SP13 - Cannot add user as farm administrator

Question

As a farm administrator am I not allowed to add an other farm administrator? If I fill in the existing user and hit apply I get following...

Sorry, something went wrong An unexpected error has occurred. Correlation ID: 01c9b69c-f8ec-e0be-9915-f6e3717a17d0

What's wrong?

Answer 1

If your account is not in Local admin on the Server then even with farm Administrator rights you cannot add another user in the same group.

In Simple words, Add your account into Local Admin group on the server(especially Central Admin Server), then try it.

this is old KB but still applicable for your situation.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/926320

If above not solve the issue, then you can check the ULS for the correlation id(mentioned in your error).

Answer 2

your account is not part of the local admin group on the server. If you look up the error from the correlation id give on you 15hive log directory i think you would see the following:

Local administrator privilege is required to update the Farm Administrators' group

goto server manager -> expand configuration -> expand local user and groups -> click on groups folder -> on the right hand side you should now see a list of local groups for the server, topmost you should see administrators -> double click administrators group -> a popup will appear -> click on add button -> search for your account to add to this group and click apply and then ok.

you should then be able to add users to admin group.

or

you can save this ps code to run in powershell,

Add-PSSnapin Microsoft.SharePoint.PowerShell -erroraction SilentlyContinue 

# Creates a new Farm Administrator

$newFarmAdministrator = Read-Host -Prompt 'Please provide the name of the new Farm Administrator in the form of DOMAIN\Username'

$caWebApp = Get-SPWebApplication -IncludeCentralAdministration | where-object {$_.DisplayName -eq "SharePoint Central Administration v5"} 
$caSite = $caWebApp.Sites[0] 
$caWeb = $caSite.RootWeb

$farmAdministrators = $caWeb.SiteGroups["Farm Administrators"] 
$farmAdministrators.AddUser($newFarmAdministrator, "", $newFarmAdministrator, "Configured via PowerShell")

$caWeb.Dispose() 
$caSite.Dispose()

$caDB = Get-SPContentDatabase -WebApplication $caWebApp 
Add-SPShellAdmin -Database $caDB -Username $newFarmAdministrator

when you run the .ps1 file it will promt you with the following message:

provide the name of the new Farm Administrator in the form of DOMAIN\Username

all you need todo it write to powershell the user domain\name e.g. myDomAin\ali.sharepoint

http://www.sharepoint-reference.com/Blog/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=12

Answer 3

You have to do it in Internet Explorer AND run it as an administrator or it fails every time. Even in SharePoint 2016. So if you set your prefered browser to Chrome and run Central Administration via Central Administration Link on Start Menu (or via Find.. function) it is going to fail.. Just copy the url from there to IE in admin mode and off you go..

We are all sure they are going to fix it in the next release..

Answer 4

If the farm administrator has already added to local administrator group and the issue still persist.

So you should try to open the Central Administration via Central Administration Link on Start Menu as administrator or as a different user then provide the farm account that has been provided to configure SharePoint via SharePoint Configuration wizard during installing SharePoint.

You can also check the same scenario at this link