| Executive Summary: Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007 and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 are hugely popular collaboration platforms, but they're not without their faults. Perhaps Microsoft will fix these gaps in future versions, but until that happens, you can use these tips to work around things such as having to remember the port number when accessing SharePoint's Central Administration console, having to drill down whenever accessing the Stsadm utility, and assigning a permission level for the Check In Documents feature. |
Although Microsoft SharePoint is a powerful, transforming
technology in our enterprises, it presents
many administrative obstacles in configuration, management,
and security. Let’s look at some common
headaches that IT professionals face when implementing
SharePoint Products and Technologies.
The Random Port for Central Administration
When you perform a basic installation of Windows SharePoint Services
(WSS) 3.0 or Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007,
the setup routine makes all configuration choices for you. Along the
way, SharePoint setup selects a random port on which to publish
the Central Administration website. This means that you’re forced
to access Central Administration using a URL in the format http://server:port number, but you must know the port number. Remembering
a random port number for one farm’s Central Administration
site is painful enough. Multiply that by several farms, and you’ll
quickly be checking yourself into the SharePoint funny farm.
Luckily, you can retrieve the port number by looking at the list
of web applications in the Microsoft Management Console (MMC)
IIS Management snap-in. You can also use the Stsadm command
(stsadm.exe). To use Stsadm, open a command prompt and focus it
on the BIN folder by typing
cd %CommonProgramFiles%\Microsoft SharedWeb Server Extensions\12\bin
Then type the command
stsadm o getadminport
to get the port number.
Better yet, you can set Central Administration on each of your
farms to a standard port number of your choice. There are two ways
to specify the port for Central Administration. The first is to perform
an advanced installation instead of a basic installation. After
performing an advanced installation, run the SharePoint Products
and Technologies Configuration Wizard. The wizard presents the
Configure SharePoint Central Administration Web Application page,
where you can configure the port manually.
Alternatively, you can use Stsadm to configure the port after
either a basic or advanced installation. From a command prompt focused on SharePoint’s BIN
folder, type
stsadm o setadminport port
port_number
Stsadm also takes other
switches, such as -ssl, which
lets you enable Secure Sockets
Layer (SSL) encryption for the administration port.
The “Non-Fully Qualified” URL for Central
Administration
Sometimes, the URL of a SharePoint web application isn’t what you
want it to be. SharePoint Central Administration, for example, might
be tied to a non-Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN), such as
http://server01:9999. You can change the URL of Central Administration
to a more accessible name, such as http://server01.contoso
.com:9999. To do so, open a command prompt and type
cd %CommonProgramFiles%\Microsoft Shared\Web Server
Extensions\12\bin
Then type
stsadm o addzoneurl http://<currentURL> urlzone default
zonemappedurl http://<newURL>.
In our example, the command would be
stsadm -o addzoneurl http://server01:9999 -urlzone default
-zonemappedurl http://server01.contoso.com:9999
Drilling Down to Use Stsadm
You’ve seen several examples of using Stsadm commands in this
article, and in each you’ve had to drill down to its folder in the Program
Files directory. You’ll quickly get tired of doing that. To make
it easier to use Stsadm, use the following method to open a special
Stsadm-enabled command prompt. Open Notepad and enter the
following four commands, one per line:
@echo off
set path=%path%;%CommonProgramFiles%\microsoft shared web server extensions\12\bin
cmd.exe
@echo on
Save the file as “STSADM Command
Prompt.bat.” Include the quotation marks,
so that the file is saved as a batch file and
is not given a .txt extension. Double-click
the batch file, and a command prompt will
open. The command prompt includes the
path to Stsadm, so you can use the command
without specifying its full path.
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