Matt Groves -my soapbox

I had call recently to generate some passwords to be used for service accounts, for dev/test/demo systems I like to stick with pretty basic passwords, especially when other people frequently need to know them, for example I often use the MSFT favourite: pass@word1

For service accounts in production environments I like to use something more secure, although ultimately less useable/memorable, that said, I see lots of clients using things like "5hareP01nt" or "M0555erv1c3" which although much better than "password" (etc) aren't very good. For personal use (where security is less of a concern and generally only I ever use the system anyway!) I will often use lyrics or quotes (such as "MayTh3F0rc3B3W1thY0u" or "J0nny51nTh3Ba53m3nt"). For secure systems I will often just close my eyes and slap the keyboard a few times.

I set about writing something to generate passwords, using some VBScript and an array of entries in the ASCII table (33 to 126 will do nicely), then someone pointed out this site http://www.pctools.com/guides/password/ and I abandoned my project!!

Cross-posted from Matt's SharePoint Blog on www.sharepointblogs.com/mattg

SharePoint designer will allow the creation of looping workflows (the "validate this workflow" check doesn't pick it up). So you can create a workflow that does the below:

• Step1 – where STATUS = draft, set STATUS to pending
• Step2 – where STATUS = pending, set STATUS to draft

Round and round it will go!!

Add some email to get spammed!

• Step1 – where STATUS = draft, set STATUS to pending
• Step2 – email someone
• Step3 – where STATUS = pending, set STATUS to draft

 

Cross-posted from Matt's SharePoint Blog on www.sharepointblogs.com/mattg

MSFT have (at last) published the 2007 updated "good/Better/best" Office & SharePoint integration document...

Get it here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=E0D05A69-F67B-4D37-961E-2DB3C4065CB9&displaylang=en

 

Cross-posted from Matt's SharePoint Blog on www.sharepointblogs.com/mattg

After completing your capacity planning excercise prior to deploying MOSS/WSS3 you will have the number of content DB's you are going to start with (a very different proposition to working out the number of content DB's you'll end up with!). For the sake of the article let's say the number came out at 22 per WebApp.

So, you can either create 21 DB's manually (remember, you already have one) and then assign them manually, which will be about 90 seconds to create each DB in SQL, plus around 60 seconds to attach each DB to the WebApp, so it will take (1+1.5)*21 for each WebApp, totalling 52.5 minutes of repetative boredom (unless you have a Cross-posted from Matt's SharePoint Blog on www.sharepointblogs.com/mattg/

The following error was shown after clicking on the 'Search Settings' link (http://server:port/ssp/admin/_layouts/searchsspsettings.aspx):

Retrieving the COM class factory for component with CLSID {GUID of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server Search Gathering Manager} failed due to the following error: 8007042d

This was due to the Office Server Search service not being in the running state on the Search (Index) server, this was down to the server being moved into a production OU where a GPO setting removed the “log on as service” right from the search service account, after the server was rebooted the service didn’t start (log on failure), yet the SCA UI showed that the service was “started”… Strange…

Why not report: Failed to connect to search service ??? Cross-posted from Matt's SharePoint Blog on www.sharepointblogs.com/mattg/

The nice people at Combined Knowledge are hosting another SUGUK session: http://suguk.org/forums/permalink/2342/2300/ShowThread.aspx#2300

Just down the road from home! Cross-posted from Matt's SharePoint Blog on www.sharepointblogs.com/mattg/

The VPC2007 (Virtual PC) Beta has ended and it has been RTW (Released to Web).

Get it from Microsoft download center.

VPC2007 offers:

• Hardware assisted virtualisation (supporting the new technology from Intel and AMD)
• PXE Boot support
• Vista support (as host and guest)
• x64 host support (still no x64 guests!)

I am surprised that VPC2007 didn't include more functionality to better rival the market leaders, still at least it's free... Cross-posted from Matt's SharePoint Blog on www.sharepointblogs.com/mattg/

I (we - counting the small contribution from Tom Short!) have discovered a bug with the site collection creation/deletion process.

If you create a SharePoint Site Collection at the root of your web app (without SHM) and then delete it, you are unable to create a new site collection at root!!

Deleting and recreating the web application resolves this but is somewhat of a sledgehammer approach and one that could not be used where there are other site collections in the web application...

And yes, we are using RTM...

A lot of the posts to various Rugby forums, and a couple of articles from Rugby journo's, described the French side as "aging" and/or "underperforming", well, they seemed to perform reasonable well to win against the Irish (and Italians last weekend), and certainly the last minute try, while typical of the bloody French, demonstrates a level of determination and fitness...

I also seem to remember a side being described as "too old" and "underperforming" prior to a tournament 4 years ago and they did alright (if I remember correctly)... The French will always be a decent bet!

I've been looking at Exchange2007 for use in a demo environment (that will be virtualised and therefore 32bit) and a colleague pointed out the really useful blog post on Scott Schnoll's blog – summarises the situation very well indeed.

