After a long wait, SP2 is available for download . With this new service pack, SharePoint users could benefit from
1.    Performance
2.    Stability
3.    Availability improvements
4.    Security

Installation Steps
Please check SharePoint Team Blog and Updates Resource Center for SharePoint Products and Technologies when the articles go live.

Related Resources
About Service Pack 2 for SharePoint Product and Technologies
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=148551

Service Pack 2 Overview (TechNet article links, very useful)
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=148374

Updates Resource Center for SharePoint Products and Technologies
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/office/sharepointserver/bb735839.aspx
The full list of changes in SP2 (Excel 2007 format)
Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 SP2 Changes
2007 Office Servers SP2 Changes
You can also go to this KB article for a full list of downloads for Office System 2007 SP2 (client & server).
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/968170

Q&A
Q: Why is the new STSADM upgrade checker operation important for my customers?
A: The upgrade checker is a stsadm operation that scans server farm to establish whether it is ready for upgrade to SharePoint 2010. It does so by identifying issues that could present obstacles to the upgrade process. It provides feedback and best practice recommendations on your current environment, together with information on how to resolve any issues that the tool discovers. It also check operating system requirement for Windows Server 2008 and 64bit.

Q: Which browser will be added into support for SP2 for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0?
A: Internet Explorer 8 will be added into level 1 browser support, and Firefox 2.0/3.0 will be added into level 2 browser support.

Q: Which operating system will be added into support?
A: Windows Server 2008 SP2 and Windows Server 2008 R2 will be supported on their release.

Q: Can customer skip other updates and directly apply SP2 in their server farm?
A: Yes. SP2 includes SP1 and Infrastructure updates. [Thats so good. No mess of installing different updates all the time.]

Q: Will there be a MOSS slipstream build with SP2?
A: There’s no plan for official MOSS slipstream build with SP2. An official slipstream guide will be provided so users can create their own slipstream build based on their patch needs. WSS with SP2 slipstream builds are provided on download center.

IIS 7 sites can be authenticated in “User mode” as well as “Kernel mode”. When we configure kerberos and use IIS 7 site in kernel mode authorization mode, SharePoint sites will give an error:

“HTTP Error 401. The requested resource requires user authentication.”

Take a look at the following article to understand how IIS7 authentication works.

http://learn.iis.net/page.aspx/101/introduction-to-iis7-architecture/#Application

RESOLUTION:

Disable the kernel mode authentication in IIS7.

You can disable Kernel-mode authentication by clicking Advanced Settings of the web site in IIS.

NOTE: As a best practice, you should not disable this setting if you use Kerberos authentication and a custom identity on the application pool.

But at this point, we do not have any alternative at this point. May be SP2 for Office Servers should provide a resolution for this.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/968170

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/944981
This is a very common issue that people are facing these days. The above KB should resolve the issue.

ISSUE
*****************************
Issue specific to the web application. Users are prompted for username and password and the site does not load. Using a modified Content Query Webpart and ItemStyle.xsl sheet to display the first 1000 characters of a blog site posting.  When the blog post is large(8000 lines) it causes the 1000 character render to blow up the application pool.

Symptoms:
*****************************
Event id = 2262
ISAPI ‘C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\v2.0.50727\aspnet_isapi.dll’ reported itself as unhealthy for the following reason: ‘Deadlock detected’.
For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.

Event ID=1000
Faulting application w3wp.exe, version 6.0.3790.3959, stamp 45d691cc, faulting module kernel32.dll, version 5.2.3790.4062, stamp 462643a7, debug? 0, fault address 0×0000000000027d8d.
For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.

