/dev/arthur

Diagnosing 401.3 errors with a new IIS 7 website deployment

2010-07-06T11:38:00.001-04:00

I recently worked to help diagnose why a new website we deployed was getting 401.3 errors on its site images. It used forms authentication, and we could get some of the pages to load, but none of the images would load. I had confirmed that the application pool identity was a member of IIS_IUSRS, but the problem persisted.

Process Monitor was invaluable in diagnosing this issue. After filtering its process name to w3wp, It revealed that we were getting 'access denied' messages trying to fetch the images running under the context of NT AUTHORITY\IUSR:

After researching this a bit ("401.3 Unauthorized Due to ACL on Resource," "Thread: IUSR Built-in Account Associated with Users Group?" ) I took a look at the ACL for the images folder. In building the server, someone had removed the built-in Users group from having any permissions on C:\inetpub or its descendants. NT AUTHORITY\IUSR relies on its intrinsic membership in the built-in Users group to get rights to any anonymous access folders, so NT security was shutting us down. I replaced the rights at C:\inetpub with the defaults I found on another unmodified web server and the site began to work:

Android, Eclipse, and Windows 7 x64

2010-06-10T17:16:00.001-04:00

I'm diving into Android development these days. While the platform shows a lot of promise and provides many compelling features, I had a few speed bumps getting started with Android development in Eclipse, the predominant IDE. I had a fairly recent version (dated Dec. 2009, I believe) of Eclipse Galileo installed from a previous project to which I wanted to add the Android SDK and plugin. My initial installation attempt was not successful--while the SDK installed properly and would load the Android SDK and AVD Manager, and the plugin itself also reported a successful installation, there was no evidence of Eclipse knowing anything about Android--there were no project templates, samples, or preferences.

Thinking that this was due to the age of my Eclipse installation, I renamed the Eclipse installation folder and fetched a fresh download of the latest version. My second installation attempt appeared to work with the new copy; the Android plugin registered properly this time and I was able to create and debug projects. Then I tried to install a second plugin--the Team Explorer Everywhere 2010 plugin for Eclipse--and voila, not only did all of the Android bits vanish, but the TFS plugin didn't register either.

I started looking at my folder locations. My workstation is a Windows 7 x64 with UAC enabled. Eclipse was deployed to C:\Program Files (x86)\Eclipse, and I had dropped the Android SDK folder into C:\Program Files (x86)\Eclipse\android-sdk-windows ("put it anywhere," I thought...). I had a suspicion that UAC was interfering with Eclipse's plugin management, so I moved the entire Eclipse installation folder including the Android bits to my user folder, adjusted the Android Eclipse plugin setting and system path entry for the SDK location, and tried again. This time, I was able to get the Android plugin to function, but when I tried to create projects from the Android samples, I got access control errors on the .project file of anything I tried to open.

In the end, the following cookbook worked:

Eclipse installed to %USERPROFILE%\Documents\eclipse
Android SDK installed to %USERPROFILE%\Documents\android-sdk-windows and set up in that location (ran the tool to download all of the SDK components directly there)
Plugins installed in Eclipse via the standard method (Help | Install New Software)

After doing this, all of the plugins played nicely with each other, and I no longer got warnings creating the Android sample projects.

Someone please tell me...

2010-04-17T11:58:00.002-04:00

...why the Adobe Reader updater, popping up on a freshly-rebooted Windows system, says a system restart is required? What, is PDF functionality part of the kernel?

Error moving the Zenoss database to a new MySQL server

2010-03-17T11:04:00.000-04:00

We recently grew our Zenoss 2.3.3 installation by installing a dedicated MySQL server and moving the events database to that server. Events were being collected and written, but we could not move any events to history, and the zenactions log showed the following:

2010-03-17 05:31:26 ERROR zen.Events: (1449, "The user specified as a definer ('zenoss'@'localhost') does not exist")

It turns out this error was coming from MySQL. There is a trigger, status_delete, on the events.status table that controls moving events to history; apparently, the application code is designed to simply delete the status table rows when instructed, and the trigger then moves the rows to the history table. The trigger has a definer specified that indicates the zenoss user must be @locahost (yes, that bold code is commented out):

CREATE
    /*!50017 DEFINER = 'zenoss'@'localhost' */
    TRIGGER `status_delete` BEFORE DELETE ON `status`
    FOR EACH ROW INSERT INTO history SET
            dedupid=OLD.dedupid,
            evid=OLD.evid,
            device=OLD.device,
            component=OLD.component,
            eventClass=OLD.eventClass,
            eventKey=OLD.eventKey,
            summary=OLD.summary,
            message=OLD.message,
            severity=OLD.severity,
            eventState=OLD.eventState,
            eventClassKey=OLD.eventClassKey,
            eventGroup=OLD.eventGroup,
            stateChange=OLD.stateChange,
            firstTime=OLD.firstTime,
            lastTime=OLD.lastTime,
            COUNT=OLD.count,
            prodState=OLD.prodState,
            suppid=OLD.suppid,
            manager=OLD.manager,
            agent=OLD.agent,
            DeviceCLass=OLD.DeviceClass,
            Location=OLD.Location,
            Systems=OLD.Systems,
            DeviceGroups=OLD.DeviceGroups,
            ipAddress=OLD.ipAddress,
            facility=OLD.facility,
            priority=OLD.priority,
            ntevid=OLD.ntevid,
            ownerid=OLD.ownerid,
            deletedTime=NULL,
            clearid=OLD.clearid,
            DevicePriority=OLD.DevicePriority,
            eventClassMapping=OLD.eventClassMapping,
            monitor=OLD.monitor;
$$

DELIMITER ;

I fixed it by changing it to the following, and then dropping and recreating the trigger:

CREATE
    TRIGGER `status_delete` BEFORE DELETE ON `status`
    FOR EACH ROW INSERT INTO history SET
            dedupid=OLD.dedupid,
            evid=OLD.evid,
            device=OLD.device,
            component=OLD.component,
            eventClass=OLD.eventClass,
            eventKey=OLD.eventKey,
            summary=OLD.summary,
            message=OLD.message,
            severity=OLD.severity,
            eventState=OLD.eventState,
            eventClassKey=OLD.eventClassKey,
            eventGroup=OLD.eventGroup,
            stateChange=OLD.stateChange,
            firstTime=OLD.firstTime,
            lastTime=OLD.lastTime,
            COUNT=OLD.count,
            prodState=OLD.prodState,
            suppid=OLD.suppid,
            manager=OLD.manager,
            agent=OLD.agent,
            DeviceCLass=OLD.DeviceClass,
            Location=OLD.Location,
            Systems=OLD.Systems,
            DeviceGroups=OLD.DeviceGroups,
            ipAddress=OLD.ipAddress,
            facility=OLD.facility,
            priority=OLD.priority,
            ntevid=OLD.ntevid,
            ownerid=OLD.ownerid,
            deletedTime=NULL,
            clearid=OLD.clearid,
            DevicePriority=OLD.DevicePriority,
            eventClassMapping=OLD.eventClassMapping,
            monitor=OLD.monitor;
$$

DELIMITER ;

I did try just dropping and recreating the trigger without the change, but it seems the "commented out" definer was responsible for our error, as I duplicated the same error when trying to delete events from the mysql client directly as user zenoss. I then removed the comment completely and recreated the trigger, and the “move to history” function began working.

Note that the age_events stored procedure also has a localhost definer. If you script it out and change the definer specification to the IP of the Zenoss server, that too will function.

Deleting all devices from Zenoss with zendmd

2010-03-08T07:18:00.003-05:00

We upgraded our Zenoss 2.3.3 installation to 2.5.2 in a test environment, but wanted to retain only a few of the hundreds of devices that were monitored by the system. We tried deleting these from the web UI, but it would not complete--it always timed out and never seemed to delete anything. I then turned to a zendmd script, which worked wonders:

for dev in dmd.Devices.getSubDevices():
print dev.id
dev.deleteDevice()
commit()
reindex()
commit()

This ran quickly and took out all of our devices. We then added back in the ones we wanted. Note: this does not delete performance graphs or events for the affected devices, so you can add them back in and still have this information available.

Using Caliburn inside of Windows Forms with WPF UserControls/ElementHost

2010-02-05T13:15:00.001-05:00

I'm working to have a little MVVM action inside of our application, but it's Windows Forms, so I am using an ElementHost to get the WPF UserControl objects loaded. There are aspects to MVVM that cry out for frameworks to help you (binding double-click events to ListViewItem objects being one important one for me). I tried about a million things to get the very powerful Caliburn WPF application framework to do something--anything--in this hybrid context. It was the last thing I tried that worked! ;)

There seem to be two key things you must do to get Caliburn properly registered and listening in this context:

You have to use the "WithAssemblies" option on the framework configuration call, passing in a reference to the current assembly, along with the "WithPresentationFramework" call.
You must spin up Caliburn before the entry point UserControl is initialized and assigned to the ElementHost. If the UserControl is set as the Child via the Windows Forms designer, this means that you must initialize Caliburn in the Form containing the ElementHost's constructor before its InitializeComponent call.

    public partial class Form1 : Form
    {
        public Form1()
        {
            CaliburnFramework.ConfigureCore()
                .WithAssemblies(System.Reflection.Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly())
                .WithPresentationFramework()
                .Start();
            InitializeComponent(); // must come after the above
        }
    }

I went down several dead-ends before discovering this, such as thinking I needed a non-null System.Windows.Application.Current class, thinking I needed to initialize the framework inside of the UserControl's constructor, etc. I hope this helps someone.

You can download the sample application here.

Silent Installation of Microsoft MapPoint 2009 -- without changing browser settings

2010-01-20T13:43:00.003-05:00

I had the pleasure of working with a friend of mine on performing silent installations of Microsoft MapPoint 2009. Out of the box, MapPoint's installer prompts the user for several settings, and by default has checked to change the home page and default search provider to Live/Bing Search as well as to install the Live Search toolbar. While you can get it to perform a silent installation without too much trouble and omit the toolbar as part of this, it still changes the browser settings during the installation, unless you perform the following procedure we discovered...

1) Create an administrative installation
Insert/explode your MapPoint DVD/iso and get a command prompt open to that location. Run:

Setup.exe /a

This will prompt you for a location in which to place the administrative/server installation.

2) Edit Setup.ini to turn off Live Toolbar installation
Working now in the server installation folder, edit Setup.ini in its root and change the following setting from 1 to 0:

[LIVETOOLBAR]
INCLUDE_LIVETOOLBAR=0

3) Edit data.msi to disable browser settings changes
There are no settings we could find exposed in the setup.ini to turn off taking over the browser settings. To disable this behavior, we edited data.msi (at .\mappoint\MSMap\data.msi in the admin installation folder), which is one of the MSI files called by MapPoint setup. Editing the MSI requires a tool called Orca that is part of the Windows SDK (we used version 6.0a). After installing the Windows SDK, I found Orca's installation MSI located at C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v6.0A\Bin\Orca.Msi. First, double-click this MSI to install Orca, then run the tool.

In Orca then, open data.msi from the admin installation folder. This shows you the series of tables and components within the MSI with their values used. There are several components you need to change under the tables listed below. You are editing the Condition field. HINT: sort the tables on condition and all of these will be grouped together.

Component > MP_NA_IE_Homepage: SETLIVEHOMEPAGE<>"0" AND NOT Installed
InstallExecuteSequence > SetLiveSearchAsIE6SearchEngine: SETLIVESEARCHSERVICE<>"0" AND IEBUILDVERSION<70000 AND NOT Installed
InstallExecuteSequence > ResetDefaultSearchProvider: SETLIVESEARCHSERVICE<>"0" AND IEBUILDVERSION>70000 AND (LIVESEARCHSTATE=0 OR LIVESEARCHSTATE=1) AND NOT Installed
InstallExecuteSequence > InstallAndSetLiveSearchProviderAsIE7Default: SETLIVESEARCHSERVICE<>"0" AND IEBUILDVERSION>70000 AND LIVESEARCHSTATE=0 AND NOT Installed
InstallExecuteSequence > SetLiveSearchInstallAndSetAsDefaultGuid: SETLIVESEARCHSERVICE<>"0" AND IEBUILDVERSION>70000 AND LIVESEARCHSTATE=0 AND NOT Installed
InstallExecuteSequence > SetLiveSearchProviderAsIE7Default: SETLIVESEARCHSERVICE<>"0" AND IEBUILDVERSION>70000 AND LIVESEARCHSTATE=1 AND NOT Installed
InstallExecuteSequence > SetLiveSearchSetAsDefaultGuid: SETLIVESEARCHSERVICE<>"0" AND IEBUILDVERSION>70000 AND LIVESEARCHSTATE=1 AND NOT Installed
InstallExecuteSequence > GetLiveSearchProviderState: SETLIVESEARCHSERVICE<>"0" AND IEBUILDVERSION>70000 AND NOT Installed

Finally, edit the Value field of the Property table to put those zeroes into the stored settings:

INSTALLLIVETOOLBAR: 0
SETLIVEHOMEPAGE: 0
SETLIVESEARCHSERVICE: 0

The INSTALLLIVETOOLBAR setting may not need to be tweaked as it does seem to respond to the Setup.ini setting, but we turned it off for good measure.

Once you are done editing the values, save the MSI as data.msi and replace the one in the MapPoint admin installation folder.

4) Perform a silent installation

With your shiny new modified administrative installer, get a command prompt open and run:

Setup.exe /quiet

You will see msiexec.exe running in Task Manager but there will be no visible prompts. Once those terminate, MapPoint 2009 is installed, and it should have left your browser settings alone.

Enjoy!

Best practice around Zenoss template bindings

2009-09-07T12:46:00.003-04:00

After working with Zenoss Core for a few years now, I wanted to pass along a tip that would have saved me a lot of time had I known it in the beginning: do not bind performance templates to individual devices, or make local modified copies of templates on devices. Once you do this, the device no longer inherits template bindings from the parent device class, but you have no good way to know that this condition exists unless you drill into the device and examine its template bindings.

When you move a device from one class to another, if it lacks local bindings or overridden templates, it will inherit the bindings of the new class. However, this does not occur if you have made any local changes as above. Also, if you bind new performance templates to its parent, it ignores these new bindings if you have made any local changes. I highly recommend that if you need local changes to a device, make a new device class and make the template binding changes to the class. Then, move the device to the new class, and it will pick up the new bindings.

To clear this condition on a device once you have made local changes, you must reset bindings to be those of its container. On the device, go to More | Templates, then use the drop-down arrow next to "Performance templates for device," and finally Reset Bindings.

Updating the UI from a BackgroundWorker in WPF

2009-09-07T12:38:00.003-04:00

This approach enabled me to flexibly send messages to objects on the UI thread while processing from a BackgroundWorker object in WPF. Otherwise, the UI thread doesn't update if the BackgroundWorker code tries to manipulate its objects during processing. First I created this UIUpdater:

public delegate void UpdateTextDelegate(string message);

///

/// Sends messages to the UI thread via the dispatcher.
///

class UIUpdater
{
#region ctor
///

/// Initializes a new instance of the class.
///

/// The dispatcher in scope for the UI.
/// Function that will apply the message to the appropriate control(s).
public UIUpdater(Dispatcher uiDispatcher, UpdateTextDelegate uiUpdateDelegate)
{
if (default(Dispatcher) == uiDispatcher) throw new ArgumentNullException("uiDispatcher");
if (default(UpdateTextDelegate) == uiUpdateDelegate) throw new ArgumentNullException("uiUpdateDelegate");

dispatcher = uiDispatcher;
updateTextDelegate = uiUpdateDelegate;
}
#endregion

#region member variables
Dispatcher dispatcher = default(Dispatcher);
UpdateTextDelegate updateTextDelegate = default(UpdateTextDelegate);
#endregion

#region methods
///

/// Sends the message.
///

/// The message.
public void SendMessage(string message)
{
if (default(string) == message) throw new ArgumentNullException("message"); // allow string.Empty
dispatcher.BeginInvoke(
DispatcherPriority.Normal,
(ThreadStart)delegate() {
updateTextDelegate(message);
});
}
#endregion
}

To use it, in the BackgroundWorker_DoWork event handler, initialize it and pass it into your objects that implement the background work. Give it a reference to your dispatcher and a delegate that will handle updates from the background thread:

UIUpdater updater = new UIUpdater(mainWindow.Dispatcher, new UpdateTextDelegate(UpdateStatus));

DoMyWork(updater);

Then from the code doing the background work, you can call the SendMessage delegate to safely pass along the message:

updater.SendMessage("Deleting all items from the " + listName + " list...");

Programmatically creating a recursive view with WSS web services

2009-09-07T11:28:00.004-04:00

I had a project where I wanted to do a few things:

Create a view using the Windows SharePoint Services' web services
Make this view recursive
Set the display style to the alternating line style

What I discovered is that there is not feature parity between the WSS object model and the web service. Also, while it is possible to create the view and make it recursive, there is no support in the WSS 3.0 web services for setting the style on a view.

To create a recursive view:

Add Web Reference
First, add a web reference to the Views web service. You can do this by adding an ASMX web reference in your project to http://yourSharePointSiteUrl/resources/_vti_bin/views.asmx.