Of course, the 32/64 issue would disappear if Virtual Server supported x64 guests, but that's another topic entirely and one that was very hot at the start of the Virtual Server Sp1 beta...

On the whole I have been quite disappointed with the Live From Abbey Road series, maybe I was expecting more, maybe I believed the hype, anyhow, last night (thanks to MCE recording it) I watched last week's LFAR with Gnarls Barkley, The Feeling and The Killers.

The Killers were fantastic, although I was very impressed with Sams Town, I hadn't heard/seen them performing live before and they blew me away, stunning performance.

My new server arrived last week. Me happy geek ;)

I had been looking for a while for a box to replace my aging Proliant's and Poweredge's, in the end I found an IBM eserver-x for a reasonable price on Ebay, spec is:

4 x Xeon 2.0GHz (HT shows OS 8 CPU's), 14GB RAM, 2 36GB SCSI disks (RAID1).

I have ordered a 1TB Western Digital MyBook firewire disk for data storage...

<happy geek>

So, if anyone is interested in a Proliant (1850R - Xeon 550/768MB/2x18GB) or a Poweredge (6400 – 4x Xeon 550/4GB/4x36, and, 2400 – 2x Xeon 600/1GB/6x18GB), drop me a line – or they'll be on Ebay...

Having just rebuilt my home PC with Vista as I have never and will (probably) never trust OS upgrades, I have been re-downloading and installing my applications, one of which is Colligo reader.

Just installed the latest build (1.9) and have been delighted to find that a feature I suggested, when I met a couple of the guys from Colligo in Seattle last year, has been incorporating into the product!

Within IE there is a menu option to attach the current site to Colligo reader:

You then get a confirmation prompt:

The site is then launched in the Colligo app, after selecting what you want to syncronise, it (errr) syncronises, after that, your site content (whatever was selected) is available offline...

So, thanks to Bill England and Anthony Van Houton at Colligo for listening to feedback, I hope the feature is well received!

I'll be in touch with Bill to see if this earns me a free Contributor licence!!

When accessing a MOSS public facing site that has presence enabled the user may see a browser warning about "Name ActiveX control", this is easily resolved by following the MSFT KB article 931509.

Interesting article on MOSS RM capability and uses over at Document media:

http://www.documentmedia.com/ME2/dirmod.asp?sid=85E19EF231F247A6A5E041508233D23C&nm=Content+Library&type=Publishing&mod=Publications::Article&mid=8F3A7027421841978F18BE895F87F791&tier=4&id=2E6E5035A9254CA2BB3A5071CAB33B05

Microsoft was quite brave when they changed the menu structure in Office to something new. Users have been using the "old" menu's for over 10 years. But things must move forwards, and a fundamental change is often required, and the ribbon is just another example of where MSFT have got it right.

I actually quite like it. But while I am not alone, there are lots of users who do not like it, and often for good reason. What I felt was missing was the equivalent of the "new ways to do familiar tasks" available with Windows 2000 to help NT4 admins with performing day-to-day maintenance, well it seems MSFT HAVE got something to help (they just didn't seem to shout about it!).

The command reference guides are available for Word and Excel (I suspect the Excel one will prove most useful).

Ever had the problem where you have multiple content databases for a given web application in WSS and need to find which one has the site you’re after?

Probably not, I’d only had the odd one until recently, so I wrote the following script to help out…

This works only where you have single SQL server with content databases, if you have content databases across multiple SQL servers you’ll need to modify this script slightly…

Font is quite small to fit it all on one screen!! - Simply copy-paste into your favourite script editor (I like PrimalScript)...

** Start Script **

'declare

Dim debugmode

' read CommandLine args into vars

' no validation here so they must all be complete

For Each oArg In WScript.Arguments

  sSwitch = LCase(Left(oArg,3))

  sValue = Right(oArg,Len(oArg)-3)

  Select Case sSwitch

    Case "-x:"

        Debugoption = sValue

    Case "-y:"

        SQLServer = sValue

    Case "-z:"

        ConfigDB = sValue

    Case "-s:"

        SiteSearch = SValue

  End Select

Next

'Debug Option

'error and bomb out if not set

If Debugoption = "debugon" Then

        debugmode = 1

        MsgBox "Debugging activated!", vbOKOnly Or vbExclamation

        MsgBox "SQLServer = " & SQLServer, vbOKOnly Or vbExclamation

        MsgBox "ConfigDB = " & ConfigDB, vbOKOnly Or vbExclamation

        MsgBox "SiteSearch = " & SiteSearch, vbOKOnly Or vbExclamation

Elseif Debugoption = "debugoff" Then

        debugmode = 0

Else

        MsgBox "Debugoption not specified, please set using:" & (Chr(13)) & "'sitebackup.vbs -x:debugon' for ON" & (Chr(13)) & "'sitebackup.vbs -x:debugoff' for OFF" & (Chr(13)) & "this utility will do nothing without the correct command line arguments!"  & (Chr(13)) & (Chr(13)) & "Matt is a lazy coder!", vbOKOnly Or vbCritical, "BIG FAT ERROR"

