Hello readers. I need some help with a very strange problem I have come up to at a customer farm.
The error that I am researching occurs when SharePoint crawls the default content source which is, in my test farm, a normal non-edited publishing portal. The error that appears in de crawl log is “The crawler could not communicate with the server. Check that the server is available and that the firewall access is configured correctly.”
FARM / NETWORK CONFIGURATION:
The farm consists of (for testing)
1 SP server:
OS W2K3R2 SP2 Enterprise x64 English installation,
CPU E5405 @2GHz, 24GB RAM
SP native dutch version 12.0.0.6548
Location: The Netherlands, Regional settings: Dutch, Input Language: Dutch – US International
OS updated by Windows Update with critical patches on 1/10/2011
1 DB Server:
OS W2K8R2 Enterprise x64 English installation
2x CPU E5620 @2.4GHz, 32GB RAM
SQL server 2008 R2
Location: The Netherlands, Regional settings: Dutch, Input Language: Dutch – US International
Forest functional level is 2000 and Domain functional level is 2000 mixed.
SP server and DB server are on different VLANs and separated by a Firewall. Only port 1433 is open. SP finds the DB server by Alias. This Alias is configured in SQL Server Configuration Manager which is installed at the SP server. The Alias directs to the DB server with Protocol TCP and Parameter 1433. Only by this Alias/Port 1433 the DB server can be reached.
Windows Firewalls on both servers are not enabled.
STEPS TAKEN SO FAR:
I wanted to start with a clean SP install because a lot of configuration has been done on the SP servers to make it work. All configuration has been done in my absence. Because I have to support this farm from now on I want to know every bit of it.
1. So disjoined the previous installation from the farm. Deleted all databases. Did a complete deinstallation of SP software on the SP server and rebooted.
2. Installed SP including service pack 2 (native dutch installation).
3. Start config wizard for configuring the farm.
4. Configuration in Central Admin:
4a. Services on server > WSS Search (Search and Content Access account are separate)
4b. Office Search (for this test the SP server is Search and Index server)
5. Continued with Configuring server farm’s shared services
6. Configured a Shared Services Provider (SSP1).
7. For every web application the “Security Configuration” is.
7a. authentication provider: NTLM
7b. Allow Anonymous: NO
7c. Use Secure Sockets Layer (SSL): NO
8. Made a Web application for SSP, Mysite and Portal
9. In the Portal Web App I made a Site collection with the Publishing portal template (this SP farm will host a Internet facing site)
10. Set search server at every database with CA > application management > content databases
11. Crawl results in error (error is in dutch but this is the translation): The crawler could not communicate with the server. Check that the server is available and that the firewall access is configured correctly
12. CU October 2010 Installed and restarted the server
13. same Crawl error
14. Language settings set the same on SP and SQL server. Location: Dutch, regional setting: Dutch. Input language: Dutch-US International
15. Install account was not a local admin at SQL server, added the account to local admin on SQL server
16. Run the command: Stsadm –o upgrade –forceupgrade > errors (install account does not have access to search db)
17. on SQL: added the install account to the search db as db_owner
18. Run the command: Stsadm –o upgrade –forceupgrade > errors (install account does not have access to another db)
19. Made the install account db_owner of all databases
20. Run the command: Stsadm –o upgrade –forceupgrade uitgevoerd. > Completed successfully.
21. same Crawl error
22. installed High prio windows updates through Windows Update on the SP server
23. Added application pool accounts to local group WSS_ADMIN_WPG at SP server
24. Added group WSS_ADMIN_WPG to IIS WAMREG Service properties. Given local launch and local activation
25. same Crawl error
26. added a Crawl rule including everything
27. same Crawl error > Crawl rule deleted
28. In IE > tools > internet options > security added the portal url to trusted sites.
29. Crawl error
30. In IIS added a hostheader, in SP added a AAM and in the hosts file added a local URL. Made a separate content source and crawled
31. Crawl error
32. Deleted hostheader, aam and line in hosts file. Also content source.
33. In hosts file disabled every line except the lines redirecting the SP urls directly to the SP server ipaddress
34. Crawl error (full and incremental crawl)
35. Standard time zone on webapplications set to GMT+1 Amsterdam
36. Crawl error
37. Search server set on content databases
38. Crawl error
39. Content Access account set secondary admin on site collection > crawl error > removed
40. Content Access account given Full access to site collection by policies > crawl error > removed
41. First site coll was publishing portal > deleted >
42. made a new sitecollection based on the teamsite template > crawl error.
I have run out of options. Do you have any suggestions? Please insert a comment or mail me. All help is welcome.
part 1: step by step
My other post about preparation for the 70-667 SP2010 exam got very positive reactions so in this post you will find a list of the resources I used to prepare for the second exam.
