stsadm export, "User cannot be found", zone authentication - Sharepoint

Did you remove the user that was logged in when you installed Sharepoint. I
had a similar "User not found" error.

Note: Working with database is not supported!!!

Example Situation - installed MOSS logged in as user "USERABC" with services
running as "SERVICEABC"
after everything was running fine, I changed the site collection owners to
"ADMINABC" and then removed "USERABC" from site collection security.

Everything continues to work. While working with reporting services, I found
that the Author of the site was USERABC in the database. (Select * from webs)

I then did a (select * from userinfo) to check the id that was the author
from webs. this record had the deleted flag set.

This caused the error. I updated hte record in webs to an author that was
not deleted and everything is back to great.

I hope this at least points you in the right direction

"spwalla" wrote:

> In our SharePoint Services 3.0 configuration, we have two zones defined;
> Default and Intranet. The Default Zone uses Windows authentication while the
> Intranet Zone uses Forms authentication using CA-SiteMinder. When I try to
> export a website using stsadm, I receive the error "User cannot be found"
> whether I include the "-includeusersecurity" option or not. I am assuming
> that stsadm uses the Default Zone authentication, but the sites to export are
> using custom forms authentication so the users cannot be found. I saw
> another post similar to this problem and the individual contacted MS and
> obtained the fix/patch related to KB936867, but I'm not sure if that would
> solve this particular problem.

Eric,

The problem is not that I have users I cannot delete, the problem is that
the 'stsadm' tool does not provide a mechanism to validate users against
different authentication zones. If I run "stsadm -o enumusers -url
http://website/webapp" I might get "ldap:user1" returned because I have valid
LDAP users added to the Intranet Zone where the authentication is based on
LDAP. But when I run "stsadm -o export -url http://website/webapp
-filename...." I get user not found because the Default Zone is using Windows
authentication NOT LDAP. STSADM doesn't know how to validate users in other
zones.

"Eric VanRoy" wrote:

> Did you remove the user that was logged in when you installed Sharepoint. I
> had a similar "User not found" error.
>
> Note: Working with database is not supported!!!
>
> Example Situation - installed MOSS logged in as user "USERABC" with services
> running as "SERVICEABC"
> after everything was running fine, I changed the site collection owners to
> "ADMINABC" and then removed "USERABC" from site collection security.
>
> Everything continues to work. While working with reporting services, I found
> that the Author of the site was USERABC in the database. (Select * from webs)
>
> I then did a (select * from userinfo) to check the id that was the author
> from webs. this record had the deleted flag set.
>
> This caused the error. I updated hte record in webs to an author that was
> not deleted and everything is back to great.
>
> I hope this at least points you in the right direction
>
> "spwalla" wrote:
>
> > In our SharePoint Services 3.0 configuration, we have two zones defined;
> > Default and Intranet. The Default Zone uses Windows authentication while the
> > Intranet Zone uses Forms authentication using CA-SiteMinder. When I try to
> > export a website using stsadm, I receive the error "User cannot be found"
> > whether I include the "-includeusersecurity" option or not. I am assuming
> > that stsadm uses the Default Zone authentication, but the sites to export are
> > using custom forms authentication so the users cannot be found. I saw
> > another post similar to this problem and the individual contacted MS and
> > obtained the fix/patch related to KB936867, but I'm not sure if that would
> > solve this particular problem.