WSS and MOSS October CU Released

The October cumulative update for WSS 3.0 and MOSS 2007 has been released yesterday here are the KB article links for these fixes:

• KB 974989 - WSS 3.0 October 2009 CU
• KB 974988 - MOSS 2007 October 2009 CU

The fixes can be downloaded using the following links:

• Download WSS 3.0 October 2009 CU (full server package)
• Download MOSS 2007 October 2009 CU (full server package)

SharePoint 2010 – And the Downloadable Content keeps coming!!!

The content keeps trickling in. Microsoft has been releasing posters all day, (http://ctrulove.blogspot.com/2009/10/sharepoint-2010-posters-for-everyone.html) but wait, there’s more!

More POSTERS!!!!

SharePoint 2010- SharePoint Developer Platform Wall Poster - The SharePoint 2010 Developer Platform wall poster (PDF format) shows a view of the SharePoint 2010 developer tools, community ecosystem, execution environment, SharePoint Server 2010 workloads, and target application types. The poster is intended to be printed at 24 inches x 36 inches (61 centimeters x 91 centimeters).

SharePoint 2010- Developer Platform White Paper - This white paper provides an overview of the SharePoint 2010 Developer Platform for ASP.NET developers.

Enterprise Search Planning for SharePoint Server 2010 - This model describes primary architecture design decisions for search environments.

Design Search for SharePoint Server 2010 - This model describes the steps to determine a basic design for a SharePoint Server 2010 search architecture.

SharePoint Server 2010 Search Architecture - This model describes the physical and logical architecture components of the search system.

 

Learning and Evaluation Stuff Too!!!

SharePoint 2010- Getting Started with Development on SharePoint 2010- Hands on Labs in C# and Visual Basic - Use these 10 hands-on lab manuals for SharePoint 2010 to get started learning SharePoint 2010 development.

SharePoint 2010- Developer and IT Professional Learning Plan - This document provides information to help developers and IT professionals learn Microsoft SharePoint 2010.

SharePoint 2010- Professional Developer Evaluation Guide and Walkthroughs - The SharePoint 2010 developer evaluation guide describes the SharePoint 2010 developer platform, including walkthroughs of some of the new capabilities for developers.

SharePoint Server 2010 Evaluation Guide - Introduction and overview of SharePoint Server 2010 for IT pros.

I am sure there is more to come. Enjoy!

SharePoint 2010 and PowerShell

Great reference posted by Dmitry Sotnikov. 467 cmdlets!!!

http://dmitrysotnikov.wordpress.com/2009/10/19/sharepoint-2010-cmdlet-reference/

SharePoint 2010 Posters for Everyone!

Microsoft has apparently decided that posters are the way to go. In tandem with the start of the SharePoint Conference Keynote starting a deluge of SharePoint 2010 posters were released to http://download.microsoft.com. Below you can find them all for your viewing pleasure:

Services in SharePoint Products 2010 - Describes and illustrates the services architecture, including and common ways to deploy services in your overall solution design.

Hosting Environments for SharePoint 2010 Products - Summarizes the support for hosting environments and illustrates common hosting architectures.

Business Connectivity Services poster - Microsoft Business Connectivity Services enable users to interact with external data by using SharePoint lists and Microsoft Office 2010.

Topologies for SharePoint Server 2010 - Describes common ways to build and scale farm topologies, including planning which servers to start services on.

Cross-farm Services in SharePoint 2010 Products - Illustrates how to deploy services across farms to provide centralized administration of services.

SharePoint Enterprise Search - Compares and contrasts search technologies in SharePoint 2010 Products

Upgrade planning poster - Describes requirements and considerations for planning to upgrade to SharePoint Server 2010

Upgrade approaches poster - This model describes the three basic approaches to upgrading to SharePoint Server 2010: in-place, database attach, or a hybrid of the two.

Upgrade testing poster - To help ensure a smooth transition to SharePoint Server 2010, perform a trial upgrade to find issues likely to surface during the actual process.

Upgrading services poster - You need to give special consideration to the issues involved when you upgrade services from the previous version of SharePoint Server

Getting started with BI in SharePoint Server 2010 - Discusses the business intelligence tools available in SharePoint Server 2010

Enjoy!

