Assorted Frustrations

There are many different causes and solutions to this problem.  In our case it was because there was no default page specified.  By typing in the url with the "Default.aspx" at the end we were able to go to the admin section of that site and set the Default.  Once set the site worked properly.  The solution to our problem was found in a comment on Chris Hammond's site. References http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/29924/Fixing-infinite-redirect-loops-in-DotNetNuke http://weblogs.asp.net/christoc/dotnetnuke-homepage-won-t-load-keeps-redirecting

In the management studio connect to the server.  Then expand the "Server Objects" and linked Servers should be underneath that.  Right click Linked Servers -> New Linked Server.  In the pop up fill in the name of the remote server (ex servername.domain.lan or something similar, same as the network name of the server).  Also select "Sql Server" for Server Type since I am connecting to another Sql server instance. local login for this server, the Remote user, and the remote password.  On the bottom select "Be made using this security context", and input the same remote credentials as above. After created it will be possible to use the linked server in selects like below.  use the Remote Server name same as the linked server name.Schema name is usually dbo. FROM dbo.FirstTable as F LEFT JOIN [RemoteServer].RemoteDB.dbo.RemoteTable as R on F.id=R. id

Came in to a nice DNN error - Connection to the Database Failed when trying to run the website.  In my case I had some stray text in the web.config that was not xml.  Once I commented it out the site ran properly.