MOSS AD Synch Issues Part 2

So I was having issues with the MOSS AD Synch of the user profile info into MOSS from Active Directory (email address, first and last name etc).

The issue is this, the import process into the Shared Services database from Active Directory was working and scheduled and fine. A full import was done and all users came in. Then, I scheduled hourly incremental import (runs like 10-20seconds max on a 1200 user AD). Fine.

But, the individual Sharepoint sites each have their own Content Database (SQL db) right? What was happening is the UserProfile table (where all this info is stored) was not being updated in the Content DBs but WAS BEING UPDATED IN THE SSP DB. Turns out their is a Timer job called ProfileSynch that was failing. It had no credentials to login to the SSP_DB as the specified user (EGSEG-ROSMOS01\sa_MOSS2007). So, now I am off now to fix that problem (and hope this works)! Why can't MOSS be less complicated? UGH - the NCAA games are starting soon.. GO TIGERS!!! Memphis, Lousiville, UNC, and Syracuse are my Final 4 with Memphis over UNC in the championship!

MOSS AD Synch Issues Part 1

1. MOSS provides user profile from AD sync to user profile list while WSS doesn't.

2. MOSS support Active Directory sync to user profile other than lists, and computer information in AD can not be synced.

3. If you want to get MULTIPLE AD information in AD sync to one list, it is also impossible using MOSS provided user profile sync.

Here is a custom tool from sharepointboost.com (for purchase?) that tries to address the shortcomings:

MOSS 2007 Pages show up for system account but not regular users (i.e. Publishing Pages)!

So I ran into a problem (should have been rather obvious but just learning sharepoint designer on my own here). I made changes to several master pages and page layouts in Sharepoint designer and by hand coding html and they were showing up perfectly for me and the Sharepoint System Account in the web browser when accessing the site. So cool, I thought my job was done.

But NOPE - Because ... somehow for regular MOSS users and guests, they were not showing up. AARRGH MSFT again! Here we go...

I first thought it was a permissions thing. But then I looked closer in Sharepoint Designer, and saw a bunch of little green checkmarks next to each file I had changed plus a bunch I did not change. So I right clicked and said Check In. Well then it asks you are you checking in a minor version or publishing a major version. I say Publish Major Version, put a short comment. Then it says this type of change has to be approved, do you wish to approve/review now? I say yes, then it opens up web browser to the content approval page within Sharepoint for the particular site I am working on. In there, I select the pending files to approve and Click Approve.

VOILA - then all users can see my beautiful new changes and Marketing is happy! Plus is Friday 2:30PM and 60 degrees out after a hard long winter in CHI TOWN so I am happy to be able to leave the office a bit early today!

MOSS 2007 Master Pages - how to use, what are they?

Here is a link to a Microsoft MVP Sharepoint Master Page and Layout specialist's blog. Heather Solomon is very good at this stuff.

This article in particular discusses what master pages are and how to use them in MOSS 2007 at a conceptual level:

http://www.heathersolomon.com/blog/articles/MOSS07DesignComponents.aspx

Enjoy!!

MOSS 2007 Create New Web Application/Database for later move to another MOSS Server

Here is how to create a new web application and database for a new site in MOSS 2007.  This will allow for ease of moving the site and database in the future to a separate physical MOSS server.  This came up yesterday at work.

1. Go into Central Administration on the existing MOSS instance.  You must sign in as a farm administrator, I do not think a site collection administrator will cut it for this task.  The way to check is if you see the Create or Extend Web application Link in the step below, you are good.  It should be the top most link under Sharepoint Web Application Management on the Application Management page of Central Administration.  It will be just above Remove SharePoint from IIS Web Site.  NOTE: If you can not see this, simply type in http://servername:centraladminport/_admin/extendvs.aspx
   
