andreas glaser

SharePoint 2007 / SharePoint 2010 resources – October 2009: Administration, WCMS and virtualization, Hyper-V

Andreas Glaser — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 17:49:53 +0100

Here are the in my opinion most interesting SharePoint 2007 resources in October 2009… with every link comes a short description of the content available. This month is about SharePoint 2007 administration, WCMS and some SharePoint 2010 resources.

SharePoint 2007 Administration

October 2009 Cumulative Update Packages for SharePoint Server 2007 and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0
The SharePoint 2007 October cumulative update is available.

x64 version of Debug Diag 1.1 troubleshooting tool has been released to web yesterday
Useful for troubleshooting issues.

SharePoint 2007 WCMS

Content Deployment – The complete Guide – Part 1 – The Basics
You can find everything you need to know about SharePoint 2007 content deployment at Stefan's blog.

SharePoint 2010

Part 1 - Improvements to the Core SharePoint Platform & How the Benefit SharePoint 2010 Web Content Management
Part 2 – What’s Improved with SharePoint Server 2010 Web Content Management
Part 3 – What’s New with SharePoint Server 2010 Web Content Management
Andrew Connell has blogged about improvements regarding web content management in SharePoint 2010.

SharePoint 2010 – New Shared Services
The Shared Service Provider is gone… now we have Service Applications.

Content posters for Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010!
Andrew Connell has blogged about improvements regarding web content management in SharePoint 2010.

Virtualization (Hyper-V)

Sorry no Hyper-V this month.

External storage of huge amount of data with SharePoint 2007

Andreas Glaser — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 15:06:45 +0100

Michael Pertek and I have written a professional article Hart am Datenlimit - Externe Speicherung grosser Datenmengen in SharePoint 2007 for a German database magazine called database pro (sorry no English translation available). This article is based on a white paper I have written with Michael in September 2008. The first link includes the white paper and the last two links contain the English translation.

A translation for the article is not intended.

Summary

The following summary is in German since the article is not translated…

Die Speicherung von grossen Datenmengen ist zu einem zentralen Entscheidungskriterium bei der Auswahl einer strategischen Plattform für businessrelevante IT Applikationen geworden. Wo liegen meine Daten, wie können diese regelmässig und einfach gesichert (Backup) und im Bedarfsfall wieder hergestellt (Recovery) werden? Am Beispiel eines Patientendossiers für ein Krankenhaus erläutern Andreas Glaser und Michael Pertek wie Speichermechanismen für grosse Datenmengen mit SharePoint interagieren. In dem Artikel werden verschiedene Varianten vorgestellt, wie unstrukturierte Daten gespeichert werden können. Als konkrete Beispiel und Variationen werden angerissen:

VARBINARY (MAX)-Datentyp
Filestream
External BLOB Storages (=EBS)
Remote BLOB Storages (=RBS)

Anhand von konkreten Anleitungen und Codebeispielen zeigen die Autoren die Anwendungsmöglichkeiten mit den jeweiligen Vor- und Nachteilen und geben eine Ausblick auf herstellerseitige Lösungsansätze, die hoffentlich mit SharePoint 2010 zumindest teilweise realisiert werden.
Der ganze Artikel unter: http://www.namics.com/wissen/hart-am-datenlimit
Das passende Whitepaper unter: http://www.namics.com/download/Whitepaper_SharePoint_23Sep08.pdf

Retrieving the COM class factory for component with CLSID {A8F03BE3-EDB7-4972-821F-AF6F8EA34884} failed due to the following error: 800703fa.

Andreas Glaser — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 20:43:06 +0100

This problem was another result because of a snapshot taken at the virtualized SQL Server. After stepping back to a state in the past using the snapshot I got the error “The object SPPersistedFile Name=SOLUTIONNAME-SOMEGUID.bak Parent=SPSolutionLanguagePack Name=0 has been deleted by another user since it was last fetched.” and after that the COM exception.

You can read more about the previous error:

The object SPPersistedFile Name=SOLUTIONNAME-SOMEGUID.bak Parent=SPSolutionLanguagePack Name=0 has been deleted by another user since it was last fetched.

