బాలాద్వైతం

అద్వైతము అంటే ద్వైతము కానిది. అంటే రెండు కానిది లేక రెండు గా లేనిది. సరే ఇది అందరికి తెలిసిన అర్ధమే అనుకోండీ! ఈ టపా అర్ధం చెప్పడంతో మొదలు పెట్టాలి కాబట్టి అలా మొదలుపెట్టాను. ఇంతకీ బాలాద్వైతం అని ఎందుకు అన్నాను అంటే ... కింద చదవండి.

మిగిలిన టపా చదవబోయేముందు నేను చెప్పేది ఏంటంటే ఈ కింద రాసింది అంతా నా  అనుభవం లోకి వచ్చిన రకరకాల సందర్భాల సమాహారం. ఎక్కడైనా తప్పులు దొర్లితే నేను క్షమార్హుడను. ఇది పూర్తిగా సనాతన ధర్మానికి సంబంధించిన టపా.

సాధారణంగా అద్వైతం అనే పదాన్ని అద్వైత సిద్ధాంతం గురించి చెప్పేటప్పుడు చెప్తారు. అంటే వేదం ప్రతిపాదించిన పరబ్రహ్మము ఒక్కటే. అది కాకుండా వేరేది లేదు అని దాని అర్ధము. మరి బాలాద్వైతం అంటే? ఇది నేను ప్రయోగించిన పదము. ఇంతకుముందు ఎవరైనా వాడారేమో నాకు తెలియదు. అందుకే ధైర్యంగా నేను ప్రయోగించిన పదము అని చెప్పాను. బాల వయసు లో అనగా పుట్టిన శిశువు పెరుగుతున్న కొద్దీ తాను తన చుట్టూ ఉన్న మనుషులను ప్రపంచాన్ని ఎలా చూడడం మొదలుపెట్టి ఎలా చుస్తూ పెరుగుతున్నాడు ఎలా చూస్తూ చనిపోతాడు అనే ఒక చిన్న ఆలోచన లో నుండి పుట్టిందే ఈ టపా. ముఖ్యంగా ఇది మా అమ్మాయి పుట్టి పెరుగుతున్నపుడు నా అనుభవాల లోనుండి ప్రచోదనము చెందింది. సరిగా ఆ సమయము లోనే నేను పెద్దలు ప్రవచించిన రామాయణ భాగవతాలు విన్నాను. బహుశా దాని ప్రభావమే నాలో ఈ ఆలోచనకి కారణం కావచ్చు.

మలమూత్రంబులతో మహాభయముతో మాతృస్థానాపేక్ష తో 

ఛలమూర్ఖత్వముతో సదా భ్రమతతో చాంచల్య చిత్తంబుతో 

బలువైనట్టి కఫజ్వర గ్రహమహా బాల్యామయ శ్రేణితో 

కలనైన తమ చింత లేక చెడితిన్ కామ్యార్ధినై శంకరా !

ఎందుకో ఈ పద్యము తో మొదలుపెట్టాలని అనిపించింది. పెద్ద సంబంధం లేకపోయినా ఈ పద్యం లో శిశువు యొక్క రకరకాల అవస్థలు చెప్పి ఈ అవస్థల వలన కలలోనైనా నీ ధ్యానము చేయలేదు శంకరా అని శతక కర్త అంటారు . గురువు గారు చాలా సార్లు చెప్పిన పద్యమ్. పుట్టిన వెంటనే శిశువు కి ప్రపంచం లో ఉన్నది ఎవరంటే అమ్మే. పుట్టిన క్షణం నుండి కొన్ని నెలలు నిండే వరకు దేవుడి తో సహా అన్ని అమ్మే. బ్రహ్మము లోనుండి వచ్చి బ్రహ్మము లో ఉండి  బ్రహ్మము లోనే కలిసినట్లు, ముందు అమ్మ లో ఉండి తరువాత బయటకి వచ్చి మళ్లీ అమ్మ లోకే వెళ్తాడు. అందుకే శిశువు గా ఉన్నపుడు అమ్మే పరబ్రహ్మము. రెండొవది లేదు. అదే బాలాద్వైతము.

ఇంతకీ తరువాత ఏంటి అంటే నెలలు నిండి వయసు పెరిగే కొద్దీ, నాన్న ని చూస్తాడు. అద్వైతము నుండి ద్వైతము లోకి వచ్చాడు. ఇంక మొదలుతుంది గొడవ అప్పటినుండి. అమ్మ అరిస్తే నాన్న దగ్గరకి రావటం. నాన్న అరిస్తే అమ్మ దగ్గరకి రావటం. దేనికి అంటే ముద్దులాడటానికి. విష్ణువు కోరిక తీర్చలేదని శివుడు దగ్గరకి, శివుడు కోరికలు తీర్చలేదని విష్ణువు దగ్గరకి ఏడ్చుకుంటూ వెళ్ళే వాళ్ళలాగా ! పొద్దునైతే నాన్న కావాలి నాన్నతో ఆడుకోవాలి. రాత్రి అయితే నాన్న వద్దు అమ్మ కావలి ఎందుకంటే నాన్న నిద్రపుచ్చేస్తారు కాబట్టి ! ఇందాక చెప్పిన శివ విష్ణు ఉదాహరణ మళ్లీ అనువర్తిస్తుంది. అయితే ఇదే సందర్భాన్ని ఇంకో రకంగా చూస్తే వాడికి పొద్దున నాన్న కావాలి (పొద్దున అంటే  విష్ణువు ) రాత్రి అమ్మ(రాత్రి అంటే శివుడు) ఇద్దరూ కావాలంటాడు. అమ్మా నాన్నలకి అభేదం చూసినవాడే ఎలా గొడవ చేయనివాడు ఔతాడో శివకేశవుల మధ్య అభేదం చూసినవాడే పరమాత్మ లో కలుస్తాడు !

