A site corruption problem
While working on creating a new site, we ran into a problem (and found a solution) that I thought I would pass along. All was well in our site.. then, we changed permissions on a document library to no longer inherit permissions from the parent site (web) that it was a part of. Then, we added a large group of individuals to the document library permissions.. about 50 people.. hit OK and then the error occurred. The navigation menu at the top simply said "Error". If you hovered over it, it gave a stacktrace error in the tooltip. If you pulled up the site, you got a page that simply said "Cannot complete this action. Please try again." I did notice that if I navigated to any site that did NOT inherit permissions from the parent and added "_layouts/user.aspx" to the url, I was able to bring up a page.. butthe navigation still said "error". However, if I added "_layouts/user.aspx" to a url which DID inherit permissions from the parent web site (actually, the top level web site), then I was NOT able to bring up the page at all. After some digging, I discovered the following in the datamodel. There is a tabled called "perms" in the content database. This table will contain an entry for any entity that has permissions assigned to it. I saw an entry for all of the sites and document libraries which had unique permissions. BUT.. I did not see an entry for the top level website. It was gone. To confirm, I created a new site collection (btw, I created it in the same web application as the broken site collection) and used another content database. In this new one (that worked by the way), I saw an entry in the perms table.. but not in the broken site. So I felt like the issue was that when the site tried to render, it could not resolve the permissions to the top level web site. NOTE: I did not change anything in the database... AND YOU SHOULD NOT EITHER.... just look around. Then, I spent time with Microsoft to determine the problem. We did all of the ordinary things and then, I suggested we look at the following hotfix: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/936867/en-us We applied this hotfix to the WFE server (we did not apply to the backend database server) and then ran the configuration wizard. That fixed the problem. I also went into the database and checked the table.. sure enough.. the missing entry in the perms table was now there. I thought I would pass this along, in hopes it might help someone else.. ALSO... MICROSOFT..I think its about time for SP1.... :-)
September 4th, 2007 10:09pm

I ran into the same issue not being able to fire up the advanced user settings after I did a minor change in the sharepoint groups. It has a 3 site levels deep structure like this: http://root/ http://root/subsite/ http://root/subsite/forum On all 3 I get the error page, just only on all the "_layouts/user.aspx"URLs, all other stuff works OK. I enabled ASP errors in the web.config and I got this trying to open the advanced settings: Object reference not set to an instance of an object. at Microsoft.SharePoint.SPSite.get_IISAllowsAnonymous() at Microsoft.SharePoint.ApplicationPages.UserRoles.InitPage() at Microsoft.SharePoint.ApplicationPages.CBaseAclPage.OnLoad(EventArgs e) at System.Web.UI.Control.LoadRecursive() at System.Web.UI.Page.ProcessRequestMain(Boolean includeStagesBeforeAsyncPoint, Boolean includeStagesAfterAsyncPoint) Strange thing is, that compared with a few other databases, the root site table entry seems to exist (the one with theempty ScopeUrl entry?) just like in the the other sites content databases. I tried to copy the whole site into a new site. same problems. Another problem we have on this server, but on another siteis also security related. If I add a Domain Global Group to the WSS Sitemembers group, the user get's a 403 page. I I ad them individually, it works OK. I am reluctant to take the hotfix route on this production server, but I might try it on a test system first. It's very frustrating and hard to debug. No event logs, no special entries in the sharepoint logfiles at all. Only in the IIS logs I can see the 401 and 403 errors.
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September 18th, 2007 12:21pm

One word of caution about the hotfix... since we applied it, most of our timer jobs have stopped working. I'm trying to work with Micrsoft to figure out the problem, but no luck yet. When we get an answer, I'll post it here.
September 18th, 2007 2:16pm

Mmmmm. that's what I fear most. New update about this subject. I did a stsadm -o backup of the whole site collection and stsadm -o restore it back into a newly created site on another port number on the same server. Tatataaa! now suddenly it starts to work again in the new site. I'm planning to do this again for the site exibiting this problem during a maintenance window. I recently ran into an article of Keith Ritchie on the security inheritance being broken in WSS 3.0 and MOSS2007 http://blog.krichie.com/2007/04/05/beware-of-cascading-deletes-in-wssmoss/ This might be related to the problem but I'm not 100% sure. I was deleting a few users and groups, among them one of the former site collection admins in that particular site, and after that the problems began. I did however assigned a new site collection owner before that. Indeed a service pack would be nice to fix these strange issues. M
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September 18th, 2007 3:24pm

We have just started getting the same problem, with the log showing the trace similar to yours:"Application error when access /_layouts/user.aspx, Error=Object reference not set to an instance of an object. at Microsoft.SharePoint.SPSite.get_IISAllowsAnonymous()"...continuedDid you ever find a resolution for this?Mark
February 6th, 2009 8:47pm

Hi,Actually you will not find a reference for this error on the internet, as its related to bad configuration. you will get the below error when you try to access users.aspx page "Advanced Security" under site settings, also you will got another error when you try to add web parts, of course you need to show the real error using web.config. and you will see the below error.Error 1: "Object reference not set to an instance of an object. at Microsoft.SharePoint.SPSite.get_IISAllowsAnonymous()" Error 2: Object reference not set to an instance of an object. at Microsoft.SharePoint.WebPartPages.VirtualServerWebPartDataProvider.get_VirtualRootPath() many technicals suggest to restore the site again from backup, but its not always right proceedure. you have to know what cauases this error in order to fix it, i did some tracing and i found some bad configuration caused that error.cause of this error:1. the application was created using windows as Authintication provider in the default zone!2. or the application was extended to an application using windows as Authintication provider in the internet zone!3. the application was removed from iis that are in default zone! work arround:1. go to site administration portal, navigate to operation and pick "Alternative Access Maping" 2. change the url of your application to another alternative name for exmple mysite.com3. add new alternative name for your application to have your targeted name4. choose "Internet" from zone drop down menugo to "Advanced Security" and you will find the error disappeard. also try to add new web part :)hope someone can make use of this scenarioRegards,M. Ismailmosubhi@hotmail.com M. Ismail
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July 27th, 2009 9:11am

Thanks a bunch Ismail. I ran into the "Object reference not set to an instance of an object..." issue and was looking for a solution for a couple of days as no clear indication of error or description was available. Thankfully, I came across this post of yours. This was exactly the reason and adding back the mapping for Internet Zone resolved the issue. Thanks again. Regards, Waqas Arshed
January 8th, 2010 12:36pm

I'm having this same problem, except I'm using Sharepoint Foundation 2010. After turning on logging through web.config I get this message in the application log while attempting to go to Site Actions- Site Permissions: Stack trace: at Microsoft.SharePoint.ApplicationPages.UserRoles.InitPage() at System.Web.UI.Control.LoadRecursive() at System.Web.UI.Page.ProcessRequestMain(Boolean includeStagesBeforeAsyncPoint, Boolean includeStagesAfterAsyncPoint) And like you, I only have this problem with the site permissions page, or "_layouts/user.aspx". What's interesting about this issue, is that it only happens when I'm using my custom branded master page. When I use the default built in one, the page renders fine. So it really seems to point towards an incorrect configuration in my master page. I used this guidance while creating my custom branding. Would love some help to figure out what could cause an error like this. Hopefully someone here can point me in the right direction.
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September 15th, 2011 6:47pm

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