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  • How to configure fastcgi to work with ligttpd in ubuntu

    - by michael
    I am able to run lighttpd on ubuntu 9.10. But when i tried to setup fastcgi with lighttpd by putting this in the ligttpd.conf file: #### fastcgi module fastcgi.server = ( "/fastcgi_scripts/" => (( "host" => "127.0.0.1", "port" => "9098", "check-local" => "disable", "bin-path" => "/usr/local/bin/cgi-fcgi", "docroot" => "/" # remote server may use # it's own docroot )) ) This is what I get in the error.log in ligttpd: 2010-03-07 21:00:11: (log.c.166) server started 2010-03-07 21:00:11: (mod_fastcgi.c.1104) the fastcgi-backend /usr/local/bin/cgi-fcgi failed to start: 2010-03-07 21:00:11: (mod_fastcgi.c.1108) child exited with status 1 /usr/local/bin/cgi-fcgi 2010-03-07 21:00:11: (mod_fastcgi.c.1111) If you're trying to run your app as a FastCGI backend, make sure you're using the FastCGI-enabled version. If this is PHP on Gentoo, add 'fastcgi' to the USE flags. 2010-03-07 21:00:11: (mod_fastcgi.c.1399) [ERROR]: spawning fcgi failed. 2010-03-07 21:00:11: (server.c.931) Configuration of plugins failed. Going down. I do have cgi-fcgi in /usr/local/bin: $ which cgi-fcgi /usr/local/bin/cgi-fcgi '/usr/local/bin/cgi-fcgi' is the executable after I download and compile fast-cgi. Here is my lighttpd conf file: $ more lighttpd.conf # lighttpd configuration file # # use it as a base for lighttpd 1.0.0 and above # # $Id: lighttpd.conf,v 1.7 2004/11/03 22:26:05 weigon Exp $ ############ Options you really have to take care of #################### ## modules to load # at least mod_access and mod_accesslog should be loaded # all other module should only be loaded if really neccesary # - saves some time # - saves memory server.modules = ( # "mod_rewrite", # "mod_redirect", # "mod_alias", "mod_access", # "mod_trigger_b4_dl", # "mod_auth", # "mod_status", # "mod_setenv", "mod_fastcgi", # "mod_proxy", # "mod_simple_vhost", # "mod_evhost", # "mod_userdir", # "mod_cgi", # "mod_compress", # "mod_ssi", # "mod_usertrack", # "mod_expire", # "mod_secdownload", # "mod_rrdtool", "mod_accesslog" ) ## A static document-root. For virtual hosting take a look at the ## mod_simple_vhost module. server.document-root = "/srv/www/htdocs/" ## where to send error-messages to server.errorlog = "/var/log/lighttpd/error.log" # files to check for if .../ is requested index-file.names = ( "index.php", "index.html", "index.htm", "default.htm" ) ## set the event-handler (read the performance section in the manual) # server.event-handler = "freebsd-kqueue" # needed on OS X # mimetype mapping mimetype.assign = ( ".pdf" => "application/pdf", ".sig" => "application/pgp-signature", ".spl" => "application/futuresplash", ".class" => "application/octet-stream", ".ps" => "application/postscript", ".torrent" => "application/x-bittorrent", ".dvi" => "application/x-dvi", ".gz" => "application/x-gzip", ".pac" => "application/x-ns-proxy-autoconfig", ".swf" => "application/x-shockwave-flash", ".tar.gz" => "application/x-tgz", ".tgz" => "application/x-tgz", ".tar" => "application/x-tar", ".zip" => "application/zip", ".mp3" => "audio/mpeg", ".m3u" => "audio/x-mpegurl", ".wma" => "audio/x-ms-wma", ".wax" => "audio/x-ms-wax", ".ogg" => "application/ogg", ".wav" => "audio/x-wav", ".gif" => "image/gif", ".jar" => "application/x-java-archive", ".jpg" => "image/jpeg", ".jpeg" => "image/jpeg", ".png" => "image/png", ".xbm" => "image/x-xbitmap", ".xpm" => "image/x-xpixmap", ".xwd" => "image/x-xwindowdump", ".css" => "text/css", ".html" => "text/html", ".htm" => "text/html", ".js" => "text/javascript", ".asc" => "text/plain", ".c" => "text/plain", ".cpp" => "text/plain", ".log" => "text/plain", ".conf" => "text/plain", ".text" => "text/plain", ".txt" => "text/plain", ".dtd" => "text/xml", ".xml" => "text/xml", ".mpeg" => "video/mpeg", ".mpg" => "video/mpeg", ".mov" => "video/quicktime", ".qt" => "video/quicktime", ".avi" => "video/x-msvideo", ".asf" => "video/x-ms-asf", ".asx" => "video/x-ms-asf", ".wmv" => "video/x-ms-wmv", ".bz2" => "application/x-bzip", ".tbz" => "application/x-bzip-compressed-tar", ".tar.bz2" => "application/x-bzip-compressed-tar", # default mime type "" => "application/octet-stream", ) # Use the "Content-Type" extended attribute to obtain mime type if possible #mimetype.use-xattr = "enable" ## send a different Server: header ## be nice and keep it at lighttpd # server.tag = "lighttpd" #### accesslog module accesslog.filename = "/var/log/lighttpd/access.log" ## deny access the file-extensions # # ~ is for backupfiles from vi, emacs, joe, ... # .inc is often used for code includes which should in general not be part # of the document-root url.access-deny = ( "~", ".inc" ) $HTTP["url"] =~ "\.pdf$" { server.range-requests = "disable" } ## # which extensions should not be handle via static-file transfer # # .php, .pl, .fcgi are most often handled by mod_fastcgi or mod_cgi static-file.exclude-extensions = ( ".php", ".pl", ".fcgi" ) ######### Options that are good to be but not neccesary to be changed ####### ## bind to port (default: 80) server.port = 9090 ## bind to localhost (default: all interfaces) server.bind = "127.0.0.1" ## error-handler for status 404 #server.error-handler-404 = "/error-handler.html" #server.error-handler-404 = "/error-handler.php" ## to help the rc.scripts #server.pid-file = "/var/run/lighttpd.pid" ###### virtual hosts ## ## If you want name-based virtual hosting add the next three settings and load ## mod_simple_vhost ## ## document-root = ## virtual-server-root + virtual-server-default-host + virtual-server-docroot ## or ## virtual-server-root + http-host + virtual-server-docroot ## #simple-vhost.server-root = "/srv/www/vhosts/" #simple-vhost.default-host = "www.example.org" #simple-vhost.document-root = "/htdocs/" ## ## Format: <errorfile-prefix><status-code>.html ## -> ..../status-404.html for 'File not found' #server.errorfile-prefix = "/usr/share/lighttpd/errors/status-" #server.errorfile-prefix = "/srv/www/errors/status-" ## virtual directory listings #dir-listing.activate = "enable" ## select encoding for directory listings #dir-listing.encoding = "utf-8" ## enable debugging #debug.log-request-header = "enable" #debug.log-response-header = "enable" #debug.log-request-handling = "enable" #debug.log-file-not-found = "enable" ### only root can use these options # # chroot() to directory (default: no chroot() ) #server.chroot = "/" ## change uid to <uid> (default: don't care) #server.username = "wwwrun" ## change uid to <uid> (default: don't care) #server.groupname = "wwwrun" #### compress module #compress.cache-dir = "/var/cache/lighttpd/compress/" #compress.filetype = ("text/plain", "text/html") #### proxy module ## read proxy.txt for more info #proxy.server = ( ".php" => # ( "localhost" => # ( # "host" => "192.168.0.101", # "port" => 80 # ) # ) # ) #### fastcgi module fastcgi.server = ( "/fastcgi_scripts/" => (( "host" => "127.0.0.1", "port" => 1026, "check-local" => "disable", "bin-path" => "/usr/local/bin/cgi-fcgi", #"docroot" => "/" # remote server may use # it's own docroot )) ) ## read fastcgi.txt for more info ## for PHP don't forget to set cgi.fix_pathinfo = 1 in the php.ini #fastcgi.server = ( ".php" => # ( "localhost" => # ( # "socket" => "/var/run/lighttpd/php-fastcgi.s ocket", # "bin-path" => "/usr/local/bin/php-cgi" # ) # ) # ) #### CGI module #cgi.assign = ( ".pl" => "/usr/bin/perl", # ".cgi" => "/usr/bin/perl" ) # #### SSL engine #ssl.engine = "enable" #ssl.pemfile = "/etc/ssl/private/lighttpd.pem" #### status module #status.status-url = "/server-status" #status.config-url = "/server-config" #### auth module ## read authentication.txt for more info #auth.backend = "plain" #auth.backend.plain.userfile = "lighttpd.user" #auth.backend.plain.groupfile = "lighttpd.group" #auth.backend.ldap.hostname = "localhost" #auth.backend.ldap.base-dn = "dc=my-domain,dc=com" #auth.backend.ldap.filter = "(uid=$)" #auth.require = ( "/server-status" => # ( # "method" => "digest", # "realm" => "download archiv", # "require" => "user=jan" # ), # "/server-config" => # ( # "method" => "digest", # "realm" => "download archiv", # "require" => "valid-user" # ) # ) #### url handling modules (rewrite, redirect, access) #url.rewrite = ( "^/$" => "/server-status" ) #url.redirect = ( "^/wishlist/(.+)" => "http://www.123.org/$1" ) #### both rewrite/redirect support back reference to regex conditional using %n #$HTTP["host"] =~ "^www\.(.*)" { # url.redirect = ( "^/(.*)" => "http://%1/$1" ) #} # # define a pattern for the host url finding # %% => % sign # %0 => domain name + tld # %1 => tld # %2 => domain name without tld # %3 => subdomain 1 name # %4 => subdomain 2 name # #evhost.path-pattern = "/srv/www/vhosts/%3/htdocs/" #### expire module #expire.url = ( "/buggy/" => "access 2 hours", "/asdhas/" => "ac cess plus 1 seconds 2 minutes") #### ssi #ssi.extension = ( ".shtml" ) #### rrdtool #rrdtool.binary = "/usr/bin/rrdtool" #rrdtool.db-name = "/var/lib/lighttpd/lighttpd.rrd" #### setenv #setenv.add-request-header = ( "TRAV_ENV" => "mysql://user@host/db" ) #setenv.add-response-header = ( "X-Secret-Message" => "42" ) ## for mod_trigger_b4_dl # trigger-before-download.gdbm-filename = "/var/lib/lighttpd/trigger.db" # trigger-before-download.memcache-hosts = ( "127.0.0.1:11211" ) # trigger-before-download.trigger-url = "^/trigger/" # trigger-before-download.download-url = "^/download/" # trigger-before-download.deny-url = "http://127.0.0.1/index.html" # trigger-before-download.trigger-timeout = 10 #### variable usage: ## variable name without "." is auto prefixed by "var." and becomes "var.bar" #bar = 1 #var.mystring = "foo" ## integer add #bar += 1 ## string concat, with integer cast as string, result: "www.foo1.com" #server.name = "www." + mystring + var.bar + ".com" ## array merge #index-file.names = (foo + ".php") + index-file.names #index-file.names += (foo + ".php") #### include #include /etc/lighttpd/lighttpd-inc.conf ## same as above if you run: "lighttpd -f /etc/lighttpd/lighttpd.conf" #include "lighttpd-inc.conf" #### include_shell #include_shell "echo var.a=1" ## the above is same as: #var.a=1 Thank you for your help.

