I had an oddball situation where the app pool of a given site would keep stopping. No one visits this site with a browser, it’s used just for search crawling. So when it goes down, we never know.

In theory SCOM can tell us this, but SCOM produces so much noise that it’s easy to miss things.

import-module webadministration

	function main{
	#get-command -module webadministration will show all the IIS stuff
	$appPoolName = "SharePoint - www.mysite.com443"
	
	$dt = get-date
	$ComputerName = $env:computername
	If((get-WebAppPoolState -name $appPoolName).Value -eq "Stopped")
	{
		write-host "Failure detected, attempting to start it"
		start-webAppPool -name $appPoolName
		start-sleep -s 60
		
		If((get-WebAppPoolState -name $appPoolName).Value -eq "Stopped")
		{
			write-host "Tried to restart, but it didn't work!"
			sendmail "AppPoolRestart Failed" "App Pool $appPoolName restart on $ComputerName failed - this will effect search `n $dt"
			#log to event log
		}
		else
		{
			write-host "Looks like the app pool restarted ok"
			$subjectString = "AppPool Restart was needed"
			$body = "A routine check of the App Pool $appPoolName on $ComputerName found that it was not running, it has been started. `n $dt"
			sendmail $subjectString $body
			#log to event log?
		}
	}
	else
	 {
	 write-host "app pool $appPoolName is running"
	 }
 } #end main function
 
 function sendmail($subject, $body)
 {
    
    write-host "in Sendmail with subject: $subject, and body: $body"
	
	$EmailFrom = "WEBMONITOR@mydomain.com"
	$EmailTo = "jack@mydomain.com"
	$EmailBody = $body
	$EmailSubject = $subject
	$SMTPServer = "DNS.name.of.your.internal.smtp.server.com"
 
	Send-MailMessage -From $EmailFrom -To $EmailTo -Subject $subject -body $EmailBody -SmtpServer $SMTPServer
	"Emailed $subject on $dt to $EmailTo" | out-file -filepath "CheckSearchAppPools.log" -append 
 }
 
 #call main function
 main

Call me unlucky, but every time I’ve had to install Language Packs, There has been some kind of failure or another….

The first failure was my own fault, I’ll share it here, because it may save you some embarrassment.

When you go to download the langage packs, be sure to notice the drop down for “Language” it defaults to your PC’s default Language (In my case English).

The download for language packs looks like the same Microsoft download screen you see for anything else. I think mentally, my mind just completely ignores the “English x64” dropdown, since it seems so familiar. So, yeah step one of downloading a langauge pack, is to pick the language you want to install.. Also be sure to put the downloaded file into a folder named after the language – the dang install file will be called “ServerLanguagePack.exe” no matter what language you pick… Confusing…

On now onto the “real” errors:

One failure I’ve seen more than once, cropped up when installing langage packs on a 5 node farm.

I installed the Language packs, and the service packs, and after each step, I say no to the SharePoint setup wizard offer, saving that for the very end.

Now it was time to run the SharePoint Product Configuration Wizard on each machine.

I started with the server hosting Central admin…

And got a nice error – it said one of the language packs was not installed on two of the 5 nodes.

Short answer: Start the SPtimer Service.

This was relatively easy to figure out – Much of SharePoint server to server communication doesn’t actually happen server to server, instead, timer jobs are created in the database, and timer service on each node will pick them up and run them. This is true for WSP deployments and
I figured it was probably the case here – I KNEW I had just installed the binaries on ALL nodes so there was no question there – So, the first thing I checked was the SPTimerV4 (Windows) service on the machines in question and sure enough, it wasn’t running – I started them, along with the SPAdminV4 service and gave it a few minutes, and sure enough the installer on the first node, recognized the other nodes now…

Another error I had on one farm occurred around step 9 or 10 of the setup wizard. The wizard failed as a result and the logs were not super obvious as to the cause…

This one was tricker to diagnose… I ended up with a Support call to MS.
They asked me to run SETH – that diagnostic tool they have for collecting your farm’s logs and configuration. I usually cringe when they ask this, most of the great support reps’ I’ve spoken to never ask for SETH and instead dive right in.

I’m happy to report, this was an exception and I appreciate SETH a little more now.

The support rep emailed back something very specific…
“Grant Full Control to WSS_ADMIN_WPG to your logs directory”
Huh?
SharePoint is already using that directory just fine I thought to myself…
Next I looked at the permissoins: WSS_ADMIN_WPG already had read and write perms on the log directory!

I was convinced it wouldn’t work, but hey, nothing to loose by trying it.

