SharePoint Caching (Access denied)

Posted: October 28, 2011 in SharePoint 2007
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Recently a collegue and I ran in to an unexpected error at a client. It was quite tough to diagnose, as the initial error pointed us to a permissions issue.

However, after some intense research, we found information that led us to believe it was a corrupt cache file.
Below are the steps to repair the corrupt cache :

  1. Log into the SharePoint Server experiencing the corrupt cache.
  2. Stop the SharePoint 2010 Timer Service (OWSTIMER)
  3. Navigate to ‘C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\SharePoint\Config\{GUID}
    There may be more than one {GUID} folder.
  4. One of these {GUID} folders will contain a cache.ini file, and a number of .XML files.
    Make a backup of these files. WARNING, DO NOT DELETE THE Cache.ini FILE. It will break your Farm!
  5. Now, delete all the .XML files.
  6. Then open the Cache.ini file, and edit the value in the file to 1. Save and close the file.
  7. Now, start the SharePoint 2010 Timer Service.
    You will see the new .XML files being built.
  8. If you open the Cache.ini, you will see that the number you saved has been replaced.
  9. You should now be able to run the PSCONFIG successfully and complete the configuration of your farm.

There are various causes for the Cache to become corrupted. Researching this problem, has shown that any of the following causes can be linked:

  • When the cached data is out of sync with the configuration database, timer jobs might start failing. This is usually when the content of the file system cache on the front-end servers are newer that the contents of the configuration db.
  • The Timer job service on the SharePoint servers stopped of failed unexpectedly.
  • Network connectivity (intermittent connections)
  • Connection Pools, Thread Pools, resource contention & database locking.

Here are some links to additional resources where we found the same or similar information:
http://sharepointreporter.wordpress.com/tag/psconfig-errors
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/josrod/archive/2007/12/12/clear-the-sharepoint-configuration-cache-for-timer-job-and-psconfig-errors.aspx
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/jamesway/archive/2011/05/23/sharepoint-2010-clearing-the-configuration-cache.aspx
http://blog.christophermichaelwebb.com/date/2011/09/
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/939308

Let us know if you have any questions.

 

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