2. Click on Application Management, Create or extend Web Appplication.  Click create a new web application.  This will create a new IIS website and a new content database for the new site.  This aids in moving it to other physical or logical MOSS instances later on.
3. Fill in the information accordingly for the new Web Application page.
4. You can use an existing IIS site, but not for this exercise, instead create a new IIS site, give it a port number not already in use (MOSS will default to one for you or you can change it).
5. Give the site a description describing its purpose - make it a good description that includes sharepoint and the port number and the sites purpose because this is what will show up in IIS for example later and it is easy to move if you have a lot of sites to manage.
6. Specify the path for the website files - or take the default of c:\inetpub\wwwroot\wss\VirtualDirectories\...
7. Take the default NTLM Allow Anonymous No and Use SSL No (unless it is externally facing or you have special security requirements.  NOTE: Excel Services sites work better with Kerberos not NTLM.
8. Choose the load balanced URL for the site or take the default
9. Application Pool - here is where you can use an exsiting one on the existing MOSS instance or create a new one, it does not matter.  When you move this to another server/MOSS instance later, it will use one on that server/MOSS instance anyway not this one.
10. Restart IIS Manually (the default) is ok - 99 times out of 100 you will not have to even restart IIS after creating this new site anyway.  I don't knwo why MSFT puts this in here.
11. Specify Database Server and Name - it is a good idea to name the database WSS_Content_ like you named the website above (minus the port information of course)
12. Select your database authentication method, Windows authentication is preferred.
13. Select which server in your MOSS environment is the Search Server for the new site.
14. Click OK and MOSS will try to create the new IIS website and new SQL Server database for you.  If you look in those apps after it returns (with successfully created) you will see the new website and new database.  Be sure to add those to your backup strategy if it requires you to update which database and site files needs backup.
15. If you get errors, read the error message and try to troubleshoot it, it may mean there is a security/authority error or something else.  Good luck!
16. Now create a new site collection in Central Administration -> Application Management then you can begin creating sites on your new MOSS Web Application and start to fill up your new database and IIS Web Application with sites and subsites!

TO RESTORE ONTO NEW SERVER/MOSS INSTANCE

To move the site and database onto a new box or instance is pretty straightforward.  Often you have to do this due to performance, disk, or logical split/upper management decision reasons.

1. On the new server, create a new web application similar to the above process.
   
2. Create a new site collection using the blank site template
3. use the stsadmin -backup command on the old server.  This makes a .dat file.
4. use the stsadmin -restore command on the new server on the .dat file
5. Everything should work fine.

MOSS 2007 Physical and Applicaiton Architecture Tiers

MOSS 2007 follows a 3 Tier structure

1. Web Server Tier (IIS) - can be network load balanced

2. Application Server Tier 

• Contains Shared Service Provider (SSP) which handles:
• Search, Index, Audience, User Profiles, My Sites, BDC, Excel Services (Last 2 are Enterprise Edition only).  Typically you woudl put My Sites on its own server, Excel Services/BDC on its own or the same server, and Audience/User Profiles on its own or the same server, and Search+Index on its own or the same server (if you had 4 servers in this tier for example).
  
• NOTE: Any service can reside on any mid tier server.  Also, the index server is limited to 1 per SSP, but all the other services have no limit as to how many servers can provide/service/host them 

3. Database Tier - consist of standard SQL Server 2005 or SQL Server 2005 Cluster of servers

Using the SCP command (Linux)

20.3.2. Using the scp Command

The scp command can be used to transfer files between machines over a secure, encrypted connection. It is similar to rcp.

The general syntax to transfer a local file to a remote system is as follows:

scp username@tohostname: 

The  specifies the source including path to the file, such as /var/log/maillog. The  specifies the destination, which can be a new filename such as /tmp/hostname-maillog. For the remote system, if you do not have a preceding /, the path will be relative to the home directory of username, typically /home/username/.

To transfer the local file shadowman to the home directory of your account on penguin.example.net, type the following at a shell prompt (replace username with your username):

 scp shadowman username@penguin.example.net:shadowman  

This will transfer the local file shadowman to /home/username/shadowman on penguin.example.net. Alternately, you can leave off the final shadowman in the scp command.

The general syntax to transfer a remote file to the local system is as follows:

scp username@tohostname: 

The  specifies the source including path, and  specifies the destination including path.

Multiple files can be specified as the source files. For example, to transfer the contents of the directory downloads/ to an existing directory called uploads/ on the remote machine penguin.example.net, type the following at a shell prompt:

 scp downloads/* username@penguin.example.net:uploads

Photoshop make buttons with text labels

Use the Text Selet tool (It has the letter A in the toolbar) then drag your move over the text or click on the text layer with the mouse point.

--j

Can you sendme the wec buttons and instructions how I can select the text on the button and modify it.

There are 4 wec buttons I think.  Then they also toggle off to different color. So 8 total.

I need to also make 8 but just with different text.  Trying to learn photoshop

MOSS 2007 (Sharepoint) Architecture

Here is a good article explaining MOSS 2007 arch as well.

http://blogs.msdn.com/martinkearn/archive/2006/06/06/MOSS-Architecture-_2600_-Shared-Services.aspx

Microsoft Certification Tips

Travis here is what I did.  To Become a MCP, just take one test(70-271).

