JasonBrinkle.com http://www.jasonbrinkle.com Mon, 05 Mar 2007 15:30:38 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 en hourly 1 Review of MSDN Webcast: SharePoint Server 2007 Web Content Management for Developers and Designers http://www.jasonbrinkle.com/2006/12/21/review-of-msdn-webcast-sharepoint-server-2007-web-content-management-for-developers-and-designers/ http://www.jasonbrinkle.com/2006/12/21/review-of-msdn-webcast-sharepoint-server-2007-web-content-management-for-developers-and-designers/#comments Thu, 21 Dec 2006 19:05:24 +0000 Jason http://www.jasonbrinkle.com/2006/12/21/review-of-msdn-webcast-sharepoint-server-2007-web-content-management-for-developers-and-designers/ MSDN LogoI just watched a great MSDN webcast from Andrew Connell titled “SharePoint Server 2007 Web Content Management for Developers and Designers”. I honestly think it was the best webcast I’ve seen regarding MOSS 2007, but I might only think that since I’ll be working on customizing the MOSS 2007 CMS when I get back from vacation in January. My favorite part was when Andrew was demonstrating how to create a custom field control and dogged the Florida State Seminoles by putting in a field validation to only enter “good” schools. I’m most looking forward to his follow-up post where he’ll be answering some of the questions from the attendees and making his minimal master page template available. Great job, Andrew!

]]> http://www.jasonbrinkle.com/2006/12/21/review-of-msdn-webcast-sharepoint-server-2007-web-content-management-for-developers-and-designers/feed/ 1 Microsoft eats their own dog food http://www.jasonbrinkle.com/2006/12/21/microsoft-eats-their-own-dog-food/ http://www.jasonbrinkle.com/2006/12/21/microsoft-eats-their-own-dog-food/#comments Thu, 21 Dec 2006 14:04:21 +0000 Jason http://www.jasonbrinkle.com/2006/12/21/microsoft-eats-their-own-dog-food/ It looks like microsoft.com is running their new design on MOSS 2007. I wondered if they would do this, and honestly didn’t think they would, so it’s good to hear. I got the news from this blog post.

]]> http://www.jasonbrinkle.com/2006/12/21/microsoft-eats-their-own-dog-food/feed/ 0 My first SharePoint support case with Microsoft http://www.jasonbrinkle.com/2006/12/11/my-first-sharepoint-support-case-with-microsoft/ http://www.jasonbrinkle.com/2006/12/11/my-first-sharepoint-support-case-with-microsoft/#comments Mon, 11 Dec 2006 20:42:06 +0000 Jason http://www.jasonbrinkle.com/2006/12/11/my-first-sharepoint-support-case-with-microsoft/ Since I wrote this post about getting errors about .NET 2.0 on our SharePoint sites, we have gotten the errors again and more frequently. Last weekend, I had the portals and the WSS sites separated into 2 application pools instead of just 1. The day after I did that, we got the error again, but only on the portal app pool. This tends to make sense because we didn’t start getting these errors until we installed SP2 for the Portal product.

Even though we have a better idea of what is causing the issue, we still don’t know exactly what it is or how to fix it. So, we swallowed our pride and decided to open a support case with Microsoft. I contact our on-site TAM to see how to start one and he gave me the phone number and id to use. I was rather impressed with how quickly I got a hold of someone that knew SharePoint very well. I tried to lay out the situation as quickly as possible, and based on that, he wants me to do 2 things:

  1. Run the SPSReport tool (which can be found at here) on our 2 web front-ends and index/job server.
  2. Further separate the app pools by placing each portal into its own app pool. Since each new app pool takes up about 150MB of RAM, he asked me to make sure there would be enough physical memory on each WFE.

So, I am going to get the report tool installed and run on Wed night, and the app pools will get done on Saturday (because of our change management process). Hopefully, I will have good news to report on this issue by next week!

UPDATE Dec 12, 2006:
I ran SPSReports on the web and job servers and gave the output back to support. A few days later, they said they couldn’t see anything obvious. So, on Dec 16, we created 4 new app pools and put a portal into each one. We haven’t seen the error since, but it hasn’t even been a week. Support also suggest that I isolate one of the web front end servers and do the following:

  1. Pick one of your Sharepoint sites.
  2. Recycle the Application Pool for this site.
  3. Start IE on any machine and browse to “http://yourportalserver/_vti_bin/owssvr.dll?location=Document Library&dialogview=FileSave&FileDialogFilterValue=*.doc;” where youreportalserver is the NetBIOS name of your Portal Server from step 1.
  4. Navigate to
  5. You should see the error.