సరే తరువాత ఏంటి అంటే - ఇంకా వయసు పెరిగే కొద్దీ రకరకాల మనుషులు పరిచయం ప్రారంభం. బంధువులు, స్నేహితులు, వైరులు, ఇంకా ఒకరేమిటి రకరకాల వాళ్ళు రకరకాల విషయాలు చెప్పి అతని మనసు ని ప్రభావింప చేస్తారు. మంచి గురువు చేతిలో పడ్డాడా, వాడి బతుకు ధన్యం. చెడు స్నేహం చేసాడా, బతుకు నాశనం. ఇది ఎలాగంటే పెరిగేకొద్దీ చాలా మంది దేవతల పేర్లు తెల్సుకొని వాళ్ళ కోసం కొట్టుకోని మా వాళ్ళు వేరే జాతి వాళ్ళు వేరే మతం వాళ్ళు అని జీవించి ఉండే కొద్ది సమయం వృధా చేసుకోవడం. అదే గురువు ఉంటే ? అన్ని నదులు సముద్రం లోనికి వెళ్ళినట్లు అన్ని మతాలు కులాలు పరబ్రహ్మము లోనికి వెళ్తాయి అని చెప్తాడు. జీవితం బాగు పడుతుంది.

సరే చాలు చివరికి ఏంటి అంటే? ముసలితనం వచ్చేసరికి చావు కళ్ళ ముందు ఉన్నపుడు శత్రువు మిత్రుడు కొడుకులు కూతుళ్ళు మనమలు మనవరాండ్లు చుట్టూ ఉండే ప్రకృతి, జీవాలు, అందరూ అన్నీ ఒకలా కనిపిస్తారు. ఎలాగా ? తనలాగే తనతోపాటే వచ్చిన మనుషుల్లా, జీవాలుగా !! నిష్టగా జీవించి ఉంటే ఇంకొక అడుగు ముందరికి వేసి ఆ పరబ్రహ్మాన్నే చూసి అందులో కలిసిపోతున్నానని సంతోషంగా భగవంతుణ్ణి  తల్చుకుంటూ తనువు చాలిస్తాడు.

యాదృచ్చికంగా మన చరిత్ర కూడా ఇలానే ఉంది.  ముందర ఋషులు మునులు కేవలం ఆ బ్రహ్మాన్నే ధ్యానించి బ్రహ్మజ్ఞానన్నే పొందారు. తరువాత మెల్లగా శైవులు వైష్ణవులు అంటూ కొట్టుక్కున్నారు. ఆ తరువాత హైందవులు మొహమదీయులు క్రైస్తవులు అంటూ కొట్టుకుంటున్నారు. చివరికి అందరూ ఏమౌతారో చూద్దాం.

ఇదే అద్వైతం లోనుండి ద్వైత ము లోనికి వచ్చి మల్లి అద్వైతం లోకి వెళ్ళటం. మనం రోజూ చేసే పూజ అంతరార్ధం!!

శ్రీ రామ జయ రామ జయ జయ రామ 

Two Heads in a Saloon

[This is just a time pass story/experience. NOM to any race, country or type of work they do.]

It is a Sunday and a nice summer morning in the city of San Antonio, United States of America. Krishna recently has come to this city on a project work for a big client of his IT services company. It has been a month since he is here and he is planning to have haircut this weekend. Time is 9 AM and as a bachelor after marriage (staying away from his family), he is currently sharing his apartment with another colleague and friend, Ram. Ram is staying in US from past 1 year.

Krishna: Ram, can you tell me where the nearest saloon is located at? I don’t mind if it is a bit expensive but they should complete the haircut decently.

Ram: The nearest one takes 10 min to walk, right beside the grocery store and they charge you $10. There are saloons where they charge less than that but they are far away from here.

Krishna: That’s cool! Is there anything to remember before going to the saloon? I am going to the saloon for the first time in US and I am a bit excited.

[Krishna is excited because he had few bad experiences from his childhood related to haircut. So he is enquiring more than needed and is a bit scared too. He generally does need based talk.]

Ram (very casually): Nothing much, just tell them how you want to get it done, Clipper or scissors? If you are not used to clipper, I suggest you to take the option of scissors.

Krishna: Thanks man, I will have my haircut done today. See you!

While walking to the saloon, he has various things running in his mind. Actually, his head started ‘fissioning’ into 2 heads, one is the head that the world could see and the other is the imaginary head that talks only to the first head. The eyes of the first head are seeing the path towards the saloon while the eyes of his second head are imagining a typical US saloon environment. However his imagination is a ‘fusion’ of typical Indian saloon with American guys doing the haircut. Finally he reached the saloon.

The Lady: Hello Sir, Good Morning. How are you doing today?

Krishna (Head 1) HH.. Hi … I am doing well. How are you?

Krishna (Head 2): What! A lady in a saloon? Got it, this saloon is for both gents and ladies. I hope this will be my last surprise today.

The Lady: Doing Well! How can I help you today?

Krishna (Head 1) I am looking for a haircut today.

