Van Laan on Sharepoint and all things Microsoft

Get DNSDIAG working

So, was trying to get DNSdiag.exe to work on my laptop after installing the Windows Server 2003 Resource Kit. After installing the kit, running the command shell, and then running dnsdiag.exe, I got an error saying:

"Unable to locate component" and referring to isatq.dll, which lives in the C:\WINDOWS\system32\inetsrv folder.

I chased my tail for a bit trying to register that .dll with regsvr32.exe and installing IIS on my laptop, neither of whcih worked.

Then I copied dnsdiag.exe into the C:\WINDOWS\system32\inetsrv, and now it works fine.

Nice.

Security hardening for SharePoint

Specific info on server hardening found here:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc262849.aspx

This post has hardening recommendations for both the SharePoint WFEs and app servers, as well as the SQL server hosting SharePoint.

And from this post by JoelO, http://blogs.msdn.com/joelo/archive/2007/02/13/protocols-ports-and-firewall-rules.aspx, there's a great list of ports SPoint uses, like so:

 

Inbound/Outbound	From	Port	To
Inbound	Client IPs (as applicable)	TCP 80 or 443	ISA Web Pub or WFE
Inbound	TS Jump point	RDP (TCP 3389) For Remote Admin	APP (Central Admin /SSP Admin)
Inbound	All SharePoint Server (Depends on Central Admin config)	Office Server Web Services, TCP 56737, SSL 56738	App (Central Admin /SSP Admin)
Inbound	Index ***	TCP 80 or 443	WFE
Outbound	ALL SharePoint Svrs (Based on Auth)	DS (TCP 445) RPC (TCP 135) DNS (UDP 53) Kerberos (UDP 88) LDAP/S (UDP 389/636)	DC/DNS (LDAP)
Outbound/(Inbound if applicable)	WFE (alerts or mail enabled list) *	SMTP (TCP 25)	SMTP/Exchange
Outbound	ALL SharePoint Svrs	SQL (TCP 1433) or SSL custom port	SQL
Outbound	WFE (Search Request)	Search Query, either NBT (TCP/UDP 137, 138,139) or Direct-hosted SMB (TCP/UDP 445)	Query
Outbound	Index (Propagation)	Search Query, either NBT (TCP/UDP 137, 138,139) or Direct-hosted SMB (TCP/UDP 445)	Query
Outbound	WFE (SSO)	RPC for SSO – (TCP 135), plus random high ports (Dynamic RPC) or restricted high ports (Static RPC)	APP Servers

 

 

 

Microsoft Product Lifecycle and Version Evaluation

The support lifecycle policy FAQ:

http://support.microsoft.com/gp/lifepolicy

The support lifecycle index:

http://support.microsoft.com/gp/lifeselectindex

Some key notes here are that most versions of Windows Server 2003 are ending mainstream support in mid-to-late 2010.

SQl 2005 support lifecycle:

http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/?p1=2855

Mainstream ends 4/2011

Windows Server 2003 Version Evaluation:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc758523.aspx

Things like you can only address up to 4 GB in Standard, up to 32GB in Enterprise. Or you can only go above quad-proc with Enterprise.

Capacity Planning and Caching

TechNet's library entry on SharePoint capacity and planning:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc262971.aspx

Some good notes, including repeated recommendations to use a 64-bit architecture, at the very least on the SQL side. It provides for greater directly addressable memory space, improved bus architecture (more data passed to cache and procs), and larger number of procs (only 32 on 32-bit architecture).

From microsoft.com : Capacity Planning for Windows SharePoint Services

http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/wss/2/all/adminguide/en-us/stsb07.mspx?mfr=true

Some good info on requests per user per second, etc.

From deeper in the same TechNet library as above:

Tune Web server performance (Office SharePoint Server)

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc298550.aspx

Some specific recommendations including, again,  a very hard rec to use 64-bit for WFEs. Don't use web gardens. Also, and this is a big one in large farms: Use dedicated Web servers for services that are not exposed to end-users, such as indexing, CA, Profiles, and Excel Services.

Also, use Kerberos for large number of requests.

Some more in-depth tips on object caching:

http://www.sharepointblogs.com/bobbyhabib/archive/2008/07/02/different-type-of-moss-caching-mechanisms.aspx

MSDN's take on Internet site optimization:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb727371.aspx

This article has some great tips, including instructions for the following:

"Delay load the core .js file (~250 KB uncompressed) in the background (load it asynchronously), which allows the page to load faster and become available to the user more quickly. Delay loading results in a better user experience because the .js file loads asynchronously. This is also the safest option. "

Some specific instructions on enabling Static compression for IIS 6.0 from both Bill Baer and Scott Forsyth:

http://blogs.technet.com/wbaer/archive/2008/01/30/http-compression-internet-information-services-6-0-and-sharepoint-products-and-technologies.aspx

http://weblogs.asp.net/owscott/archive/2004/01/12/57916.aspx

ASP.NET Memory and CPU Considerations as they relate to SharePoint

This post is a potential placeholder for ongoing research into whether or not ASP.NET app pool and machine.config settings changes from the default are necessary for a stable SharePoint installation.

