I found myself getting really tired of constantly modifying configuration files when setting up forms based auth (FBA) in SharePoint 2010. There's even more work now then there was in the previous release, because now we have an additional web.config file to modify – for the STS. It was also a constant hassle when you…
Tag: Operations
Migrating from Windows Classic Auth to Windows Claims Auth in SharePoint 2010 Part 2
NOTE: UPDATED 1/8/2011 I wanted to follow-up on the previous post about migrating authentiation types in SharePoint 2010 that was done here: http://blogs.technet.com/b/speschka/archive/2010/06/12/migrating-a-web-application-from-windows-classic-to-windows-claims-in-sharepoint-2010.aspx. I still recommend taking a look at that posting if you haven't already because it includes some good background information about the migration process. Recently we've been tweaking with the set ot…
Managing Trusted Root Authorities for Claims Authentication in SharePoint 2010 Central Admin
I just thought I would create this post to raise awareness about another way to manage trusted root authorities in SharePoint 2010. For those of you who have been doing claims authentication sites, you know that you need to add all of the certificates in the token signing certificate's chain into SharePoint's list of trusted…
The given key was not present in the dictionary Error When Validating User Accounts
This is a problem that I’ve seen come up a few times now, with a particularly nasty side effect for sites using SAML claims with ADFS. Where I first saw this problem was when I created a new farm and I went into add a service account. I typed in the alias for the account…
How Does SharePoint 2010 Support Partitioned Tables in the Usage Database
I was talking with a buddy of mine today about the usage database in SharePoint 2010. It is by all appearances a set of partitioned tables in SQL Server. His very good question was well, partitioning tables is only available in the enterprise edition of SQL Server – what happens if I have a different flavor of…
Writing Custom Health Rules in SharePoint 2010
I just wrote my first health analyzer rule this weekend and it was a pretty straightforward and painless experience. I just thought I’d share a few tips from the experience. First, make sure you check out the SDK. We just released the RTM version of it and there is a bunch of great information in…
Creating Custom Error Pages in SharePoint 2010
SharePoint 2010 now provides the ability to create custom error pages. There are some very good reasons for doing this, especially if you have an externally published site. Todd Carter has written an excellent post that describes some of these reasons in detail, along with sample code to register your own custom error page. I…
Why Do I Get an Access Denied Error When Managing User Contexts in SharePoint 2010
User Context is a feature of FAST Search for SharePoint 2010 that is analagous to using audiences with search results. As you start to test this out you may find that within the site collection you can create FAST keywords and document promotions and demotions, but when you try and manage the User Contexts for…
Figuring Out What Claims You Have in SharePoint 2010
One of the interesting problems I was working on last week had to do with some strange permissions errors on a claims auth site. Part of the difficulty in troubleshooting the situation is that we were not / are not enumerating the claims that SharePoint thinks we have and dumping them out anywhere. So when…
Access Denied with Claims Auth in Interim Build
For those of you who have access to one of the interim builds of SharePoint 2010, specifically 4730.1010, you will very likely find claims to be pretty much non-functional. Like after everything is set up and you hit the SharePoint site, you are taken to the page that says “you are signed in as Joe…