Create the Client

SharePointViewService.Views viewClient = new MyProject.SharePointViewService.Views();
viewClient.Credentials = System.Net.CredentialCache.DefaultCredentials;

Create the View via the Web Service
When working with the WSS web services, the basic model is to send the XML fragments to the method call and then parse the result for exceptions.

XmlNode result = viewClient.AddView(listName, viewName, viewFieldsNode, queryNode, rowLimitNode, type, false); // the last parameter: isDefaultView

Here are examples of the parameter values for the above:

listName: "My List"
viewName: "My View"
viewFieldsNode (outer XML):

<ViewFields><FieldRef Name="LinkTitle" />
 <FieldRef Name="Item_x0020_Number" />
 <FieldRef Name="Description" />
 <FieldRef Name="Release" />
 <FieldRef Name="Module" />
</ViewFields>

queryNode (outer XML):

<Query>
 <OrderBy>
   <FieldRef Name="Item_x0020_Number" />
 </OrderBy>
 <GroupBy Collapse="TRUE" GroupLimit="100">
   <FieldRef Name="Release" />
   <FieldRef Name="Module" />
 </GroupBy>
</Query>

rowLimitNode (outer XML):

<RowLimit Paged="TRUE">100</RowLimit>

type: "HTML"

If exceptions occur, you will have meaningful data in the return value from the AddView method call.

Update the View to Set the Recursive Property
You cannot create the view as a recursive view--the key is that you must follow up the add call with an update call to set this property.

XmlDocument vp = new XmlDocument();
vp.AppendChild(vp.CreateElement("View"));
vp.DocumentElement.SetAttribute("Scope", "Recursive");
viewClient.UpdateView(addView.ListName, viewResult.Name, vp, default(XmlNode), default(XmlNode), default(XmlNode), default(XmlNode), default(XmlNode));

I sincerely hope this helps someone, as the documentation for the WSS web services, particularly the Views web service, is significantly lacking.

Zenoss 2.3.3 error moving device organizers

2009-07-28T16:15:00.000-04:00

I encountered an interesting error today with Zenoss 2.3.3 (yes, 2.4 has been out for some time, but we've been having trouble getting a clean upgrade process). I had the following device classes with devices:

/Server/Windows/Sync/DatacenterA
- device1
- device2
- device3
/Server/Windows/Sync/DatacenterB
- device4
- device5
- device6

As these were all production machines, I wanted to differentiate them from the other dev and QA machines. I created the organizer /Server/Windows/Sync/Production and moved the ../DatacenterA and ../DatacenterB organizers with their devices under the new /Server/Windows/Sync/Production and...

...everything broke for the moved devices. All zencommand and zenperfsnmp-based monitoring just stopped cold. When starting zenperfsnmp in debug mode, I noticed errors on its first run like:

2009-07-27 17:15:45 WARNING zen.zenperfsnmp: Error loading config for devices ['device1', 'device2']
2009-07-27 17:15:45 WARNING zen.zenperfsnmp: Error loading config for devices ['device3', device4']
2009-07-27 17:15:45 WARNING zen.zenperfsnmp: Error loading config for devices ['device5', device6']

To correct this, I ended up moving the organizers back to their original locations, creating new organizers with the structure I wanted, and moving the individual devices (not the organizers) to the new organizer structure.

Now if I could just get this issue fixed I'd have no more zenperfsnmp/zencommand mysteries!

Zenoss zencommand daemon overload

2009-05-15T07:55:00.002-04:00

I think we have found that the zencommand daemon in Zenoss Core has some very reachable limits with regard to the number of commands it will process. We have been increasing our command monitoring lately and got to a point where zencommand, the daemon responsible for running these types of monitoring functions, had 1,200 commands in each cycle. I noticed that some of the performance templates that graphed the counters fetched by our commands had gaps--sometimes large gaps--and some had simply quit entirely. The odd thing was that we didn't really get any warnings (our VP went looking for graphed data and, ummm, didn't find it).

If I took one of the devices with templates that weren't graphing and manually ran zencommand against that device, it worked perfectly and fetched all the counters from the various commands. Stracing it didn't show any errors either. But with the amount of load we were providing, it was definitely silently dropping commands.

Zencommand seems to be a rather single-threaded beast. Its ability to get everything done is a function of the following:

The number of data sources it is processing
The number of monitored devices
The cycle time of the data sources it is processing

I was able to collapse some of our data sources so that instead of 1,200 commands I got down to around 560, and voila--the graphs that had not been painting suddenly began working correctly. To avoid this issue, I recommend the following:

The native Device template uses SNMP (and SNMP Informant on the Windows side) to read the base CPU, memory, and paging counters. To avoid deploying SNMP Informant everywhere, some time ago we had changed to using a different template that used zencommand and remote WMI calls to read these in. I am going to change this back to using Device, which will take quite a bit of load off of zencommand.
Watch the cycle time. Does anyone have QoS recommendations for the resolution of performance counters? 60 second cycle times are a bit aggressive, but what works well--3 minutes? 5 minutes?
Always validate that the graphs are painting after making changes affecting zencommand. If you roll out a new template, don't just look at that template to make sure it's working--look at other things zencommand is handling after you roll it out. As we discovered, adding too much load can silently break other things.

Windows 7 RC x64 impressions

2009-05-11T10:57:00.003-04:00

I rebuilt my machine due to system instability and decided to go with Windows 7 x64 this time now that we have a release candidate. So far, this is running much better than Vista ever did and some of the new features are compelling. I think my favorite feature so far is how the window manager groups related windows behind the application icon only, and--wait for it--lets you CLOSE them from the window preview when you hover over the icon. You no longer need to raise the window first and use its close controls or right-click to close-the 'x' icon is right there on the preview. This seems simple, but it's a great improvement.

Another nice feature is the selection of a wireless network. This works the same as Ubuntu does now and just shows you the available networks with a single click. Each has radio buttons to select it. No more wading through multiple screens just to change networks.

I have hit one bug: I have files on my desktop (as shown in \Users\user\Desktop), but the desktop itself is completely clean. I can right-click on the desktop and create new files, but while these appear in an Explorer folder pointed to that location, they vanish from the desktop itself. Has anyone else run into this?
** Update: I'm an idiot; it's a setting to show icons on the desktop. I am not sure why this was off by default. The setting is under Control Panel\Appearance and Personalization\Personalization\Change desktop icons, and you check User's Files.

Overall, I highly recommend giving the RC a spin.

Ubuntu 9.04 and .local domain access

2009-05-05T16:16:00.001-04:00

I had to re-discover why my organization's .local internal domain wouldn't resolve on Ubuntu 9.04. I was unable to ping or RDP to any of the machines using their fully-qualified names (e.g. server.domain.local), although this DID work if I used the NetBIOS names (e.g. server). After researching for a bit, I rediscovered something someone helped me with a long time ago when I thought this issue was related to DNS resolution over a PPTP VPN connection (it is not in fact related to this).

The issue: the avahi daemon. As I understand it, it grabs the .local domain as its own and interferes with ping, RDP, and other communication when using the fully-qualified .local domain names. There are two fixes I know of:

Disable avahi. I understand this can interfere with apps that use avahi, so...
Edit the hosts line if /etc/nsswitch.conf to read:

FROM:
hosts: files mdns4_minimal [NOTFOUND=return] dns mdns4

TO:
hosts: files dns mdns4_minimal mdns4

IIS7 and net.tcp only WAS hosting

2009-02-25T10:09:00.001-05:00

I was interested in having net.tcp-only hosting (no HTTP) for a WAS-activated WCF service in IIS7. I found that IIS uses icons that trick you into thinking the site is in an error state when in reality it is not. Here are the steps I took to host my service:

Create the Website

I didn't want to use a virtual directory to host my service, so I created a new web site in IIS Manager (right-click Sites, then Add Web Site). The key here is to select the net.tcp binding type and specify the port in the Binding Information section:

After doing this, IIS7 will show the website in what appears to be an error state (it will have a red 'X' next to the website icon and many of the right-panel Actions menu options (notably the entire Manage Web Site section, containing the restart/start/stop controls and Advanced Settings link) will not appear. THIS SEEMS TO BE A RED HERRING. It will show the red 'X' whenever there are no HTTP bindings for the service. Here is what it looked like on a different site I set up in this manner:

The service will function in spite of the fact that it doesn't show as started. Starting/stopping the service must be done via the controls on the site's application pool (right-clicking it works):

Add Filesystem Components

At a minimum, you need your .svc file, a web.config file, and a bin folder containing the assembly(ies) that implement your service in the website root folder:

The .svc file simply contains the declaration of the class that implements the service:

<%@ServiceHost language="c#" Debug="true" Service="Microsoft.ServiceModel.Samples.CalculatorService" %>

In the web.config, you can omit all references to HTTP bindings, and set up the Metadata Exchange (mex) endpoint to use the net.tcp binding. You can even omit that if you don't need the service to be discoverable, although it helps to retain it:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<configuration>
<system.serviceModel>
    <services>
      <service
          name="Microsoft.ServiceModel.Samples.CalculatorService"
          behaviorConfiguration="CalculatorServiceBehavior">

        <endpoint    address=""
                    binding="netTcpBinding"
                    contract="Microsoft.ServiceModel.Samples.ICalculator" />
        <endpoint    address="mex"
                    binding="mexTcpBinding"
                    contract="IMetadataExchange" />
      </service>
    </services>

    
    <behaviors>
      <serviceBehaviors>
        <behavior name="CalculatorServiceBehavior">
        <serviceMetadata /> 
          <serviceDebug includeExceptionDetailInFaults="False" />
        </behavior>
      </serviceBehaviors>
    </behaviors>
</system.serviceModel>
</configuration>

Note that I did not specify any port information in the address for the endpoint using netTcpBinding as I wanted it to simply use the binding specified for the website (in the case of the website I showed creating up top, TCP over port 11111).

Create a Client

After this, you should be able to point to the service via net.tcp and generate a proxy. In Visual Studio 2008, you can use the Add Service Reference facility in your client project by specifying the following, substituting your service's TCP port for the '11111':

net.tcp://localhost:11111/service.svc/mex

Error on MOSS list submissions after December 2008 cumulative update

2009-02-23T08:13:00.002-05:00

I recently patched my MOSS development environment to the post-SP1 December 2008 cumulative updates. The patch applied successfully (although it did require two reboots, one for the WSS cumulative update and a second for the MOSS one). In testing the site after the update, everything seemed to work well until I tried to add an item to a list. I then got this "Page has been modified since you opened it" error:

I followed the "refresh page" link and re-attempted my submission, and it succeeded the second time. I then tried a different list and received the same results. It seems that each list needs to be touched once before new list submissions will succeed.

** UPDATE: Perhaps there is a timer job that is fixing the lists. I tried another test after waiting a bit, and this time, I did not get the above refresh error upon making the first list submission. Patience may be the applicable virtue here.

Visual Studio 2008 x64: The Project Location is Not Trusted

2009-02-19T20:21:00.003-05:00

Aargh... here's hoping I can save someone else some time on this. I raised a new Windows Server 2008 x64 .NET build machine and loaded up Visual Studio 2008 on there. I then tried to open up a project stored on a network share via a UNC path (\\server\share\my.sln) and got the dreaded "project location is not trusted" dialog.

I started looking for the .NET Framework 2.0 Configuration utility in the Administrative Tools area so I could grant FullTrust to my share. It isn't there. Apparently it used to deploy as part of the .NET Framework 2.0 SDK, but the .NET 3.5 (Windows 2008) SDK no longer includes it. This is a shame because the alternative, CasPol.exe, is harder to work with.

At any rate, I fired up a Windows Server 2008 command shell and ran the following command to trust my network share (for those not familiar with CasPol and its syntax, here is an excellent post):

caspol.exe -m -ag 1.2 -url file://\\server/share/* FullTrust

However, upon opening my project, I was continuing to get prompted that the location was not trusted. Finally I noticed that the Windows Server 2008 command shell was an x64 command shell... and Visual Studio 2008 is a 32-bit (x86) application. You have to set the security policy separately for the appropriate version of the .NET Framework.

I then navigated to the x86 version of caspol (%windir%\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\caspol.exe), issued the same command... and voila, no more prompting!

Guidance on Ahead of Time Compilation for Mono 2.2?

2009-01-27T09:28:00.001-05:00

Does anyone have recommendations on using ahead of time compilation for the system libraries under Mono 2.2? The Mono website has this article with some (outdated?) information about how to carry it out. I tried following the instructions with the following exceptions:

I found multiple mscorlib.dll assemblies (at /usr/lib/mono/1.0, 2.0, 2.1) and tried AOT-compiling all of them. Only the 1.0 and 2.0 assemblies succeeded. The 2.1 assembly kept referring to the 2.0 assembly and never produced the .so file for itself.
Several assemblies (System.Xml.dll for one) in the GAC failed to precompile. The AOT compilation process for that one complained that it could not load the System assembly.

When I tried executing Mono executables (themselves also AOT-compiled and working prior to my pre-compilation of the system assemblies), they universally failed with Mono framework errors.

Has anyone successfully AOT-compiled the system assemblies under Mono 2.2? Is this even a good idea, assuming there's a way to make it work?

Yet another WPF HyperlinkButton control

2009-01-19T09:35:00.001-05:00

I wanted a general purpose implementation of the Silverlight HyperlinkButton for WPF that supported binding things like the font, font weight, etc. so I quickly rolled this puppy. It has its own Click event so clients can subscribe appropriately. I am sure there are some enhancements lurking, but it seems to do the job:

XAML:

<UserControl x:Class="Controls.HyperlinkButton"
    xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"
    xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"
    x:Name="root"
    >
    <TextBlock x:Name="hyperlinkContentText"
        Text="{Binding HyperlinkContent, ElementName=root}"
        FontSize="{Binding FontSize, ElementName=root, Path=FontSize}"
        FontFamily="{Binding FontFamily, ElementName=root, Path=FontFamily}"
        FontStretch="{Binding FontStretch, ElementName=root, Path=FontStretch}"
        FontStyle="{Binding FontStyle, ElementName=root, Path=FontStyle}"
        FontWeight="{Binding FontWeight, ElementName=root, Path=FontWeight}"
        Foreground="{Binding Foreground, ElementName=root, Path=Foreground}"
        Background="{Binding Background, ElementName=root, Path=Background}"
        Opacity="{Binding Opacity, ElementName=root, Path=Opacity}"
        OpacityMask="{Binding OpacityMask, ElementName=root, Path=OpacityMask}"
        MouseEnter="hyperlinkContentText_MouseEnter"
        MouseLeave="hyperlinkContentText_MouseLeave"
        MouseLeftButtonDown="hyperlinkContentText_MouseLeftButtonDown" />
</UserControl>

Code-behind:

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using System.Windows;
using System.Windows.Controls;
using System.Windows.Data;
using System.Windows.Documents;
using System.Windows.Input;
using System.Windows.Media;
using System.Windows.Media.Imaging;
using System.Windows.Navigation;
using System.Windows.Shapes;

namespace Controls
{
    /// <summary>
    /// Interaction logic for HyperlinkButton.xaml
    /// </summary>
    public partial class HyperlinkButton : UserControl
    {
        #region dependency properties
        /// <summary>
        /// Dependency property for hyperlink text content.
        /// </summary>
        public static readonly DependencyProperty HyperlinkContentProperty;
        #endregion

        #region routed events
        /// <summary>
        /// Routed event for handling the "button" click.
        /// </summary>
        public static readonly RoutedEvent ClickEvent;
        #endregion

        #region ctor
        #region static
        /// <summary>
        /// Initializes the <see cref="HyperlinkButton"/> class.
        /// </summary>
        static HyperlinkButton()
        {
            FrameworkPropertyMetadata fpm = new FrameworkPropertyMetadata(string.Empty);
            HyperlinkContentProperty = DependencyProperty.Register(
                "HyperlinkContent",
                typeof(string),
                typeof(FrameworkElement),
                fpm);

            ClickEvent = EventManager.RegisterRoutedEvent(
                "Click", RoutingStrategy.Bubble, typeof(RoutedEventHandler), typeof(HyperlinkButton));
        }
        #endregion

        #region instance
        /// <summary>
        /// Initializes a new instance of the <see cref="HyperlinkButton"/> class.
        /// </summary>
        public HyperlinkButton()
        {
            InitializeComponent();
        }
        #endregion
        #endregion

        #region properties
        /// <summary>
        /// Gets or sets the content of the hyperlink.
        /// </summary>
        /// <value>The content of the hyperlink.</value>
        public string HyperlinkContent
        {
            get { return (string)GetValue(HyperlinkContentProperty); }
            set { SetValue(HyperlinkContentProperty, value); }
        }

        /// <summary>
        /// Occurs when [click].
        /// </summary>
        public event RoutedEventHandler Click
        {
            add
            {
                AddHandler(ClickEvent, value);
            }
            remove
            {
                RemoveHandler(ClickEvent, value);
            }
        }
        #endregion

        #region event handlers
        /// <summary>
        /// Handles the MouseEnter event of the hyperlinkContentText control.
        /// </summary>
        /// <param name="sender">The source of the event.</param>
        /// <param name="e">The <see cref="System.Windows.Input.MouseEventArgs"/> instance containing the event data.</param>
        private void hyperlinkContentText_MouseEnter(object sender, MouseEventArgs e)
        {
            hyperlinkContentText.TextDecorations = TextDecorations.Underline;
            hyperlinkContentText.Cursor = Cursors.Hand;
        }

