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.

Scheduling Events in SharePoint 2007

There are many events that need to be scheduled in a proper SharePoint installation. These are the ones I've run into in the course of my consulting work and the timing I've come up with during my installation and configuration experiences. It may not work for all implementations, but it's a good default for a medium complexity installation.

Microsoft provides quite a few planning worksheets for a SharePoint 2007 installation, which are located here:

http://technet2.microsoft.com/Office/en-us/library/49cf7edd-14ee-445b-8ab0-1d1339f2435f1033.mspx?mfr=true

But a scheduling worksheet doesn't seem to be among them. So, here's one for you:

Download sharepoint_2007_event_scheduler.docx

And the Word 2003 version:

Download sharepoint_2007_event_scheduler.doc

The explanation for the steps in the chart are as follows, as well as some suggested times I’ve seen work well in quite a few environments. The times are by no means required—alter them to whatever fits your particular environment. The main thrust of this post is simply ensuring that there’s some centralized location where events scheduled in the farm are recorded and understood.

For profile, people content source crawl, and Audience compilation, the logic is that they should cascade in that order throughout the day.

1. Full AD Import : 10pm :Time varies

This took 3 minutes for an Active Directory with 2000 users in one environment and about 1.5 hours for an Active Directory with 170,000 user accounts in another environment—so time definitely varies depending on the size of your overall AD structure. This can only be scheduled once, on the hour.

1a. Incremental AD import : 12pm: Time varies (can only be scheduled once, on the hour)

2.  Full Crawl content source for people (sps3://etc ) : 11pm : Time varies based on size of AD (I usually split off the people content source, which is denoted by sps3://yourmysitewebapp, into its own Content Source. This will allow your scheduling to be more granular. Additionally, this should occur after the 10pm AD Profile Import).

2a. Incremental Crawl content source for people: 1pm every day  (Scheduled to occur after the 12pm AD Import.)

Note: There’s no reason to do crawl of the sps3 content source if there hasn’t been a new AD Profile import.

3. Crawl content source for all site content (12am), once more during the day (12PM) (logic here is that you want two fulls during the day, and can only set number of minutes from last one, so 720 minutes, or 12 hours, later). For a particularly large farm, you might split off multiple web apps into their own content source, as well.

3a. Crawl content source for incremental site content (every 60 minutes), starting at (1PM)

4. Audience Compilation (only on the hour, once a day) 2am:

5. IIS Reset: 3am:  1min

By default, IIS sets a time between 1am and 3am to recycle the app pools for the web apps (with the exception of Shared Services  app pool and the OfficeServerApplicationPool).  This is basically an IIS Reset, but on an individual web application basis. I usually go in and change the defaults all to 3am so that that’s when the IIS Reset occurs.

6. MOSS Warm-Up Scripts : 3:20am : 15 minutes tops

This is done to prevent that really, really long load time that occurs the first time a web site is hit each day (or after the automatically scheduled web application pools recycle sometime between 1 and 3am). It’s basically a pre-compilation of the JIT that causes the .aspx pages to be ready to be served up right away, as opposed to compiled the first time an end user makes a request. If you Google “MOSS Warm-Up Script” you’ll find Joel O’s article, among many others, describing how to do this. The only caveat I’ve found over time that isn’t 100% clear in these walkthroughs is that account used to run this task must have full read to the sites you’re asking it to hit.

7. SQL Backup: 4am start

This would be a good time to script the backup of C:\inetpub and the 12 Hive for your Web Front Ends.

8. Usage Analysis Processing (if site is complex enough to deem necessary)

9. Crawl of external file shares(Thanks, Sonny, Alan, Sherry, Troy, Richard, Brantley, Alex)

This is a double-edged sword that at first excites, then usually scares the business owners. They get excited when they see how easy it is to search their complex, beehive complex of a file share and find the files they need. They get worried when they see some of the files that get exposed because they’ve been placed in a location that doesn’t have the proper security on it, but have been enjoying “security through obscurity.” This will generate a data catalogue and security tightening project or two in many organizations before they feel comfortable exposing their file shares through SharePoint search, but it’s worth the effort.

And that’s it. Those are the primary events that need to occur in every SharePoint farm. I hope you find this article and the associated chart useful in your SharePoint environment.

