Installing SP2 on MOSS- Workarounds for installation and post installation errors
After installing SP2 for MOSS on several farms, I can say that in most cases, the operation goes smoothly. But when it gets wrong, it really gets wrong.
Here are some scenarios I have encountered, and the way they were solved (in most cases- with many thanks to Zohar Kimhi).
While installing SP2, you get an error – installer can't find a DB
While installing the SP2, the installation failed time after time because a content DB that couldn’t be found- no matter what we tried to do. Further investigation showed that it was a very old search DB that his related SSP web application and application pool where apparently deleted manually.
The only way to continue with the installation was creating a new "Temp SSP", using the DB name as its search DB.
After adding the temp SSP successfully, it was deleted fully, through central admin.
The installation succeeded without any error after that.
Site collections from specific content DBs are skipped in crawl
One of the weirdest issues ever- having a web application with several DBs where no crawl/ search issues happened in the past. After SP2 installation, only part of the content was crawled - Reset crawled content, full crawl, verify default account, restart services and even restart to all farm servers didn’t help.
The crawl rules shown that the contents should be crawled, many site collections where crawled successfully, but the site collections with the search problem, even didn’t appear in the crawl log.
Further investigation revealed that from 3 content DBs, only one was crawled (in central admin > application management > site collection list you can see which content DB is related to the site collection).
The only way to solve that issue was to remove and reattach the content DBs from the web application:
1. Went to central admin > application management > content databases
2. Chose on the upper right corner the web application where the non crawled DBs are.
3. Copied the DBs name to notepad (important! Most DBs have really long and "unmemorable" names)
4. Chose a non crawled DB > set it to be offline >OK.
5. Chose the DB again, checked "remove" >OK.
6. Repeated steps 3-5 to all the no- crawled DBs.
7. Now added the DBs by using STSADM command:
Stsadm –o addcontentdb –url http://YourWebApplicationURL -databasename Your_DB_Name
8. Started full crawl > crawling restored to all contents.
Search service doesn’t work/ Tips for DR…
Again –a weird issue, without a happy end: in one of the front end servers, after SP2 installation, the search services were up, but trying to search leaded to an error: "The search service is currently offline ".
Verifying admin account, restarting services and even restarting farm servers didn’t help.
In this case, only DR solved the issue:
1. Installed share point on a "Stand by" server.
2. Installed SP2.
3. Added the server to the farm.
4. Configured Kerberos (if needed) : added the server name with set SPN command.
5. Installed 3rd party products.
6. Reviewed and copied deltas between the "old" and "new" servers with the mostly recommended beyond compare tool. "Popular" places with deltas where:
- \\serverName\c$\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions (with the folders and files below it)
- \\ serverName \c$\Inetpub\wwwroot (with the folders and files below it)
- Web config in the virtual directories (note that the machine key should be kept in the new server web configs)
- \\ serverName \c$\WINDOWS\assembly
7. Checked for deltas in IIS configurations (only modifications through central admin duplicates on adding server to the farm).
8. Checked for regedit modifications deltas.
9. Checked that browsing through the new server have no errors.
10. Removed the services from the old server and added them to the new one.
11. Changed alternate access mapping if needed.
12. Changed DNS to the new server.
13. Kept the old server "partially alive" for some time, in order to have the relevant resources," just in case".
Have fun, Elad.