artykul8 » SharePoint

VSeWSS BIN Deployment and CAS Policy Issues

admin — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 16:03:50 +0000

There is a bug in Visual Studio Extensions for WSS (including VSeWSS 1.3) – if you are targeting your web part deployment into BIN instead of GAC, you are in for an upleasant surprise, when you realize that you custom access policy is not working.

The reason for this is incorrect assembly reference in manifest.xml, which results in invalid URL for IMembershipCondition element, where binary name has an extra .dll suffix in CAS policy file, just like in the file excerpt below:

C:\Program Files\Common Files\microsoft shared\Web Server Extensions\12\CONFIG\wss_custom_wss_mediumtrust_guid.config

... MyCustomWebPart.dll.dll" />

The solution for this problem is relatively simple:

- in your Visual Studio open WSP View pane, click Refresh button to update solution files

- open manifest.xml and in element remove extension ‘.dll’ from Assembly Name attribute:
... http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/"> ...

Additionally, while editing manifest.xml if you like to grant your web part additional security privileges you might need to add a few lines to PermissionSet element. In particular, if you are using MOSS Search or Search Server functionality, such as KeywordQuery or FullTextSqlQuery classes you would need RegistryPermission and FileIOPermission lines.
...

Additional resources:

SharePoint Server 2007 on Windows Server 2008 R2

admin — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 21:04:53 +0000

This already became a somewhat old topic, since Microsoft released a proper SharePoint Server 2007 slipstream edition with SP2.

Nonetheless, it is important to remember that if you are planning to install SharePoint Server 2007 or Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, it has to be at least SP2, anything before that is not supported on Windows Server 2008 R2. SharePoint Team Blog: Install SharePoint Server 2007 on Windows Server 2008 R2

There was a bit of confusion/frustration raised over this topic, because WSS 3.0 slipstream with SP2 came out long ago (April 2009), but MOSS 2007 was for some reasons left behind, and MSDN subscribers saw slipstream SP2 edition only in January 2010.

WSS 3.0 with SP2:
x86: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=EF93E453-75F1-45DF-8C6F-4565E8549C2A&displaylang=en
x64: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=9FB41E51-CB03-4B47-B89A-396786492CBA&displaylang=en

MOSS 2007 with SP2 (trial):
x86: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=2e6e5a9c-ebf6-4f7f-8467-f4de6bd6b831&displaylang=en
x64: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=3015fde4-85f6-4cbc-812d-55701fbfb563&displaylang=en

Windows Server, IIS/SharePoint, and NULL SID ‘Audit Failure’ Security Errors

admin — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 20:24:36 +0000

I stumbled across this issue, while troubleshooting errors accessing host-named SharePoint sites locally from within a web server (sites with specified host headers different from local server name).
While I had no problems accessing the same site from another computer, I could not login and access any pages locally. I was constantly prompted for user name and password receiving access errors, while my Security event log was getting filled with ‘Audit Failure’ log messages about NULL SID: “An account failed to log on. Security ID: NULL SID”.

After eliminating all possible causes – NLB, SharePoint site configuration, IIS security and settings – it turned out that it wasn’t even IIS- or SharePoint-related issue at all. Starting with Windows Server 2003 SP1 and higher (Windows Server 2008 and R2 editions in that list as well), as a security measure Microsoft introduced a loopback check to prevent man-in-the-middle (MITM) attack, when a malicious application (such as spyware) can try to eavesdrop communication with a remote server by introducing itself locally as a remote host. Please note: loopback check happens only when host headers do not match local computer name.

The symptoms and solutions are described in Microsoft KB article: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/896861
Additionally a few other related issues (accessing network shares, etc) are outlined in two more KB articles: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/887993 and http://support.microsoft.com/kb/926642.

To deal with this issue you have two options: either explicitly specify all host headers in the registry (the most secure, but also the most cumbersome solution), or disable loopback check entirely.

If you decide to opt for completely disabling loopback check (on a development or test server), here is one command line you can achieve it through. Please remember to restart your server after changing the registry!

