Managing .NET custom errors in Sharepoint 2007

The first problem I faced when started to manage Sharepoint 2007 farms was the error handling. Every time I see the "Unknown error" page I raged against Microsoft swearing about their family.

Just to introduce my case, I manage several Sharepoint 2007 farm, the most important one hosts sites for many countries. Because of that every time I have problems with the database server hosting the content databases, the help desk department reports users complain about an error in other language. I'd like to share to how to know what's going on your Sharepoint Farm, showing errors only for administrators where the users will see a custom error page.

Firstly, you should create a virtual directory in the root of the web application called /errors or something like that, then create a custom html page (e.g. General_error.html). As the Sharepoint 2007 is a .NET application the next step should be editing the web.config file. So open it and change the "Callstack" value from "false" to true. Next find the label custom errors and comment the line, next add the following line just below the one you have just commented.

The RemoteOnly Value, means all users accessing the web application form outside the webserver will see the custom error page, so you, as an administrator, should log in the server an browse the URL returning error and so you can see the real error.

Now you can try forcing a .Net error going to your database server and detaching a Content database, when trying to browse a site collection from the web application you have changed the web.config form outside the web server you should see your custom .html page.