WSS 3.0 Beta 2 Known Issues

Article
09/14/2006

Workflow

Unable to start workflows via browser on list item if list item was created and never updated on v2 site.

The workaround is to update the list item first, and then you can navigate to workflow.aspx page for the list item.

Views

You get the following error clicking on the add new document link on a document library view in your homepage: Operation is not valid due to the current state of the object.

This is a build to build upgrade bug.

You can workaround this by:

Delete the View on your homepage and create a new one. Browse to the document library and use the upload link there.

Upgrade

Upgrade stops, the error in the log file is: [ERROR] [12:26:13 PM]: Access to the path 'd:\inetpub\wwwroot\App_GlobalResources' is denied.

The problem is that the account given for Central Administration does not have permissions in the folder used for the v2 IIS Web site. Continue with upgrade using the command line.

STSADM is located by default in:

program files\common files\microsoft shared\web server extensions\12\bin.

From a command prompt, go to that directory, type stsadm -o upgrade, and press ENTER.

This will restart upgrade in a way that will work past the issue.

Upgrade

Gradual upgrade is successful for the root site collection of a web application, but after that gradual upgrade fails for other site collections.

After doing a gradual upgrade on the root web site, the admin must do an "IIS Reset /noforce" to clear an internal information cache. This is only needed after the root site.

Upgrade, Alerts

After upgrade, alerts can be created but no email is sent. The SharePoint Outbound Email service is configured, and appears to be running.

In some situations, upgrade finishes but the SharePoint Web Application service is not started. This can be solved by starting the service via the command line using the following command:

stsadm -o provisionservice -action start -type SPWebService

Once that command completes, run "IISReset /noforce".

Alerts should begin.

Upgrade

After upgrade, attempt to create a new SharePoint Web Application. The UI appears to work, but the site does not work, and IIS Manager shows that no IIS Web site has been created.

In some situations, upgrade finishes but the SharePoint Web Application service is not started. This can be solved by starting the service via the command line using the following command:

stsadm -o provisionservice -action start -type SPWebService

Once that command completes, run "IISReset /noforce".

You will need to delete, then re-create the Web application that failed to create properly.

Upgrade

How do I run upgrade when there are language packs installed in the v2 environment?

If v2 included any language packs, you need to install the v3 version of the language pack before running upgrade.

After setup, the post-setup configuration wizard will be started. The user should exit out of this configuration wizard, then run setup for each of the language packs they need to install.

Once the language pack setups are completed, click Start, and select Administrative Tool under All Programs. Restart the SharePoint Product and Technologies Configuration Wizard.

You should be able to continue with upgrade from this point.

If you have run upgrade already, and found that some sites needed language packs, you can still proceed. Install the language pack on each Web server. Once that is done, run the command "STSADM -O Upgrade" from program files\common files\microsoft shared\web server extensions\12\bin. This will cause upgrade to be re-run, and should apply the language pack to the sites that needed it.

Upgrade

How do I upgrade a Windows SharePoint Services farm that is installed using Scalable Hosting (hostheader) mode?

In Beta 2, you must use in-place upgrade for farms that are using Scalable Hosting mode.

After Beta 2, content database attach upgrade is expected to work for farms using Scalable Hosting mode.

Note Gradual Upgrade cannot be used for Scalable Hosting mode farms.

Upgrade

If I use the Gradual Upgrade "revert to previous version" feature, I cannot immediately browse to the site.

In order to clear the cached data & re-set the redirect to the original location in v2, you must do an "IISReset /Noforce" on all farm servers, after reverting an upgraded site to the v2 version.

Surveys

Branching does not work for Drop-down choice question.

There is no workaround for Beta 2.

Surveys

Create a survey that includes a Rating scale (Matrix) question Resond to the survey Attempt to export your results to Excel RESULT Rating Scale Questions do not get exported.

This issue will be fixed in later Beta releases.

Surveys

Error after selecting View Item from Edit menu on survey that has space in the title.

1. Create a new survey with a space in the title, like: my survey.

2. Respond to the survey.

3. Show all responses.

4. Select View Item on the Edit menu.

EXPECT: Response to be displayed without error.

This issue will be fixed in later Beta releases.