I haven't put them into place yet, but have seen a few installations where they might be necessary.

Here are the governing documents from Microsoft. No connecting mention to SharePoint at all, but it's certainly running on .NET 2.0 technology, so why not, right?

Contention, poor performance, and deadlocks when you make Web service requests from ASP.NET applications:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/821268

MSDN Improving .NET Application Performance and Scalability

Chapter 6 — Improving ASP.NET Performance

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms998549.aspx

This aricle might be useful, as well:

828222 How to generate a dump file when ASP.NET deadlocks in IIS 6.0
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=828222

This questions are based off of seeing these events in the event log occasionally:

Event Type: Warning
Event Source: W3SVC
Event Category: None
Event ID: 1013
Date:  6/12/2008
Time:  12:46:05 PM
User:  N/A
Computer: HostNameHere
Description:
A process serving application pool 'SharePoint - AppPool Name' exceeded time limits during shut down. The process id was '####'.

For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.

I like this bit of help from Matt:

http://www.dvsug.org/Matt/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=3

He's suggesting a memory threshold to recycle at between 800MB to 1.5 GB.

And he led me to this great article:

http://blogs.technet.com/stefan_gossner/archive/2007/11/26/dealing-with-memory-pressure-problems-in-moss-wss.aspx

Talking about memory and CPU issues with SharePoint. Very good read.

And finally found Joel O's post on the topic:

http://blogs.msdn.com/joelo/archive/2007/10/29/sharepoint-app-pool-settings.aspx

And here's a great free utility for managing Application pools:

http://www.harbar.net/articles/APM.aspx

How to Check for whether MOSS SP1 is installed

Start Central Administration, Click on Operations, then Servers on server.

Without SP1, it's version:

12.0.0.6020

With, SP1, it is version:

12.0.0.6219

***Update 6.12.08 ***

Check out

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/948945

And look at the file sizes, dates, and version number to see if you've updated to WSS 3.0 or not.

Also, this KB article: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/936984

Contains a specific section on determining whether or not you've upgraded to MOSS SP1 on the third link down under Installation details. So there you go.

***End Update***

Event ID 1013 - SharePoint edits and uploads hanging

Short Version:

Symptoms: Uploads of documents, pictures, .aspx pages hanging. Edits of pages hanging when trying to check them back in. High-volume Publishing site.

Fix: Change shutdown timeout of application pool from default of 90 to 180, up worker threads for app pool web garden to two (I was lucky enough to have quad-proc machines).

Long Version:

So, recently went live with a SharePoint Publishing site that replaced an existing site that averages a few thousand hits per day. Web farm with two WFEs and an App server. On the first day things were going well for the anonymous external users hitting the site and getting the info they were used to getting. But not so well for internal IT users who were applying edits as requested to the site. Document uploads were taking forever and finally hanging.

The corollary event in the event log is this:

And the text is this:

Event Type:        Warning

Event Source:    W3SVC

Event Category:                None

Event ID:              1013

Date:                     6/9/2008

Time:                     9:59:13 PM

User:                     N/A

Computer:          SPWFE02

Description:

A process serving application pool 'Cybersubstation-Internal' exceeded time limits during shut down. The process id was '6264'.

And lots of 1013s in the event log, but many, many on our golive date and shortly thereafter:

 

Some research turned up this post from Steve Sheppard at Microsoft:

http://blogs.msdn.com/steveshe/archive/2007/12/19/overlapped-recycling-and-sharepoint-configuring-the-shutdown-timeout.aspx

He references the Planning and Deploying Service Pack 1 for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 in a Multi-server Environment at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc262996.aspx which states that the App pool shut down timeout should be changed from 90 to 300 seconds.

So, go to IIS Admin, right-click on the web app in question and select properties. Select the Home Directory tab and look at the Application pool setting to determine which app pool to modify the timeout for (or just look at the one referenced in the event log).

Now, in IIS Admin, expand the Application pools and right-click and select properties on the app pool in question.

Select the health tab and you should see the default of 90 for shutdown timeout:

 

And changed to 300:

Both my servers immediately starting pegging all 4 cpu's mercilessly. They both shot up to around 100% pretty quick. I assumed this was some kind of temporary adjustment phase. 15 minutes later, it was still happening:

This was obviously worrisome. So I added another thread to the web garden of the app pool (which defaults to one):

Since I'm working with quad-proc machines, I figured this would offset the load nicely.

After monitoring the servers for another 20-30 minutes, the pattern had changed a bit. I now had another w3wp.exe for that application pool, and the total CPU no longer spiked at 100% and stayed there. But it was still consistently between 60-95%, occasionally touching 100%. Still not right.