Errors in ULS Logs:
*****************************
An SPRequest object was not disposed before the end of this thread.  To avoid wasting system resources, dispose of this object or its parent (such as an SPSite or SPWeb) as soon as you are done using it.  This object will now be disposed.  Allocation Id: {E7B5E974-452A-4FB4-A71A-ECA0C7AFE647}  This SPRequest was allocated at    at Microsoft.SharePoint.Library.SPRequest..ctor()     at Microsoft.SharePoint.SPGlobal.CreateSPRequestAndSetIdentity(Boolean bNotGlobalAdminCode, String strUrl, Boolean bNotAddToContext, Byte[] UserToken, String userName, Boolean bIgnoreTokenTimeout, Boolean bAsAnonymous)     at Microsoft.SharePoint.SPSite.GetSPRequest()     at Microsoft.SharePoint.SPSite.get_Request()     at Microsoft.SharePoint.SPSite.OpenWeb(Guid gWebId, Int32 mondoHint)     at Microsoft.SharePoi…        

04/03/2009 11:13:09.58*        w3wp.exe (0×0AC4)                               0×1A48        Windows SharePoint Services           General                               8l1n        High            …nt.SPSite.OpenWeb(Guid gWebId)     at Microsoft.SharePoint.Publishing.CachedArea.GetIdentityWeb(Guid webId, SPSite elevatedSite, Boolean isSuperUser)     at Microsoft.SharePoint.Publishing.CachedArea.GetSuperReaderIdentityWeb(SPSite site)     at Microsoft.SharePoint.Publishing.CachedArea..ctor(PublishingWeb area, String id, String parentId, String title, String url, String description, CachedObjectFactory factory)     at Microsoft.SharePoint.Publishing.CachedArea.CreateCachedArea(PublishingWeb area, CachedObjectFactory factory, String parentId)     at Microsoft.SharePoint.Publishing.CachedObjectFactory.CreateObject(PublishingWeb area, String parentUrl)     at Microsoft.SharePoint.Publishing.CachedObjectFactory.CreateObject(PublishingWeb area)     at Microsoft.SharePoint.Publishing.Publishi…        

04/03/2009 11:13:09.58*        w3wp.exe (0×0AC4)                               0×1A48        Windows SharePoint Services           General                               8l1n        High            …ngPage.IsPublishingPage(SPListItem sourceListItem)     at

FIX – for now
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Remove the large blog post or close the web part

Microsoft has announced that they will be taking the December Cu off from their site as there were number of known issues after installation. These issues were fixed in the Feb CU. So, if you have installed the December CU, go ahead and install the Feb CU for WSS and MOSS.

Feb CU information [Reference Microsoft SharePoint Official Blog]

Download Information

Feburary Cumulative Update Uber Package for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 (Version: 12.0.6341.5000)

http://support.microsoft.com/hotfix/KBHotfix.aspx?kbnum=961755

Feburary Cumulative Update Uber Package for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (Version: 12.0.6341.5002)

http://support.microsoft.com/hotfix/KBHotfix.aspx?kbnum=961756

Detail description

Description of the Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 cumulative update package: February 24, 2009

Description of the Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 cumulative update package: February 24, 2009 (Link is not actived yet)

Installation Recommendation for a fresh SharePoint Server

To keep all files in a SharePoint installation up-to-date, the following sequence is recommended.

1. Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Service Pack 1
2. The 2007 Microsoft Office Servers Service Pack 1
3. Feburary Cumulative Update for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0
4. Feburary Cumulative Update for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007

Meanwhile, if customer need to index Visio files, there is a Visio iFilter hotfix which is not a part of the uber package.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/960502

After applying the preceding updates, run the SharePoint Products and Technologies Configuration Wizard or “psconfig –cmd upgrade –inplace b2b -wait” in command line. This needs to be done on every server in the farm with SharePoint installed. 

The version of content databases should be 12.0.6341.5000 after successfully applying these updates.

For more in-depth guidance for the update process, we recommend that customers refer to the following articles. These articles provide a correct way to deploy updates, identify known issues (and resolutions), and provide information about creating slipstream builds.

Deploy software updates for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc288269.aspx

Deploy software updates for Office SharePoint Server 2007

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc263467.aspx

How to create a SharePoint slipstream using the latest updates (Updated for FEB CU!)

Issue:
When we add a task that is assigned to multiple users, the task is not shown up in the Outlook Tasks pane.

