27 August 2010

How do I – Delete my SharePoint Shared Service Provider (SSP) when it fails to delete with STSADM

When you enter
STSADM -o deletessp
from your SharePoint web server command line, you should get this:
image_3_44AEF49C
If you then proceed to try and delete your SSP with a command such as
STSADM -o deletessp –title SharedServices1
but it still fails to delete, then you could use the undocumented -force flag thus:
STSADM -o deletessp –title SharedServices1 -force
Which should yield this:
image_6_2FBD7229
Gotta love those little –force flags.


Cheers
C

19 August 2010

How do I – Increase the SharePoint Foundation site template size limit

This one was undocumented in SharePoint 2007 / WSS 3.0 and is still undocumented in SharePoint 2010 / SPF. I posted about this back in 2007 for the previous version, but was asked the same question in the SharePoint Support Forums. A little digging and firing off a test confirmed that the command has stayed intact for the latest version as well. Using STSADM from a command windows:
STSADM -o setproperty -pn max-template-document-size -pv 524288000
Let it run and upon completion, you should see this:
image_3_3604BAB5

Cheers
C

17 August 2010

How do I – Move my SharePoint databases from a 32 bit Windows Server 2003 x86 with SQL Server 2005 x86 to a new SQL instance on a 64 bit Windows Server 2008 R2 x64 with SQL Server 2008 R2 x64



As part the migration plan for a major customer of mine, we had a phase scheduled to move the back end databases from 32 bit Windows Server 2003/SQL Server 2005 to 64 bit Windows Server 2008 R2/SQL Server 2008 R2. This brought back to light the question of how to move your content to a new SQL Server. There are many good articles out there, but this worked well for us.

http://www.cjvandyk.com/blog/Articles/How-do-I—Move-my-SharePoint-databases-from-32-bit-SQL-Server-2005-x86-to-a-new-Instance-on-64-bit-SQL-Server-2008-R2-x64.aspx



Cheers
C

15 August 2010

Nothing gets your blood boiling like Credit Card FRAUD!!!



I’m one of, what I’d like to believe, the most careful people around when it comes to dealing with my confidential information. I use Roboform for all my passwords which means I don’t have a single password that’s either the same, or easy to guess. I have Lifelock for protecting my identity and I check all my accounts weekly when I download them into Quicken for review. I like to think that I’m very careful about these things.

Let me tell you… nothing, and I mean NOTHING kicks your weekend off on a sour note like looking at your credit card transactions in Quicken and seeing nearly $2,000.00 in charges that you didn’t make. That happened to me this weekend.

I found myself staring at four charges on my company credit card. What struck me was not the amount of the charges, or even the number of charges even considering I had not used the card actively in almost 9 months. No, it was the PLACE where the charges originated. The payee was “Lollapalooza”. I thought to myself… what the hell is Lollapalooza???!!! So the first thing I did, after noticing there were three charges to it, was to Google it. A music festival in Chicago? That happened this past week? Huh? I’m from Indianapolis so it was clear to me that this was fraud. On top of that, the was also a charge to T-Mobile which is NOT my cell phone provider. Sadly, I’m on of the schmucks who are stuck with AT&T because I love my iPhone.

It seems that my credit card number was somehow lifted and used. What still confuses me is the fact that I had not used the card in 9 months. The last time I used it, I set it up on file with my dry cleaning service and my limmo service in Boston. That’s it. It’s been in my vault ever since. Of course, being my company credit card, it’s number had been used with multiple other companies and services and all I can think is that one of them was breached and my number was stolen as recently as last weekend.

In any event, I proceeded to logon to my bank’s web site to try and find the number to call in case of fraud. Banks should REALLY get some usability experts to design the web UI. It should be as easy as logging onto my bank web site, clicking on the account in question, and then having a menu option called “Report Fraud”. Yes, yes, I know the bank needs us to call and report it in person, and I’m not saying allow me to do it online, but at least have the link give me the phone number to call. I shouldn’t have to click through multiple customer support pages just to find out what number to call. But that’s just me…

I made the call and got the card cancelled. Thankfully I’m not responsible for the fraudulent charges, but I would like to know where the breach took place. The moral of the story is to watch your accounts closely. These kind of things are, unfortunately, going to happen. The best we can do is respond as quickly as possible. I wish we could do more…



Cheers
C

09 August 2010

How do I – Get a list of all databases attached to my SQL Server 2008 R2 database server

Another quick one… You can run this stored procedure:
exec sp_databases
Which should yield the following output:
image_3_2A71938E
or you could try this stored procedure:
exec sp_helpdb
Which would yield some more extended information thus:
image_6_2A71938E
or if you just want the names, you could execute this “undocumented” stored procedure:
exec sp_msforeachdb 'print ''?'''
Which will yield this:
image_9_2A71938E
Or you could do the manual step of executing the following select query:
select name from sys.databases
Which will yield:
image_12_2A71938E

Cheers
C

02 August 2010

Creating a HTML Redirect page



Every so often, you run across the need to redirect a page somewhere else, like after a server migration when DNS isn’t used. By simply adding a HTTP-EQUIV meta tag to the

of your page, you can redirect elsewhere in a jiffy. Syntax isn’t complex, but must be correct to function properly. Here’s the syntax:



Cheers
C

Microsoft Authentication Library (MSAL) Overview

The Microsoft Authentication Library (MSAL) is a powerful library designed to simplify the authentication process for applications that conn...