REG ADD HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Lsa /v DisableLoopbackCheck /t REG_DWORD /d 1

Web Site Performance and JPEG Compression

admin — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 04:56:05 +0000

As a consultant, throughout stabilizing and deployment phases, I get frequently asked to investigate performance of specific web pages or whole sites, in order to improve page rendering speed, lately more and more related to SharePoint environment.

And what I often see in breakdown of page rendering that it is not that server execution time, which lags behind and causes visual delays, but the size and amount of creative content, which was put on the web site – images and flash files. The easiest way to quickly look at the page load timing breakdown is probably by using FireBug’s Net tab, as it’s shown on this illustration.

There are many ways to optimize and enhance performance of specific web pages and web sites in general. One of the great examples of the process and approach to optimization, is documented in the blog of Microsoft SharePoint team, which has done amazing job speeding up SharePoint.Microsoft.com.

However, in this post, rather than talking about optimization in general, I want to draw your attention to one highly overlooked issue – the size of creative media content used on production web sites, specifically size of JPEG images and Flash pieces relying heavily on imagery.

Back in the days, when I was working in video encoding industry, I used to spend large chunk of my time working with different JPEG settings and libraries for motion JPEG video compression. JPEG has many different implementations, and all image editing software programs, such as PhotoShop, Picasa, Paint, etc. use their own libraries with proprietary JPEG-compression, which differs in compression speed, parallelism, and quality.

However, they all have one thing in common – a configurable characteristic of compression quality, often expressed in per centage, or 0-100. You can read more on JPEG compression quality on wikipedia, with lots of great examples and comparisons.

But I would like to compare samples, which are closer to real life situation, such a simple web site banner, and show what programs you can use to optimize image file compression.

Here’s a sample image saved with different image quality:

Original Image – PNG, Image size: 43KB

JPEG Image – Quality: 100% (PhotoShop compression quality: Maximum), Size = 24KB

JPEG Image – Quality: 80% (PhotoShop compression quality: Very High), Image Size: 14KB

JPEG Image – Quality 60% (PhotoShop compression quality: High), Image size: 12KB

JPEG Image – Quality 30% (PhotoShop compression quality: Medium), Image size: 6KB

JPEG Image – Quality 10% (PhotoShop compression quality: Low), Image size: 4KB

As you can see the size differs drastically on the compression quality, and in many situations, when the images do not contain a lot of text or are related to professional photography, the quality can be lowered to reduce the size of the images. How low you should go is absolutely up to you and your attention to details. It is just important to remember to review image sizes before putting them online, and make an intelligent decision about how large do you want your image to be, and how fast you want your page to render on the screen of internet users.

The best way to review image sizes and quality if you are using PhotoShop CS editions is to choose to “Save for Web“. PhotoShop shows you image preview and quality comparison right in the save dialog:

As far as free alternatives to PhotoShop go:

- if you are using Picasa, one of the ways to do that if you choose to ‘Export to Folder’, and specify ‘Image Quality’ in the dialog, opting for ‘Normal’, ‘Minimum’, or ‘Custom’ where you can specify the exact compression quality

– or you can use MS Paint, which by default already saves with relatively lossy compression settings, and which you can also override through the registry

Visual Studio 2008 Extensions for SharePoint (VSeWSS 1.3)

admin — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 15:50:17 +0000

This one is the biggest pet peeve about SharePoint development for me right now.

Microsoft SharePoint product team is blowing all bells and whistles, announcing SharePoint 2010, and how important it is to switch to 64-bit environment, while poor SharePoint 2007 left in the dust and crippled with the only development extension working on 64-bit, which is still in CTP phase Visual Studio Extensions 1.3 (March 2009 CTP).

VSeWSS 1.3 was promised almost half a year ago to become a final release in the spring of 2009, and later on in one of the dev blogs mentioned July 2009 release date, but up to this date there hasn’t been any final version announcement or releases yet.

Also, if you are looking for more information and code snippets, you may still find useful referring to the samples that come with Visual Studio Extensions 1.1 for Visual Studio 2005 User Guide, which have been removed from 1.3 release.

I’m keeping my fingers crossed for the new release to come soon, while blaming it all for the recession…