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  • ServerRoot in my lighttpd.conf

    - by michael
    Hi, I have use the following example lighttpd.conf to launch my lighttpd. Can you please tell me where is my 'ServerRoot'? # lighttpd configuration file # # use it as a base for lighttpd 1.0.0 and above # # $Id: lighttpd.conf,v 1.7 2004/11/03 22:26:05 weigon Exp $ ############ Options you really have to take care of #################### ## modules to load # at least mod_access and mod_accesslog should be loaded # all other module should only be loaded if really neccesary # - saves some time # - saves memory server.modules = ( # "mod_rewrite", # "mod_redirect", # "mod_alias", "mod_access", # "mod_trigger_b4_dl", # "mod_auth", # "mod_status", # "mod_setenv", "mod_fastcgi", # "mod_proxy", # "mod_simple_vhost", # "mod_evhost", # "mod_userdir", # "mod_cgi", # "mod_compress", # "mod_ssi", # "mod_usertrack", # "mod_expire", # "mod_secdownload", # "mod_rrdtool", "mod_accesslog" ) ## A static document-root. For virtual hosting take a look at the ## mod_simple_vhost module. server.document-root = "/srv/www/htdocs/" ## where to send error-messages to server.errorlog = "/var/log/lighttpd/error.log" # files to check for if .../ is requested index-file.names = ( "index.php", "index.html", "index.htm", "default.htm" ) ## set the event-handler (read the performance section in the manual) # server.event-handler = "freebsd-kqueue" # needed on OS X # mimetype mapping mimetype.assign = ( ".pdf" => "application/pdf", ".sig" => "application/pgp-signature", ".spl" => "application/futuresplash", ".class" => "application/octet-stream", ".ps" => "application/postscript", ".torrent" => "application/x-bittorrent", ".dvi" => "application/x-dvi", ".gz" => "application/x-gzip", ".pac" => "application/x-ns-proxy-autoconfig", ".swf" => "application/x-shockwave-flash", ".tar.gz" => "application/x-tgz", ".tgz" => "application/x-tgz", ".tar" => "application/x-tar", ".zip" => "application/zip", ".mp3" => "audio/mpeg", ".m3u" => "audio/x-mpegurl", ".wma" => "audio/x-ms-wma", ".wax" => "audio/x-ms-wax", ".ogg" => "application/ogg", ".wav" => "audio/x-wav", ".gif" => "image/gif", ".jar" => "application/x-java-archive", ".jpg" => "image/jpeg", ".jpeg" => "image/jpeg", ".png" => "image/png", ".xbm" => "image/x-xbitmap", ".xpm" => "image/x-xpixmap", ".xwd" => "image/x-xwindowdump", ".css" => "text/css", ".html" => "text/html", ".htm" => "text/html", ".js" => "text/javascript", ".asc" => "text/plain", ".c" => "text/plain", ".cpp" => "text/plain", ".log" => "text/plain", ".conf" => "text/plain", ".text" => "text/plain", ".txt" => "text/plain", ".dtd" => "text/xml", ".xml" => "text/xml", ".mpeg" => "video/mpeg", ".mpg" => "video/mpeg", ".mov" => "video/quicktime", ".qt" => "video/quicktime", ".avi" => "video/x-msvideo", ".asf" => "video/x-ms-asf", ".asx" => "video/x-ms-asf", ".wmv" => "video/x-ms-wmv", ".bz2" => "application/x-bzip", ".tbz" => "application/x-bzip-compressed-tar", ".tar.bz2" => "application/x-bzip-compressed-tar", # default mime type "" => "application/octet-stream", ) # Use the "Content-Type" extended attribute to obtain mime type if possible #mimetype.use-xattr = "enable" ## send a different Server: header ## be nice and keep it at lighttpd # server.tag = "lighttpd" #### accesslog module accesslog.filename = "/var/log/lighttpd/access.log" ## deny access the file-extensions # # ~ is for backupfiles from vi, emacs, joe, ... # .inc is often used for code includes which should in general not be part # of the document-root url.access-deny = ( "~", ".inc" ) $HTTP["url"] =~ "\.pdf$" { server.range-requests = "disable" } ## # which extensions should not be handle via static-file transfer # # .php, .pl, .fcgi are most often handled by mod_fastcgi or mod_cgi static-file.exclude-extensions = ( ".php", ".pl", ".fcgi" ) ######### Options that are good to be but not neccesary to be changed ####### ## bind to port (default: 80) server.port = 9090 ## bind to localhost (default: all interfaces) server.bind = "127.0.0.1" ## error-handler for status 404 #server.error-handler-404 = "/error-handler.html" #server.error-handler-404 = "/error-handler.php" ## to help the rc.scripts #server.pid-file = "/var/run/lighttpd.pid" ###### virtual hosts ## ## If you want name-based virtual hosting add the next three settings and load ## mod_simple_vhost ## ## document-root = ## virtual-server-root + virtual-server-default-host + virtual-server-docroot ## or ## virtual-server-root + http-host + virtual-server-docroot ## #simple-vhost.server-root = "/srv/www/vhosts/" #simple-vhost.default-host = "www.example.org" #simple-vhost.document-root = "/htdocs/" ## ## Format: <errorfile-prefix><status-code>.html ## -> ..../status-404.html for 'File not found' #server.errorfile-prefix = "/usr/share/lighttpd/errors/status-" #server.errorfile-prefix = "/srv/www/errors/status-" ## virtual directory listings #dir-listing.activate = "enable" ## select encoding for directory listings #dir-listing.encoding = "utf-8" ## enable debugging #debug.log-request-header = "enable" #debug.log-response-header = "enable" #debug.log-request-handling = "enable" #debug.log-file-not-found = "enable" ### only root can use these options # # chroot() to directory (default: no chroot() ) #server.chroot = "/" ## change uid to <uid> (default: don't care) #server.username = "wwwrun" ## change uid to <uid> (default: don't care) #server.groupname = "wwwrun" #### compress module #compress.cache-dir = "/var/cache/lighttpd/compress/" #compress.filetype = ("text/plain", "text/html") #### proxy module ## read proxy.txt for more info #proxy.server = ( ".php" => # ( "localhost" => # ( # "host" => "192.168.0.101", # "port" => 80 # ) # ) # ) #### fastcgi module fastcgi.server = ( "/fastcgi_scripts/" => (( "host" => "127.0.0.1", "port" => 1026, "check-local" => "disable", "bin-path" => "/usr/local/bin/cgi-fcgi", #"docroot" => "/" # remote server may use # it's own docroot )) ) ## read fastcgi.txt for more info ## for PHP don't forget to set cgi.fix_pathinfo = 1 in the php.ini #fastcgi.server = ( ".php" => # ( "localhost" => # ( # "socket" => "/var/run/lighttpd/php-fastcgi.socket", # "bin-path" => "/usr/local/bin/php-cgi" # ) # ) # ) #### CGI module #cgi.assign = ( ".pl" => "/usr/bin/perl", # ".cgi" => "/usr/bin/perl" ) # #### SSL engine #ssl.engine = "enable" #ssl.pemfile = "/etc/ssl/private/lighttpd.pem" #### status module #status.status-url = "/server-status" #status.config-url = "/server-config" #### auth module ## read authentication.txt for more info #auth.backend = "plain" #auth.backend.plain.userfile = "lighttpd.user" #auth.backend.plain.groupfile = "lighttpd.group" #auth.backend.ldap.hostname = "localhost" #auth.backend.ldap.base-dn = "dc=my-domain,dc=com" #auth.backend.ldap.filter = "(uid=$)" #auth.require = ( "/server-status" => # ( # "method" => "digest", # "realm" => "download archiv", # "require" => "user=jan" # ), # "/server-config" => # ( # "method" => "digest", # "realm" => "download archiv", # "require" => "valid-user" # ) # ) #### url handling modules (rewrite, redirect, access) #url.rewrite = ( "^/$" => "/server-status" ) #url.redirect = ( "^/wishlist/(.+)" => "http://www.123.org/$1" ) #### both rewrite/redirect support back reference to regex conditional using %n #$HTTP["host"] =~ "^www\.(.*)" { # url.redirect = ( "^/(.*)" => "http://%1/$1" ) #} # # define a pattern for the host url finding # %% => % sign # %0 => domain name + tld # %1 => tld # %2 => domain name without tld # %3 => subdomain 1 name # %4 => subdomain 2 name # #evhost.path-pattern = "/srv/www/vhosts/%3/htdocs/" #### expire module #expire.url = ( "/buggy/" => "access 2 hours", "/asdhas/" => "access plus 1 seconds 2 minutes") #### ssi #ssi.extension = ( ".shtml" ) #### rrdtool #rrdtool.binary = "/usr/bin/rrdtool" #rrdtool.db-name = "/var/lib/lighttpd/lighttpd.rrd" #### setenv #setenv.add-request-header = ( "TRAV_ENV" => "mysql://user@host/db" ) #setenv.add-response-header = ( "X-Secret-Message" => "42" ) ## for mod_trigger_b4_dl # trigger-before-download.gdbm-filename = "/var/lib/lighttpd/trigger.db" # trigger-before-download.memcache-hosts = ( "127.0.0.1:11211" ) # trigger-before-download.trigger-url = "^/trigger/" # trigger-before-download.download-url = "^/download/" # trigger-before-download.deny-url = "http://127.0.0.1/index.html" # trigger-before-download.trigger-timeout = 10 #### variable usage: ## variable name without "." is auto prefixed by "var." and becomes "var.bar" #bar = 1 #var.mystring = "foo" ## integer add #bar += 1 ## string concat, with integer cast as string, result: "www.foo1.com" #server.name = "www." + mystring + var.bar + ".com" ## array merge #index-file.names = (foo + ".php") + index-file.names #index-file.names += (foo + ".php") #### include #include /etc/lighttpd/lighttpd-inc.conf ## same as above if you run: "lighttpd -f /etc/lighttpd/lighttpd.conf" #include "lighttpd-inc.conf" #### include_shell #include_shell "echo var.a=1" ## the above is same as: #var.a=1 Thank you.