So, contrary to the Microsoft recommendation from the link above, I dropped the app pool shutdown timeout from 300 down to 180-still double the default of 90, but less than the 300 recommended:

My two WFEs almost immediately calmed down on the CPU spike and have stayed there for about 30 minutes now, with only occasional spikes that only last about 15-20 seconds, even with the constant traffic the web site experiences from the outside.

Thanks Linda, Jeanine, Eddie, Theresa, Joey, Tom. 

Use HTML to make HREF within same SharePoint page

So, this is just a quick post to remind myself that old-school HTML tricks can be used fine within SharePoint web pages. So, within a Content Editor Web Part or Page Editor field, you can create a hyperlink to another point on the same page.

Click Edit HTML or Source Editor to view the html encoding of the page or web part:

Locate the place within your existing text where you want the link to jump to. Put this line in:

<a name=1></a>

Where "1" equals whatever name you want to give this jump-to point on the page. You could call this point whatever you like, just so long as it's unique in the page. You could call it <a name=FAQQuestion1></a>, to have the answer to the first in a long list of Frequently Asked Questions.

Then click OK to get out of the source editor.

Then, go back up to whatever point on the page you want to hyperlink down to this, use the mouse to select the words you want to hyperlink, then click on the Hyperlink button on the edit fields up top. Put in a hyperlink to

#1

in the first case above, or #FAQQuestion1 in the second case. As long as they match.

Save your work and you should have a hyperlink within the same page. Yay!

Automatically Populate Field in InfoPath from AD

This is an easy way to get AD info into an InfoPath form without writing code.

http://blogs.microsoft.co.il/blogs/itaysk/archive/2007/04/05/InfoPath-_2D00_-Get-the-current-user-without-writing-code.aspx

Free WildCard People Search

Just found this great code snippet online that does wildcard people search. Out of the box SharePoint, even with SP1 (I was hoping SP1 would add this functionality, but...), search does not return wildcard results. So, doing a people search on "Ric" would return only those people whose first names were actually entered into Active Directory as "Ric" or who had some field, like department, that had "ric" in it. The code is at the bottom of this post.

And, to give credit where it's definitely due, here's the link to the original post:

http://www.ramonscott.com/Home/tabid/37/EntryID/1/Default.aspx

Here's what a search in default people search looks like when I search on ric:

As you can see, there's only results that have *exactly* "ric" in them. The rest of the results, truncated because they have lots of client info in them, all are returned because the user has a department field of "RIC."

Here's what it looks like when the code is pasted into a content editor web part on the page:

And here's what it looks like when I click Search on the above box:

As you can see, I'm now returning results on users named Richard, as presented by the default peopleresults.aspx page. So, you could do this, or pay Ontolica $10K to do it for you. (Though we're still missing some search components that should be basic, in my opinion, such as wildcard results on non-people data and extended boolean search.)

Additionally, here's a link to where someone extended this code to be able to do wildcard searches on additional fields with people search:

http://www.sharepointbuzz.com/index.php/2008/01/24/how-to-extend-wildcard-people-search-on-moss-2007/

Here's the code:

<script language="javascript">
//function to handle enter on keyboard
function txtWildPeopleFinder_KeyDown(e)
{
  if (e.keyCode == 13 || e.keyCode==10)
  {
    e.returnValue=false;
    DoWildPeopleSearch();
    return false;
  }
  else
    return true;
}
//escape apostrophes in search strings
function escapestr(str)
{
return str.replace("'","%22");
}

//search function
function DoWildPeopleSearch()
{
var firstname = escapestr(document.all["firstname"].value);
var lastname =  escapestr(document.all["lastname"].value);
var url;

//search on last name
if(firstname == "")
{
url = "/searchcenter/Pages/peopleresults.aspx?k=LastName%3A" + lastname;
window.location=url;
return;
}

//search on first name
if(lastname == "")
{
url = "/searchcenter/Pages/peopleresults.aspx?k=FirstName%3A" + firstname;
window.location=url;
return;
}

//first and last
url = "/searchcenter/Pages/peopleresults.aspx?k=lastname%3A" + lastname +  "%20FirstName%3A" + firstname;
window.location=url;
return;
}
</script>

<table cellpadding="3" cellspacing="0" border="0" width="100%" ID="Table3">
<tr>
  <td width="80" nowrap>
   First Name:
  </td>
  <td width="100%">
   <input size="20" maxlength="100" id="firstname" name="firstname" type="text" onkeydown="txtWildPeopleFinder_KeyDown(event)">
  </td>
</tr>
<tr>
  <td width="80" nowrap>
   Last Name:
  </td>
  <td>
   <input size="20" maxlength="100" id="lastname" name="lastname" type="text" onkeydown="txtWildPeopleFinder_KeyDown(event)">
  </td>
</tr>
<tr>
  <td> &nbsp; </td>
  <td>
   <input type="button" onclick="DoWildPeopleSearch()" value="Search">
  </td>
</tr>
</table>

Thanks to Richard and Alex