Dancing with Abby Normal…

You may remember my April adventures with a beta of Microsoft’s “Windows Home Server” (AKA: WHS). WHS is a neat little consumer product. I think it also has some applicability in the NGO-SOHO space. It’s perfect, for example, for a nonprofit with fewer than ten or so people in need of automated backup and some easily expanded shared file storage.

Since that foray into Betatown, MS released a new WHS version, the so-called “RC1″ or “release candidate 1″ edition — just a little bit closer to an actual commercial release. Just between you and me, I don’t pretend to follow Microsoft’s various mystical and mysterious machinations as it (slowly) walks a product to market. RC1, or Beta 3, or CTP, they’re all beta’s to me. It means you can’t buy it, yet. It also means install at your own risk. A beta, by any other name, is still likely to break your heart, eat your hard drive, and maybe shred your collection of precious Godzilla DVD rips.

While I am on the subject of both the mystical and Godzilla — has anybody noticed that Microsoft has a severe case of marketing schizophrenia? At times, it’s almost comical.

Why, on one hand, with WHS, are they introducing network file shares for the home market, while simultaneously encouraging migration away from shares (to things like SharePoint) in all other markets? Why didn’t they just bundle SharePoint Services (WSS) with WHS? They could have called it a “break-through in web-based home file storage” and garnered lots of hype. It makes a whole lot more sense than their decision to introduce a line of furniture in the form of a table-sized PC. Gack! That thing only serves to remind me of wasted hours with the lovely Ms. Pac Man.

Mystical musing aside, I was nevertheless eager to once again take another walk on the seedy side of Betatown, so I installed RC1. (Everything was running just fine, so it seems a perfect time to screw things up.)

The upgrade itself was uneventful, smooth even; smooth enough to make me nervous. So far: “Everything is beautiful and nothing hurt.” This also seemed an opportune time to take a look at the “add-ins” feature of WHS.

What are they? Well, they’re little server based processes — that do things. The one I specifically wanted to see was something called PhotoSync. It supposedly automates uploads to Flickr from a designated WHS folder or folders. I thought that sounded like a neat idea. I’ve been having lots of fun lately with Flickr. (Shameless self-promotion alert: I’m especially fond of this one I call “Looking for the heart of Saturday night,” with apologies to Tom Waits.)

The concept behind PhotoSync is simple: You put photographs in a designated WHS folder and it will automagically post them to your Flickr account. I tried it. It worked. It was nice.

The down side: it didn’t do tagging, at least not yet. But it will automatically create new photo sets. That’s a nice feature. Moreover, it will automatically title the photographs based upon the name of the file. All in all, a nice piece of work, that.

On the side, what’s also nice is the “add an add-in” process itself. (Try saying that fast.) It’s brain-dead simple. You need only copy the appropriate installation files to the appropriate folder on WHS. Moreover — in a true break from tradition — the appropriate folder was even logically named (\Software\Add-ins).

When an add-In is copied to the right folder, it shows up on the WHS management console. You click the button to install, or, if it’s already installed, you click the button to un-install it. Simple.

Unfortunately, there appear to be relatively few add-ins available — maybe four or five max. Nevertheless, they are all “community developed” and freebies, which is pretty cool. You can find them at a place called We Got Served. I note that there is a handy µTorrent client, and some sort of media extender that will stream media (music, DVDs, videos, photos) called WebGuide.

Meanwhile, while I was doing all the requisite staring into space that goes hand in hand with any software installation, I got to pondering… a dangerous thing, that. When I ponder, I get ideas — wild ideas, fanciful ideas — sometimes they lead me on a journey of discovery, other times I just end up breaking things.

What I got to pondering about was SharePoint and Windows Home Server. I got to thinking about the fact that WHS was just a stripped-down version Server 2003, the OS required for Window SharePoint Services (the free version). To me, it seemed such a shame, such a waste of resources — to have a whole server doing not much but humming to its self. What a waste of processing power, and resources, and potential.

Now, clearly I could install Seti@home, feel good about my carbon footprint or some such, and simultaneously help search for intelligent life in Washington, but I had a better idea. [Besides, I think that's fruitless; alien life, sure, absolutely, but Washington, not likely at least for another 18 months; highly doubtful even then.]

Instead, I pondered up this idea: Why not build a Frankenstein —and… I could even name the server “Abby Normal” — I could transplant a WSS brain into WHS body! Clearly I have watched too much Mystery Science Theater 3000. Just as clearly, I’m entertained by simple things.

Anyway, my logic went like this: if it’s Server 2003, why can’t it run SharePoint too? Besides, it’s free. I could even use it when I wanted to do some SharePoint development at home and, well, who knows, it might be handy. Besides, what have I got to lose except all my backups?

The fact is, I could imagine a nice WSS/WHS Frankenstein, err … Fronkensteen, as being very handy for your typical nuclear, post-nuclear, and not-so-nuclear family.

