SharePoint Search Error – Event ID 6482

Error 6482, I have been wondering and pondering about this error for the last couple of days and I finally found a fix for this and I am putting it here.

Our SharePoint servers were recently rebooted, after this I started having the following errors in the event log.

The Application Server Administration job failed due to the reason ” The underlying connection was closed: An unexpected error occurred on a send”

Also the crawl status was error on the ssp admin site and the server status was as below

Could not connect to server ServerName for application ‘SSP Name’. This error might occur if the server is not responding to client requests, the firewall or proxy configuration is preventing the server from being contacted, or the search administration Web service is not running on the server.

I could not get to search settings and there was an error next the default content access account.

After some research, I found the cause for this the problem.

As everyone know, SharePoint search works through the Office Server Web Service, this web service uses has both HTTP (running off port 56737) and HTTPS (Running off port 56738) Protocols. When SharePoint is installed, no certificate will be available on HTTPS Port and sometimes servers will refuse to talk to each other especially in Windows Server 2008 R2 which has more stringent secure features.

A simple test to see if the servers are communicating with each other is to open the browser and type in http://servername:56737/SSP_NAME/Search/SearchAdmin.ASMX and https://servername:56738/SSP_NAME/Search/SearchAdmin.ASMX.

If you get the SearchApplicationWebService Page, you are good or it means the servers are not communicating with each other.

In my case, the servers were not communicating due to the certificate error. So whats the solution, I had to get a self signed certificate and install it for the Office Server Web Services Website. How can you do it? Follow the steps below

1. Download SSLDiag.EXE and install it,

2. Open up a command prompt and navigate to C:\Program Files (x86)\IIS Resouces\SSLDiag,

3. Type the follow command

SSLDiag.exe /SeflSSL /S:SiteId /V:730 /K:1024 /N:”CN=ServerName”

(You can get the Site ID for Office Server Web Services from IIS),

4. Hit enter and The cursor simply moves to the next line and you have self signed certificate,

5. Repeat this on your index server followed by your query server(s).

That’s it, now your servers should be communicating with each other and everything should be ok. Shoot me an email if you have any questions.

Installing 64 bit Adobe PDF iFilter 9.0 for SharePoint!

I recently had some issues with installing the PDF iFilter 9.0 (which supports 64 bit) on a Windows Server 2008 R2 box hosting a Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007 Farm. The requirement was to allow SharePoint to Index the content inside the PDF Files. So, here are few pointers.

The steps highlighted in red are very important, if you don’t follow them you will end up with the following message in your crawl log.

The filtering process could not process this item. This might be because you do not have the latest file filter for this type of item. Install the corresponding filter and retry your crawl
1. Download the Adobe PDF iFilter 9.0 64 bit from here

2. Unzip the file and copy the executable to your Indexing Server.

3. Logon to your Indexing Server and Run the executable to install the PDF iFilter 9.0. You need to install the PDF iFilter only on the server performing Indexing.

4. After completing the installation, it is recommended to add Adobe PDF iFilter BIN to the path variable under environment variables. To do this, go to your computer properties and click on “Advanced System Settings”

Click on Environment Variables, Select the Path Variable and click edit.

Add the following address path to the variable value

C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe PDF iFilter for 64 bit platforms\bin

5. Add PDF as a file type in the SSP Admin site.

Alternatively, you can add a registy entry for this. Open up REGEDIT and scroll down to

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office Server\12.0\Search\Applications\GUID\Gather\Portal_Content\Extensions\ExtensionList

Add String Value  with 38 (or the highest number) as the name and PDF as the value.

If you have already added the file type for PDF in the SSP ADMIN site, it would appear in the list already. You don’t need to add a registry entry.

6. Check and Modify the following registry key “THIS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT STEP”

Open REGEDIT and scroll down to the following registry key

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office server\12.0\Search\Setup\ContentIndexCommon\Filters\Extension\.pdf

If the value of the default key is {4C904448-74A9-11D0-AF6E-00C04FD8DC02}, you need to change the value to {E8978DA6-047F-4E3D-9C78-CDBE46041603}.

Also make sure the key type is “REG_MULTI_SZ” not “REG_SZ”

7. On All SharePoint Servers serving sites or hosting the Web Application Role, do the following

Download the PDF Icon from here

Copy the Icon as pdficon.gif to the images folder by navigating to “System Folder\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\12\TEMPLATE\IMAGES” ,

Make an entry in DOCICON.XML, you can do this by navigating to “System Folder\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\12\TEMPLATE\XML”,

Edit the DOCICON.XML and add the following entry,

<mapping Key=”pdf” Value=”pdficon.gif”/>

Do not forget the closing slash “/”

Do an IISRESET!

8. Restart Office Search Service from Common Prompt

Net Stop OSEARCH

Net Start OSEARCH

9. Start a full crawl and you should be able to Search Inside PDF’s now.

VSS Error in Windows Server 2008 R2 – Event ID 8193

Recently  SharePoint Search was not working on a Windows Server 2008 R2 environment, whenever I stopped and started the office search service by using NET STOP OSEARCH and NET START OSEARCH, I would end up getting the following VSS error with Event ID 8193.

