SharePoint Support - Microsoft Fargo

Closing Up Shop..

paulthur — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 23:44:38 GMT

..and moving to the new SharePoint Support blog, spblog. Thank you for taking the time to view this blog, and looking forward to posting on the new blog along with support engineers from around the world!

Important Information Regarding Service Pack 2 for Office Servers

paulthur — Fri, 22 May 2009 16:31:13 GMT

We take product quality seriously and make every effort to avoid and resolve issues that adversely impact our customers. Unfortunately, we have recently discovered a bug with Service Pack 2 (SP2) that affects all customers that have deployed it for SharePoint Server 2007.

During the installation of SP2, a product expiration date is improperly activated. This means SharePoint will expire as though it was a trial installation 180 days after SP2 is deployed. The activation of the expiration date will not affect the normal function of SharePoint up until the expiration date passes. Furthermore, product expiration 180 days after SP2 installation will not affect customer’s data, configuration or application code but will render SharePoint inaccessible for end-users.

We are working to release a hotfix to automatically fix this issue. A manual work-around is currently available and involves customers re-entering their Product ID number (PID) on the Convert License Type page in Central Administration. For more information and detailed steps please read this KB article. (The KB link is not currently active, it will be available within the next 48hrs)

We want to assure our customers that this issue does not impact data integrity or their SharePoint deployment in any other way.

For your convenience, below are some answers to questions that you may have and we will update this blog post with a link to the hotfix as soon as it’s available.

We apologize for any inconvenience this issue may cause you.

Jeff Teper
Corporate Vice President
SharePoint.

Q&A

Which products are affected by this?
Applying Service Pack 2 to any of the following products will result in this issue: Office SharePoint Server 2007, Project Server 2007, Form Server 2007, Search Server 2008 and Search Server 2008 Express.

Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 is not affected by this issue.

What can I do to fix it?
To work around this issue customers will need to re-enter their Product ID numbers (PID) on the Convert License Type page in Central Administration. Please see this KB article for detailed steps. (The KB link is not currently active, it will be available within the next 48hrs)

Customers can also wait for the hotfix (available for free from http://support.microsoft.com) to resolve this issue.

Product ID numbers (PIDs) can be retrieved by logging into the Volume Licensing Service Center.

Note: For Search Server 2008 Express the only way to resolve this issue is to apply the hotfix.

What is Microsoft doing to fix it?
Microsoft is working on a hotfix and public update for the product. We will update this blog post with details and a link to the hotfix as soon as it is available.

Do I need to update all of the servers in my farm?
No. The Product ID number only needs to be entered once.

What if I haven’t installed SP2 yet but want to? What should I do?
You can continue to plan for and install Service Pack 2 for SharePoint Server 2007 with the additional step of re-entering your Product ID number after the installation is complete by following the instructions in this KB article. (The KB link is not currently active, it will be available within the next 48hrs)

Does this issue impact anything else?
The issue only activates the product expiration date. The activation of the expiration date does not affect the normal function of SharePoint up until the expiration date passes, at which point SharePoint will be inaccessible for end-users. This issue does not affect customer’s data, configuration or application code.

I can’t find/don’t know my original PID, where can I find it?
Product ID numbers (PIDs) can be retrieved by logging into the Volume Licensing Service Center.

Troubleshooting Content Deployment

paulthur — Fri, 15 May 2009 22:39:48 GMT

A newly published series of articles has been published to TechNet providing guidance on troubleshooting our old friend, Content Deployment. The series is divided up into the following sections:

· Determine sites and subsites

· Plan content deployment

· Administer content deployment

· Configure content deployment settings

· Administer content deployment paths and jobs

· Create a new content deployment job

There is also a new topic section, Troubleshoot content deployment, which covers common errors and problems. Hopefully this information will make your next content deployment attempt go much smoother!

SharePoint Server 2010 Preliminary System Requirements

paulthur — Thu, 14 May 2009 21:08:51 GMT

A very nice guideline for, again, preliminary requirements for 2010 was put out by Richard Riley from the SharePoint Technical Product Management team. There are some very big changes in store for the next release, the biggest being no more 32 bit. The other big one to note is that Server 2003 will not be supported at all.

As usual, some of these specs may change, but this should give you a good baseline to start planning:

SharePoint Server 2010 will be 64-bit only.
SharePoint Server 2010 will require 64-bit Windows Server 2008 or 64-bit Windows Server 2008 R2.
SharePoint Server 2010 will require 64-bit SQL Server 2008 or 64-bit SQL Server 2005.

