Monthly Archives: July 2009
SharePoint and Mapped Drives…
An incredibly useful feature of SharePoint Document libraries is their ability to use the WebDAV protocol to be accessed via Windows Explorer.
The below scenarios will use screen shots and steps from a Windows XP Pro SP3 workstation that is NOT bound to the same domain as the SharePoint Implementation. This mimics behavior that would be seen by a kiosk or dedicated printing workstation. The SharePoint installation is based on SharePoint Services 3.0 SP2, running on Windows Server 2003 (IIS 6) with WebDAV extensions allowed.
Log in already!
One of the biggest user peeves with SharePoint is the authentication prompts. I get questions about this all the time, so I thought I would explain some simple configuration changes either you or your system administrator can implement to make your SharePoint experience just a bit better.
There are 2 scenarios that I will cover:
- Visiting the site from your work network; this assumes your workstation is bound to the same domain as the SharePoint implementation.
- Visiting a SharePoint site of another company, such as an extranet for a partner company. This would assume your workstation is bound to a different domain than the SharePoint implementation –or- Visiting the site from a workstation that is not bound to any domain (home computer or workgroup).
There are of course scenarios where you will get prompted regardless, in case 2 above, if you open a Microsoft Office document (Excel, Word, etc), after the corresponding Office application opens, you will be presented with a dialogue box requesting your credentials. This is by design, meaning when the Office application opens, it is initiating a new session to the server, this new session does not have access to the credentials you offered up when initially logging into the site.
If you fall into the category of case 1, and you are being prompted for credentials when opening Office documents from SharePoint libraries, follow the procedure described for that scenario.
Is Charter Throttling My Bandwidth?
I had recently worked on a problem with a customer in which they had been experiencing issues with the phone quality of their Voice-over-IP (VOIP) phone system at one of their branch offices (VPN connection). During my review, I was told the Internet connection was supposed to be 20×2 (20 Mbps down and 2 Mbps up), but my speed tests were showing 3Mbps down/512 Kbps up. What?!
I asked my customer to verify with their ISP (Charter Communications) what the contracted bandwidth was and they confirmed that they were paying for 20×2 service. Many phone calls later, the customer determined "unofficially" from a friendly insider at the ISP that they may be throttling their bandwidth due to BitTorrent traffic. A BitTorrent client was discovered in use by an employee at that location. After the BitTorrent client was stopped, the bandwidth resumed to normal levels.
NtFrs Error 13559 OR When in Doubt, Read the Error
A customer was complaining that their “sysvol” share on their Windows Server 2003 R2 domain controllers was not replicating content (updated group policies, login scripts, etc.). Upon initial examination, I ran across this error in the event logs:
Event Type: Error
Event Source: NtFrs
Event Category: None
Event ID: 13559
Continue reading →
3-party IM conference with OCS 2007 and OCS 2007 R2
OK, so you just got your shiny new Office Communications Server (OCS) 2007 (R1 or R2) implementation up and running, and whoa!, you start receiving complaints that users are unable to initiate multiparty instant messaging (IM) sessions, or multi-party conferences.
The setup:
OCS 2007 R1 and R2 (Standard)
Cisco Unified Presence Server v7.0.2
Cisco Call Manager v7.0.1.11000-2
In OCS 2007, the error reads as:
“Your attempt to start a conference was unsuccessful. If you need further assistance, contact your system administrator.”
Love for the Linux Users
It never hurts to have a quick reference for Linux administration commands, so I wanted to put out some helpful items for user, file, directory, and group management.
Move all databases (Office SharePoint Server 2007)
If you’re like me, this is definitely in your Top 10 WSS/MOSS 2007 requests.
Never fails, the database server is provisioned with less than adequate storage, or the company utilization and adoption of SharePoint has been more than successful.
None the less, the SharePoint and related databases have or are on track to outgrow their environment. This used to be a trial and error procedure, as there was no clear documentation from Microsoft, and community documentation was, less than complete.
Using VMware Server 1.x to Break Exchange 2007 OWA
Another dumb mistake: installed VMware Server 1.8 on an Exchange 2007 SP1 server with the client access role installed. Instead of choosing the “custom” install option, as I usually do, I was in a hurry and chose “complete”. Halfway through the install, I remembered why I never blindly choose “complete”; VMware Server Management Interface. VMSI is a web-based management interface for VMware Server that when installed changes the preferences for IIS by enabling 32-bit ASP on 64-bit Windows. This breaks OWA (64-bit ASP) because IIS 6.0 does not support running 32-bit mode and 64-bit mode at the same time on 64-bit Windows.