The LandPhil

This is only funny if you’ve ever worked with SharePoint.  Or really any enterprise level Microsoft product.  Or really any enterprise software product…

No, only funny to SharePoint folks: Leave SharePoint Alone

Props to Christian Buckley.

So you’ve patched SharePoint.  And then you’ve run the configuration wizard on all of the farm machines to actually apply the updates.  Or, perhaps you prefer to use the command line psconfig.exe.  In any case, you get the dreaded (and very generic and not at all helpful) “an update conflict has occurred, and you must re-try this action”.

Fair enough, it says you should re-try, so you do.  And you get it again.  Ad infinitum.

Turns out it’s a problem with the configuration cache on that machine.  You need to clear that out.  I found the steps here (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/939308, which is an article for SP 2007, but it worked for me on 2010.)

I’ll summarize them:

1. Stop the timer service
2. Go to <systemrootdrive>:\ProgramData\Microsoft\SharePoint\<GUID>
3. Open the cache.ini file and look at the number.
4. Backup the folder.
5. Delete all of the XML documents in the folder.
6. Edit cache.ini so that it only contains “1″.
7. Restart the timer service.

When you restart the timer service, it should rebuild the contents of that directory, along with changing the value in the cache.ini file.  You should also then be able to run the upgrade wizard (or psconfig.exe).

I tend to write and talk as if I’m an authority on a subject. I do it because it keeps arguments to a minimum. It’s also easier to push your agenda when you’re aggressive.

That said, I am in no way claiming that anything I write on this blog is 100% accurate. I’ve looked at sources, I’ve tested the solutions, but I still may be wrong. I may have patched some issue that was ancillary to the problem I was hoping to address, I may have made a change that covered up the problem I was trying to solve originally.

The short version of what I’m saying is this: Correct me. Leave a comment if you see something is wrong, or you think I’ve led people down the wrong path. I’m not above correcting my posts. This isn’t a static document. I honestly want to makes things easier for others struggling down the same path. I believe I would be remiss in not doing so.

So I thought I’d give the Office Web Apps installation a try, just to see how things worked.  The installation itself is pretty easy.  You may see a lot of stuff go flying by in the SharePoint Configuration Wizard (that you have to run after the Office Web Apps install is finished) that would seem to indicate that it’s creating a bunch of service applications.  Don’t worry, it’s not.  I assume it’s just doing a check to make sure all of the applications that are supposed to be installed are installed.

At any rate, once that was done, I wanted to set up a PowerPoint Broadcast site.  This turned out to be a learning experience, so here are a few gotchas.  The PowerPoint Broadcasting is only available as a site collection template.  I assume there’s probably a way to shoehorn it’s functionality anywhere using Visual Studio or SharePoint Designer, but I just wanted to get it up and running.  So, when you create a site collection, do it then.  Also, when you create the PowerPoint Service Application you can also create a site collection that will be the “default” broadcasting site.  However, if you don’t do it as part of the service application creation process, you can’t add a “default” broadcasting site afterwards.  Live and learn.

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Yes, this is silly.