Category Archives: Windows
Adding Active Directory Accounts to SharePoint 2010
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In my previous post ‘Adding Active Directory Accounts to SharePoint‘ I outlined how you can first create AD accounts then add them to SharePoint 2007. Since the AD portion still stays the same this will outline how to add users to your SharePoint instance.
Log onto your server with appropriate administrator right to add SharePoint accounts and click: Site Actions>Site Settings>Users and Permissions>People and groups. You will land in the ‘Visitors’ group page. Continue reading
SharePoint 2007 vs SharePoint 2010 Comparison
This was such a great piece of complied work I wanted to post it here for informational purposes. All credit goes to Richard Harbridge at Richard Harbridge: Insights. The original link is: SharePoint 2007 vs SharePoint 2010. Continue reading
Adding, Deploying, Removing, and Most All Things Involving Solutions and SharePoint 2010
Part of being an administrator in SharePoint is you have to able to navigate solutions packages. While I won’t get into all the details of what a solutions package is and does for SharePoint, suffice to say that they will add functionality to your SharePoint site.
In our example I’ll use the Codplex MiniCalendar Web Part.
When you download this solution package you will see that it will come as a <FILE>.wsp format. So the question becomes: how do I go from this WSP file to a deployed and usable solution? Continue reading
Create a new UPN suffix in AD
Just a short quick note that seems to be missing from the Internet. To add a new Alternative UPN suffix to your domain controller, you will need to do the following:
1. Goto Administrative Tools -> Active Directory Domains and Trusts.
2. Right-click on Active Directory Domains and Trusts from the top of the MMC tree.
3. Add the domain name you want to use for your new Alternative UPN suffix.
Disable SSL 2.0 and PCT 1.0
When a company has gone through an external security check on of the most common failure is that SSL 2.0 and PCT 1.0 are enabled.
Why is this a big deal? What this means is that if a client application tries to connect to your server on one of this older protocols it will be allowed. The protocols are easily broken and therefore not recommended. To disable this do the following.
- Open regedit
- For PCT 1.0 go to:
- HKey_Local_Machine\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\SecurityProviders \SCHANNEL\Protocols\PCT 1.0\Server
- For SSL 2.0
- HKey_Local_Machine\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\SecurityProviders \SCHANNEL\Protocols\SLL 2.0\Server
- Add a value of data type DWORD called ‘Enabled’
- In the binary value set to ‘00000000’ (the equivalent of ‘0’ turning it off)
- Reboot you computer.
Using contig for single file defragmentation
From time to time you will need to use all available tools at your disposal. There are even times when you have to find a quick fix if not the a long term fix for a problem. The contig.exe is one such tool. You can download it from here. I ran across this particular tool when I have to gain access to a massive mailbox that had grown beyond normal sizes and consequently was also heavily fragmented. While normally I would use the build in Windows disk defragmentor in this case it would have taken to long, or even not been able to finish at all. This tool lets you analyze and fragment a single or group of files. Once I defragmented the single file I was able to open the target mailbox and start at least archiving unneeded messages. This can be used in any other situations as well to: a heavily fragmented database file, or even attempting to degragment DLL fiels for better performance.
Problem: How to defragment a single file
Fix: Download and copy the contig.exe file to your ‘/system32′ directory. open a command line windows and navigate to the directory that contains the file(s) you would like to defragment. type ‘contig <FILE(S)>’. IF you would like to see howdefragmented the file is you can use the ‘-a’ to analize your file in the following fashion: ‘contig -a <FILE(S)>’.
Drive mapping in Terminal services part 2
This is one of those quirky issue that will not go away. As we noted in my steps from an earlier post Drive mapping in Terminal services this should have let your user be able to connect via an RDP session and use the clinet mapped drives. As some you have noted this doesn’t always work. I’ve done a bit more research and found that sometimes you need to take an extra step. Please note that this requires a registry hack. If you are not confortable please use backup or find someone who is more capable to give you a hand.
Problem: Original Drive mapping in Terminal services steps still don’t show mapped drives
Fix: Open you registry editor on the server using ‘regedit’. browse to the following key:
‘HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESYSTEMCurrentControlSetControlTerminal ServerWdsrdpwdfEnablePrintRDR’. change the value from 0 to 1.
I’m not sure why changing the print redirector has any bearing on this particular problem, but it seems to do the trick once you log off and log on once again.
Identify an Isolated IIS FTP site
As I have come to notice alot of times there are too many chefs in the administration kitchen. Often there are requests that are filled but never documented. In such cases it is always best to check an environment out before you start to make changes of your own. In one particular instance manipulating FTP sites in IIS 6.0 can be particularly problematic. Ever since IIS 6 was released a new feature called isolated FTP came as a welcome feature but in typical Microsoft fashion is lacked some basic user functionalities. How can you identify a isolated FTP site? or change an established isolated FTP site to a regular site?
You might think why go through all of this trouble when it would be easier to delete and recreate? In some cases this is not always appropriate. After all this is someone else’s server and often just deleting things causes more problems that fixes.
Problem: identify or change an IIS 6 isolated FTP site
Fix: First open IIS manger and navigate to your FTP sites folder. Note the identifier of the FTP site in question. The identifier is usually some random but unique 9 digit number. Next, open your IIS metabase explorer. If you don’t already have the IIS metabase explorer you can find it here. Navigate to <server name> -> LM -> MSFTPSVC -> <identifier number>. At this point the panel on the right should be showing to much information, the vital information will have to be reveled. On the menu bar select ‘view’ and enaable both ‘Inherited Data’ and ‘Secure Data’. The right hand panel should now show much more information. The particular value of intrest to us is:
- ID: 5012
- Name: UserIsolationMode
- Data Type: DWORD
The Data will determine the type of FTP site it is:
- 0: standard FTP site
- 1: isolated FTP site
- 2: isolated FTP site using active directory
You can of course change these values but do so with care.
MySQL not loading in PHP on Windows
There seems to be bug in MySQL 5.0.41. I stumbled across this when I tried to install a new isntallation of wordpress with the up to date versions I keeps getting a message “cannot load MySQL extension, please check PHP Configuration”. You can verify this also by running the following command: “php -m”. If you recieve a message lett ing you know that it can not load the MySQL dynamic library then this might be your problem. this is a know bug documented here:
http://bugs.mysql.com/bug.php?id=28358
problem: MySQL no loading in PHP
Fix: download a recompled version of libmysql.dll at:
http://www.tomdonovan.net/download/libmysql_5.0.41_Win32.zip
Replace all instances on your system.
thanks to the much smarter MySQL folks for this temporary fix.