The Lady: Sure, please come over. You are our first customer today. Please have a seat in that chair, I will be right back.

Krishna (Head 1) Thanks!

Krishna (Head 2): Hmm, looks like the guy who does the haircut for gents is inside. She went to call him.

[The lady came back after couple of minutes and started to prepare Krishna for the haircut by covering him with a cloth from neck to toe.]

The Lady: Ok sir, what size you want to have the haircut?

Krishna (Head 1) Please make it near to short length.

The Lady: Do you have a number?

Krishna (Head 1) Number? I do not know any number. What is that?

The Lady: Ok, so you might be new to this. Let us say 1 stands for a very mild haircut and 5 stands for completely tonsured head, what is your preference?

Krishna (Head 1) Aaa..aa…aa…

Krishna (Head 2): Unexpected man! Ram didn’t tell about this before. Whatever, let us do not take risk. Anyway, this lady doesn’t understand the gent’s preference of haircut; just tell her 3 which will be medium and the safest option. When will the other guy come to do my haircut?

Krishna (Head 1) Let us make it 3.

The Lady: OK sir, that suits you as you look like an office going professional. Let me start.

Krishna (Head 1) Are you going to do the hair cut?

The Lady: Yes sir, any problem?

Krishna (Head 2): Whaaatt!!

Krishna (Head 1) O..O…Ok, is it possible for you to use scissors?

The Lady: Sure sir, I should have asked your preference. There is no major difference though, the scissors take much more time but I will take your option.

Krishna (Head 1) Thank you!!

Krishna (Head 2): Unreal maaannn!! For the first time, you hair is being cut by a lady!!

[The Scissors started making noise and the hair started to appear the blanket cloth covered on the rest of the body]

The Lady: Are you married?

Krishna (Head 1) Yes

The Lady: How many kids do you have?

Krishna (Head 1) I have a daughter who is 1 year old.

The Lady: I have a daughter who just crossed 18 years of age.

Krishna (Head 2): Why are you telling this to me?

Krishna (Head 1) Ahaa..ok…

The Lady: You know we have to be very careful with these kids at this age. I know you have lot of time but I am telling you. You should be a very strict father and your wife should be a strict mother. Otherwise they will never listen to us….

[The Lady started to tell her experiences and opinions.]

[After 5 min]

Krishna (Head 2): Am I still in the real world? An Indian having a haircut done by a Chinese or Vietnamese lady in America. Wow, this is globalisation.

[After 5 min]

The Lady: And you should never say yes to them at the first time. They are shouting in the car. And I stopped the car in the middle of highway and asked them to leave the car if they shout......

Krishna (Head 2): God! Why is she telling all this to me? Is she actually doing what she is supposed to do? Is she doing size 3 or 5? When will she stop tell me all her stories?

Krishna (Head 1) Ok, what happened next?

[After 5 min]

The Lady: And I said no. I asked them not to power off the cooler and switch to the heater and vice versa on their will. They should take my permission to do it. After all, I am paying the current bill….

Krishna (Head 2): Hey Head1, just sleep man. You don’t have to listen to her. Or at least acknowledge her every one minute. Don’t just sit silent.

[After 5 min, she goes on]

The Lady: Especially, University going girls should be very careful. It is different in this part of the country. We don’t just leave them to dating and other things in our side of the earth. Here they don’t care and you should not let your grown up fall into that…….

Krishna (Head 2): Will my haircut be done today? When? When? When? The stories are getting over but not the actual work. Come on, for how long your ears can bear this? Looks like this saloon has some offers. Come for haircut and get ears bleed for free. We have to have exceptions for people like this in every country, every state, every city, and every family.

[After 10 min]

The Lady: Sir..Sir..

Krishna (Head 1) Yeah

The Lady: we are done. You can pay at the counter.

Krishna (Head 2): Hurray!! You know what, only I know that you had a quick nap in past 5 minutes.

Krishna (Head 1) Y..Ye..Yeah…sure lets go.

The first saloon experience in a different country has left memories in Krishna’s brain. Although the second head disappeared later, it is such a different experience for him. He changed the saloon the next time he did his haircut and the problems continued. 

Deleting customised web applications in SharePoint 2010 – HTTP 404 Error

General Introduction

Deleting SharePoint 2010 applications is always an easy task. At least for the web applications with site collections having no major customisations and features activated on them, it is moderately easy to go to Central administration -> Manage Web Applications -> select the required Web application and click delete button from the ribbon. It immediately prompts to select the 2 major components to be deleted which are the content database and the IIS container sites. You can select either one of them or both and click OK to delete the required web applications. Alternatively, Windows PowerShell can be leveraged to remove the web application by using the Remove-SPWebapplication cmdlet with -DeleteIISSite and/or –RemoveContentDatabases option(s) as required.

Problem Description

However, if your farm is heavily customised with many farm level solutions used by various web applications, it is not easy to delete a web application. This is what I have learnt from my experience. When I tried to a web application which is heavily customised and is also extended to a different zone with a different type of authentication, the application is not getting deleted although I tried to delete the web application in various ways mentioned above. The error I was getting is a typical SharePoint error page with a correlation ID and a message “404: File not found”. At the first second, I thought “What! A 404 error?” Then I checked the IIS container sites which are removed from the server. But the web application continued to appear in the web application management page in the central administration.

