Home - Blog

Blog

8/23/2008

Site Settings reporting wrong version number after SP1 or hotfix upgrade

In some cases, after installing SP1 or hotfixes for WSS or MOSS, the version number reported in the site settings remains at the same version as before the upgrade.

There are several ways to verify if the upgrade was indeed succcesful

Check Versions table in the config and other content databases. If the table called Version

Check the Servers in Farm in Central Administration

Check the Site Settings for each Site collection

In the event some version number are not synchronized, try to run the following command

psconfig -cmd upgrade -inplace b2b -wait -force

In most cases, this should force version to be synced

Posted at 7:01 AM by Daniel Cohen-Dumani | Category: MOSS; Troubleshooting; WSS | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

8/20/2008

List Type IDs - Handy List for Creating Features

As a consultant I have come to realize that different projects call for different hats to be worn. The project I am currently working on requires me to write features to deploy our customizations to our clients site collection.

As I learned about Modules and how to declare them in a feature I came across an interesting property: List. By defining this property you can specify the type of list that you will deploy your file to. (Keep in mind this property is optional but I use it to help keep things well defined) So the next question that came to mind was what existing list types are there?

After much searching I found a reference which outlines all the out of the box list id's that exist in the Onet.xml file. I thought I would post this just incase someone else could find it useful for writing modules in an elements.xml file.

100 Generic list
101 Document library
102 Survey
103 Links list
104 Announcements list
105 Contacts list
106 Events list
107 Tasks list
108 Discussion board
109 Picture library
110 Data sources
111 Site template gallery
112 User Information list
113 Web Part gallery
114 List template gallery
115 XML Form library
116 Master pages gallery
117 No-Code Workflows
118 Custom Workflow Process
119 Wiki Page library
120 Custom grid for a list
130 Data Connection library
140 Workflow History
150 Gantt Tasks list
200 Meeting Series list
201 Meeting Agenda list
202 Meeting Attendees list
204 Meeting Decisions list
207 Meeting Objectives list
210 Meeting text box
211 Meeting Things To Bring list
212 Meeting Workspace Pages list
301 Blog Posts list
302 Blog Comments list
303 Blog Categories list
1100 Issue tracking
1200 Administrator tasks list

So using the list above you could write a module that deploys a custom masterpage to the master page gallery by writing the following:

Bon appetite!

Carlos

Posted at 10:32 PM by Carlos Fernandez | Category: MOSS | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

8/12/2008

Content Deployment issue: The formula refers to a column that does not exist.

Another day and unfortunately another content deployment issue. But this one was alot easier to solve than the previous error. Below is the error I encountered:

The formula refers to a column that does not exist. Check the formula for spelling mistakes or change the non-existing column to an existing column. at Microsoft.SharePoint.Library.SPRequest.AddField(String bstrUrl, String bstrListName, String bstrSchemaXml, Int32 grfAdd) at Microsoft.SharePoint.SPFieldCollection.AddFieldAsXmlInternal(String schemaXml, Boolean addToDefaultView, SPAddFieldOptions op) at Microsoft.SharePoint.Deployment.ListSerializer.CreateOrUpdateField(SPList list, String fieldName, XmlNode fieldNode) at Microsoft.SharePoint.Deployment.ListSerializer.UpdateListFields(SPList list, Dictionary`2 listMetaData) at Microsoft.SharePoint.Deployment.ListSerializer.SetObjectData(Object obj, SerializationInfo info, StreamingContext context, ISurrogateSelector selector) at Microsoft.SharePoint.Deployment.XmlFormatter.ParseObject(Type objectType, Boolean isChildObject) at Microsoft.SharePoint.Deployment.XmlFormatter.DeserializeObject(Type objectType, Boolean isChildObject, DeploymentObject envelope) at Microsoft.SharePoint.Deployment.XmlFormatter.Deserialize(Stream serializationStream) at Microsoft.SharePoint.Deployment.ObjectSerializer.Deserialize(Stream serializationStream) at Microsoft.SharePoint.Deployment.ImportObjectManager.ProcessObject(XmlReader xmlReader) at Microsoft.SharePoint.Deployment.SPImport.DeserializeObjects() at Microsoft.SharePoint.Deployment.SPImport.Run()

The error was caused by how content deployment was creating the columns that were dependent on one another. One of the users in our environment created two columns in the following order: first a date column followed by a calculated column that performed a calculation based on the date column. But it appeared that content deployment was creating the columns in a different order. Thus causing the exception

To resolve the error perform the following steps:

* Modify the calculated column to refer to a column that you know exsits on the destination site (for this instance I chose the title column).
* Perform another deployment (this deployment should create both your calculated column and the column for the calculation.)
* Once the deployment completes go back and modify the calculated column to now reference the previous column (in this case the date column).
* Perform another deployment
* Sit back and watch the deployment should now complete successfully.

NOTE: The above solution would only be feasible if you use incremental deployments. For large site collections performing the above would take hours to complete.