In addition to the requirements listed above we also wanted to share with you some preliminary detail about SharePoint Server 2010 browser compatibility.

To ensure the best possible experience across multiple browsers we’re focusing our SharePoint 2010 engineering efforts on targeting standards based browsers (XHTML 1.0 compliant) including Internet Explorer 7, Internet Explorer 8 and Firefox 3.x. running on Windows Operating Systems. In addition we’re planning on an increased level of compatibility with Firefox 3.x and Safari 3.x on non-Windows Operating Systems. Due to this focus Internet Explorer 6 will not be a supported browser for SharePoint Server 2010.

So, what can you do today to get into the best shape for SharePoint Server 2010?

Start by ensuring new hardware is 64-bit. Deploying 64-bit is our current best practice recommendation for SharePoint 2007.
Deploy Service Pack 2 and take a good look at the SharePoint 2010 Upgrade Checker that’s shipped as part of the update. The Upgrade Checker will scan your SharePoint Server 2007 deployment for many issues that could affect a future upgrade to SharePoint 2010.
Get to know Windows Server 2008 with SharePoint 2007, this post is a great starting point.
Consider your desktop browser strategy if you have large population of Internet Explorer 6 users.
Continue to follow the Best Practices guidance for SharePoint Server 2007.
Keep an eye on this blog for updates and more details in the coming months.

Below are a few common Q&A’s (which we’ll add to as required)

Q: What about Internet Explorer 6 and SharePoint 2010 publishing sites?
A: The Web Content Management features built into SharePoint 2010 will provide a deep level of control over the markup and styling of the reader experience. These features will enable customers to design pages that are compatible with additional browsers for viewing content, including Internet Explorer 6. A standards based browser such as Internet Explorer 7, Internet Explorer 8 or Firefox 3.x will be required to author content.

Q: Is Internet Explorer 6 officially supported by Microsoft?
A: Official Microsoft Product Support for Internet Explorer 6 will expire in July 2010. You can find additional information on Microsoft’s Support Lifecycle Policy including specific dates, product information and support offerings here: http://support.microsoft.com/gp/lifepolicy.

Q: Why are you only supporting the 64-bit versions of SQL Server 2005 or 2008 for SharePoint Server 2010?
A: This decision was based on our current test data for SharePoint Server 2010 and real world experience from customers running SharePoint Server 2007 with 32-bit SQL Server. SharePoint performance and scalability can benefit significantly from 64-bit SQL Server and the throughput increases are significant enough for us to make the difficult decision to only support SharePoint Server 2010 on 64-bit SQL Server 2005 or 2008. It has been our strong recommendation for some time that SharePoint Server 2007 customers take advantage of 64-bit SQL Server due to the inherent performance and scale benefits it can provide.

April Cumulative Update Now Available

paulthur — Mon, 11 May 2009 19:39:06 GMT

Update: The uber packages are now available as well:

Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 April cumulative update package
http://support.microsoft.com/hotfix/KBHotfix.aspx?kbnum=968850

Office SharePoint Server 2007 April cumulative update package
http://support.microsoft.com/hotfix/KBHotfix.aspx?kbnum=968851

The latest round of CUs is now out. The April CU can be applied after you install the recently released Service Pack 2, as this does not contain this particular CU. The April CU can be considered a Service Pack roll-up, so to keep yourself fully up to date, install Service Pack 2, then the April CU.

More information below:

968857 Description of the Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 hotfix package (Sts.msp): April 28, 2009
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;968857

968859 Description of the Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 hotfix package (Coreserver.msp): April 28, 2009
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;968859

A very good tip from the Product Team blog. If you want to be fully up to date when deploying a new WSS/MOSS farm, updates should be deployed as such:

1. Service Pack 2 for WSS 3.0
2. Service Pack 2 for MOSS 2007
3. April CU for WSS 3.0
4. April CU for MOSS 2007

WSS and MOSS SP2 KB Articles

paulthur — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 19:04:15 GMT

Here is a list of KB articles that may be of importance, both pre-deployment and post deployment of Service Pack 2. This list will be updated as new KB articles come on-line.