Changing the Installation/Farm Sharepoint 2007 Password

Basically, just a self-reminder that following the ole' Msoft KB works just fine for this process:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/934838

And here's Joel Oleson's take: (but again, the MSoft KB worked just fine)

http://blogs.msdn.com/joelo/archive/2006/08/22/712945.aspx

The one caveat here was that the cut and paste from IE to notepad then to the command prompt didn't work for some reason and just gave a "Command line error" until the command was typed out manually.

In this recent case, the commands were as below:

stsadm –o updatefarmcredentials –userlogin DomainName\UserName -password NewPassword

iisreset /noforce

This changes the farm password and the Central Administration web app password.

click Operations, and then click Timer job definitions -- verify that Administration Application Pool Credential Deployment job definition is completed (ie, it's not there anymore)

stsadm -o updateaccountpassword -userlogin DomainName\UserName -password NewPassword –noadmin

(this should update the svcsharepoint pswd for all the other web apps in the farm)

iisreset /noforce

Update Windows SharePoint Services Help Search service account:
stsadm.exe -o spsearch -farmserviceaccount DomainName\UserName -farmservicepassword NewPassword

Thanks to Juan in Jax.

MVPS.ORG Hosts file to block bad pages, ads, spyware, etc.

So, this isn't really a Sharepoint post, but it's something I use continually, both on my own machines and whenever I get called to help out friends and family. How many times have I heard: "My computer is slow. Should I get a new one?" Nine times out of ten it's because of spyware and random .exe's clogging up the memory space of a machine, or numerous Internet Explorer toolbars or popups slowing down web browsing.

The good people at www.mvps.org have provided what is basically a blacklist of known malware and adware web sites that represent the seedier neighborhoods of the internet. The short instructions are to download their list from http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/hosts.txt or http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/hosts.zip and copy and paste it into your own hosts file located on your computer at C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc\hosts or C:\WINNT\system32\drivers\etc\hosts (depends on which operating system you're running).

Basically, go to http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/hosts.htm to read all the explanation needed, then click the link about halfway down the page to view the hosts file:

Then, in an explorer window, browse to  C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc\ or C:\WINNT\system32\drivers\etc\ depending on your OS. Windows XP and Windows Vista will be the former directory. Double-click the file called hosts to open it. You'll get a prompt asking what program you want to use to open the file, as it has no extension. Don't ask me why Microsoft decided not to give it an extension. Choose notepad to open the file:

Go back to the Internet Explorer window where you've got the hosts file displayed and click Edit, Select All then Edit, Copy to copy the entire contents into your cache (or hit ctrl-a and then ctrl-c). Then go back to the notepad window with your hosts file open and click Edit, Select All and Edit, Paste (or hit ctrl-a and then ctrl-v to Paste). This will copy the contents of the mvps.org hosts file into your local hosts file, which should look like this:

Then, click File, Save to save the file and you've added the entries to your local machine! What this does is redirect requests that originate from your computer to malicious spyware, adware, and malware sites to the local machine's address, 127.0.0.1 . It will actually make browsing faster as your computer will no longer go to retrieve all those crap ads and bad software it was trying to get to. You might get "Page cannot be found" in various places on your browser window when browsing the web, but the experience will be worth it. Here are some examples:

So, as you can see, it doesn't really disrupt the browsing experience. It just doesn't allow certain ads to be displayed in zones on the web page. To me, that's just a huge bonus in browsing the web. Most pages are cluttered with crap ads and popups that really interfere with the browsing experience. I've never really had a website completely not work for me by applying this method. And, after a very short time browsing, I don't even notice the Page not found pieces anymore. When I do, it's usually with a brief sense of enjoyment that I've avoided any more mind pollution.

Thanks to MVPS.org and, of course, Thurley.

Enjoy.

Site collections versus sites

So, I've had this discussion either internally or with clients a few times, and I agree with alot of what Dave has to say in this post:

http://www.sharepointblogs.com/llowevad/archive/2007/06/25/site-collection-logical-architecture.aspx

Of particular note is the clients I've had ask me about curtailing space usage, and the fact that Quotas can be applied at the site collection level only. Not at the site level. So, in a particular customer's case, this entailed separate site collections for their five functional areas, as opposed to one site collection with sites created for each of the functional areas. This was necessary because they were using the MSDE built-in engine and had to keep a very close granular eye on how much space was used in each area as they only had 4GB overall.