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  • Integrate SharePoint 2010 with Team Foundation Server 2010

    - by Martin Hinshelwood
    Our client is using a brand new shiny installation of SharePoint 2010, so we need to integrate our upgraded Team Foundation Server 2010 instance into it. In order to do that you need to run the Team Foundation Server 2010 install on the SharePoint 2010 server and choose to install only the “Extensions for SharePoint Products and Technologies”. We want out upgraded Team Project Collection to create any new portal in this SharePoint 2010 server farm. There a number of goodies above and beyond a solution file that requires the install, with the main one being the TFS2010 client API. These goodies allow proper integration with the creation and viewing of Work Items from SharePoint a new feature with TFS 2010. This works in both SharePoint 2007 and SharePoint 2010 with the level of integration dependant on the version of SharePoint that you are running. There are three levels of integration with “SharePoint Services 3.0” or “SharePoint Foundation 2010” being the lowest. This level only offers reporting services framed integration for reporting along with Work Item Integration and document management. The highest is Microsoft Office SharePoint Services (MOSS) Enterprise with Excel Services integration providing some lovely dashboards. Figure: Dashboards take the guessing out of Project Planning and estimation. Plus writing these reports would be boring!   The Extensions that you need are on the same installation media as the main TFS install and the only difference is the options you pick during the install. Figure: Installing the TFS 2010 Extensions for SharePoint Products and Technologies onto SharePoint 2010   Annoyingly you may need to reboot a couple of times, but on this server the process was MUCH smother than on our internal server. I think this was mostly to do with this being a clean install. Once it is installed you need to run the configuration. This will add all of the Solution and Templates that are needed for SharePoint to work properly with TFS. Figure: This is where all the TFS 2010 goodies are added to your SharePoint 2010 server and the TFS 2010 object model is installed.   Figure: All done, you have everything installed, but you still need to configure it Now that we have the TFS 2010 SharePoint Extensions installed on our SharePoint 2010 server we need to configure them both so that they will talk happily to each other. Configuring the SharePoint 2010 Managed path for Team Foundation Server 2010 In order for TFS to automatically create your project portals you need a wildcard managed path setup. This is where TFS will create the portal during the creation of a new Team project. To find the managed paths page for any application you need to first select the “Managed web applications”  link from the SharePoint 2010 Central Administration screen. Figure: Find the “Manage web applications” link under the “Application Management” section. On you are there you will see that the “Managed Paths” are there, they are just greyed out and selecting one of the applications will enable it to be clicked. Figure: You need to select an application for the SharePoint 2010 ribbon to activate.   Figure: You need to select an application before you can get to the Managed Paths for that application. Now we need to add a managed path for TFS 2010 to create its portals under. I have gone for the obvious option of just calling the managed path “TFS02” as the TFS 2010 server is the second TFS server that the client has installed, TFS 2008 being the first. This links the location to the server name, and as you can’t have two projects of the same name in two separate project collections there is unlikely to be any conflicts. Figure: Add a “tfs02” wildcard inclusion path to your SharePoint site. Configure the Team Foundation Server 2010 connection to SharePoint 2010 In order to have you new TFS 2010 Server talk to and create sites in SharePoint 2010 you need to tell the TFS server where to put them. As this TFS 2010 server was installed in out-of-the-box mode it has a SharePoint Services 3.0 (the free one) server running on the same box. But we want to change that so we can use the external SharePoint 2010 instance. Just open the “Team Foundation Server Administration Console” and navigate to the “SharePoint Web Applications” section. Here you click “Add” and enter the details for the Managed path we just created. Figure: If you have special permissions on your SharePoint you may need to add accounts to the “Service Accounts” section.    Before we can se this new SharePoint 2010 instance to be the default for our upgraded Team Project Collection we need to configure SharePoint to take instructions from our TFS server. Configure SharePoint 2010 to connect to Team Foundation Server 2010 On your SharePoint 2010 server open the Team Foundation Server Administration Console and select the “Extensions for SharePoint Products and Technologies” node. Here we need to “grant access” for our TFS 2010 server to create sites. Click the “Grant access” link and  fill out the full URL to the  TFS server, for example http://servername.domain.com:8080/tfs, and if need be restrict the path that TFS sites can be created on. Remember that when the users create a new team project they can change the default and point it anywhere they like as long as it is an authorised SharePoint location. Figure: Grant access for your TFS 2010 server to create sites in SharePoint 2010 Now that we have an authorised location for our team project portals to be created we need to tell our Team Project Collection that this is where it should stick sites by default for any new Team Projects created. Configure the Team Foundation Server 2010 Team Project Collection to create new sites in SharePoint 2010 Back on out TFS 2010 server we need to setup the defaults for our upgraded Team Project Collection to the new SharePoint 2010 integration we have just set up. On the TFS 2010 server open up the “Team Foundation Server Administration Console” again and navigate to the “Team Project Collections” node. Once you are there you will see a list of all of your TPC’s and in our case we have a DefaultCollection as well as out named and Upgraded collection for TFS 2008. If you select the “SharePoint Site” tab we can see that it is not currently configured. Figure: Our new Upgrade TFS2008 Team Project Collection does not have SharePoint configured Select to “Edit Default Site Location” and select the new integration point that we just set up for SharePoint 2010. Once you have selected the “SharePoint Web Application” (the thing we just configured) then it will give you an example based on that configuration point and the name of the Team Project Collection that we are configuring. Figure: Set the default location for new Team Project Portals to be created for this Team Project Collection This is where the reason for configuring the Extensions on the SharePoint 2010 server before doing this last bit becomes apparent. TFS 2010 is going to create a site at our http://sharepointserver/tfs02/ location called http://sharepointserver/tfs02/[TeamProjectCollection], or whatever we had specified, and it would have had difficulty doing this if we had not given it permission first. Figure: If there is no Team Project Collection site at this location the TFS 2010 server is going to create one This will create a nice Team Project Collection parent site to contain the Portals for any new Team Projects that are created. It is with noting that it will not create portals for existing Team Projects as this process is run during the Team Project Creation wizard. Figure: Just a basic parent site to host all of your new Team Project Portals as sub sites   You will need to add all of the users that will be creating Team Projects to be Administrators of this site so that they will not get an error during the Project Creation Wizard. You may also want to customise this as a proper portal to your projects if you are going to be having lots of them, but it is really just a default placeholder so you have a top level site that you can backup and point at. You have now integrated SharePoint 2010 and team Foundation Server 2010! You can now go forth and multiple your Team Projects for this Team Project Collection or you can continue to add portals to your other Collections.   Technorati Tags: TFS 2010,Sharepoint 2010,VS ALM

