SharePoint 2007 – Exception 1387 – Trying to add a Server to the Farm

 

Our existing environment is all 32-bit, Windows 2003 R2 SP2, MOSS 2007 SP1, with the Infrastructure Update and the October Cumulative Updates applied for WSS and MOSS.

We want to migrate to a 64-bit platform, so we provisioned some new 64-bit servers, and installed the x64 binaries for MOSS, with the above updates slipstreamed in, without any problems.

We then ran PSCONFIG on one of the new servers, in order to join it to the farm.

At this point, it throws an exception 1387, failed to connect to the configuration database, so PSCONFIG then exits.

Looking in Central Administration at the Servers in Farm, the new server is now showing up, listed as ‘not configured’, and with a version number matching the existing servers in the farm.

We logged a ticket with PSS, who got us to try various things, including updating the credentials for all the various service accounts using stsadm.exe, forcing an upgrade, etc.

Nothing helped, however…

Whilst in Central Administration, updating the credentials for the various application pools, I noticed that there were a couple of pools / credentials listed relating to Web Apps that were removed ages ago.

(You can use stsadm.exe to manage credentials for Web App pools, but it can’t cope with different accounts for different pools, so you have to use Central Administration if you are running in Least Privilege mode like we are)

A quick google led me to this blog posting, which details how to identify and remove such orphaned configuration objects.

I identified the IDs of the offending pools, and followed the instructions to remove them using stsadm.exe.

I also found that in IIS Manager on my new server, there were pools configured using those orphaned details, despite them not showing on the existing (working) servers.

I can only assume that PSCONFIG read everything (including the orphaned items) and tried applying them, only to get stuck.

Needless to say, having cleared the objects using stsadm.exe, and removed the pools from my new server, my subsequent attempt to join the new server to the farm was a success.

ECTS Extension Released

 

David McWee has just announced the release of the ECTS Extension, available now from the CodePlex site.

The extension adds a number of useful features and options to ECTS, which I will be investigating with interest, as I am using it at the moment, but in its ‘vanilla’ form, which has some shortcomings, some of which I’ve blogged about before.

 

Technorati Tags: ECTS,SharePoint,SharePoint 2007

Service Pack 2 (SP2) for the 2007 Microsoft Office System

SP2 for the 2007 Microsoft Office System, which covers the Office 2007 applications themselves, as well as SharePoint, etc, is slated for release sometime between February and April 2009.  More details can be found here.

 

Technorati Tags: moss,sharepoint 2007,sp2,office 2007,servicepack

Microsoft Office Outlook Team Blog : Living in Outlook: Multi-Day Calendar Views

Cool tip for calendar viewing in Outlook 2007:

Microsoft Office Outlook Team Blog : Living in Outlook: Multi-Day Calendar Views

 

Technorati Tags: office,outlook,microsoft,tip

ECTS Scalability

David McWee has found issues with ECTS above about 100 users.  He is also working on some improvements to some of the web parts which should help ECTS scale a bit better.  Read more on David McWee’s Blog.

 

Technorati Tags: ECTS,SharePoint 2007,Extranet

SMTP Configuration – Unspecified Error

 

Configuring a standalone development server that is running MOSS 2007 SP1, we wanted to point SharePoint at the local SMTP instance.

We needed to configure that SMTP instance to relay messages, but we were seeing ‘Unspecified Error’ if we tried making changes to the Access tab.

We had installed hotfix 946517 on the server, because we have it installed on the live servers, but it turns out that Microsoft have found that hotfix is the cause of the error.

The hotfix was removed, and the settings on the Access tab changed successfully.

We then re applied the hotfix.  This effectively locks us out of the Access tab again, but we can always request hotfix 950426, which looks like it was made available around the middle of August, although there is no KB article for it yet.

 

Technorati Tags: SharePoint 2007,SMTP,Error,Bug

SharePoint 2007 – Import Spreadsheet fails on top level site – works fine on sub-site

I’m seeing an error when trying to import an Excel 2007 spreadsheet to a list.

"Import to Windows SharePoint Services list
Method ‘Post’ of object ‘IOWSPostData’ failed"

A quick Google search showed that (unsurprisingly) plenty of other people have experienced the same problem.  Some are reporting that making a change to the code in one of the Excel Add-ins fixed the problem, but my testing showed that this just resulted in a different error.

"Cannot connect to the server at this time. Your table cannot be published"

Further testing on our environment showed that even without messing with the Excel Add-in, an import worked fine on a subsite, but not on a top level site (site collection root).

There are some custom site templates installed, so I initially suspected them, but have since proven the problem exists even with the Microsoft default templates.

Interestingly, an import works fine on a Personal Site / MySite, which itself is a top level site  / site collection.

I feel a call to Microsoft coming on…

Technorati Tags: SharePoint 2007,SharePoint,Excel

ECTS – missing ExternalCollaboration resx file

I came across this problem (amongst others) when deploying ECTS in a multiserver environment.

Technorati Tags: SharePoint,ECTS

IAG 2007 and SharePoint ECTS – UPN logon format not supported

The External Collaboration Toolkit for SharePoint (ECTS) is something I’m using at the moment to provide Extranet capabilities for a SharePoint 2007 farm.

ECTS uses an Active Directory Application Mode (ADAM) instance to store credentials for external users, and it registers those users by taking their email address as their user name, e.g. joe@bloggs.com.

I am using an Intelligent Application Gateway (IAG) appliance to publish the extranet site to the Internet, but I was having some problems getting the authentication to work for the external users.

On the IAG, I created an authentication repository for ADAM, and it seemed to work fine, plus I could connect using LDP.exe from the IAG to ADAM.

However, when an external user was authenticating, the IAG was logging a failure to authenticate, with the phrase ‘Missing Credentials’ involved.

A PSS call later, it transpires that IAG does not currently support UPN logons, without a lot of customisation.  Out of the box, it is only designed to handle domain\username type of logons.

Waiting to hear back about the nature of the customisation required, but in the meantime, I’ve configured IAG to not authenticate, but instead just perform the session validation, then display the normal SharePoint logon form.  Not as secure as I wanted, but it works.

Technorati Tags: IAG,Intelligent Application Gateway,ECTS,SharePoint,ADAM