Post a comment or two and let me know if this helped in your particular scenario. Thanks!

Posted at 9:30 PM by Carlos Fernandez | Category: Troubleshooting | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

8/11/2008

Resolve Error: This constraint cannot be enabled as not all values have corresponding parent values

Treading the waters of content deployment has never been for the faint of heart. I personally can remember numerous instances where I was up whole nights trying to solve a deployment issue.

Recently, I ran across this issue:

This constraint cannot be enabled as not all values have corresponding parent values

When I saw it I couldn't believe it. Before this error I had successfully run deployments for 3 months straight with no problems. Now this! So like anyone without a clue I googled the error hoping someone had run across it as well.

Well all trails led to a telerik issue; someone who wrote a custom data control; or some other non content deployment issue. The only Microsoft forum ended in a dead end.

So after numerous sleepless nights the final step was to contact Microsoft. And luckily I got a response.

"The above error has been logged as a bug and has been resolved"

All you have to do is install Hotfix KB955594. So I requested it installed it on the source and destination servers. And bonza!!! Success!!

I hope that google logs this so if someone runs into it again they can run across this blog post and get an answer. Good luck!

Posted at 3:15 PM by Carlos Fernandez | Category: Troubleshooting | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

6/11/2008

Restore using stsadm error – “Your backup is from a different version of Windows SharePoint Services”

I ran into a strange error message trying to restore a backup to a new SharePoint server. One of our developers send us a backup to restore on a dev server to test. So I ran stsadm –o restore ….. but got the following error message "Your backup is from a different version of Windows SharePoint Services and cannot be restored to a server running the current version. The backup file should be restored to a server with version '1162887508.196608.17694860.0′ or later." This error really got me puzzled. I have done 100s of restore in the past but never ran into this particular

After a few search on-line, I found some hint to my problem. I realized that the backup I had in my hands wasn't a stsadm backup but SQL backup instead. I restore the backup using SQL manager and attach the content database and all worked as expected.

Lesson learned today, always question the quality of the error message thrown at you. This message should have been "Unknown backup type" or something like that.

Posted at 8:26 PM by Daniel Cohen-Dumani | Category: Misc; MOSS; Troubleshooting; WSS | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

5/29/2008

Opening documents in MOSS causes Internet Explorer to crash

When trying to open documents in SharePoint 2007/ WSS 3.0, such as a word document or powerpoint presentation, Internet Explorer crashes.

This tends to happen on systems that may have Windows XP/Vista, Office 2003 and Internet Explorer 6/7. The problem occurs because even though Office 2003 is loaded on the machine, other components of Office 2007 are also being used causing a conflict. Even if the user only has Project 2007 loaded and is using Office 2003 for every other application, the conflict can occur. Fortunately Microsoft has addressed the problem and issued a hotfix. The link for the hotfix is listed below.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/938888

This problem occurs if the following conditions are true, in the order in which they are presented:

•	You install a Microsoft Office 2003 product on the computer.
•	You install one or more 2007 Office system programs on the computer.
•	You repair or update the installation of an Office 2003 product.

In this scenario, the older version of the Name.dll file becomes the registered version. When the Owssupp.dll file is used, it tries to use functionality that is not available. This condition causes Internet Explorer to crash (stop responding).

Posted at 12:15 PM by Jamie Nace | Category: Troubleshooting | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

5/22/2008

Sharepoint People Picker - Multiple Domains

I recently came across the scenario where a client was managing multiple domains for various business units in the company. They had deployed SharePoint to domain X, and allowed users from Domain Y to authenticate and use the portal.

They noticed that when users tried to use the people picker control to select users from Domain Y, they were unable to find the users.

It appears that the people picker control defaults to only searching in the domain where the farm is deployed.

After some research I found a post from the SharePoint team regarding how the people picker works. In the end, it turns out that adding some additional configuration via STSADM was the way to go.

Command:

stsadm -o setproperty -url http://CentralAdminURL:8888 -pn "peoplepicker-searchadforests" –pv "domain:DomainX.company.net;domain:DomainY.company.net"

Reference:

http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2006/03/15/552331.aspx

Posted at 8:53 AM by Hector Ramos | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

5/5/2008

Office Sharepoint Server Search Returns No Matches

Scenario:

1. You create a site: http://serverurl/sites/site1 and add a few documents.

2. The same site is accessible via http://localhost/sites/site1

3. You create a content source for http://localhost and run a full crawl.

4. A search for a document with the URL: http://localhost/sites/site1/_layouts/OSSSearchResults.aspx?k=doc&cs=This%20Site&u=http://localhost/sites/site1, will return results correctly.

4. A search for a document with the URL: http://serverurl/sites/site1/_layouts/OSSSearchResults.aspx?k=doc&cs=This%20Site&u=http://serverurl/sites/site1, will not return any results.

Problem:

The search service is using the URL specified in the "u" query string parameter to query against the search service. Since the search service crawled against a different URL, it can't find any results with the same URL stem.

