I hit this nasty problem recently.
I could access central admin fine on http://servername:port but when trying to crawl sites locally, the crawler failed on sites with a custom host header, returning access denied messages. That's strange I thought, so launched up IE on the server and tried to access the sites, get prompted to login 3 times then boom access denied 401.1. These same sites work just fine when accessed on other client machines in the network.
Something definetly aint right here!!!
Luckily Todd Klindt saved the day for me, he blogs this issue nicely here. Further to that Ishai Sagi also has a blog post on it. So have a read of those awesome blog posts and then check out http://support.microsoft.com/kb/896861 for a resolution, the cause is stated in the hotfix as:
"A loopback check security feature that is designed to help prevent reflection attacks on your computer. Therefore, authentication fails if the FQDN or the custom host header that you use does not match the local computer name."
The resolution involes a little bit of regedit.
Phew disaster averted!
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Perth SharePoint User Group Lead
I am the new Lead of the Perth SharePoint User Group !
http://www.sharepointusers.org.au/Perth/Lists/Announcements/DispForm.aspx?ID=23
Rick Rosato of Connected Systems resurrected the Perth SharePoint User Group in early 2007 and has done a great job of running the user group since then, we’ve had some great sessions in the last two years and many people have benefitted from the user group. Rick has decided to hand over the presidency to me so he can focus on other things, and I gladly accept the position and all the responsibility that it entails – cheers Rick !
Recent Meetings & Presentations
Late last month, on the 25th March Jeremy Thake of Readify presented an excellent talk on unit testing in SharePoint, check out the webcast here.
For this months meeting, on the 21st April, the infamous Paul Culmsee of Seven Sigma Business Solutions graced the Perth SharePoint User Group as a speaker for the very first time, to present a talk on "Wicked Problems and SharePoint - Rethinking the Approach" you can view the presentation slides on Paul's blog.
If you are based in Perth and working with SharePoint, you've got to come along to our meetings!
Check out the user group website regularly for up and coming events. If you are keen on sharing your SharePoint adventures with others, get in contact with me, as we need speakers! We'll slot you in as a presenter so you can share your experiences with the community.
http://www.sharepointusers.org.au/Perth/Lists/Announcements/DispForm.aspx?ID=23
Rick Rosato of Connected Systems resurrected the Perth SharePoint User Group in early 2007 and has done a great job of running the user group since then, we’ve had some great sessions in the last two years and many people have benefitted from the user group. Rick has decided to hand over the presidency to me so he can focus on other things, and I gladly accept the position and all the responsibility that it entails – cheers Rick !
Recent Meetings & Presentations
Late last month, on the 25th March Jeremy Thake of Readify presented an excellent talk on unit testing in SharePoint, check out the webcast here.
For this months meeting, on the 21st April, the infamous Paul Culmsee of Seven Sigma Business Solutions graced the Perth SharePoint User Group as a speaker for the very first time, to present a talk on "Wicked Problems and SharePoint - Rethinking the Approach" you can view the presentation slides on Paul's blog.
If you are based in Perth and working with SharePoint, you've got to come along to our meetings!
Check out the user group website regularly for up and coming events. If you are keen on sharing your SharePoint adventures with others, get in contact with me, as we need speakers! We'll slot you in as a presenter so you can share your experiences with the community.
Thursday, March 19, 2009
10 New Themes for SharePoint!
Noticed this post on Randy Drisgills blog regarding 10 new awesome themes recently released by Microsoft
http://blog.drisgill.com/2009/03/microsoft-released-10-new-sharepoint.html
They look great - best themes for SharePoint I have ever laid my eyes on. I also agree with Randy that these should have been released in Solution package(s). Still the format they are released in are better than those extra Master pages released by Microsoft a year or two ago.
Download the 10 new themes here:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=0a87658f-20b8-4dcc-ad7a-09ad22641f3a
Update
Daniel Brown - SharePoint MVP based out of Adelaide, South Australia has "solutionised" the themes. Check them out here - http://www.danielbrown.id.au/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=256
http://blog.drisgill.com/2009/03/microsoft-released-10-new-sharepoint.html
They look great - best themes for SharePoint I have ever laid my eyes on. I also agree with Randy that these should have been released in Solution package(s). Still the format they are released in are better than those extra Master pages released by Microsoft a year or two ago.
Download the 10 new themes here:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=0a87658f-20b8-4dcc-ad7a-09ad22641f3a
Update
Daniel Brown - SharePoint MVP based out of Adelaide, South Australia has "solutionised" the themes. Check them out here - http://www.danielbrown.id.au/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=256
Friday, January 30, 2009
Go and download SPDisposeCheck !