Yet another Add! 11.15.07:

So, here will hopefully be my last addition to this beaten, tired horse:

When you go to add a content database, which is done per web app, like so:

And then hit the drop-down to get to your main portal web app (perversely, this always seems to default to your SSP web app, dunno why):

 

When, you get to this screen, you'll see just one SQL database. If you now click "Add a content database" you'll be prompted to add a SQL database to the current web app you're viewing. To me, all this talk about separate site collections is a bit futile without this step, as adding content dbs speaks towards a long look down the road towards the future and potential growth.

Here's a case where I've added two additional content databases and then added all the site collections:

Note that I have 11 separate site collections here and they were created in separate content databases, round-robin style, as they were provisioned. Viewing these db's in SQL Manager Studio would show a decent distribution in size as the site collections are similarly sized. Well, actually, there was one site collection I needed to add that I knew was going to have a lot of documents imported right away, but the round-robin was set to create the next site collection in a database that was already pretty large. So I created a dummy site collection to go there, then created the one I knew would add alot of size, and it provisioned smoothly into the next content db where there wasn't so much space used.

Note also that no, you cannot move a site collection from one database to another after creating it, unless you save, then delete, the whole thing and then jury-rig where it will go (via the above method of creating dummies until a slot is open in the db you want).

End Add 11.15.07

Added 11.14.07:

Another benefit of separate site collections. If you need to lock a certain portion of the web portal, you have to do so per site collection. So with your portal split up into site collections, you can lock just the portion you desire.

End Add

Here's the pain, though:

You have to go through and fix the Global and Current Navigation for every site collection! This doesn't sound like a pain, but think about having to go in and fill out this screen:

FORTY TIMES! Yep, that's right. Because the formula works out to:

N(N-1) X 2

where N=Number of Site collections. This is because on each site collection you have to modify both the global and current nav (thus the X 2 at the end up there) to include a reference to every other site collection save the current one.

It's also a pretty good idea to go in and create a portal site connection for each of the site collections, so you at least have the very top cookie crumb leading back up to your "main" site collection:

Also, you'll have to set your site theme, master page, and icon for every one of your site collections. There's no "trickle down" between the first created site collection in a web app and the others.

Additionally, the Search on each site collection will only search the local site collection by default, though I'm guessing someone's figured that one out. But it'd be just another customization to apply N number of times.

So, all that said, there's lots of pros with going with separate site collections for separate functional areas, but it's no walk in the park.

Added 11.08.07:

So, list of all things that need to be performed cross-site collection for administration and site consistency, if these are the goals:

1. Security

2. Title, Description, Icon

3. Site Theme

4. Site Collection Quota

5. Global and Current Navigation

6. Portal Site Connection

Caveats to remember:

1. Search defaults to the top-level of the site collection down (so a user would have to go back to the "main" site collection to search.

2. Content Query Web Part doesn't allow query across site collections... this is pretty big:

"Cannot save the property settings for this Web Part. The site URL is not valid. The site URL should refer to a site in the current site collection and should be specified as a server relative URL, as in "/sites/busdev"

And this is true regardless of where site collection is, ie you could build your site collection at a totally separate web app and, thus, address, and this applies. It also applies if this is a site collection built in a managed path, ie \sites\sitecollname . Even in this case, where the site appears to be "hanging off" of the main site collection, the fact that it's a separate site collection negates the ability to query content.

Setting up the Bamboo Solutions free World Clock and Weather web part

Setting up the Bamboo Solutions free World Clock and Weather web part

Head to

www.bamboosolutions.com and browse to Web Parts and find the World Clock and Weather Web Part

Or head straight to:

https://store.bamboosolutions.com/pc-55-1-world-clock-and-weather-web-part.aspx

You’ll need to register and get a free account to download this free (for now) web part from them.

After doing so, extract the files to a folder on your Web Front End (WFE) and then run setup.bat by double-clicking on it.

You’ll get this screen:

Click Run, then:

Click on the Bamboo World Clock and Weather WebPart on the left side, which should cause “Install” to appear on the right:

Then,

Click Run, then select the web apps to which you want to install the part. As I’ve said before and I’m sure you’ve experienced, an error here is almost certainly a security issue. Go get some more rights and come back to it if it fails.

