Even after verifying that my configuration was correct (as far as SharePoint was concerned), I was still running into issues with the Extensible Connectivity agent (part of FIM) associated with my User Profile Service Application. It would consistently fail, throwing 6801 and 6803 errors in the event log.

Error 6801

The extensible extension returned an unsupported error.

The stack trace is:

“System.Reflection.TargetInvocationException: Exception has been thrown by the target of an invocation. —> System.UriFormatException: Invalid URI: A port was expected because of there is a colon (‘:’) present but the port could not be parsed.

at System.Uri.CreateThis(String uri, Boolean dontEscape, UriKind uriKind)

at System.Web.HttpRequest.get_Url()

at Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPAlternateUrl.get_ContextUri()

at Microsoft.SharePoint.WebControls.SPControl.SPSiteFromContextNoCache()

at Microsoft.SharePoint.WebControls.SPControl.SPWebEnsureSPControl(HttpContext context)

at Microsoft.SharePoint.SPContext.get_Current()

at Microsoft.Office.Server.UserProfiles.ProfileManagerInstance.GetApplicationProxy()

at Microsoft.Office.Server.UserProfiles.ProfileImportExportService.GetPartitionIds()

— End of inner exception stack trace —

at System.RuntimeMethodHandle._InvokeMethodFast(Object target, Object[] arguments, SignatureStruct& sig, MethodAttributes methodAttributes, RuntimeTypeHandle typeOwner)

at System.Reflection.RuntimeMethodInfo.Invoke(Object obj, BindingFlags invokeAttr, Binder binder, Object[] parameters, CultureInfo culture, Boolean skipVisibilityChecks)

at System.Reflection.RuntimeMethodInfo.Invoke(Object obj, BindingFlags invokeAttr, Binder binder, Object[] parameters, CultureInfo culture)

at Microsoft.Office.Server.WebServiceDirectProxy.WebMethodInfo.Invoke(Object webServiceInstance, Object[] args)

at Microsoft.Office.Server.WebServiceDirectProxy.Invoke(String methodName, Object[] args)

at Microsoft.Office.Server.UserProfiles.ManagementAgent.ProfileImportExportDirect.GetPartitionIds()

at Microsoft.Office.Server.UserProfiles.ManagementAgent.ProfileImportExportExtension.Microsoft.MetadirectoryServices.IMAExtensibleFileImport.GenerateImportFile(String fileName, String connectTo, String user, String password, ConfigParameterCollection configParameters, Boolean fFullImport, TypeDescriptionCollection types, String& customData)

Forefront Identity Manager 4.0.2450.5″

The extensible extension returned an unsupported error. The stack trace is:  ”System.Reflection.TargetInvocationException: Exception has been thrown by the target of an invocation. —> System.UriFormatException: Invalid URI: A port was expected because of there is a colon (‘:’) present but the port could not be parsed.   at System.Uri.CreateThis(String uri, Boolean dontEscape, UriKind uriKind)   at System.Web.HttpRequest.get_Url()   at Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPAlternateUrl.get_ContextUri()   at Microsoft.SharePoint.WebControls.SPControl.SPSiteFromContextNoCache()   at Microsoft.SharePoint.WebControls.SPControl.SPWebEnsureSPControl(HttpContext context)   at Microsoft.SharePoint.SPContext.get_Current()   at Microsoft.Office.Server.UserProfiles.ProfileManagerInstance.GetApplicationProxy()   at Microsoft.Office.Server.UserProfiles.ProfileImportExportService.GetPartitionIds()   — End of inner exception stack trace —   at System.RuntimeMethodHandle._InvokeMethodFast(Object target, Object[] arguments, SignatureStruct& sig, MethodAttributes methodAttributes, RuntimeTypeHandle typeOwner)   at System.Reflection.RuntimeMethodInfo.Invoke(Object obj, BindingFlags invokeAttr, Binder binder, Object[] parameters, CultureInfo culture, Boolean skipVisibilityChecks)   at System.Reflection.RuntimeMethodInfo.Invoke(Object obj, BindingFlags invokeAttr, Binder binder, Object[] parameters, CultureInfo culture)   at Microsoft.Office.Server.WebServiceDirectProxy.WebMethodInfo.Invoke(Object webServiceInstance, Object[] args)   at Microsoft.Office.Server.WebServiceDirectProxy.Invoke(String methodName, Object[] args)   at Microsoft.Office.Server.UserProfiles.ManagementAgent.ProfileImportExportDirect.GetPartitionIds()   at Microsoft.Office.Server.UserProfiles.ManagementAgent.ProfileImportExportExtension.Microsoft.MetadirectoryServices.IMAExtensibleFileImport.GenerateImportFile(String fileName, String connectTo, String user, String password, ConfigParameterCollection configParameters, Boolean fFullImport, TypeDescriptionCollection types, String& customData)Forefront Identity Manager 4.0.2450.5″