Problem description

I can’t remember what I exactly did but it was upgradesolution, deploysolution or retractsolution which resulted in the following error:

Retrieving the COM class factory for component with CLSID {A8F03BE3-EDB7-4972-821F-AF6F8EA34884} failed due to the following error: 800703fa.

This error occurred on a Windows Server 2008.

Solution

iisreset ;) I was really lucky that the problem was gone after doing an iisreset because I didn’t want to track down a COM exception.

The object SPPersistedFile Name=SOLUTIONNAME-SOMEGUID.bak Parent=SPSolutionLanguagePack Name=0 has been deleted by another user since it was last fetched.

Andreas Glaser — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 19:09:00 +0100

Using SharePoint 2007 in a virtualized environment can bring up new or different problems compared to a physical machine. With Hyper-V or VMware ESX you can take a snapshots of your SharePoint 2007 environment including SQL Server. Jumping back to a state in the past can be helpful if something is corrupted. Jumping back can also corrupt your SharePoint farm. In this case a snapshot of the SQL Server was taken and after some time used to go back to a state in the past resulting in the error.

Problem description

After running stsadm with the operation upgradesolution the following error was display in command prompt:

“The object SPPersistedFile Name=SOLUTIONNAME-SOMEGUID.bak Parent=SPSolutionLanguagePack Name=0 has been deleted by another user since it was last fetched.”

I wasn’t able to retract, remove or upgrade the solution neither by stsadm nor using Central administration.

Solution

The reason for this behavior was the retraction of a snapshot regarding the SQL Server. The snapshot was taken at the SQL Server with a certain version of a solution package. After taking the snapshot a new version of the solution package was deployed. Retracting the snapshot resulted in a different state of the solution in the configuration database and on the file system of the SharePoint server.

Fortunately two of my colleagues came up with a solution. Microsoft released a knowledge base article (KB39308) which solves a different problem but can be used to solve my upgradesolution problem too:

Error message when you try to modify or to delete an alternate access mapping in Windows SharePoint Services 3.0: "An update conflict has occurred, and you must re-try this action"

There is a cache folder stored on the SharePoint 2007 server which has to be deleted using the instructions given by Microsoft.

MOSS 2007 / WCMS development - List does not exist

Andreas Glaser — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 08:49:53 +0100

Sometimes things don’t work from one moment to the other if you do MOSS 2007 / WCMS development. Usually it’s due to a mistake I made and usually finding it is difficult since some error message aren’t really useful:

This time I got a “List does not exist” error together with a COMException.

Problem description

This problem occurred after loading a site collection I have created with the out-of-the-box publishing template. Here are more details about the problem:

List does not exist

The page you selected contains a list that does not exist. It may have been deleted by another user.
Description: An unhandled exception occurred during the execution of the current web request. Please review the stack trace for more information about the error and where it originated in the code.

Exception Details: System.Runtime.InteropServices.COMException: List does not exist

The page you selected contains a list that does not exist. It may have been deleted by another user.

Here is a picture with the error:

Solution

The only thing I did was an iisreset. I couldn’t imagine a reason for this error so I thought about a reboot. Since this takes more time I did an iisreset and after that everything worked fine after reloading the site collection.

SharePoint 2007 / SharePoint 2010 resources – September 2009: Administration, WCMS and virtualization, Hyper-V

Andreas Glaser — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 16:45:53 +0100

Here are the in my opinion most interesting SharePoint 2007 resources in September 2009… with every link comes a short description of the content available. This month is about SharePoint 2007 administration, WCMS as well as virtualization and one SharePoint 2010 resources.

SharePoint 2007 Administration

Important: Be careful when installing WSS August Cumulative Update
There is a problem with detaching the content database and applying the update.

SharePoint 2007 WCMS

IE8 to SharePoint-‘Are you sure you want to navigate away from this page?’
Annoyed by this error? There is a possibility to fix that.
How we did it: Speeding up SharePoint.Microsoft.com
Speeding up SharePoint 2007 WCMS web sites is always useful to read.