ACTUAL:

An unexpected error has occurred. at Microsoft.SharePoint.Library.SPRequestInternalClass.GetListCurrentFolderPermMask(String bstrUrl, String bstrListName, Boolean& pbPreFetched) at Microsoft.SharePoint.Library.SPRequest.GetListCurrentFolderPermMask(String bstrUrl, String bstrListName, Boolean& pbPreFetched).

Surveys

Create a survey with Rating scale data and have your users respond to this question.

Use PRIME to export the information on the current site to a new site.

Import the data to the new site.

View a graphical summary of the survey on the new site.

View the response item itself. The data in the graphical summary is incomplete. Viewing the response item itself results in an error page.

This issue will be fixed in later Beta releases.

Calendar

Can't delete exception to recurring item from the calendar view

Repro:

1. Create a new recurring calendar item.

2. From the Calendar view, click on an instance of the item.

3. Edit item.

4. Change the time of the item to create an exception.

5. From the Calendar view, click on the exception item.

6. Delete item.

7. Click OK.

Results: Error: Expanded recurrence items can not be updated.

Microsoft.SharePoint.SPException: Expanded recurrence items can not be updated.

Delete the item from the current events view instead of from the calendar graphical view.

Backup/Restore, Alerts

After database or site collection restore, alerts may not be sent with the proper alert template.

There is an alert template GUID stored in the configuration database that allow alert subscriptions to be associated. When the content database got attached to a new farm or when site collection got restored to a new farm, the GUID in the configuration database will not match with the alert subscription. In that case, user can re-subscribe to the alert and the proper alert template will be attached

List Templates

A ListTemplate created in Beta 1 cannot be used on https://office in Beta 2.

This is by design . We do not support ListTemplate or SiteTemplates from an earlier builds. You will have to save it as a template in Beta2 to be able to access it from all Beta2 servers. The support for ListTemplate/SiteTemplate compatibility will be added ony after RTM i.e Site/list tempates created after RTM wil be accessible from SP1 etc . builds. We also do not support cross version templates as well .

Config

Prerequisite for enabling incoming e-mail in central admin UI.

The Windows SMTP Service needs to be installed in the SharePoint front-end server that is receiving incoming e-mail.

Wiki - Upgrade

After upgrade, Wiki pages do not have an edit button.

The site must be reset to template. This can be done from Site Settings.

Navigation - Upgrade Config

After upgrade, if the masterpage was unghosted, the navigation is incorrect.

Reset the master page to template

Config

When installing the WSS Server Beta you get the following error message:

Failed to create sample data

An exception of type system.reflection.targetinvocationexception was thrown.

Additional exception information:

Exception has been thrown by target of the invocation. Database ‘WSS_Content’ is already open and can only have one user at a time.

To workaround this error, do the following:

1. On the Start menu, click All Programs, point to Administrative Tools, and then click Component Services.

2. In the Console Root list, click the plus signs (+) to expand the Component Services, Computers, and My Computer nodes.

3. Right-click My Computer, and then click Properties.

4. On the MSDTC tab, click Security Configuration.

5. Select the Network DTC Access check box, select the Allow Remote Clients check box, and then click OK.

Config

After installing the Windows SharePoint Services Beta, you get the following error in the configuration wizard:

This access control list is not in canonical form and therefore cannot be modified.

This issue will occur if you are using Sysinternal's Newsid utility to reset the SID of the machine or image.

To work around this issue do the following:

Remove the WSS Server Beta install.

Join a workgroup.

Remove machine account from domain.

Run sysprep from Windows Support Tool's deploy.cab.

Reboot and rejoin the domain.

Install the WSS Server Beta.

You can also build the server from scratch and not use NewSID.

Config

When you visit your home page on an upgraded server, you may get a SecurityPermission error.

This is because custom Code Access Security policies are not upgraded when you upgrade from Windows SharePoint v2 to Windows SharePoint Services v3.

If you used a custom code access security policy for WSSv2, you will need to manually upgrade the file. If you have a custom code access security policy on your existing servers, that policy needs to manually upgraded.

To do this, you should first:

1. Locate the folder which hosts each existing web application on your server. This will be a folder like c:\inetpub\wwwroot.

2. Open up web.config in that web application.

3. Find the <trust> tag. The policy in use is specified by the level attribute. If level is equal to WSS_Minimal or WSS_Medium, you are using the default policy file, and this will be automatically upgraded.