Cause:
Not known till now. I am researching on this a bit. Probably a bug with the product. No hot-fix found related to this. If any one does come across any hot-fix for this, it would be great if you can reply to this post.

Resolution:
Browse to the tasks library –> Library Settings
Select the “Assigned to” column and remove it from the tasks library.

After that click on “Add columns from existing site columns” link in the library settings and then add the “Assigned to” column back to the library.

Once this is done, the tasks are updated in Outlook.

NOTE: If you are not able to remove or add any site columns, make sure that “Allow management of content types” is enabled under Library Settings –> Advanced Settings.

The December Cumulative update information is posted at http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2008/12/17/announcing-december-cumulative-update-for-office-sharepoint-server-2007-and-windows-sharepoint-services-3-0.aspx.

Deploy software updates for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc288269.aspx

Deploy software updates for Office SharePoint Server 2007

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc263467.aspx

Seems like the contacts that are created by SharePoint in Exchange 2007, does not update the properties of the contact as per the requirements of Exchange 2007. Following is the repro of the issue and I am figuring out where exactly thep roblem lies. Will update the blog as soon as I get the solution.

Should be able to resolve the SharePoint contact information by clicking Ctrl + K while sending e-mails to List library
Created one new web application on port 80 and the site URL as http://site-url and we configured the incoming and outgoing e-mails as mentioned in fig 1.1 and fig 1.2

Fig 1.1

Fig 1.2

Browse the site http://site-url and create one document library name as “Incoming Email”. Went to document library settings of that particular document library as shown in fig 1.3

Fig 1.3

And configured the incoming e-mail settings and given the e-mail address as documents@serverSMTP.domain.com as mentioned in fig 1.4

Fig 1.4

And we went to to the Active directory there we can see that the contact has been created and we went to Start——>All Programs—–>Microsoft Exchange server 2007—–>Exchange Management Console there we can see the document library contact is created as shown below

And right click on that contact and selected property but we are getting error as shown below as customer is getting the same

And we tried to resolve the display name by clicking Ctrl+K but we are getting error

Present Behavior : Not able to resolve the document library contact by clicking the Ctrl+ K as we are able to do for normal Active Directory Contacts as shown below

Expected: Need to resolve the document library contacts by clicking Ctrl + K and able to send an e-mail to that particular document library

• Install October Cumulative Update for WSS Global KB957691

• Install October Cumulative Update for MOSS Global KB957693

• Install October Cumulative Update for MOSS language specific KB958567

• Install October Cumulative Update for MOSS Global Workflow KB958569

Now, you need to be sure if you have installed any pre-requisites for these hot-fixes. You can find them in the kb articles mentioned. I am installing the October updates on my lab and will write down if I come across any issues.

Consider the following scenario:

- We have a document library with the following settings:
o Name – Major and Minor Version – Alert Issue
o Permission – Unique Permissions. We have broken the permissions and the library no longer inherits the permissions from the top level site collection.

- We now add a user to the top level site with Read Permissions
- The same user is added to the document library with Read permissions
- For a better clarification, following is the versioning settings for the document library:

- Now the user with Read permission logs on to the site and subscribe for an Alert for the document library. The user gets the initial alert email about the alert being created for the Document Library.
- To distinguish, I have the site admin logged in to the document library and create a alert for him. The site admin now uploads a new document to the document library.
- We see that the user with Read only permissions does not get a subsequent alert, but the site admin does.

Conclusion:
If the user has Read permissions over a document library and if the document library has “Major and Minor” versioning turned on, then the user with the read permission will not get an alert.
This is a by-design issue.

Work-Arounds:
- Turn Off Major and Minor versioning and either keep Major versioning on or Minor versioning on, but not both.
- Give the user edit permission over the document library. This can be done either by assigning Contribute permission to the user or by editing the permission levels for the site.

Reason:
The user only has read permission and not edit permission over the library and its items. When a new item is inserted, the document is saved as draft and now published on the site. Thus, the document is not final. Thus, the user will not get an alert. But for the user who has edit permission, can approve the document and thus need to be notified about the document change so that the user can approve/reject the draft version.