Error: Content Plugin can not be initialized - list of CSS addresses is not set

AutoSPInstaller released a new version last month. To test it, I reinstalled SharePoint 2013 farm (leave the farm, then delete all SharePoint databases). It's almost perfect, except one error:


topology activation failed. no system manager locations set, search application might not be ready yet


Dig into it, I found the error was thrown out by "$clone.Activate()" of "AutoSPInstallerFunctions.ps1".

However, I don't see anything wrong there.

In ULS, there are a lot of error message like below:


Content Plugin can not be initialized - list of CSS addresses is not set

Failed to extract required parameter FastConnector:ContentDistributor, hr=0x80070002  [pluginconfig.cpp:81]  search\native\gather\plugins\contentpi\pluginconfig.cpp

Unable to get systemmanagerlocation from db

Exception stack trace:   
 at Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.Administration.CustomDictionaryDeploymentJobDefinition.ExecuteTimerJob()    
 at Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPTimerJobInvokeInternal.Invoke(SPJobDefinition jd, Guid targetInstanceId, Boolean isTimerService, Int32& result)

I am not the first one who got this error.

To confirm the problem is caused by AutoSPInstaller, I reinstalled the farm, but initialized the farm through "SharePoint Products Configuration Wizard". Same error happened again. So, AutoSPInstaller may not be the one we should blame.

After quite a while research, I realized this is not something easy to fix. It may caused by some file or folder created by previous installation, which don't allow current installed components to access it; or some settings pointed to an invalid server.

I don't want to dig out the root cause, but to fix it. So I uninstalled SharePoint, then deleted the folder "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office Servers\15.0\Data\Office Server", then reinstalled SharePoint.

Finally, everything works now.