Troubleshooting & Resolution

I tried to troubleshoot further to check if there was timer job still running or hung by any chance. I browsed to Timer job definitions in the Monitoring section of central administration. However, this page started to show the same error. It was at this point that I realised there was something else going on. Time for ULS logs!! I checked the correlation ID in the ULS log and found that there were few custom application DLLs missing in the registry. These DLLs were part of the solutions (wsps) that were deployed to the web application to be deleted. I had no idea why the DLLs got knocked out of registry since I was not removing the WSPs. The WSPs which were deployed only to the web application, that I was removing, changed their status to “Not Deployed” state but the DLLs were never knocked out. I could not find a clue for why they got knocked out. I had manually placed those missing DLLs listed in ULS logs back in the registry in all the servers of the farm and did an IISReset. Then the timer job definitions page started working. And, we were able to successfully delete the web application too. The manage web applications page did not display the web application this time.

Looking back into what has happened, when we have a farm with highly customised applications, I think it is always recommended to deploy the DLLs (WSPs) to the bin directory of the application’s virtual directory rather than the system’s assembly.

I hope this post helps in resolving this type of issues that you might be facing.

A trip to Florida

Recently my wife, my daughter and I went on a 5 day trip to Florida State in the United States. Unlike my earlier travel related posts, I decided not write about this trip in multiple posts because there is less to explain and more to experience when we visit this state. Florida is all about enjoying God’s nature and man’s creation. Here are the top tourist places that we visited in Florida. Although there are many other places to visit (list can be found in the internet), these are the must see places that a visitor should keep in mind before planning the visit. 

• Florida Keys and Key West
• Miami – city and the beach
•  Orlando – Various entertainment parks (Disney World, Universal Studios and Sea World)
• Kennedy space centre
• Ft. Lauderdale, Tampa
• Islands around Florida
• Everglades National Park

Can we cover all these in 5 days? NO. You have to spend at least 15 days to cover each and every aspect in detail. However, my visit didn’t include few places in the above list. I will explain them below.

Day 0, we travelled from Houston to Ft. Lauderdale the previous day and reached our cousin’s place; who stay near to Ft. Lauderdale city. The city of Ft. Lauderdale had some road extension constructions going on and luckily, they did not stop us anywhere in the travel. We, along with my cousin’s family travelled together and visited various places.

Day 1, we went on a guided ferry trip in Ft. Lauderdale city. It was a 45 min trip in the back waters of Ft. Lauderdale sea side city. By the way, Ft. Lauderdale is called Venice of the America because of these back waters, just like Alleppey in India. The guide on the ferry explained various places on the trip and mostly, we had seen various costliest houses of the United States that were constructed on banks of back waters. The average prices were in multiples of millions of dollars. Also we happened to see the ‘Oasis Of The Seas’ cruise which is largest cruise ship in the world. After the ferry trip, we went to the city of Miami. Miami is around 40 minutes away from Ft. Lauderdale. We went straight to the Miami Beach which is one of the most famous beaches around the world. There are a many places of interest around the Miami Beach and the beach is famous for various reasons. As a family, there are few places to exclude in that beach but in general, the beach is sandy and water is clear. The water in the beach gives an introduction to how the water is going to be in rest of beaches and Florida Keys. Especially after seeing the beach in Houston, TX (Galveston) and other places, it was a very pleasant experience. The shore looks greenish blue and the water was so clear that we could see our feet when we stood waist depth in the water. We drove back home, had dinner and it was a nice day.

Day 2, we started little late in the morning on the Sunday to Key West. When we saw the map initially, it was given that we have to travel straight on US 1 highway which starts in Key West. That makes sense because Key West is the southernmost point of the country of United States. The sad part is US 1 is not like other highways at least from Miami. It has lot of traffic signals and later is a single lane road. This made driving a little boring for us. After travelling around miles from Ft. Lauderdale, we started crossing the keys, which were basically islands in the form of a chain, Key West being the last island in that chain. There are bridges connecting each key and one of the most important of such bridges is the seven mile bridge which connects Key West to its previous island and is constructed on the sea. Travelling on it is a wonderful experience with blue-greenish water around and white colour sandy shores. Key West is

famous for sunset ride, water sports, parties and liquor. We reached around 2 PM in Key West. We initially planned to do parasailing and snorkelling in our trip. I was very interested in snorkelling and my wife was interested in parasailing. Out of 3 trips that happen every day for snorkelling in Key West, we had reserved for the last trip at 5 PM. Meanwhile, we visited the Key West beach which was again a wonderful beach. That reminded of all the songs of Indian movies that were made in foreign beaches. Then we went on to see the southernmost point buoy in Key West, took some pics. We were left with very less time to reach the point to board the cruise for snorkelling trip. And when I reached the point that we thought we should take the cruise, we came to know that the cruise should be boarded from a different point that is 10 min away. We searched a lot and reached that place finally but were already late as the cruise left. That was how I missed the snorkelling adventure. However,

there was a glass bottomed boat trip to see the corral reeves of the sea. These corral reeves are the second biggest in the world. The tour also included sunset watch which was an awesome experience too. We drove back to home and it was midnight when we reached home.