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  • This task is currently locked by a running workflow and cannot be edited. Limitation to both Nintex and SPD workflow

    - by ybbest
    Note, this post is from Nintex Forum here. These limitations apply to both SharePoint designer Workflow and Nintex Workflow as Nintex using the SharePoint workflow engine. The common cause that I experience is that ‘parent’ workflow is generating more than one task at once. This is common as you can have multiple approvers for certain approval process. You could also have workflow running when the task is created, one of the common scenario is you would like to set a custom column value in your approval task. For me this is huge limitation, as Nintex lover I really hope Nintex could solve this problem with Microsoft going forward. Introduction “This task is currently locked by a running workflow and cannot be edited” is a common message that is seen when an error occurs while the SharePoint workflow engine is processing a task item associated with a workflow. When a workflow processes a task normally, the following sequence of events is expected to occur: 1.       The process begins. 2.       The workflow places a ‘lock’ on the task so nothing else can change the values while the workflow is processing. 3.       The workflow processes the task. 4.       The lock is released when the task processing is finished. When the message is encountered, it usually indicates that an error occurred between step 2 and 4. As a result, the lock is never released. Therefore, the ‘task locked’ message is not an error itself, rather a symptom of another error – the ‘task locked’ message does not indicate what went wrong. In most cases, once this message is encountered, the workflow cannot be made to continue and must be terminated and started again. The following is a guide that can help troubleshoot the cause of these messages.  Some initial observations to narrow down the potential causes are: Is the error consistent or intermittent? When the error is consistent, it will happen every time the workflow is run. When it is intermittent, it may happen regularly, but not every time. Does the error occur the first time the user tries to respond to a task, or do they respond and notice the workflow does not continue, and when they respond again the error occurs? If the message is present when the user first responds to the task, the issue would have occurred when the task was created. Otherwise, it would have occurred when the user attempted to respond to the task. Causes Modifying the task list A cause of this error appearing consistently the first time a user tries to respond to a task is a modification to the default task list schema. For example, changing the ‘Assigned to’ field in a task list to be a multiple selection will cause the behaviour. Deleting the workflow task then restoring it from the Recycle bin If you start a workflow, delete the workflow task then restore it from the Recycle Bin in SharePoint, the workflow will fail with the ‘task locked’ error.  This is confirmed behaviour whether using a SharePoint Designer or a Nintex workflow.  You will need to terminate the workflow and start it again. Parallel simultaneous responses A cause of this error appearing inconsistently is multiple users responding to tasks in parallel at the same time. In this scenario, one task will complete correctly and the other will not process. When the user tries again, the ‘task locked’ message will display. Nintex included a workaround for this issue in build 11000. In build 11000 and later, one of the users will receive a message on the task form when they attempt to respond, stating that they need to try again in a few moments. Additional processing on the task A cause of this error appearing consistently and inconsistently is having an additional system running on the items in the task list. Some examples include: a workflow running on the task list, an event receiver running on the task list or another automated process querying and updating workflow tasks. Note: This Microsoft help article (http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepointdesigner/HA102376561033.aspx#5) explains creating a workflow that runs on the task list to update a field on the task. Our experience shows that this causes the ‘Task Locked’ issues when the ‘parent’ workflow is generating more than one task at once. Isolated system error If the error is a rare event, or a ‘one off’ event, then an isolated system error may have occurred. For example, if there is a database connectivity issue while the workflow is processing the task response, the task will lock. In this case, the user will respond to a task but the workflow will not continue. When they respond again, the ‘task locked’ message will display. In this case, there will be an error in the SharePoint ULS Logs at the time that the user originally responded. Temporary delay while workflow processes If the workflow is taking a long time to process after a user submits a task, they may notice and try to respond to the task again. They will see the task locked error, but after a number of attempts (or after waiting some time) the task response page eventually indicates the task has been responded to. In this case, nothing actually went wrong, and the error message gives an accurate indication of what is happening – the workflow temporarily locked the task while it was processing. This scenario may occur in a very large workflow, or after the SharePoint application pool has just started. Modifying the task via a web service with an invalid url If the Nintex Workflow web service is used to respond to or delegate a task, the site context part of the url must be a valid alternative access mapping url. For example, if you access the web service via the IP address of the SharePoint server, and the IP address is not a valid AAM, the task can become locked. The workflow has become stuck without any apparent errors This behaviour can occur as a result of a bug in the SharePoint 2010 workflow engine.  If you do not have the August 2010 Cumulative Update (or later) for SharePoint, and your workflow uses delays, “Flexi-task”, State machine”, “Task Reminder” actions or variables, you could be affected. Check the SharePoint 2010 Updates site here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/ff800847.  The October CU is recommended http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2553031.   The fix is described as “Consider the following scenario. You add a Delay activity to a workflow. Then, you set the duration for the Delay activity. You deploy the workflow in SharePoint Foundation 2010. In this scenario, the workflow is not resumed after the duration of the Delay activity”. If you find this is occurring in your environment, install the October CU, terminate all the running workflows affected and run them afresh. Investigative steps The first step to isolate the issue is to create a new task list on the site and configure the workflow to use it.  Any customizations that were made to the original task list should not be made to the new task list. If the new task list eliminates the issue, then the cause can be attributed to the original task list or a change that was made to it. To change the task list that the workflow uses: In Workflow Designer select Settings -> Startup Options Then configure the task list as required If any of the scenarios above do not help, check the SharePoint logs for any messages with a category of ‘Workflow Infrastructure’. Conclusion The information in this article has been gathered from observations and investigations by Nintex. The sources of these issues are the underlying SharePoint workflow engine. This article will be updated if further causes are discovered. From <http://connect.nintex.com/forums/thread/6503.aspx>

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  • Friday Fun: Favorite Games to Play in Chrome

    - by Asian Angel
    Online games can provide a perfect break while you are working and being able to choose from a multitude of games makes it even better. If you are a game addict then you will definitely want to have a look at the Game Button extension for Chrome. Game Button in Action Once the extension has finished installing you are ready to enjoy all that gaming goodness. To get started just click on the “Toolbar Button” and choose a game category. For our example we chose “Shooting Games”. Once you select a game category a new window will open. Towards the lower right corner you will be able to access a scrollable drop-down menu and choose the game that you would like to play. Note: Some of these games come with sounds that can not be turned off so you may want to have the volume lowered all the way or your speakers temporarily turned off if you are at work. For our first game we chose “Snowball Throw”. Notice that there is a nice variety such as “DinoKids – Archery” to games like “Secret Agent”. You can see that our game was nicely sized…not too small and not too large. Go go snowballs! This is definitely a fun one to try…the best approach for this one is to use one hand for clicking the mouse and the other hand for moving it at the same time. If desired you can post your score and see other high scores afterwards. For our second game we decided to try “Target Shooter Firing Range”. This one is definitely a little harder because you have to be extremely precise while moving as quickly as possible. Not too bad for the score but that is ok. You will certainly be able to have fun finding the games that will become your favorites while enjoying the nice variety. Conclusion If you love online games and want a good variety to choose from then the Game Button extension will make a nice addition to your browser. Links Download the Game Button extension (Google Chrome Extensions) Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Play a New Random Game Each Day in ChromeFriday Fun: Get Your Mario OnFriday Fun: Go Retro with PacmanFriday Fun: Play Air Hockey in Google ChromeFriday Fun: Five More Time Wasting Online Games TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Recycle ! Find That Elusive Icon with FindIcons Looking for Good Windows Media Player 12 Plug-ins? Find Out the Celebrity You Resemble With FaceDouble Whoa ! Use Printflush to Solve Printing Problems

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  • HttpContext.Items and Server.Transfer/Execute

