Mar 5
2010

Hi friends. I have been playing around for some time now. We have a funny client and that has kept me out for months. Well, as you would expect, I encountered a lot of issues and this is just one of this list of them.

Even though the MOSS 2010 has a lot more better and enhanced search capability, yet, so many of us are still administering 2007 version of the product.

However, you come in one morning and find out the People Search in your MOSS 2007 server farm is down. Now, so many of us will just have to jump in to doing several thing….from gooling to creating new SSPs(I hate this…….it makes the page so untidy) and so on but before any of these, consider and review the following first:

  • Has there been any change of any of the SharePoint server’s DNS records lately – check the DNS HOST A entry for MySite
  • Is the active indexer server running
  • Are the people’s profile imported to the SSP
  • You check the People Search Scope in the Central Admin  and you have zero items in scope (you find this on the following navigation breadcrumb: Shared Services Administration: SharedServices1> Search Administration > Scopes)
  • You verify that you have the sps3://mysite entry on the Local SharePoint Server Content source.

All these and other more are to be considered if you are not able to search for People. You may however note that if you are not able to search for information and not just people…then, something must be wrong….and this post may not address this.

So going back to the checklist I have above, the issue I faced with this client of mine was that in three different cases, we were not able to do people search and I noticed it all stopped when we had cause to change the DNS serverHOST A entries for both Mysite and the SharePoint site. When you do a search, something pops up like this:

 

This may actually deceive you if you are not very careful. You may assume that you do not have any name like the one you are searching for. It is always adviceable to search for items that are very familiar…..if you are a user on the portal, you may have to try your name.

Now, if you have confirmed that the search is not working and you eventually find out that the Central Admin Scope for people search is showing zero items and perhaps, User Profiles are imported and the Shared Service Provider is running fine. You may now have to follow these steps to get things to work in your farm again.

  • You will have to re import the User’s Profile from the Directory Service: You will have to navigate to the following on your Shared Service Provider Settings: Shared Services Administration: SharedServices1 > User Profile and Properties > Start Full Import.
  • After the import, you will navigate to the server running the Active Indexing Service (MOSS 2007 allows one Index server and Index location to be used in a particular time ) Select the server from  the services on server then  stop the Service. The stop this service by stopping the following service on the server: Office SharePoint Server Search.
  • Navigate to the Shared Service Provider Page (Not the SSP Created), select the default/active SSP (you created) and click on Edit Properties.
  • Verify that the Indexer selected there is the same indexer where the Office SharePoint Server Search was started, if not select the correct one.
  • You will now have to re-crawl the SharePoint  Local Site Source: Shared Services Administration: SharedServices 1> Search Administration > Content sources > Edit Content Source.
  • Once thisre-crawl runs successfully, you can now search and find you people without problem.

So, with this few steps, I hope that you will be able to fix you People and Staff search. It is always easier to tackle in a single server environment but it sometimes, may be troublesome in  some type of complex farm deployment.

Have a nice day!

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Trackback  •  Posted in Technology  


Jan 18
2010

A happy new year my friends. It is glad to be free after quite a long time. For a while, I have been quite busy with a client here in Lagos Nigeria. We have been working around a project here that has a lot to do with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server deployment and I think that I have lots of stories to tell and a handful of experiences to share.
Some of the things we worked on include:
• Clustering of SQL Databases for MOSS 2007.
• Network Load Balancing of MOSS 2007 Web Front End Servers.
• Deployment of SharePoint Language Packs.
• Branding and Master page customisation.
• SLK Deployment.
• Advanced Search Customisation – PDF indexing.
In fact, there were lots of issues and challenges around all these and I hope to share all these with all of you. However, the basic ones are these:
• Learn to admit your incapability. If you don’t you die with them.
• There is power in community. Always find a way to share your problems.
• Always learn to work in teams. We win when we work together.
• Also, never look down on anyone. Solutions may come from a source we least expect.
• God is ever willing to help you. Why not call him.
As I said, I had always known all these but from time to time on the site of this client, I had course to relearn all of these from the scratch.
TechNet is one powerful forum I will recommend for anyone who is ready to develop and work on Microsoft products.
I will still find out time to write extensively on the details of all the different things we did above and more importantly, the issues we faced and how we eventually surmounted them.
However, I wish to say a happy new year to all of you and just keep being good.

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Trackback  •  Posted in Technology  


Nov 15
2009

This is a write up by Rev Charles Spurgeon

“And Laban said, it must not be so done in our country, to give the younger before the firstborn.”

Genesis 29:26
We do not excuse Laban for his dishonesty, but we scruple not to learn from the custom which he quoted as his excuse. There are some things which must be taken in order, and if we would win the second we must secure the first. The second may be the lovelier in our eyes, but the rule of the heavenly country must stand, and the elder must be married first. For instance, many men desire the beautiful and well-favoured Rachel of joy and peace in believing, but they must first be wedded to the tender-eyed Leah of repentance.