If you are into WSS 3.0 and MOSS 2007 custom development go and download the SharePoint Dispose Checker Tool (aka SPDisposeCheck) -
http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/SPDisposeCheck
Announced by Paul Andrew at Microsoft -
http://blogs.msdn.com/pandrew/archive/2009/01/29/spdisposecheck-v1-3-1-is-released.aspx
Proper disposal of SharePoint objects in custom code is very important. If you are causing memory leaks you will create memory pressure problems in production Farms, which can result in serious side affects and system downtime.
http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/SPDisposeCheck
Announced by Paul Andrew at Microsoft -
http://blogs.msdn.com/pandrew/archive/2009/01/29/spdisposecheck-v1-3-1-is-released.aspx
Proper disposal of SharePoint objects in custom code is very important. If you are causing memory leaks you will create memory pressure problems in production Farms, which can result in serious side affects and system downtime.
Sunday, November 30, 2008
Announcing SharePoint Site Configurator
http://www.codeplex.com/spsiteconfigurator
One controversial topic of late is - should you develop with custom site definitions? A lot of people argue no - they are too complex and will cause upgrade problems into the future.
The majority of SharePoint developers should be familiar with the SharePoint Solutions and Features framework for developing and deploying customisations to SharePoint. A smaller number of developers work with and are familiar with custom site definitions - they are complex and difficult to master. This can cause problems with resourcing as some SharePoint developers will not be productive having to sort out and work with another developers site definition.
To complicate things further - when developing with custom site definitions one can go for the miniminalist approach where most work is implemented in Features, and these Features are simply referenced in the site definition for activation purposes, or you can go ahead and build the work straight into the site definitions. Another problem is developers use the OOTB WSS and MOSS site definitions as examples, and many of those implement functionality in the site definitions themselves instead of in Features.
So it's great to see MCS release the SharePoint Site Configurator on codeplex which will hopefully help to do away with complex custom site definitions.
One controversial topic of late is - should you develop with custom site definitions? A lot of people argue no - they are too complex and will cause upgrade problems into the future.
The majority of SharePoint developers should be familiar with the SharePoint Solutions and Features framework for developing and deploying customisations to SharePoint. A smaller number of developers work with and are familiar with custom site definitions - they are complex and difficult to master. This can cause problems with resourcing as some SharePoint developers will not be productive having to sort out and work with another developers site definition.
To complicate things further - when developing with custom site definitions one can go for the miniminalist approach where most work is implemented in Features, and these Features are simply referenced in the site definition for activation purposes, or you can go ahead and build the work straight into the site definitions. Another problem is developers use the OOTB WSS and MOSS site definitions as examples, and many of those implement functionality in the site definitions themselves instead of in Features.
So it's great to see MCS release the SharePoint Site Configurator on codeplex which will hopefully help to do away with complex custom site definitions.
Monday, November 24, 2008
Isolator for SharePoint !
If you are a big fan of TDD and you develop on SharePoint then you need to check out Typemock Isolator for SharePoint - develop and test SharePoint code without a SharePoint server - how cool is that!!!
Head over to Andrew Woodward's blog - http://www.21apps.com for some more TDD goodness - specifically these two posts that link to whitepapers and code for download.
http://www.21apps.com/agile/beginners-guide-to-test-driven-web-part-development/
http://www.21apps.com/agile/unit-testing-sharepoint-getting-into-the-object-model/
Typemock are offering their new product for unit testing SharePoint called Isolator For SharePoint, for a special introduction price. it is the only tool that allows you to unit test SharePoint without a SharePoint server. To learn more click here.
The first 50 bloggers who blog this text in their blog and tell us about it, will get a Full Isolator license, Free. for rules and info click here.
Head over to Andrew Woodward's blog - http://www.21apps.com for some more TDD goodness - specifically these two posts that link to whitepapers and code for download.
http://www.21apps.com/agile/beginners-guide-to-test-driven-web-part-development/
http://www.21apps.com/agile/unit-testing-sharepoint-getting-into-the-object-model/
Typemock are offering their new product for unit testing SharePoint called Isolator For SharePoint, for a special introduction price. it is the only tool that allows you to unit test SharePoint without a SharePoint server. To learn more click here.
The first 50 bloggers who blog this text in their blog and tell us about it, will get a Full Isolator license, Free. for rules and info click here.