Once it’s installed, you’ll get a message about resetting IIS, so:

C> iisreset /noforce

So, we’ve cycled our web apps and lost our JIT compilation, which will cause pages to load slowly the first time we hit them, so let’s run our warmup script, which we’ve hopefully got configured as a task (if not, see this post: http://vanlaan.typepad.com/van_laan_on_sharepoint/2007/08/sharepoint-quic.html ).

Right-click and Run the task:

Now, let’s head to a site to get it on the page and configured.

The only thing I’ve done with this site collection is create it with the Publishing, Collaboration template and change the site theme to Belltown. (This client likes teal--alot).

Click Site Actions, Edit Page:

You’ll see the editing view:

Click on Add a Web Part on the Zone you prefer. We’ll choose the Bottmo zone which, ironically enough, is towards the bottom right now. Or, we could click the drop-down beside Page on the upper left side and select Add web parts, like this:

But, I’m going to click the add a web part link in the bottom zone:

I don’t see what I want in these default web parts, so I’m going to click Advanced Web part gallery and options:

I’ll get this applet on the right:

Notice there’s a ton of web parts in the normal gallery for this page, and only one in the Server Gallery. That’s going to be our freshly installed web part, which we’ve installed globally to the server. While we ran a nice .MSI application package created by Bamboo solutions, most likely in the background, at some point, this command was run:

C> stsadm.exe –o addwppack –filename Bamboo. WorldClockAndWeather.SPv3.cab –globalinstall

Or, if you don’t have the BIN directory added to your PATH system statement yet, then this command:

“c:\program files\common files\microsoft shared\web server extensions\12\bin\stsadm.exe” –o addwppack –filename Bamboo. WorldClockAndWeather.SPv3.cab –globalinstall

Anyways, there it is. Click on Server Gallery to see the part:

Hit the drop-down at the bottom to select your zone, then click Add.

Now, scroll down and we should our web part on the page. Here it is on my page. Looks like it’s defaulted to

Reston

,

VA.

Which is funny strange, because that’s where I was located for my last project, but not for this client.

Anyways, let’s get the settings we desire by clicking the edit drop-down and selecting Modify Shared Web Part:

Now, we’ve got our World Clock and Weather web part configuration applet. Let’s remove the default location and add a couple more:

Now, let’s click Ok, to get out of the modify web part dialogue. And then Check the Page in so we don’t lose our work:

We’ll make it a major version and go ahead and Publish it.

Now, we’ve got it on our page, but the title doesn’t look that hot, so let’s fix that.

Site Actions, Edit page, edit drop-down menu on the web part, then Modify Shared web part:

You can see there that I’ve expanded the Appearance settings area by clicking the + sign and changed the title from “Bamboo World Clock and Weather Web Part” to “Time and Weather”.  Nice and simple.

Click Ok. Click Publish. Looks pretty nice:

Hmmm… Something’s still not just right. This time, we’ll go straight into modifying the web part by hitting the drop-down arrow and selecting Modify Shared Web Part right from there:

And then go in and change the date/time format to something a bit more user-friendly:

Which gives us:

Using TAB with Command Line Browsing

So, hey, don't laugh if this is a basic one for you since you been browsing around the DOS prompt since before the time of hard drives.

But, I just saw this in use today and am going to try to remember it. As you read this blog (as you should, religiously), you'll find I'm a big fan of keyboard shortcuts (windows E, Windows D, Windows F are some favorites) and Start, Run, commands that quickly access Control Panels or MSC's (appwiz.cpl, appsrv.cpl, dsa.msc, domain.msc). While they're really just a (mostly) quicker way of doing things, what they really accomplish is to show off mad Microsoft skillz. Yep, I went there.

So, anyways, whenever I discover a new trick like this, I like to use it as much as possible so that it, hopefully, becomes a good habit.

Here it is: Hit the TAB key after typing cd at a command prompt and you'll begin to cycle through available directories. What? How awesome is that? Even better, hit the TAB key after typing cd and then the first letter of the directory you know you want, and you'll cycle through directories starting with that letter. Talk about super-fast command line browsing.

Friggin awesome.