Yes folks, I received one of the most abstract error messages from MOSS the other day. When trying to provision a new site collection (team site site collection, that is), the error message that was thrown by MOSS was titled:
"Unknown Server Error: d".
After checking my usual spots for crazy activity when errors are thrown (event logs, IIS logs, MOSS logs, etc.) which turned up nothing, I tried to provision a new site collection of a different type thinking "ahh...it must be in the site provisioning process...that's it..." Everything except the Team Site site collection worked as expected with no errors.
So how do you "fix" the busted site collection template? My solution, while more simple than elegant was to spin up another central administration server (on a server that's also a front-end web server) from the SSP (remember that site collections can only be configured from the central admin server without using custom code). Once this process is complete, I provisioned the team site-site collection from the new central admin server and it worked like a champ.
After my success with this, I removed central administration from the server that was throwing the error and then reconfigured it as a central admin server. Once this was complete, I tested the newly configured server by creating a new team site site collection and the problem was resolved. Finally, I removed the temporary configuration of central admin from the front end web server and my environment is working great once again.
Am I the only one that has seen this goofball error?