SharePoint STSADM backup to a file share

I have been configuring STSADM backups today on a few SharePoint & WSS WFE servers to backup to a file share. These have been scheduled using the task scheduler and some batch files.

I had read before that the service account running the SQL instance would need modify permissions on the on the file share (both Sharing and Security permissions), and I am sure this is how we have it configured for another server.

However when I executed the backup it kept failing with the error message –

Object objectName failed in event OnBackup. For more information, see the error log located in the backup directory. SqlException: Cannot open backup device Operating system error 5(Access is denied.)

I did some searching around and eventually came across this TechNet thread –

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/sharepointadmin/thread/7a0100cf-f396-46e6-83e8-06bdb08b432e

It seems that modify permissions is not enough and that the SQL service account needs full control permissions on the file share. I changed the permissions to full control and hey presto the backup worked!

Hope this helps.

MonoTouch – .NET apps on the iPhone platform

Had to write a post about this as this is great news for .NET developers who fancy developing apps for the iPhone.

MonoTouch is a platform that has been developed by Novell allowing .NET C# based applications to run on the iPhone and take advantage of the iPhone’s API’s.

Here is the original post that I read over at modmyi –

http://modmyi.com/forums/iphone-news/684724-filling-language-gap-app-development.html

And here is the link to the official site –

http://monotouch.net/

There appears to be a trial available so I might give it a go Although the base version is very expensive at $399!

Edit – I’ve just noticed you have to run it on a mac which is annoying if you only have a windows machine like me.

Quest Migration Manager 2.0 now released

Bit of a plug for Quest software here but their tool to migrate SharePoint subsite’s, site collections and content has now been fully released. This post is slightly late though as the official release was on the 6th August 2009!

The official page is here –

http://www.quest.com/migration-manager-for-sharepoint/

And this blog post by the quest team talks about some of the features –

http://sharepointforall.com/blogs/team/archive/2009/08/07/migration-manager-for-sharepoint-2-0-is-now-generally-available.aspx

Their previous version of the software was called the ‘Reorganization Wizard’, we ran into problems moving subsites around within our farm and this software came to the rescue.

I would urge you all to check it out as its packed full of useful functionality.

Obtaining workflow status in code

I recently wrote a console application which looped through the workflows running on my SharePoint site and showed the status of each one. When I refer to status I mean the same status that is displayed under the workflow column e.g. In Progress, Error occurred etc

To get the workflow status in code you need to use the enumeration ‘SPWorkflowStatus’, which will return one of the following numeric values:

public enum SPWorkflowStatus
{
NotStarted = 0,
FailedOnStart = 1,
InProgress = 2,
ErrorOccurred = 3,
StoppedByUser = 4,
Completed = 5,
Max = 15,
}

Hope this helps!