Front and Center: Configuring Server Extensions Using Command-Line Properties

For those who want to configure the Server Extensions without the HTML administration pages, Microsoft offers a command-line tool that makes configuring Server Extensions fairly easy.

The Server Extensions command-line administration tool is called owsadm.exe, and it is located in C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\50\bin. By running the tool with no parameters (just running the .exe file with nothing after it), you will see a partial list of the functions it can perform. For a full list, see the URL at the bottom of the help screen that displays when you run the tool, or visit http://fpserk.frontpagelink.com, browse to the bottom of the page, and click on Command Line Properties.

To determine the current value for a particular property, you can use the getproperty command. For example, if you wanted to find out if author logging is enabled (the Logging property), use the following command line:

 owsadm.exe -o -p 80 getproperty -pn Logging 

This will return the current value of the property.

TIP

The Microsoft documentation on this command-line tool is incorrect. The documentation leaves off the dash before many of the parameters. Only commands (such as getproperty and setproperty) and property names (such as Logging) are entered without a dash.

Why is being able to control these settings from a command line such a great tool? Because it makes it very easy to script configurations for a Server Extensions Web site. It's quite easy to create a batch file that will set properties to your heart's content, alleviating the burden of trying to wade through administration pages trying to find the property you need.

Then there are those properties that you can't configure from the HTML administration pages. Suppose, for example, that you are trying to get Visual SourceSafe integrated with the Server Extensions and it's not working. Normally, there is no indication of what the problem might be in this situation, but if you set the Server Extensions property called LogInitialSourceControlErrors to 1, any errors are written into the Application log in the Windows Event Viewer. The error message is descriptive and will tell you what the problem is.

The LogInitialSourceControlErrors property is not available in the HTML administration pages. To set it, you need to use the owsadm.exe command-line tool and set the property as follows:

 owsadm -o setproperty -pn LogInitialSourceControlErrors -pv 1 

By creating a batch file with this line in it, you can easily give it to a server administrator and have her enable source control error logging for you without her having to know anything at all about the Server Extensions.

NOTE

Some of the Server Extensions properties might not take effect correctly or might cause problems. For example, setting the WECCtlFlags property used to be a way to cause the FrontPage 2000 and later Open Web dialog boxes to appear just as the FrontPage 98 Open Web dialog box complete with the List Webs button that FrontPage 98 users were used to. Microsoft has now turned off that ability, and setting this value will generate an error or cause FrontPage to crash.