Error 6803

The management agent “MOSS-8e630c0a-434f-4af2-b8fe-a020bd3ef255″ failed on run profile “MOSS_FULLIMPORT_e6294a6e-3dcb-4ac5-86e2-24eddfeaa0e9″ because the server encountered errors.

Opening miisclient (%programfiles%\Microsoft Office Server\14.0\Synchronization Service\UIShell\miisclient.exe) revealed that my Extensible Connectivity agent was failing with a status of stopped-extension-dll-exception (which was confirmed by was visible in the event log).

A bad URI request was being formed somewhere along the way. FIM was expecting a URI formatted with a colon (“:”), which none of my alternate access mappings provided. (Question for the SharePoint product team – Who still runs their applications on non-standard ports?)

Thankfully, the FIM Synchronization Service can be configured manually to tidy these errors up.

1. Browse to %programfiles%\Microsoft Office Server\14.0\Synchronization Service\UIShell
2. Launch miisclient.exe
3. Click the ‘Management Agents’ button in the toolbar to switch to the “Management Agents” pane
4. Right click on the Management Agent with the “Extensible Connectivity” type called MOSS-{guid} and select “Properties”
5. Click on the “Configure Connection Information” property pane
6. At the bottom of the dialog, there should be a “Connection information” section which includes a “Connect To:” text box
7. Change the hostname of the URI in this text box to direct://{HOST}:{PORT}…
8. Click OK, and close the Synchronization Service Manager (miisclient)
9. Start a full import and everything should now work.

Reference

• Rational Guide to implementing SharePoint Server 2010 User Profile Synchronization
• SharePoint 2010 – Provisioning User Profile Synchronization

Designing and developing rich, robust Microsoft® SharePoint® applications can be challenging. The following releases are designed to help solution developers and architects make the right decisions and follow proven practices when building applications for SharePoint. Each release contains guidance documentation, source code for reference implementations, reusable library code, and Quick Starts.

Definitely worth exploring further if you looking to see how others are building on top of the product stack and what the SharePoint MVPs view as essential for developing robust applications.

Reference

• SharePoint Guidance on MSDN

If anything, it can serve as a handy guide for how to script out individual actions pertaining to installation and farm maintenance.

Reference

• SharePoint 2010 Products scripted deployment SPModule .zip file
• Install SharePoint Server 2010 by using Windows PowerShell
• Install SharePoint Foundation 2010 by using Windows PowerShell

I recently wanted to take an existing site collection, make a copy of it in the same web application under a newly created managed path and have it reside in a new content database. The backup went smooth, utilizing stsadm -o backup. The creation of the new managed path went off without a hitch. The creation of a new content database and the restoration of the site collection into that database also occurred with no issues.

Browsing the site however told a different story. I was immediately greeted with a standard error page stating “File Not Found”. Browsing to other pages within the site (eg. “/_layouts/settings.aspx“) yielded the same result. After turning on the callstack/debugging and disabling the custom error page, I was greeted with the following:

The problem? Each publishing page points to an incorrect page layout after the restoration. One would think that the restore via stsadm would recognize this and fix it, but it does not.

The fix? The stsadm extensions published by Gary Lapointe. The package built by Gary offers a command call gl-fixpublishingpagespagelayouturl. Verbose? Yes. Does it work? Absolutely.

After running the command and executing an iisreset, the site was once again able to be browsed and appears to be intact.

