With the release of Power Pack 3 for Windows Home Server, I have been thinking about trying it out. Having an MSDN subscription and a virtual machine host made this quite a bit easier, as I didn’t need to purchase any additional hardware to use it.
Prior to installing WHS, I had a Windows 2008 virtual machine that I installed all my stuff on and had shares. It definitely worked, but some of the cool features of WHS kept me wanting to move in that direction. Things like automated backups of client machines, a console, better managed and accessible shares, and Media Center tie-ins (I have a Win7 virtual machine as a Media Center and an Xbox 360 as the extender). All in all, I think it is definitely going to be a move in the right direction, but that doesn’t mean there weren’t issues getting there. I am going to outline a bunch of them here in the hopes that others can find comfort in the work I have done to resolve them.
Just silly stuff like that, which take awhile to troubleshoot, when they don’t need to. Turn it off.
Protocol mismatch. This computer uses protocol version 6.0.2030.2, but partner computer [server] uses protocol version 6.0.2030.0. A connection cannot be established
This was because the http://server:55000/enrollid/id.aspx webservice that the connector uses on the WHS machine was returning the incorrect version. The only way to fix it that I found was by installing the final build of Power Pack 3. The beta didn’t work, nor did downgrading to a previous PP.
Hopefully this little guide helps someone else out there. As I tinker with it some more, I will probably add additional articles, but it is amazing how long it has taken me to get this silly machine up and running, especially when this is supposed to be an appliance. I know that MS is learning a lot from this, but the polish is still a bit missing, and this is after 3 Service Packs (Power Packs).
Having issues installing the WCF Extensions on Visual Studio 2005 when you have .NET 3.0 SP1 installed? Getting an error message the looks something like the following?
Setup has detected that a prerequisite is missing. To use Visual Studio 2005 extensions for .NET Framework 3.0 (WCF & WPF), November 2006 CTP you must have the .NET Framework 3.0 runtime installed. Please install the .NET Framework 3.0 runtime and restart setup.
Well, instead of just installing the application by double clicking on the MSI, run it the following way. This ends up bypassing the prereq checks and it installs successfully. Yay to broken installers!
msiexec /i vsextwfx.msi WRC_INSTALLED_OVERRIDE=1
Make sure your Database Access account is an admin on the central administration server, otherwise you’ll get access denied errors when trying to create new web applications. This is because the db access account won’t have the ability to edit the metabase. Oh, and this bubble up by MOSS saying that you, the logged in user doesn’t have access, which is completely inaccurate, especially since I was a Farm Administrator. In addition you’ll see the error message listed below in the Application event logs.
Log Name: Application
Source: ASP.NET 2.0.50727.0
Date: 3/18/2008 10:58:42 AM
Event ID: 1309
Task Category: Web Event
Level: Warning
Keywords: Classic
User: N/A
Computer:
Description:
Event code: 3005
Event message: An unhandled exception has occurred.
Event time: 3/18/2008 10:58:42 AM
Event time (UTC): 3/18/2008 3:58:42 PM
Event ID: c59d97a1bbf8405cba1d837292259be4
Event sequence: 4767
Event occurrence: 8
Event detail code: 0
Application information:
Application domain: /LM/W3SVC/236168797/ROOT-1-128503227503346172
Trust level: WSS_Minimal
Application Virtual Path: /
Application Path: C:\inetpub\wwwroot\wss\VirtualDirectories\37466\
Machine name:
Process information:
Process ID: 3720
Process name: w3wp.exe
Account name:
\
Exception information:
Exception type: COMException
Exception message: Access is denied.
Request information:
Request URL: http://
:24055/_admin/extendvs.aspx
Request path: /_admin/extendvs.aspx
User host address: fe80::e48a:75aa:9034:9106WSS_Minimal
User:
\
Is authenticated: True
Authentication Type: NTLM
Thread account name:
\
Thread information:
Thread ID: 9
Thread account name:
\
Is impersonating: False
Stack trace: at Microsoft.SharePoint.Utilities.SPUtility.HandleAccessDenied(Exception ex)
at Microsoft.SharePoint.ApplicationRuntime.SPRequestModule.HandleAccessDenied(Exception ex)
at Microsoft.SharePoint.ApplicationRuntime.BaseApplication.Application_Error(HttpApplication app)
at Microsoft.SharePoint.ApplicationRuntime.SPRequestModule.ErrorAppHandler(Object oSender, EventArgs ea)
at System.Web.HttpApplication.RaiseOnError()
I hate having service accounts admins on boxes.
After trying to install MOSS 2007 on a new Windows 2008 box, I almost went completely bonkers. No place in the installation documentation does it tell you what Role Services need to be installed for MOSS to successfully install and run. Initially MOSS 2007 wouldn’t even install because I didn’t have the IIS6 metabase compatability installed. However, just because it’s installed, doesn’t mean it actually runs. I then started installing additional role services to see if I could get it to work. Needless to say, even after installing all of services, my MOSS installation didn’t work. Turns out you need to have the services installed prior to actually installing MOSS. Otherwise the page will never render, and you’ll get a 5MB binary download instead of the actual application.
However, after I knew what I was looking at (reinstalling MOSS again after all the services were installed), I decided to start whittle down the actual services I need. Instead of doing it by hand, I finally found a website that listed what’s needed. I’d like to give Bill Baer’s site a shoutout as to where I found this information.
Web Server
Common HTTP Features
Static Content
Default Document
Directory Browsing
HTTP Errors
Application Development
ASP.NET
.NET Extensibility
ISAPI Extensions
ISAPI Filters
Health and Diagnostics
HTTP Logging
Logging Tools
Request Monitor
Tracing
Security
Basic Authentication
Windows Authentication
Digest Authentication
Request Filtering
Performance
Static Content Compression
Dynamic Content Compression
Management Tools
IIS Management Console
IIS 6 Management Compatibility
IIS 6 Metabase Compatibility
Having troubles running SQL Server Manager on your shiny new Windows 2008 installation? Make sure you right click and do a “Run as administrator” on it. Took me awhile to figure this one out. Otherwise you’ll just get the error “Login failed for user domain\user. (Microsoft SQL Server, Error: 18456)” even if you’re a member of the local administrators on the SQL box.
Yet another instance of where UAC sucks.
Microsoft released a bunch of how-to guides for various things new to Windows 2008. You can grab them all from the MS Download page.
Things I would definitely check out are:
After having issues with a potential bug on Feb the 29th, I’ve finally gotten things straightened out.
Today I attempted to move the mailboxes again, but received the same error message.
Summary: 1 item(s). 0 succeeded, 1 failed.
Elapsed time: 00:00:08
User’s Mailbox
FailedError:
The address list service on the server ‘servername.fqdn’ is not running. The Exchange server address list service failed to respond. This could be because of an address list or email address policy configuration error.The Exchange server address list service failed to respond. This could be because of an address list or email address policy configuration error.
Exchange Management Shell command attempted:
‘fqdn/Managed Users/User’ | move-mailbox -BadItemLimit ‘10’ -TargetDatabase ‘servername\First Storage Group\Mailbox Database’Elapsed Time: 00:00:08
It turns out that all I needed to do was restart the System Attendant service on the machine I was trying to move the mailboxes to. After I did that, everything moved successfully. I then attempted to hit OWA on the new machine and it was successful! So I finished moving all the mailboxes over, changed ISA to point to the new server name, imported the right certificate and I’m good to go. Almost 5 days of downtime, but no email lost, yay!
Now I just need to decommission the old Exchange box and give the new one more RAM. Not a bad few days work.