    - by Rick Strahl
    A few days ago my buddy Ben Jones pointed out that he ran into a bug in the ScriptContainer control in the West Wind Web and Ajax Toolkit. The problem was basically that when a Server.Transfer call was applied the script container (and also various ClientScriptProxy script embedding routines) would potentially fail to load up the specified scripts. It turns out the problem is due to the fact that the various components in the toolkit use request specific singletons via a Current property. I use a static Current property tied to a Context.Items[] entry to handle this type of operation which looks something like this: /// <summary> /// Current instance of this class which should always be used to /// access this object. There are no public constructors to /// ensure the reference is used as a Singleton to further /// ensure that all scripts are written to the same clientscript /// manager. /// </summary> public static ClientScriptProxy Current { get { if (HttpContext.Current == null) return new ClientScriptProxy(); ClientScriptProxy proxy = null; if (HttpContext.Current.Items.Contains(STR_CONTEXTID)) proxy = HttpContext.Current.Items[STR_CONTEXTID] as ClientScriptProxy; else { proxy = new ClientScriptProxy(); HttpContext.Current.Items[STR_CONTEXTID] = proxy; } return proxy; } } The proxy is attached to a Context.Items[] item which makes the instance Request specific. This works perfectly fine in most situations EXCEPT when you’re dealing with Server.Transfer/Execute requests. Server.Transfer doesn’t cause Context.Items to be cleared so both the current transferred request and the original request’s Context.Items collection apply. For the ClientScriptProxy this causes a problem because script references are tracked on a per request basis in Context.Items to check for script duplication. Once a script is rendered an ID is written into the Context collection and so considered ‘rendered’: // No dupes - ref script include only once if (HttpContext.Current.Items.Contains( STR_SCRIPTITEM_IDENTITIFIER + fileId ) ) return; HttpContext.Current.Items.Add(STR_SCRIPTITEM_IDENTITIFIER + fileId, string.Empty); where the fileId is the script name or unique identifier. The problem is on the Transferred page the item will already exist in Context and so fail to render because it thinks the script has already rendered based on the Context item. Bummer. The workaround for this is simple once you know what’s going on, but in this case it was a bitch to track down because the context items are used in many places throughout this class. The trick is to determine when a request is transferred and then removing the specific keys. The first issue is to determine if a script is in a Trransfer or Execute call: if (HttpContext.Current.CurrentHandler != HttpContext.Current.Handler) Context.Handler is the original handler and CurrentHandler is the actual currently executing handler that is running when a Transfer/Execute is active. You can also use Context.PreviousHandler to get the last handler and chain through the whole list of handlers applied if Transfer calls are nested (dog help us all for the person debugging that). For the ClientScriptProxy the full logic to check for a transfer and remove the code looks like this: /// <summary> /// Clears all the request specific context items which are script references /// and the script placement index. /// </summary> public void ClearContextItemsOnTransfer() { if (HttpContext.Current != null) { // Check for Server.Transfer/Execute calls - we need to clear out Context.Items if (HttpContext.Current.CurrentHandler != HttpContext.Current.Handler) { List<string> Keys = HttpContext.Current.Items.Keys.Cast<string>().Where(s => s.StartsWith(STR_SCRIPTITEM_IDENTITIFIER) || s == STR_ScriptResourceIndex).ToList(); foreach (string key in Keys) { HttpContext.Current.Items.Remove(key); } } } } along with a small update to the Current property getter that sets a global flag to indicate whether the request was transferred: if (!proxy.IsTransferred && HttpContext.Current.Handler != HttpContext.Current.CurrentHandler) { proxy.ClearContextItemsOnTransfer(); proxy.IsTransferred = true; } return proxy; I know this is pretty ugly, but it works and it’s actually minimal fuss without affecting the behavior of the rest of the class. Ben had a different solution that involved explicitly clearing out the Context items and replacing the collection with a manually maintained list of items which also works, but required changes through the code to make this work. In hindsight, it would have been better to use a single object that encapsulates all the ‘persisted’ values and store that object in Context instead of all these individual small morsels. Hindsight is always 20/20 though :-}. If possible use Page.Items ClientScriptProxy is a generic component that can be used from anywhere in ASP.NET, so there are various methods that are not Page specific on this component which is why I used Context.Items, rather than the Page.Items collection.Page.Items would be a better choice since it will sidestep the above Server.Transfer nightmares as the Page is reloaded completely and so any new Page gets a new Items collection. No fuss there. So for the ScriptContainer control, which has to live on the page the behavior is a little different. It is attached to Page.Items (since it’s a control): /// <summary> /// Returns a current instance of this control if an instance /// is already loaded on the page. Otherwise a new instance is /// created, added to the Form and returned. /// /// It's important this function is not called too early in the /// page cycle - it should not be called before Page.OnInit(). /// /// This property is the preferred way to get a reference to a /// ScriptContainer control that is either already on a page /// or needs to be created. Controls in particular should always /// use this property. /// </summary> public static ScriptContainer Current { get { // We need a context for this to work! if (HttpContext.Current == null) return null; Page page = HttpContext.Current.CurrentHandler as Page; if (page == null) throw new InvalidOperationException(Resources.ERROR_ScriptContainer_OnlyWorks_With_PageBasedHandlers); ScriptContainer ctl = null; // Retrieve the current instance ctl = page.Items[STR_CONTEXTID] as ScriptContainer; if (ctl != null) return ctl; ctl = new ScriptContainer(); page.Form.Controls.Add(ctl); return ctl; } } The biggest issue with this approach is that you have to explicitly retrieve the page in the static Current property. Notice again the use of CurrentHandler (rather than Handler which was my original implementation) to ensure you get the latest page including the one that Server.Transfer fired. Server.Transfer and Server.Execute are Evil All that said – this fix is probably for the 2 people who are crazy enough to rely on Server.Transfer/Execute. :-} There are so many weird behavior problems with these commands that I avoid them at all costs. I don’t think I have a single application that uses either of these commands… Related Resources Full source of ClientScriptProxy.cs (repository) Part of the West Wind Web Toolkit Static Singletons for ASP.NET Controls Post © Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2010Posted in ASP.NET  

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  • Using JCA Adapter with OSB 11.1.1.3

    - by James Taylor
    In OSB 10g to use the JCA adapters you were required to use JDeveloper to create the necessary WSDLs and XSDs etc using the associated adapter wizard. These files were imported into Oracle Workshop (Eclipse) and used to create the business service as you would any other web service. In 11g unfortunately JDeveloper is still required. The process has changed slightly as described below. As an example I have used the JCA DB adapter as an example. Start JDeveloper 11.1.1.3 Create a new SOA Application Create a new SOA Project and call it DBAdapters. Choose the Empty Composite Template Drag a Database Adapter Component to the External References panel on the composite. Provide a service name. Create a new database connection, or use an existing one Take note of the JNDI Name, e.g. eis/DB/MyConnection This will be used to configure the DB connection in the WebLogic Console. In my example I use a stored procedure, but you can use what ever operation you require. Please refer to the following link for other options: User's Guide for Technology Adapters Select a schema and stored procedure Once the procedure has been selected, accept the defaults and finish. Startup your OEPE version of Eclipse. Create a new Oracle Service Bus Configuration Project (you can use an existing project if you have one) Create a new Oracle Service Bus Project in the configuration project created above. Instead of importing the WSDL and XSD files you import the jca file created in JDeveloper. In Eclipse right click the Oracle Service Bus Project and select Import –> Import    Choose File System Browse to the directory where JDeveloper stores its project Select the jca, wsdl, and xsd files based on the service you created in step 5. Also check the ‘Create selected folders only’ radio button. When you import you may have a little red x indicating the files are invalid. This is due to the location of the files. Open the invalid files and fix the path in relation to where you store your files in the OSB project.   Once you have the files all valid, Right-Click the jca file and select Oracle Service Bus –> Generate Service. This will create a new Business Service. In the WebLogic Console configure the JNDI name defined in step 7. You can now deploy your project and test

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  • IIS SSL Certificate Renewal Pain