SharePoint 2010 Upgrade Posters Now Available!

Just hours before the SharePoint Conference in Vegas, new content is already arriving out on http://download.microsoft.com. You can now get 4 posters that provide a lot of insight into the 2007 to 2010 upgrade process. And here they are:

Upgrade approaches poster - This model describes the three basic approaches to upgrading to SharePoint Server 2010: in-place, database attach, or a hybrid of the two.

Upgrading services poster - You need to give special consideration to the issues involved when you upgrade services from the previous version of SharePoint Server.

Upgrade planning poster - Describes requirements and considerations for planning to upgrade to SharePoint Server 2010.

Upgrade testing poster - To help ensure a smooth transition to SharePoint Server 2010, perform a trial upgrade to find issues likely to surface during the actual process.

Enjoy!

SharePoint August CU re-released

You may have read that there was an issue with the previously released version of the WSS August CU. Well, Microsoft has now released a new version of the update that appears to not have the same problem.

You can find all the information here: http://blogs.msdn.com/joerg_sinemus/archive/2009/10/01/new-build-available-for-august-cu.aspx

What version of SharePoint am I running?

There is a very useful post by Penny Coventry, author of Office SharePoint Designer 2007 Step By Step, on the books website. It allows you to translate the SharePoint version number to the actual patches that have been applied.

http://www.sharepointdesignerstepbystep.com/Blog/Articles/How%20To%20find%20the%20SharePoint%20version.aspx

Thanks Penny!

WSS and MOSS August CU Issue

You may have heard that the WSS 3.0 and MOSS 2007 August CU is now available. It is, and can be found here:

WSS:

973400 The full server package for WSS
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;973400

MOSS:

973399 The full server package for MOSS
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;973399

However, there is an issue with the update that causes you not to be able to attach databases of earlier versions. This means that if you are doing an upgrade or server migration you should not install this update on the destination server unless it has already been applied to the incoming content databases.

Microsoft’s current solution is as follows:

• Attach your databases on a June CU SharePoint Installation. My recommended environment would be Hyper-V and using snapshots.
• Upgrade to August CU. Remember that you can run PSCONFIG from command-line more than one time if timeout or others happened.
• Detach the databases.
• The databases are now on August CU level and a re-attach to an already patched SharePoint installation with August CU should work.

401.1 Error When Accessing SharePoint From Server

If you are running SharePoint Server 2007 or WSS 3.0 on  Windows Server 2003 SP1 or later you will run into authentication issues if you are trying to access a SharePoint site using host headers from the server itself (i.e. host file has portal.mydomain.com pointed to 127.0.0.1).  This issue manifests itself as the result of a loop back security check that Microsoft built in to Windows Server 2003 SP1 and later.  The purpose of the loopback check is to eliminate denial of service attacks however it causes issues with access SharePoint sites locally from the server.  In a typical production environment this is typically not a problem since you rarely access SharePoint sites (besides central admin) from  a front end web server itself.

You can read the detailed KB article at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/926642 & http://support.microsoft.com/kb/896861.

Here is a rundown of how to fix the problem.   I typically disable the loopback check in development scenarios; however, this is not recommended for production server environments.

Method 1: Disable the authentication loopback check
Re-enable the behavior that exists in Windows Server 2003 by setting the DisableLoopbackCheck registry entry in the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Lsa registry subkey to 1. To set the DisableLoopbackCheck registry entry to 1, follow these steps on the client computer:

1. Click Start, click Run, type regedit, and then click OK. 

2. Locate and then click the following registry subkey: 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. Exit Registry Editor.

8. Restart the computer.

Note: You must restart the server for this change to take effect. By default, loopback check functionality is turned on in Windows Server 2003 SP1, and the DisableLoopbackCheck registry entry is set to 0 (zero). The security is reduced when you disable the authentication loopback check, and you open the Windows Server 2003 server for man-in-the-middle (MITM) attacks on NTLM.

