Joe Rodgers

One or more files in the restored site collection will exceed the maximum supported path length. Please select a shorter destination site address and try again.

2009-05-29T02:37:57Z

I had a customer encounter an error while trying to restore a site collection using STSADM -O RESTORE. They had backed up the site collection without error from the same farm, but when they tried to restore the site collection using a new URL to the same farm, STSADM gave them the following error:

One or more files in the restored site collection will exceed the maximum supported path length. Please select a shorter destination site address and try again.

After some investigation I found out, as the error message alludes to, the path we are trying to restore to is violating the 260 character path length restriction in SharePoint. There are a few tables in the database that can trigger a violation of the path length, in our case it was in the docs table. In our scenario, the original URL was sites/abc. In this site collection, we have a document library with a nested folder structure, the longest folder path being 259 characters, just under the 260 limit. The URL we used to restore the site collection backup to was sites/abcxyz, three characters longer than the original URL. These extra three characters made our 259 character folder path in the original URL, 262 characters, which is over the 260 character limit, causing the error to be thrown.

To understand the root of the problem, I kept digging and finally tracked the error down to the proc_RenameSite stored procedure, which is called AFTER the process restores all the content to the content database. The bad part about the AFTER statement, is that if you have a large site collection (10’s of GBs), you will likely be waiting a several hours for the restore process to reach this point in the process, have it error out and roll back the restore and exit, leaving you in a very “happy” mood.

You have a couple courses of action to work around this problem. The easiest, but not always practical, method is to shorten the name of the site collection you are restoring, something like sites/sweng instead of sites/software_engineering, giving you 15 extra characters in your folder paths. Second, if you still have the original site collection available, you could rename some folders, files, etc, to shrink the URL length well below the 260 character limit, so you have the extra characters available for your restored site URL. Finally, if you do not have the original site collection available to you, and you cannot choose a shorter URL for your restored site, you could run the restore processing again, choosing a temporary short site collection URL, like sites/x, rename some of the longer paths in your site collection, backup the sites/x site collection, and try the restore again using your desired URL. It’s not a pretty or easy method, but it may be your only solution.

Here is a bit of SQL that you can use to examine your DOCS table in the content database, to look for long paths. The Total column is the combination that cannot exceed 260 characters.

SELECT
    LEN(DirName + N’/' + LeafName) AS Total,
    DirName,
    LeafName
FROM
    Docs WITH (NOLOCK)
ORDER BY Total DESC

Latest WSS & MOSS Patches and Service Pack 2 04/2009

2009-05-15T17:01:50Z

Good news for those of you who like the “pleasure” of patching SharePoint, we have four new updates for you, WSS and MOSS Service Pack 2 and the WSS and MOSS April Cumulative Update packages. If you have a multi-lingual farm, you will also need SP2 for each language pack you install.

You can find out everything you ever wanted to know about SP2 on this SharePoint team blog post. The April CU package is the post SP2 rollup package, which is the release that will contain all the updates that did not make it into the SP2. You can find more info on the April CU, including installation instructions, on this SharePoint team blog post.

You can download all four server packages with the following links:

Service Pack 2 for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, x86 & x64
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=79BADA82-C13F-44C1-BDC1-D0447337051B&displaylang=en

Service Pack 2 for Office SharePoint Server 2007, x86 & x64
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=B7816D90-5FC6-4347-89B0-A80DEB27A082&displaylang=en

Description of the Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 cumulative update package(WSS server-package): April 30, 2009
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/968850/en-us
Package Download Link:
http://support.microsoft.com/hotfix/KBHotfix.aspx?kbnum=968850&kbln=en-us

Description of the SharePoint Server 2007 cumulative update package (MOSS server-package): April 28, 2009
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/968851/en-us (not public yet)
Package Download Link:
http://support.microsoft.com/hotfix/KBHotfix.aspx?kbnum=968851&kbln=en-us

Here are the links to the download site for the WSS and MOSS language pack Service Pack 2:

The 2007 Microsoft Office Servers Language Pack Service Pack 2 (SP2)
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=01c6a3e8-e110-4956-903a-ad16284bf223&displaylang=en

Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Language Pack Service Pack 2 (SP2)
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=085e5ac8-58f6-4cf9-8012-33b95ee36c0f&displaylang=en

How to Disable Property Promotion In WSS

2009-05-12T01:03:33Z

I was working with a customer recently that has a business need to disable property promotion/demotion in WSS/MOSS. If you don’t know what property promotion is, it’s the functionality in WSS that pulls the document metadata (e.g. Title, Subject, etc) from Office 2003/2007 documents during upload and sets those values to their corresponding column in WSS. Property demotion is just the opposite, if you update the document properties (like Title) via the WSS UI, that property value is written back to the file. Basically, with property promotion/demotion, we keep the properties in the document and in WSS in sync.

Disabling property promotion and demotion is very easy. The SPWeb object has a ParserEnabled property, which enables or disables this functionality. Using the below PowerShell sample script, we can turn off this functionality at the web level.

PS C:\>[system.reflection.assembly]::LoadWithPartialName("Microsoft.SharePoint")

PS C:\> $site = new-object Microsoft.SharePoint.SPSite("http://mossweb/sites/test")

PS C:\> $site.RootWeb.ParserEnabled = $false

PS C:\> $site.RootWeb.ParserEnabled

False

PS C:\> $site.RootWeb.Update()

To enable document property promotion, just set the ParserEnabled property to true:

PS C:\Users\administrator.LAB> $site.RootWeb.ParserEnabled = $true

PS C:\Users\administrator.LAB> $site.RootWeb.Update()

If you want to learn more about document property promotion, see this article on MSDN:

Document Parser Processing: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa543341.aspx

Flush BlobCache on all Servers In the Farm

2009-04-24T18:19:54Z

A colleague of mine was working on a BlobCache issue with a customer. During troubleshooting, they wanted to flush the cache store on all the servers in the farm. Under Site Settings, we provide site administrators the option to flush the cache on “this server”, but not on all servers in the farm. Now if you have one or two WFE servers in the farm, this isn’t a big deal, but if you have a bunch, it can be very time consuming to force your connection to a specific WFE and execute the cache flush.

Some research into this page a bit more, I found we actually have a check box build into the Object Cache Settings page to allow a site administrator to flush the cache on the farm, but it’s not visible. I have no idea why, but it would be very handy to have this feature available from the browser. I have yet to find a solution to flush the cache without requiring server access. However, if you have server access, you can execute the following sequence of STSADM commands to force a flush of the cache on all the servers. We need to first execute the following to get the current property value:

stsadm -o getproperty -pn blobcacheflushcount -url <Web App or Site URL>

This command will return some XML, like the following:

<Property Exist="Yes" Value="1" />

The value attribute of this XML represents a incrementing value we store internally to determine when the farm should flush the blob cache. To force the cache to flush, we need to increment this value, which can be accomplished using the following command:

stsadm -o setproperty -propertyname blobcacheflushcount -propertyvalue <value returned from “get” command +1> -url <Web App or Site URL>

WSS and MOSS Language Pack Slipstreaming

2009-03-10T21:37:41Z

In case you didn’t know, you can slipstream server pack 1 (or the latest SP) of a language pack into the RTM service pack installation point, creating a single install point for each language pack include includes SP1. You may think, big deal, I’m saving one installation. That’s true, but if you have a a medium or large farm, it cuts the number of items you need to install by half, which can add up over time, especially if you have a dev and QA/staging environment you keep in sync. Unfortunately, you can only do this per language, so you still need to do one install per language, but every little bit helps.

