Advanced Topics

                 

 
Special Edition Using Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server
By Robert Ferguson

Table of Contents
Chapter 8.  Managing the Servers


There are several advanced topics that do not necessarily fall under the classification of a particular server management function. For the sake of planning and server management, we decided to group these together here. In this section we will discuss the following:

  • Configuring IFilters

  • Using Robots.txt and HTML tags to prevent access

  • Installing Outlook Web Access Help files

  • Reclaiming disk space from the Web Storage System

Configuring IFilters

Before we talk about how to configure IFilters, many of you may be asking questions such as "What is an IFilter and why are they useful?" IFilters enable you to register a particular file extension and begin crawling for documents and including these file types within the index. The actual procedure for configuring file types depends on the IFilter that you are registering. Third-party providers can be specified and registered, including Adobe .pdf files. There are also filters for HTML documents, Microsoft Office files, TIFF files, and text files. When content sources are configured, the workspace administrator specifies the file types that will be included within the index.

NOTE

It is possible that some file types exist but no filters are registered for these files. When you include file types that do not have registered IFilters within your index, the index will only include the file properties and not the actual files.


To learn more about IFilters, see "Using and Configuring IFilters," p. 467, and "The Importance of IFilters," p. 599.

IFilters may also play a role in troubleshooting and diagnosis, as well as allowing for the reading of various content sources and data format types.

graphics/troubleshoot_icon.gif

If you need a tool that reports the time it takes to access a document stored in your SharePoint Portal Server, perhaps because access times seem extremely long, see " Access Time to a Document is Long " in the " Troubleshooting " section at the end of the chapter.

Using Robots.txt and HTML Tags to Prevent Access

The robots.txt file is used to prevent other servers from crawling your workspace and impacting the performance of your end users' portal experience. The file indicates explicitly where Web crawlers are allowed to explore within a particular Web site. The SharePoint Portal Server crawl process looks for this file and follows the rules specified within the file. The file is not installed automatically, so you will need to manually create the file and store it in the home directory of the Default Web Site for the SharePoint Portal Server computer. To verify the proper path of the Default Web Site, perform the following tasks :

  1. Launch the Administrative Tools application and click on Internet Services Manager.

  2. Expand the SharePoint Portal Server, right-click the Default Web Site, and click Properties.

  3. Click on the Home Directory Property page and note the location for Local Path.

  4. Place the robots.txt file in the same directory as Local Path on the Home Directory property page.

Figure 8.13. Verifying the file location for robots.txt.

graphics/08fig13.jpg

NOTE

SharePoint Portal Server references this file one time per day. If you make changes to this file, you should start and stop the MSSearch service to ensure that your changes go into effect immediately.


The use of the Robots.txt file is covered in great depth in "Excluding and Restricting Crawling," p. 469.

Installing Outlook Web Access Help Files

Some organizations will need Outlook Web Access (OWA) Help files on the SharePoint Portal Server. You will need to install the language-specific Help Files if you have developers who are developing applications that will use OWA. To install the language-specific help files, perform the following tasks:

  1. Within Windows Explorer, browse to Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Storage System\Exchweb and create a folder named Help.

  2. On the SharePoint Portal Server CD, browse to Server\Web Storage System\Exchweb\Help. This directory contains the help files for the following languages:

    English

    Japanese

    Chinese (Simplified)

    Chinese (Traditional)

    Italian

    Spanish

    Korean

    German

    French

  3. Once the appropriate folder is identified, you will need to copy the entire folder from the CD into the Help folder that you created in step 1.

Web Storage System Disk Space Reclaim

By default, every evening at 12:00 midnight, a defrag process is launched on the Web Storage System (wss.mdb) of the SharePoint Portal Server. This process does a great job of freeing all deleted space, but the only way to physically reduce the size of the file is to run ESEUTIL.EXE. This utility runs several other checks and balances on the wss.mdb file, including performing integrity checks, defrag, physically reducing the size of the file, as well as repairing the file if necessary. To manually reclaim disk space, perform the following:

  1. From the taskbar, click on Start, Programs, Accessories, and click on Command Prompt.

  2. At the command prompt, enter net stop MSExchangeIS and hit the Enter key.

  3. Select Yes to acknowledge other dependent services and to start the process.

  4. Change directories to the \BIN directory where the ESEUTIL.EXE resides. Usually, the file location is \Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Storage System\Bin.

  5. Once you are in this subdirectory, type ESEUTIL /d " path /wss.mdb" where path points to the directory of wss.mdb. You can type ESUETIL /? If you need further assistance with this command.

  6. Once the process is complete, at the DOS prompt, type net start MSExhangeIS and hit Enter. All appropriate services will be restarted.

graphics/troubleshoot_icon.gif

If you find yourself with users complaining that they cannot access the system and the WSS reclaim process is executing, see " No SPS User Access While WSS Reclaim Is in Progress " in the " Troubleshooting " section at the end of the chapter.

To obtain additional WSS performance- related information, see "WSS Optimization," p. 471.


                 
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Special Edition Using Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server
Special Edition Using Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server
ISBN: 0789725703
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2002
Pages: 286

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