Tuesday, 19 August 2008

SBS 2008 - Wizard cannot configure Remote Web Workplace - Internet Address Management Error

There are many ways to learn a lesson ... for some of us the methodology falls into the "trial by fire" category.

Those lessons can come hard and fast when life is running at 115% ... which is virtually near meltdown.

And, not paying attention to the SBS 2008 AnswerFile help (previous blog post containing the help) is a sure fire way to find one of those lessons very quickly!

On to the problem at hand:

Internet Address Management Error Details

The server cannot configure Remote Web Workplace. To correct this problem, run the Fix My Network Wizard

Okay, this is really strange!

The kicker: Remote Web Workplace works from the Internet! But, as soon as the link to the internal Companyweb SharePoint site is clicked, the browser URL monitor at the bottom right of IE flashes http://sites/ and then a Page Cannot Be Displayed error.

This particular install of SBS 2008 RC1 was the fourth run at it. The first two cratered to what turned out to be bad sectors on one of the RAID 0+1 array members.

So, by now things were getting to be a little more than frustrating.

After running the Fix My Network wizard to try and correct the problem, we were getting absolutely nowhere.

In an email exchange with the Dev Team via the Microsoft Connect Web site it was discovered that a setting in the AnswerFile was the culprit ... mea culpa.

Here is a mock up of the answer file as it was used to run the four setup attempts:


SBS 2008 Answer File: Wrong Setting

And, here is what the answer file looks like when the setting is correct (to see side by side right click and Open in new Window for both):

SBS 2008 Answer File: Right Setting

If you catch the error, good for you! ;)

Just to recap from the AnswerFile Help:

Certification authority name (optional)
The name of the certification authority that you want to use. If you leave this field blank, Windows SBS 2008 uses the internal domain name and the server name (syntax -) to generate a self-signed certificate (for example, Contoso-Server1-CA). This is the name in the Issued By field when you view the certificate from the Internet.
Important: Do not use the domain name as the certification authority name.

The setting that we had: remote.mpecsinc.ca

The setting that we should have had: [blank] or something like MPECS Inc. as indicated in the correct AnswerFile.

Notice, that a quick reading of the AnswerFile help may not yield the best results ... as is the case here. 8*/

A closer read of the particular section in question, Certificate Authority Name, clearly indicates what this particular field is for:

Issued by: Springers Ltd

So, we now have a very valuable lesson learned: We need to pay closer attention to the instructions. ;)

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists

*All Mac on SBS posts are posted on our in-house iMac via the Safari Web browser.

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12 comments:

  1. Anonymous02 April, 2009 16:45

    Did you end up having to reload the OS from scratch all over again with a corrected AnswerFile, or were you able to solve the problem after the fact?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Philip Elder Cluster MVP02 April, 2009 19:24

    A,

    There is a fix for it. I am not sure where it is at the moment. I will try and dig it up and post the link.

    Thanks for the comment,

    Philip

    ReplyDelete
  3. Anonymous25 May, 2009 22:41

    Did you ever find this link for the fix? Besides the one where you change the prefix?

    ReplyDelete
  4. Philip Elder Cluster MVP25 May, 2009 23:00

    Run the Internet Address Wizard and put another domain name for the domain setup.

    Once the wizard has completed, rerun the wizard to seat the proper e-mail domain and RWW URL.

    IIRC, that is the fix. I still have not found the source. I have put the bug in a few people's ears this time. :)

    Philip

    ReplyDelete
  5. Anonymous26 May, 2009 09:59

    mine was pretty messed up, I couldnt get the wizards to run or ability to add any certs.
    I had tried to manually make some changes that made it worse.
    I uninstalled certificate authority from SBS 08 Console unders Roles, restarted and then allowed it to finish up.
    Once that was done I ran Fix My Internet and everything worked again, as well as allowed me to use remote.domain.com, it recreated the CA with a generic name not the AnswerFile one.
    Hope this helps anyone.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Unknown14 April, 2010 13:46

    Just wanted to leave a note on how to fix this. I've been working on this for the better part of a day but finally got it fixed. You need to uninstall and reinstall Certificate Authority services and give it a different name. Then you need to go in the registry to "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\SmallBusinessServer\Networking\" look for the key name "CAName" you need to change this to match the name of whatever you called the CA when you reinstalled it. After you do this rerun the Internet Address Wizard and it should run without issue.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Anonymous25 April, 2010 08:51

    i left that portion of the answer file section blank and still got the error

    ReplyDelete
  8. Chimera Computing Ltd07 October, 2010 05:22

    for detailed instructions on how to resolve this, follow this MS technet article...

    http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/sbs-2008-reinstall-ca-role(WS.10).aspx

    ReplyDelete
  9. Anonymous07 October, 2010 05:24

    For step-by-step instructions...

    http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/sbs-2008-reinstall-ca-role(WS.10).aspx

    ReplyDelete
  10. Adam Gurney31 December, 2010 05:44

    Rev - I owe you a massive beer.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Anonymous23 January, 2011 18:04

    Hi. Thanks for your help guys. Also I beleive this is the updated link: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd421659(WS.10).aspx

    ReplyDelete
  12. Anonymous16 January, 2012 15:07

    Rev, you are the man. Thanks!!

    ReplyDelete

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