Every one falls in love with happiness, and many would cheerfully serve twice seven years to enjoy it, but according to the rule of the Lord’s kingdom, the Leah of real holiness must be beloved of our soul before the Rachel of true happiness can be attained. Heaven stands not first but second, and only by persevering to the end can we win a portion in it. The cross must be carried before the crown can be worn. We must follow our Lord in his humiliation, or we shall never rest with him in glory.
My soul, what do you say, art thou so vain as to hope to break through the heavenly rule? Dost thou hope for reward without labour, or honour without toil? Dismiss the idle expectation, and be content to take the ill-favoured things for the sake of the sweet love of Jesus, which will recompense thee for all.

In such a spirit, labouring and suffering, thou wilt find bitters grow sweet, and hard things easy. Like Jacob, thy years of service will seem unto thee but a few days for the love thou hast to Jesus; and when the dear hour of the wedding feast shall come, all thy toils shall be as though they had never been-an hour with Jesus will make up for ages of pain and labour.

Jesus, to win thyself so fair,

Your cross I will with gladness bear:

Since so the rules of heaven ordain,

The first I’ll wed the next to gain.

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Trackback  •  Posted in Christianity  


Nov 10
2009

Hello to all.

I have been having problems lately virtualising on my pc. I run a Windows Vista Home Premium on an Intel Pentium Dual CPU @ 2.00 GHz and 3GB main memory – a Sony Viao. The problem is that I have quite a lot of unnecessary process running which I do not need to run my Virtual machines.

Also, some of these processes are very stubborn. Killing them from the task manager using the CTRL+ALT+DEL and invoking Task Manager still does not kill the processes permanently as I want it.

So, after doing a couple of research around these windows process, I came to find out they can be handled properly without any side effect to the host.

A good approach from my own perspective was just to kill and terminate the processes and have them come back no more until am done with my virtualisation.

Ok. Now, you may want to find out the critical processes that are using up your system resources which you may not want at the moment.
You can achieve this is seconds by running the tasklist command on the cmd prompt. Additionally, you may want to filter these so that you get a report on a list of all the processes that are using most of the memory. To achieve this, run this:
tasklist  /FI “MEMUSAGE gt 10000″ >>  tasks.txt  && start task.txt
This command lists all the processes using more than 10000KB. From here now, you can now get the processes you may have to terminate.
From these you can now determine which processes are to go down.
Be very careful not to terminate critical system processes. You may now create a batch file with the following entries:

@ echo off
TASKKILL /F /IM explorer.exe
TASKKILL /F /IM dwm.exe
TASKKILL /F /IM otherprocess.exe

And so on. You can then save the batch file and run it on the command line.
But for you to effectively implement this, you may have to have a basic idea of how to use the windows command line interface.

This way, you will be able to free your memory and use it to Virtualise effectively.

To be able to check your Outlook or Word, you need to include the office 12 folder in your path variable.

To do this, make sure to set the path variable to include the installation location of the Office binaries which is at %systemdrive%/Program Files/Microsoft Office/Office12

With this in place, your virtualisation works fine which you have only wanted applications up and running.

I will also be updating this blog on enhancing this process with garbage collection.

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Trackback  •  Posted in Technology  


Oct 23
2009

I was  installing Exchange Server 2007 SP1 32 bit version on Windows Server 2008 DataCenter and I encountered the following error:

Error

An error occurred. The error code was 2147504141. The message was The property cannot be found in the cache..

This problem occurs because IPv6 is not disabled on tunnel interfaces if you disable IPv6 in Local Area Connection. By default, IPv6 is enabled in Windows Server 2008. If you want to disable IPv6 for any reasons, you have to use Registry Editor to completely disable IPv6

To resolve, carefully follow the instruction here

Or alternatively, fix it directly by clicking here

Hope this worked for somebody!

But if it does not work, it i most likely you are using the Datacenter Edition.

References:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/952842

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Trackback  •  Posted in Technology  


Oct 19
2009

Perseverance conquers. The half-hearted will never get to win the battle of life. Hard times and tough times are here to make us better, stronger and even greater.

The right time to quit was yesterday. I have gone too far to look back. The thorny bushes I see here are to my own advantage – preserving my treasure and destiny from the feeble and the frail. If I have come this far, why go back now? Even if the mediocre mockery makes no count to me, what my ego, and more importantly, how am I sure I will not be here tomorrow.

Keeping and holding faith is important. Giving in to challenges is old school. To make miracles, faith is mandatory. If you were convinced at the beginning, then keep on holding on. If you believe it, keep doing it – your environment and feelings will not only deceive you – it will destroy you if you!

Great men are convinced of their beliefs and inspiration.  I will never believe until I am convinced, once I am, I will never give in to anything otherwise.

All things are possible to him who believes. I can do all things through Christ that strengthens me. You Can



Trackback  •  Posted in Personal  


Sep 10
2009

Hello my friends! I have just finished my MSc examinations yesterday – September 9, 2009. I feel very happy for this, being that I had to leave my initial job to go back to school. Now I can go back to work. Join me to thank God!

Well, now, I think I now have the time to start blogging. I promise you it will be fun down here. Bless you



Trackback  •  Posted in Personal