        WScript.Quit

End if

If SQLServer = "" Then

        'error out

        MsgBox "SQL Server not specified, please set using:" & (Chr(13)) & "'sitebackup.vbs -y:SERVERNAME'" & (Chr(13)) & "This utility will do nothing without the correct command line arguments!"  & (Chr(13)) & (Chr(13)) & "Matt is a lazy coder!", vbOKOnly Or vbCritical, "BIG FAT ERROR"

        WScript.Quit

End If

If ConfigDB = "" Then

        'error

        MsgBox "ConfigDB not specified, please set using:" & (Chr(13)) & "'sitebackup.vbs -z:DATABASENAME'" & (Chr(13)) & "This utility will do nothing without the correct command line arguments!"  & (Chr(13)) & (Chr(13)) & "Matt is a lazy coder!", vbOKOnly Or vbCritical, "BIG FAT ERROR"

        WScript.Quit

End If

If SiteSearch = "" Then

        'error

        MsgBox "Site URL not specified, please set using:" & (Chr(13)) & "'sitebackup.vbs -s:http://server/sites/site'" & (Chr(13)) & "This utility will do nothing without the correct command line arguments!"  & (Chr(13)) & (Chr(13)) & "Matt is a lazy coder!", vbOKOnly Or vbCritical, "BIG FAT ERROR"

        WScript.Quit

End If

filedatestamp = "Y" & year(now()) & "-M" & month(now()) & "-D" & day(now()) & "-HH" & hour(now()) & "-MM" & minute(now())

' SET CONSTS

baseDir = BakDrive & BakDir

SQLConString = "Provider=SQLOLEDB.1;Integrated Security=SSPI;Persist Security Info=False;Initial Catalog=" & ConfigDB & ";Data Source=" & SQLServer

If Debugmode = 1 Then

        'MsgBox "baseDir = " & baseDir & (Chr(13)), vbOKOnly Or vbExclamation

        MsgBox "sql con string = " & SQLConString & (Chr(13)), vbOKOnly Or vbExclamation

End If

' CONNECT TO DB

Dim WSSCon

Set WSSCon = CreateObject("ADODB.Connection")

WSSCon.Open SQLConString

'create record set

set rsWSSDB = CreateObject("ADODB.recordset")

WSSDBsql="select Name from DATABASES order by Name"

rsWSSDB.open WSSDBsql, SQLConString

'loop through each contant DB

Dim NOval

Dim YESval

NOval = 0

YESval = 0

while NOT rsWSSDB.EOF

        set WSSSiteRS = CreateObject("ADODB.recordset")

        WSSSiteCon = "Provider=SQLOLEDB.1;Integrated Security=SSPI;Persist Security Info=False;Initial Catalog=" & rsWSSDB("Name") & ";Data Source=" & SQLSERVER

        'WSSSitessql="select fullUrl from SITES WHERE FullURL = '" & SiteSearch & "' order by fullUrl"

        'WSSSiteRS.Open WSSSitessql, WSSSiteCon

        'count records

        If Debugmode = 1 Then          

                MsgBox "WSSSiteCon = " & WSSSiteCon & (Chr(13)), vbOKOnly Or vbExclamation

        End If

        set cNumWSS = CreateObject("ADODB.recordset")

        NumWSSsql="select count(*) as TotTeamSites from SITES WHERE FullURL = '" & SiteSearch & "'"

        If Debugmode = 1 Then          

                MsgBox "Couting Query= " & NumWSSsql & (Chr(13)), vbOKOnly Or vbExclamation

        End If

        cNumWSS.open NumWSSsql, WSSSiteCon

        If Debugmode = 1 Then

                MsgBox "number of sites found = " & cNumWSS("TotTeamSites") & (Chr(13)), vbOKOnly Or vbExclamation

        End If

        If cNumWSS("TotTeamSites") = 0 Then

                NOval = (NOval + 1)

        End If

        If cNumWSS("TotTeamSites") >0 Then

                YESval = (YESval + 1)

                MsgBox "I found it!!" & (Chr(13)) & "It's in: " & rsWSSDB("Name") & (Chr(13)), vbOKOnly Or vbExclamation

        End If

rsWSSDB.MoveNext

wend

If YESVal = 0 Then

        MsgBox "I didn't find it!!" & (Chr(13)) & "I checked " & NOVal & " content databases" & (Chr(13)) & "You searched for: " & SiteSearch & (Chr(13)) & "Did you remember the trailing backslash?", vbOKOnly Or vbExclamation

End If

WSSCon.Close

cNumWSS.close

** End Script **

Call the script from a shirtcut or command line, like:

C:\path\script.vbs -x:debugon -y:MYSERVER -z:MyConfigDB -s:http://server/sites/sitename/

You must include the trailing backslash!