4. Find the <trustLevel> tag that corresponds to the specified trust level underneath <system.web>/<securityPolicy>. This will tell you where your policy is located.

5. Make a back up of your existing policy file, and then open the specified policy file.

6. Find all the Asp.Net PermissionSet. Change the name to SPRestricted. Also, find the CodeGroup which refers to Asp.Net, and rename this to SPRestricted as well.

7. Add a CodeGroup which grants the _app_bin directory full trust:
<CodeGroup class="UnionCodeGroup" version="1" PermissionSetName="FullTrust"> <IMembershipCondition class="UrlMembershipCondition" version="1" Url="$AppDirUrl$/_app_bin/*" /> </CodeGroup>

8. Save this policy file out, run iisreset, and try again. NOTE: you may still run into code access security errors when you run a web part which calls into the SharePoint object model with partial trust. This error is described in a seperate readme entry.

Config

You may receive a SecurityPermission error when you run a web part which calls into the SharePoint object model and that comes from an assembly that has been granted partial trust.

Windows SharePoint Services does not properly assert for all permissions needed when you run a web part with partial trust, that has SharePointPermission and calls into the Windows SharePoint Services. Some of these permissions (e.g., FileIOPermission, SqlClientPermission) may be improperly requested of the web part assembly code, and when the web part doesn't have these permissions, this causes a SecurityPermission failure.

The workaround for beta2 is to elevate the permissions for the web part assembly in particular.

Config

On Windows SharePoint Services hosted on operating systems in a language where characters are represented in multibytes (e.g., a Japanese OS), uploading a document or creating a site with certain multilbyte characters may fail with an HTTP 400 Bad Request.

This is a bug with the .net framework. We are working on making a public fix for this available.

Config

The following error appears when running setup.exe on Windows Server 2003 Web Server Edition:

Setup is unable to proceed due to the following error(s):

Setup has detected that you have Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Web Edition installed. Because of Windows licensing restrictions, you must join this computer to a farm and may not host database engines on it.

Please refer to the readme file for instructions on how to obtain these pre-requisites. Correct the issue(s) listed above and re-run setup.

The Standalone mode for setup is not supported on Windows Server 2003 Web Server Edition. If you want to install Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 as a farm in standalone mode on this edition, you must either run setup in silent mode and specify a server farm install or customize your config.xml file to install in the Web Front End mode instead.

To customize the config.xml file for setup:

1. Copy the config.xml file from <path to setup.exe>\Files\Setup to a new location.

2. Open the config.xml file from the new location, and find the line that contains SERVERROLE.

3. Change the server role from STANDALONE to WFE on that line, and save the file.

4. Use the following command to run setup and call the config.xml file: Setup.exe /config <new location>\config.xml

Config

The Server Type defaults to Stand-alone when upgrading from Windows SharePoint Services 2.0.

If you are upgrading a Windows SharePoint Services 2.0 Web Front End server, select Web Front End as the Server Type tab on the Upgrade earlier versions page in Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 setup.

Config

You try to install an East Asian version of Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services version 3 on a computer that is running an English version of Microsoft Windows Server 2003. However, when you run the Setup program, you receive the following error message:

The language of this installation package is not supported by your system.

To resolve this issue, install East Asian language support on the computer before you install an East Asian version of Windows SharePoint Services v3. To install East Asian language support, follow these steps:

1. On the Start menu, click Run, and then type intl.cpl in the Open box, and click OK.

2. In the dialog box, click the Languages tab.

3. Under Supplemental language support, select the Install files for East Asian languages check box, click OK, and then click OK.

4. When you are prompted, insert the Windows Server 2003 CD-ROM into the computer's CD drive or DVD drive. Or, specify the network location where the files are located.

5. Click OK.

6. When you are prompted, restart the computer.

Config

In a clean install of Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, after running setup for a Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 (Beta) Language Pack, the language pack is not fully installed.

If you are installing the language pack as part of a clean install of Windows SharePoint Services, you must run the SharePoint Products and Technologies Configuration Wizard after completing language pack setup.

Config

Which mobile browsers and devices that have been verified to access WSS mobile pages beta version?

The following are mobile browsers and devices have been verified to access WSS mobile pages beta version, with additional browser profiles listed as below.