Method 2: Create the Local Security Authority host names that can be referenced in an NTLM authentication request
To do this, follow these steps for all the nodes on the client computer:

1. Click Start, click Run, type regedit, and then click OK. 

2. Locate and then click the following registry subkey: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Lsa\MSV1_0

3. Right-click MSV1_0, point to New, and then click Multi-String Value. 

4. In the Name column, type BackConnectionHostNames, and then press ENTER. 

5. Right-click BackConnectionHostNames, and then click Modify. 

6. In the Value data box, type the CNAME or the DNS alias, that is used for the local shares on the computer, and then click OK.

Note: Type each host name on a separate line.

Note: If the BackConnectionHostNames registry entry exists as a REG_DWORD type, you have to delete the BackConnectionHostNames registry entry.

7. Exit Registry Editor, and then restart the computer.

Windows SharePoint Services 3 Search Event ID 2436

I was combing through the event logs on a server I set up recently when I ran across an Warning event occurring exactly every hour.

Log Name:      Application Source:        Windows SharePoint Services 3 Search Date:          7/22/2009 6:34:03 PM Event ID:      2436 Task Category: Gatherer Level:         Warning Keywords:      Classic User:          N/A Computer:      server.domain.com Description: The start address <sts3://SSP_URL/contentdbid={GUID}> cannot be crawled. Context: Application 'Search index file on the search server', Catalog 'Search' Details:     The object was not found.   (0x80041201)

After much research to no avail I had almost given up and decided it didn’t actually matter as there was nothing in the SSP that I actually needed to search. However, it finally dawned on me that the issue was that there was no root site for the SSP Web Application, just the /ssp/admin. I created an empty root and the issue immediately went away.

Also, I slept much better knowing that my event logs were nice and clean. :-)

Windows Live Writer

This is a test with Microsoft’s offline blog editing tool Windows Live Writer.

I do not like blogspot’s online editor and, working at a Microsoft Gold Partner, figured I would see what Microsoft has to offer.

So, here we go….

Web Part Management

There are times we want to manage Web parts on a SharePoint page but could not use "Edit Page" option, such as unhandled exception occurs in code and an error page is shown. In this case we normally use the Web part management page. SharePoint usually provides this link on the error page, but sometimes doesn't. So remembering the page will be helpful.

This is an application page called SPContnt.aspx. It takes one parameter url in the query string. So It would look something like

http://server/site/_layouts/spcontnt.aspx?url=http://server/site/default.aspx

This brings you to a page that will allow you to Close, Reset, and Delete Web Parts from the page.

Rebuilding System Databases (/cry)

So, I spent about 4 hours between last night and this morning troubleshooting an issue with one of my SharePoint machines. The master SQL database had somehow become corrupted and the service would not start. When you attempt to start it you get the following error in the event log:

Event Type: Information
Event Source: MSSQLSERVER
Event Category: (2)
Event ID: 3417
Date: 6/18/2008
Time: 5:19:25 PM
User: N/A
Computer: SERVER_NAME
Description:
Cannot recover the master database. SQL Server is unable to run. Restore master from a full backup, repair it, or rebuild it. For more information about how to rebuild the master database, see SQL Server Books Online.

For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.
Data:
0000: 59 0d 00 00 0a 00 00 00 Y.......
0008: 0d 00 00 00 41 00 54 00 ....A.T.
0010: 4c 00 53 00 50 00 53 00 L.S.P.S.
0018: 44 00 30 00 31 00 56 00 D.0.1.V.
0020: 30 00 34 00 00 00 00 00 0.4.....
0028: 00 00 ..

In order to repair the master database I had to invoke the setup.exe from the install disk from the command line. The syntax to do this is as follows:

start /wait \sqlfoder\setup.exe /qb INSTANCENAME=[instance] REINSTALL=SQL_Engine REBUILDDATABASE=1 SAPWD=[strong_password]

The only issue with this is that if you have installed any of the service packs (which you should have) then that statement gives you the following error:

Installation package for the product SQL Server 2005 (64bit) cannot be found. Please locate a valid SQLRUN_SQL.MSI

After some searching I found the solution and it is to first run this command:

\sqlfoder\setup.exe /qb INSTANCENAME=myinstance REINSTALL=SQL_Engine REINSTALLMODE=v

After that succeeds you can run the normal rebuild database command listed above and it will succeed as well.

Now all you have to do is reattach all of your databases and you are good to go!