User security information cannot be properly imported without setting UserInfoDateTime option to ImportAll.

After running a deployment the error message 'User security information cannot be properly imported without setting UserInfoDateTime option to ImportAll.' appears.

Despite setting the 'Security information in the deployment' to 'All' the message still appears, though the deployment still goes through. I've changed the setting to 'Role Definitions Only' and - guess what - it still appears. If the selection is reset to 'All' it is still there. The reason for resetting it was to check that it was actually being set, but from the tests it appears that the value is never actually passed.

Cross Farm Deployment pt 2

The issue with the failure of the export/import was due to some pages that had been approved/published had a parent that had not been approved/published. So much for asking the rest of the team to ensure all content was ready for the deployment.

On another issue we have a number of custom groups that are used where we have broken inheritance on reuseable content and image libraries so that the end users cannot delete or edit these. When the deployment is run to the WFE these custom groups are not exported, the deployment runs but warns that groups could not be imported. No matter which options you select in the deployment process nothing happens. You will not notice this if the default groups are only used.

As a work round we have backed up and restored the site to the staging and production servers and users will edit content from there and the deployment will be to WFE's and anonymous access turned on so it will not matter. But it is a gotcha!