After my fun with installing WSS I also needed to install OSS. For purposes of ensuring I had a clean install I started with a brand new VPC for Windows Server 2003. The steps involved include setting up IIS, installing all patches including .NET 2.0, installing the Windows Workflow Foundation package and then installing OSS.
This is the first change from the previous version: You don't need to install WSS before installing Office SharePoint Server (OSS) (aka SharePoint Portal Server v 3.0). In fact if you do then you will probably face configuration issues.
After I installed OSS, I went through the initial configuration and was then able to start up my site. No problems - right? Well not quite.
I then restarted and watched the Event Log and the behind the scenes errors began. The first set of errors I noticed occurred in the System Event Log and were flagged as DCOM errors. In looking at these I found that they were associated with the Network Services account. I then when to the Component Services MMC. Within the MMC proceed under Computers->MyComputer->DCOM Config Right Click-> “IIS WAMREG admin Service” and select properties. On the properties pane, select the Security tab and hit the top edit button to customize your Launch and Activation permissions. Inside the properties for this DCOM object, add Network Service as an authorized user to launch and activate this component locally.
This granted my Network Service account permission to access these components and on the next restart the DCOM errors (all of them) were gone from the System Event log.
Next up was the Application Event log. About a minute or so after restart I was seeing a series of errors occuring related to WSS and OSS. These were related to indexing files and content which would be placed on the server, and were again associated with the Network Service account. In this case however, the only solution is to go to Computer Management and open your Local Users and Groups. The Network Service account needs to be added to the Administrators security group - at which point you will be able to restart your system. Note I attempted to use any of the other security groups and all failed, and the account must remain as an administrator or the errors return on the next restart.
At this point I was able to feel comfortable that my OSS installation was working error free. Of note don't forget to enable the 'premium' services on your OSS install - not sure which capabilities that is, but I turned them on as part of this debugging process (they had no effect on the errors I saw).