General:

List of all 2007 Office system Service Pack 2 and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Service Pack 2 packages
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/968170/

Description of Office SharePoint Designer 2007 Service Pack 2 (SP2) and of Office SharePoint Designer Language Pack 2007 Service Pack 2 (SP2)
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;953292

List of all Windows SharePoint Services and SharePoint Server Pre-Upgrade Checker knowledge base articles
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/960577/

Known issues that you may experience when you install the 2007 Microsoft Office suite Service Pack 2 and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Service Pack 2
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/968173/

WSS:

Technical details about the Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Service Pack 2 (SP2) releases
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;970359

Description of Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 SP2 and of Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Language Pack SP2
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;953338

Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Service Pack 2 provides a change in the way that a Windows SharePoint Services site that is in forms-based authentication mode responds to an anonymous access request from SharePoint Designer 2007
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/968788/

You may be unable to delete certain site collections in Windows SharePoint Services 3.0
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/968787/

After you install Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Service Pack 2, the Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 database can be auto-defragmented
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/968785/

Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Service Pack 2 provides support for host header-based site collection crawls
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/968786/

Groove, Groove Server, InfoPath, InfoPAth Server, Outlook, and WSS all block new files with the installation of SP2
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/968768/

Error message when you try to install an update for 2007 Office programs or Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 if the Windows system drive has insufficient free disk space: "The installation of this package failed"
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;943589

MOSS:

Technical details about the 2007 Microsoft Office Servers Service Pack 2 (SP2) releases
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;970358

Description of 2007 Microsoft Office servers Service Pack 2 (SP2) and of 2007 Microsoft Office servers Language Pack Service Pack 2 (SP2)
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;953334

You are prompted unexpectedly to restart the computer after you install a 2007 Office service pack or a 2007 Office update
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;942995

No SharePoint Server 2007 Service Pack 2 .msp files are installed if you have the Stswwsp1.msp file in the Updates folder
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;968283

The Area Service Web service is removed from SharePoint Server 2007 after you install the 2007 Microsoft Office servers Service Pack 2
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;968998

When you query a new user property in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, nothing is returned
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;968778

WSS 3.0 Service Pack 2 is now available!

paulthur — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 16:25:21 GMT

953338 Description of Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 SP2 and of Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Language Pack SP2

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;953338

Download links:

Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Service Pack 2 (x86)

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=79BADA82-C13F-44C1-BDC1-D0447337051B

Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Service Pack 2 (x64)

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=20A100C0-BD58-40CD-A5D9-36C1986FBED9

Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Language Pack Service Pack 2 (x86)

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=085E5AC8-58F6-4CF9-8012-33B95EE36C0F

Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Language Pack Service Pack 2 (x64)

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=2C2B6CAF-B46D-45EB-AC4D-DEAAA48C3A2C

Downloadable list of issues that are fixed:

http://download.microsoft.com/download/C/2/C/C2C36159-600C-4EEA-B80A-F988EE7A418F/2007%20Office%20Service%20Pack%202%20Changes.xlsx

Service Pack 2 includes all public updates, security updates, cumulative updates, and hotfixes that were released through February 2009. It is recommended that you have 5x to 6x the size of the package free to have a successful deployment; this has increased from the requirements needed for SP1.

Service Pack 2 has some areas of improvement. These include:

Faster more reliable content migration and data backup/restore

Reduced memory consumption

Smoother upgrade experience

Significant database performance adjustments

Updated integration for forms authentication

Advanced permissions management

Helpful administrative tools, which I will cover in a separate post

Expanded browser compatibility

One tool administrators should take note of is the Pre-Upgrade Checker, which ships in the service pack. This can be used to assess the server for potential upgrade issues you may run into when you are planning for the next version of WSS.

Service Pack 2 also adds host header-based site collection crawling for WSS, which was lacking in the product previously.

Service Pack 2 adds stsadm commands to help you list and delete site collections in your farm. Please review the following KB article for more information:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;968787

Please take note of the following KB article:

Known issues that you may experience when you install the 2007 Microsoft Office suite Service Pack 2 and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Service Pack 2

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;968173

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server Service Pack 2 is now available!

paulthur — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 16:24:18 GMT

Description of 2007 Microsoft Office servers Service Pack 2 (SP2) and of 2007 Microsoft Office servers Language Pack Service Pack 2 (SP2)

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;953334

Download links:

2007 Microsoft Office servers Service Pack 2 (x86)

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=B7816D90-5FC6-4347-89B0-A80DEB27A082

2007 Microsoft Office servers Service Pack 2 (x64)

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=B7816D90-5FC6-4347-89B0-A80DEB27A082

2007 Microsoft Office servers Language Pack Service Pack 2 (x86)

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=01C6A3E8-E110-4956-903A-AD16284BF223

