JEAZ The bump and grind of daily SysAdmin life

27Jun/140

Remove Workflow Status Columns

Working in SharePoint 2010, I used the Content and Structure Tool to copy list items from a list with workflows to one without

Unfortunately, the workflow status column was also created in the destination list.
Clearly, this wasn't a useful column and I didn't want it in my fields.

How do you remove a workflow status column?
It's pretty easy with some PowerShell

PS C:\> $web = Get-SPWeb https://site.domain.com/web
PS C:\> $list = $web.Lists["List Name"]
PS C:\> $field = $list.Fields["Workflow Status Column Name"]
PS C:\> $field.Hidden
False
PS C:\> $field.ReadOnlyField
True
PS C:\> $field.ReadOnlyField = $false
PS C:\> $field.Update()

Once the field is no longer a ReadOnlyField you can delete it like any other column
You can also throw in $field.Delete() at the end

14Feb/130

Set-SCAdvisorActionAccount : The action parameter should be provided if computers are specified.

When configuring the SharePoint action account for System Center Advisor I ran into a problem.

http://onlinehelp.microsoft.com/en-us/advisor/hh923060.aspx

Run the Set-SCAdvisorActionAccount cmdlet to set the credentials. For example, if the agent computer name is Com1, run the following:

Set-SCAdvisorActionAccount -ActionAccountName Microsoft.SharePoint.Foundation.2010.AdminAccount -Credential $credential -AllowedComputer Com1

Well, that gives an error:

Set-SCAdvisorActionAccount : The action parameter should be provided if computers are specified.

Here is what it should look like:
Set-SCAdvisorActionAccount -ActionAccountName Microsoft.SharePoint.Foundation.2010.AdminAccount -Credential $credential -AllowedComputer Com1 -Action Set

Action parameter is explained on this other page:
http://onlinehelp.microsoft.com/en-us/advisor/hh965410.aspx

Parameters

-Action

Specifies an action. You have the following choices:

Set: Assign the computers in the -AllowedComputer parameter to the action account.

Add: Add the computers in the -AllowedComputer parameter to the action account.

Remove: Remove the computers listed in the -AllowedComputer parameter from the action account and delete the credentials stored in the computer*.

Clear: Remove all computers from the action account and delete the credential stored in all computers assigned to the action account*.

* After you remove a computer from the credential distribution from the gateway, the agent needs to wait for the next polling cycle to update the credentials. The agent compares the new and old credential sets and removes any credentials that are present in the old credential set but absent in the new set.

Here are the Cmdlets for System Center Advisor:
http://onlinehelp.microsoft.com/en-us/advisor/hh781477.aspx

16Nov/110

Cannot complete the configuration of the vSphere HA agent on the host. Misconfiguration in the host setup.

Today when adding a host to a cluster in vCenter I received this nearly useless error

Reconfigure vSphere HA host [host] Cannot complete the configuration of the vSphere HA agent on the host. Misconfiguration in the host setup.

vCenter Server hasn't been told the SHA1 SSL thumbprint is verified to be trusted.
Here are the steps to correct the problem

  1. In vSphere Client go to the Administration menu and select "vCenter Server Settings..."
  2. Click the "SSL Settings" tab on the left side
  3. Place a check mark in the "Verified" box for all your hosts you wish to configure for HA
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1Jun/110

The Windows Filtering Platform has blocked a bind to a local port.

I recently came across this problem while reviewing auditing logs on a Server 2008 SP2 machine - but to my surprise this was a false alarm.

The Windows Filtering Platform has blocked a bind to a local port.
Application Information:
Process ID:  976
Application Name: \device\harddiskvolume1\windows\system32\svchost.exe
Network Information:
Source Address:  fe80::58b4:5ea5:fc97:b422
Source Port:  546
Protocol:  17
Filter Information:
Filter Run-Time ID: 0
Layer Name:  Resource Assignment
Layer Run-Time ID: 38

As you can see, Filter Run-Time ID is equal to 0. Also, the layer name is Resource Assignment.

According to Biao Wang over on MSDN, this is a bug discovered in Windows Filtering Platform:

http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/wfp/thread/774026e6-a771-418a-b531-22183ef399f8/

Also this KB article details the symptoms, as well as a hotfix:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/969257

The root cause is the Windows Filtering Platform is still used by other parts of the OS, like IPSec, even when the firewall service is disabled. Furthermore, firewall filtering rules will still be in effect.

Many of us are accustomed to disabling the Windows Firewall service to disable the firewall, rather than going through firewall.cpl.

The easiest way to resolve this in our environment was to re-enable the Windows Firewall service, and this run firewall.cpl and select Turn Windows Firewall on or off and click "Off (Not Recommended)".

14Feb/110

Create NAS datastore Error – NFS Setup on ESX 4.1

Trying to mount  an NFS datastore in vCenter I got the following Errors:

vCenter error dialog:

Operation failed, diagnostics report: Unable to complete Sysinfo operation.  Please see the VMkernel log file for more details.

/var/log/vmkernel errors:

NFS: 149: Command: (mount) Server: (10.0.0.10) IP: (10.0.0.10) Path: (/mnt/servers/vmdk/vmdk) Label: (DEV-SERVERS) Options: (None)
WARNING: NFS: 946: MOUNT RPC failed with RPC status 13 (RPC was aborted due to timeout) trying to mount Server (10.0.0.10) Path (/mnt/servers/vmdk/vmdk)
NFS: 160: NFS mount 10.0.0.10:/mnt/servers/vmdk/vmdk failed: Unable to connect to NFS server

This turned out to simply be caused by the filer, in this case OpenFiler, not being able to resolve the hostnames of the ESX hosts. The DNS servers it referenced were returning Data network IPs instead of Storage network IPs, which don't cross-talk in our environment.

The fix was to simply add entries to /etc/hosts on OpenFiler with the correct IPs:

10.0.0.54 esx1 esx1.domain.local 10.0.0.55 esx2 esx2.domain.local 10.0.0.56 esx3 esx3.domain.local