Reference

• SharePoint Automation: Fix Publising Pages Page Layout URL
• File not found errors when restoring a site collection
• stsadm backup Operation
• stsadm restore Operation

1. Install the SharePoint binaries on each server in your farm. Select “Complete” as the installation type. This will allow you to create a farm as opposed to a single server installation.After the install has completed, you will asked if you would like to complete the “SharePoint Products Configuration Wizard”. Do not run the wizard at this time.
2. On the server which you wish to provision Central Administration:
   1. Open the  ”SharePoint 2010 Management Shell” (right-click and select “Run as administrator”). The shell will load with a message that the local farm is not accessible. This is expected as we have only installed the binaries.
   2. Run the following command to create the initial configuration/content database for the farm.

      New-SPConfigurationDatabase –DatabaseName “SharePoint2010_Config” –DatabaseServer “SharePoint2010SQL” –AdministrationContentDatabaseName “SharePoint2010_Content_Admin” –Passphrase (ConvertTo-SecureString “Pass@word1” –AsPlaintext –Force) –FarmCredentials (Get-Credential)
      

   3. After the initial creation of the farm, close and reload the “SharePoint 2010 Management Shell”. You should no longer receive any error messages.
   4. Install the help files.

      Install-SPHelpCollection -All
      

   5. Secure the resources used by the server (files and registry).

      Initialize-SPResourceSecurity
      

   6. Install and provision the farm services.

      Install-SPService
      

   7. Install the features on the server.

      Install-SPFeature –AllExistingFeatures
      

   8. Provision Central Administration.

      New-SPCentralAdministration -Port 1234  -WindowsAuthProvider "NTLM"
      

   9. Install the application content.

      Install-SPApplicationContent
      

   10. Optional: Disable the loopback check. If this is a development install, outright disabling the check should be fine. For production environments, the loopback check should be left in place and BackConnectionHostNames should be used in its place. See KB 896861.

       New-ItemProperty HKLM:\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Lsa -Name "DisableLoopbackCheck"  -value "1" -PropertyType dword
       

3. On each additional server that you wish to converge in the farm:
   1. Open the  ”SharePoint 2010 Management Shell” (right-click and select “Run as administrator”). The shell will load with a message that the local farm is not accessible. This is expected as we have only installed the binaries.
   2. Connect the server to the farm with the following command:

      Connect-SPConfigurationDatabase -DatabaseName "SharePoint2010_Config" -DatabaseServer "SharePoint2010SQL" -Passphrase (ConvertTo-SecureString "Pass@word1" -AsPlaintext -Force)
      

   3. Install the help files.

      Install-SPHelpCollection -All
      

   4. Secure the resources used by the server (files and registry).

      Initialize-SPResourceSecurity
      

   5. Install and provision the farm services.

      Install-SPService
      

   6. Install the features on the server.

      Install-SPFeature –AllExistingFeatures
      

   7. Install the application content.

      Install-SPApplicationContent
      

   8. Optional: Disable the loopback check. If this is a development install, outright disabling the check should be fine. For production environments, the loopback check should be left in place and BackConnectionHostNames should be used in its place. See KB 896861.

      New-ItemProperty HKLM:\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Lsa -Name "DisableLoopbackCheck"  -value "1" -PropertyType dword
      

Reference

• Eric Kraus’ SharePoint/.NET Blog – SharePoint 2010 Provisioning A New Farm with Powershell
• You receive error 401.1 when you browse a Web site that uses Integrated Authentication and is hosted on IIS 5.1 or a later version
• SharePoint Automation: SharePoint 2010 PSConfig and Powershell

New-SPConfigurationDatabase : SQL server at CLSHPT2010SQL has an unsupported version 10.0.2531.0. Please refer to “http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=165761″ for information on the minimum required SQL Server versions and how to download them.

At line:1 char:28

I had never installed the latest cumulative update for SQL Server 2008 after completing my cluster configuration. The fix is simple. Install the Cumulative update package 2 for SQL Server 2008 Service Pack 1 (KB970315).

Reference

• KB970315 – Cumulative update package 2 for SQL Server 2008 Service Pack 1

The following solution will require a Full Trust form with code, but will allow for a Contact Selector to be placed on a browser-based InfoPath form which will consistently validate, requiring the selection of a user as well as allowing for only one selection.