2007 Microsoft Office servers Language Pack Service Pack 2 (x64)

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=66C5026F-9F47-4642-8378-2526918009FA

Downloadable list of issues that are fixed:

http://download.microsoft.com/download/C/2/C/C2C36159-600C-4EEA-B80A-F988EE7A418F/2007%20Office%20Service%20Pack%202%20Changes.xlsx

Service Pack 2 has some areas of improvement. These include:

IE 8 is now a Level 1 supported browser

Mozilla Firefox V2 and V3 have been added to the Level 2 supported browser list

SSP databases are no longer deleted when running the following command:

Stsadm –o deletessp –title <SSPTitle> -force

Stsad, -o migrateuser is improved when migrating from one user to another user who has been deleted from the SharePoint site

Improved error messages and permissions handling in the Business Data Catalog

The Profile Change Cleanup job should no longer cause the transaction logs to grow to a large size

Long URLs are now logged correctly by Usage Analysis

A sub-site owner who has no permissions to the top level Team Site is able to make sub-sites under his own site

Search stability and speed is improved

Forms-Based Authentication search is now supported by search.asmx

You can reinitialize a query server for only 1 SSP so that you have zero search downtime:

Stsadm –o osearch –reprovisionindex –ssp <sspname>

Backup and restore of search has improved

If a crawl is stopped, the next crawl will be forced to do a full crawl even if an incremental crawl is set

Please take note of the following KB article:

Known issues that you may experience when you install the 2007 Microsoft Office suite Service Pack 2 and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Service Pack 2

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;968173

Service Pack 2 for the 2007 Microsoft Office System - April 28th is the day!

paulthur — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 17:42:56 GMT

You can stop holding your breath, as the release date for Service Pack 2 for Office 2007 was announced: April 28th is the big day! Mark that day down in your calendars and get those browsers warmed up.

There are, of course, numerous fixes, enhancements, etc for all the products, but since this blog covers SharePoint, I wanted to point out just a small part of what's coming up:

Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 SP2 and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server SP2:

An STSADM command line that scans your server farm to establish whether it is ready for upgrade to the next version of SharePoint and provides feedback and best practice recommendations on your current environment.
SP2 offers support for a broader range of Web browsers.
Substantial improvements to Forms-based authentication.

Windows Server 2008 SP2 and Windows Server R2 will be supported on their release.

Enterprise Content Management (ECM):

The performance and stability of content deployment and variations feature has been improved.
A new tool has been added to the STSADM command-line utility that enables a SharePoint administrator to scan sites that use the variations feature for errors.

Excel Services:

SP2 makes it easier to configure Excel Web Access Web Parts on new sites.
Several rendering, calculation, and security issues have been resolved.
Some display issues have been addressed.
Improved compatibility with Mozilla Firefox browsers.

Forms Server:

Memory requirements and the page load times for large browser-rendered forms have been reduced.
Browser rendering of various controls, such as the 'cannot be blank' asterisk and the rich text field has been improved.

Project Server:

Better memory management in the queue service.
Performance to certain database table indexes is improved.
Resource plans, build team, cost resources, and the server scheduling engine have improved.

Search Server:

Improvements to the reliability and stability of very large corpus crawls.
Backup-restore has been improved.
A new command has been introduced to the stsadm.exe tool that lets a SharePoint Administrator to tune the Query processor multiplier parameter.
Improved accuracy in searches involving numbers.

A few more tidbits about what’s coming down the pipeline for the client side can be found on the Office Sustained Engineering blog. Of course, I am working with a beta engineer to get a few sneak peeks at new features, and will be posting a lot about that in the near future.

SharePoint 14 is now Microsoft SharePoint 2010

paulthur — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 23:51:45 GMT

Over on the SharePoint product group blog, they’ve announced that, along with the name change to Exchange Server 2010, the next version of MOSS will be called Microsoft SharePoint 2010. Check out the full details on the PG blog!

New SharePoint Themes Available

paulthur — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 16:41:03 GMT

A new set of ten themes are available for use with Visual Studio 2008 extensions for SharePoint projects.

System Requirements

Supported Operating Systems:

Windows Server 2003 or Windows Server 2008

Windows SharePoint Service 3.0 or Office SharePoint Server 2007
Visual Studio 2008
Visual Studio 2008 extensions for SharePoint

You can download the themes from the Microsoft Download Site.