I followed the steps after disabling the load-balancer VIP for one of our web front ends, and didn’t get the error. I reported back via e-mail and received a follow-up call the next day. The support person is under the impression that I must not have have that server fully isolated. Since I only waited a few minutes after disabling the VIP, it’s quite possible that someone still had that VIP cached in their local DNS. So, I’m going to get that VIP disabled and wait an hour before performing those steps again. The support person told me that they are working on a fix for this issue, but it will only work if I can reproduce the error using the above steps.

UPDATE Jan 8, 2007:
I had one of the servers taken out of the load balancer for more than an hour, and then performed the steps again. I did not receive the error, so I reported my results to the support person. On that note, I am working with someone new because the previous person had too many cases. I hope nothing gets lost in transfer.

UPDATE Mar 5, 2007:
After getting someone new, the progress on this case grinded to a halt. This new person didn’t seem to know what was going on, or how to fix it. He brought his IIS team to help with the case, and we started installing debugdiag, which didn’t get us anywhere. At the end of January, I finally complained to our TAM and he got us someone new out of Dallas. This person really knew her stuff and almost immediately a hotfix was produced for us to use. The hotfix can be located at http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;930773. We installed the hotfix February 2nd, and haven’t received that error since! The only issue we had with the hotfix is that Central Administration didn’t seem to be aware that it finished installing. So, we had to run the forceupgrade command via stsadm.

]]> http://www.jasonbrinkle.com/2006/12/11/my-first-sharepoint-support-case-with-microsoft/feed/ 0 MSDN Webcast: Building Great Looking Sites with MOSS http://www.jasonbrinkle.com/2006/11/21/msdn-webcast-building-great-looking-sites-with-moss/ http://www.jasonbrinkle.com/2006/11/21/msdn-webcast-building-great-looking-sites-with-moss/#comments Tue, 21 Nov 2006 12:33:51 +0000 Jason http://www.jasonbrinkle.com/2006/11/21/msdn-webcast-building-great-looking-sites-with-moss/ A couple weeks ago, I watched a really nice MSDN webcast called “Build Great Looking Sites Using Web Content Management Features in Office SharePoint Server 2007“, which was hosted by Bob German.  It was a level 200 webcast, but it got more in depth than I thought it would.  I was watching it with a couple of guys on my team, and there were several “ah ha!” moments from all of us.  Basically, Bob demonstrated how to change the default look and feel of MOSS to look like the Microsoft Press Pass site.  I know Microsoft’s sites aren’t the most complex in the world, but it was still nice to see a dramatic change of the out-of-the-box template.  He also showed of some of the capabilities SharePoint Designer 2007.  Taking us through the whole process lasted for a little more than half of the entire webcast, with the rest devoted to workflow, deployment, variations (globalization), and other features of MOSS 2007.

I highly recommend watching this if you are considering using the content management features of MOSS.  If you want to check it out, use the link above!

]]> http://www.jasonbrinkle.com/2006/11/21/msdn-webcast-building-great-looking-sites-with-moss/feed/ 0 WSSv3 Demo from Microsoft http://www.jasonbrinkle.com/2006/11/17/wssv3-demo-from-microsoft/ http://www.jasonbrinkle.com/2006/11/17/wssv3-demo-from-microsoft/#comments Fri, 17 Nov 2006 13:55:09 +0000 Jason http://www.jasonbrinkle.com/2006/11/17/wssv3-demo-from-microsoft/ Just read on Angus Logan’s blog that Microsoft has produced a pretty nice demo of WSSv3 for end users.  It’s a pretty high level overview of WSS and only scratches the surface of its features, but it’s a good starting point for anyone new to v3 or just WSS in general.  Here’s the direct link to the demo:

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepointtechnology/HA102055631033.aspx

]]> http://www.jasonbrinkle.com/2006/11/17/wssv3-demo-from-microsoft/feed/ 0 WSSv3 and MOSS 2007 eval released http://www.jasonbrinkle.com/2006/11/16/wssv3-and-moss-2007-eval-released/ http://www.jasonbrinkle.com/2006/11/16/wssv3-and-moss-2007-eval-released/#comments Thu, 16 Nov 2006 20:10:00 +0000 Jason http://www.jasonbrinkle.com/2006/11/16/wssv3-and-moss-2007-eval-released/ According to the SharePoint team blog, WSSv3 has been released and is available for download. A 180 day evaluation copy of MOSS 2007 is also available for download. Links for each:

I’m going to download both, but may just wait for the full version of MOSS 2007 since we are focusing on that more than just plain WSS.