Modifying SharePoint RSS Feeds using a custom control adapter - Implementing Delta Encoding
Modifying RSS feeds often a required feature by customers.

SharePoint 2010

Office 15: Tentatively Planned for 2013
Office 14 is old school, you should wait for Office 15 :D

Virtualization (Hyper-V)

Explaining the Hyper-V authorization model, part one
Explaining the Hyper-V authorization model, part two
Explaining the Hyper-V authorization model, part three
Explaining the Hyper-V authorization model, part four
John Howard explains the role based Hyper-V authorization model for access checks.

Processor Affinity and why you don’t need it on Hyper-V
Ben explains why you don’t need to allocate a specific processor for use by a single virtual machine.

MOSS 2007 / WCMS development - Failed to instantiate file "default.aspx" from module "MODULE": The specified list does not exist.

Andreas Glaser — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 20:23:21 +0100

Here we go again: Playing around with SharePoint 2007 xml to create site definitions, site columns or content types isn’t always easy and fun. You have to be careful because forgetting something will result in an error message which may be unhelpful. In this case I got a helpful error message after forgetting an attribute in my module.

Problem description

The error says that something is wrong with the default.aspx: “Failed to instantiate file "default.aspx" from module "MODULE": The specified list does not exist.”

So I thought about reviewing the onet.xml.

Solution

The default.aspx couldn’t be saved since I forgot to write the Url to the pages library.

<Module Name="[MODULE]" Url="" Path="">
  <File Url="default.aspx" Type="GhostableInLibrary" >
    <Property Name="Title" Value="$Resources:cmscore,IPPT_HomeWelcomePage_Title;" />
    <Property Name="PublishingPageLayout" Value="~SiteCollection/_catalogs/masterpage/
        pagelayout.aspx, ~SiteCollection/_catalogs/masterpage/pagelayout.aspx" />
    <Property Name="ContentType" Value="Page ContentType" />
    <Property Name="PublishingAssociatedContentType" Value=";#Page ContenType;#
        [CONTENTTYPEID];#" />
  </File>
</Module>

After putting in the correct Url I was able to create new sites:

<Module Name="[MODULE]" Url="$Resources:cmscore,List_Pages_UrlName;" Path="">
  <File Url="default.aspx" Type="GhostableInLibrary" >
    <Property Name="Title" Value="$Resources:cmscore,IPPT_HomeWelcomePage_Title;" />
    <Property Name="PublishingPageLayout" Value="~SiteCollection/_catalogs/masterpage/
        pagelayout.aspx, ~SiteCollection/_catalogs/masterpage/pagelayout.aspx" />
    <Property Name="ContentType" Value="Page ContentType" />
    <Property Name="PublishingAssociatedContentType" Value=";#Page ContenType;#
        [CONTENTTYPEID];#" />
  </File>
</Module>

You can find the missing part in line 1.

MOSS 2007 / WCMS development – Site columns and error The given key was not present in the dictionary

Andreas Glaser — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 20:10:11 +0100

Writing tons of xml in order to create SharePoint 2007 site columns and getting and error “The given key was not present in the dictionary.” after deployment isn’t the thing I want to get at the end of the day. After doing some review I found the error which can easily be missed.

Problem description

This is the error I got after deployment which isn’t really helpful:

This is the text:

The given key was not present in the dictionary.   at System.ThrowHelper.ThrowKeyNotFoundException()
   at System.Collections.Generic.Dictionary`2.get_Item(TKey key)
   at Microsoft.SharePoint.SPFieldCollection.CreateSPField(Int32 index)
   at Microsoft.SharePoint.SPFieldCollection.EnsureSPField(Int32 index)
   at Microsoft.SharePoint.SPFieldCollection.get_Item(Int32 iIndex)
   at Microsoft.SharePoint.SPFieldCollection.ItemAtIndex(Int32 iIndex)
   at Microsoft.SharePoint.SPBaseCollection.SPEnumerator.System.Collections.IEnumerator.get_Current()
   at Microsoft.SharePoint.ApplicationPages.FieldListRenderer.OnPreRender(EventArgs e)
   at System.Web.UI.Control.PreRenderRecursiveInternal()
   at System.Web.UI.Control.PreRenderRecursiveInternal()
   at System.Web.UI.Control.PreRenderRecursiveInternal()
   at System.Web.UI.Control.PreRenderRecursiveInternal()
   at System.Web.UI.Control.PreRenderRecursiveInternal()
   at System.Web.UI.Control.PreRenderRecursiveInternal()
   at System.Web.UI.Page.ProcessRequestMain(Boolean includeStagesBeforeAsyncPoint, Boolean includeStagesAfterAsyncPoint)