Solution:

Add a server name mapping in the SSP administration.

URL: http://centraladminurl/ssp/admin/_layouts/listservernamemappings.aspx

The search service seems to use this to resolve additional URL's.

Hope this helps.

Posted at 11:37 AM by Hector Ramos | Category: Misc; MOSS; Troubleshooting; WSS | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

3/10/2008

Event IDs: 6482, 6398, and 7076

As a developer I often times find myself browsing through my server and checking its overall health. This includes viewing space used, file fragmentation, event logs and various other areas that are important for the overall health and performance of a server. Recently, when performing one of these ritualistic cleansing’s I happened upon the Application Event log to bear witness to a most shocking view. There were hundreds of errors occurring every few seconds on our server!!!

I immediately opened the event properties and started scrolling through each one with a ferocity and focus to solve the server’s ails. After searching through about 20 of these events I realized there was a pattern. The same events were repeating over and over again. The culprits were Event ID: 6482, 6398, and 7076. The cheeky little devils. Here are their errors outputted for your benefit:

Event: 6482 Application Server Administration job failed for service instance Microsoft.Office.Excel.Server.ExcelServerSharedWebServiceInstance (652dbf99-d195-4c5e-aa90-a9d61ad00bf9). Reason: Exception from HRESULT: 0x80005006 Techinal Support Details: System.Runtime.InteropServices.COMException (0x80005006): Exception from HRESULT: 0x80005006 Event: 6398 The Execute method of job definition Microsoft.Office.Server.Administration.ApplicationServerAdministrationServiceJob (ID 97e56cbc-2d1b-405d-bfb9-fca08c66e7c9) threw an exception. More information is included below. Exception from HRESULT: 0x80005006

Event: 7076 An exception occurred while executing the Application Server Administration job. Message: Exception from HRESULT: 0x80005006 Techinal Support Details: System.Runtime.InteropServices.COMException (0x80005006): Exception from HRESULT: 0x80005006

After seeing this I checked my other servers to see that they too were infected with this log filling bug. So, I decided to hit the interwebs in search of anything that could possibly explain why my servers were experiencing this weird behavior. After many searches and interpreting the event details as best as I could I happened upon this article from Microsoft: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;946517 which explains that the culprit is actually the OWSTimer executable.

Which attempts to access the IIS Server Manager using two threads at the same time. (This is a hotfix which has not been regression tested so make sure that you verify this solution prior to deploying to any production servers.) So if you come across this problem, just use the link provided and ask Microsoft for the hotfix. That should get your logs clean and your server in good health.

NOTE: I also noticed that the message could vary: I have seen anything from: Attempted to read memory which is corrupt to Buffer Overflow errors. But they all link back to this little baddy.

Posted at 10:12 AM by Carlos Fernandez | Category: Troubleshooting; MOSS; WSS | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

3/5/2008

Sharepoint PDF Integration

After having read all sorts of articles online on how to get Adobe Acrobat and SharePoint to work together, I think I have finally found the right combination of actions.

The first step that most people are familiar with is the addition of a mapping in the DOCICON.xml file. For those who aren’t the steps are:

1. Edit DOCICON.XML

a. Path: C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\12\TEMPLATE\XML\DOCICON.XML

2. Add an entry to support PDF files.

a. <Mapping Key="pdf" Value="icpdf.gif" EditText="Adobe Acrobat" OpenControl="SharePoint.OpenDocuments" />

Please note the second part of the entry EditText="Adobe Acrobat" OpenControl="SharePoint.OpenDocuments" which is critical to achieving the Edit in functionality

This step will provide a nice link that allows users to edit documents in Adobe Acrobat.

editpdf1

For some users the previous step described would be enough and they can now edit PDF’s stored in SharePoint and save the documents right back to SharePoint, but for the majority of us will get the dreaded error message saying that you need a Windows SharePoint Services compatible application to edit PDF’s.

editpdf2

After some research on how SharePoint open documents under the hood, the steps I took to remedy this situation involved changing settings in Adobe Acrobat. In Adobe Acrobat, select “Edit – Preferences – Internet” and find the check box labeled “Display PDF in browser”. For some people it is already checked and for others it is not. Changing this setting triggers acrobat to perform some sort of browser integration installation.

editpdf3

If the option is already checked, uncheck it and allow acrobat to perform the un-install. Then open acrobat again, check the option, and allow SharePoint to install the integration component.

editpdf4

It is my belief that whatever browser integration acrobat installs is failing or missing on those machines that receive the “compatible application” error message”. It may also help to close all your browser session when the installation is running, although I can’t confirm. Also, machines with acrobat reader and acrobat standard/professional may continue to experience problems until the option is unchecked on both instances of acrobat.

Posted at 6:54 PM by Hector Ramos | Category: WSS; Troubleshooting; MOSS | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

1 - 10

‭(Hidden)‬ Admin Links