For WSS Language Packs (example here is for the Spanish language pack):

Download the WSS Language Pack RTM and SP1 packages for the languages you are installing to C:/WSS_LPs/Spanish.
Extract the RTM package to a folder using the following command:

C:\WSS_LPs\Spanish>SharePointLanguagePack.exe /extract:C:\WSS_LPs\Spanish\
Extract the SP1 package to the UPDATES folder inside your language folder, using the following command:
C:\WSS_LPs\Spanish>wssv3lpsp1-kb936988-x86-fullfile-es-es.exe /extract:C:\WSS_LPs\Spanish\Updates
Install the language pack with SP1 by executing C:\WSS_LPs\Spanish\setup.exe

For MOSS Language Packs (example is for the Spanish language pack):

Download the MOSS Language Pack RTM and SP1 packages for the languages you are installing to C:\MOSS_LPs/Spanish.
Mount the ServerLanguagePack.img file using a virtual CD drive application
Copy all the contents from the mounted volume to C:\MOSS_LPs\Spanish\
Extract the SP1 package to the UPDATES folder inside of your language folder, using the following command:

C:\MOSSLanguagePacks\Spanish>officeserverlp2007sp1-kb936984-x64-fullfile-es-es.exe /extract:C:\MOSS_LPs\Spanish\Updates
Install the language pack with SP1 by executing C:\MOSS_LPs\Spanish\setup.exe

Latest WSS & MOSS Patches 02/2009

2009-03-10T17:00:00Z

The WSS and MOSS server packages for the February Cumulative Update have been released. These two packages are cumulative from SP1, so on new or existing farms you only need to install SP1 (use the pre-build the slipstreamed downloads (x86 & x64)) and these two server packages and you’ll be up to date.

961755 - Description of the Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 cumulative update package: February 24, 2009 (download here)

961756 - Description of the SharePoint Server 2007 cumulative update package (MOSS server-package): February 24, 2009 (download here)

If you have the x64 Microsoft iFilter package installed on your farm, you’ll also want to install an update for the Visio and PowerPoint iFilters, which will not be part of any WSS/MOSS packages. See Jamesbl’s blog post for more info on this issue.

Latest WSS and MOSS Patches

2008-12-17T18:06:00Z

Update, see the latest update on the February CU packages here.

Great news for WSS and MOSS patching! From this point forward each Cumulative Update will also consist of a package that contains the latest of every hotfix patch that we have shipped. What this means is that if you build a new MOSS server, you can apply the latest service pack (SP1), the latest WSS CU package and the latest MOSS CU package and be completely up-to-date.

A few key points on the structure of the new format:

· WSS continues to remain separate and is not included in the MOSS package.

· All of the latest Global and Local patches for WSS are in the WSS uber package.

· All of the latest Global and Local patches for MOSS (Excel Server, DLC, etc are part of MOSS), InfoPath Forms Server, Project Server are in the Office Server uber package.

· The list of what is in the package is an accumulation over time of what we have shipped since RTM.

· The package includes the Infrastructure Update, there is no reason to install it separately.

All you will need to install from this point forward is WSS SP1, MOSS SP1, WSS CU and MOSS CU.

960010 - Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 cumulative update package (WSS uber-package): December 16, 2008 (download here)

960011 - SharePoint Server 2007 cumulative update package (MOSS uber-package): December 16, 2008 (download here)

Lastest WSS and MOSS Patches - 10/2008

2008-11-03T23:11:00Z

Please refer to the newest updates, posted here:

http://blogs.msdn.com/josrod/archive/2008/12/17/latest-wss-and-moss-patches.aspx

UPDATED: 12/11/2008 - 957693 was relased with 957175 built in (they are identical patches [complicated stort as to why this had to be]), so if you have installed 957693, you don't need to install 957175. If you installed 957175, you won't need to install 957693, when you install the Oct CU updates on your farm. Again, they are identical patches, so you only need to install one of them. If you try to install both, you will get an error message when you try stating that "this update is already installed."

Microsoft has released the October cumulative update (CU) packages for WSS 2007 and MOSS 2007. The WSS CU has two packages and MOSS has five packages.

The information listed below assumes your farm has SP1 installed for both WSS and MOSS. If you are running a farm that is pre-SP1, you need to install WSS and MOSS SP1 prior to installing the updates below. If you are building a new farm using media with SP1 integrated, you have WSS and MOSS SP1 already, so you only need to install the updates below. Keep in mind, any updates that are labeld "Local" are language specific and may require you to install the same patch severals times, once for each language of MOSS you have installed. I have yet to figure out why the product group will sometimes release a single patch with all the languages included and sometimes the releaes a seperate patch for each lanaguage. I know most customers prefer a single patch, as it greatly reduce the number of patches you need to install, which is always a good thing.