Day 3 & 4, we travelled to Orlando from Ft. Lauderdale. It was a 3 hour drive on toll way. We went straight to Universal Studios, Orlando. There were 2 parks in Universal Studios; the first one was actual Universal Studios and the second one was ‘The Island of Adventures’. The first one is full of shows/rides and the second one full of rides. We are not physically capable enough to enjoy the rides, so we confined only to park 1. This park had various shows and rides with various movies as their themes. To mention the important ones, the Shrek 4D

show, the Mummy ride, the E.T ride and the Men in Black show were attractive. I did wall climbing as well in Universal Studios. We covered Universal Studio Park pretty much in day because of less rush as we went there on Monday. We left to Hotel and had dinner in the evening. It was a tiring day. The next day we left to Disney World in Orlando. As the name goes, it is a world of its own. It has in total 6 parks with various themes and each park can take a minimum of 1 day to cover. So the Disney world can take up to 6 days if you are interested. We went to the main park, the Magical Kingdom, which was a big park with lot of shows and activities for Kids. There was a castle which the main logo of Disney animations and productions and it was an attraction by itself. Initially, I was bored from morning till evening and we were completely drained out walking in the park. But the

last 3 events in the night: the electrical parade, the projections show on the castle and the fireworks on the castle were the top events one should never miss. Kids might enjoy a lot all throughout the day though. When these 3 shows were over, every visitor leaves this park at the same time. Believe me, you would be under the impression that the entire world was in front of you in the crowd. Disney management had made pretty good arrangements to handle the crowd and made sure they leave the palace with in decent amount of time and less pain. We had come back to Ft. Lauderdale the same night and it was almost 3 AM when we reached home.

Day 5, we had the small disappointment that we couldn’t complete snorkelling and parasailing. So

we did parasailing in Ft. Lauderdale that day. It was an experience that cannot be explained in words. One should feel it when you are tied with belts to a parachute which in turned was tied to a boat going at a regulated speed in the sea. We would be sent slowly from the running boat (sea level) to the parachute (400ft from sea level). Those few minutes make an exciting journey when we the corrals from that height beneath the ocean and birds would be flying under your feet catching the fish. That was a wonderful experience and completely safe to do. This was the same day we returned back to Houston and the trip ended. Overall, it was a nice experience. The one line that came into my mind, when we went to see the sea shores, was from a keerthana by Shree Annamayya.

                చిత్తములో భావమెల్లా శ్రీవేంకటేశుడే హత్తినప్రకృతి యెల్లా నాతనిమాయే

Which means All the feelings in the mind is the Lord Venkateswara and the entire nature that attracts your mind is His magic.

I know I could not cover much but we had a list of to-cover items and we managed to cover them all in 5 days.

సంధ్యావందనము - మంత్ర అర్ధములు

Sandhyavandanam - Meaning of various mantra

సంధ్యావందనము - మంత్ర అర్ధములు

హిందూ సనాతన ధర్మము ప్రకారము ఉపనయనము జరిగిన ప్రతి వ్యక్తి రోజు తప్పక చేయవలసిన కార్యము సన్ధ్యావన్దనము. అలాంటి ముఖ్యమైన కార్యమును ప్రతి నిత్యం చేస్తున్నపుడు ఆ కర్యములోని మంత్రములకు అర్ధములు తెలిసి చేయుట ఎంతో ముఖ్యము. ఎందుకంటే అర్ధం తెలుసుకోకుండా చేసినదానికి అసలు చేయకపోవటానికి పెద్ద తేడా ఏమీ లేదు. గురు ముఖతః సంధ్యావందనము చేయటం నేర్చుకుంటే సాధారణంగా అర్ధం బోధిస్తూనే నేర్పుతారు. కాని ఒకవేళ అర్ధం తెల్సుకోకుండా లేకపోతే సగం సగం తెల్సుకొని చేయవలసి వస్తే పరిస్థితి ఏంటి? అందుకనే నేను సంధ్యావందన మంత్రార్ధములు చెప్పే రెండు పుస్తకాలని చదివి అందులోని భావాన్ని నాకు అర్ధమైనన్థవరకు కలగలిపి ఈ ఫైల్ లో ఉంచాను. మీకు అవసరమైన చో డౌన్లోడ్ చేసుకొని చదవగలరు.

ఇందులో ఏదైనా గొప్పతనం ఉంటే అది ఆ రెండు పుస్తకాలు రచించినవారిదే. ఏవైనా తప్పులు ఉంటే అవి నావిగా భావింపగలరు.

ఫైల్ ని ఈ కింది చోట నుండి డౌన్లోడ్ చేసుకోగలరు.

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B_3nwxYRiuMuakJwdWRFeHg0RGc/edit?usp=sharing
 

HTTP 500 Internal Server Error–SharePoint 2010 Applications

Among the various HTTP return status codes that we receive, the two most frequent ones are 401s and 500s. While the 401s are more related to authentication and authorization, the 500s are because of problems within IIS. I am listing various things to check and ways to troubleshoot the HTTP 500 errors for IIS web applications in general and SharePoint 2010 applications in particular.

• The first thing you want to check when you receive this error, when you hit the root site of the web application, is the status of the application pool of the website. Is the application pool running?Crashed? Is the application pool properly associated with the web application?
• There is could be a possible 500 server errors in some scenarios based on the load balancer configuration. There are few settings for IIS application pools that that recycle the application pool at preconfigured intervals, by default every day. When the web applications are hit after recycle or the pool dies out the memory, I have learnt that the IIS 7.5 takes some time to WARM UP and if the load balancer’s time out is not configured to be greater than the warm up time, it is going to tell back to the client that there is some error. So make sure you have properly configured those time-outs and if you see such type of issues, just set up a warm job that keeps on pinging the URL of the web application.
• You can see the trace logs in SharePoint 2010, whether there are any assemblies that got knocked out of the assembly. If so, make sure they are added back and reset IIS to get the replaced .dll picked up.
• If you do not see any of these work, Microsoft has given a nice feature with in IIS to trace out the failed requests. Probably this should be used by every single administrator who works on IIS. This is called “Failed Request Tracing Rules” available under IIS section in the Features view of each web site.

