Donuts v. Bagels

I'm not much of a breakfast guy.  I'm lucky if I get a ClifBar with my morning coffee.  But I enjoy a bagel or donut if given the opportunity.  But here is what I want to know:

If everybody slices a bagel in half, why is only one side coated with toppings?  I.e. shouldn't there be schtuff (e.g. poppyseeds) on BOTH sides?  I can understand with a donut as you eat the thing whole.

Somebody address this market opportunity!

Increasing the Maximum File Upload Size in WSS v3/MOSS 2007

So there are three related issues when it comes to trying to allow larger files to be upload to a SharePoint WSS v3 or MOSS 2007 system:

1    1)      Several settings that specify the maximum file size allowed for uploading. We’ll call these settings “Max File Upload Size” settings though the actual property/attribute/setting label may be different in each area you’ll configure. Details are below….

2    2)      Several settings that specify the maximum timeout period (usually in seconds) for either the upload period or the http session.  We’ll call these settings the “timeout” settings though the actual property/attribute/setting label may be different in each area you’ll configure. Details are below….

3    3)      Several settings that are related to the SharePoint site/document indexer for the search shared service provider.  WE’ll call these settings “search crawler” settings though the actual property/attribute/setting label may be different in each area you’ll configure. Details are below….

The relationship between these items is as follows:  the bigger the document/file that you want to upload, the longer it will take, especially for users on low-bandwidth connections.  First, to control how much stuff can be shoved into the SharePoint server, WSS3/MOSS2007 (and 2010, too!) ship with caps on the uploadable size.  When we raise that value we increase the odds that some users will appear to the server to have “gone missing” while uploading large (i.e. slowly) files.  Thus the need to raise the timeout settings.  Also, because of the long lags during file uploads, the user’s security authentication may expire during the time they wait for the file to upload.  Increasing the security validation period can prevent forcing them to login again to see the result of their upload attempt.  Obviously there are security ramifications for changing this (at the Web Application’s zone. Note that one could forego these timeout config changes until/if users start complaining about failed uploads.  The (minor) ramifications of these changes to timeout settings are beyond the scope of this doc so for now we are just going to assume it’s easier to be proactive and do the timeout settings at the same time as the max file upload size setting mods, but do note that the timeout setting is optional until users have problems with the upload of the now allowed larger limit.  Finally, there is typically much desire for uploaded documents to be crawled by the SharePoint Search indexer so documents can be located by users using the search tools in SharePoint.  But just as there are problems introduced by allowing big files to be uploaded, similar problems are introduced by not putting some sort of cap on the size of a file that the crawler/indexer will try to “chew.”  16MB is the limit out of the box for WSS3/MOSS20007.  Often times (e.g. video file uploads, CAD drawings), it is not necessary or desired to raise this limit. But if the documents are text based, you may want to raise this limit to allow the data in the file beyond the 16MB point to be indexed.  I have had problems with raising the value though.  Let me know if you get it to work. J  For now, I have ended up leaving it at the default value and been ok with the note that gets put in the ShPt log file about a too large file being unable to be indexed.

All the changes we are going to make can easily be rolled back AS LONG AS YOU MAKE BACKUPS OF THE ITEMS PRIOR TO MODIFYING THEM – i.e. create a copy of *.config files and rename them (e.g. “Web.Config” copied to become “Web-ORIG as of yyyy-dd-mm hhmm.configOLD”), backup a registry node to a reg file prior to making mods, record ShPt settings in the Central Admin or SSP Search GUI with screenshots stored in a WordPad file.  Also be aware that there are typically SEVERAL Web.config files on a SharePoint server AND there is a difference between a Web.config and an Application.config file.  You may need to modify several Web.Config files and the exact path cannot be provided as it changes depending on how the ShPt server has been configured.  Ergo, when you see a path that mentions a virtual directory (e.g.) you must do the translating for your server AND make sure you alter the proper virtual directory for the ShPt site(s) you  are making the mods for.  Go slow, take notes of before/after and THINK!!!! I.e. the ass you save may be your own.

Max File Upload Size (MFUS) limit mods:

1    1)      First, calculate the value in bytes the size you want to raise the limit to.  E.g. 500MB = (500 * 1028 * 1024) = 524288000 Bytes.

2    2)      Open up Central Admin and for each Web application that contains the site(s) you are increasing the MFUS limit, open the “Web Application General  Settings” page. Increase the “Maximum Upload Size” setting to your desired MFUS limit in MB.

