy Developing!

Tick your Tweets

Mon, 08 Feb 2010 09:12:00 -0500

Ever since I discovered jQuery (that’s a couple of years ago) my life has been a joy ride when it comes to developing web apps. So I figured it’s only fair that I start writing about it. I would like to start with one of my favorite plug-ins written by Mike Alsup called Cycle. Among it’s numerous functionalities, I’d like to simply point out it’s ability to tick your tweets in the most basic form.

All you need to do is follow instructions from Twitter to retrieve your tweets using the RSS feed and put them in nested div containers in your page. Then call the following function to start ticking them.

  $(function() {
    $("div#twitter_feed").cycle('scrollUp');
  })

Obvisouly, there’s so much more you can do with it. To get an idea of how this really looks like, take a look at Alsup’s page itself. You can also download the plugin along with some examples to get started.

A Few InfoPath Tips

Wed, 03 Feb 2010 12:23:43 -0500

Apart from working, watching college hoops and NFL games, I have no idea how time flies by so fast. Last week I was assigned to redo this “immoderate” InfoPath form that had no structure along with the lack of commendable functionality. This was my first InfoPath task, so though I’d share some nifty things I learned during the process.

1. ALWAYS create a well organized data source structure.

Because, if you want to change it later on, you are going to end up loosing existing data.

2. Getting the Current User in the local environment (for InfoPath Client)

http://blogs.msdn.com/timpash/archive/2006/08/22/InfoPath-2007-CSharp-Code-For-Retrieval-of-Username.aspx

3. Getting the Current User using Web Services (for InfoPath Web Forms i.e. SharePoint)

http://blogs.microsoft.co.il/blogs/itaysk/archive/2007/04/05/InfoPath-_2D00_-Get-the-current-user-without-writing-code.aspx

4. Getting custom code events to work on a web-based form

Go to Tools -> Form Options -> Security and Trust. Set the Trust Level to Full Trust.

5. Getting cascade drop-downs in a web-based form to populate secondary data source values.

Right-click on the primary drop-down box and select Properties. Go to the Browser forms tab and set Postback settings to Always.

6. Update existing form in SharePoint Library without having to create a new one.

Here, the trick is to create a unique file name for each form. You can use your own naming convention, but make sure to save the filename as a part of the data source. Create a new data connection to the Form Library and use the data field which contains the file name as the filename for the connection and make sure to select the “Allow overwrite if file exists” option. In the form, create an Update button and add a rule with the submit option that makes use of the data connection you just made. You’re done!

I got more, but they will have to wait till my next free tumblr time. :)

SQL Management Studio R2 CTP

Thu, 14 Jan 2010 10:26:12 -0500

Had a hard time trying to find a download link to Management Studio (not express), so thought I’d just post them to help anyone else and myself in the future.

SSMS 32-bit: http://blogs.msdn.com/ssds/archive/2009/11/11/9921041.aspx

SSMS 64-bit: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=168735&clcid=0x409

SQL Server 2008 R2 CTP: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=c772467d-e45b-43e1-9208-2c7b663d7ad1

Oh and btw, all the links are CTPs.

DB Error while Deploying Cube

Wed, 13 Jan 2010 12:13:00 -0500

Have been trying to deploy this OLAP cube to Analysis Services using the Business Intelligence Development Studio. However, I ran into the following error multiple times.

OLE DB error: OLE DB or ODBC error: Login failed for user ‘SSAS_SVC_ACCOUNT’.; 28000.

Turns out that if you are using the Analysis Services service account to access the Data Warehouse (and deploy the cube), you need to grant (at least) read access to the service account for the Data Warehouse database in SQL Server.

For more information, check out the link below that addresses a similar issue.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc197365.aspx

Into 2010.. A New Decade

Wed, 06 Jan 2010 23:40:03 -0500

Happy New Year Folks!! The long absence came from a combination of work overload, health download and the holiday pre/post-load period. let’s not get into details. it’s better that way.

Ushering 2010 also gave me the opportunity to deploy SharePoint 2010 and play around with some of the feature in the some-what buggy beta release. However, it looks and feels much better than MOSS 2007. I’m currently working on a BI project. New to the whole OLTP/OLAP stuff. More details coming soon..