Guidance: Crawling a site with a host header

paulthur — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 17:56:03 GMT

When crawling content in a site collection that uses a host header, it will fail with the following error in your crawl logs:

“Access is denied. Check that the Default Content Access Account has access to this
content, or add a crawl rule to crawl this content.
(The item was deleted because it was either not found or the crawler was denied
access to it.)”

This is because Windows Server 2003 SP1 includes a loopback check security feature that is designed to help prevent reflection attacks on your computer. Therefore, authentication
fails if the FQDN or the custom host header that you use does not match the local
computer name.

As well, the installation of the following patches on a Windows 2003 Service Pack 1 machine will trigger the Access Denied

1. KB957097 http://support.microsoft.com/kb/957097/

2. .Net 3.5 SP1 http://support.microsoft.com/kb/959209

On all Web Front Ends that are crawled:

1. Click Start, click Run, type regedit, and then click OK
2. In Registry Editor, locate and then click the following registry key:
3. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Lsa
Right-click Lsa, point to New, and then click DWORD Value.
4. Type DisableLoopbackCheck, and then press ENTER.
5. Right-click DisableLoopbackCheck, and then click Modify.
6. In the Value data box, type 1, and then click OK
7. Quit Registry Editor, and then restart your computer.

Resolution steps are from:

896861 You receive error 401.1 when you browse a Web site that uses Integrated
Authentication and is hosted on IIS 5.1 or IIS 6
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;896861

You can run System.Net tracing (See KB947285) and in the trace you will find that
you are getting 401.1 Invalid Credentials for the web services
../_vti_bin/sitedata.asmx
947285 How to use System.NET tracing to troubleshoot content deployment issues and
search issues in Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 and in SharePoint Server 2007
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;947285

February Cumulative Update Packages

paulthur — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 18:53:59 GMT

Late update:

The “uber” packages are now out. Sorry for the late update, I was out sick all last week.

Description of the Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 cumulative update package: February 24, 2009
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/961755

Description of the SharePoint Server 2007 cumulative update package (MOSS server-package): February 24, 2009
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/961756/

Knowledge base articles:

WSS
961750 Global
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/961750

967703 Language specific
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/967703

MOSS
961749 Global
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/961749

961754 Language specific
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/961754

Download locations:

WSS
961750 Global
http://support.microsoft.com/hotfix/KBHotfix.aspx?kbnum=961750&kbln=en-us

967703 Language specific
http://support.microsoft.com/hotfix/KBHotfix.aspx?kbnum=967703&kbln=en-us

MOSS
961749 Global
http://support.microsoft.com/hotfix/KBHotfix.aspx?kbnum=961749&kbln=en-us

961754 Language specific
http://support.microsoft.com/hotfix/KBHotfix.aspx?kbnum=961754&kbln=en-us

Guidance: User info synch in MOSS 2007

paulthur — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 23:49:17 GMT

Recently we have seen more cases were customers are having problems with the synchronization of User info between the SSP and the content databases failing to sync properly; see below for an example of the information I am talking about.

Username Tag that can be found in Lists, Document Libraries, etc:

User display page that you can see from People and Groups:

In MOSS the SSP database is synchronized with Active Directory so we have a copy of Active Directory Objects in SQL. This is then synchronized with user tags and User display page for all active users within your Site Collections using 2 Timer Jobs:

Profile Synchronization - This job runs once every Hour and there is one per Web Application

Quick Profile Synchronization - This job runs once every minute as performance permits and there is one per Web Application

More guidance is available from MSDN.

How it get's broken, how we fix it, and how you can avoid it

Move content database improperly!

Why does this break the sync? We store the ID for the content database in the Config database. By not moving the content database properly we don't prepare the SSP for a new GUID, and the Timer Jobs will continue to try to sync with the old GUID not allowing us to sync with the new one.

How do you fix it? By following these steps

a. Run the command stsadm -o sync -listolddatabases 1 You should then get a list of database GUID.

b. Run the command stsadm -o sync -deleteolddatabases 1 This will remove the record from the SSP database but will not touch the actual Content Database.

c. Then wait for the next sync and you should see tags getting updated.

How do I avoid this? Follow these steps before moving Content Databases between Web Applications:

a. Run the command stsadm -o preparetomove -contentdb <Name of DB> -url http://UrlofWebApplication

b. Then disconnect the database and move it to another Web Application in the same Farm.

NOTE: If you have installed the Infrastructure update you do not have to run this command to move a Database, due to issues with Indexing they changed the way they handle the Database ID when dropping and adding it from the Web Application. See the blog for Todd Carter to get more info.

