Office SharePoint Server Search Service stuck

How did I get here? Sometime this morning I was trying to fix an issue with the people search feature not working. While trying to correct that, I got stuck in the limbo of Office SharePoint Server Search remaining in the status of “Stopping” without ever getting to the status of “Stopped”. Apparently this is a common issue, but the recommended fix for it, running “stsadm -o osearch -action stop”, isn’t working for me. 

Changed the “Log On As” to Local System, disabled the service and rebooted. Once back up, re-enabled the service, started it, stopped it. Still showed as Stopping in the Central Administration. Re-ran the command “stsadm -o osearch -action stop”. YAY!

Tried to start: An unhandled exception occurred in the user interface.Exception Information: OSearch (DOMAIN\ShareAdmin)

Change the “Log On As” back to the (DOMAIN\ShareAdmin) and start the service from Central Administration > Operations > Services on Server. Everything was back up. 

Below is a link to one of the options I tried. While it didn’t fixe this particular issue, I’m sure this will come in handy in the future.  

SharePoint Services Timer Service File System Cache

Resetting the file system cache have resolved many issues I had in my SharePoint farm. Microsoft tech support gave me this resolution to fix some issues I had with Usage Analysis. I perform this operation first if I get stuck with any issues related to timer jobs. Good times!

Site Directory is Petarded

I’m using trying to use the Site Directory Template. Out of the box, it creates “categories” for Division and Region. Of course I want to use my own categories and I remove those for my own. Being of a database driven mentality, I of course make my columns lookup columns to be driven from list values that I’ll be using over and over throughout my site; Department and Location. So why can’t I get these new columns to show up in the “Categories” tab?

Because only “choice” columns are made into Categories. And those choices are “hard coded” inside the column definition.

Grrrrr.

Trackback

I’ll be spending a great deal of my Monday learning how to customize the themes and master pages on SharePoint.

CSS Hacks for SharePoint Design

Lately, I am doing lot of design work for a client redesigning their MOSS Intranet solution. I found my self fiddling around with Master Pages, Page Layouts and CSS files more often. During this journey I came across lot of the handy resources, which helped me along the way!

The coolest thing I’ve done today thanks to this blog:

Media Player Web Part

This webpart allows you to play avi, mpg and wmv files with in your MOSS site.

But then in the comments, Daniel A (unfortunately with no link for me to trackback to) wrote:

Rather than going through this heart ache, just add a content editor web part and use the below HTML

<OBJECT id=”VIDEO” CLASSID=”CLSID:6BF52A52-394A-11d3-B153-00C04F79FAA6″ type=”application/x-oleobject”>

       <PARAM NAME=”URL” VALUE=”/Docs/[Your Document Library]/[folder]/[your file.wmv]”>

       <PARAM NAME=”animationatStart” VALUE=”true”>

       <PARAM NAME=”transparentatStart” VALUE=”true”>

       <PARAM NAME=”SendPlayStateChangeEvents” VALUE=”True”>

       <PARAM NAME=”AutoStart” VALUE=”false”>

       <PARAM name=”uiMode” value=”full”>

</OBJECT>

Which I did as well, and it was sweet! I love it when things work exactly as described. Especially on a rainy brain-deadened Friday.

Trackback

I’m in the mode of trying to do and think of way too many things at the same time. Currently I’m researching into SharePoint document library replication. At the same time there are some articles off-topic that I’ll need to come back to eventually.

SharePoint Backup and Restore : Moving content across environments

If you thought that moving content from one environment to the other using SharePoint backup and restore was as simple as the click of a button, then read this blog to understand why it is not.

Global SharePoint Deployment Partner Solutions

…guidance on how to deploy SharePoint in a geographically distributed deployment

Plan to deploy Office SharePoint Server globally

Many organizations support employees working in multiple sites either within a region or around the world. Microsoft currently supports three different deployment configurations to accommodate geographically dispersed sites with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0.

Silverlight Blueprint for SharePoint

I don’t know what Silverlight is yet, but I think I’m going to love it.

SSL-based VPN solution

With Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista SP1, you now have the ability to set up a VPN using RRAS (Routing and Remote Access) to use port 443 (HTTPS – or SSL) as the transport.  It’s a “firewall friendly” kind of VPN.