Working with 2010 Betas

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 09:55:00 -0500

With the recent release of Microsoft 2010 Betas it’s been quite the talk about making the leap to the 64-bit world. For SharePoint folks it’s also a question of compatibility. As of now, SharePoint 2010 Beta requires 64-bit SQL Server and either Windows Server 2008 or Windows 7. If you are running R2, then you are out of luck as Microsoft has not yet released a hotfix. Also, not to mention the escalated hardware requirements, specially memory-wise.

So if you wanna give it a try (myself included) here’s a nice write up by Jie Li that might come in handy with the planing and installation itself. Good Luck!

http://blogs.msdn.com/opal/archive/2009/11/16/installation-notice-for-sharepoint-2010-public-beta.aspx

Service Accounts in MOSS 2007

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 12:12:00 -0500

SharePoint Newbie Issue #2

Deployed SharePoint Server 2007 on two different boxes running on farm environments and ran into permission issues. One was involving domain controllers and the other was thanks to “the always buggy” IE. However, one important thing I’ve learned is planning your deployment well ahead. One of the prime issues in the planning should be service accounts.

I was constantly told by multiple developers that the farm accounts required local admin access in the box your installing SharePoint. However, I came to realize this was not the case, at least in SP2. Having said that, all you need to know is that you’ve gotta well organized AD setup and running and the service account created and ready to go. Microsoft has a TechNet article on planning for service accounts which is quite lengthy and confusing. Here’s a more summarized and easy to understand version. READ IT! You’re gonna thank me and the writer later on!

http://cregan.wordpress.com/2006/12/08/moss-setup-service-accounts/

WebDav Extensions in Server 2008

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 17:16:19 -0500

SharePoint Newbie Issue #1

While running a few virtual machines with Windows Server 2008 I realized that I have been running into a few problems, especially with SharePoint and Office integration. If you are trying to create documents in any Office suite application or any other document for that matter which needs to be save in a SharePoint library and run into the following error,

Path does not exist. Check the path and try again.

its likely that you need to enable WebDav extensions in your Web Server.

Download the correct extensions package for your server architecture and follow the instructions in this page to install WebDav extensions.

http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=108052

Tweet in Lists

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 16:55:18 -0400

Twitter now allows creating Lists that allow tweeters to build their own timelines consisting selected groups of followers. Pretty sweet, specially when you want to have a twitcussion among a certain few. It’s currently on BETA testing, so If you don’t see it yet be patient. It will tweet your way through.

Looks like I’m getting more and more into tweaking than speaking. Oh, btw, they only said not to tweet about it. I guess blogging is ok!

Goodbye Geocities!

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 16:23:00 -0400

Goodbye Geocities!:

A long and memorable personal home page era comes to an end.. Thanks for the memories, Geocities. You will be missed!

Troubles of a Virgin Sharepoint Deployment

Sun, 25 Oct 2009 14:53:26 -0400

Being new to this whole Sharepoint world and not being a big fan of M$ products, it has been some what of a challenging task to get Sharepoint deployed and running. A basic setup for a development environment had no issues what so ever. However, getting it done for a MOSS farm with SQL Server 2008 on a 2008 RC Server running on VMWare is more like trying to get a bunch of monkeys to work together!

After a few days of playing around, installing and uninstalling pretty much everything under the sun, I still seem to run into permission issues with Domain and Local Admins for service accounts. On top of that, having to re-do everything times how ever many service packs MS has released has definitely not made things easy. This is why I love the simple way of things in the open source world!

Having said that, this article on installing MOSS 2007 with the rest of the bandits came in very handy and might be something to look at if you are trying to take on this job for the first time!

Is Cloud Computing Ready?

Sun, 18 Oct 2009 13:37:05 -0400

So Twitter has been down for a while now. Facebook was throwing empty pages yesterday. Make’s one think how ready Cloud Computing really is. I know it’s been all over that Cloud applications are to encounter more frequent but less disruptive service outages, but what does this really mean? Saving a buck out of recovery or maintainence costs?

I’m by no means an expert in the subject but got enough brains to realize “downtime” is BAD. Now it’s not to say that it’s not expected as in all application delivery streams, but it’s definitely not something that’s favorable to anyone providing or using such services either.

I look forward to seeing what’s going to come out of the Cloud Computing World Forum and the Cloud Computing Expo in the next couple of weeks.