Wednesday 22 February 2012

error the search service instance on this server is not online cannot start Search service

The search service instance on this server is not online cannot start Search service
 
Cannot start search from Central Admin via system settings > Manage services on this server. Checked ULS logs and did lot of goggling and found different resolutions what worked for me was to reapply the topology for search.

Go to Central Admin > Application Management > Manage Service application
Click on your Search Service Application, scroll down the page till you see Modify button
Check if any of the Crawl or Query or Admin component is not online or not responding
Click on Modify button and Apply Topologies may consume 5-10 minutes to complete the process Hurray now it works for me.

If that doesn’t work for you have a look at ULS logs, PowerShell may resolve the issue for you. Run the following command

$searchinstance = Get-SPEnterpriseSearchServiceApplication

Check the search status here
Now pause the search instance run $searchinstance.Pause()
And to resume search run $searchinstance.Resume()

If this throws an error, check for the corresponding error or correlation id in ULS logs.

It could be an issue with Admin component to resolve this, run the following PowerShell command

$searchadmininstance = Get-SPEnterpriseSearchServiceApplication -local   

Type $searchadmininstance and press enter to see Search instance details, if you see the search status as disabled, now run

Get-SPEnterpriseSearchServiceInstance -Local | Start-SPEnterpriseSearchServiceInstance

Once above runs successfully, execute below:

$searchapp = Get-SPEnterpriseSearchServiceApplication

Now set search Admin component:

set-spenterprisesearchadministrationcomponent –searchapplication $searchapp –searchserviceinstance $searchadmininstance

This process may consume 5-10 minutes, now manoeuvre to search service application it shall be all okay.

Please let me know if this helps so I can update my solution

Thursday 16 February 2012

This view cannot be displayed because the number of lookup and workflow status columns it contains exceeds the threshold (8) enforced by Administrator

SharePoint list doesn’t display the items. Get an error this view cannot be displayed because the number of lookup and workflow status columns it contains exceeds the threshold (8) enforced by Administrator

The default lookup threshold is set to 8 in a web application by default. To resolve this,

Navigate to the Central Administration

Click on Application and select the web application

In my case its http://sharepoint.portal

From the ribbon bar, select General Settings > Select Resource Throttling
  
Now set List view Lookup threshold to 20


Note the maximum number you can set is between 1 to 1000

Wednesday 1 February 2012

Cannot create site collection error object reference not set


When you create a new site collection from central admin, you get an error object referent not set.
This can happen for various reasons. 

It could be that the Alternate access mapping is set incorrectly or some orphan entries in your database or you’ve set content hub or environment is unstable and you notice Upgrade required when you navigate Central Admin > System Settings > Manage Servers

First thing tried was to use PowerShell to create site collection thought may be this slip the attention of the ward and could let me create site collection. Nope doesn’t work.

Checked for environment stability by navigating to Central Admin> System Settings > Manage Servers. Didn’t find any server with status upgrade required which means may be cumulative update was installed but psconfig wasn’t executed or failed.

Checked the alternate access mapping intranet, extranet and default urls were intact

For Content Hub, checked the Managed Metadata Proxy Service Application properties and unchecked the last two options that didn’t resolve the issue

Had a look a at ULS logs again and pointed something about the content database.

Change your central url from default to : http://centraladmin:portnumeber/_admin/DatabaseStatus.aspx and notice for any unusual databases or the ones not responding. Found that the one which wasn’t responding was orphan database added some time back but didn’t delete.

Run the following command in Powershell
orphanedDB = Get-SPDatabase | where{$_.Name -eq "Content Database Name"}
$orphanedDB.Delete()
Performed an IIS reset and voila now able to create site collection