1. Enable the Failed Request Tracing logs and configure the location to store the trace logs.
2. After that, double click on the feature to add the trace rules. Click on Add button to add the content source, select All Content. Click Next.
3. Select the status code option and give 500 as the status code. Click Next.
4. Select all the provider options shown in the screen and click finish. Now a trace rule gets added in the list of the feature.
5. Go ahead and hit the application in the browser and see the 500 error again.  Couple of files get created in the directory where you have configured the logs should go.
6. Open the xml file in Internet Explorer (MUST). If you open the xml in any other xml editor, you may not see the XML styles getting applied.

The opening page will show the errors and warnings that IIS has encountered while processing the HTTP request. Those traces will provide you a direction to troubleshoot the issue.

In particular to SharePoint 2010, the issue I faced was that the My Sites web application was not coming up and it was giving the 500 internal server error. When I did the Failed Request tracing explained above, I have seen couple of warnings in the log as shown below.

I opened the applicationHost.Config which is the one of the IIS metabase files where the details about Sharepoint14Module were present.

<add name="SharePoint14Module" image="C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\isapi\owssvr.dll" preCondition="appPoolName=S………

The preCondition property value of this key is missing my application pool name in that list. I have added the application pool of the my sites web application and it started working.

Hope this helps for your troubleshooting and thanks for reading.

Manufactured Demand & Environment

Before reading any further, just watch each video. They do not take much of your time but give you lot of information. I am grateful to “The Story of Stuff” project for enlightening me and everyone.

I think the situation explained in these videos is not explicitly related to US but to all other countries. Consider the situation of bottled water. We all know, especially in India, how we use bottled water. How much environmental damage are we causing just for the water that we buy and drink? Although I had little idea about it, I realized its worse than what I have thought. And can you really explain why the plastic bottle waste is sent to India for recycling? Does the government of India realize that we are actually cleaning someone’s waste? Are we in such a bad situation to increase our revenue in all possible ways? Reasons like this are behind taking India for granted as a cheap country despite the fact that we are one of the fast growing countries in terms of science, technology and economy. Reasons like this are giving scope to the words like ‘Third World’. Why do we need to degrade ourselves like this just for money? I recollect the words by Amitabh Bachchan when he disliked Oscars being given to “The Slumdog Millionaire” where India is projected as a poor and backward country. Its not only the government, the politicians but also every Indian should consider this as a matter of self respect. No doubt that we need money but we do not need it the stake of self respect. Please do not fall for the manufactured demand. There are ways better than what we have now. As mentioned in the video, it is our right to ask Government to supply better water rather than relying on bottled water.
Just watch this video which is of completely different topic.

Can you guess what I am about to propose after watching this video? I am not going to tell you to stop using your toothpaste or soap or deodorant or shampoo. Because you would have already realized the facts around them. I am going to tell you the things that you already know of but, probably, never understood the importance of them. These are the alternatives to the cosmetics that we are using. Luckily these are part of our Indian tradition. The nature is giving a lot to us and there is no need to run behind these cosmetics. Neem or the Margosa sticks instead of a toothpaste is an alternative. Instead of soaps, you can use, Sunni pindi, a herbal bath powder. Use turmeric powder for healthy skin. How about using Reetha or Gooseberry (Amla) for head wash? Aren't they good an natural? We have to always remember that good and profitable things come in difficult way. Bad and harmful things come in an easy way. These cosmetic companies are experimenting on us? Isn't the Indian tradition more powerful than these products? Please come out of the manufactured demand. We do not need these. If someone asks me are you following these before telling someone? I would say no but I understood the importance of it and rather than using them now and then, I will follow them regularly from now.
The bad luck is that our (Indian) people are making fun of ourselves and our tradition. Let us not do that and let us not cause any more damage to our environment. We are already experiencing the results of the damage. Let us live and let others live by creating sustainable culture. Let us not throw waste just like that and let us not do things that cause damage to our respect. Thanks for understanding and following.
I am not going to talk about this video but just watch it, it is an informational one too.

A new threat, the micro beads. So updating my post.

           

“A web.config modification operation is already running” error in SharePoint 2010

It is pretty common that most of the enterprises do customize the SharePoint platform to a great extent by deploying solutions (WSPs) to the farm and associating features to those WSPs. When a feature is getting de-activated or activated, a web.config file change is triggered in the from of a timer job. This happens for almost all such operations. The file modification is done by an internally created timer job. It shows up as ‘job-webconfig-modification” when you execute the following command in SharePoint snap in loaded PowerShell console.

Get-SPTimerJob –Webapplication <ApplicationName>

There is another place where you can see the same timer job in “Run once” state. It is the Central Administration –> Monitoring –> Timer Jobs section. The job name should be visible as “Microsoft SharePoint Foundation web.config modification” job. This job should come up in the running job list for a while and then disappear as it gets removed after the modifications are done. As mentioned before, this is a run once job.

