September 2008 - Posts - Michael Blumenthal Blog

Symptoms of your DB Server going down
27 September 08 12:03 AM | Blogging about SharePoint: Posts

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Tonight I was supposed to be involved in the deployment of a workflow Solution I had built, but when the deployment window opened, I went to my client's SharePoint intranet site and got three terrifying error messages:

http://server.dom.tld/ returned a 404.

http://server.dom.tld/managedPath/siteCollectionRootSite returned a 404.

http://server.dom.tld/managedPath/siteCollectionRootSite/default.aspx returned a "An unexpected error has occurred. "

I don't have access to Central Admin on this farm, but the Farm Admin who was going to deploy my Solution (WSP) quickly identified the problem - the database server that holds all SharePoint's databases was down.

In as much as it's not a problem with my WSP, I am relieved. In as much as it keeps me from deploying my solution and getting to my weekend, I am frustrated. Such is life.

-- Michael

Category: MOSS 2007

Published: 9/26/2008 9:03 PM

Filed under: MOSS 2007

When a Solution Won't Deploy
24 September 08 03:16 PM | Blogging about SharePoint: Posts

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We loaded a WSP into the solution store with STSADM, and then used STSADM to deploy the solution and execute admin service jobs. STSADM reported a success, but when we looked in Central Admin, we saw that the solution deployment was scheduled but never starting. When we canceled the deployment job, the status page for the solution package said that it had deployed to WFE (Web Front End) Server 2 (which hosts Central Admin too), but not server 1 which is just a WFE for the user-facing web apps.

The net of it is that the OWS Timer on Server 1 was not running (even though it said it started, but when we right-clicked to restart, it gave us a start option instead of stop or restart). It was not running due to a bad config file that we had made for it because we needed to provide some application settings and some WCF settings for a workflow solution we built. Both OWSTimer as well as the web.config for the user-facing MOSS site needed the config settings for our workflow because our workflow has a delay task and the workflow is owned by the w3wp process (assuming it was started via MOSS ) until it hits a delay task. Once a workflow hits a delay task, it resumes under the context of OWSTimer.

The error message that we get in the ULS log is:

The timer service could not initialize its configuration, please check the configuration database. Will retry later.

It's categorized as Unexpected and is produced by OWSTIMER.EXE.

Removing the config file let the timer service start and then deployments started working again. We just need to figure out what was wrong with our config file.

--Michael

Category: MOSS 2007

Published: 9/24/2008 12:16 PM

Filed under: MOSS 2007

More MOSS events
17 September 08 02:58 PM | Blogging about SharePoint: Posts

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September 28-30, 2008
Hyatt Regency
Downtown Minneapolis, MN

2 DAYS, 30 SESSIONS, 4 TRACKS
Magenic has been a proud sponsor of HDC in the past and is excited to see HDC come to Minneapolis!
If you have never been to an HDC event, it's like PDC or TechEd in your back yard. HDC is a professional event, thrown for professional developers. Organized by some of the region's most active user group leaders and supported by the regional Microsoft development community, HDC is the nation's largest independent Microsoft development conference. Check out the presenters, sessions and schedule....and REGISTER!

[Michael Blumenthal says: There is one session with SharePoint in the description: "201 - DemoFest – From LINQ to Amazon to Silverlight to SharePoint".]

Tuesday, September 30
11 AM Pacific, 1 PM Central, 2 PM Eastern
MOSS Search: Better Collaboration, Deeper Context and Improved Access to Information
CIOs and IT Managers: Learn how companies use Microsoft Office SharePoint Server to make it easy to find and share information and collaborate.

Wednesday, October 15
11 AM Pacific, 1 PM Central, 2 PM Eastern
Driving Business Intelligence with SQL Server 2008
Get the latest on how SQL Server platform enhancements have taken developer productivity and the end-user experience to unprecedented levels.

Tuesday, October 21
11 AM Pacific, 1 PM Central, 2 PM Eastern
Bringing the Power of MOSS to Your Customer-Facing Applications
Business and IT Leaders: Learn from real-world experiences building compelling, customer-facing applications using Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007.

Wednesday, October 29
11 AM Pacific, 1 PM Central, 2 PM Eastern
The Evolution of User Experience with WPF & Silverlight
We'll discuss the evolution of user experience and how tools and technologies like WPF and Silverlight are changing the way designers and developers create richer experiences for their customers.

Also, there is a CSPUG (Chicago SharePoint User Group) meeting coming up September 25th.

Published: 9/17/2008 11:59 AM