        /// <summary>
        /// Handles the MouseLeave event of the hyperlinkContentText control.
        /// </summary>
        /// <param name="sender">The source of the event.</param>
        /// <param name="e">The <see cref="System.Windows.Input.MouseEventArgs"/> instance containing the event data.</param>
        private void hyperlinkContentText_MouseLeave(object sender, MouseEventArgs e)
        {
            hyperlinkContentText.TextDecorations = null;
            hyperlinkContentText.Cursor = Cursors.Arrow;
        }

        /// <summary>
        /// Handles the MouseLeftButtonDown event of the hyperlinkContentText control. Maps it to the click
        /// event of this control and suppresses it after raising Click.
        /// </summary>
        /// <param name="sender">The source of the event.</param>
        /// <param name="e">The <see cref="System.Windows.Input.MouseButtonEventArgs"/> instance containing the event data.</param>
        private void hyperlinkContentText_MouseLeftButtonDown(object sender, MouseButtonEventArgs e)
        {
            e.Handled = true;
            RaiseEvent(new RoutedEventArgs(ClickEvent, this));
        }
        #endregion
    }
}

Zenoss 2.3.2 LDAP authentication with Ubuntu 8.04 and the stack installer

2008-12-19T16:11:00.002-05:00

I was able to get the Active Directory authentication module loaded for our Ubuntu Server 8.04 stack installer-based Zenoss 2.3.2 installation. There is a bit of confusion about how to do this, as the wiki instructions for setup assume you are using the RPM-based installer or have installed from source. This turned out to not be too difficult given that the Ubuntu 8.04 distribution comes with the python-ldap package. In summary, you need to link in the distribution's installed python-ldap components into the site packages path for Zenoss's local Python 2.4 runtime and compile them. Here are the steps (these assume you have already downloaded and placed the LDAPUserFolder and LDAPMultiPlugins packages in the path identified in the wiki instructions):

Install python-ldap
(As root)

aptitude install python-ldap

Link python-ldap components to Zenoss's site packages path
We need the _ldap.so binary compiled against Python 2.4 and the source files. As the zenoss user:

#The Zenoss local Python site package path is $ZENHOME/lib/python!
cd $ZENHOME/lib/python
mkdir ldap
mkdir ldap/schema
ln -s /usr/share/pyshared/ldif.py
ln -s /usr/share/pyshared/ldapurl.py
ln -s /usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/_ldap.so
cd ldap
ln -s /usr/share/pyshared/ldap/async.py
ln -s /usr/share/pyshared/ldap/controls.py
ln -s /usr/share/pyshared/ldap/filter.py
ln -s /usr/share/pyshared/ldap/__init__.py
ln -s /usr/share/pyshared/ldap/modlist.py
ln -s /usr/share/pyshared/ldap/cidict.py
ln -s /usr/share/pyshared/ldap/dn.py
ln -s /usr/share/pyshared/ldap/functions.py
ln -s /usr/share/pyshared/ldap/ldapobject.py
ln -s /usr/share/pyshared/ldap/sasl.py
cd schema
ln -s /usr/share/pyshared/ldap/schema/__init__.py
ln -s /usr/share/pyshared/ldap/schema/models.py
ln -s /usr/share/pyshared/ldap/schema/subentry.py
ln -s /usr/share/pyshared/ldap/schema/tokenizer.py

Compile .py files
Now that we have the files linked in from the global shared Python path (where the python-ldap deb installer put them), we need to compile all of the .py files using Zenoss's local python 2.4 installation:

cd $ZENHOME/lib/python
python /usr/local/zenoss/python/lib/python2.4/py_compile.py ldif.py
python /usr/local/zenoss/python/lib/python2.4/py_compile.py ldapurl.py
cd ldap
python /usr/local/zenoss/python/lib/python2.4/py_compile.py *.py
cd schema
python /usr/local/zenoss/python/lib/python2.4/py_compile.py *.py

Now that everything is compiled, restart zope (as zenoss, zopectl restart) and you can proceed with the rest of the instructions in the above wiki article. You will now see the ActiveDirectory Multi Plugin in the plugin list on the http://zenoss-installation:8080/zport/acl_users/manage_workspace page.

Faster DFS recovery application

2008-12-16T10:43:00.002-05:00

In trying to set up DFS replication, we had a number of files that were not present in both the primary DFS partner and the destination partner. In this case, DFS will move all of the files "missing" from the primary partner out of the tree and into a separate pre-existing path on each destination volume. Microsoft will provide you with a recovery script that calls xcopy to, based on the generated PreExistingManifest.xml file, move the files back into their original locations.

The problem we had was that shelling out to xcopy when you have millions of relatively small files was going to take, well, months to complete. I built the following .NET (3.5, C#) console application which proved to do this at hundreds of times the rate of the Microsoft script. The only issue is that it does not replicate permissions; since we did not need that for our recovery, it fit the bill.

Please use at your own risk. I make no warranties. I recommend specifying an alternate recovery path when calling the application so you can validate output first.

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.IO;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using System.Xml.Linq;

namespace DFSRecovery
{
/// <summary>
/// Handles copying DFS files back into the original folder structure.
/// </summary>
class Program
{
/// <summary>
/// The main application loop.
/// </summary>
/// <param name="args">The args. See usage text.</param>
static void Main(string[] args)
{
if (args.Length < 3)
{
Console.WriteLine("\nDFSRecovery version " + System.Reflection.Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().GetName().Version.ToString() + " [Arthur Penn, http://devarthur.blogspot.com]");
Console.WriteLine("Usage: DFSRecovery.exe \"\\\\path\\to\\PreExistingManifest.xml\" \"\\\\path\\to\\pre-existing\\folder\" \"\\\\path\\to\\output\\folder\" [print only=true|false]");
Environment.Exit(1);
}

// Load the PreExistingManifest.xml document and select the values we need
var doc = XDocument.Load(args[0]);
string preExistingFolder = args[1];
string outputFolder = args[2];
bool printOnly = false;
if (args.Length > 3)
{
printOnly = bool.Parse(args[3]);
}

int rc = 0;

var actions = from n in doc.Descendants("Resource")
select new {
FileOrFolder = ((string)n.Descendants("Attributes").First()),
Source = Path.Combine(preExistingFolder, (string)n.Descendants("NewName").First()),
Destination = Path.Combine(outputFolder, ((string)n.Descendants("Path").First()).Substring(7,
((string)n.Descendants("Path").First()).Length - 7))
};

foreach (var item in actions)
{
try
{
if (File.Exists(item.Source))
{
if (File.Exists(item.Destination))
{
if (printOnly)
{
Console.WriteLine("Target file exists: \"" + item.Destination + "\"");
}
}
else
{
CopyFile(item.Source, item.Destination, printOnly);
}
}
else
{
// It's a directory
CopyDirectory(item.Source, item.Destination, printOnly);
//break;
}
}
catch (Exception x)
{
rc = 1;
Console.WriteLine("Exception copying \"" + item.Source + "\" to \"" + item.Destination +
"\": " + x.ToString());
}
}

Environment.Exit(rc);
}

/// <summary>
/// Ensures the directory is present.
/// </summary>
/// <param name="path">The path.</param>
/// <param name="isDirectory">if set to <c>true</c> [is directory].</param>
/// <param name="printOnly">if set to <c>true</c> [print only].</param>
static void EnsureDirectory(string path, bool isDirectory, bool printOnly)
{
string targetFolder = (isDirectory ? path : path.Substring(0, path.LastIndexOf("\\")));
if (Directory.Exists(targetFolder))
{
if (printOnly)
{
Console.WriteLine("Target folder exists: \"" + targetFolder + "\"");
}
}
else
{
if (printOnly)
{
Console.WriteLine("Creating target folder: \"" + targetFolder + "\"");
}
else
{
Directory.CreateDirectory(targetFolder);
}
}
}

/// <summary>
/// Copies the directory.
/// </summary>
/// <param name="sourcePath">The source path.</param>
/// <param name="destinationPath">The destination path.</param>
/// <param name="printOnly">if set to <c>true</c> [print only].</param>
static void CopyDirectory(string sourcePath, string destinationPath, bool printOnly)
{
EnsureDirectory(destinationPath, true, printOnly);
foreach (string file in Directory.GetFiles(sourcePath))
{
//#if DEBUG
// Console.Write("From CopyDirectory: ");
//#endif
string fileName = file.Substring(file.LastIndexOf("\\") + 1);
CopyFile(file, Path.Combine(destinationPath, fileName), printOnly);
}

// Recursively process directories
foreach (string directory in Directory.GetDirectories(sourcePath))
{
string sourceSubDirectory = directory.Substring(directory.LastIndexOf("\\") + 1);
string destinationSubDirectory = Path.Combine(destinationPath, sourceSubDirectory);

CopyDirectory(directory, destinationSubDirectory, printOnly);
}
}

/// <summary>
/// Copies the file.
/// </summary>
/// <param name="sourcePath">The source path.</param>
/// <param name="destinationPath">The destination path.</param>
/// <param name="printOnly">if set to <c>true</c> [print only].</param>
static void CopyFile(string sourcePath, string destinationPath, bool printOnly)
{
if (printOnly)
{
Console.WriteLine("Copying \"" + sourcePath + "\" to \"" + destinationPath + "\"");
}
else
{
EnsureDirectory(destinationPath, false, printOnly);
File.Copy(sourcePath, destinationPath);
}
}
}
}

Capturing Control Key Sequences in Silverlight 2

2008-11-13T09:07:00.001-05:00

It took me a while to locate this, but I found in this MSDN article how to capture control key sequences in Silverlight 2. I was expecting to be able to 'and' the control key with the pressed alpha key, but that's not the way it works. I attached the following event handler to my layout root grid's KeyUp event. This performs a 'save' when pressing Ctrl+S, and 'save and close' when pressing Ctrl+Shift+S:

        /// <summary>
        /// Handles keyboard shortcuts.
        /// </summary>
        /// <param name="sender">Event sender.</param>
        /// <param name="e">Event args.</param>
        private void LayoutRoot_KeyUp(object sender, KeyEventArgs e)
        {
            if ((Keyboard.Modifiers & ModifierKeys.Control) == ModifierKeys.Control)
            {
                switch (e.Key)
                {
                    case Key.S:
                        // Ctrl+S: save; Ctrl+Shift+S: save and close
                        e.Handled = true;
                        SaveMyItem((Keyboard.Modifiers & ModifierKeys.Shift) == ModifierKeys.Shift);
                        break;
                }
            }
        }

Compiling Mono 2.0.1 on Ubuntu Gutsy Server 8.04

2008-10-28T10:36:00.004-04:00

I didn't want to use the aging Mono version present in Ubuntu Server 8.04, so I set out to compile Mono 2.0 (and subsequently 2.0.1, via the same process). This turned out not to be too bad.

First, install the requisite packages:

aptitude install build-essential swig autoconf gawk mono-common binfmt-support bison pkg-config libglib2.0-dev

Yes, that's not a typo--you do want one of Ubuntu's Mono packages, mono-common. This will enable shell execution of Mono executables via ./ notation rather than having to execute "mono /path/to/executable."

Once you are done, download and unpack the source for Mono. This will get you 2.0.1:

wget http://ftp.novell.com/pub/mono/sources/mono/mono-2.0.1.tar.bz2
tar xf mono-2.0.1.tar.bz2

Now you are ready to build and install Mono (the make step will take a while):

cd mono-2.0.1
./configure --with-libgdiplus=no
make
make install

Lastly, you need one symlink so the binfmt-support package can execute Mono executables directly via the shell:

ln -s /usr/local/bin/mono /usr/bin/cli

That's it. Typing the command "mono -V" should yield the about information for Mono 2.0.1. Follow the instructions under "Testing the Mono installation" and confirm you can not only build and execute the example.exe application, but that you can execute it with ./ notation (e.g. ./example.exe).

Cheers!

D-Link DWL-G122 wireless USB adapter on Vista

2008-10-09T17:49:00.002-04:00

I have a D-Link DWL-G122 wireless adapter (B/G) that I wanted to get working on Vista. I found a few posts, including this forum thread, but nothing worked for me. It turns out I have an older revision B adapter... and I ended up getting this to work by installing the Windows XP drivers for the revision B from D-Link:

ftp://files.dlink.com.au/products/DWL-G122/REV_B/Drivers/

I installed this by right-clicking the adapter in Device Manager, choosing:

Update Driver Software...
Browse my computer for driver software
Let me pick from a list of device drivers on my computer
Network Adapters category
"Have Disk" button... then finally browsing to the extracted contents of the above driver.

Enjoy.

Vista power saving never activates... thoughts?

2008-10-05T19:02:00.002-04:00

I was hoping for some help with getting Vista's power saving to function. I have a Windows Vista Business Service Pack 1 (x64) installation. I have power options set up as follows:

Turn off the display:
[on battery] 5 minutes
[plugged in] 20 minutes

Put the computer to sleep:
[on battery] 15 minutes
[plugged in] 1 hour

Initially, power saving was working as expected. However, now it never enters power saving mode or even turns off the monitor. I have tried changing the plan settings around (including changing from one plan to another and creating a custom plan with the desired settings) with no success.

Does anyone have any ideas?

** UPDATE 28 Oct ** This was caused by the Vista Photos screensaver! Other screensavers allowed power saving to function, but the Photos screensaver did not.

MOSS doesn't like having the indexer role moved

2008-10-01T09:49:00.002-04:00

We needed to expand our MOSS farm from one server to two so that we could have the search and indexing performed by a second machine, as we were putting the one poor server under significant periodic load. So, we stood up the second instance and joined it to the farm, and attempted to assign the search and indexing roles to this new instance. After doing so, when we would go to the search settings link in the SSP, we got the following message:

“The search service is currently offline. Visit the Services on Server page in SharePoint Central Administration to verify whether the service is enabled. This might also be because an indexer move is in progress.”

I searched and found wildly different solutions for fixing this. I ended up doing the following things to correct it:

On the new index server, I had to stop and restart the Office Search role after the initial move. I did this with stsadm via the following commands: 1) stsadm -o osearch -action stop 2) stsadm -o osearch -action start -role IndexQuery -farmserviceaccount DOMAIN\accountname -farmservicepassword PASSWORD
Access the SSP administration page (http://url-of-central-admin/_admin/managessp.aspx), and on the drop-down menu for the SSP in question, choose Edit Properties.
In the section titled Process Accounts with access to this SSP, add the search service account to the dialog box.
In the section titled Index Server, select the new index server for the farm.
Click OK to apply your changes.
Reboot the index server and restart full crawls of the content sources.

Enable Silverlight in MOSS - web.config changes

2008-09-25T08:29:00.007-04:00

I know there are numerous articles on this, but here are the web.config changes I made to enable Silverlight in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (modified parent node names in bold):

configuration/configSections

<sectionGroup name="system.web.extensions" type="System.Web.Configuration.SystemWebExtensionsSectionGroup, System.Web.Extensions, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31BF3856AD364E35">
<sectionGroup name="scripting" type="System.Web.Configuration.ScriptingSectionGroup, System.Web.Extensions, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31BF3856AD364E35">
<section name="scriptResourceHandler" type="System.Web.Configuration.ScriptingScriptResourceHandlerSection, System.Web.Extensions, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31BF3856AD364E35" requirePermission="false" allowDefinition="MachineToApplication" />
<sectionGroup name="webServices" type="System.Web.Configuration.ScriptingWebServicesSectionGroup, System.Web.Extensions, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31BF3856AD364E35">
<section name="authenticationService" type="System.Web.Configuration.ScriptingAuthenticationServiceSection, System.Web.Extensions, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31BF3856AD364E35" requirePermission="false" allowDefinition="MachineToApplication" />
<section name="jsonSerialization" type="System.Web.Configuration.ScriptingJsonSerializationSection, System.Web.Extensions, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31BF3856AD364E35" requirePermission="false" allowDefinition="Everywhere" />
<section name="profileService" type="System.Web.Configuration.ScriptingProfileServiceSection, System.Web.Extensions, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31BF3856AD364E35" requirePermission="false" allowDefinition="MachineToApplication" />
<section name="roleService" type="System.Web.Configuration.ScriptingRoleServiceSection, System.Web.Extensions, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31BF3856AD364E35" requirePermission="false" allowDefinition="MachineToApplication" />
</sectionGroup>
</sectionGroup>
</sectionGroup>

configuration/system.web/httpHandlers

<remove verb="*" path="*.asmx" />
<add verb="*" path="*.asmx" validate="false" type="System.Web.Script.Services.ScriptHandlerFactory, System.Web.Extensions, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31BF3856AD364E35" />
<add verb="*" path="*_AppService.axd" validate="false" type="System.Web.Script.Services.ScriptHandlerFactory, System.Web.Extensions, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31BF3856AD364E35" />
<add verb="GET,HEAD" path="ScriptResource.axd" type="System.Web.Handlers.ScriptResourceHandler, System.Web.Extensions, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31BF3856AD364E35" validate="false" />

configuration/system.web/httpModules

<add name="ScriptModule" type="System.Web.Handlers.ScriptModule, System.Web.Extensions, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31BF3856AD364E35" />
<add name="Session" type="System.Web.SessionState.SessionStateModule" />

configuration/system.web/compilation/assemblies

<add assembly="System.Core, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=B77A5C561934E089" />
<add assembly="System.Data.DataSetExtensions, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=B77A5C561934E089" />
<add assembly="System.Web.Extensions, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31BF3856AD364E35" />
<add assembly="System.Web.Silverlight, Version=2.0.5.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31BF3856AD364E35" />
<add assembly="System.Xml.Linq, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=B77A5C561934E089" />

configuration/system.web/pages

<controls>
<add tagPrefix="asp" namespace="System.Web.UI.WebControls" assembly="System.Web.Extensions, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31BF3856AD364E35" />
<add tagPrefix="asp" namespace="System.Web.UI" assembly="System.Web.Extensions, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31BF3856AD364E35" />
</controls>

configuration

<system.web.extensions>
<scripting>
<webServices />
</scripting>
</system.web.extensions>

Customing Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 menus and toolbars

2008-09-11T13:23:00.005-04:00

I've been embarking on a new adventure of staging Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 for my company to replace a home-grown, ad-hoc CRM system. As part of this, I have needed to customize some of its menus and toolbars.