Solution

After deleting every field step by step I found that the following field was creating the error:

  <Field ID="{CA57B137-76C9-47e1-A49C-BEA5D819081B}" Name="NAME1"
         Type="Url" DisplayName="DISPLAYNAME" Group="GROUP"
         AllowDeletion="False" Sealed="TRUE" Format="Hyperlink" />

After reviewing that the type=”Url” is case sensitive and needs to be all uppercase type=”URL”:

  <Field ID="{CA57B137-76C9-47e1-A49C-BEA5D819081B}" Name="NAME2"
         Type="URL" DisplayName="DISPLAYNAME" Group="GROUP"
         AllowDeletion="False" Sealed="TRUE" Format="Hyperlink" />

Just a little mistake which can take a lot of time to find… I hope it saves time for someone else.

SharePoint 2007 - 4 steps configuring Adobe PDF iFilter 9 for 64-bit platforms

Andreas Glaser — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 19:38:59 +0100

If you want to install Adobes PDF iFilter 9 for 64-bit platforms you can find the iFilter itself as well as manuals describing the configuration steps here: Adobe PDF iFilter 9 for 64-bit platforms. In the middle of the page you can download the PDFiFilter64installer.zip and at the bottom of the page there are manuals for SharePoint 2007, Exchange Server 2007 and SQL Server 2005.

Step 1 – Installing Adobe PDF iFilter 9 for 64-bit platforms

Download the PDFiFilter64installer.zip and run the PDFFilter64installer.msi.

Click through the wizard and select a folder for installation.

Step 2 – Adding the PDF extensions to the Shared Services Provider Search

After installing the Adobe PDF iFilter 9 you need to add the PDF extension to the Shared Services Provider Search which is not done by the install witard. You don’t need to edit the registry to create this extension.

After adding the extension using Central Administration the registry key is automatically created.

Step 3 – Verifying installation

Please open regedit to verify that the things you did work:

Click Start > Run and open “regedit”
Open the key \\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\OfficeServer\12.0\Search\
Applications\{siteGUID}\Gather\Portal_Content\Extensions\ExtensionList
Verify that there is a “string value” with pdf as its “value data”. This was created during installation of the Adobe PDF iFilter 9. If this is missing create it.

The result looks like this:

Open the key \\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\OfficeServer\12.0\Search\
Setup\Filters\.pdf
Verify the values shown in the picture below. This was created during installation of the Adobe PDF iFilter 9.

Open the key \\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\OfficeServer\12.0\Search\
ContentIndexCommon\Filters\Extension\.pdf
Verify that there is a “REG_MULTI_SZ” with a value of “{E8978DA6-047F-4E3D-9C78-CDBE46041603}”. In my case I had to change the value to the correct one.

Step 4 – Restart services

Restart the following services:

net stop osearch

net start osearch

iisreset

Step 5 – PDF icon (optional)

Installing Adobe PDF iFilter 9 doesn’t install an icon for the pdf file extension so you have to do it by yourself. Download or create an icon of your choice (icpdf.gif) and copy it to the following folder:

C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\12\TEMPLATE\IMAGES

Edit the docicon.xml and add the following mapping:

C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\12\TEMPLATE\XML

<Mapping Key="pdf" Value="icpdf.gif">

Done! Now you have successfully installed the iFilter and after a full crawl (!) you can search within pdf files. If you have crawled a pdf file before and do an incremental crawl the content of the file won’t be crawled.

