It's still here...
So...after years of neglecting this blog and not posting, I thought it might be time to come back to this with some SharePoint tips. I have been working with SharePoint intensively for the last 3 and a half years.
For the people still running MOSS, I cannot stress enough the power of KB 934838. This wonderful KB has fixed so many issues for me. This is mostly more for issues with shared services than anything else. Especially issues getting into search settings, or search administration pages. Most of the time, you may see an error that states that the search service is offline and to check the timer and administration services, but they are both enabled.
You also might notice that the search service is started and you cannot seem to find the problem that it is complaining about. You might also notice that when you go into your user profiles you get an error message complaining about SQL Server connection.
While this is not the case every time, most of the time, these error messages do not actually mean what they imply.
There is no issue with the connection to SQL Server. There is no issue with the services not running.
What it actually stems from is an issue with the credential key.
The credential key is a registry value that holds a hashed credential key. It does this on all SharePoint servers. This key is supposed to be updated every so often by a timer job.
Every now and again that timer job fails to do its job and this key may fail to be updated on one or more servers in the farm. I also want to point out that this can occur even on single server farms.
When this key fails to update on ServerA and it tries to communicate with other servers in the farm to get information regarding Shared Services, the other servers might not reply with that information because that key is not up to date.
Many times, this can lead to issues with user profiles or search, which depend on servers being able to share information.
Sometimes all that is needed to to sync all the passwords in the farm. This will update the credential key as well as sync all other passwords in the farm. Many times, that is enough to fix the problem.
I would recommend going through the KB in its entirety, as I have seen times where only going through the steps to update the credential key is not enough to allow communication on the farm.
Until next time...
For the people still running MOSS, I cannot stress enough the power of KB 934838. This wonderful KB has fixed so many issues for me. This is mostly more for issues with shared services than anything else. Especially issues getting into search settings, or search administration pages. Most of the time, you may see an error that states that the search service is offline and to check the timer and administration services, but they are both enabled.
You also might notice that the search service is started and you cannot seem to find the problem that it is complaining about. You might also notice that when you go into your user profiles you get an error message complaining about SQL Server connection.
While this is not the case every time, most of the time, these error messages do not actually mean what they imply.
There is no issue with the connection to SQL Server. There is no issue with the services not running.
What it actually stems from is an issue with the credential key.
The credential key is a registry value that holds a hashed credential key. It does this on all SharePoint servers. This key is supposed to be updated every so often by a timer job.
Every now and again that timer job fails to do its job and this key may fail to be updated on one or more servers in the farm. I also want to point out that this can occur even on single server farms.
When this key fails to update on ServerA and it tries to communicate with other servers in the farm to get information regarding Shared Services, the other servers might not reply with that information because that key is not up to date.
Many times, this can lead to issues with user profiles or search, which depend on servers being able to share information.
Sometimes all that is needed to to sync all the passwords in the farm. This will update the credential key as well as sync all other passwords in the farm. Many times, that is enough to fix the problem.
I would recommend going through the KB in its entirety, as I have seen times where only going through the steps to update the credential key is not enough to allow communication on the farm.
Until next time...
posted by Kris at 8:35 PM
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