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Failure adding assembly to the cache: Cannot create a file when that file already exists

So trying to add a Timer Job to the GAC causes:

“Failure adding assembly to the cache: Cannot create a file when that file already exists”

How do you get around it? well, try these things

1. if you have any dos windows/windows explorer windows in the assembly folder (or deeper) then move out of those folders (or close the windows down)

2. if you have Visual Studio open, and your project has a reference to your assembly, then you will need to close this down. Give it a while tho, even once your VS 200x has disappeared it is still unloading in the back ground

3. GacUtil /cdl – clears the assembly cache

4. do a IIS reset, if you have used the assembly in any web applications

5. reboot :'(

Thanks to Victor

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IE8 Caching Login With Favorites

Situation

I recently had a strange SharePoint experience, where a certain user would always find me logged in to SharePoint when he launched it!

History

On this users I had switched users within SharePoint once, so I could show him features he didn’t have permissions for. I then saved a Favorite in his browser so he could easily get to SharePoint and left his office. A week later, I’m in a meeting with the user and I notice I’m logged into SharePoint on his laptop!!!

Remedy

After a little investigation, I come to discover IE8 caches credentials with the favorite! What on earth was Microsoft thinking?

To solve this, I deleted his favorite, logged into SharePoint with his credentials and saved a new favorite. Now all is good.

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SharePoint Document Property Names

Recently while working on embedding SharePoint properties within a Word 2003 document I discovered some oddities with the names. When working to embed a property named Doc No. I found at times one of the 3 following situations displayed in the Field list:

  1. Doc No.
  2. Doc No. and Document No.
  3. Document No.

If i used Doc No. the value would be incorrect. If I used Document No. the correct value would display and would synchronize.

Upon investigation I looked at the AllLists table in the database to find the row for the Document Library I was using. Examining the ContentType column explained the behaviour. For the field Doc No. this is the value I found:

DisplayName=”Doc No.”
Required=”TRUE” Hidden=”FALSE”
ReadOnly=”FALSE” PITarget=”” PrimaryPITarget=””
PIAttribute=”” PrimaryPIAttribute=””
Aggregation=”” Node=””/>

Notice that the name is Document No. (after decoding) and the DisplayName is Doc No. After seeing this, I remembered initially naming the column Document No. and then shortening it to Doc No. SharePoint obviously retained the original name as the ID of the field and just adds the DisplayName attribute to show the changed value. This is definitely a gotcha and will lead to some confusion for users. But at least the behaviour is now explained.

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Moving From September to October in BPC

Moving to October causes some trouble because we are moving from a 1 digit period (Jan = 1, Sep = 9) to a 2 digit period (Oct = 10). This causes problems during the Convert Task in SSIS. The actuals to transform text file contains all the correct data, the actuals to load text file contains only a header. The transformation fails.

To resolve this problem a change to the transformation file needs to occur. Follow these steps to make the change:

  1. eData > Manage Transformation File
  2. Select the file, in our case Actual CMS.xls
  3. Under the *MAPPING section find TIME=*COL(4) + *STR(.) + *COL(5) or TIME=*COL(4) + *STR(.0) + *COL(5)
  4. For 1 digit periods change *STR(.) to *STR(.0)
  5. For 2 digit periods change *STR(.0) TO *STR(.)
  6. Click on Validate and save transformation definitions in the Action Pane on the right.
  7. When prompted to Save, just select the same file, so in our case Actual CMS.xls.
  8. Click Yet to replace the existing file.
  9. Close the Transformation file
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Check In/Out in SharePoint Designer Not Displaying

Recently I could not Check In multiple files using SharePoint Designer. The Check In context menu pick wasn’t available and under the Edit menu it was disabled.

Thanks to a blog commenter, I learned that Ctrl+F5 will resolve the issue. Thanks Emmanuel

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Documents Not Appearing in Search Results

I recently spent quite some time trying to understand why certain documents would appear in my search results, and others wouldn’t.

I looked at the ‘Always index all ASPX pages on this site’ setting found at Site Settings > Search Visibility. But that didn’t resolve the issue.

I looked at the ‘Allow items from this document library to appear in search results?’ setting found at Document Library Settings > Advanced Settings. But that didn’t resolve the issue.

Finally I noticed that documents that appear in the search results have a major version (1.1) and the documents that do not appear, only have a minor version (0.1). So I published one of the documents, did an incremental crawl, and the document began appearing in the search results.

One mystery solved today.

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Causing the Create Site link to Create a Site Collection

If you layout your MOSS intranet with the multiple Site Collections approach, you can simplify the creation of new Site Collections.

There are a couple settings which need to be setup for this to work:

Central Administration

  1. Central Administration > Application Management
  2. Under the Application Security section click on Self-service site management
  3. Turn, ‘Enable Self-Service Site Creation’ on
  4. It is optional to require a secondary contact in this form
  5. Click OK

Site Directory

  1. From within the site directory of the web application, go to Site Settings > Modify All Site Settings
  2. Under the “Site Collection Administration” area, click on “go to top-level site settings”
  3. Under the same “Site Collection administration” area, click “Site Directory Settings”
  4. Check ‘
  5. Click OK

Now when you are the Site Directory, clicking the Create Site link, will create a Site Collection.

Thanks to Dave Wollerman for this tip.

