My IT Experiences

I was implementing a new SharePoint farm and I observed that web application that I create in Central Admin site was not getting created in the IIS of WFE servers. The sites would be created in the WFE if I restart the WSS web application service through stsadm command. But this was not an option. I ran the stsadm execadmsvcjobs and it thew this error: T he SharePoint Worker Process Group Update job failed with the following error. This job will be skipped. Failed to connect to an IPC Port: The system cannot find the file specified . It turned out that the service "Windows SharePoint Services Administration" was stopped on all my MOSS servers. Once I started this service the issue was solved.

We had this requirement the other day to make "This Site" as default search scope in the search dropdown list on our SharePoint sites. This setting is configured on a xml file "SearchArea" present in the features folder. Here are the steps to achieve this: 1. Navigate to C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\12\TEMPLATE\FEATURES\OSearchEnhancedFeature folder on the front end server(s) 2. Open the file "SearchArea.xml" in notepad 3. Add new property line just above closing control tag with Property Name as "DropDownMode" and value as "ShowDD_DefaultContextual" 4. Save and close the file. Do an IISRESET Perform the following steps on all the WFE servers in the farm.

Here is a brief on the services available in SharePoint 2010: 1. Access Database Service Enables the publishing of Access databases to SharePoint 2010 to share them with others and to use Access site templates. Requires Microsoft Office Access 2010 to create and publish databases. This SharePoint service has the related SharePoint Feature, Access Services Farm Feature. To start or stop this service: a. Navigate to Central Administration for the farm. b. On the Quick Launch, click System Settings. c. On the System Settings page, under Servers, click Manage services on server. To configure this service: a. Navigate to Central Administration for the farm. b. On the Quick Launch, click Application Management. c. On the Application Management page, under Service Applications, click Manage service applications. d. In the list of services, click Access Services. References: Access Services planning Access Services administration Build an Access database to share on the Web Video on publishing...

I received this error while creating the SSP for a MOSS 2007 SP1 farm: Command createssp failed for SSP 'SharedServices2' Microsoft.SharePoint.SPException: Unable to connect to database. Check database connection information and make sure the database server is running. ---> System.Runtime.InteropServices.COMException (0x81020024): Unable to connect to database. Check database connection information and make sure the database server is running I tried both from GUI of Central Admin and also createssp command of stsadm, both failed with the same error. I checked the ULS logs and found the above error. In event viewer I could see the event id 6141: Event Type: Error Event Source: Windows SharePoint Services 3 Event Category: Topology Event ID: 6141 Description: The site /ssp/admin could not be created. The following exception occured: Unable to connect to database. Check database connection information and make sure the database server is running. No matter wh...

Here is a list of MOSS patches, corresponding versions, and release month and year: Office SharePoint Server 2007 : 12.0.4518.1016 October public update (2007) : 12.0.6036.5000 Service Pack 1 : 12.0.6219.1000 Post Service Pack 1 rollup : 12.0.6300.5000 Infrastructure Update (IU) : 12.0.6320.5000 (July 2008) August Cumulative Update : 12.0.6327.5000 October Cumulative Update : 12.0.6331.5000 (October 2008) December Cumulative Update : 12.0.6335.5000 (December 2008) February Cumulative Update : 12.0.6341.5002 (February 2009) Service Pack 2 : 12.0.6420.1000 (April 2009) April Cumulative Update : 12.0.6504.5000 (April 2009) June Cumulative Update : 12.0.6507.5000 (July 2009) August Cumulative Update : 12.0.6514.5002 (September 2009) October Cumulative Update : 12.0.6520.5000 (October 2009) December Cumulative Update : 12.0.6524...

I got this error while trying to browse my SharePoint site from within the server. I tried in both my front ends and application server and got the same error. I double checked to make sure the user I'm trying to login to the site had enough permission and also that password had not expired or account locked. Nothing seems to help. Then I came across this excellent article by Spencer Harbar which talks about this issue. This error is caused by a feature in Windows Server 2003 SP1 and above called loopback security check. This feature prevents access to a site using its FQDN (Fully Qualified Domain Name) from the server that hosts the website. Here is Spencer's blog post: http://www.harbar.net/archive/2009/07/02/disableloopbackcheck-amp-sharepoint-what-every-admin-and-developer-should-know.aspx There is also a Microsoft KB article that gives a solution to this problem. There are two solutions, disable loop check through a registry entry (not recommended for production servers) ...

To restore a SQL server database from multiple files we can use the RESTORE DATABASE T-SQL command. Before we do the restore process it is good to know the name of the “.mdf” and “.ldf” files in the backup set. To find this out we can run the RESTORE FILELISTONLY command in the following syntax: RESTORE FILELISTONLY FROM DISK = 'E:\Db_Backups\FILE1_FULL.BAK', DISK = 'E:\Db_Backups\FILE2_FULL.BAK', DISK = 'E:\Db_Backups\FILE3_FULL.BAK' In the above example I assume the full backup consists of 3 files, “FILE1_FULL.BAK”, “FILE2_FULL.BAK”, and “FILE3_FULL.BAK”. The files in this case files are locate in E drive “Db_Backups” folder. The above command will output the name of the “.mdf” and “.ldf” files contained in the backup set. Once we get those we can run the actual restore command in the following way: RESTORE DATABASE My_DB FROM DISK = 'E:\Db_Backups\FILE1_FULL.BAK', DISK = 'E:\Db_Backups\FILE2_FULL.BAK', DISK = 'E:\Db_Backups\FILE3_FULL.BAK...