MOSS 2007: 3 additional assembly binding redirects, where are they coming from

Question

Hi,

I have a web.config of a functioning MOSS server with our custom settings and a web.config of a freshly installed MOSS.

Here's 3 redirects I don't know the source of:

    <dependentAssembly>
        <assemblyIdentity name="Microsoft.SharePoint.Portal.SingleSignon" publicKeyToken="71e9bce111e9429c" culture="neutral" />
        <bindingRedirect oldVersion="11.0.0.0" newVersion="12.0.0.0" />   </dependentAssembly>   
<dependentAssembly>
        <assemblyIdentity name="Microsoft.SharePoint.Portal.SingleSignon.Security" publicKeyToken="71e9bce111e9429c" culture="neutral" />
        <bindingRedirect oldVersion="11.0.0.0" newVersion="12.0.0.0" />   </dependentAssembly>   
<dependentAssembly>
        <assemblyIdentity name="SPCanary_NET" publicKeyToken="71e9bce111e9429c" culture="neutral" />
        <bindingRedirect oldVersion="11.0.0.0" newVersion="12.0.0.0" />   </dependentAssembly>

I don't remember adding them manually and they don't appear in the fresh config. Both installations are SP1. I suspect some update may have added these. Just curious. Does anybody know when exactly these redirects are added and what is SPCanary_Net?

Thanks!

Answer 1

SP_Canary.net is part of Office:

http://www.fileproperties.com/default.aspx?id=40469&filename=spcanary_net.dll

Answer 2

These three assemblies are all SharePoint DLLs. You can tell from the public key token being the same for all of them and matching that of all other SharePoint DLLs.

The binding redirects have been automatically added by SharePoint (probably the WSS Administration service) so that code that was compiled for the previous version will still work against the new version. I don't know why it does this at some point after creating a web application instead of from the start but I've seen it happen myself.

It looks like SPCanary_Net (located at C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office Servers\12.0\Bin\SPCanary.dll) is used by Microsoft Office SharePoint Search judging from this post. Use of the word 'canary' indicates it is some sort of data protection mechanism that dies if an error occurs.

Update: These three redirects are added with the installation of MOSS 2007 SP2.