The code:

public void supervisorEmployeeID_Changed(object sender, XmlEventArgs e)
{
     try
     {
          int supervisorCount = e.Site.SelectChildren(XPathNodeType.Element).Count;

          if (this.Errors.GetErrors("_supervisorCountError").Length > 0)
               this.Errors.Delete("_supervisorCountError");

          if (supervisorCount > 1)
               this.Errors.Add(e.Site, "_supervisorCountError", "You can only select one Manager");
          else if (supervisorCount < 1)
               this.Errors.Add(e.Site, "_supervisorCountError", "You must select a Manager");
     }
     catch { }
}

The above is meant to serve as a reference and should be self-explanatory.

Sample Usage:

stsadm -o trimauditlog -date 20090101 -databasename MyContentDB

If you have auditing enabled and find yourself curious about the amount of space a particular table is consuming, the following script can help in finding the largest tables in a database:

/********************************************************************
*
*  BigTables.sql
*  Bill Graziano (SQLTeam.com)
*  graz@sqlteam.com
*  v1.1
*
********************************************************************/

declare @id	int
declare @type	character(2)
declare	@pages	int
declare @dbname sysname
declare @dbsize dec(15,0)
declare @bytesperpage	dec(15,0)
declare @pagesperMB		dec(15,0)

create table #spt_space
(
	objid		int null,
	rows		int null,
	reserved	dec(15) null,
	data		dec(15) null,
	indexp		dec(15) null,
	unused		dec(15) null
)

set nocount on

-- Create a cursor to loop through the user tables
declare c_tables cursor for
select	id
from	sysobjects
where	xtype = 'U'

open c_tables

fetch next from c_tables
into @id

while @@fetch_status = 0
begin

	/* Code from sp_spaceused */
	insert into #spt_space (objid, reserved)
		select objid = @id, sum(reserved)
			from sysindexes
				where indid in (0, 1, 255)
					and id = @id

	select @pages = sum(dpages)
			from sysindexes
				where indid < 2
					and id = @id
	select @pages = @pages + isnull(sum(used), 0)
		from sysindexes
			where indid = 255
				and id = @id
	update #spt_space
		set data = @pages
	where objid = @id

	/* index: sum(used) where indid in (0, 1, 255) - data */
	update #spt_space
		set indexp = (select sum(used)
				from sysindexes
				where indid in (0, 1, 255)
				and id = @id)
			    - data
		where objid = @id

	/* unused: sum(reserved) - sum(used) where indid in (0, 1, 255) */
	update #spt_space
		set unused = reserved
				- (select sum(used)
					from sysindexes
						where indid in (0, 1, 255)
						and id = @id)
		where objid = @id

	update #spt_space
		set rows = i.rows
			from sysindexes i
				where i.indid < 2
				and i.id = @id
				and objid = @id

	fetch next from c_tables
	into @id
end

select top 25
	Table_Name = (select left(name,25) from sysobjects where id = objid),
	rows = convert(char(11), rows),
	reserved_KB = ltrim(str(reserved * d.low / 1024.,15,0) + ' ' + 'KB'),
	data_KB = ltrim(str(data * d.low / 1024.,15,0) + ' ' + 'KB'),
	index_size_KB = ltrim(str(indexp * d.low / 1024.,15,0) + ' ' + 'KB'),
	unused_KB = ltrim(str(unused * d.low / 1024.,15,0) + ' ' + 'KB')

from 	#spt_space, master.dbo.spt_values d
where 	d.number = 1
and 	d.type = 'E'
order by reserved desc

drop table #spt_space
close c_tables
deallocate c_tables

Credit: Finding the biggest tables in a database

For more information, see Trimauditlog: Stsadm operation (Office SharePoint Server).

The quick fix? Bring the content database(s) online.

The moral of the story? Do not leave your content database(s) offline without a good reason. If you do leave them offline, User Information Lists in the offline site collections will not be synchronized with the SSP.

An existing request to enable the Enterprise feature is in progress. To check the status of this request, go to the Timer Job Status page in Central Administration Operations and check the status of the Office Server Enterprise Features Upgrade Job.

When you find the job in the Timer Job Status page, you will see that it needs to run on all servers in your farm. Chances are it has failed on one (or more) servers. The quick fix? Restart (or start if stopped) the Windows SharePoint Services Timer service on the server where the upgrade job failed. After the job has completed, return to Central Administration to verify that your farm has been upgraded.