2. Databases are set to offline in Central Administration -> Application Management -> Content Databases

Why does this brake the sync? The timer Jobs that perform the sync will check first to see if the Database is offline, if it is then the job will end without making any changes

How do you fix it? By following these steps

a. Select the database so that you can edit the properties

b. Change Database Status to Ready

How do I avoid this?

If you would like to stop people from adding Site Collections to the Database then set the property "Maximum number of sites that can be created in this database”.

3. Problem with Timer Jobs

Why does this break the sync? There are 2 Timer Jobs that perform the sync "Profile Synchronization" and "Quick Profile Synchronization". There should be 1 per Web Application and they need to be enabled.

How do you fix it?

Depends really on what the issue is but I have provided several articles and blogs to help you troubleshoot your Timer Jobs/Timer Service. Remember it needs to be there and enabled.

How do I avoid this?

Insure you maintain the general health of your farm; install updates as permitted, stay within capacity planning, monitor your ULS logs and event logs.

4. User is not active on the site

Why does this break the sync? When the timer jobs run they will check in the Userinfo table and look to see if tp_IsActive = True or False. And will only update the user tag if it's set to True.

How do you fix it?

Have the user log onto the Site and make a change either upload a document or edit a link; this will toggle it from False to True. Then wait for the Timer jobs to run.

References:

Sync: Stsadm operation (Office SharePoint Server)

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc263196.aspx

Database: Stsadm operations (Office SharePoint Server)

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc262486.aspx

Manage SharePoint timer jobs (Office SharePoint Server)

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc263433.aspx

Joe Rodgers - Blog

http://blogs.msdn.com/josrod/archive/2007/12/12/clear-the-sharepoint-configuration-cache-for-timer-job-and-psconfig-errors.aspx

Guidance: Troubleshooting Search Propagation

paulthur — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 23:42:11 GMT

A common issues administrators run into is broken propagation. For a variety of reasons, propagation failures on one or more servers are very difficult to troubleshoot. However, following the process below has been very successful at resolving many of these issues by allowing the query search service to start out fresh and re-provisioning the service.

NOTE: The following steps will require your search service to be offline for a period of time, the length of which determined by the number of servers, index size etc. It will also require you to delete the index files off of your query servers, but does not require you to completely re-index your content. After the service has been online for a short time, the index will be re-propagated to the query servers. If there are any questions on this, please contact Microsoft Support before proceeding.

1) Using Central Administration, stop the Office SharePoint Server Search service on all servers. Choose the server name from the dropdown to toggle between them until the service is “Stopped” for all servers.

1) Once they are all stopped, delete the index on the query servers. This is the GUID folder located by default at C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office Servers\12.0\Data\Office Server\Applications. However, to find this location on your individual machine, navigate to Central Admin-> Operations-> Services on Server. From the dropdown, choose the name of your query server and then click on “Office SharePoint Server Search”. Look under default index file location- that’s where you need to go to delete the index on that query server.

NOTE: If you find several GUID folders, as in the example below, you will need to determine exactly which one it is that is tied to your SSP. You can find this by checking the registry hive HLKM\Software\Microsoft\Office Server\12.0\Search\Applications. Here, you will find a listing of all your GUIDs. Clicking on the GUID reveals a key for that GUID named “Display Name”, which will match the name in Central Admin.

1) Use the Central Administration to start the Office SharePoint Server Search service on the index server only.

2) Once started, use the following STSADM commands on all of the Query servers to start the service and configure the propagation share. STSADM is located in the C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\12\bin directory. NOTE: DRIVE:\PathToIndex in the below commands is the local path (not the share) to the location to store the index on the query servers.

o Run this command to start the service:

stsadm -o osearch -action start -role Query -defaultindexlocation DRIVE:\PathToIndex

o Run this command to configure the share:

stsadm -o osearch -propagationlocation DRIVE:\PathToIndex

o Run this command to ensure that the share is properly configured:

stsadm -o provisionservice -action start -servicetype "Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.Administration.SearchService, Microsoft.Office.Server.Search, Version=12.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c" -servicename osearch

3) Assign the SSP to the indexer. This is done by clicking the drop down tied to the SSP name (in your Shared Services Administration page) and choosing ‘Edit Properties’ (Picture below). This will open the “Edit Shared Services Provider” page. Underneath the ‘Index Server’ setting, choose the name of your index server.

1) Start a full crawl on your content sources. After running for a bit, test to ensure that search results are returned successfully.