A colleague from Australia IMed me tonight asking for help with a pesky error he was running into when trying to use SMIGRATE for Windows SharePoint Services 2003 to back up a SharePoint site.

The error was "ERROR: 6553609 You are not authorized to perform the current operation."

There's a KB article that addressed that error, but even after following the instructions in the KB article, the problem persisted. So we kept trying to figure it out. Permissions on the machine were fine, IE settings were fine, everything else checked out...

Greg Hughes says:
send me exactly what you typed on the command line pls

Greg Hughes says:
for your smigrate command?

< Jason /> says:
C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\60\BIN>smigrate -u domain\Administrator -pw **** -w http://siteserver/clients/ -f c:\backup.fwp

< Jason /> says:
yea even with that tool still says im not authorised to do it

Greg Hughes says:
just for grins try this...

Greg Hughes says:
smigrate -w http://siteserver/clients -f c:\backup.fwp -u domain\Administrator -pw ****

< Jason /> says:
o ur good ur really good

< Jason /> says:
lol its working

Greg Hughes says:
yup

Greg Hughes says:
heh

Greg Hughes says:
two differences - not sure which mattered but I have a guess

Greg Hughes says:
so try it this way next:

Greg Hughes says:
smigrate -w http://point/clients/ -f c:\backup.fwp -u sydney\Administrator -pw *

< Jason /> says:
rofl yea that breaks it

Greg Hughes says:
you see the difference?

< Jason /> says:
yea

< Jason /> says:
the slash interesting

Greg Hughes says:
non fault-tolerant tool

< Jason /> says:
lol yea

Greg Hughes says:
yep it doesnt like that

So apparently it's important to remove the trailing slash from the site URL you specify with SMIGRATE on the command line if you want it to behave correctly. Also note that the error you get when running the tools is the same one covered under the KB article I mentioned above (http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=828210) for a different problem that's also related to backing up or restoring a SharePoint web:

"ERROR: 6553609 You are not authorized to perform the current operation."

The same error occurs when the trailing slash is applied in the site URL, at least in our case. So if you do everything in the KB article and still get the same persistent error, look for evil slashes...

For reference...

Also, when it's time to restore, it's important to know that you have to restore to an empty subsite that you create in the SharePoint admin web tool - no template, no nothing - just an empty SharePoint enabled subweb site.

You can do this with the STSADM.exe tool, leaving out the extra syntax for specifying templates, titles, etc - all the stuff that makes it not blank...

stsadm.exe -o createweb -url http://server_name/sites/site1/subsite1

or, if you're creating a top-level site on the server that you want to restore to, you create it like this:

stsadm.exe -o createsite -url http://server_name/sites/site1 -ownerlogin <DOMAIN\user> -owneremail someone@example.com -ownername <display name>

Also - remember that especially when it comes time to back up and restore sites, the patch levels and versions of the WSS servers you're dealing with might make or break your ability to get done what you want - so make sure the versions of your servers match if you keep running up against errors when you go to do your restore. Not a silver bullet, but it can be an elusive problem to troubleshoot.

There I was going to go and write up a big ol' post comparing the new IE7 beta 3 and Firefox 2.0 beta 1 releases, and it turns out Scott Hanselman already did a great job of it.

For lots of detail and good review, see Scott's post. He covers RSS capabilities, the anti-phishing/anti-fraud capabilities (yay Scott! heh), usability, download functionality, and more. Well worth the read.

Amanda Murphy's got a whole slew of great blog posts and screen shots from Office 2007 and SharePoint 2007, which is looking more and more to be a great collaboration platform. Lots and lots of new features and significant improvements over the 2003 versions.

Check out the list of posts here. Keep on posting more, Amada!

Yeah, it's cliche and random, but truth is Oregon's a great place to live. Heck, the whole Pacific Northwest is terrific. Here's just three among many reasons I say this...

My lab, Buddy, died today. He was one of my oldest and best friends and lived more than 13 years, which they say is old for a lab.

He was a good dog, and a true friend. I'll miss him more than I can say.

People always commented about how well behaved he was. I trained him to do all sorts of things and he was very smart. One of his favorite things was to hold some sort of snack or food on his nose, balanced for as long as it took until you told him it was okay to toss it in the air off his nose and catch it mid-air. He practically always caught it, and would always wait for the okay, no matter how long it took. One time my son had him waiting, and got engrossed in a TV show and forgot buddy was standing there, patiently and neurotically waiting for someone to give him the okay. A huge puddle of drool soaked the carpet under his feet. He always aimed to please, even if he couldn't control his drool.

Buddy came into my life one afternoon when my first foster son and I went to the local animal shelter and there he was, a tiny little black furball exactly eight weeks old. I could hold him in one hand, he was so tiny.

At any rate, I think everyone that ever met him over the past 13 years truly liked him, and when all is said and done, that says a lot. He'd been getting and appearing older and quite tired and worn out, and it was becoming obvious that time was catching up with him. People who met him before know that's unusual. He'd been almost like a puppy until about a year ago, and in recent weeks his breathing had become quite labored and he had slowed down a lot.

Now he's gone. Tonight I'll take him down to be cremated. My friend Tyson, whom I've known as long as Buddy, is going to meet me. I'll miss him, I'm glad he was my friend.

There's an interesting story over at the Times of London online that describes the need and future of IPv6, a new number addressing scheme for the Internet that will take the finite IP addressing scheme used today (which is quickly running out of addresses) and replaces it with something significantly huger. The story explains the new addressing scheme without getting all geeky, so it's good for non-technical types. It also does an effective job of explaining the massive difference between the old and new systems.

Only one problem - the math appears to be wrong in the article. IPv6 addresses are 128 bits long. IPv4 addresses are 32 bits long. So, I am not sure where the author's numbers came from...

"When the Internet was developed in the 1980s, programmers had no idea how big it would become. They gave each address a “16-bit” number, which meant that the total number of available addresses worked out at about four billion (2 to the power of 32).

"But as use grew, it became clear that the old protocol, IPv4, wasn’t big enough, so a new one was written based on '32-bit numbers.' That increased the number of available addresses to 340 undecillion, 282 decillion, 366 nonillion, 920 octillion, 938 septillion — enough for the foreseeable future, Mr Kessens said."

Well, the math is off but the article does get the point across that the change is significant. Too bad it's not more accurate, though. Read the story here.