WSS Packages

957691 WSS Global – Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 hotfix package (Sts.msp): October 28, 2008
956612 WSS Global (DST) – Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 that applies to daylight saving time (DST) changes

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server Packages

957693 MOSS Global – SharePoint Server 2007 hotfix package (Coreserver.msp): October 28, 2008 (Not necessary if patch #8 has already been installed)
958567 MOSS Local – SharePoint Server 2007 hotfix package (Coreservermui.msp): October 28, 2008
955586 MOSS Local (DLC) – SharePoint Server 2007 post-2007 Microsoft Office servers Service Pack 1 hotfix package (Dlcmui.msp): July 23, 2008
958569 MOSS Global (DLC) – SharePoint Server 2007 hotfix package (Dlc.msp): October 28, 2008
955937 MOSS Security – MS07-057: Security update for Excel Services in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007: October 14, 2008
957694 MOSS Forms Server (MOSS Enterprise SKU only) – Forms Server 2007 hotfix package (Ifswfe.msp): October 28, 2008
951597 MOSS Security - MS08-069: Security Update for 2007 Microsoft Office System Servers: November 11, 2008
957175 MOSS Security – MS08-077: Security Update for 2007 Microsoft Office System Servers: December 08, 2008 (Not necessary if patch #1 has already been installed)

I can’t stress enough the need to review the software update procedures. Checking and removing orphaned content is a vital prerequisite for update installation, orphaned content will cause some packages to fail. One additional orphan check that is not detachable by STSADM -o databaserepair, that I also highly recommend running, is outlined here.

Deploy software updates for Office SharePoint Server 2007

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc263467.aspx

Deploy software updates for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc288269.aspx

Lastest WSS and MOSS Patches - 9/2008

2008-09-16T23:13:00Z

For those of you that are building a new WSS and/or MOSS farm, I've assembled a list of the patches you will need to build a "lastest and greatest" farm. The list below is published for an RTM farm, but if you have a farm in production already, you only need to install the patches dated after your current patch level. For example, if you have the IU installed, you only need to install 957109 and 956057 for WSS and 955586, 956056 and 953397 for MOSS.

To hopefully clear up some confusion, for localized WSS and MOSS patches, you need to install a localized patch for every lanague you have installed. At a minimum, this is one patch, which is for the base lanaguge of MOSS you have installed. For example, if you have an English SKU of WSS and MOSS, you need to install the English WSS and MOSS localized patches. If you have a German SKU of MOSS installed, you need to install the German WSS and MOSS localized patches. You will also need to install a localization patch for each language pack you have installed. So if you have an English SKU of WSS and MOSS and have the German and Spanish language packs installed, you need to install a English, German and Spanish localization update.

Lastest bits required for WSS 2007

1. WSS SP1

2. WSS Localized – 957109 – August 26^th Package

3. WSS Global – 956057 – August 26^th Package

Lastest bits required for MOSS 2007 (in addition to the WSS bits above)

1. MOSS SP1

2. MOSS Global – 951297 – July 15^th Package (a.k.a. IU package)

3. MOSS Local (Document Life Cycle) – 955586 – July 23^rdPackage

4. MOSS Global – 956056 – August 26^th Package

5. MOSS Global – 953397 – MS08-043: August 12^th Package

I can’t stress enough the need to review the software update procedures. Checking and removing orphaned content is a vital prerequisite for update installation, orphaned content will cause some packages to fail. One additional orphan check that is not detachable by STSADM -o databaserepair , that I also highly recommend running, is outlined here.

Deploy software updates for Office SharePoint Server 2007

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc263467.aspx

Deploy software updates for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc288269.aspx

WSS and MOSS Infrastructure Updates Released

2008-07-16T01:13:00Z

Today we released some very important updates for WSS 3.0, SharePoint 2007, Project Server 2007, Search Server 2008 (Full and Express) and Project Professional 2007. This updates includes fixes for several areas of the product, including search, content deployment, performance and some core platform components. I’ve included the links to the WSS and MOSS updates below for your convenience. Because of the magnitude and amount of updates included in these package, I strongly encourage you to schedule these updates for deployment into your environments.