The basic mechanism for doing this is to:

1. Enable ISV Config. You do this by navigating to Settings | Administration | System Settings | Customization tab, then choosing one of the client options under "Custom menus and toolbars:"

2. Once done, export the ISV Config and change it. To get a copy of it, go to Settings | Customization | Export Customizations, select the ISV Config item, and click the Export Selected Customizations button.

You should either keep a copy of this file for reference before changing it, as it contains many sample objects, or at least refer to this MSDN article which references possibly the same sample.

You may wonder how to get rid of all the default customizations present in the initial sample--it's chock full of menus, toolbars, etc. Here is the minimal ISV Config XML structure without any of the sample objects. Add your own objects to this minimal file, and then...

3. Re-import your modified ISV.config.xml file (Settings | Customization | Import Customizations). MS CRM validates the XML upon upload, not upon import, so you will receive a notice of any validation errors immediately upon clicking the Upload button. Don't forget to click the Import Selected Customizations button after you have a successful upload. :)

Silverlight web part - Code Access Security and Startup Permissions

2008-09-08T11:13:00.004-04:00

I built a web part based upon the Silverlight 2 beta 2 guidance and encountered an interesting situation. If a user that did not have administrative privileges on the web server was the first to browse the portal hosting the web part, the user would simply receive a 403 (Forbidden) error page.

I had been working with a web part installer based upon the SharePoint Solution Installer (an excellent project to simplify installation of web part packages), and my WSP specified a custom code access security policy. Additionally, my web part referenced Enterprise Library 4.0 assemblies that I had built and signed. So my troubleshooting initially focused around the following:

Changing the custom code access security policy to grant unrestricted access to the web part (no effect);
Changing the trust level for the entire WSS site to Full (no effect);
Registering the Ent Lib assemblies via InstallUtil (no effect);
Adding the Ent Lib assemblies to the GAC (they were running in bin before--no effect);
Removing all reference to Ent Lib from my web part assembly (no effect).

Finally, I added System.Web.Silverlight.dll to the GAC, and voila--the site started working. I backed out all other changes and it continued working.

In case it helps, I believe this is the minimal CAS policy for a web part that hosts an application via Silverlight:

<CodeAccessSecurity>
<PolicyItem>
<PermissionSet Name="Web Part Permission Set" class="NamedPermissionSet" version="1" Description="Permission set for Silverlight-hosting web part">
<IPermission class="AspNetHostingPermission" version="1" Level="Medium" />
<IPermission class="SecurityPermission" version="1" Flags="Execution" />
<IPermission class="Microsoft.SharePoint.Security.SharePointPermission, Microsoft.SharePoint.Security, version=12.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c"
version="1" ObjectModel="True" />
</PermissionSet>
<Assemblies>
<Assembly Name="My.WebPart" Version="1.0.0.0" PublicKeyBlob="---insert long encoded public key blob extracted with sn -Tp here ---" />
</Assemblies>
</PolicyItem>
</CodeAccessSecurity>

Windows Desktop Search 4.0 + TrueCrypt = crash?

2008-09-04T09:14:00.003-04:00

I used TrueCrypt to encrypt the entire system disk for a Vista x64 installation. Everything was running fine on this, until suddenly I started having frequent (every 40-50 minutes) crashes. I had just installed Visual Studio 2008, so I thought perhaps the SQL Express instance it installed was causing some incompatibility... but after disabling those services, and in fact removing every piece of VS 2008, I was still suffering the crashes.

Finally I waded through the recent updates and noticed that Windows Desktop Search 4.0 had been recently applied. I can't prove this, but I think I may have rebooted (and hence the service got started) during my application updates. Regardless, I stopped and disabled the service and have had no crashes since.

I did set Vista to record crash dumps, but it always fails to load the crash dump driver, and so I was not able to capture any data about the crashes I experienced. Has anyone else experienced problems with this combination of applications? The system drive has a single partition and is NTFS-formatted within the TrueCrypt container, for what it's worth.

WCF web service setup with integrated security

2008-09-03T14:31:00.008-04:00

I found setting up a WCF web service to use Windows integrated security to be a somewhat less-than-transparent process, so I thought I'd publish the steps I used to make it work.

Set IIS to allow Negotiate authentication in addition to NTLM

To do this, you need to find the web site identifier. In IIS 6.0, run IIS Manager and choose the Web Sites node and note the identifier of the web site that will host your web service:

Once done, drop to a command prompt and execute the following:

cscript C:\inetpub\AdminScripts adsutil.vbs GET w3svc/<identifier from above>/root/NTAuthenticationProviders

For example:

cscript C:\inetpub\AdminScripts adsutil.vbs GET w3svc/174926873/root/NTAuthenticationProviders

This will report output like the following:

Microsoft (R) Windows Script Host Version 5.6
Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation 1996-2001. All rights reserved.

NTAuthenticationProviders : (STRING) "Negotiate,NTLM"

If the NTAuthenticationProviders node reads "Negotiate,NTLM" you need make no changes. If it reads simply "NTLM" you must set it as follows:

cscript C:\inetpub\AdminScripts adsutil.vbs SET w3svc/<identifier from above>/root/NTAuthenticationProviders "Negotiate,NTLM"

Use at most one host header

There are workarounds, but out of the box you will get errors if you have more than one host header configured on the IIS web.

Set Windows integrated security, except for the .svc file

In IIS Manager's Directory Security tab for the web site (accessed via right-click | Properties), click Edit in the Authentication and access control section. At the web site level, Enable anonymous access should be unchecked and Integrated Windows authentication should be checked.

Now click on your web site to view its files. You should see the .svc file listed. Right-click this file and go to Properties:

This time, go to the File Security tab and click the Edit button in the Authentication and access control section. This file should have both anonymous access and integrated Windows authentication checked:

Use an integrated security binding

Lastly, you need to use an integrated security web service binding in web.config. Here is an example:

<system.serviceModel>
<bindings>
<basicHttpBinding>
<binding name="IntegratedBinding" maxBufferSize="2147483647" maxReceivedMessageSize="2147483647">
<readerQuotas maxArrayLength="2147483647" maxStringContentLength="2147483647" />
<security mode="TransportCredentialOnly">
<transport clientCredentialType="Windows" />
</security>
</binding>
</basicHttpBinding>
</bindings>
<behaviors>
<serviceBehaviors>
<behavior name="serviceBehavior">
<serviceMetadata httpGetEnabled="true" httpGetUrl="" />
<serviceDebug includeExceptionDetailInFaults="true" />

</behavior>
</serviceBehaviors>
</behaviors>
<services>
<service name="My.Service.OrderService" behaviorConfiguration="serviceBehavior">
<endpoint address="" binding="basicHttpBinding" bindingConfiguration="IntegratedBinding" name="integratedBasicHttpEndpoint" contract="My.Service.IOrderService" />
<endpoint address="mex" binding="mexHttpBinding" name="mexEndpoint" contract="IMetadataExchange" />
</service>
</services>
<serviceHostingEnvironment aspNetCompatibilityEnabled="false" />
</system.serviceModel>

Enterprise Library data block and return values

2008-08-25T13:37:00.002-04:00

I've seen various posts discussing how to get return values from calls via the Enterprise Library data block, but many seemed convoluted. I didn't need multiple output parameters, just the one integer. Here's what I did to capture the return value from a stored procedure call:

Within the stored procedure

CREATE PROCEDURE [dbo].[GetReturnValue]
AS
RETURN 1

Enterprise Library call

Database db = DatabaseFactory.CreateDatabase();
DbCommand cmd = db.GetStoredProcCommand("dbo.GetReturnValue");
db.AddParameter(cmd, "return_value", DbType.Int32, ParameterDirection.ReturnValue, null, DataRowVersion.Default, null);

db.ExecuteNonQuery(cmd);

int myReturnValue = Convert.ToInt32(db.GetParameterValue(cmd, "return_value"));

HTH.

Feeling insecure? Bothered by the economy?

2008-08-17T21:50:00.003-04:00

While this blog has strictly been a technology-focused affair (all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy), a friend of mine has excellent insights on mental health and how recent turbulence in the economy affects us. If you're interested, I highly recommend his blog:

A Note to Myself and Whoever Else Cares

Copying files from Linux to Windows

2008-08-17T21:10:00.004-04:00

If you ever have occasion to copy files from Linux to Windows, you may discover that this process is not as simple as it may seem. It's fairly easy to take a USB drive formatted with the FAT or NTFS filesystem and physically transport the files from one environment to the other, but there are other complexities you must manage:

1. File Naming Rules

On ext3 filesystems, one of the most common filesystems in the Linux world, there are many legal filenames that are illegal on Windows:

Filenames with double quotes (")
Filenames with colons (:)
Filenames with backslashes (\)
etc.

This script will, when executed from the path you wish to examine, rename the files so that they have legal names for Windows environments.

2. Path Length

While ext3 has no maximum length for paths and a 255-character limit for filenames, Windows' NTFS restricts each each path component (directory or filename) to a maximum of up to 255 characters long (from Wikipedia). You have to examine the source folders to confirm you don't have any path component names that are too long to copy. DO NOT TRUST THE SUCCESS OF THE FILE COPY TO VALIDATE THIS. It seems that the Linux NTFS implementation (at least on Ubuntu 8.04) allows paths that would be legal for ext3, and that work while the Linux machine is using the NTFS-formatted drive, but that are NOT legal when consumed by Windows.

3. Case Sensitivity

Windows filenames are not case-sensitive, but Linux filenames are. This means that if you have two files in one folder on the Linux source system as follows:

myDocument.doc
MyDocument.doc

Only one of these will copy to the destination, or odd errors will result when you attempt to copy them. To identify these issues, and to confirm you haven't been bitten by any of the above problems...

4. Compare, compare, compare

Always use a file and folder compare tool like WinMerge to make sure that everything did copy over properly. Make sure you investigate any differences it identifies, because those are likely issues with case-sensitivity, path lengths, or other problems. This prevents you from thinking you have a good copy of the file tree when you don't. I recommend editing WinMerge's compare options so that only the file size and time are considered when comparing the results of large copy operations so that the comparison completes in a timely fashion.

5. Text File Handling

Lastly, you must be aware that text files have different end-of-line delimiters on Linux vs. Windows. This means that at a minimum Windows programs that don't understand this (Notepad) will show the text all run together rather than having separate lines as it should be. Cross-platform applications using the files (e.g. the instant messenger application Pidgin) will fail on Windows because they expect Windows text file formats.

To avoid these issues, after getting a successful copy, use a Unix-to-Windows text file converter application. I have had good luck with EOL Converter (as an added bonus, it is also free. :) )

iTunes on Vista won't play any songs

2008-08-15T18:45:00.002-04:00

This was annoying. iTunes 7.7 quit playing tracks--any tracks, not just DRM-infested ones--on my Vista installation recently. There was no sound after hitting play and the playhead would not progress. I ran down the suggestions from Apple about this problem to no avail.

After googling, I discovered this post where the author had trouble with video playback after attaching a ReadyBoost-configured USB drive. Sure enough, I removed my ReadyBoost drive and rebooted, and voila--iTunes is again playing songs.

PerformancePoint 2007 Monitoring Server permissions

2008-07-17T11:33:00.010-04:00

The Monitoring Server component of PerformancePoint 2007 is responsible for managing the user rights as far as being able to publish dashboards, edit existing dashboards, etc. This article got me most of the way there in understanding how to set up user permissions, but I think it's helpful to point out a few other items.

Dashboard Designer is the interface for Monitoring Server user security.
This was not immediately clear to me. There are two basic aspects to the permissions: global permissions (such as administrator rights, being able to publish new dashboards, etc.) and per-Dashboard permissions.

To configure server (global) role assignments:

In Dashboard Designer, hit the Office button and then the Options button on the resulting menu:

On the resulting Server tab, hit the Connect button:

Once it logs in, hit Permissions:

On the resulting Permissions dialog, you can add users in DOMAIN\name form, specifying their server (global) role:

To configure permissions for individual dashboards:

Open the desired dashboard On its Properties tab, there is a Permissions section at the bottom:

Add your users (DOMAIN\name format again) and specify Reader or Editor roles. After changing these permissions, you must publish the dashboard.

Vista Page File in Netherworld

2008-07-17T07:11:00.003-04:00

I had an odd problem with a Windows Vista SP1 installation. I suddenly began getting "your computer is low on memory" warnings when nothing really had changed with the way I use the machine. I looked at Task Manager and saw that it was showing page file use of ~1700M / ~1800M. When I went to Advanced System Settings (System Properties) to examine the page file size (Advanced tab, Performance settings, then the Advanced tab again) it showed the total page file size as.... 0 MB!

I knew I had enabled a page file previously when I set up the machine, so I rebooted--and it still showed 0 MB for the page file size. So, I went to assign a new 4096 MB page file. When I did this, it gave me a message stating that pagefile.sys already existed (!) and asked if I wanted to overwrite it. I half expected the machine to die painfully when I approved this action, but it did not... and knock on particleboard, I haven't gotten any of the warnings since.

WCF in .NET 3.5 SP1 and Enterprise Library - TypeInitializationException

2008-07-10T14:34:00.009-04:00

I have been fighting a maddening issue. It seems that if you have a WCF service under the .NET 3.5 SP1 beta that is impersonating the caller--either using the ServiceModel pipeline or ASP.NET Compatibility Mode--calls to Enterprise Library assemblies (at least for logging or data access needs) will fail with the following exception:

"The type initializer for 'Microsoft.Practices.EnterpriseLibrary.Logging.LogEntry' threw an exception."

When you dig for the inner exception, you find:

Could not load file or assembly 'System.Management, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a' or one of its dependencies. Access is denied.

I've tried numerous things to get around this, such as:

Changing the application pool identity to Local System
Directly referencing System.Management in the service assembly
Adding System.Management (and the Ent Lib assemblies, for that matter) to the <assemblies> node in the web.config

** Update - 11 Jul 2008: Client configuration changes were required to correct the problem. In the client's app.config, configure a behavior for the endpoint to allow impersonation:

<client>
<endpoint address="http://server/WcfService1/Service1.svc"
binding="basicHttpBinding" bindingConfiguration="BasicHttpBinding_IService1"
contract="ServiceReference2.IService1" name="BasicHttpBinding_IService1"
behaviorConfiguration="endpointBehavior"/>
</client>
<behaviors>
<endpointBehaviors>
<behavior name="endpointBehavior">
<clientCredentials>
<windows allowedImpersonationLevel="Impersonation"/>
</clientCredentials>
</behavior>
</endpointBehaviors>
</behaviors>

Then, for some reason, an IIS reset was needed to make the client start working. This article describes the problem in detail.

Here's the thread over on the Enterprise Library forums where I was corresponding about the issue.

Silverlight and REST for corporate (intranet) applications

2008-06-27T09:54:00.003-04:00

Danger Will Robinson, Silverlight 2 beta 2's WebClient implementation does not support passing integrated security credentials. I was hoping to implement a RESTful services tier for my intranet Silverlight application using Windows Integrated Security. While this does work brilliantly when using IE as a client, the Silverlight client cannot call the services. There seems to be no good workaround: I could use ASP.NET authentication services using Forms authentication against AD, but I would have to present the client with a login prompt.

FYI, the service configuration for WCF REST and integrated security is as follows:

<system.serviceModel>
<behaviors>
<endpointBehaviors>
<behavior name="webBehavior">
<webHttp/>

</behavior>
</endpointBehaviors>
</behaviors>

<serviceHostingEnvironment aspNetCompatibilityEnabled="true" />

<bindings>
<webHttpBinding>
<binding name="integratedWebHttpBinding">
<security mode="TransportCredentialOnly">
<transport clientCredentialType="Windows"/>
</security>
</binding>
</webHttpBinding>
</bindings>

<services>
<service name="AppNamespace.Service">
<endpoint address=""
behaviorConfiguration="webBehavior"
binding="webHttpBinding"
bindingConfiguration="integratedWebHttpBinding"
contract="AppNamespace.Service" />
</service>
</services>
</system.serviceModel>

MOSS and Kerberos on Windows Server 2008 - a gotcha

2008-06-25T08:50:00.008-04:00

I've been through the Kerberos mill repeated times--getting the SPNs lined up, making sure the computer and service accounts are trusted for delegation, making sure the times on the servers are within 15 minutes, etc. But I couldn't make Kerberos authentication work on my MOSS web applications on a Windows Server 2008 server.

