Today was my lucky day to install a new MOSS2007 Beta2TR virtual machine from scratch. Oh, joy. Has anyone anywhere at any time so far managed to do this without uttering a single curse of frustration? I seriously doubt it. So here are the lessons I learned on today's adventure to MOSS-land:
- If you plan on using a unique admin account (other than 'Administrator') for database access and application pools (such as 'SPSAdministrator') be sure that you are logged in as that account throughout the entire installation, upgrade and configuration process. Otherwise, you'll get all kinds of strange errors during installation and configuration. Oh, and don't forget to add that account to SQL before starting the process with full admin rights (or at least 'dbcreator' and 'securityadmin').
- The slipstream process ain't all it's cracked up to be. I tried three times to slipstream the install, which worked through the installation process (assuming you sorted out the somewhat misleading upgrade instructions), but it failed to create the central admin application upon configuration all three times. What is not quite so obvious is that you need both MOSS and WSS TR's to do the update - just MOSS won't work. This is confusing as you don't need have to install WSS before MOSS the first time around. Just remember to a) copy all the files from the Beta 2 cd image into a local directory, then b) extract the update files for MOSS B2TR and WSS B2TR into that directory's \Update folder.
- Central Administration will not work from a clean slipstream install (at least not for me it wouldn't and I was working from a fresh Win2k3 install). The configuration wizard runs and the central admin app is created but you can't access it - just an annoying 404 error every time. You must first install Beta 2, then run the configuration wizard (which creates the central admin app correctly) THEN run the WSS B2TR followed by the MOSS B2TR.
Finally, after much gnashing of teeth and flailing of limbs, I have a clean MOSS2007 image to work from. Now it's on to custom site definitions which, based on the install experience, promise to be a all-out man vs. machine war. Stay tuned for reports from the battlefield.
