Hey all,
last week, a colleague of mine called me with a problem he had while setting up TFS 2013. He installed it and also used the option to create a SharePoint Foundation along with it.
So far so good… it worked. You get a SharePoint Foundation. Now, this is where it gets ugly. When you try to search for something… nothing happens. You get an empty page.
When you click the Search Settings link in the Site Settings menu, you get the message:
“The search request was unable to connect to the search service”
Sure enough… no search service application.
Tried in any way possible to get it up and running but nada. Using the configuration wizard => no search service application. Using PowerShell, no go. Tried it with psconfig to install the services manually. Nop. No search.
After running the psconfig, I did see a Search Host Controller Service in Central Admin but if you try to start it, you simply get an error. No other Search Service anywhere to be seen.
My question… IS there a Search Service with the SPF that ships with TFS and if so… how do you get this up and running?
I know you can connect your TFS to a full blown SharePoint but not an option here. They just want the project sites when you create a new team project and be able to search in the site.
I finally figured it out and put my findings in a blogpost.
Summarized: if you install SharePoint Foundation by means of the TFS2013 installer, you have no search. Period. The mssearch.exe is MIA.
If you install SharePoint Foundation manually and then have TFS detect it, you do have a search and you can configure it.
The only thing I still don’t know is if this is by design or a bug in the installer.
