Happy Christmas

Wish you all a very happy Christmas and hope you enjoy it with your family and friends.

MOSS Errors

Now, I do have an answer to the following error messages:

Error 1:
While trying to backup the whole farm, I saw the error message:
Object Shared Search Index failed in event OnPrepareBackup. For more information, see the error log located in the backup directory. UnauthorizedAccessException: Retrieving the COM class factory for component with CLSID {3D42CCB1-4665-4620-92A3-478F47389230} failed due to the following error: 80070005.

Event Viewer Error messages

Error 2:
Event Type: Error
Event Source: Windows SharePoint Services 3
Event Category: Timer
Event ID: 6398
Date: 12/7/2007
Time: 1:47:40 PM
User: N/A
Computer: ****ServerName******WIKI
Description:The Execute method of job definition Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.Administration.IndexingScheduleJobDefinition (ID 1f3483b5-34a2-421a-9f3f-92a9c5251363) threw an exception. More information is included below.
Retrieving the COM class factory for component with CLSID {3D42CCB1-4665-4620-92A3-478F47389230} failed due to the following error: 80070005.
For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.

Error 3:
Event Type: Error
Event Source: Office SharePoint Server
Event Category: Office Server Shared Services
Event ID: 6481
Date: 12/7/2007
Time: 1:47:33 PM
User: N/A
Computer: ****ServerName******WIKI
Description:Application Server job failed for service instance Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.Administration.SearchServiceInstance (1a9460af-60a2-4fc5-8fb2-c53f9a48063a).
Reason: Retrieving the COM class factory for component with CLSID {3D42CCB1-4665-4620-92A3-478F47389230} failed due to the following error: 80070005.
Techinal Support Details:System.UnauthorizedAccessException: Retrieving the COM class factory for component with CLSID {3D42CCB1-4665-4620-92A3-478F47389230} failed due to the following error: 80070005. at System.Runtime.Remoting.RemotingServices.AllocateUninitializedObject(RuntimeType objectType) at System.Runtime.Remoting.RemotingServices.AllocateUninitializedObject(Type objectType) at System.Runtime.Remoting.Activation.ActivationServices.CreateInstance(Type serverType) at System.Runtime.Remoting.Activation.ActivationServices.IsCurrentContextOK(Type serverType, Object[] props, Boolean bNewObj) at Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.Administration.Gatherer.get_AdminObject() at Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.Administration.Gatherer.ProvisionGlobalProperties() at Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.Administration.SearchServiceInstance.Synchronize() at Microsoft.Office.Server.Administration.ApplicationServerJob.ProvisionLocalSharedServiceInstances(Boolean isAdministrationServiceJob)
For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.

Solution:
The application pool account needs to be given launch & activate permission to the DCOM 'osearch' service. In my case it was the network service which was getting accessed denied. I had to give it the permissions and there were no errors in the eventviewer.

• Start -> Run -> DCOMCNFG
• Component Services ->Computers->My Computer->DCOM Config
• Look for osearch and right click it to give lauch, activate permissions to the desired account
• Sometimes you need to give the IISWAM REG ADMIN service.

Hope this helps someone.

I am back !

Its been long since I posted anything. I was on vacation for nearly a month and recently have been tied up with work. Probably, I will start posting something really soon.

REMIX 2007 at Boston

I just returned back home after attending REMIX for two days and it was absolutely wonderful. I got to meet some of the most Geeky people and also gotto see some Geeky stuff. I have a lot of good things to write about it, but this is not the right time. I am really dead tired especially after the awful air traffic at Philadelphia.

If you cannot wait till my posts, you can check out the videos at:

http://www.remix07boston.com/Videos.aspx

How to become a DBA from a Developer

Today, I was listening to an audio talk show on RunAsRadio about being a better DBA. This show was hosted by Richard Campbell and Greg Hughes with Brad McGhee as the guest.
Brad gave some real good tips for becoming a better DBA.

Here are a few tips from the show:

• Love the DBA work. If you are not going to love something, you will never be able to understand it.
• Take responsibility. This is the only way you will be able to learn something new.
• Understand your organization's data. This will help you a lot in better structuring your databases.
• You have to be a good Problem Solver.
• Read Books...this is one of the easiest ways to learn something quickly. I still prefer books to electronic media.
• Take Classes/Training.
• Participate in forums.
• Be active in your community and attend events (like PASS).
• Always keep looking for the Dirtiest, hardest jobs. This will help you by giving you new harder challenges everyday.....keeps your brain sharp.
• Be proactive (prepare for next failure).

These are only a few tips and if you want to know more, you check out the audio here.
Thanks for the great show guys and keep on coming up with such shows....

Moving SSIS packages from Development to Production

I built a few packages on my development machine and it worked fine without any major hiccups. Then after moving the packages to the destination server, it started throwing weird errors. I had first changed the connection strings in the package configuration file but still the following errors started showing up :

First Error:

a)Failed to decrypt protected XML node "PackagePassword" with error 0x8009000B "Key not valid for use in specified state.". You may not be authorized to access this information. This error occurs when there is a cryptographic error. Verify that the correct key is available.

b)Failed to decrypt protected XML node "DTS:Property" with error 0x80070002 "The system cannot find the file specified.". You may not be authorized to access this information. This error occurs when there is a cryptographic error. Verify that the correct key is available.

This happens because of the package protection level which is by default set to "EncryptWithSensitiveKey". Setting the package protection level to "DontSaveSensitive" helped me to remove these errors. This can be done by right clicking the package in the designer and changing the properties
Also, I setup the proxy sever agent so that the package runs under my account(the one which created the package)

Second Error:

After the first error was resolved, now was the time to run the packages. When I ran the package, it threw an error which was something like this:

SSIS Error Code DTS_E_CANNOTACQUIRECONNECTIONFROMCONNECTIONMANAGER. The AcquireConnection method call to the connection manager "*****" failed with error code 0xC0202009. There may be error messages posted before this with more information on why the AcquireConnection method call failed

The error was happening in an access datasource. I went back into the package configuration file and removed the initial catalog parameter value(which was empty by the way) and voila, it worked.
This post helped me to get through :
https://forums.microsoft.com/msdn/showpost.aspx?postid=73863&siteid=1

Code Camp

Last week I was at Phili Code camp and it was great to be there. There were some really good sessions on Advanced asp.net, Http handlers, and Test driven development. I attended 4 sessions and though it was a code camp, only the first two sessions had something related to code and the rest were more kind of presentations. Other than that I have been pretty busy with my schedule without much time for my own projects. Hopefully, I will post something interesting soon.