    - by Rick Strahl
    I’m in the middle of my annual certificate renewal for the West Wind site and I can honestly say that I hate IIS’s certificate system.  When it works it’s fine, but when it doesn’t man can it be a pain. Because I deal with public certificates on my site merely once a year, and you have to perform the certificate dance just the right way, I seem to run into some sort of trouble every year, thinking that Microsoft surely must have addressed the issues I ran into previously – HA! Not so. Don’t ever use the Renew Certificate Feature in IIS! The first rule that I should have never forgotten is that certificate renewals in IIS (7 is what I’m using but I think it’s no different in 7.5 and 8), simply don’t work if you’re submitting to get a public certificate from a certificate authority. I use DNSimple for my DNS domain management and SSL certificates because they provide ridiculously easy domain management and good prices for SSL certs – especially wildcard certificates, which is what I use on west-wind.com. Certificates in IIS can be found pegged to the machine root. If you go into the IIS Manager, go to the machine root the tree and then click on certificates and you then get various certificate options: Both of these options create a new Certificate request (CSR), which is just a text file. But if you’re silly enough like me to click on the Renew button on your old certificate, you’ll find that you end up generating a very long Certificate Request that looks nothing like the original certificate request and the format that’s used for this is not accepted by most certificate authorities. While I’m not sure exactly what the problem is, it simply looks like IIS is respecting none of your original certificate bit size choices and is generating a huge certificate request that is 3 times the size of a ‘normal’ certificate request. The end result is (and I’ve done this at least twice now) is that the certificate processor is likely to fail processing those renewals. Always create a new Certificate While it’s a little more work and you have to remember how to fill out the certificate request properly, this is the safe way to make sure your certificate generates properly. First comes the Distinguished Name Properties dialog: Ah yes you have to love the nomenclature of this stuff. Distinguished name, Common name – WTF is a common name? It doesn’t look common to me! Make sure this form gets filled out correctly. Common NameThis is the domain name of the Web site. In my case I’m creating a wildcard certificate so I’m using the * prefix. If you’re purchasing a certificate for a specific domain use www.west-wind.com or store.west-wind.com for example. Make sure this matches the EXACT domain you’re trying to use secure access on because that’s all the certificate is going to work on unless you get a wildcard certificate. Organization Is the name of your company or organization. Depending on the kind of certificate you purchase this name will show up on your certificate. Most low end SSL certificates (ie. those that cost under $100 for single domains) don’t list the organization, the higher signature certificates that also require extensive validation by the cert authority do. Regardless you should make sure this matches the right company/organization. Organizational Unit This can be anything. Not really sure what this is for, but traditionally I’ve always set this to Web because – well this is a Web thing after all right? I’ve never seen this used anywhere that I can tell other than to internally reference the cert. State and CountryPretty obvious. Should reflect the location of the business/organization/person or site.   Next you have to configure the bit size used for the certificate: The default on this dialog is 1024, but I’ve found that most providers these days request a minimum bit length of 2048, as did my DNSimple provider. Again check with the provider when you submit to make sure. Bit length mismatches can cause problems if you use a size that isn’t supported by the provider. I had that happen last year when I submitted my CSR and it got rejected quite a bit later, when the certs usually are issued within an hour or less. When you’re done here, the certificate is saved to disk as a .txt file and it should look something like this (this is a 2048 bit length CSR):-----BEGIN NEW CERTIFICATE REQUEST----- MIIEVGCCAz0CAQAwdjELMAkGA1UEBhMCVVMxDzANBgNVBAgMBkhhd2FpaTENMAsG A1UEBwwEUGFpYTEfMB0GA1UECgwWV2VzdCBXaW5kIFRlY2hub2xvZ2llczEMMAoG B1UECwwDV2ViMRgwFgYDVQQDDA8qLndlc3Qtd2luZC5jb20wggEiMA0GCSqGSIb3 DQEBAQUAA4IBDwAwggEKAoIBAQDIPWOFMkMVRp2Ftj9w/cCVV4OYYhoZYtl+8lTk oqDwKca0xWHLgioX/9v0rZLS6a82MHqKEBxVXu+cuCmSE4AQtB/1YH9lS4tpc/be OZDvnTotP6l4MCEzzAfROcw4CiIg6X0RMSnl8IATAvv2V5LQM9TDdt9oDdMpX2IY +vVC9RZ7PMHBmR9kwI2i/lrKitzhQKaHgpmKcRlM6iqpALUiX28w5HJaDKK1MDHN 607tyFJLHijuJKx7PdTqZYf50KkC3NupfZ2avVycf18Q13jHWj59tvwEOczoVzRL l4LQivAqbhyiqMpWnrZunIOUZta5aGm+jo7O1knGWJjxuraTAgMBAAGgggGYMBoG CisGAQQBgjcNAgMxDBYKNi4yLjkyMDAuMjA0BgkrBgEEAYI3FRQxJzAlAgEFDAZS QVNYUFMMC1JBU1hQU1xSaWNrDAtJbmV0TWdyLmV4ZTByBgorBgEEAYI3DQICMWQw YgIBAR5aAE0AaQBjAHIAbwBzAG8AZgB0ACAAUgBTAEEAIABTAEMAaABhAG4AbgBl AGwAIABDAHIAeQBwAHQAbwBnAHIAYQBwAGgAaQBjACAAUAByAG8AdgBpAGQAZQBy AwEAMIHPBgkqhkiG9w0BCQ4xgcEwgb4wDgYDVR0PAQH/BAQDAgTwMBMGA1UdJQQM MAoGCCsGAQUFBwMBMHgGCSqGSIb3DQEJDwRrMGkwDgYIKoZIhvcNAwICAgCAMA4G CCqGSIb3DQMEAgIAgDALBglghkgBZQMEASowCwYJYIZIAWUDBAEtMAsGCWCGSAFl AwQBAjALBglghkgBZQMEAQUwBwYFKw4DAgcwCgYIKoZIhvcNAwcwHQYDVR0OBBYE FD/yOsTbXE+GVFCFMmldzQvyloz9MA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBBQUAA4IBAQCK6LlsCuIM 1AU0niB6QZ9v0FTsGFxP1dYvVUnJyY6VEKNiGFiQjZac7UCs0p58yScdXWEFOE8V OsjAYD3xYNc05+ckyD67UHRGEUAVB9RBvbKW23KeR/8kBmEzc8PemD52YOgExxAJ 57xWmAwEHAvbgYzQvhO8AOzH3TGvvHbg5UKM1pYgNmuwZq5DkL/IDoeIJwfk/wrI wghNTuxxIFgbH4YrgLgv4PRvrS/LaTCRBdboaCgzATMczaOb1nd/DVNR+3fCtMhM W0psTAjzRbmXF3nJyAQa7jF/52gkY0RfFX2lG5tJnG+XDsVNvKNvh9Qa5Tlmkm06 ILKCm9ciWCKk -----END NEW CERTIFICATE REQUEST----- You can take that certificate request and submit that to your certificate provider. Since this is base64 encoded you can typically just paste it into a text box on the submission page, or some providers will ask you to upload the CSR as a file. What does a Renewal look like? Note the length of the CSR will vary somewhat with key strength, but compare this to a renewal request that IIS generated from my existing site:-----BEGIN NEW CERTIFICATE REQUEST----- MIIPpwYFKoZIhvcNAQcCoIIPmDCCD5QCAQExCzAJBgUrDgMCGgUAMIIIqAYJKoZI hvcNAQcBoIIImQSCCJUwggiRMIIH+gIBADBdMSEwHwYDVQQLDBhEb21haW4gQ29u dHJvbCBWYWxpFGF0ZWQxHjAcBgNVBAsMFUVzc2VudGlhbFNTTCBXaWxkY2FyZDEY MBYGA1UEAwwPKi53ZXN0LXdpbmQuY29tMIGfMA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBAQUAA4GNADCB iQKBgQCK4OuIOR18Wb8tNMGRZiD1c9X57b332Lj7DhbckFqLs0ys8kVDHrTXSj+T Ye9nmAvfPpZmBtE5p9qRNN79rUYugAdl+qEtE4IJe1bRfxXzcKa1SXa8+TEs3zQa zYSmcR2dDuC8om1eAdeCtt0NnkvANgm1VLwGOor/UHMASaEhCQIDAQABoIIG8jAa BgorBgEEAYI3DQIDMQwWCjYuMi45MjAwLjIwNAYJKwYBBAGCNxUUMScwJQIBBQwG UkFTWFBTDAtSQVNYUFNcUmljawwLSW5ldE1nci5leGUwZgYKKwYBBAGCNw0CAjFY MFYCAQIeTgBNAGkAYwByAG8AcwBvAGYAdAAgAFMAdAByAG8AbgBnACAAQwByAHkA cAB0AG8AZwByAGEAcABoAGkAYwAgAFAAcgBvAHYAaQBkAGUAcgMBADCCAQAGCSqG SIb3DQEJDjGB8jCB7zAOBgNVHQ8BAf8EBAMCBaAwDAYDVR0TAQH/BAIwADA0BgNV 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+XZ8bhM7vsAS+pZionR4MyuQ0mYIt/lDcsZVZ91KxTsIm8rNMkkYGFoSIXjQ0+0t CbxMF0i2qnpmNRpA6PU8l7lxxvPkplsk9KB8QIPFrR5p/i/SUAd9vECWh5+/ktlc rfFP2PK7XcEwWizsvMrNqLyvQVNXSUPTMYIBrzCCAasCAQEwgYcwcjELMAkGA1UE BhMCR0IxGzAZBgNVBAgTEkdyZWF0ZXIgTWFuY2hlc3RlcjEQMA4GA1UEBxMHU2Fs Zm9yZDEaMBgGA1UEChMRQ09NT0RPIENBIExpbWl0ZWQxGDAWBgNVBAMTD0Vzc2Vu dGlhbFNTTCBDQQIRAO7UTVPkm+2Sbks59IdptaUwCQYFKw4DAhoFADANBgkqhkiG 9w0BAQEFAASCAQB8PNQ6bYnQpWfkHyxnDuvNKw3wrqF2p7JMZm+SuN2qp3R2LpCR mW2LrGtQIm9Iob/QOYH+8houYNVdvsATGPXX2T8gzn+anof4tOG0vCTK1Bp9bwf9 MkRP+1c8RW/vkYmUW4X5/C+y3CZpMH5dDTaXBIpXFzjX/fxNpH/rvLzGiaYYL3Cn OLO+aOADr9qq5yoqwpiYCSfYNNYKTUNNGfYIidQwYtbHXEYhSukB2oR89xD2sZZ4 bOqFjUPgTa5SsERLDDeg3omMKiIXVYGxlqBEq51Kge6IQt4qQV9P9VgInW7cWmKe dTqNHI9ri3ttewdEnT++TKGKKfTjX9SR8Waj -----END NEW CERTIFICATE REQUEST----- Clearly there’s something very different between this an my original request! And it didn’t work. IIS creates a custom CSR that is encoded in a format that no certificate authority I’ve ever used uses. If you want the gory details of what’s in there look at this ServerFault question (thanks to Mika in the comments). In the end it doesn’t matter  though – no certificate authority knows what to do with this CSR. So create a new CSR and skip the renewal. Always! Use the same Server Keep in mind that on IIS at least you should always create your certificate on a single server and then when you receive the final certificate from your provider import it on that server. IIS tracks the CSR it created and requires it in order to import the final certificate properly. So if for some reason you try to install the certificate on another server, it won’t work. I’ve also run into trouble trying to install the same certificate twice – this time around I didn’t give my certificate the proper friendly name and IIS failed to allow me to assign the certificate to any of my Web sites. So I removed the certificate and tried to import again, only to find it failed the second time around. There are other ways to fix this, but in my case I had to have the certificate re-issued to work – not what you want to do. Regardless of what you do though, when you import make sure you do it right the first time by crossing all your t’s and dotting your i's– it’ll save you a lot of grief! You don’t actually have to use the server that the certificate gets installed on to generate the CSR and first install it, but it is generally a good idea to do so just so you can get the certificate installed into the right place right away. If you have access to the server where you need to install the certificate you might as well use it. But you can use another machine to generated the and install the certificate, then export the certificate and move it to another machine as needed. So you can use your Dev machine to create a certificate then export it and install it on a live server. More on installation and back up/export later. Installing the Certificate Once you’ve submitted a CSR request your provider will process the request and eventually issue you a new final certificate that contains another text file with the final key to import into your certificate store. IIS does this by combining the content in your certificate request with the original CSR. If all goes well your new certificate shows up in the certificate list and you’re ready to assign the certificate to your sites. Make sure you use a friendly name that matches domain name of your site. So use *.mysite.com or www.mysite.com or store.mysite.com to ensure IIS recognizes the certificate. I made the mistake of not naming my friendly name this way and found that IIS was unable to link my sites to my wildcard certificate. It needed to have the *. as part of the certificate otherwise the Hostname input field was blanked out. Changing the Friendly Name If you by accidentally used an invalid friendly name you can change it later in the Windows certificate store. Bring up a Run Box Type MMC File | Add/Remove Snap In Add Certificates | Computer Account | Local Computer Drill into Certificates | Personal | Certificates Find your Certificate | Right Click | Properties Edit the Friendly Name | Click OK Backing up your Certificate The first thing you should do once your certificate is successfully installed is to back it up! In case your server crashes or you otherwise lose your configuration this will ensure you have an easy way to recover and reinstall your certificate either on the same server or a different one. If you’re running a server farm or using a wildcard certificate you also need to get the certificate onto other machines and a PFX file import is the easiest way to do this. To back up your certificate select your certificate and choose Export from the context or sidebar menu: The Export Certificate option allows you to export a password protected binary file that you can import in a single step. You can copy the resulting binary PFX file to back up or copy to other machines to install on. Importing the certificate on another machine is as easy as pointing at the PFX file and specifying the password. IIS handles the rest. Assigning a new certificate to your Site Once you have the new certificate installed, all that’s left to do is assign it to your site. In IIS select your Web site and bring up the Site Bindings from the right sidebar. Add a new binding for https, bind it to port 443, specify your hostname and pick the certificate from the pick list. If you’re using a root site make sure to set up your certificate for www.yoursite.com and also for yoursite.com so that both work properly with SSL. Note that you need to explicitly configure each hostname for a certificate if you plan to use SSL. Luckily if you update your SSL certificate in the following year, IIS prompts you and asks whether you like to update all other sites that are using the existing cert to the newer cert. And you’re done. So what’s the Pain? So, all of this is old hat and it doesn’t look all that bad right? So what’s the pain here? Well if you follow the instructions and do everything right, then the process is about as straight forward as you would expect it to be. You create a cert request, you import it and assign it to your sites. That’s the basic steps and to be perfectly fair it works well – if nothing goes wrong. However, renewing tends to be the problem. The first unintuitive issue is that you simply shouldn’t renew but create a new CSR and generate your new certificate from that. Over the years I’ve fallen prey to the belief that Microsoft eventually will fix this so that the renewal creates the same type of CSR as the old cert, but apparently that will just never happen. Booo! The other problem I ran into is that I accidentally misnamed my imported certificate which in turn set off a chain of events that caused my originally issued certificate to become uninstallable. When I received my completed certificate I installed it and it installed just fine, but the friendly name was wrong. As a result IIS refused to assign the certificate to any of my host headered sites. That’s strike number one. Why the heck should the friendly name have any effect on the ability to attach the certificate??? Next I uninstalled the certificate because I figured that would be the easiest way to make sure I get it right. But I found that I could not reinstall my certificate. I kept getting these stop errors: "ASN1 bad tag value met" that would prevent the installation from completion. After searching around for this error and reading countless long messages on forums, I found that this error supposedly does not actually mean the install failed, but the list wouldn’t refresh. Commodo has this to say: Note: There is a known issue in IIS 7 giving the following error: "Cannot find the certificate request associated with this certificate file. A certificate request must be completed on the computer where it was created." You may also receive a message stating "ASN1 bad tag value met". If this is the same server that you generated the CSR on then, in most cases, the certificate is actually installed. Simply cancel the dialog and press "F5" to refresh the list of server certificates. If the new certificate is now in the list, you can continue with the next step. If it is not in the list, you will need to reissue your certificate using a new CSR (see our CSR creation instructions for IIS 7). After creating a new CSR, login to your Comodo account and click the 'replace' button for your certificate. Not sure if this issue is fixed in IIS 8 but that’s an insane bug to have crop up. As it turns out, in my case the refresh didn’t work and the certificate didn’t show up in the IIS list after the reinstall. In fact when looking at the certificate store I could see my certificate was installed in the right place, but the private key is missing which is most likely why IIS is not picking it up. It looks like IIS could not match the final cert to the original CSR generated. But again some sort of message to that affect might be helpful instead of ASN1 bad tag value met. Recovering the Private Key So it turns out my original problem was that I received the published key, but when I imported the private key was missing. There’s a relatively easy way to recover from this. If your certificate doesn’t show up in IIS check in the certificate store for the local machine (see steps above on how to bring this up). If you look at the certificate in Certificates/Personal/Certificates make sure you see the key as shown in the image below: if the key is missing it means that the certificate is missing the private key most likely. To fix a certificate you can do the following: Double click the certificate Go to the Details Tab Copy down the Serial number You can copy the serial number from the area blurred out above. The serial number will be in a format like ?00 a7 9b a1 a4 9d 91 63 57 d6 9f 26 b8 ee 79 b5 cb and you’ll need to strip out the spaces in order to use it in the next step. Next open up an Administrative command prompt and issue the following command: certutil -repairstore my 00a79ba1a49d916357d69f26b8ee79b5cb You should get a confirmation message that the repair worked. If you now go back to the certificate store you should now see the key icon show up on the certificate. Your certificate is fixed. Now go back into IIS Manager and refresh the list of certificates and if all goes well you should see all the certificates that showed in the cert store now: Remember – back up the key first then map to your site… Summary I deal with a lot of customers who run their own IIS servers, and I can’t tell you how often I hear about botched SSL installations. When I posted some of my issues on Twitter yesterday I got a hell storm of “me too” responses. I’m clearly not the only one, who’s run into this especially with renewals. I feel pretty comfortable with IIS configuration and I do a lot of it for support purposes, but the SSL configuration is one that never seems to go seamlessly. This blog post is meant as reminder to myself to read next time I do a renewal. So I can dot my i's and dash my t’s before I get caught in the mess I’m dealing with today. Hopefully some of you find this useful as well.© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2014Posted in IIS7  Security   Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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  • VS 2010 SP1 (Beta) and IIS Express

