Crashed site

A customer intranet died the other morning. The is what happend.

First user notifies of error while trying to access.

I start to look into it.

- First issue. Low/none diskspace. Frees up so its workable. This does nothing for the site. Tries restart to no avail.

- Checks all IIS-sites and Application Pools. A lot of pools are stopped. Starts these up, but not difference.

- Notices that patches been applied the previous night. Server starts warning for diskspace soon after. Ok so maybe a patch requires psconfig. Runs this but are greeted with error: Failed to initiate the upgrade sequence…. Method not found ‘void Microsoft.Sharepoint.WorkflowServices.Iworkflowservice.upgrade….

searching for this error doesn’t give much. Tries to uninstall the workflow manager services for this seems to related. the workflow 2013 mananger has given some ache in the past and isn’t used anyways. This gives nothing.

Tries to access Central Administration and curiously this works to certain degree. Until tries to access Service Application then it throws iWorkflowServices errors again.

Looks deeper into the logs and finds issues with the patches being applied.

Ok, so maybe a patch was trying to be applied but got stuck on the diskissue and landed in some unfinished state?

Tries to download the latest updates to see if this is an issue. There is some, but it takes alot of time.

Checks the size of the culprits Kb2863829. Turns out this mother is 827MB, no wonder it takes time. AND the patch requires and psconfig run after completion!

Let the update run through and then runs psconfig again. Though this failes on the Task 8 in the first run (Failed to create sample data) another run let it finishes.

Now everything works again!

What to take with us from this experience?

Always have 10-20GB free space on the sharepointserver!

References:

http://support.microsoft.com/Kb/2863829

http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/e5644dc3-3849-46fe-aa38-460e9f9d7bc2/error-in-configuration-wizard-after-installing-sharepoint-2013-service-pack-1?forum=sharepointadmin

Shrink transaction log

When transaction log has grown to size that is too big to take backup, or space just isn’t available AND the database just isn’t that important that it should drag all others to lag-hell this might be done to solve the issue.

Note that there is a point to transaction files. If the database is so important that you can’t loose a minuts worth of transactions its really a necessary feature. But if that need isn’t there, the recovery mode could easily be changed to Simple to avoid the risk of losing space on an old server and therefore halting critical applications.

But here it is anyways.

1. Change recovery mode to Simple on the overgrown database.
2. Run query: dbccshrinkfile (mydatabase_Log,0)
3. Change recovery mode to Full again to restore the logging.

If the transaction logs grows, its usually because their isn’t a real backupsolution running for the database. Use maintenance jobs or stored procedures if a real one isn’t available.

Can’t create maintenance plans

For some security reason these are disabled on SQL Server 2008-2012 on some occasions. Might be a servicepack disables it. But maintenance plans are a nice tier 2 security precaution.

Get thrown this error when trying to create a maintenance plan

Ran following query on victimserver to solve it.

Manage stored wireless networks in W8

Microsoft, in all their wisdom, have removed the Manage my wireless network option that was available on the wireles interface in Windows 7 and earlier. So, how to we manage it now?

See stored wireless profiles

/> netsh wlan show profiles

Delete a profile

/> nets wlan delete profile name=mynetwork

To show saved information, including key

/> netsh wlan show profiles name=mynetwork key=clear

 

Or to use the gui-way

Charms>PC Settings>Networks>Connections>WiFi>Manage known networks

But only thing you can do from here is see the name and forget the network, so learn the cli way.

References:

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/windows/en-US/ac80d8ec-21ad-4d44-9a0c-c8777f861db7/windows-8-manage-wireless-networks?forum=w8itpronetworking

Where’s my search dude?

I made a customer installation of Sharepoint Foundation 2013 recently. Naturally I used the latest Slipstreamed Microsoft package with Service Pack 1.

Sure everything looks fine at first, but after first site collection is up and running I notice that the searchbox is missing. Sure, maybe a glitch, runs new full crawl, but nothing changes. Tries to create a new search center site, site creator throws a sorry my way.

Tries to create my own custom page and add the search webpart and get another fun message “Common Language Runtime detected an invalid progam”.

Ok, maybe language is an issue, installs localization pack for swedish and creates new site collection. Same error.

After searching for information on the issue someone makes me aware of the fineprint of Slipstreampackaged Foundation downloadpage

First time that field contained any relevant information!

Searching on forums shows a few MS-cases that all indicates that this is an issue which will be fixed in the April CU. So we have to wait I tell the customer, looking like a noob cause they don’t want to put in the extra time for a reinstallation sans SP1.

But today I found an update that solved the issue!  Curiously not by googling but in my rssfeeds…

Hero of the day is: KB2760625 March 2014 PU for SharePoint Foundation 2013

Note the package is claiming to aimed at Sharepoint Enterprise Server but it worked nicely on my Foundation.

References:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2760625

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=42268

http://www.sharepointblogs.be/blogs/vandest/archive/2013/12/10/sharepoint-foundation-2013-broken-search-experience.aspx

http://blogs.technet.com/b/stefan_gossner/archive/2014/03/20/an-important-fix-for-sharepoint-foundation-2013-sp1-has-just-been-released.aspx

Shared Mailbox mail sent folder

In Exchange 2013 with Outlook 2010 client, mail sent dont land in the corresponding sent folder.

For example, If John has access to shared mailbox Info@contoso.com, mail he sends with info as sender will land in his personal sent folder. This makes John and John collegues confused.

Solution:

1. Make sure KB24591115 is installed, from 2010 so most likely. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2459115
2. Add this registry value on Johns computer/session

Key: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\14.0\Outlook\Preferences
Name: DelegateSentItemsStyle
Type: DWORD
Value: 1

Or run FixIt on https://support.microsoft.com/kb/2181579

References:

https://support.microsoft.com/kb/2181579

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2459115

The simplicity of Promoted Links

Ever gazed upon the startpage of a Sharepoint Team Site and wondered how you could make your own Get Started panel?

Its simpler than it looks.

1. Create a List of type Promoted Links
2. Create Items on the list, add images if you under Background Image Location
3. Add list as a webpart
4. Done