Please note that MICROSOFT CORPORATION MAKES NO REPRESENTATION OR WARRANTY, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, WITH RESPECT TO THE TESTING OF THE LISTED DEVICES, BROWSERS, DEVICE EMULATORS, AND ADDITIONAL BROWSER PROFILES.

Verified Mobile Browsers, Devices and Emulators

Japan (Carriers/Devices)

NTT DoCoMo FOMA series: P902i, SH902i, N902i, F902i, D902i, N901iC, P901i, SH901iC, P901iS, N901iS, SH901iS, D901iS, D901i, F901iS, F901iC, P900i, N900iS, SH900i, N900i, P900iV, F900iC, D900i, F900i, F900iT, N900iG, N900iL au by KDDI: W32T vodafone: 702NKII WILLCOM: W-ZERO3

US (Browsers/Devices)

Pocket Internet Explorer: AudioVox Cingular SmartPhone Nokia S60: Nokia 6230 Motorola Internet Browser: Motorola v551 Openwave 7.0, 6.2 browser (Emulator)

To install additional browser profiles, please copy following browser profiles into [driver]:\inetpub\wwwroot\wss\VirtualDirectories\[GUID or Port]\

To find [GUID or Port],

1. Open Internet Information Services.

2. Open the property of WSS site.

3. Click Home directory tab.

4. See Local Path data.

Browser profiles File name: wss_motorola.browser

2. File name: wss_nokia.browser

3. File name: wss_openwave.browser

4. File name: wss_vodafone.browser

Config

Re-using an application pool that is running an ASP.Net 1.1 Web application will cause SharePoint to fail.

Any time you specify an IIS application pool for SharePoint to use, you must be certain that it is not already in use by an application that is running ASP.Net 1.1. There will be no initial error, but SharePoint cannot run in this state.

This is most often encountered when upgrading from v2, when the existing SharePoint installation is running ASP.Net 1.1.

The easiest method to avoid this is to only use application pools that are created for Windows SharePoint Services (v3) or Office SharePoint Servers 12.

Config

Not all of the global settings from my v2 farm were added to the v3 farm in Gradual Upgrade.

Global settings are not included in the data that is migrated into the new v3 farm in Gradual Upgrade. Web application settings are upgraded. You will need to copy v2 settings for email servers, antivirus applications, quota templates, and any changes to the blocked file types into the v3 configuration.

Config

How do I configure the SharePoint Directory Management Service?

This service is used for creating DLs and Contacts in an Active Directory from SharePoint.

From the Incoming E-Mail Settings Page:

Connect to a SharePoint Directory Management Service? Select Yes

Directory Management Service URL:

The URL should be of the form:

https://SHAREPOINTSERVER:ADMINPORT/_vti_bin/SharepointEmailWS.asmx

E-mail server address:

The address of the SharePoint server where e-mail should be delivered. This is normally the SharePoint front-end server which is running the Windows SMTP server.

Does this Directory Management Service manage distribution lists? Select Yes if you'd like to provide users the option to create and manage distribution lists. If you select No, the DMS will only create Contacts for e-mail enabled lists.

From the Active Directory settings for e-mail web service Page:

Enter the active directory container where SharePoint should create Contacts and DLs. The app pool running the central admin site will need rights to write to this container in the AD.

From the Approval settings for e-mail web service page: Choose whether or not you want to require approval for creation and modification of distribution lists. You can approve requests from the Distribution Lists list which is accessed from the View All Site Content link in central admin.

Config

Command-line installation of SharePoint will not enable the search service.

During command line installation and configuration of a SharePoint Server, using the psconfig command, provisioning of the SharePoint Search Service will fail.

Workaround: To enable search, once installed, use the administrative UI to start (provision) the search service.

Note Enable the search service on the server[s] you intend to be used to provide the search service. If the search service is not enabled on a server, the server's name will not show in the dropdown on extendvs.aspx when a new web application is created. If no search servers are available, full-text search will not be available and the search box will not show on SharePoint web pages.

Config

How do I configure SharePoint Search using the Central Administrative user interface? I cannot find the Search Service listed.

In some cases, the service will be listed with a misleading service name.

To configure the search service:

Navigate to the Services on Server page.

The available services are listed on this page.