I opened a ticket on this with Microsoft and discovered that IIS 7.0 has kernel mode authentication turned on by default. MOSS has a problem with this and it will completely break Kerberos for those web applications. To turn this off:

In Server Manager, select the web application for which you want to fix Kerberos authentication:

Select its Authentication tool:

Now choose Advanced Settings:

Finally, make sure the "Enable Kernel-mode authentication" checkbox is UNCHECKED:

Apply your changes and you should be good to go. It is not necessary to reset IIS or bounce the application pool to make it take effect. Don't forget that you still have to configure the web in MOSS Central Administration to use Kerberos (Negotiate) authentication instead of NTLM in addition to all the other normal domain-based Kerberos setup steps. Cheers.

** UPDATE 24 Mar 2009 **
Apparently the kernel mode authentication setting also breaks NTLM authentication on WS 2008, so this is not specific to making Kerberos work.

Moving Silverlight 2 beta 1 applications to beta 2

2008-06-13T10:25:00.009-04:00

With new times come a new Silverlight beta, released last week. I set out to update my beta 1 applications to beta 2. First, I let it run the project through the upgrade wizard. After that, I found there were several more steps, starting with fixing your installation...

Remove and Re-Add System.Windows References

This includes:

System.Windows
System.Windows.Browser
System.Windows.Controls.Data
System.Windows.Controls.Extended (this one will likely not be needed now as many controls have moved into the base assemblies)

Update Namespaces of the Silverlight User Control and Application Objects

Make this change in App.xaml and any other user control (*.xaml) objects.

From:

xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/client/2007"

To:

xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"

This avoids mystery "invalid XAML" errors from the Silverlight control on web pages:

Sys.InvalidOperationException: Invalid XAML for control 'Xaml1'. [] (line 1, col 229): The element is not valid in the given namespace.

Update the Deployment Node Namespace in AppManifest.xaml

From:

<Deployment xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/client/2007/deployment" xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml" EntryPointAssembly="HCHB.ServiceRequests" EntryPointType="HCHB.ServiceRequests.App" RuntimeVersion="2.0.30226.2">

To:

<Deployment xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/client/2007" xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml" EntryPointAssembly="HCHB.ServiceRequests" EntryPointType="HCHB.ServiceRequests.App" RuntimeVersion="2.0.30523.6">

Update the Silverlight Control Declaration

Find the Silverlight control on the web page(s) in your site and update the node accordingly, from:

<asp:Silverlight ID="Xaml1" runat="server" Source="~/ClientBin/Silverlight1.xap" Version="2.0" Width="100%" Height="100%" />

To:

<asp:Silverlight ID="Silverlight1" runat="server" Source="~/ClientBin/Silverlight1.xap" MinimumVersion="2.0.30523" Width="100%" Height="100%" />

Change the Cross-Domain Access Policy

This prevents 404 errors when calling my web services.

From:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<access-policy>
<cross-domain-access>
<policy>
<allow-from>
...

To:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<access-policy>
<cross-domain-access>
<policy>
<allow-from http-request-headers="*">
...

FreeMind manual installation in Ubuntu Hardy 8.04

2008-05-31T21:17:00.021-04:00

So you like the mind mapping software FreeMind, but the distribution package for Ubuntu 8.04 is hideously out of date. Your solution awaits... simply by installing FreeMind from source. While this is fairly easy to follow, there is some complexity with getting full desktop integration. I am including the steps I followed, but if you scroll all the way to the bottom, you can find a compiled archive with 0.9.0 beta 17 included with a script to do all the work referenced in the article.

First, you need a few packages (if you are going to use the version of FreeMind I compiled below, you do not need sun-java6-jdk):


sudo aptitude install sun-java6-jre sun-java6-fonts sun-java6-jdk

Now download FreeMind. I recommend the latest beta version, found here. You will also need to download Apache Ant. There is an Ant package in the Hardy repositories, but it is broken, so you will need the binaries directly from Apache. I used 1.7.0, the latest version available at the time of this article.

Unpack Ant and copy it to its destination (execute the following in a terminal wherever you placed the downloaded Ant archive):


tar xf apache-ant-1.7.0-bin.tar.bz2
sudo mkdir /usr/local/ant
sudo mv apache-ant-1.7.0/* /usr/local/ant

Set up Ant's environment variables:


gksu gedit /etc/rc.local

# In gedit, append the following to this file before "exit 0":

export ANT_HOME=/usr/local/ant
export PATH=${PATH}:${ANT_HOME}/bin

Reboot for the above to take effect, or just execute the two export commands within your current terminal. Now you are ready to compile FreeMind. Unpack it and build it with Ant:


tar xf freemind-src-0.9.0_Beta_17.tar.gz
cd freemind
ant

Now copy the built contents of the dist folder into /opt/freemind, and set up the executable:


sudo mkdir /opt/freemind
sudo cp -R ../bin/dist/* /opt/freemind
sudo chmod +x /opt/freemind/freemind.sh
sudo ln -s /opt/freemind/freemind.sh /usr/local/bin/freemind

Congratulations, you can now run FreeMind by simply typing the command: freemind

The harder part was registering the x-freemind MIME type and getting Gnome to open .mm files with a double-click (and having an icon assigned to those files!). For the MIME type, there are two existing conflicting MIME types you will have to get rid of: x-troff-mm and x-matlab. As I have no use for these applications, this is not a problem for me. These are defined in /usr/share/mime/packages/freedesktop.org.xml, and you have to comment out the nodes as follows:


<!--
<mime-type type="text/x-matlab">
 <sub-class-of type="text/plain"/>
 <comment>MATLAB script/function</comment>
 <comment xml:lang="bg">Ð¡ÐºÑ€Ð¸Ð¿Ñ‚/Ñ„ÑƒÐ½ÐºÑ†Ð¸Ñ� â€” MATLAB</comment>
 <comment xml:lang="ca">script/funciÃ³ MATLAB</comment>
 <comment xml:lang="cs">Skript/funkce MATLAB</comment>
 <comment xml:lang="de">MATLAB-Skript/-Funktion</comment>
 <comment xml:lang="en_GB">MATLAB script/function</comment>
 <comment xml:lang="es">script/funciÃ³n de MATLAB</comment>
 <comment xml:lang="eu">MATLAB script/funtzioa</comment>
 <comment xml:lang="fi">MATLAB-skripti/funktio</comment>
 <comment xml:lang="fr">script/fonction MATLAB</comment>
 <comment xml:lang="hu">MATLAB parancsfÃ¡jl/funkciÃ³</comment>
 <comment xml:lang="it">Script/Funzione MATLAB</comment>
 <comment xml:lang="ja">MATLAB ã‚¹ã‚¯ãƒªãƒ—ãƒˆ/é–¢æ•°</comment>
 <comment xml:lang="ko">MATLAB ìŠ¤í�¬ë¦½íŠ¸/í•¨ìˆ˜</comment>
 <comment xml:lang="nb">Skript/funksjon for MATLAB</comment>
 <comment xml:lang="nl">MATLAB-script/functie</comment>
 <comment xml:lang="nn">MATLAB-skript/funksjon</comment>
 <comment xml:lang="pl">Skrypt/funkcja MATLABa</comment>
 <comment xml:lang="pt_BR">Script/funÃ§Ã£o do MATLAB</comment>
 <comment xml:lang="sv">MATLAB-skript/funktion</comment>
 <comment xml:lang="uk">Ð¡Ñ†ÐµÐ½Ð°Ñ€Ñ–Ð¹/Ñ„ÑƒÐ½ÐºÑ†Ñ–Ñ� MATLAB</comment>
 <comment xml:lang="vi">VÄƒn lá»‡nh/chá»©c nÄƒng MATLAB</comment>
 <magic priority="10">
   <match value="%" type="string" offset="0"/>
 </magic>
 <magic priority="50">
   <match value="function" type="string" offset="0"/>
 </magic>
 <glob pattern="*.m"/>
 <alias type="text/x-octave"/>
</mime-type>
-->


...and....

<!--
<mime-type type="text/x-troff-mm">
 <sub-class-of type="text/plain"/>
 <comment>Troff MM input document</comment>
 <comment xml:lang="bg">Ð˜Ð·Ñ…Ð¾Ð´ÐµÐ½ Ð´Ð¾ÐºÑƒÐ¼ÐµÐ½Ñ‚ â€” Troff MM</comment>
 <comment xml:lang="ca">document d'entrada Troff MM</comment>
 <comment xml:lang="cs">VstupnÃ dokument Troff MM</comment>
 <comment xml:lang="da">Troff MM inddata-dokument</comment>
 <comment xml:lang="de">Troff-MM-Eingabedokument</comment>
 <comment xml:lang="el">ÎÎ³Î³Ï�Î±Ï†Î¿/Ï€Ï�ÏŒÎ³Ï�Î±Î¼Î¼Î± ÎµÎ½Ï„Î¿Î»ÏŽÎ½ troff MM</comment>
 <comment xml:lang="en_GB">Troff MM input document</comment>
 <comment xml:lang="eo">eniga dokumento de Troff MM</comment>
 <comment xml:lang="es">documento de entrada Troff MM</comment>
 <comment xml:lang="eu">Troff MM sarrerako dokumentua</comment>
 <comment xml:lang="fi">Troff MM -syÃ¶teasiakirja</comment>
 <comment xml:lang="fr">document d'entrÃ©e Troff MM</comment>
 <comment xml:lang="hu">Troff MM bemeneti dokumentum</comment>
 <comment xml:lang="it">Documento di input Troff MM</comment>
 <comment xml:lang="ja">Troff MM å…¥åŠ›ãƒ‰ã‚ãƒ¥ãƒ¡ãƒ³ãƒˆ</comment>
 <comment xml:lang="ko">Troff MM input ë¬¸ì„œ</comment>
 <comment xml:lang="lt">Troff MM Ä¯vesties dokumentas</comment>
 <comment xml:lang="ms">Dokumen input Troff MM</comment>
 <comment xml:lang="nb">Troff MM-inndatadokument</comment>
 <comment xml:lang="nl">Troff MM-invoerdocument</comment>
 <comment xml:lang="nn">Troff MM inndata-dokument</comment>
 <comment xml:lang="pl">Dokument wejÅ›ciowy Troff MM</comment>
 <comment xml:lang="pt">documento origem Troff MM</comment>
 <comment xml:lang="pt_BR">Documento de entrada Troff MM</comment>
 <comment xml:lang="sq">Dokument input-i Troff MM</comment>
 <comment xml:lang="sr">Troff MM ÑƒÐ»Ð°Ð·Ð½Ð¸ Ð´Ð¾ÐºÑƒÐ¼ÐµÐ½Ñ‚</comment>
 <comment xml:lang="sv">Troff MM-indatadokument</comment>
 <comment xml:lang="uk">Ð’Ñ…Ñ–Ð´Ð½Ð¸Ð¹ Ð´Ð¾ÐºÑƒÐ¼ÐµÐ½Ñ‚ Troff MM</comment>
 <comment xml:lang="vi">TÃ i liá»‡u nháºp MM Troff</comment>
 <comment xml:lang="zh_CN">Troff MM è¾“å…¥æ–‡æ¡£</comment>
 <glob pattern="*.mm"/>
</mime-type>
-->

You then need to add a file at /usr/share/mime/packages/freemind.xml with the following contents:


<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<mime-info xmlns="http://www.freedesktop.org/standards/shared-mime-info">
<mime-type type="application/x-freemind">
 <comment>FreeMind Mind Map</comment>
 <glob pattern="*.mm"/>
</mime-type>
</mime-info>

Once you have edited/created these files, you need to update the MIME database:


sudo update-mime-database /usr/share/mime

To assign icons to the FreeMind .mm files, It turns out you have to create 48x48, 32x32, and 24x24 icons (PNG files) for FreeMind, copy these to /usr/share/icons/gnome under the appropriate size-named folders, and then update the icon cache. I used GIMP to create the icons based on an svg icon that came with the FreeMind source package. Each icon PNG must be named gnome-mime-application-x-freemind.png. To update the icon cache once these are in place:


sudo gtk-update-icon-cache --force gnome

Once you are done, log out and back in, and enjoy your FreeMind goodness.

NOW, if that all seems a bit much... I have created an archive containing a script that does everything except set up the main menu item pointing to FreeMind. It contains a version of FreeMind 0.9.0 beta 17 I compiled (on 64-bit Ubuntu, so this may or may not work on 32-bit versions) along with the modifications to the MIME types and the icons I created.

Download it here: freemind-0.9.0_Beta_17.tar.bz2

Integrating Ubuntu Hardy Heron 8.04 with Active Directory

2008-05-05T10:00:00.009-04:00

I have three primary goals with integrating Ubuntu Server with Active Directory:

Join the server to the domain
Allow domain admins to be Ubuntu Server administrators
Allow Windows clients in domain groups access to Samba shares

Goal #1: Join the Server to the Domain

Thanks to this post for helping with this portion. The steps are:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install likewise-open
sudo domainjoin-cli join fqdn.of.your.domain Administrator
sudo update-rc.d likewise-open defaults
sudo /etc/init.d/likewise-open start

Goal #2: Allow Active Directory Domain Administrators to Administer Ubuntu

Ubuntu Forums to the rescue... thanks, gotee12. This will allow members of the Domain Admins AD group to issue sudo commands. From a command prompt:

visudo
Add this line to the resulting file:

%YOURDOMAINNAME\\domain^admins ALL=(ALL) ALL

Note the carat symbol to substitute for spaces.

Goal #3: Allow Windows Clients in Domain Groups to Access Samba Shares

*** UPDATE *** My friend Chris got the plumbing to wire up Likewise Open with Samba figured out. Good grief, this was opaque:
http://chrplunk.blogspot.com/2008/06/allow-windows-clients-in-active.html

Now you have to set up your shares. The shares are defined as individual text files under /var/lib/samba/usershares. Create a file in this folder named with the name of the share (e.g. "test") and contents like the following, but be careful--match the spaces and casing with nothing extra, and **make sure the file name is in all lowercase regardless of the casing of the share name**:

#VERSION 2
path=/path/to/shared/folder
comment=
usershare_acl=<Group SID>:<access modifier>
guest_ok=y

For example:

#VERSION 2
path=/testShare
comment=
usershare_acl=S-1-1-0:F
guest_ok=y

To get the SID of the group that will have access to enter in the usershare_acl row, execute:

wbinfo -n "DOMAIN\group"

(S-1-1-0 is Everyone.)

The access modifiers after the group SID are as follows:

R - read-only
F - full access
D - deny access

The last thing you need do is to set the permissions on the shared folder itself. I found it easiest to give world-writable permissions to the folder, as it seemed not to dereference my group memberships at the folder permission level (unlike Samba at the share level). So:

chmod -R 0777 /path/to/shared/folder

If anyone knows how to get the group security to work at the folder level so it need not be world-writable, I'd appreciate a comment. I tried:

chgrp -R 'DOMAIN\group' /path/to/shared/folder
chmod -R 2770 /path/to/shared/folder

...but I kept getting access denied.

*** UPDATE 2 *** I had to grant read access to everyone for the usershares folder to avoid 'cannot stat' errors by ordinary users:

chmod o+r /var/lib/samba/usershares

Original post for this section follows:

Oooh, I haven't managed to get this one to work. I can issue successful commands like the following while logged on to the Ubuntu machine with my domain credentials:


smbclient -k -L //dmsc01
OS=[Windows Server 2003 R2 3790 Service Pack 2] Server=[Windows Server 2003 R2 5.2]

   Sharename       Type      Comment
   ---------       ----      -------
   C$              Disk      Default share
   IPC$            IPC       Remote IPC
   ADMIN$          Disk      Remote Admin
OS=[Windows Server 2003 R2 3790 Service Pack 2] Server=[Windows Server 2003 R2 5.2]

   Server               Comment
   ---------            -------

   Workgroup            Master
   ---------            -------

So SOMETHING's working, but I can't manage to get remote machines to connect to hosted shares. I've tried the following smb.conf (key lines included):


workgroup = mydomain
security = ads
realm = MYDOMAIN.LOCAL
encrypt passwords = yes
idmap uid = 10000-40000
idmap gid = 10000-40000
template homedir = /dev/null
template shell = /bin/false
winbind separator = \
winbind use default domain = yes
winbind enum users = yes
winbind enum groups = yes
winbind cache time = 300
winbind nested groups = yes

#=====================Shares====================
[tmp]
path = /tmp
browseable = yes
writeable = yes
guest ok = no

All I get when attempting to connect, however, is errors like the following in the client logs:


[2008/05/05 10:27:14, 1] libads/kerberos_verify.c:ads_secrets_verify_ticket(237)
ads_secrets_verify_ticket: failed to fetch machine password
[2008/05/05 10:27:14, 1] smbd/sesssetup.c:reply_spnego_kerberos(316)
Failed to verify incoming ticket with error NT_STATUS_LOGON_FAILURE!

And from the log.winbindd-idmap:


[2008/05/05 10:25:11, 1] nsswitch/idmap_tdb.c:idmap_tdb_alloc_init(397)
idmap uid range missing or invalid
idmap will be unable to map foreign SIDs
[2008/05/05 10:25:11, 0] nsswitch/idmap.c:idmap_alloc_init(750)
ERROR: Initialization failed for alloc backend, deferred!