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
Anouncing SPDisposeCheck for SharePoint Developers
http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2008/11/12/announcing-spdisposecheck-tool-for-sharepoint-developers.aspx
So what is SPDisposeCheck
"SPDisposeCheck, will open your custom compiled assemblies recursively and validate them against the Microsoft published guidance. The output from the tool will contain messages that may indicate the SPSite and SPWeb Dispose() methods guidance is are not being followed in the customers source code. While these messages need expert evaluation in order to determine if the software is not performing properly, in some cases just running the tool on your custom code can lead you to simple fixes that improve the quality and performance of custom code on SharePoint. "
"This tool is planned for release during the coming North American Winter. Customers who are currently experiencing difficulties with memory management in their custom applications should review the guidance listed above. Customers who are currently experiencing difficulties with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 should contact their regular Microsoft Customer Support Services contact, or refer to http://support.microsoft.com/."
Disposing of SharePoint objects correctly is a big problem in custom developed code, if your SharePoint implementation is constantly "Dieing" ie, after regular use the memory and cpu max out and you need to reboot your server to get things going again then its highly likely you are running custom SharePoint Object Model code that is not correctly disposing of objects causing memory leaks. The rate of memory leakage can be significant.
I have since this ugly problem rear its head in a number of projects I have been involved in. So yeah when you finally do fixup the problem and dispose of objects correctly you will notice the improvement of system performance and your server should run as if it has a simple vanilla install of SharePoint.
Another major problem with this is that.... These Dispose() rules are COMPLEX. The biggest problem faced is the difference in coding patterns depending on where your custom code is running.
ie. If your SharePoint OM code is running in a Web Part or Custom Control then you have access to the SPContext.Current object which is your starting point to get to your SPSite, SPWeb, SPList, SPListItem, SPFile etc. etc. its important to note that objects accessed from the current context should not be disposed of. The SPContext.Current.Site and its SPWebs that hang of it are singletons and should not be disposed as SharePoint makes use of these and will need to possibly use these objects after your custom code executes. That means the using(SPWeb =...) pattern will dispose of objects you are not meant to, you will get an error.
BUT - if you are running the code in a console app or 'out-of-context' then you should always dispose the objects as you are the one creating them.
Confused? Complicated? Yeh it is but it is important to understand the issues if you are writing custom SharePoint Object Model code.
So what is SPDisposeCheck
"SPDisposeCheck, will open your custom compiled assemblies recursively and validate them against the Microsoft published guidance. The output from the tool will contain messages that may indicate the SPSite and SPWeb Dispose() methods guidance is are not being followed in the customers source code. While these messages need expert evaluation in order to determine if the software is not performing properly, in some cases just running the tool on your custom code can lead you to simple fixes that improve the quality and performance of custom code on SharePoint. "
"This tool is planned for release during the coming North American Winter. Customers who are currently experiencing difficulties with memory management in their custom applications should review the guidance listed above. Customers who are currently experiencing difficulties with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 should contact their regular Microsoft Customer Support Services contact, or refer to http://support.microsoft.com/."
Disposing of SharePoint objects correctly is a big problem in custom developed code, if your SharePoint implementation is constantly "Dieing" ie, after regular use the memory and cpu max out and you need to reboot your server to get things going again then its highly likely you are running custom SharePoint Object Model code that is not correctly disposing of objects causing memory leaks. The rate of memory leakage can be significant.
I have since this ugly problem rear its head in a number of projects I have been involved in. So yeah when you finally do fixup the problem and dispose of objects correctly you will notice the improvement of system performance and your server should run as if it has a simple vanilla install of SharePoint.
Another major problem with this is that.... These Dispose() rules are COMPLEX. The biggest problem faced is the difference in coding patterns depending on where your custom code is running.
ie. If your SharePoint OM code is running in a Web Part or Custom Control then you have access to the SPContext.Current object which is your starting point to get to your SPSite, SPWeb, SPList, SPListItem, SPFile etc. etc. its important to note that objects accessed from the current context should not be disposed of. The SPContext.Current.Site and its SPWebs that hang of it are singletons and should not be disposed as SharePoint makes use of these and will need to possibly use these objects after your custom code executes. That means the using(SPWeb =...) pattern will dispose of objects you are not meant to, you will get an error.
BUT - if you are running the code in a console app or 'out-of-context' then you should always dispose the objects as you are the one creating them.
Confused? Complicated? Yeh it is but it is important to understand the issues if you are writing custom SharePoint Object Model code.
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