What you will need, according to my opinion is:
- Off course a lot of experience with SharePoint and Windows Infrastructure deployments (I have 10+ years Windows experience (I am also MCITP EA) and SharePoint 5+ years)
- Planning and architecture for SharePoint Server 2010 on Technet: http://technet.microsoft.com/nl-nl/library/cc261834(en-us).aspx (read a lot of articles and whitepapers)
- The book Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Administrator’s Companion
by Bill English, Brian Alderman & Mark Ferrarz
- SharePoint 2010 Advanced IT Professional Training: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/ff420396.aspx (I watched all vids on this site)
- Learning resources from the SharePoint 2010 Readiness site: http://www.sharepoint2010readiness.com/
The October 2010 Cumulative Updates have been republished for SharePoint Server 2010 resolving the issues described in this blog post.
Updates for:
SharePoint Foundation 2010
SharePoint Server 2010
Project Server 2010
Find more information at the source.
Today I installed the SP2010 Dutch language pack (download here; all languages) on our test sharepoint farm. After executing the ServerLanguagePack.exe file the language pack is being installed. When finished you can choose to Run the SharePoint Configuration Wizard immediately when you close the installation box.
I did so and expected it to work. I created a site collection and that went well. I went on with creating a site based on the Team Site template. I immediately got an error. ULSviewer showed this error:
No document templates uploaded for list “$Resources:core,MasterPageGallery;” — none found for list template “100″.
On Technet I searched for what to do when deploying a Language Pack and on this site I read:
Install a language pack:
- Run setup.exe.
- On the Read the Microsoft Software License Terms page, review the terms, select the I accept the terms of this agreement check box, and then click Continue.
- The Setup wizard runs and installs the language pack.
- Rerun the SharePoint Products Configuration Wizard, using the default settings. If you do not run the SharePoint Products Configuration Wizard after you install a language pack, the language pack will not be installed correctly.
Rerun the SharePoint 2010 Products Configuration Wizard
- Click Start, point to All Programs, click Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Products, and then click SharePoint 2010 Products Configuration Wizard.
- On the Welcome to SharePoint Products page, click Next.
- Click Yes in the dialog box that alerts you that some services might have to be restarted during configuration.
- On the Modify Server Farm Settings page, click Do not disconnect from this server farm, and then click Next.
- If the Modify SharePoint Central Administration Web Administration Settings page appears, do not change any of the default settings, and then click Next.
- On the Completing the SharePoint Products and Technologies Configuration Wizard page, click Next.
- On the Configuration Successful page, click Finish.
When I rerunned the Wizard I was able to finish all the sites that were not created correctly.
Tags: error, Language Pack, SP2010
In the next couple of weeks I am getting into Infopath again. I think that I am going to do lot with web services so here is a post with links to all the SharePoint 2007 and SharePoint 2010 web services.
Tags: SP2010, webservice
For a client I am building a Proof of Concept SP2010 site. In this site almost every piece of information like documents, blogposts etc have to tagged. In several sites they want to see an aggregation of certain tags.
There is for example a site where they want to see all new information about 3 sectors:
Companies (in the pictures “Bedrijfsleven”; in dutch)
Government (in the pictures “Overheid”; in dutch)
Health care(in the pictures “Zorg”; in dutch)
In this picture you see the three Search Core Results web parts I put on the Sectors site:
At first this caused a problem because all web parts showed the same results. I tried to resolve this by adding a Fixed Keyword Query (”bedrijfsleven” or “overheid” or “zorg”) to each web part. See picture below:
But this did not solve the problem. My next step was to create a search scope for each sector and connect each scope to the corresponding search core results web part. See picture below:
As you might have guessed this also did not solve my problem. Searching the internet and trying out some settings resulted in a working site with 3 web parts showing seperated results.
The solution is to change the Cross-Web Part Query ID and use a different ID per search core results web part. See picture below for the settings:
With all these settings you can show several seperated search core results web parts on one site.
Tags: SP2010
Cumulative Update October for SharePoint 2010 has been released last week. This is build 14.0.5128.5000 of the cumulative update package.
Find downloads and information about SharePoint Foundation 2010 here:
information in kb2394323
request the hotfix here
Find downloads and information about SharePoint Server 2010 here:
information in kb2394320
request the hotfix here
More information can be found at the SharePoint Products Technet site
Found a useful script to remove the “This Site” option from the search drop down list in SharePoint 2007. Here it is (add this to your masterpage):
<script type=”text/javascript”>
function SearchScDDLInj()
{
var srhScDDL = document.getElementById(”ctl00$PlaceHolderSearchArea$ctl01$SBScopesDDL”);
srhSpDDL.remove(0);
}
SearchScDDLInj();
</script>
Thanks to Saras Tech Blogs
Tags: javascript
Last two days I have visited, like a lot other SharePoint enthausiasts, the SharePoint Connections 2010 Autumn in The Hague. It were two great days.
I visited sessions of Dan Holme, Spencer Harbar, Andrew Connell, Rick Taylor and Asif Rehmani. Some sessions were great and some were a bit disappointing. Maybe I expected too high a level of some sessions, but I understand that they had to appeal to a wide audience.
I especially liked Dan Holme’s sessions (Governance and Managed Metadata Service). He is able, in my opinion, to explain things very clearly in a short period of time. At Rick Taylor’s “Migrate to 2010″ session there were a lot of laughs.
I am lookimg forward to any future events.
