Error HRESULT E_FAIL has been returned from a call to a COM component.

When the MOSS crawl was started, it started throwing up this exception:

System.Runtime.InteropServices.COMException (0x80004005): Error HRESULT E_FAIL has been returned from a call to a COM component.

We had no clue about this one and the log messages weren't much helpful. They contained the following error:

CSTS3Accessor::InitURLType: Return error to caller

But checking the eventviewer on the app server(where the indexer was running) showed the following error:

Content sources could not be accesed.

All these messages started throwing up before forms authentication was turned on. For Forms authentication (using Active Directory membership provider) to work, imperonation was turned off.

This was the root cause of the problems. Turning on imperonation was supposed to do the trick and get everything to work, but looks like we have more bugs in the code and hence we had to go back to switch back to the default membership and role provider. Switching back to the previous state helped in indexing/crawling the content. The crawl started again without any problems.

Also careful planning is required if you plan to use forms authentication. Enterprise Search will not work with forms authentication without some workarounds. Allocate some good chunk of time to work on it. You need to create a two zones :

• Default Zone - Forms authentication for external users.
• Custom Zone - Extend the previous web application to create a new zone. Configure it use Windows authentication(with NTLM) and let the crawler crawl across this zone.

Atleast one zone must be configured to have NTLM for the search to work. Also make sure that the content access account has access to this zone.

Been really busy these days...

Not having much time to do some reading as a big project is getting to roll out. Iam planning to blog regularly, but with the intricacies in my life, its really hard to do to find time to do something interesting.
For now, check out the new interactive live tv at : http://beta.livestation.com/

Its a lazy sunday afternoon out here and Iam getting ready to doze off....

Sharepoint 2007 Backup, Restore, Migration

The built in Sharepoint Backup and restore tool essentially backs up everything(including indexes, but not sure about Custom Solutions, Alternate Mappings, IISMetabase). I was not able to test this one, but will do it sometime soon.

In order to have a fail proof recovery plan, one might follow these steps:

• Backup the whole farm using the built in backup tool (either through central admin/ stsadm)

Command: stsadm.exe -o backup
-directory \\backupfolder\ -backupmethod full

• Back up all the databases(content and configuration using sql server tools)
• Backup the web front end servers(IIS Metabase, Hive, Inetpub, IIS logs etc.)

In case of disaster, you could use stsadm/central admin to restore the complete farm. Also, you can create the Web Application, restore the content databases and intall the custom solutions. You should create a new configuration database and if needed you can also restore the old one. Now this method will not restore the indexes or any settings in the central admin(Alternate mappings, search scopes, bdc and others) .You will end up creating the scopes and reindexing again.
If you want to migrate from one farm to another, check this article: http://blogs.msdn.com/priyo/archive/2006/09/15/755490.aspx

Photosynth

Photosynth is a new technology from Microsoft Research which enables to combine and view pictures in a three dimensional space. It's a Microsoft and University of Washington collaboration project. With a huge collection of pictures you can have a detailed view of a particular element on the Photo.
Do you want to try it ? Check it out here.

Here are a few videos to know more about it:

http://labs.live.com/photosynth/video3.htm
http://labs.live.com/photosynth/videodemo.html

This is not open to the public but you can have a look at the available collections here.
If you want to know more about it, Please visit their website at:
http://labs.live.com/photosynth/default.html

More videos:
Photosynth and Virtual Earth:


Video: Virtual Earth and Photsynth Tour of St. Peter's Basilica

Sharepoint 2007 Backup

Recently I have been looking for different backup options for Sharepoint 2007. You have two options for it:

• Traditional Backup (using Central Admin, Stsadm tool, IIS Metabase backup, File System backup of Custom Assemblies, binaries and code, IIS logs, event logs, home directories, HIVE and many more)
• Using Third Party tools like 'http://www.google.com/search?q=sharepoint+backup'

Central Admin : You can backup the databases from here, but cannot schedule a backup
STSadmin tool: Much more control than the previous one but not much of a granularity
Third Party tools: Provide much granularity upto an item level. But need to shell out lotta of green paper...
This post is not intended to give a detailed explanation of the backup procedure. Its is just a place to find some of the links to the resources.
Joel Oleson as always has a great post here. Things to expect here : What to Backup and what tools to backup?
Technet has an article on the backup plan.
More articles:
http://www.compliancesolutionsgrp.com/blog-content/Practicing%20SharePoint%202007-Backup%20and%20Recovery.pdf
Relationship between IIS Metabase and Configuration Database: http://blogs.msdn.com/joelo/archive/2007/01/02/relationship-between-the-iis-metabase-and-sharepoint-configuration-database.aspx
Backup Sharepoint Search: http://blogs.technet.com/wbaer/archive/2007/03/13/planning-for-disaster-microsoft-office-sharepoint-server-2007-search.aspx
I guess that's it for this friday.....off I go.

AppSettings in a file other than web.config

As the number of websites in Sharepoint increases, the bin folder gets bigger and also the web.config becomes larger. But, you can have multiple web.config's and have the Appsettings in a different file. Thanks to Mark for bringing this to my notice.You can use the file element of the appSettings attribute to specify the optional file.

Syntax:
<appsettings file="customAppSettingsFile/">
or
<appsettings file="customAppSettingsFile">
<add value="testvalue1" key="test1">
<add value="testvalue2" key="test2">
</appsettings>

You can specify the core appsettings in web.config and the extra ones in customAppSettingsFile. Any change to customAppSettingsFile will not restart the application. You have to modify web .config to make the application restart.

TechED and IPhone Videos

The most talked about video at TechEd was probably the Back to the Future skit. Check it out here:





You can also watch the entire KeyNote at:
http://www.microsoft.com/winme/0706/29992/teched_.asx

Also other videos can be found at Virtual Studio at:
http://www.virtualteched.com/pages/videos_2.aspx

As most of you know, Apple has released quite a few IPhone videos, you can find them here:
http://www.apple.com/iphone/ads/