SharePoint Hut

So today, I got a present for my company. 24 GB or RAM. My Testlab is complete now. After it failed to perform as a testlab before (it was basically designed as an overpowered dev desktop) I upgraded to some flashy RAM and now I can run me some virtuals with Hyper-V.

Setup is such:

Host – DNS, DC, Hyper-V

Scripted SharePoint Environment (via AutoSPInstaller) with 1 DB (just for show with 2 GB of RAM), 2 WFE and 2 App Servers.

The idea is to have a small farm setup in less than a day (half a day actually).

It’s a long running project, but now I need to get it done…

So, true story…
I have been working in a global company and there are three environments (test, pre and prod). Test- and Pre-environments had disableloopbackcheck enabled – Production didn’t. Now in Production there was an error whenever a SharePoint WebPart, Custom Code or Workflow Solution (i.e. Nintex) was trying to call a web service hosted on the farm. There is basically only one WFE, so whenever they were calling they were calling the WFE they were calling from, i.e. service caller == service provider. Classic DisableLoopBackCheck Scenario.

You can verify this by checking the IIS Logs. (Go to IIS, select the site that you want to inspect and click ‘IIS\logging’. There you will find the physical path of the logs:
Default: ‘%SystemDrive%\inetpub\logs\LogFiles’

Go to that location and check out you will find some folders there…
The naming convention here is: W3SVC{ID of IIS Site}. So on my test machine I see:
W3SVC857252282
W3SVC1408403042

That’s because I have two started IIS sites apart from the web services site (that’s 80 default and CA).
Now you want to know which folder to check, not why these folders are there, but give me one more step.
The ID of the web site in IIS you can get from the advanced settings.

Go to IIS and go to the context menu of the IIS Site you are interested in (right-click). Then do manage site > advanced settings
The ID will be displayed in the corresponding value field for the ID key.
In my case (80 -Default) this is 1408403042. So I check out that folder and voila I have logs for this site. Now I sort those descending order by date. What I can see is something like this:


2011-12-23 07:56:13 fe80::4519:cfda:26df:cf90%11 GET /_vti_bin/spscrawl.asmx - 80 - fe80::4519:cfda:26df:cf90%11 Mozilla/4.0+(compatible;+MSIE+4.01;+Windows+NT;+MS+Search+6.0+Robot) 401 1 2148074254 3


or

2011-12-23 07:56:13 fe80::4519:cfda:26df:cf90%11 GET /_vti_bin/spscrawl.asmx - 80 WORKGROUP\WIN-DGKR68KV601$ fe80::4519:cfda:26df:cf90%11 Mozilla/4.0+(compatible;+MSIE+4.01;+Windows+NT;+MS+Search+6.0+Robot) 200 0 0 6


What that means is the service (asmx) file on port 80 was hit, and there has been an unauthorized exception (401.1). The second one shows a success (200) and it shows the name of the server called. So if you are working with a multi-server environment this helps to figure out who is calling whom.

Check the google for more explanation on this.

Back to the actual problem I was trying to solve…DisableLoopBackCheck.

First check this link so you understand what the issue is. Spencer is an authority on SharePoint. When I think for myself I do have to agree though. If MS intends you not to do this, then don’t.

Thanks to this you have an alternative.

All I am going to do is give screenshots below, tell you it worked for me and tell you one thing to watch out for:

Being the idiot I am, I first added the urls instead of the host names to the registry. That’s crap of course and doesn’t work.
SO DO NOT ADD HTTPS://something.domain.extension but rather ONLY something.domain.extension.

This definitely has to correspond with your DNS Setup (A-Record/ C-Name). Don’t forget to add the hosts in the hosts file as well.
The registry change didn’t even need an IISReset /noforce. The host name file did.