    - by ScottGu
    Last month we released the VS 2010 Service Pack 1 (SP1) Beta.  You can learn more about the VS 2010 SP1 Beta from Jason Zander’s two blog posts about it, and from Scott Hanselman’s blog post that covers some of the new capabilities enabled with it.  You can download and install the VS 2010 SP1 Beta here. IIS Express Earlier this summer I blogged about IIS Express.  IIS Express is a free version of IIS 7.5 that is optimized for developer scenarios.  We think it combines the ease of use of the ASP.NET Web Server (aka Cassini) currently built-into VS today with the full power of IIS.  Specifically: It’s lightweight and easy to install (less than 5Mb download and a quick install) It does not require an administrator account to run/debug applications from Visual Studio It enables a full web-server feature set – including SSL, URL Rewrite, and other IIS 7.x modules It supports and enables the same extensibility model and web.config file settings that IIS 7.x support It can be installed side-by-side with the full IIS web server as well as the ASP.NET Development Server (they do not conflict at all) It works on Windows XP and higher operating systems – giving you a full IIS 7.x developer feature-set on all Windows OS platforms IIS Express (like the ASP.NET Development Server) can be quickly launched to run a site from a directory on disk.  It does not require any registration/configuration steps. This makes it really easy to launch and run for development scenarios. Visual Studio 2010 SP1 adds support for IIS Express – and you can start to take advantage of this starting with last month’s VS 2010 SP1 Beta release. Downloading and Installing IIS Express IIS Express isn’t included as part of the VS 2010 SP1 Beta.  Instead it is a separate ~4MB download which you can download and install using this link (it uses WebPI to install it).  Once IIS Express is installed, VS 2010 SP1 will enable some additional IIS Express commands and dialog options that allow you to easily use it. Enabling IIS Express for Existing Projects Visual Studio today defaults to using the built-in ASP.NET Development Server (aka Cassini) when running ASP.NET Projects: Converting your existing projects to use IIS Express is really easy.  You can do this by opening up the project properties dialog of an existing project, and then by clicking the “web” tab within it and selecting the “Use IIS Express” checkbox. Or even simpler, just right-click on your existing project, and select the “Use IIS Express…” menu command: And now when you run or debug your project you’ll see that IIS Express now starts up and runs automatically as your web-server: You can optionally right-click on the IIS Express icon within your system tray to see/browse all of sites and applications running on it: Note that if you ever want to revert back to using the ASP.NET Development Server you can do this by right-clicking the project again and then select the “Use Visual Studio Development Server” option (or go into the project properties, click the web tab, and uncheck IIS Express).  This will revert back to the ASP.NET Development Server the next time you run the project. IIS Express Properties Visual Studio 2010 SP1 exposes several new IIS Express configuration options that you couldn’t previously set with the ASP.NET Development Server.  Some of these are exposed via the property grid of your project (select the project node in the solution explorer and then change them via the property window): For example, enabling something like SSL support (which is not possible with the ASP.NET Development Server) can now be done simply by changing the “SSL Enabled” property to “True”: Once this is done IIS Express will expose both an HTTP and HTTPS endpoint for the project that we can use: SSL Self Signed Certs IIS Express ships with a self-signed SSL cert that it installs as part of setup – which removes the need for you to install your own certificate to use SSL during development.  Once you change the above drop-down to enable SSL, you’ll be able to browse to your site with the appropriate https:// URL prefix and it will connect via SSL. One caveat with self-signed certificates, though, is that browsers (like IE) will go out of their way to warn you that they aren’t to be trusted: You can mark the certificate as trusted to avoid seeing dialogs like this – or just keep the certificate un-trusted and press the “continue” button when the browser warns you not to trust your local web server. Additional IIS Settings IIS Express uses its own per-user ApplicationHost.config file to configure default server behavior.  Because it is per-user, it can be configured by developers who do not have admin credentials – unlike the full IIS.  You can customize all IIS features and settings via it if you want ultimate server customization (for example: to use your own certificates for SSL instead of self-signed ones). We recommend storing all app specific settings for IIS and ASP.NET within the web.config file which is part of your project – since that makes deploying apps easier (since the settings can be copied with the application content).  IIS (since IIS 7) no longer uses the metabase, and instead uses the same web.config configuration files that ASP.NET has always supported – which makes xcopy/ftp based deployment much easier. Making IIS Express your Default Web Server Above we looked at how we can convert existing sites that use the ASP.NET Developer Web Server to instead use IIS Express.  You can configure Visual Studio to use IIS Express as the default web server for all new projects by clicking the Tools->Options menu  command and opening up the Projects and Solutions->Web Projects node with the Options dialog: Clicking the “Use IIS Express for new file-based web site and projects” checkbox will cause Visual Studio to use it for all new web site and projects. Summary We think IIS Express makes it even easier to build, run and test web applications.  It works with all versions of ASP.NET and supports all ASP.NET application types (including obviously both ASP.NET Web Forms and ASP.NET MVC applications).  Because IIS Express is based on the IIS 7.5 codebase, you have a full web-server feature-set that you can use.  This means you can build and run your applications just like they’ll work on a real production web-server.  In addition to supporting ASP.NET, IIS Express also supports Classic ASP and other file-types and extensions supported by IIS – which also makes it ideal for sites that combine a variety of different technologies. Best of all – you do not need to change any code to take advantage of it.  As you can see above, updating existing Visual Studio web projects to use it is trivial.  You can begin to take advantage of IIS Express today using the VS 2010 SP1 Beta. Hope this helps, Scott