To become a MCDST take these two tests 70-271 and 70-272   Go Here

http://www.microsoft.com/learning/mcp/mcdst/requirements.mspx

Then for a MCSA go here

http://www.microsoft.com/learning/mcp/mcsa/windows2003/default.mspx

You are supposed to take 4 exams, one of which is an elective BUT  "As an alternative to choosing an elective exam listed in the preceding table, you can choose the following certifications or certification combinations." and that certification is an MCDST.  Get it?

So if you are a MCDST FIRST then you only have to take 3 more tests Exam 70-270, Exam 70-290, Exam 70-291.  I have the test questions for these 3.

Then if you want to become an MCSE you go here:

http://www.microsoft.com/learning/mcp/mcse/windows2003/default.mspx

And there are even more tests to take...(3 more maybe) BUT if you take the path in order of MCP-MCDST-MCSA-MCSE  then you will have to take less tests because you have already taken some of them to fullfill the other certs.  Then you will have ALL 4 certs...(I only have 3)

And now I am reading that EVERYTHING changes with 2008.. The new Cert is called an Microsoft Certified IT Professional (MCITP) and you can either become an  MCITP: Server Administrator or an MCITP: Enterprise Administrator.

CRAZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZYYYYYYYYYYYYY

By the way you can get the ANSWERS for the first two tests 70-271 and

70-272 by going to ebay and downloading it for $3.20 LOL http://cgi.ebay.com/MCDST-Exam-Qs-As-Package-70-271-70-292_W0QQitemZ260346792933QQcmdZViewItemQQptZUS_Nonfiction_Book?hash=item260346792933&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14&_trkparms=72%3A1205%7C66%3A2%7C65%3A12%7C39%3A1%7C240%3A1318%7C301%3A1%7C293%3A1%7C294%3A50

Taxonomy and Meteadata Resources

http://hepburndata.blogspot.com/2006/12/metadata-defined.html

The following Metadata repositories exhibit these desired traits:
1. Whitemarsh's Metabase
2. CA's AllFusion Repository for Distributed Systems
3. Data Foundation's OneData Registry
4. Oracle's Enterprise Metadata Manager

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dublin_Core

 http://www.taxonomystrategies.com/html/archive.htm

Make an HTML apostrophe show up

In the HMR footer I added this to make the apostrophe show up in all browsers correctly:

’

Dell Server Build plus RAID and windows server

With NO OS (Windows Install instructions):

High level:

• First time out of box, accept EULA and Dell service tag
• Follow Dell steps for server with no os:

1.     Insert the Dell Systems Management Tools and Documentation DVD

2.     Press any key on the keyboard

3.     The boot menu screen displays

4.     Select Dell Systems Build and Update Utility

5.     From the Dell Systems Build and Update Utility Home page, click Server OS Installation to continue your operating system setup.

• Make RAID 5 if possible
• Make 20-40GB C partition for OS install
• Make Swap Partition S twice the physical RAM or 8GB minimum
• Make Data Partition

 Install Windows Server 2003 Standard Edition 64 bit

Run updates

Install .NET Framework 2.0

Install Apps like - Sharepoint Server Standard Edition 2007 (will prompt for additional .NET Frameworks like 3.0 and maybe 3.5) or other apps

 

Website Banner Ad standards and sizes

This group runs all the standards - here are the sizes:

http://www.iab.net/iab_products_and_industry_services/1421/1443/1452

Good Linux find command and Joomla Footer

Here is the linux command I used and the file location in joomla to edit the footer:

From the public_html folder of the domain:

find ./ -type f -exec grep -H copyright '{}' +

 

The footer file you can edit to change the Joomla 1.5 standard footer is here:

/home/aheumann/domains/theheumannmarketreview.com/public_html/language/en-GB/en-GB.mod_footer.ini

Reset Root Password from console or root single user mode

So we have disabled root ssh to our linux boxes now.  But to reset the root password we need to login as a approved ssh user (/etc/ssh/sshd_conf AllowUsers bacuff for example) then su root

Enter old root password

then passwd change to new root password

or - if you have no valid ssh users (bad but we foudn ourselves in this case today on our important shared web and mail server):

I'd first see if they can get in with the root pw first on the console, if that does not work, you would reboot, and when you get to the grub boot loader, you press e for edit, the second entry, you modify, and you put 'single' at the end of that line, then boot that up, it will drop you into root single user mode, and they can reset the password