The Search Service may be listed as SharePoint Services Help Search Service. This is an issue with the configuration of the Search Service in Beta 2, in fact this service wll provide full-text search to all user content.

Click Start on this service to configure the search service on this server.

Use the domain account to configure the search service account. The search service configuration page is presented to allow congiuration of the service account and (optional) content access account for the search service.

Important Do not pick any of the Predefined accounts (LocalService or Network service) as the service account.

Selecting LocalService will cause the Search Service to fail when accessing resources on other servers in the farm.

If you select the LocalService account, the Search service will fail when accessing resources on other servers in the server farm.

Config

How do I enable search over Adobe PDF, Microsoft Office Visio and other files that require the installation of IFilters?

The beta 2 WSS installation includes search over a files stored in document libraries, as attachments, or in folders in SharePoint. WSS uses the IFilter interface and filter registration to associated IFilters with files for indexing, but installting the filters in Windows will not enable SharePoint to use them. In beta 2, special steps are required. After installing the filters in the normal way, the work around is:

The following registry paths must be added. In this example, the registration is for the pdf file extention, enabling the Adobe PDF IFilter from Adobe. Equivalent entries should be added for other file extensions to enable their filters to work. Add the following registry settings:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office Server\12.0\Search\Setup\ContentIndexCommon\Filters\Extension\.pdf HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office Server\12.0\Search\Setup\Filters\.pdf HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Shared Tools\Web Server Extensions\12.0\Search\Setup\ContentIndexCommon\Filters\Extension\.pdf HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Shared Tools\Web Server Extensions\12.0\Search\Setup\Filters\.pdf

Config

The gradual upgrade option to manually configure database names does not work properly at beta2. If the administrator chooses this option, when they press Submit, the next page will give the error:

Updates are currently disallowed on GET requests. To allow updates on a GET, set the 'AllowUnsafeUpdates' property on SPWeb.

The solution to this is to use the Automatically select database names option.

Search Config

Search is not functional for deployments using Scalable Hosting mode. The site collection urls are not crawled. This deployment option allows hosting many host named web sites on the same IIS virtual server.

There is no workaround for Beta 2. This issue is fixed for later beta releases.

Upgrade Config

After upgrading WSS sites users that are browsing the site anonymously will see an error similar to the following:

Control 'CTL0#_ct100' of type 'Button' must be placed inside a form tag with runat=server.

Here’s the workaround:

Open the page in Sharepoint Designer:

Find the markup: <WebPartPages:AuthenticationButton runat="server"/>

Replace the markup with: <%@ Register TagPrefix="wssuc" TagName="Welcome" src="~/_controltemplates/Welcome.ascx" %> <wssuc:Welcome runat="server" EnableViewState="false"/>

WSS Blogs - Upgrade Content

After upgrading, the categories and links web parts look bad.

Remove the web parts and add the new ones by clicking Edit Page on the Site Actions menu.

Content Migration (Import/Export) with InfoPath Forms Service Content

When using the stsadm – export command, the spexport object model, or Office Server Content Deployment to export any Office server content from a server with InfoPath admin deployed forms activated, the command fails on import, with the error: Could not find Feature.

In Beta 2, before using content migration to export content to a .cmp file or deploy content in the Office Server admin user interface, inactivate all InfoPath admin deployed forms on the source server.

Config

If I try to connect to a Beta2 SharePoint site with a Beta1 or Beta1-TR version of SharePoint Designer, I get an error saying that my site admin has disallowed editing with SharePoint Designer.

The server APIs that SharePoint Designer uses to edit SharePoint content were updated after Beta 1 Technical Refresh, so earlier versions of SharePoint Designer can no longer edit the site successfully. Use a Beta2 version of SharePoint Designer to edit the site.

Permission

Users added to the site as "Site Collection Administrator" do not receive any alerts

Add the user to the site explicitly.

Security

Digest Authentication is not supported in Beta 2.

We were blocked from testing Digest Authentication in time for Beta 2 due to a blocking bug in IIS 6 (Windows 2003). We do plan to support this for RTM but will not support this for Beta 2.

Security

Why do workflow tasks never complete if I'm using forms authentication?

It is recommended that you evaluate workflow features without using forms authentication.

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

WSS 3.0 Beta 2 Known Issues

Additional resources