It worked.

Oddly, the permissons on WSS_ADMIN_WPG after it worked?
Yep, Right back where we started, Read and write (no full control)

Not sure why this is, but I do know we moved logs to the D drive at one point – so maybe there is just a tiny glitch somewhere that comes across when the logs are not in the default location.

I was glad that was solved!

– Jack

PS, as a follow up, to use the new language, you must create a new site collection.
In powershell, you would use something like this:

new-spsite -language 3082 #3082=Spanish

There is a full list of Language ID’s at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/goglobal/bb964664.aspx

Some of the languages have several variants, It’s a good idea to check C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\TEMPLATE and look for a folder with the number you think you are trying to use, just to confirm you actually have that Language Pack installed. (If you recently installed it, the language folder should have the date of the install, which might help)
In my case I installed “Simple Chinese” which turned out to be 2052 And “Spanish” which turned out to be 3082.

I’m grateful to be a part of the planning team for this year’s SharePoint Saturday Event in the Chicago Suburbs.

The event will be held on June 1st at DeVry University in Addison, IL.

The event website is http://www.spschicagosuburbs.com

SharePoint Saturday Events are always free, and this one is no exception – I hope to see you there!

Nitzan Raz has a great article on some lesser known people picker settings over at http://blog.oneboredadmin.com/2012/09/some-things-i-didnt-know-about-people.html

There are two people picker tweaks I am aware of – one of which is set on the site collection object (with set-spsite -UserAccountDirectoryPath, which seems to limit the people picker to a single OU in AD, but only for the given site collection)

The other tweaks are discussed in Nitzan’s article, and involve the web application level (for those who can’t keep the terminology straight, this is the highest level, I often think of this as the IIS site.

Grabbing the SP Site object with get-SPWebApplication lets us look at the PeoplePickerSettings

$wa= get-spwebapplication http://yoururl.yourdomain.com
$wa.PeoplePickerSettings

Update July 11 2013:
I had an issue today where users in a trusted domain weren’t showing up in the people picker in a stage environment, but they worked fine in production.
The difference was $webapplication.PeoplePickersettings.ActiveDirectoryCustomFilter which was empty in the working environment, but had a value in the non-working environment.

The fix was like this:

# remove the filter
$wa = get-SPWebApplication http://www.peoplepickerdoesntwork.com
$backup = $wa.PeoplePickersettings.ActiveDirectoryCustomFilter
$wa.PeoplePickersettings.ActiveDirectoryCustomFilter = $null
$wa.update()
$backup | out-file originalpeoplepickercustomfiltervalue.txt

I often get WSP’s from our developers to redeploy in our various environments.
For our more sophisticated deployments we use Nik Patel’s Deployment script

However we often have smaller “one time” deployments. For those tiny deployments I created the script below.

If you’re the Visual Type, you might like this video on youtube.

(The script is below the video if you want to copy/paste)

Here’s the Script:

#this script might be easier to read on this blog if you click the "pop out" icon in the toolbar above.

#Simplple WSP redeplyment script from SharePointJack.com
#http://sharepointjack.com/2013/a-simple-powershell-script-for-redeploying-a-sharepoint-wsp-solution-file/
#first we add the SP snap in so that this can be launched from "normal" powershell
Add-PSSnapin Microsoft.SharePoint.PowerShell –ErrorAction SilentlyContinue

#While not really needed, I like to wrap functionality in a function
function main {

	$path = get-location # gets the location this script is running - it is assumed you have the WSP in the same directory
	$wsp = "nameofyour.wsp" #name of the WSP

        #this switch statement lets you assign the webapp URL based on the machine it's run from - in this way you can use the same script for Dev, stage and production.
	switch($env:computername)
	{
	 "DevelopmentServerName" {$webapp = "http://dev-url.yoursite.com"}
	 "StageServerName" {$webapp = "https://stg-url.yoursite.com"}
	 "ProdServerName" {$webapp = "https://prod-url.yorusite.com"}
          default {write-host "This should be run from the central admin box - Press any key to exit this script"; read-host; exit}
	 }

	write-host "retracting $wsp from $webapp"
	uninstall-spsolution $wsp -WebApplication $webapp -confirm:$false
	wait4timer($wsp)
	write-host "Removing solution $wsp from the farm"
	remove-spsolution $wsp -Confirm:$false
	write-host "Done Removing"
	sleep 2
	write-host "Adding solution $path\$wsp to the farm"
	add-spsolution -literalpath "$path\$wsp"
	write-host "Deploying solution $wsp to $webapp"
	install-spsolution -Identity $wsp -WebApplication $webapp -gacdeployment
	wait4timer($wsp)
	write-host "Done adding"
	write-host "press any key to continue"
	$a = read-host
} #end main