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BPC Import Won’t Complete

I find there are a couple reasons for an import into BPC to not complete, getting stuck on the the DumpLoad task:

  1. The first reason it stops at the DumpLoad task is there is alot of data and it just takes that long. You can always Abort the import and try importing a smaller set of data.
  2. The OutlookSoft SendGovernor Service is not started. This is usually the result of a server reboot. To check this out:
    1. Start > Run
    2. Type services.msc and press Enter
    3. Scroll down to the OutlookSoft SendGovernor Service
    4. Start the service if it is not running
  3. The other reason has to do with the dbo.lck[Application Name] table. So if the application name is Finance, then there are rows left in the dbo.lckFinance table. This can happen if an import errors out. To solve this:
    1. Verify no imports are occurring
    2. Check if there are any rows in the table: SELECT * from dbo.lckFinance
    3. If there are, remove them: DELETE dbo.lckFinance

That should solve a hung import.

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Installing MOSS in VirtualBox Environment – Notes

Machine Environment:

Windows Server 2008 64bits Install the .NET Framework 3.0 Features Configure service accounts, see this for details. Have SQL Server prepared, preferabbly on another VM and using a named instance. In my case I had to put SQL on the same VM because networking between VMs was unstable.

MOSS Setup:

  1. Server Type: Select Advanced -> Complete install
  2. File Location: Install MOSS to non OS drive
  3. Before running the SharePoint Products and Technologies Wizard, neither any databases, application pools or web sites are created. However D:Program FilesMicrosoft Office Servers12.0 is created.


SharePoint Products and Technologies Wizard:

Create a new farm
Config DB Settings:

  1. MOSS_Farm_Config
  2. spSql account for the database

Config Central Admin Web Application

  1. Port 9991
  2. Use NTLM authentication

Performing configuration tasks 1 thru 9

  1. Create Config DB
  2. Install Help collections
  3. Securing SharePoint resources
  4. Registering SharePoint services
  5. Registering SharePoint features
  6. Provisioning Central Admin Web App
  7. Installing the application content files
  8. Finalizing the Products and Technologies configuration

At this point the following items have been created:

  1. MOSS_Farm_Config DB
  2. SharePoint_AdminContent_GUID DB
  3. OfficeServerApplicationPool (NetworkService identity)
  4. SharePoint Central Administration Application Pool (spsqluser identity)
  5. Office Server Web Services Web Site – uses OfficeServer App Pool
  6. SharePoint Central Administration v3 Web Site

and the Central Admin Site displays in the browser. At this point address the Administrator Tasks displayed.

Administrator Tasks

READ FIRST

Displays the Quick Start Guide

Deploy Servers???

Nothing required for a small farm

Assign services to servers

Excel Calculation Services – just start it, no configuration required.

Configure Office SharePoint Server Search Service Settings

  1. Farm Search Service Account – spSearch
  2. Configuring this search doesn’t create a database, app pool or web site

Configure Windows SharePoint Services Search Service Settings – This provides search capabilities within the Help content

  1. Service Account – spSearch
  2. Content Access Account – spContentAccess
  3. Database MOSS_WSS_Search created

Configure server farm’s shared services (New Shared Services Provider)

SSP Name – TurtleSSP

Create a new Web Application

NOTE: The SSP needs its own Web application. This will be the second web application for the system (Central Admin was the first).

IIS Web Site

  1. Description: MOSS TurtleSSP
  2. Port: 9992

Application Pool

  1. MOSS TurtleSSP – 9992
  2. Service Account: spAppPool

Database Name and Authentication

  1. DB Name: MOSS_TurtleSSP_Admin

MOSS_TurtleSSP_Admin DB created
MOSS_TurtleSSP – 9992 App Pool created
MOSS TurtleSSP – 9992 Web Site created

My Site Location

Create a new Web Application

NOTE: The SSP needs its own Web application. This will be the second web application for the system (Central Admin was the first).

IIS Web Site

  1. Description: MOSS MySite
  2. Port: 9993

Application Pool

  1. MOSS MySite – 9993
  2. Service Account: spAppPool

Database Name and Authentication

  1. DB Name: MOSS_TurtleSSP_MySite_Content)

MOSS_TurtleSSP_MySite_Content DB created
MOSS_MySite – 9993 App Pool created
MOSS MySite – 9993 Web Site created

SSP Service Credentials

Service Account: spSsp (This account is for SSP Web services to use for inter-server comm and running SSP timer jobs)

SSP Database

Used for Service specific data

  1. DB Name: MOSS_TurtleSSP_Content

Search Database

  1. DB Name: MOSS_TurtleSSP_Search

MOSS_TurtleSSP_Content DB created
MOSS_TurtleSSP_Search DB created
TurtleSSP App Pool created (Don’t recall the opp to name this MOSS_TurtleSSP, it appears to grab the name of the SSP)


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SP 2007: New Web Application, Site Collection and Document Center in a VirtualBox Environment

Create New Web Application

IIS Web Site

  1. Description: MOSS Web App – 80 (Consider TurtlePoint Web App – 80)
  2. Port: 80

Application Pool

  1. App Pool Name: MOSS Web App – 80 (Consider TurtlePoint Web App – 80)
  2. Account: spAppPool

Database Name and Authentication

  1. DB Name: MOSS_WebApp_Content

MOSS_WebApp_Content DB created
MOSS Web App Web – 80 Site created
MOSS Web App – 80 App Pool created

Create New Site Collection

Title and Description

  1. Title: Turtle Point

Template Selection

  1. Publishing > Collaboration Portal

Primary Site Collection Administrator

  1. TURTLELLCAdministrator

No new database, web site or app pool created