Search Enhancements

The Infrastructure Update for MOSS contains the new Enterprise Search features that were shipped in Search Server 2008 and Search Server 2008 Express that were are not already in SharePoint Server 2007; this includes Federated Search capability, a unified administration dashboard and several Search core platform performance updates. Additional information on the new search capabilities can be found here.

Content Deployment Enhancements

For the folks that are using Content Deployment, there are a number of additional fixes included in this update that are not in the Content Deployment ( 952704 & 952698) update released on May 20^th. Details on the additional content deployment fixes can be here.

MOSS 2007 Links

Description of the Microsoft Office Servers Infrastructure Update: July 15, 2008

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/951297

Issues that are fixed in Microsoft Office Servers by the Microsoft Office Servers Infrastructure Update

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/953750/

Installation Instructions

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc718729.aspx

Download Links:

(x86) http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=3811C371-0E83-47C8-976B-0B7F26A3B3C4

(x64) http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=6E4F31AB-AF25-47DF-9BF1-423E248FA6FC

Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Links

Description of the Infrastructure Update for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0: July 15, 2008

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/951695

Issues that are fixed in Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 by the Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Infrastructure Update

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/953749/

Installation Instructions

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc288269.aspx

Download Links:

(x86) http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=256CE3C3-6A42-4953-8E1B-E0BF27FD465B

(x64) http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=3A74E566-CB4A-4DB9-851C-E3FBBE5E6D6E

A SharePoint "Related" Patch

2008-07-02T20:26:00Z

There's an IIS 6.0 update that recently came out that should be applied to all WSS/MOSS servers, as it often falls victim. JB has more on his blog at: http://blogs.msdn.com/jb/archive/2008/02/28/so-your-iis-manager-comes-up-blank-too.aspx

You can get the details at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/946517

Windows SharePoint Services & Microsoft Office SharePoint Server hotfixes for March 27, 2008

2008-04-14T20:55:00Z

The latest post SP1 global WSS and MOSS patches are:

Description of the SharePoint Server 2007 hotfix package: March 27, 2008

http://support.microsoft.com/?id=950487

Description of the Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 hotfix package: March 27, 2008

http://support.microsoft.com/?id=950484

The lastest post SP1 localized WSS (no localized MOSS patches after SP1 yet) patch is:

Description of the Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 hotfix package: February 22, 2008

http://support.microsoft.com/?id=948957

You need all three of these patches installed to be running the most current WSS and MOSS updates.

Your build number will be 12.0.0.6308 after this installation.

Lastest SharePoint 2003 Post SP3 Updates Released

2008-03-18T01:52:00Z

Just in case anyone is looking, the WSS & SPS 2003 post SP3 rollup packages have been released. The links are below for quick reference.

Windows SharePoint Services 2003

Windows SharePoint Services SP3 Download Site

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=2BBFC89B-EB59-49FF-B58F-684693CB25A7&displaylang=en

Description of the Windows SharePoint Services 2.0 post-Service Pack 3 hotfix package: February 26, 2008

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/948919

SharePoint Portal Server 2003

SharePoint Portal Server 2003 SP3 Download Site

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=ab086d48-1148-48de-b4ec-a6298367e5f0&displaylang=en

Description of the SharePoint Portal Server 2003 post-Service Pack 3 hotfix package: February 26, 2008

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/941204

Description of the SharePoint Portal Server 2003 post-Service Pack 3 hotfix package: February 27, 2008

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/943167

Install Zune 2.3 on Server 2008 x64

2008-02-04T00:38:00Z

After a couple failed attempts and a bunch of swearing at the "The media for installation package couldn't be found. It might be incomplete or corrupt." error message, I ended up going through the required components, finding that "Windows Format SDK" requires Windows Media Player. After installing the Desktop feature in 2008, which incldues Windows Media player, the Zune install completed with no problems.

WSS 2003 Post SP3 Hotfix Package Released

2008-02-01T01:47:00Z

Details are in KB941412, but it's got a couple notable updates, one specifically for a New Zealand DST change. You'll have to contact MS to get the download or use our new hotfix request system linked in the KB.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/941412