This is where you find the disableloopbackcheck (if it’s been configured, if not it’s not there to begin with) in the registry:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE > SYSTEM > CurrentControlSet > Control > Lsa

This is where to go for the BackConnectionHostNames (MultiStringValue, needs to be created)
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE > SYSTEM > CurrentControlSet > Control > Lsa > MSV1_0 > “BackConnectionHostNames”

This is where to go for the hosts file: ‘%SystemDrive%\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts’

If you want to change a setting for all user profiles of a user profile service application, e.g. Newsgator Digest Email (“NGReceiveDigestEmail”) this is what you can do:


if ((Get-PSSnapin "Microsoft.SharePoint.PowerShell" -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue) -eq $null)
{
Add-PSSnapin "Microsoft.SharePoint.PowerShell"
}

# Create Service Context
$site = Get-SPSite http(s)://mysite-host.extension
$serviceContext = Get-SPServiceContext $site

# Get ProfileManager, User Profiles and User Properties
$profileManager = New-Object Microsoft.Office.Server.UserProfiles.UserProfileManager($serviceContext)

$userProfiles = $profileManager.GetEnumerator()

$val = "false"

foreach($userProfile in $userProfiles)
{
# Set New Value
$userProfile["BoolValueNameOfProperty"].Value = $val
$userProfile.Commit()
}

#Dispose of site object
$site.Dispose()

The script first gets the SharePoint snap-in silently.

Then itgets the User Profile Manager, which needs to the mysite-host location as a context (don’t forget to dispose the site object in the end, and in production watch out for exceptions that may lead to not executing that line of code).

The enumerator of the profile manager allows iteration of all user profiles. Set the value for the boolean property (for strings or other value types the assignment will look different).

Commit the change and dispose after iteration is finished.

This is basically the English Version of this German article on msdn: http://msdn.microsoft.com/de-de/library/bb979071.aspx by Mathias Schiffer.

It tells you how to disable the cache viewing of the global assembly cache and this way lets you view the gac the same way you can browse the rest of the file system. This is good for finding dlls that are in possession of running processes and therefore cannot be removed from the gac.

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This short article shows a little tweek that allows you to browse the Global Assembly Cache (GAC) of the .NET Frameworks in Windows Explorer like a usual folder. You thereby get a look at the physical struktur of the GAC.

Browse the Global Assembly Cache (GAC) of the .NET Frameworks in Windows Explorer (it can be found in the windows sub-directory “assembly”, i.e. typically “c:\windows\assembly“). This is how Windows Explorer shows the GAC as a list (default).

The so-called “GAC-Viewer” allows you to get a good quick overview of names, types, version numbers and details of the assemblies in the GAC.

Image 1: GAC-View in Windows Explorer

This does not have a lot to do with the reality of what the directory “assembly” contains in terms of files and folders.

To get a better look at the real structure of the GAC, you can deactivate the GAC-Viewer. Every time when the GAC is viewed via Windows Explorer the value of a registry key in the registry branch HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Fusion, the value of the DWORD-Entry DisableCacheViewer is checked. Usually this value does not exist and this means it has a value of 0. If you create a new DWORD-Entry DisableCacheViewer in the branch with the value of 1 the GAC will not use the cacheview and therefore show you everything at once.

Image 2: GAC de-mystified – this is how you do it!

TRight away you will see that the GAC actually resides in a sub-directory \assembly\GAC\. For every registered assembly there is a sub-directory with the name of the assembly. This itself contains in-turn sub-directories, that contain version number and public key of the assembly in their name. These sub-directories contain the actual assembly-file and a windows initialisationfile (INI).

To get the GAC-Viewer back to normal, all you need to do is either set the value of the DWORD DisableCacheViewer to 0 or delete it altogether.

If you want to switch between views it might be helpful to have two REG-Files which you can create with the Windows Editor and save accordingly:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
// Deactivate the GAC-Viewer for Windows Explorer
// Save this as text-file with the name GacViewOff.reg

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Fusion]
“DisableCacheViewer”=dword:00000001

Listing 1: Template for a REF-File for turning off the GAC-Viewer

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
// Activating the GAC-Viewer for Windows Explorer (Default)
// Save this as text-file with the name GacViewOn.reg

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Fusion]
“DisableCacheViewer”=dword:00000000

Listing 2: Template for a REG-File for turning on the GAC-Viewer