Archive for March 2008

 
 

Executables in the 12 Hive

When I run a search on *.exe in the 12 folder, I get:

  1. HCINSTAL.exe – This appears to be the executable that will install the Help Collection.  It is sometimes an issue when language packs are installed as noted here.

  2. MSSDMN.exe – This is a process related to populating full text indexes as noted here.

  3. MSSEARCH.exe – Also related to indexing on SQL Server but can also be used for Exchange.

  4. OWSTIMER.exe – This is the program that tracks SharePoint's "to do" list.  It is critical for alerts and use logs.  There's a pretty good description here.

  5. PRESCAN.exe – This is a program that analyzes your site to identify issues before you upgrade a site.  Technet has a good description here.

  6. PSCONFIGUI.exe – The only references to this executable I found are in hotfix description on Microsoft.com.  I think it's the configuration wizard.

  7. SPWRITER.exe – This is the volume shadow copy service (VSS) reference writer and most of the references we find are discussion about hotfixes from Microsoft.

  8. STSADM.exe – This is the admin command line console.

  9. WSSADMIN.exe – This is the service that runs the various administrative functions.

  10. WSSTRACING.exe – Not sure what this one does.  Jose says it logs records out to the diagnostic log file.

Jose's post is actually a very good description of baseline MOSS performance indicators.  If you've got better links or explanations, I'd love for you to share them.

-robot

Error on User Profiles and Properties Page and Event ID: 7888

In a brand new three server farm, I'm opening up the User Profiles and Properties page from the SSP Admin site.

I get the red "X" with this error:

An error has occurred while accessing the SQL Server database or the Office SharePoint Server Search service. If this is the first time you have seen this message, try again later. If this problem persists, contact your administrator.

The only log entry I can attribute to this action is in the WFE's Application log and I've copied the error below.

Source: Office SharePoint Server
Category: Office Server General
Event ID: 7888
Description:
A runtime exception was detected. Details follow.
Message: The request failed with HTTP status 503: Service Unavailable.

Techinal Details:
System.Net.WebException: The request failed with HTTP status 503: Service Unavailable.
   at Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.Administration.SearchApi.RunOnServer[T](CodeToRun`1 remoteCode, CodeToRun`1 localCode, Boolean useCurrentSecurityContext, Int32 versionIn)
   at Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.Administration.SearchApi..ctor(WellKnownSearchCatalogs catalog, SearchSharedApplication application)
   at Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.Administration.SearchSharedApplication.get_SearchApi()
   at Microsoft.Office.Server.UserProfiles.UserProfileConfigManager.<>c__DisplayClass3.<GetImportStatus>b__0()
   at Microsoft.Office.Server.Diagnostics.FirstChanceHandler.ExceptionFilter(Boolean fRethrowException, TryBlock tryBlock, FilterBlock filter, CatchBlock catchBlock, FinallyBlock finallyBlock)

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

So, in digging around, I got this one hint from an acquaintance at MindSharp.com:

IIRC, this is a permissions error in that the particular SharePoint Server 2007 service cannot access the SQL database.

Which leads me to the following questions:

  1. What's IIRC
  2. Which MOSS 2007 service would we be talking about, the SSP Admin service?
  3. Which SQL Database?

So to work past all of these questions, I added every service account to a group on the SQL Server and then created a SQL Server Login for that group with the sysadmin server role and made it dbowner of every database.

Alas, to no avail.  Apparently, there's something between the server that's running the SSP Admin service and the SQL Server that acting gnarly.

I'll fix it.  It'll rue the day…

JK

More 10016 Errors

So the system log fills up whenever I try to look at the user user profiles.  The system log error is this:

The application-specific permission settings do not grant Local Activation permission for the COM Server application with CLSID

{3D42CCB1-4665-4620-92A3-478F47389230}

to the user MyDomainmosssspsvc SID (S-1-5-21-1875211509-1510927935-777304043-47821). This security permission can be modified using the Component Services administrative tool.

The User Profile page says this:

An error has occurred while accessing the SQL Server database or the Office SharePoint Server Search service. If this is the first time you have seen this message, try again later. If this problem persists, contact your administrator.

I found a couple of reports like this one that say to search for the CLSID in the registry and then get the associated App ID and look for the App ID in Component Services under the DOM Config heading where you have to convert the view to a list view to see the App IDs.

When I do that, I get the OSearch Application and I set the Local Activiation permissions so allow Local Activate for my MossSSPSvc user but the errors wouldn't quit untill I rebooted the machine.  Apparently, something in that process got everything reset except the User Profiles and Properties page issues.

I'll ge to it next.

-robot

MOSS, Kerberos and the Security Log

You may recall we discussed Kerberos authentication here.

And we linkd to two great posts, one, here, from Martin.

And as we worked through the process, it started to make some sense.  We quit when we got to configuring component services, I guess out of sheer laziness.

Well, now, I'm digging through the Windows Security log and I'm seeing these 10016 errors that say:

The application-specific permission settings do not grant Local Activation permission for the COM Server application with CLSID

{61738644-F196-11D0-9953-12345ABCDEC1}

to the user MyDomainmossapppool_01 SID (S-1-5-21-1234567899-1510927935-777304043-47828). This security permission can be modified using the Component Services administrative tool.

To me, this is obviously a "two-hop" issue.  So I go back and look at the component issues from Martin's post.

Now, this is the first time I've ventured into Component Services which is a Server 2003 Administrative Tool mmc.  Martin says to drill into the properties of My Computer and change the Default Impersonation Level on the Default Properties tab to Impersonate.  This makes sense if I'm telling My Computer to assume that it's impersonating someone else when it runs a component that needs to "Hop" to connect to another computer.

The the only other issue is in the DCOM Config folder under My Computer where we have to look at the IIS WAMREG admin Service.  Here we select the Security tab and edit the Launch and Activation Permissions adding our app pool identities and giving them Local Activation permissions.  Then, I presume I'll need to do the same to my SSP server that's also a WFE server.

And the hope is that this will eliminate the 10016 Errors from the security log.  We'll see.

-robot

 

MOSS 2007 SP1 Install

So, now that I have the farm operational, they want SP1 installed.

The first thing I found was this:

Planning and Deploying Service Pack 1 for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 in a Multi-server Environment

And then, I downloaded the WSS SP1 language pack install instead of the WSS SP1 install so be sure the WSS file you're using is:

wssv3sp1-kb936988-x64-fullfile-en-us.exe

I guess you might have the x86 version or non-us-english versions as well but, the important point would be that is does not have an "lp" in the name.

Then, our new friend, Shane, covers it pretty good here.

I can add that, on the multi-farm install, I had trouble when I tried to run the Configuration Wizard on both WFE servers at once.  It seemed to like running one and then the other better.

-robot