#I grabbed this right from Nik Patel's script - there are some operations that you cant do in quick succession - the system needs time to copy to each node and let the timer job run it's course.
# one way to deal with this, is to use a sleep timer, but that's not exact, I liked Nik's approach of checking the solution's job status - well done Nik!
function wait4timer($webapp) {
	$solution = Get-SPSolution | where-object {$_.Name -eq $wsp}
	if ($solution -ne $null) 
	{
		$counter = 1   

		Write-Host "Waiting to finish soultion timer job"
		while( ($solution.JobExists -eq $true ) -and ( $counter -lt 50 ) ) 
		{   
			Write-Host "Please wait..."
			sleep 2
			$counter++   
		}

		Write-Host "Finished the solution timer job" 		
	}
} #end wait4timer
main

Today I had some complaints that the SharePoint farm was slow – one of our teams noticed that an automated site creation process they used was timing out which is rare.

I brought up task manager which showed one of the w3wp.exe processes taking up about 25% CPU on a 4 core system.

I then launched Sysinternals process explorer, which if launched as an administrator, has some nice features.

Using Process Explorer, I was able to tell which IIS site the w3wp runaway process belonged to.
Then I was able to look at the threads to see what thread was consuming CPU in the process
and then I was able to look at the call stack for the thread, which shows the name of the DLL/EXE that was being called – it indicated that Workflow was the likely culprit.

I then searched the internet for a powershell command to list workflows in the farm and found this one:

http://sharepointrelated.com/2011/11/21/get-all-workflows-in-all-sites-and-lists/

With a little bit of fiddling, I was able to alter the script to just the web application (IIS site) in question.

A little bit more fiddling and I added the number of RunningInstances and added an if statement to the output so that it would only output the workflows with running instances.

I was then able to send that to our development team to check up on things

The completed script:
(All credit really goes to Nico Martens at sharepointrelated.com,
I’m only including the script here because I altered it to add the Running count which wasn’t in his original script):

param ([boolean] $writeToFile = $true) 
#List all workflows in farm 
Add-PSSnapin Microsoft.SharePoint.PowerShell -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue
#If boolean is set to true, you can specify an outputlocation, to save to textfile.
if($writeToFile -eq $true) 
{ 
$outputPath = Read-Host "Outputpath (e.g. C:\directory\filename.txt)" 
} 
#Counter variables 
$webcount = 0 
$listcount = 0 
$associationcount = 0
#Grab all webs 
Get-SPSite -webapplication "https://www.mywebsite.com" -Limit All | % {$webs += $_.Allwebs} 
if($webs.count -ge 1) 
{ 
	write-host "Starting"
    foreach($web in $webs) 
    { 
	#write-host $web
    #Grab all lists in the current web 
    $lists = $web.Lists    
        foreach($list in $lists) 
        { 
        $associations = @() 
        #Get all workflows that are associated with the current list 
            foreach($listassociation in $list.WorkflowAssociations) 
            { 
            $associations += $($listassociation.name) + " running:" + $($listassociation.RunningInstances)
            } 
            $listcount +=1        
            if($associations.count -ge 1) 
            { 
			if ($listassociation.RunningInstances -gt 0) {
            Write-Host "Website"$web.url -ForegroundColor Green    
            Write-Host "  List:"$list.Title -ForegroundColor Yellow 
            foreach($association in $associations){Write-Host "   -"$association} 
            
                if($WriteToFile -eq $true) 
                { 
                Add-Content -Path $outputPath -Value "Website $($web.url)" 
                Add-Content -Path $outputPath -Value "  List: $($list.Title)" 
                foreach($association in $associations){Add-Content -Path $outputPath -Value "   -$association"} 
                Add-Content -Path $outputPath -Value "`n" 
                } 
            } }
        } 
$webcount +=1 
$web.Dispose() 
    } 
#Show total counter for checked webs & lists 
Write-Host "Amount of webs checked:"$webcount 
Write-Host "Amount of lists checked:"$listcount 
} 
else 
{ 
Write-Host "No webs retrieved, please check your permissions" -ForegroundColor Red -BackgroundColor Black 
}

PS, I kept this script Private for a while because I wanted to get Nico’s permission to include his script with my revisions here.
I’m happy to report that Nico was ok with that – thanks to his generosity, this is now a public post!