Getting into the problems, sometimes while activating or deactivating the features, you might receive this error (which is understandable from ULS logs) that a web.config modification is already running and this operation cannot be completed. This can be because you are trying to deactivate or activate features so quickly that you are not giving SharePoint the necessary time to complete its previous action. In some cases, although your previous action is complete a long time back, this still gives the same error. When I faced this error, I had no clue about what is happening because there is no feature activation deactivation that I did earlier nor I see the timer job in the PowerShell console. However I have learnt that the “Microsoft SharePoint Foundation web.config modification” job in Central Administration is present the job definition list and its schedule is stated as “Disabled”. I was not sure why it was not deleted after the feature deactivation/activation activity that I did before. It just remained there in the list disabled and it was stopping me from doing the current operation of activating features. I cannot take any action on that job except for leaving it like that DELETE it. I deleted the job and my current operation of feature activation and deactivation is now working :-).

So in case you are having similar issue and find such scrap job in your scheduled timer jobs list, please go ahead and delete it if it is in disabled state. This should work. I hope it helps and thanks for reading.

SharePoint 2010 ULS (Trace) Logs Not Working

This is one of the most common problems, I believe, with SharePoint 2010. You set up your brand new farm and configure the required logging levels in Central Admin – Configure Diagnostic logging page. However, you will notice that the log files get created in the folder you assigned the logs to be written to with no data inside them. The logs get rotated as usual but you will find the log file size as 0KB. The files are empty. Here is a solution for such problem scenarios.

There are absolutely 2 (or 3 more exactly) places where SharePoint administrators are exposed to tweak Logging mechanism of SharePoint out of the box. The Central Admin Monitoring Tab has a link to configure diagnostic logging settings which is the first place of interest for any administrator to change the logging settings. The other place is the “SharePoint 2010 Tracing” Windows Service which the actual engine that controls the logging on each individual server of the farm. This is the first point of check for the admins to see whether all the settings in Central Administration are configured properly and if this windows service is running. The same can be checked through power shell commands.

If you still see the same error, then there is a problem with security. In my experience, out of 5 farms that I have installed, these security settings were not properly implemented by SharePoint 2010 installation/configuration in one farm. I don’t know why. However, in order to fix it, please get the credentials with which the service SharePoint 2010 Tracing service is running. Make sure the user account is added to the local group “Performance Log Users”. It should be added to “Performance Monitor Users” local group as well. Restart the windows service after this change and that’s it. This should fix the security issues with the logs and logs should start rolling as per your configuration in central administration.

I read somewhere in the internet that even the application pool accounts should also be added to these security groups but I do not think so and I never had to do it to get the logs rolling.

Thanks for reading and hope this information helps in resolving any SP2010 logging issues you are facing.

Solution Deployer for Sharepoint 2010

DOWNLOAD HERE

How it works

·         After you install, Solution Deployer for SharePoint 2010 provides a config.xml file in which there are various values to be populated as per your environment. This is a onetime task and you can populate multiple environments too. More details about this xml and how to fill it following sections.

·         Copy the WSP files to a location on any of the servers or all the servers along with the required text files.

·         Run the tool by selecting the required options in the GUI. Check the status of the deployment in the status update pane.

That’s it!!

Prerequisites

•       SharePoint farm should be reachable from the computer the tool is running.

•       PowerShell Remoting should be enabled on both the SharePoint servers and the computer on which the tool is running.

•       The tool is supported to run on Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2. (CredSSP authentication support)

•       Make sure the text files for each set of WSPs/change is available as described in user guide section.

Installation (One Time)

Installation is pretty much easy. Download the zip file to any server or computer from which you can reach the farm by executing the tool. Here is the step by step process in detail.

•       Extract the contents of the zip file and leave the directory structure intact.

•       Open PowerShell console with administrative privileges and execute the script ‘SPDeployerPreRequisiteSetupClient-OneTimeRun.ps1’ under “FirstTimeSetup-OneTimeExecution” folder. Remember that this should be run on the computers on which this tool is running.

Type Yes or Run Once where ever the script prompts you to do so.

•       Copy the file “SPDeployer-PreRequisiteSetupServer-OneTimeRun.ps1” to all the application and web front end servers of the farm to a directory.

•       Log on to all the application and web front end servers of the SharePoint farm and open

PowerShell console with administrative privileges. Change the directory to the place where

you copied the script to “SPDeployer-PreRequisiteSetupServer-OneTimeRun.ps1” and execute the same. Type Yes or Run Once where ever the script prompts you to do so.

That’s it. The environment is ready to run the tool.

Configuration – Modifying Config.xml (One Time, and later, Need based)

This section basically describes about setting up config.xml. This xml contains all the SP2010 farm related information required for successful functioning of the tool. This is an Easy to fill xml. Caution should be taken not to change any tags. Only the values should be changed according to your needs. The points below explain about various tags. The tags missing in these point are obvious and need not be explained.

The XML is structured this way.

Parent Node (SHAREPOINT_CONFIGURATION) -> Environment Classification ->Application

Classification in each environment

1)       Fill the “EnvName” value as your environment name. For example, Development, Disaster Recovery etc.

2)       Fill the value between tags as the enterprise domain where the sharepoint farm resides and does user authentication.

3)       Fill the value between tags as the username with farm admin privileges or privilege to deploy WSPs and manage features. Do not mention

‘domain\username’ format but just ‘username’

4)       Fill the value between tags as the encrypted password of the farm admin user mentioned above. The password can be encrypted using

“encryptString.ps1” PowerShell script present in “EncryptionTool” directory of the extracted and installed folder. Right click on encryptString.ps1 and select “Run with PowerShell”. Provide the plain text password at the prompt and hit Enter. You will get the encrypted string. Copy and paste the encrypted string in between these tags in the xml.