————————————————————————————————————————————————————–

Event Type:    Error
Event Source:    VSS
Event Category:    None
Event ID:    8193
Date:        12/5/2009
Time:        2:18:03 PM
User:        N/A
Computer:    ServerName
Description:
Volume Shadow Copy Service error: Unexpected error calling routine RegOpenKeyExW(-2147483646,SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\VSS\Diag,…).  hr = 0×80070005, Access is denied.
.

For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.
Data:
0000: 2d 20 43 6f 64 65 3a 20   – Code:
0008: 52 45 47 52 45 47 53 43   REGREGSC
0010: 30 30 30 30 30 31 35 36   00000156
0018: 2d 20 43 61 6c 6c 3a 20   – Call:
0020: 52 45 47 52 45 47 53 43   REGREGSC
0028: 30 30 30 30 30 31 32 39   00000129
0030: 2d 20 50 49 44 3a 20 20   – PID:
0038: 30 30 30 30 36 38 36 30   00006860
0040: 2d 20 54 49 44 3a 20 20   – TID:
0048: 30 30 30 30 39 30 39 36   00009096
0050: 2d 20 43 4d 44 3a 20 20   – CMD:
0058: 22 43 3a 5c 50 72 6f 67   “C:\Prog
0060: 72 61 6d 20 46 69 6c 65   ram File
0068: 73 5c 43 6f 6d 6d 6f 6e   s\Common
0070: 20 46 69 6c 65 73 5c 4d    Files\M
0078: 69 63 72 6f 73 6f 66 74   icrosoft
0080: 20 53 68 61 72 65 64 5c    Shared\
0088: 57 65 62 20 53 65 72 76   Web Serv
0090: 65 72 20 45 78 74 65 6e   er Exten
0098: 73 69 6f 6e 73 5c 31 32   sions\12
00a0: 5c 42 49 4e 5c 6d 73 73   \BIN\mss
00a8: 65 61 72 63 68 2e 65 78   earch.ex
00b0: 65 22 20 20 20 20 20 20   e“
00b8: 2d 20 55 73 65 72 3a 20   – User:
00c0: 4e 61 6d 65 3a 20 4e 49   Name: ServiceAccountName
00c8: 48 5c 4e 49 4e 44 53 53
00d0: 50 50 52 57 53 45 41 2c   ,
00d8: 20 53 49 44 3a 53 2d 31    SID:S-1
00e0: 2d 35 2d 32 31 2d 31 32   -5-21-12
00e8: 36 30 34 32 38 36 2d 36   604286-6
00f0: 35 36 36 39 32 37 33 36   56692736
00f8: 2d 31 38 34 38 39 30 33   -1848903
0100: 35 34 34 2d 34 30 36 35   544-4065
0108: 35 31 20 20 20 20 20 20   51

———————————————————————————————————————————-

I initially ignored this error and trying to see if anything was wrong but after looking at the details tab I realized that the whenever I started the Office Search Service, the content access account was trying to access the VSS registry key and it was failing due to lack permissions. So here is the fix, just type in regedit.exe in run and navigate the VSS registry key

HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\VSS\Diag

Right click on Diag, go to permissions and give the service account listed under details tab in the error with full control permissions.

This should fix the error, you can check this by restarting the office search service by using NET STOP OSEARCH and NET START OSEARCH

Shoot me an email if anybody have any questions!

DCOM Config in Windows Server 2008 R2

I have recently installed SharePoint 2007 on Windows Server 2008 R2 and ran into a rather peculiar security feature in R2.

As most SharePoint Administrators would have come across the DCOM Config error [Error No 10016], this error does not break the SharePoint farm but errors fill up the error log. The solution for this is give local activation permissions to the service account for the IIS WAMREG Admin Service and the error goes away.

But in the new Windows Server 2008 R2 environment, this was not the case. I could not make any changes to the properties of IIS WAMREG Admin Service through the Component Services Administrative Tool. All the properties were grayed out and I could not change the local and activation permissions from the security tab. My initial reaction was that I did not have sufficient permissions on the box which cannot be true as I am an Administrator on this particular box.

After some investigation, I found that I indeed did not have permissions to make changes to the component services. So, I tried assigning myself permissions;

I opened “REGEDIT and I navigated to the following key

HKLM -> SOFTWARE -> Classes -> AppID -> {61738644-F196-111D0-995300C04FD919C1}

I right clicked on this AppID and selected permissions.

The first thing you notice under security is that Administrators only have read access to this service. That explains why the settings are grayed out in DCOM Config. I tried to give the administrators full control but I got the following message

Unable to save permission changes on {61738644-F196-111D0-995300C04FD919C1}.

Access is denied.

I also noticed the only person or service which has full control over this is the “TrustedInstaller”. This was really strange for me, then I clicked on advanced and under the owner tab, current owner was listed as “TrustedInstaller”. Under that there is an option to change owner to either the administrators group or my own user account. I simply changed the owner to the administrators group and restarted the component services. Guess what, I was able to modify properties of the IIS WAMREG Admin Service.

This is a new security feature in R2 which prevents changes to the component services even though you are Administrator on the server, if you need to change the properties of any component services, you need to assume ownership through the registry editor.

Note: Do not change the permissions levels of the “TrustedInstaller”, this will cause problems during installations.