3    3)      Using the integer amount in bytes for your new MUFS limit, add the maxAllowedContentLength attribute and value in the Web.config for each virtual directory that maps to a site, zone, or Web application (extended or base WA) in SharePoint, locate the Web.config file.   A typical (EXAMPLE) path for such a Web.config looks like:

a.      C:\inetpub\wwwroot\wss\VirtualDirectories\80

b.     C:\inetpub\wwwroot\wss\VirtualDirectories\11001

e.g. this... web-ORIG as of 2010-08-02.config

               </configSections>
               <SharePoint>

 

…gets turned into this...

  </configSections>
  <system.webServer>
       <security>
  <requestFiltering>
  <requestLimits maxAllowedContentLength="524288000"/>
  </requestFiltering>
  </security>
  </system.webServer>
  <SharePoint>

Note that if doing timeout setting mods, you will return to this file (but I’m breaking this into functional sections for clarity of what affects what).

4    4)      If you are running on Windows Server 2008 (i.e. Internet Information Server 7.0) or R2 (i.e. IIS7.5), the following (optional) proactive change may  also need to be made.

a.      Add the same value for the maxAllowedContentLength attribute IF IT EXISTS.  The attribute, its element (or even the whole section ) may be missing. If not, you can create the attribute or make it look like <requestLimits maxAllowedContentLength="524288000"/> for the element and attribute (and any missing parent elements as shown in the example above) to the application.config file, located at:

                                                    i.     %windir%\system32\inetsrv\config\applicationhost.config

Timeout mods:

1    1)      If desired, to prevent user’s from having to re-authenticate after a long file upload, increase the time that a logged-in user is allowed to sit “idle” by going to ShPt Central Admin and on the appropriate Web Application(s)’s “Web Application General Settings” page (i.e. http://YourSharePointServer[:CAport]/_admin/vsgeneralsettings.aspx ) and increasing the “Web Page Security Validation” settings “Security validation expires’ value. Default is 30 minutes.  60 has generally worked for us in the past.

2    2)      for each  Web site (aka Virtual Server) in IIS Manager , change the connection timout limit (in Seconds) as appropriate for you new MFUS limit. E.g. default "120" (i.e. 2 minutes) to "3600" (i.e. 60 minutes). I.e. …

a.      Click Start, point to All Programs, point to Administrative Tools, and then click Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager.

b.      Right-click the virtual server that you want to configure, and then click Properties.

c.      Click the Web Site tab. Under Connections, type the number of seconds that you want in the Connection time-out box, and then click OK.

3    3)      Modify the “layouts” Web.config (i.e.  "C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\12\TEMPLATE\LAYOUTS\web.config" by changing/adding the executionTimeout attribute and a max allowed value of 999999 in the Web.config’s httpRuntime element like so...

  <location path="upload.aspx">
  <system.web>
  <httpRuntime maxRequestLength="2097151" />
    </system.web>
  </location>

to this...

  <location path="upload.aspx"> 
  <system.web> 
    <httpRuntime executionTimeout="999999" maxRequestLength="2097151" /> 
    </system.web> 
 </location>

Note that the value in maxRequestLength will probably be different.  This value seems to be overridden by the <system.webServer> <security> <requestFiltering> <requestLimits maxRequestLength<  attribute’s value.  If you don’t find that to be true, you can change it to match your MUFS limit but IN Kilobytes, NOT Bytes. E.g.  524288000 Bytes  = 512000KB.

4    4)      add the executionTimeout attribute and a max allowed value of 999999 in the Web.config for each virtual directory that maps to a site, zone, or Web application (extended or base WA) in SharePoint, locate the Web.config file.   A typical (EXAMPLE) path for such a Web.config looks like:

a.      C:\inetpub\wwwroot\wss\VirtualDirectories\80

b.     C:\inetpub\wwwroot\wss\VirtualDirectories\11001

e.g. this...

<httpRuntime maxRequestLength="51200" />

becomes this...

<httpRuntime executionTimeout="999999" maxRequestLength="51200" />

Note that the value in maxRequestLength will probably be different.  This value seems to be overridden by the    attribute’s value.  If you don’t find that to be true, you can change it to match your MUFS limit but IN Kilobytes, NOT Bytes. E.g.  524288000 Bytes  = 512000KB.