Any ideas?

Silverlight 2.0 integration with Windows Forms

2008-04-30T13:33:00.014-04:00

Here's how you can host Silverlight 2.0 beta 1 applications in existing Windows Forms applications and have two-way communication between them. There may be an ActiveX approach that will accomplish this, but the approach I took was with a WebBrowser control.

First, set up the Windows Forms client. I'll use Form1, the hardest working form of them all. I simply drag the WebBrowser control onto the form. In its constructor, I set a few properties needed for having the embedded WebBrowser:


public partial class Form1 : Form {
    public Form1() {
        InitializeComponent();

        webBrowser1.AllowWebBrowserDrop =
            webBrowser1.IsWebBrowserContextMenuEnabled =
            webBrowser1.WebBrowserShortcutsEnabled = false;
            webBrowser1.ObjectForScripting = this;

        webBrowser1.Navigate("http://<url of Silverlight application>");
}

I also added a property and a method in the Windows Form for the hosted Silverlight application to call:


public void ButtonClicked(string message) {
    MessageBox.Show("ButtonClicked: " + message);
}

public string Test {
    set {
        MessageBox.Show("Test: " + value);
    }
}

In the Silverlight application, use managed code like the following (e.g. in a click event handler, load event, etc.) to call the custom methods on the hosting form (note that you need a reference to System.Windows.Browser to get to the browser):



using System.Windows.Browser;
/* ... */

string msg = "Clicked at " + DateTime.Now.ToString();
HtmlWindow w = HtmlPage.Window;
ScriptObject o = (ScriptObject)w.GetProperty("external");
if (null != o)
{
    try
    {
        // Set a property value on the host form
        o.SetProperty("Test", msg);

        // Call a method on the host form
        o.Invoke("ButtonClicked", new object[] { msg });
    }
    catch { }
}

Note the catch block: I haven't yet discovered how to detect if the Silverlight application is being hosted in a WebBrowser from inside (if it is being run directly in a browser, the 'external' object exists but invoking custom properties and methods will fail).

Calling methods in the Silverlight application from the WebBrowser control is a bit more complex and involves a few steps:

1) Stage the Silverlight application and methods for scripting

In App.xaml, you must register each Silverlight page for scripting support. For example, if I have a page called Page, I need code like the following:


Page p = new Page();
this.RootVisual = p;
HtmlPage.RegisterScriptableObject("Page", p); // The identifier ("Page") here is arbitrary and refers to your key for identifying the object from script

Now that I've done this, I have to mark each Silverlight page class with the ScriptableType attribute:


[ScriptableType()]
public partial class Page : UserControl
{
    /* ... */

Also, each public method I intend to call in the marked class from external script must be marked with the attribute:


[ScriptableMember()]
public void SetSearchText(string msg)
{
    /* ... */

2) Set up scripting support in the web page hosting the Silverlight application

The WebBrowser control can call script methods within the page, but doesn't seem to be able to call the Silverlight control object directly (I made several attempts to do this but was unsuccessful). What I ended up doing that worked was to set up a script method corresponding to each method I want to call within the Silverlight application.

First, alter the tag on the Silverlight control so that it calls a script method of yours when it loads:


<div  style="height:100%;">
    <asp:Silverlight ID="Xaml1" runat="server" Source="~/ClientBin/MySilverlightApp.xap" Version="2.0" Width="100%" Height="100%" OnPluginLoaded="pluginLoaded" />
    </div>

Now, add a script block in the HEAD tag with a method corresponding to the above to store a reference to the Silverlight control when it loads:


<head runat="server">
    <title>Test Page For DiggSample</title>
    <script type="text/javascript">
        var scControl;
        
        function pluginLoaded(sender) {
            scControl = sender.get_element();
        }       
    </script>
    ...

Next, add one script method for each method you marked exposed within the Silverlight application. Note the formatting (you must call it in the form: objectName.Content.<name you chose as the Silverlight script object identifier>.method(arguments)):


<script type="text/javascript">
    function SetSearchText(msg) {
        scControl.Content.Page.SetSearchText(msg);
    }
</script>

Finally, from within the Windows Forms application, you can call the method you exposed via the WebBrowser control as follows:


private void btnSetSearchText_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    webBrowser1.Document.InvokeScript("SetSearchText", new string[] { "foo" });
}

That's it--you should be able to have two-way communication between the Windows Forms application and the Silverlight application hosted via its WebBrowser control.

Debugging Kerberos authentication issues

2008-04-29T09:59:00.003-04:00

I have found the following registry key to be of greatest assistance when debugging Kerberos issues. It sets the following parameters:

Turns on verbose debug logging
Forces Kerberos to use TCP instead of UDP (MaxPacketSize parameter)
Increases the token size so that users with large numbers of groups will fit inside the Kerberos ticket

Just save the following as a .reg file and double-click it on your server to enter it into the registry.

----COPY BELOW THIS LINE----
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Lsa\Kerberos\Parameters]
"LogLevel"=dword:00000001
"KerbDebugLevel"=dword:ffffffff
"LogToFile"=dword:00000000
"MaxTokenSize"=dword:0000ea60
"MaxPacketSize"=dword:00000001

----COPY ABOVE THIS LINE----

PerformancePoint 2007 Monitoring Server per user authentication

2008-04-29T09:44:00.006-04:00

I had an interesting time getting Kerberos authentication working for PerformancePoint 2007 Monitoring Server. The deployment guide is pretty thorough, but I had some issues getting the Kerberos authentication to function. After making the changes recommended in the guide for Kerberos auth and per-user security, the Dashboard Designer would produce the following error when trying to refresh:

Unable to connect to the specified server. Make sure the address is correct.

After reviewing Kerberos logging messages, I found that this was a Kerberos error. I used adsiedit to set SPNs rather than the SetSPN utility as I find it a bit faster to work with. I set the service principal names above on the Monitoring Server application pool identity domain account (locate the account in the tree, right-click and choose Properties, select the servicePrincipalName attribute, and click Edit). This is because:

My PPSMonitoring web runs on the dppt01 server on port 40000;
My PPSPlanningWebServices web runs on the dppt01 server on port 46787; and
My PPSPlanningAdminConsole web runs on the dppt01 server on port 46788.

This wasn't sufficient to make it work, however. I also had to:

- Set one more SPN (for both the short and fully-qualified domain name) on both the server's computer account and the Monitoring Server application pool identity:

HTTP/dppt01.domain.local
HTTP/dppt01

- Change the application pool identity of the PPSMonitoringCentral app pool (for some reason, the installer defaulted this to Network Service instead of my app pool identity, ppt-pool-dev).

After doing these steps and allowing for replication, Dashboard Designer was again able to connect and enumerate resources.

Integrating PerformancePoint 2007 into MOSS

2008-04-25T12:36:00.006-04:00

Being new to PerformancePoint 2007, it wasn't immediately apparent to me how to integrate it into MOSS. I found that you do this by installing the Dashboard Viewer for SharePoint Services on the MOSS server.

Prerequisites on MOSS Server

Microsoft ASP.NET 2.0 AJAX Extensions 1.0

Installation

Mount the PerformancePoint 2007 media in the MOSS server.
Choose the Monitoring Server installation and complete it.
Run the Monitoring Server Configuration Manager.
Uncheck all options except for the Dashboard Viewer for SharePoint Services.
Select the site collection in which to install the Dashboard Viewer.

If you need to later install the Dashboard Viewer web part on an additional site collection, this post has an excellent guide to doing so. In step 2 where the author references uploading the master page, I did this differently:

Navigated to http:///_catalogs/masterpage/Forms/AllItems.aspx, and clicked the Upload button.
Browsed to %programfiles%\Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server\3.0\Monitoring\Assemblies\ and chose PerformancePointDefault.master.
Once uploaded, used the context menu on the uploaded master page and used the Approve/Reject link to approve the uploaded item.

Further adventures with Citrix WISP installation

2008-04-22T10:14:00.008-04:00

Continuing with earlier efforts to get WISP working, I attempted to re-add/re-deploy the solutions after first undeploying/removing them. Prerequisite steps:

Turn on WISP logging. You can import the following registry key to do so (save as a .reg file and double-click it; don't forget to actually create the folder):

------COPY BELOW THIS LINE-----
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Citrix\WISP]
"LogFolder"="C:\\temp\\WISP_logs"
-----COPY ABOVE THIS LINE-----

Turn on verbose MOSS (ULS) logging:

Open Central Administration, click Operations.

```
Click Diagnostic Logging.
```

Under the Event Throttling section, set Verbose in "Least critical event
to report to the trace log."

Under the Trace log section, type 20 in Number of log files.

```
Click OK.
```

To add the solutions:

stsadm -o addsolution -filename CitrixWssCore.wsp
stsadm -o addsolution -filename CitrixAppDeliveryWebPart.wsp
stsadm -o addsolution -filename CitrixContentRedirection.wsp
stsadm -o addsolution -filename CitrixMossCore.wsp

While adding seems to be pretty safe, you have to be very careful about the order of deployment of the various WSPs. The CitrixWssCore.wsp must be deployed first, and this deployment doesn't necessarily work. You must carefully review stsadm output to see what your results were before proceeding. After initiating the deployment, check the Timer Job Status page in CA to see if the job is complete and/or run stsadm -o enumsolutions and look for the solution in the list with the Deployed node set to true.

stsadm -o deploysolution -name CitrixWssCore.wsp -immediate -allowgacdeployment

On this attempt, I was deploying CitrixWssCore.wsp first as directed. Note the value of the LastOperationResult node:

<Solution Name="citrixwsscore.wsp">
  <Id>fe3deba9-9b5d-4105-9983-2af1db3c0e42</Id>
  <File>CitrixWssCore.wsp</File>
  <Deployed>FALSE</Deployed>
  <WebApplicationSpecific>FALSE</WebApplicationSpecific>
  <ContainsGlobalAssembly>TRUE</ContainsGlobalAssembly>
  <ContainsCodeAccessSecurityPolicy>FALSE</ContainsCodeAccessSecurityPolicy>
  <LastOperationResult>DeploymentFailedFileCopy</LastOperationResult>
  <LastOperationTime>4/21/2008 4:14 PM</LastOperationTime>
</Solution>

I didn't find any particular reason for this failure, but I repeated the operation, and the next time got success values in these nodes.

Once I deployed the key prerequisite package, it was on to the others. The CitrixAppDeliveryWebPart also balked:

<Solution Name="citrixappdeliverywebpart.wsp">
  <Id>8a0a1be2-7648-4703-9cca-8ea0fa625793</Id>
  <File>CitrixAppDeliveryWebPart.wsp</File>
  <Deployed>FALSE</Deployed>
  <WebApplicationSpecific>TRUE</WebApplicationSpecific>
  <ContainsGlobalAssembly>FALSE</ContainsGlobalAssembly>
  <ContainsCodeAccessSecurityPolicy>TRUE</ContainsCodeAccessSecurityPolicy>
  <LastOperationResult>DeploymentFailedFeatureInstall</LastOperationResult>
  <LastOperationTime>4/22/2008 10:34 AM</LastOperationTime>
</Solution>

This also occurred on my second attempt. So I started digging through the MOSS ULS logs (it's a good idea to turn on verbose logging before starting operations like this, as exceptions do not generally get logged to the Windows event log). I found the following key message:

Line 19554 : 04/22/2008 10:41:33.12 OWSTIMER.EXE (0x058C) 0x1404 Windows SharePoint Services Topology 8zpd High Solution Deployment : Error - Add Feature definition for citrixappdeliverywebpart.wsp Exception message - A feature with ID 94af8a34-19db-4114-876d-5a7a587a8405 has already been installed in this farm. Use the force attribute to explicitly re-install the feature.

Apparently, the uninstall procedure (I had made earlier attempts to install these solutions) did not properly remove the features. I was able to get this one to pass by adding the -force switch to the stsadm deploy solution command.

stsadm -o deploysolution -name CitrixAppDeliveryWebPart.wsp -immediate -allowgacdeployment -allowcaspolicies -url http://server -force

After this, I forced the remaining solution deployments as well (CitrixContentRedirection.wsp and CitrixMossCore.wsp) and the rest succeeded.

stsadm -o deploysolution -name CitrixContentRedirection.wsp -immediate -allowgacdeployment -force

stsadm -o deploysolution -name CitrixMossCore.wsp -immediate -allowgacdeployment -force

After deployment of these features comes activation. Unless your application pool identity has admin privileges in various areas (this should not be the case), you will need to use the stsadm commands to activate the features. You must activate the CitrixAccessCore feature, and you must activate it before the others. Fortunately, activation does not use a timer job, so you get immediate feedback from stsadm about the success or failure of your request.

stsadm -o activatefeature -name CitrixAccessCore -url http://server
stsadm -o activatefeature -name CitrixTopNavigation -url http://server
stsadm -o activatefeature -name CitrixQuickLaunchNavigation -url http://server
stsadm -o activatefeature -name CitrixAdministrationTool -url http://server
stsadm -o activatefeature -name CitrixAppDeliveryWebPart -url http://server
stsadm -o activatefeature -name CitrixContentRedirectionModule -url http://server
stsadm -o activatefeature -name CitrixContentRedirectionMenu -url http://server
stsadm -o activatefeature -name CitrixContentRedirectionNewMenu -url http://server

The key step after getting everything installed is to configure the connection to the Citrix farm. From the site collection root, go to Site Settings | Modify All Site Settings > Citrix Administration and specify the applicable settings. At first I tried going to the Advanced Administration and copying the contents of our Citrix farm's WebInterface.conf file into the large textbox, but that is not sufficient.

Now if I could just get past the "No Resources found" message presented by the Citrix Application Delivery web part...

*** UPDATE ***
I got the Application Delivery web part working. It turned out the CitrixWssCore feature did not deploy properly in spite of the success message returned by stsadm -o enumsolutions. The contents of the WISP logs were the only place I saw the exception:

AccessCore.DeploymentJob: Wednesday, April 23, 2008 1:36:01 PM
Service Provider Deployment run as Identity: DOMAIN\server-farm-account
CreateEventLog() Error: Requested registry access is not allowed.
at System.ThrowHelper.ThrowSecurityException(ExceptionResource resource)
at Microsoft.Win32.RegistryKey.OpenSubKey(String name, Boolean writable)
at System.Diagnostics.EventLog.CreateEventSource(EventSourceCreationData sourceData)
at System.Diagnostics.EventLog.CreateEventSource(String source, String logName)
at Citrix.WISP.Util.CoreLog.CreateEventLog(CultureInfo locale)
....
Info: Attempting to create Web Virtual Directory (CitrixAccessPlatform-f6ec3ff1-328a-4fdf-b78b-61f0f5b703d0):
ADS Path: IIS://localhost/W3SVC/1634379371/Root/f6ec3ff1-328a-4fdf-b78b-61f0f5b703d0
File Path: C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\12\CitrixAccessPlatform\f6ec3ff1-328a-4fdf-b78b-61f0f5b703d0
IISObject: Exception has been thrown by the target of an invocation.

Our MOSS server farm account was not a local machine administrator on the SharePoint machine, and apparently this is required for the CitrixWssCore deployment to create the custom event log and its web site. I had to grant these rights and the redeploy the solution with the -force option to correct it. The key point is that you must review all possible logs, including the WISP logs, to check for installation/deployment problems.

Citrix, won't you please build a real installer for WISP that will take care of some of these details/checks?

Infrequent IP address changes and No-IP

2008-04-20T21:55:00.005-04:00

I use No-IP to provide dynamic DNS services so I can have remote access to my machine at home. However, the No-IP client doesn't send updates when my IP address doesn't change, and with my provider it tends to not change for quite some time. This causes No-IP to send me warning messages that my host is going to be deactivated from inactivity. In these notices, there is a link you can click to keep your host alive with its current IP. That got me thinking how I could force a periodic update.

I wrote the following script, pagecheck, to allow fetching an arbitrary web page and checking for some simple content in the page output:

#!/bin/bash
#Gets a web page and searches it for the specified text; if not found, or if a wget error results, returns
#an error code and prints error text.
#Arthur Penn - 16 Apr 2008

if [ $# -ne 2 ]; then
echo "pagecheck \"URL to page\" \"Success text to expect\""
exit 1
fi

PAGE=$(wget --no-verbose -O - "$1" 2>&1)
RC=$?
if [ 0 -eq $RC ]; then
SUCCESS=$(echo "$PAGE" | grep "$2")
if [ -n "$SUCCESS" ]; then
exit 0
else
echo "Did not find success message of \"$2\" in $1:"
echo "$PAGE"
exit 1
fi
else
echo "$PAGE"
exit 1
fi

This uses wget to fetch the web page and look for the content, and only prints output when it encounters problems. This makes it suitable for cron jobs. I added this script to /usr/local/bin (save it to a text file, and then: sudo cp pagecheck /usr/local/bin && sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/pagecheck). I then added the following script into the /etc/cron.monthly folder so it gets run once per month (don't do this more often to avoid excessive No-IP updates):

#!/bin/bash
# Touches the no-ip.com host dialog to confirm that the URL is still in use
/usr/local/bin/pagecheck "http://www.no-ip.com/hostactive.php?host=myhost&domain=noipdomain.net" "Update Successful"

T0 use this, you need to update the portions in red to match your No-IP domain (e.g. if your No-IP domain is fred.atx.net, the host would be "fred," and the domain would be "atx.net."

