FAST Down Due to SharePoint Security Token Service Certificate Errors

Good Morning SharePoint!  Walking in the door with a fire to put out is better than coffee.

When browsing to a search page we were getting the following error.

Source: SharePoint Foundation

Event ID: 8311

An operation failed because the following certificate has validation errors:\n\nSubject Name: CN=SharePoint Security Token Service, OU=SharePoint, O=Microsoft, C=US\nIssuer Name: CN=SharePoint Root Authority, OU=SharePoint, O=Microsoft, C=US\nThumbprint: 9057913C61BA802F52787B75CFBE3BFAD0104E43\n\nErrors:\n\n The root of the certificate chain is not a trusted root authority..

A quick search lead me to the following KB article.

How to re-create the local Trusted Root Authority

This article states that an administrator deleted the local trust in CA. But I check and it is there.  I didn’t delete it and no one else has access.

I ran the following command from the article, which added a new local trust relationship.

$rootCert = (Get-SPCertificateAuthority).RootCertificate
New-SPTrustedRootAuthority -Name "localNew" -Certificate $rootCert

I still do not know what caused this to happen.  Will have to look into it later.

Unexpected error occurred while communicating with Administration Service – When Adding Managed Property

When this error first popped up I thought I was going to have one of those long days troubleshooting SharePoint's guts. 

Looking at the log I found out the managed property I was trying to create already existed. 

Update ManageProperty failed Microsoft.SharePoint.Search.Extended.Administration.Common.AdminException: The  managed property  'Location' already exists.

Cmon Microsoft.  This message is a bit misleading.

Installing Visual Studio 2012 RC on Windows 8 RP Running on ThinkPad T510 (4349)

When trying to install Visual Studio the splash screen for the installer would come up with a black screen and never go away.  I gave up trying to get this to work.  Came back to it this weekend and saw Lenovo released another video driver for Windows 8 on August 9.  Installed the new driver, rebooted and Visual Studio installed with no issues.  FINALLY!

http://support.lenovo.com/en_US/downloads/detail.page?DocID=HT072084

Blogging

I’ve tried to blog for years.  As you can see it is not going well.  I have 100s of drafts and I think 1 published page.  With 4 kids, a wife, a challenging job and a house that is falling apart I just don’t have the time.  I still plan to write some articles but they will be short and sweet.  More like writing notes for myself instead of trying to create the perfect article.