SharePoint 2007 and EventID 6482 - Application Server Administration job failed for service instance Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.Administration. SearchServiceInstance

Andreas Glaser — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 21:09:11 +0100

This is one of the errors which occurs when you have set up a SharePoint 2007 farm where you applied the index and query roles to different servers. Microsoft released a knowledge base article describing the problem: You cannot browse to an SSL-secured Office SharePoint Server 2007 site or to the Search Settings page for a Shared Services Provider.

Problem description

In my case I configured a small server farm with an application server acting as the indexing server and 2 web front-end servers acting as query servers.

After reviewing the event log at the end of the week I discovered an error with event ID 6482:

Event Source: Office SharePoint Server
Event Category: Office Server Shared Services
Event ID: 6482

Description:
Application Server Administration job failed for service instance Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.Administration.SearchServiceInstance (GUID).

Reason:
The underlying connection was closed: An unexpected error occurred on a send.

Technical Support Details:
System.Net.WebException: The underlying connection was closed: An unexpected error occurred on a send. ---> System.IO.IOException: Authentication failed because the remote party has closed the transport stream.

[Please read the knowledge base article for further details.]

This error occurred because I had:

given my 2 web front-end servers the query role,
given my application server the index role and
updated the SharePoint 2007 server farm with Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 Service Pack 1 (SP1).

The reason for this error is an self-issued certificate used by the Office Server Web Services that is no longer valid.

Solution

In order to solve this problem you need to reissue a new certificate. Please read the article for detailed instructions: You cannot browse to an SSL-secured Office SharePoint Server 2007 site or to the Search Settings page for a Shared Services Provider.

andreas glaser

SharePoint 2007 / SharePoint 2010 resources – October 2009: Administration, WCMS and virtualization, Hyper-V

SharePoint 2007 Administration

SharePoint 2007 WCMS

Content Deployment – The complete Guide – Part 1 – The Basics You can find everything you need to know about SharePoint 2007 content deployment at Stefan's blog.

SharePoint 2010

Virtualization (Hyper-V)

External storage of huge amount of data with SharePoint 2007

Summary

Retrieving the COM class factory for component with CLSID {A8F03BE3-EDB7-4972-821F-AF6F8EA34884} failed due to the following error: 800703fa.

Problem description

Solution

The object SPPersistedFile Name=SOLUTIONNAME-SOMEGUID.bak Parent=SPSolutionLanguagePack Name=0 has been deleted by another user since it was last fetched.

Problem description

Solution

MOSS 2007 / WCMS development - List does not exist

Problem description

Solution

SharePoint 2007 / SharePoint 2010 resources – September 2009: Administration, WCMS and virtualization, Hyper-V

SharePoint 2007 Administration

SharePoint 2007 WCMS

IE8 to SharePoint-‘Are you sure you want to navigate away from this page?’ Annoyed by this error? There is a possibility to fix that.

SharePoint 2010

Virtualization (Hyper-V)

MOSS 2007 / WCMS development - Failed to instantiate file "default.aspx" from module "MODULE": The specified list does not exist.

Problem description

Solution

MOSS 2007 / WCMS development – Site columns and error The given key was not present in the dictionary

Problem description

Solution

SharePoint 2007 - 4 steps configuring Adobe PDF iFilter 9 for 64-bit platforms

Step 1 – Installing Adobe PDF iFilter 9 for 64-bit platforms

Step 2 – Adding the PDF extensions to the Shared Services Provider Search

Step 3 – Verifying installation

Step 4 – Restart services

Step 5 – PDF icon (optional)

SharePoint 2007 and EventID 6482 - Application Server Administration job failed for service instance Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.Administration. SearchServiceInstance

Problem description

Solution

Content Deployment – The complete Guide – Part 1 – The Basics
You can find everything you need to know about SharePoint 2007 content deployment at Stefan's blog.

IE8 to SharePoint-‘Are you sure you want to navigate away from this page?’
Annoyed by this error? There is a possibility to fix that.