Since doing this, I haven't gotten any of the host deactivation messages from No-IP.

Make zenwin and zenwinmodeler ignore WMI errors

2008-04-15T16:06:00.003-04:00

(This tip is also on the Zenoss wiki.)

At least in version 2.1.1, zenwin, zenwinmodeler, and zeneventlog have (IMO) a critical defect: if there are any /Status/WMI/Conn issues not in history for the device, they ignore the device. On our network, for some reason we end up with a lot of these events ('timegenerated' errors, various intermittent failures to connect, etc.). This causes the monitoring of our Windows servers to dramatically fall off as the system runs, and we miss critical issues.

I changed the behavior of these three systems to go ahead and attempt monitoring even if WMI issues are encountered. I learned that most of the time these WMI issues are spurious and successful monitoring CAN still be attempted. If you use this code, I recommend combining it with event commands to restart the zenoss daemons when it finds them dead.

Also, in zenwin, I added/improved the exception handling; a failure to create the watcher object occurs outside of a try block. Much of this code is an attempt to keep zenwin from crashing if it tries to monitor a Windows Server 2008 machine (Zenoss is not compatible with WS 2008 or Vista's WMI interface, and zenwin cannot monitor services on these devices). I ended up adding a hardcoded exclusion list so I can otherwise monitor the machine but have zenwin skip it. For some reason, zeneventlog seems to not crash, although it is not able to retrieve events from the WS 2008 machine either.

Please see the Zenoss wiki for the zenwin and zenwinmodeler diffs.

Find Zenoss event classes with transforms

2008-04-06T09:16:00.002-04:00

(This tip is also on the Zenoss wiki.)

If you have entered transforms but can't remember where you entered them, type the following in zendmd (run zendmd from the command line on the Zenoss server as the zenoss user):

>>> for ec in dmd.Events.getSubOrganizers():
...      if ec.transform:
...      print ec.getOrganizerName()

Custom Zenoss graph based on multiple data points

2008-04-05T22:09:00.004-04:00

(This tip is also on the Zenoss Wiki.)

If you want to make a custom graph in Zenoss based on more than one data point (such as a ratio or other calculation), you will need to enter a custom graph definition for RRDTool to use. I found some good guides on how to define graphs with RRDTool (such as this tutorial on CDEF and others at that site), but it took me a while to put this together with the available data points and variables in Zenoss so the graph would work.

Edit the performance template to which you wish to add the graph. Click the drop-down arrow next to Graph Definitions and choose "Add Graph..." and name it.

Click on the Graph Custom Definition tab and you are presented with a blank slate for your new graph's definition. It may be easiest to start with an example. I entered the following custom graph definition:

DEF:BusyThreads-raw=${here/fullRRDPath}/appThreads_BusyThreads.rrd:ds0:AVERAGE
DEF:RequestsPerSecond-raw=${here/fullRRDPath}/appThreads_RequestsPerSecond.rrd:ds0:AVERAGE
DEF:AppCurrentConnections-raw=${here/fullRRDPath}/currentConnections_appCurrentConnections.rrd:ds0:AVERAGE
CDEF:connectionsToThreads=AppCurrentConnections-raw,1,RequestsPerSecond-raw,BusyThreads-raw,+,+,/
LINE:connectionsToThreads#00cc00:"Connections to Threads/Thread Activity Ratio"
GPRINT:connectionsToThreads:LAST:cur\:%5.2lf%s
GPRINT:connectionsToThreads:AVERAGE:avg\:%5.2lf%s
GPRINT:connectionsToThreads:MAX:max\:%5.2lf%s\j

To break this apart, I have two data sources and three data points involved in my ratio that are part of the performance template with this graph:

Data source: appThreads
This data source has two data points, BusyThreads and RequestsPerSecond.

Data source: currentConnections
This data source has one data point, appCurrentConnections.

What I want to graph is a ratio based on these data points as follows:

appCurrentConnections / (BusyThreads + RequestsPerSecond + 1)

Basically, I want a measure of the amount of work in the queue (current connections) divided by the amount of work output my application is producing (a combination of the busy threads and requests per second it is handling, plus one to avoid the possibility of a divide-by-zero error).

With that established, we need to define the RRD DEFs (variables) used in the graph, one for each of the variables in the above calculation. Here's the one for the busy threads variable. I supplied BusyThreads-raw as the name that is used in the graph line:

DEF:BusyThreads-raw=${here/fullRRDPath}/appThreads_BusyThreads.rrd:ds0:AVERAGE

The key above is the TALES expression to get the variable from the Zenoss performance template into our RRDTool DEF variable: ${here/fullRRDPath}/dataSourceName_dataPointName

Regarding the :AVERAGE at the end: While there are many different RRD functions, the most common one I've seen used is the AVERAGE function, which takes a recent rolling average of the value in question. Please consult the RRDTool documentation for going deeper with this.

After providing DEF lines for each variable in my calculation, I need a CDEF line (calculated definition) for the actual calculation that puts the calculation together:

CDEF:connectionsToThreads=AppCurrentConnections-raw,1,RequestsPerSecond-raw,BusyThreads-raw,+,+,/

The calculation uses reverse Polish notation and the CDEF tutorial above has an excellent guide to understanding it, but basically you can think of it as a stack: the variables and constants are pushed onto the stack in order from left to right, and when the first operator (the leftmost plus sign) hits the stack, the top two items (in this case, the BusyThreads-raw and RequestsPerSecond-raw variables) are popped off the stack and added together (the operator is applied). The result is pushed back onto the stack. The next plus sign adds this sum with 1, and finally the division operator divides the AppCurrentConnections-raw variable by the topmost stack item (1 + RequestsPerSecond-raw + BusyThreads-raw).

Once we have our connectionsToThreads variable, we can graph it. The next line defines the one line on our graph:

LINE:connectionsToThreads#00cc00:"Connections to Threads/Thread Activity Ratio"

It refers to the connectionsToThreads variables, defines a color in hex notation, and defines a label. Finally, we can print some additional information on the graph:

GPRINT:connectionsToThreads:LAST:cur\:%5.2lf%s
GPRINT:connectionsToThreads:AVERAGE:avg\:%5.2lf%s
GPRINT:connectionsToThreads:MAX:max\:%5.2lf%s\j

Here we print the last, average, and maximum values of our graph line on the currently-viewed graph section.

Limitation: Thresholding
One thing I could not get working was to define a threshold based on my calculated value above. It seems that the thresholds are only valid on the values of the data points themselves, and I couldn't get a threshold working on my derived value above.

Moving a Zenoss event to history via the Transform expression

2008-04-05T20:07:00.006-04:00

(This tip is also on the Zenoss Wiki.)

There are cases where certain events are just noise and you want them moved to history automatically, but perhaps without having ALL of the events in that event class moved to history. For example, you may wish to move certain events from one event class to another based on matching text and at the same time have these go straight to history.

To do this, enter the following in Transform of the event class mapping:

evt._action="history"

Move an event in Zenoss from one event class to another based on event text

2008-04-05T19:29:00.003-04:00

(This tip is also on the Zenoss Wiki.)

Many events map to the /App/Failed event class, most notably the Windows Application Error_1000 error (http://<your Zenoss server>:8080/zport/dmd/Events/App/Failed/instances/Application%20Error_1000). I wanted to move some of these Application Error_1000 events to other event classes based on matching particular applications, but to leave the rest in /App/Failed. How does one do this?

To begin, confirm that you have an existing event class to receive the events. If not, create a new one by navigating through the "Events" tree from the left navigation to get to the desired parent class, and once there, click the drop-down arrow next to Subclasses and choose "Add New Organizer..." Enter the name for the new event class, e.g. "MyApplication."

Second, map an additional event class mapping to Application Error_1000. In /zport/dmd/Events/App/Failed, click the drop-down arrow to the left of EventClass Mappings and choose "Add Mapping..." For the ID of the mapping, type Application Error_1000_<name of the application to handle differently>, e.g. "Application Error_1000_MyApplication." (This event class mapping doesn't have to be named this way, but it helps to have the application name as the suffix, so that the mapping gets grouped with any other Application Error_1000 mappings in the list.)

Once you have done this, edit the properties of the new mapping. There are three key things you need to set:

Event Class Key: Set this to: Application Error_1000
Regex: I'm sure you can put in much more complicated regular expressions, but all that is necessary is to type some text from the event message, which will usually contain the application's executable name. If this is the case, all you need to enter is something like: MyApplication.exe
Transform: Here, you need to key in the Python expression that will re-map the event to a different event class, e.g.: evt.eventClass="/App/Failed/MyApplication"

Save your changes to this new event class mapping. Now you need to sequence all the Application Error_1000* events so that this custom entry is matched first. Edit the new mapping and click on the Sequence tab. Make sure that your new mapping (Application Error_1000_MyApplication) has a lower sequence number than the generic Application Error_1000 entry. I'm not sure if the sequence numbers need to start at zero, but I've done it that way. So, make your new class sequence 0, and the generic Application Error_1000 class sequence 1. Don't forget to save your changes.

That's it--the events matching your custom event class mapping will be moved to the target event class, and all the others will be left in the original class.

Change Zenoss event severity based on message text

2008-04-05T17:14:00.006-04:00

(This tip is also on the Zenoss Wiki.)

If you have events being mapped to a particular event class, generally one event severity gets applied to all of those events. If, however, you want to change the event severity of certain events based on the contents of the event message, do the following:

Navigate to the event class (under "Classes' in the left navigation, click Events, and then navigate to the event class containing the events you wish to conditionally map).
Using to drop-down arrow in the tab bar, choose More | Transform
In the Transform entry area, enter the following:

if evt.message.find("text to find") >= 0:
evt.severity = <desired severity>

For example:

if evt.message.find("timegenerated") >= 0:
evt.severity = 3

The above will change the severity of any events containing the text "timegenerated" from the default for the event class to 3 (warning). For your convenience, the event severity values are as follows:

Severity	Description
5	Critical
4	Error
3	Warning
2	Info
1	Debug
0	Clear

Zenoss Percentage Used for /Perf/Filesystem events

2008-04-05T16:51:00.003-04:00

By default, Zenoss does not show the percentage of the filesystem used when showing disk space events (/Perf/Filesystem). The approach detailed below (also on the Zenoss Wiki) does the following:

Shows both the percentage used in the event summary as well as the amount of free space remaining in GB
Changes the event severity to critical (red) when the percentage free is 5% or less

Access http://:8080/zport/dmd/Events/Perf/Filesystem and enter the following for the transform:

fs_id = device.prepId(evt.component)
for f in device.os.filesystems():
    if f.id != fs_id: continue
    p = (float(f.usedBytes()) / f.totalBytes()) * 100
    freeAmtGB = (float(f.totalBytes() - f.usedBytes())) / 1024 / 1024 / 1024
    evt.summary = "Disk space low: %3.1f%% used (%3.2f GB free)" % (p, freeAmtGB)
    if p >= 95.0: evt.severity = 5
    break

Access Denied with Citrix WISP

2008-03-26T07:34:00.003-04:00

I was attempting to install and activate the Citrix Web Interface for SharePoint on MOSS 2007 but was getting nowhere. The solutions appeared to add, deploy, and activate without error, but when I hit any of the Citrix administration links on the site collection root’s Site Settings page in the portal, all I received was 'Unknown Error.'

I had to first apply a registry hack to get the Citrix code to log anything that was going wrong. From its admin guide:

You can also find useful troubleshooting information in the log files stored in sharepoint\LOGS\LogFolder, where LogFolder is a location you can specify by setting a string value for LogFolder in the following registry key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Citrix\WISP.

Without creating this key, nothing is logged. After creating it, I could see a curious sequence of events when trying to activate the Citrix Access Core feature:

...
Adding List Item Event Receiver: Added
Adding List Item Event Receiver: Deleting
Adding List Item Event Receiver: Deleted
Elevating privilege, now running as DOMAIN\moss-pool-dev
Adding new configuration update job (ConfigUpdateJob-default-WIConfiguration(DMOSS01))
AddConfigurationUpdateJob() Error: Access denied.
at Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPPersistedObject.Update()
at Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPJobDefinition.Update()
at Citrix.WISP.Configuration.Jobs.UpdateJob..ctor(String jobName, SPSite site, SPServer server, String configurationName, String configurationType, String filename, List`1 featureIds, SPJobLockType targetType)
at Citrix.WISP.Configuration.Jobs.Installer.<>c__DisplayClass2.b__0()
End of Elevating privilege, now running as DOMAIN\apenn
Adding new job CitrixAccessCoreDeployment(DMOSS01)(Citrix Access Core Service Provider Deployment) to DMOSS01(Application)
AddDeploymentJob() Error: Access denied.
at Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPPersistedObject.Update()
at Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPJobDefinition.Update()
at Citrix.WISP.AccessCore.Jobs.DeploymentJob..ctor(String jobName, SPSite site, SPServer server, SPJobLockType targetType, String title)
at Citrix.WISP.AccessCore.Jobs.Installer.<>c__DisplayClass2.b__0()
Updating Property Citrix.WISP.Site.Active in site https://devextranet.DOMAIN.local with value True
CitrixContentRedirectionModule: Add the web.config mod
- SPWebApp Name: Customer Extranet
- add/remove here: configuration/system.web/compilation/expressionBuilders
- the following:
CitrixAccessCore::Activate Error: Access to the path 'C:\Inetpub\wwwroot\wss\VirtualDirectories\devextranet.DOMAIN.local80\web.config' is denied.
at System.IO.__Error.WinIOError(Int32 errorCode, String maybeFullPath)
at System.IO.FileStream.Init(String path, FileMode mode, FileAccess access, Int32 rights, Boolean useRights, FileShare share, Int32 bufferSize, FileOptions options, SECURITY_ATTRIBUTES secAttrs, String msgPath, Boolean bFromProxy)
at System.IO.FileStream..ctor(String path, FileMode mode, FileAccess access, FileShare share)
at System.Xml.XmlDocument.Save(String filename)
at Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPWebApplication.ApplyWebConfigModifications()
at Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPWebService.ApplyWebConfigModifications()
at Citrix.WISP.AccessCore.FeatureReceiver.<>c__DisplayClass2.b__0()
at Microsoft.SharePoint.SPSecurity.CodeToRunElevatedWrapper(Object state)
at Microsoft.SharePoint.SPSecurity.<>c__DisplayClass4.b__2()
at Microsoft.SharePoint.Utilities.SecurityContext.RunAsProcess(CodeToRunElevated secureCode)
at Microsoft.SharePoint.SPSecurity.RunWithElevatedPrivileges(WaitCallback secureCode, Object param)
at Microsoft.SharePoint.SPSecurity.RunWithElevatedPrivileges(CodeToRunElevated secureCode)
at Citrix.WISP.AccessCore.FeatureReceiver.changeExpressionBuilderInWebConfig(SPWebApplication app, Boolean remove)
at Citrix.WISP.AccessCore.FeatureReceiver.FeatureActivated(SPFeatureReceiverProperties properties)
CitrixAccessCore: Ended at Monday, March 24, 2008 9:51:03 AM

It was apparent it was trying to take some actions under the application pool identity for the web application which failed with 'access denied,' and then was trying to use MY account (a domain administrator, MOSS farm administrator, and local MOSS server administrator) for other actions and STILL getting 'access denied!'

The administrator's guide for WISP does state:

To complete the installation you must have server farm administrator permissions, meaning you must be a member of the
administrators group on each of your Web and Application servers, and SQL security administrator with database creator rights on each of your SQL servers.

Those rights my account had; however, to correct the 'access denied' problem, I had to make my APPLICATION POOL IDENTITY:

A member of the Farm Administrators group in MOSS; and
A local machine administrator on the MOSS server.

C'mon Citrix, the application pool identity is supposed to be a low-privileged account.

Ubuntu rkhunter configuration

2008-02-14T20:08:00.003-05:00

I recently added rkhunter, a rootkit detection utility, to my Ubuntu installation. After doing so, I started picking up warnings from cron during its daily scan:

Warning: Found enabled inetd service: /usr/sbin/vmware-authd
Warning: Hidden directory found: /etc/.java
Warning: Hidden directory found: /dev/.static
Warning: Hidden directory found: /dev/.udev
Warning: Hidden directory found: /dev/.initramfs
Warning: Hidden file found: /dev/.tmp-2-0: block special (2/0)

Research indicates that these particular warnings are spurious--I know I have VMware running, and the others seem to be facets of the way Ubuntu is constructed. To suppress them, I added the following lines to /etc/rkhunter.conf:

ALLOWHIDDENDIR=/etc/.java
ALLOWHIDDENDIR=/dev/.static
ALLOWHIDDENDIR=/dev/.udev
ALLOWHIDDENDIR=/dev/.initramfs
ALLOWHIDDENFILE=/dev/.tmp-2-0
INETD_ALLOWED_SVC=/usr/sbin/vmware-authd

MOSS audiences and missing AD groups

2008-01-11T08:21:00.002-05:00

I had a problem where I was trying to construct audiences in MOSS with members based on certain Active Directory groups, but I had a handful of groups that did not appear in the "browse" dialog on the Add Audience Rule page. It turns out these groups were empty, and that the group list is populated by reading the groups each user is a member of during the profile import. This dialog does NOT contact AD.