In my mind — strange as it may be — the typical features of a small “team” site might be quite applicable to both the home market and the small NGO market — shared calendar, “cork” board, shared file storage, etc. Having a quick and dirty WSS Intranet happily humming on WHS might just be the ticket.

It also fit in to my plans to write up a couple of SharePoint “use case” studies I was thinking of calling “Gavin’s Five-Minute Guide to SharePoint Intranets.” (Coming soon to a theater near you.)

“What a grand idea,” I said to myself. So, I set out to see if it could be done.

Give my creation life!

The short story is: yes, it can be done. In fact, it was easy as pie. First you need a brain…

Seriously, there was only one small SNAFU, and that was easily solved with some quick tweaks to IIS (Internet Information Server) — changing a few ports around so that all the various web sites would work. Below, I lead you through how to do it and how to avoid the SNAFU.

Here are the simplified steps:

1. Login to WHS as administrator and ignore the big splash screen warning that your naughty bits are going to fall off if you mess about with stuff. Relax, really. Trust me <evil grin>.
   
2. Grab your mouse and prepare to mess about. Close the warning window — out of sight, out of mind — and open IIS Manager.
   
3. In IIS Manager, locate the “Default Web Site” in the Web Server’s list, and change the port from 80 to 81. Leave the SLL port (443) the same. If you want to know why, I explain what this does at the end of this posting.
   
4. Open “My Computer” and create a folder on the root of the [D:] drive and name it WSSIndex. We’ll use it later to hold the WSS index files and avoid filling up the limited space on [C:]. (WHS sets up a rather small [C:] partition, so I figured not to crowd it.)
   
5. Download WSS if you haven’t got it already, it’s here. Then double-click the install file (it’s called “SharePoint.exe”)
   
6. Accept the EULA, ignoring the fact that you’ve probably just offered up your firstborn to Satan.
   
7. At the dialog window where you choose an installation type, choose the option for “Advanced.”
   
8. On the next dialog window, click on the “Data Location” tab, and switch where the beast stores its index files. Change it to the folder you created on the [D:] drive, e.g., D:\WSSIndex.
   

   
   

9. Go back to the “Server Type” tab, select the option for “Stand-Alone” and press the “Install Now” button.
   
10. Make a cup of tea and pet the dog for a while as it installs. Consider making a political donation or moving (back) to Canada, or both, or maybe Scotland.
    

    
    

11. When Windows is done whirring and installing, click the “Close” button, making sure the checkbox for “Run the Configuration Wizard” is checked. This will start the WSS configuration wizard.
    
12. Click “Next” to tell the wizard to keep on keeping wiz’ing, and accept the silly warning that a few services will be reset. It will run through all sorts of tasks — ten in all, so…
    
13. Make another cup of tea. Check your Gmail to see if anybody has written you lately. Sigh, sadly, at all the spam, close Gmail and go back to work.
    
14. If all goes well, about this time, Windows SharePoint Services should now be installed, and you should see something like this:
    

    
    

15. Click “Finish” … and if all went according to plan, you should be dropped at the default WSS web page. It should look sort of like the picture on the left (below). If you substitute “HTTPS” for “HTTP” you should see the default WHS site, as shown on the right (below).
    

You’re done, by the way. You’ve now got a SharePoint site to play with. Both the WSS and WHS web sites should be available at URLs shown above, from anywhere on your home network (substitute your server name, of course).

WSS itself is administered through the Control Panel, under Administrative Tools, and click the item labeled “SharePoint 3.0 Central Administration.” The first thing to do is add authorized users to the WSS site — if you’ve set up WHS with local users, you can use the same login credentials (user accounts) on WSS. You add them right under site actions, site settings, “People and Groups.” Easy as pie.

Have fun!

About Port 80 and Port 81:

I mentioned above that I’d talk briefly about why we moved one web server from port 80 to port 81. Port 80, as you no doubt know, is the default web server port. What we did is free-up port 80 for WSS. It simplifies the installation process, as the WSS wizard is going to use Port 80 no matter what. But, if we leave the WHS in place, on Port 80, the WSS installation wizard ends up shutting down the server on both port 80 and port 443 (SSL/HTTPS). By changing the default server to port 81 before hand, we avoid that problem, and the server on port 443 is left untouched.

It’s easy to do.

1. Open IIS Manager and locate the Default Web Site.
   
2. Right click and choose Properties. You should see a window like this:
   

   
   

3. Change the TCP port from 80 to 81 and click OK.
   
4. Right-click on the default web server and choose stop. Wait a few seconds and then right-click again, and choose start. That usually gets everything humming nicely again.
   

This way, it keeps everything neat – otherwise, the installation just stops the WHS instance and leaves it stopped. Sure, there are other approaches, including host headers and adding additional IP addresses to the network interface. But this is the simplest and has no impact that I can see.

Quite frankly, I don’t think you need the WHS web server on port 80. All that web site does is redirect you to the SSL port (443). It’s simpler and easier to just use HTTPS for your WHS server and leave WSS as is, on port 80. So far, it’s worked just fine for me.