]]> http://www.jasonbrinkle.com/2006/11/16/wssv3-and-moss-2007-eval-released/feed/ 0 Error after installing SP2 for SharePoint Portal 2003 http://www.jasonbrinkle.com/2006/11/15/error-after-installing-sp2-for-sharepoint-portal-2003/ http://www.jasonbrinkle.com/2006/11/15/error-after-installing-sp2-for-sharepoint-portal-2003/#comments Wed, 15 Nov 2006 13:30:47 +0000 Jason http://www.jasonbrinkle.com/2006/11/15/error-after-installing-sp2-for-sharepoint-portal-2003/ This post is a bit long, but I want to give as much information as I can since this will also probably be used to open a case with Microsoft. Basically, after installing SP2 for SharePoint Portal Server 2003, we started getting errors on all of our portals and sites that are running under .NET 1.1 which states that the virtual server hasn’t been configured for .NET 2.0. We have .NET 2.0 installed on our servers, and are running 2 WSS sites on it, but the others are definitely configured for .NET 1.1. We are also running those 2 .NET 2.0 sites under separate application pools. If you want all the juicy details, read on!
Our SharePoint environment consists of 2 WFE (Web Front End) servers, 1 index/job server, and 1 clustered database server. We had Windows SharePoint Services 2.0 SP2 and SharePoint Portal Server 2003 SP1 running without any problems. We decided to install SP2 for SharePoint Portal Server 2003 on the 2 WFEs and the Index server, which was done on 9/22/06. On 9/23/06, WFE#1 was giving the following error:

This Windows SharePoint Services virtual server has not been configured for use with ASP.NET 2.0.50727.42. For more information, please refer to Knowledge Base article 894903 at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=42660

Obviously, I clicked on the link, which took me to a KB article. We followed the resolution steps and the error went away. On 9/24/06, WFE#2 gave the error, but stopped after applying the resolution.

On 10/06/06, we made another change to WFE#1 and WFE#2. On WFE#1, we ran the stsadm.exe command to restore a team site to the farm. On WFE#1 and WFE#2, we ran a setup file that deployed a .NET 1.1 web application to the Default Web Site (not running WSS or Portal). We also copied over some ASP.NET 1.1 files to its own subfolder in C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\60\TEMPLATE\LAYOUTS. We then created a virtual directory in one of the WSS virtual servers to map to that subfolder.

On 10/08/06, WFE#2 started giving the error again (this was exactly 2 weeks after WFE#2 initial gave the error). We decided to stop the Web Publishing service on that server to take it out of the load balancing pool so traffic would be routed only to WFE#1. The next day, we started investigating the event logs and the SharePoint worker process log for WFE#2, but couldn’t find anything that pointed to triggering that error. We started the Web Publishing service on WFE#2 so we could trigger the error again, but when we forced our browser to point to WFE#2, we no longer got the error.

The resolution on the KB article states that when the forceupgrade command is run, the web.config files for the URLs specified will be modified. This was not the case for our servers as the web.config files on our servers have timestamps before 9/22/06. My assumption is that the forceupgrade command only modifies the web.config files if the virtual server is set to run ASP.NET 2.0. The virtual servers that are giving us the errors are set to run ASP.NET 1.1. However, we have 2 WSS virtual servers that are set to run ASP.NET 2.0, but we have had no problems with those. I’m also assuming that the forceupgrade command stops and starts the web site for the URL specified, which is what really fixed the error.

Once again, on 11/12/06 (exactly 5 weeks later), we got the error again on WFE#2. WFE#2 has been producing the error on Sundays. Even though this isn’t a job server, I checked our scheduled jobs. We have a full profile import from AD at 10PM every Sunday, and we have a full portal content crawl at 12AM every Sunday.

Hopefully, I’ll be able to figure this out before we upgrade to MOSS 2007. I’m going to do some more investigation on the server, and then talk to our on-site Microsoft support person to figure out how to proceed.

]]> http://www.jasonbrinkle.com/2006/11/15/error-after-installing-sp2-for-sharepoint-portal-2003/feed/ 0 An introduction http://www.jasonbrinkle.com/2006/11/13/an-introduction/ http://www.jasonbrinkle.com/2006/11/13/an-introduction/#comments Mon, 13 Nov 2006 15:50:17 +0000 Jason http://www.jasonbrinkle.com/2006/11/13/an-introduction/ For my first post, I will try to describe what my purpose of using this blog is for. I won’t talk about me personally, but that information can be found on the About page.

When I first started working on SharePoint, there was very little documentation from Microsoft or even a book about it. Thanks to the wonder of the Internet, people started blogging about SharePoint and getting some very helpful information out there. Now that Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 is coming out, I thought I would return the favor and post any information that I find to be helpful or interesting about the product. I also plan to link to any other blog posts that I find helpful so that those people can be recognized and their posts moved to the top of search engines. Since most of my current job involves administration and support of SharePoint Portal Server 2003, I will also post about problems I have had and (hopefully) their solutions.

So, without further ado, I will make my first post specifically about SharePoint next.

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