I added an account to the groups in question and repeated the profile import. Voila--the groups appeared in the browse dialog.

Zenoss Core web site (Zope application server) crash

2008-01-10T07:32:00.001-05:00

We had two Zenoss winexe processes go out of control yesterday. They consumed all available CPU and RAM and caused the rest of the daemons to crash/slow down. When we restarted Zenoss ("zenoss stop" followed by "zenoss start"), all Zenoss daemons came up, but zopectl (the Zope application server daemon) immediately died.

We found several of the following errors in $ZENHOME/log/event.log that appeared to be related:

2008-01-09T10:15:36 ERROR Zope.SiteErrorLog http://server.domain.local:8080/zport/RenderServer/render
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "usr/local/zenoss/lib/python/Zope2/App/startup.py", line 167, in zpublisher_exception_hook
File "usr/local/zenoss/lib/python/ZPublisher/Publish.py", line 120, in publish
File "usr/local/zenoss/lib/python/Zope2/App/startup.py", line 233, in commit
File "usr/local/zenoss/lib/python/transaction/_manager.py", line 84, in commit
File "usr/local/zenoss/lib/python/transaction/_transaction.py", line 381, in commit
File "usr/local/zenoss/lib/python/transaction/_transaction.py", line 379, in commit
File "usr/local/zenoss/lib/python/transaction/_transaction.py", line 424, in _commitResources
File "usr/local/zenoss/lib/python/ZODB/Connection.py", line 462, in commit
File "usr/local/zenoss/lib/python/ZODB/Connection.py", line 495, in _commit
ConflictError: database conflict error (oid 0x3b, class Products.ZenUtils.PObjectCache.PObjectCache)

Remediation:

Make sure zeoctl is started (as zenoss, "zeoctl start" followed by a few seconds pause and then "zenoss status" to confirm it has a PID and is running).
cd $ZENHOME/var
rm *.zec (this deletes invalid cache files that are causing the above error)
zopectl start
Wait a few seconds, then check if Zope stays running (use "zenoss status" or just hit the website to confirm).

WSS/MOSS SP1 application caused DCOM activation error

2008-01-04T09:15:00.002-05:00

I applied the WSS 3.0 SP1 and MOSS SP1 to one of my MOSS installations and started getting the following errors:

Application Log
Event Source: Office SharePoint Server
Event Category: Office Server Shared Services
Event ID: 6482

The application-specific permission settings do not grant Local Activation permission for the COM Server application with CLSID
{3D42CCB1-4665-4620-92A3-478F47389230}
to the user HCHB\moss-svc-prd SID (S-1-5-21-796845957-484763869-839522115-12856). This security permission can be modified using the Component Services administrative tool.

System Log
Event Source: DCOM
Event Category: None
Event ID: 10016

The application-specific permission settings do not grant Local Activation permission for the COM Server application with CLSID
{3D42CCB1-4665-4620-92A3-478F47389230}
to the user HCHB\moss-svc-prd SID (S-1-5-21-796845957-484763869-839522115-12856). This security permission can be modified using the Component Services administrative tool.

I tracked down these class IDs and it turns out they belong to the OSearch DCOM application. I swear, I wish in this modern era that MOSS didn't use DCOM. To fix this, verify that your primary MOSS service account is in the Distributed COM Users group on the MOSS server. Then, in dcomcnfg, locate the OSearch application and choose Properties.

On the Security tab, click Edit on the Launch and Activation Permissions area and add the Distributed COM Users group to the ACL. Check both the Local Launch and Local Activation for this group. Restart OSearch (net stop osearch followed by net start osearch at a command prompt) and that should fix the problem.

WQL Queries Fail Against Valid Performance Counters

2007-12-20T14:18:00.000-05:00

I was trying to run WQL queries against remote Windows systems to read things such as the current IIS connections. The query looks like the following:

SELECT CurrentConnections FROM Win32_PerfFormattedData_W3SVC_WebService

I kept getting an 0x80041010 ("Invalid Class") error from the remote DCOM objects even though the performance objects clearly were visible and monitorable in perfmon. This error code means that either:

- You are trying to query a non-existant performance object;
- The performance object exists and has not been registered; or
- The performance object is not registered properly.

I went through a number of troubleshooting steps, including jacking around with dcomcnfg (launch/activation permissions, default authentication levels), re-registering performance counter DLLs, etc. and nothing helped. Finally, executing the following command on the target servers proved to be the key:

winmgmt /clearadap (thanks to this site for advising about this clear command)
winmgmt /resyncperf

This tool fixes invalid registry entries around the performance DLLs and fixed all of my WQL problems.

Some other steps that may help:

If the performance objects haven't been registered, install the Windows Server Support Tools, and run exctrlst. This tool allows you to uncheck and re-check the registered performance objects and may help with the above. If you use this tool on any classes, follow the execution with a call to winmgmt as above.

To rebuild all Performance counters including extensible and third party counters in Windows Server 2003, type the following commands at a command prompt. Press ENTER after each command.

cd \%windir%\system32
lodctr /R

Additional WMI Troubleshooting Resources

WMI Troubleshooting (MSDN)

WMI Isn't Working! (TechNet--good troubleshooting tips)

Scriptomatic 2.0: This tool shows you a list of all registered WMI classes on the machine with the WQL format class names.

WMI Explorer: Another good tool for exploring registered WMI classes.

GnuCash 2.2 on Ubuntu Gutsy - with OFX Direct Connect!

2007-10-19T16:27:00.000-04:00

When I started running Ubuntu Gutsy (7.10) about a month and a half ahead of its release this week, its GnuCash package was still in the 2.0 series, and I wanted to run 2.2. While 2.2 is now in the official repositories, I understand that a licensing issue prevents the Ubuntu GnuCash package from shipping with OFX Direct Connect enabled (it will import qfx/ofx files but not connect directly to financial institutions to retrieve transactions, as one of mine requires). So, with both of these goals in mind, I set out to build my own GnuCash 2.2 with OFX Direct Connect. Unfortunately, this process is not for the average user...

Building GnuCash

First, get a terminal open and install all the dependencies for this process:

sudo aptitude install libktoblzcheck1-dev libqt3-mt-dev libofx-dev libxml2-dev libgconf2-dev guile-1.6-slib guile-1.6-dev libglib2.0-dev libgtk2.0-dev libgnomeui-dev libgoffice-0-dev libgtkhtml3.8-dev libgwenhywfar38-dev slib gettext devscripts build-essential

Whew! Now we need to build libchipcard3-3.0.3, a dependency of the aqbanking library we will build later. This has no dependencies. For the uninitiated, this process consists of unpacking the archive and then executing the following in a terminal:

cd [folder in which you unpacked libchipcard]
./configure
make
sudo make install

That done, we build aqbanking 2.3.2. This is similar to building libchipcard above, but you have to pass some arguments when running the configure step:

./configure --with-frontends="cbanking g2banking qbanking"

Now download and unpack the latest GnuCash 2.2 source. You are looking for the latest archive starting with just "gnucash." Go through the same process again, except do the following for the configure step:

./configure --enable-ofx --enable-hbci

Configuring OFX Direct Connect

That's it--once you are done, you should have a shiny installed GnuCash 2.2 with OFX Direct Connect support (you will have an Actions > Online Actions menu). Next comes the frustrating process of figuring out how to connect to your bank! This is where applications like Quicken and Microsoft Money have done the hard work for you and baked in all these details. Unfortunately, it is somewhat difficult to find out the parameters you need to pass from the Direct Connect interface to get a successful download. The GnuCash wiki has a nice article that details some of the settings and contains instructions for downloading a script that will pull down the raw information about thousands of financial institutions. Follow these instructions to get the configuration information about your bank.

Add a User

Once you have this done and have located the details for your financial institution, in GnuCash, go to Tools > Online Banking Setup. The Online Banking Setup Wizard will launch. Click the Forward button until you see the button labeled Start Aqbanking Wizard, and click it. In the AqBanking Wizard, go to the Users tab and click New.

Here's where the guesswork begins. Many fields exist in the wizard that may or may not be used by your particular institution. For example, for Charles Schwab, I put my online login (user) name in all three of the User name, User Id, and Customer Id fields. If you are downloading transactions from a bank account, put your bank's ABA routing number (the number at the bottom left of your checks) in the Bank Id field, and specify the country of your bank. For my credit card, I did specify the country, but put arbitrary text in the Bank Id field (I probably could have left it blank).

Now let's move on to the OFX tab. Using the information downloaded about your financial institution, enter any of the FID, ORG, and Broker Id values that the institution is using (there will be values for those nodes in the downloaded XML file). Put the OFX server URL in the Server URL field in its complete https:// format. It doesn't seem to matter if you specify HTTP 1.0 or 1.1, and in fact with the version of the code I compiled, it always saves it as 1.0 regardless of what I do.

For the checkboxes at the bottom, typically just check the following and then click the Get Accounts button:

Supports Account List Download
Supports Statement Download
(and, if a credit card) Send Empty Bank Id

You will be prompted for your password, and then it should pull down all the settings for the account(s) you have at that institution under the Accounts tab. You may wish to review what it downloaded and poke around in these settings, but I can't give any specific advice.

Downloading Transactions

Once you have set up your institutions and accounts, you are ready to download. NOTE: some institutions (like Chase) have a setting in your online (not GnuCash) account configuration to enable OFX download before any of this will work. To get your transactions, open the account in GnuCash and click Actions > Online Actions > Get Transactions. When downloading for the first time, you may be prompted to accept the SSL certificate of the site, and you WILL be prompted to associate the GnuCash account with the OFX account you set up. Once you have done this, for subsequent downloads, just open the GnuCash account, go to the Get Transactions as above, and key in your password (the application does not store passwords).

I hope this helps someone. While not for the faint of heart, it IS possible to have GnuCash downloading transactions directly from your bank/credit card company without any intervening file downloads.

Ubuntu 7.10 Keyboard Shortcuts in compiz (Appearance > Visual Effects)

2007-10-03T21:44:00.000-04:00

I love the eye candy compiz provides in Ubuntu 7.10. (To enable this, go to System > Preferences > Appearance, and on the Visual Effects tab, turn on Normal or Extra effects.) However, as a keyboard shortcut nut, I lamented the fact that enabling these horked all my non-standard application launch shortcuts I had entered into gconf-editor. I dug around and figured out how to fix them. (Gripe: KDE handles this configuration waaaay better.)

Run gconf-editor (Alt+F2, and type gconf-editor in the dialog box).
Drill down to apps | compiz | general | allscreens | options.
There are a series of commandx keys (command0 through command11). Pick any empty one(s) and type the command to start the application(s) you desire, e.g. for command0: speedcrunch
For any commandx you entered, find the corresponding run_commandx_key node further down the screen. Type the keystroke you desire to trigger running the command. Special keys are:

Control: <Control>
Alt: <Alt>
Windows key: <Super>
Shift: <Shift>

So, to set the key sequence Windows+Alt+s to launch SpeedCrunch in the example above, I would type (not press) the following in run_command0_key: <Super><Alt>s

Does anyone know how to represent the escape key? It used to be "Escape", but that doesn't seem to work with any of the combinations I tried.

** UPDATE 15 Oct: I learned that you can more naturally set the shortcut commands and keystrokes by installing the compizconfig-settings-manager package. Once installed, this is accessed via the System > Preferences > Advanced Desktop Effects Settings menu entry.

Under its Command options, you can enter the commands that get stored in the commandx keys above. Then on the Actions tab under the Commands section, you can click in the Key column and type in the keystroke you wish to set for each command. I still had problems getting the Ctrl+Shift+Escape keystroke mapped, but for many keystrokes this is much easier.

Microsoft Hotfix Request Form

2007-09-20T07:56:00.001-04:00

http://support.microsoft.com/gp/CUHotFix_LandingPage_Request

I learned today that there is a web page you can use to request Microsoft hotfixes that are not available for public download. You supply your email address and the KB article number and a representative will contact you within eight hours.

Associating FreeMind mind map files with FreeMind in KDE

2007-02-08T19:58:00.000-05:00

FreeMind is a fantastic cross-platform mind map application. If you haven't used it, I highly recommend it as it is a revolutionary way of taking notes, organizing thoughts, and planning.

On Windows, the FreeMind installer offers to associate its .mm files with the application in Windows Explorer. On KDE however, you have to do this yourself. I happened to put the missing pieces together on how to do this when looking over Beagle index logs that revealed the FreeMind MIME type to me. The steps are:

Run kcontrol (KDE Control Center).
Under KDE Components, choose File Associations.
Click Add. Change the group to text, and enter x-troff-mm for the type name.
Under Filename Patterns, enter *.mm. Fill in the description as FreeMind Mind Map.
Under Application Preference Order, click Add, and browse to the FreeMind application (on mine, it installed under Office; you can probably just enter /usr/bin/freemind).
Click Apply and you're all done.

If you want to associate the FreeMind icon while you are here, you'll have to download it from the source tree. In the 0.8.0 source zip file, it's at freemind/images/FreeMindWindowIcon.png. I copied this to /usr/share/icons and then made the association in kcontrol.

Visual Studio Extensions for WF conflict with Office Live Meeting 2005

2007-02-02T14:06:00.001-05:00

Not sure if this is related to me trying to develop on Vista, but when I run the installer for Visual Studio 2005 Extensions for Windows Workflow Foundation (EN), it tries to repair or reinstall Office Live Meeting 2005 and never actually installs the WF extensions. I had to let it remove Live Meeting (repair didn't work) before it would actually install the extensions.

Good CSS reference guide for MOSS

2007-01-31T19:16:00.000-05:00

http://www.heathersolomon.com/content/sp07cssreference.htm

This site has a good guide to the MOSS CSS classes, useful for when you are trying to override certain styles to customize the portal.

Missing telnet client in Vista

2007-01-31T16:46:00.000-05:00

I needed to check if an SMTP server would respond on the correct port and DNS name. I fired up telnet from a command prompt... and discovered that there was no telnet client. This post indicates it's disabled by default and contains instructions for enabling it again.

Vista RTM and its networking "tuning"

2007-01-12T16:22:00.000-05:00

I was having some maddening issues with Vista Business RTM:

MSN Messenger was constantly getting disconnected, but Google Talk stayed rock solid.
LiveMeeting (the Windows version) would not stay connected.
Firefox would halfway load a web page and then freeze.

It seems that Vista was automatically tuning my networking settings. Since declining this assistance, the above programs started running normally. The fix for me was to disable network auto tuning:

Click Start and type cmd.
When cmd.exe appears, right click and select Run as Administrator.
Enter the following command: netsh int tcp set global autotuninglevel=disabled
Reboot after getting the OK message.

SQL Server 2005 Developer and AdventureWorks on Vista

2006-10-17T13:50:00.000-04:00

I had a problem getting the AdventureWorks sample database that I installed to run under Vista RC1. SQL Server Management Studio kept reporting an error when I tried to access either the AdventureWorks or AdventureWorksDW databases. To get around this, I discovered that I needed to add my Windows user account to the sysadmin server role. After doing this, I was able to access both databases.

On a side note, I can't get SQL Server 2005 SP1 to install. It keeps prompting with a dialog box reading "Error performing inpage operation" regardless of whether or not I run the installer as administrator. Looks like I'm stuck waiting for SQL Server 2005 SP2 for this to work right.

Getting Virtual Server 2005 R2 to work under Vista

2006-10-06T08:00:00.000-04:00

I found an excellent post discussing how to make Virtual Server 2005 work on Vista, but the key thing that helped me was changing the authentication on the VirtualServer virtual directory to Basic Authentication (it was originally Anonymous Authentication). This prevented me from having to run IE as an administrator.

Update 16 Oct: after moving my VMs back to my machine, I discovered that the basic auth enabled me to start the machines and use the virtual machine web site, but when I tried the ActiveX control to actually control the machines, it would not accept my user account when prompting for the remote control. Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 beta 2 did not help. I ended up going back to Windows integrated security for the VirtualServer virtual directory and doing a "Run as Administrator" on IE before browsing to the administration website.

Burning software for Vista?

2006-09-29T07:43:00.000-04:00

Aargh, it seems to be pretty difficult to find any CD/DVD burning software for Vista. I had been using Nero 6 but it is marked as not compatible upon install (and I've read of other users having a problem with this). Any thoughts as to what I can use?

Early Windows Vista RC1 impressions

2006-09-28T08:25:00.000-04:00

My hard drive died, so I rebuilt my laptop with Windows Vista RC1. Here are my initial impressions after a week living with Vista:

Good

Backup is integrated and does scheduled backups with differentials
Shore is purty
New security features exist to allow 'sudo' when executing programs with elevated privilege needed
BitLocker drive encryption (in Vista Ultimate) is native

Bad

Trend AntiVirus does not install
FreeMind

Open dialog fails (but you can open mindmaps by drag-and-drop or double-click association)

Save As dialog fails (so, you need to have a blank mindmap to copy for new maps); existing maps can be saved

Uses a ton of HD space (~10GB just for Vista alone)
Nero 6 doesn't work

Other Points of Interest

.NET Framework 1.1 is not installed; have to install it and the SP1 patch for it to function