5)       Fill the value between tags with all the application and web front end server names in comma separated format. The first server mentioned in the csv server list is the server used by the tool to do all the deployment work.

6)       Fill the value between tags with UNC or absolute path where you want to store all the logs of this tool. This logs who is working on the deployment and all the text shown in the status update pane.

7)       Fill the value between tags with the central administration solution management page URL.

8)       Fill the value of “AppName” in tags with the web application name.

9)       Fill the value of tags with the absolute path on the server where you store all the WSPs and the related text files. More details about the text files in the User guide.

10)   Fill the value of with the URL of the web application as you see in central administration.

11)   Fill the value of tags with the relative path of the IIS virtual directory of the web application.

The tags can be of any number based on your setup and so the applications under tags. 

Quick User Guide

The following are the quick steps to jump start using the tool.

1)      Maintain a common folder (deployment scripts base path) on any server of sharepoint farm and copy the WSPs deployed to that folder

2)      Create and copy 2 text files into the same directory whose names are of format “ChangeNumber_WSPList.txt” and “ChangeNumber_Features.txt” where change number is the actual change number for this release.

3)      List the wsps to be deployed in ChangeNumber_WSPList.txt comma separated with URL to which the WSP should be scoped. If it is global do not mention anything.

4)      List the feature IDs associated with the WSPs to be activated and deactivated in the ChangeNumber_Features.txt file.

5)      Run the SharepointDeployerV3.1.exe and fill in the required details. Click Apply Config button.

6)      This populates the WSP text files to be used for the deployment and features for activation and deactivation. Select the right options for the deployment and click Deploy.

7)      Check the status pane for updates.

User Guide

In order to maintain consistency, especially when deploying same set of WSPs across various environments, the following process works well but you can modify it as you need. The following steps are explained considering a general scenario of every enterprise into consideration. It might differ a little from what you do but it can always be customised.

Consider there is a requirement from business to sharepoint developers and the developers have written code in the form of 3 WSPs which creates 2 features to a sitecollection of web application webapp1. However all the WSPs are existing WSPs in production and they have to be replaced with these new ones. They want to deploy these 3 WSPs in Dev environment first. The enterprise is using Solution Deployer for Sharepoint to do the WSP deployments. Considering the enterprise practises ITIL Change and Release management, this is what the developer does.

1)       The developer creates a Change record and the change number is RFC12345. This is used to track the deployment till it reaches production from development.

2)       While building WSPs, the developer also creates two text files with following name format. This is a must.

a.        RFC12345_WSPList.txt

b.       RFC12345_Features.txt

The WSPList text file is used while retraction and deployment and Features.txt file is used during feature activation and deactivation. You can skip creating any of these files if you are not doing retraction/deploying or activation/deactivation.

3)       The content of RFC12345_WSPList.txt is as follows.

Basically it will contain the list of WSPs along with any specific URL to which the WSP need to be deployed to. The URL and the WSP are separated by a comma. Also if the WSP has to be deployed globally, there is no need to place a comma.

4)       The content of RFC12345_Features.txt is as follows.

 

Basically, this will contain the Feature IDs or Feature Names of the features that are going to deactivated and activated in this particular deployment and the scope of the feature. All the features listed will be deactivated and activated if the option is selected in the tool. If no scope is mentioned, it gets deactivated the default scope.

5)       Now, the directory in which you copied the WSPs and the above text files is the deployment scripts base path and the absolute path of this directory should be placed in the tags in config.xml file.

6)       Launch the tool by double clicking on SharepointSolutionDeployerV3.2.exe file.

7)       Provide the RFC Number in the first field. For example RFC12345

8)       Select the environment

9)       Select the application of the environment to which deployment is happening

10)   Click on Apply Config to populate all the fields in section below. The fields will be auto populated based on the process that we have followed earlier. In cast the file names or paths are different, you have an option to change them.

11)   Check the boxes for the actions that you want to carry out and click on Deploy button.

12)   The tool will complete all the required validations during execution and complete the required actions that are selected. The status is shown in the status field.

Points to Note:

a)       The tool is basically a powershell script wrapped up in an exe. So there will be a console window that opens along with the tool. The console window displays any errors during execution and also displays overall status messages as well.

If you do not want the console to open and you want just the GUI, execute the exe with – noconsole option.

b)       Make sure you populate the encrypted password and other values in config file properly. Any mistakes in config file will lead to mistakes and errors. The encrypted password feature is to enhance the security.

c)       If you do not want to follow the process mentioned above, you could still use the tool by modifying the text file paths on the server during execution.

d)       In case you want to use different text files for retraction and deployment, you have an option in the tool to retract using a different file. By selecting the option, the tool will consider the file that you mention here for retraction and the actual WSPList file for deploying WSP files.

e)       There is an option for config file changes which halts the execution of the tool in case you want to make any other changes after deactivation/retraction/deployment/activation steps. This might include changing any web.config entries or owstimer.exe.config entries etc. You can select the options on prompt to continue further with IIS reset and timer restart.

f)        The sequence of actions carried out by the tool is 

a.        Deactivate features

b.       Retract Solutions

c.        Deploy solutions

d.       Activate features

e.       Config File Changes

f.         IIS reset

g.        Timer restart

If you do not select any option in the above list, the tool will skip that action but the sequence is maintained.