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  • Guidance: A Branching strategy for Scrum Teams

    - by Martin Hinshelwood
    Having a good branching strategy will save your bacon, or at least your code. Be careful when deviating from your branching strategy because if you do, you may be worse off than when you started! This is one possible branching strategy for Scrum teams and I will not be going in depth with Scrum but you can find out more about Scrum by reading the Scrum Guide and you can even assess your Scrum knowledge by having a go at the Scrum Open Assessment. You can also read SSW’s Rules to Better Scrum using TFS which have been developed during our own Scrum implementations. Acknowledgements Bill Heys – Bill offered some good feedback on this post and helped soften the language. Note: Bill is a VS ALM Ranger and co-wrote the Branching Guidance for TFS 2010 Willy-Peter Schaub – Willy-Peter is an ex Visual Studio ALM MVP turned blue badge and has been involved in most of the guidance including the Branching Guidance for TFS 2010 Chris Birmele – Chris wrote some of the early TFS Branching and Merging Guidance. Dr Paul Neumeyer, Ph.D Parallel Processes, ScrumMaster and SSW Solution Architect – Paul wanted to have feature branches coming from the release branch as well. We agreed that this is really a spin-off that needs own project, backlog, budget and Team. Scenario: A product is developed RTM 1.0 is released and gets great sales.  Extra features are demanded but the new version will have double to price to pay to recover costs, work is approved by the guys with budget and a few sprints later RTM 2.0 is released.  Sales a very low due to the pricing strategy. There are lots of clients on RTM 1.0 calling out for patches. As I keep getting Reverse Integration and Forward Integration mixed up and Bill keeps slapping my wrists I thought I should have a reminder: You still seemed to use reverse and/or forward integration in the wrong context. I would recommend reviewing your document at the end to ensure that it agrees with the common understanding of these terms merge (forward integration) from parent to child (same direction as the branch), and merge  (reverse integration) from child to parent (the reverse direction of the branch). - one of my many slaps on the wrist from Bill Heys.   As I mentioned previously we are using a single feature branching strategy in our current project. The single biggest mistake developers make is developing against the “Main” or “Trunk” line. This ultimately leads to messy code as things are added and never finished. Your only alternative is to NEVER check in unless your code is 100%, but this does not work in practice, even with a single developer. Your ADD will kick in and your half-finished code will be finished enough to pass the build and the tests. You do use builds don’t you? Sadly, this is a very common scenario and I have had people argue that branching merely adds complexity. Then again I have seen the other side of the universe ... branching  structures from he... We should somehow convince everyone that there is a happy between no-branching and too-much-branching. - Willy-Peter Schaub, VS ALM Ranger, Microsoft   A key benefit of branching for development is to isolate changes from the stable Main branch. Branching adds sanity more than it adds complexity. We do try to stress in our guidance that it is important to justify a branch, by doing a cost benefit analysis. The primary cost is the effort to do merges and resolve conflicts. A key benefit is that you have a stable code base in Main and accept changes into Main only after they pass quality gates, etc. - Bill Heys, VS ALM Ranger & TFS Branching Lead, Microsoft The second biggest mistake developers make is branching anything other than the WHOLE “Main” line. If you branch parts of your code and not others it gets out of sync and can make integration a nightmare. You should have your Source, Assets, Build scripts deployment scripts and dependencies inside the “Main” folder and branch the whole thing. Some departments within MSFT even go as far as to add the environments used to develop the product in there as well; although I would not recommend that unless you have a massive SQL cluster to house your source code. We tried the “add environment” back in South-Africa and while it was “phenomenal”, especially when having to switch between environments, the disk storage and processing requirements killed us. We opted for virtualization to skin this cat of keeping a ready-to-go environment handy. - Willy-Peter Schaub, VS ALM Ranger, Microsoft   I think people often think that you should have separate branches for separate environments (e.g. Dev, Test, Integration Test, QA, etc.). I prefer to think of deploying to environments (such as from Main to QA) rather than branching for QA). - Bill Heys, VS ALM Ranger & TFS Branching Lead, Microsoft   You can read about SSW’s Rules to better Source Control for some additional information on what Source Control to use and how to use it. There are also a number of branching Anti-Patterns that should be avoided at all costs: You know you are on the wrong track if you experience one or more of the following symptoms in your development environment: Merge Paranoia—avoiding merging at all cost, usually because of a fear of the consequences. Merge Mania—spending too much time merging software assets instead of developing them. Big Bang Merge—deferring branch merging to the end of the development effort and attempting to merge all branches simultaneously. Never-Ending Merge—continuous merging activity because there is always more to merge. Wrong-Way Merge—merging a software asset version with an earlier version. Branch Mania—creating many branches for no apparent reason. Cascading Branches—branching but never merging back to the main line. Mysterious Branches—branching for no apparent reason. Temporary Branches—branching for changing reasons, so the branch becomes a permanent temporary workspace. Volatile Branches—branching with unstable software assets shared by other branches or merged into another branch. Note   Branches are volatile most of the time while they exist as independent branches. That is the point of having them. The difference is that you should not share or merge branches while they are in an unstable state. Development Freeze—stopping all development activities while branching, merging, and building new base lines. Berlin Wall—using branches to divide the development team members, instead of dividing the work they are performing. -Branching and Merging Primer by Chris Birmele - Developer Tools Technical Specialist at Microsoft Pty Ltd in Australia   In fact, this can result in a merge exercise no-one wants to be involved in, merging hundreds of thousands of change sets and trying to get a consolidated build. Again, we need to find a happy medium. - Willy-Peter Schaub on Merge Paranoia Merge conflicts are generally the result of making changes to the same file in both the target and source branch. If you create merge conflicts, you will eventually need to resolve them. Often the resolution is manual. Merging more frequently allows you to resolve these conflicts close to when they happen, making the resolution clearer. Waiting weeks or months to resolve them, the Big Bang approach, means you are more likely to resolve conflicts incorrectly. - Bill Heys, VS ALM Ranger & TFS Branching Lead, Microsoft   Figure: Main line, this is where your stable code lives and where any build has known entities, always passes and has a happy test that passes as well? Many development projects consist of, a single “Main” line of source and artifacts. This is good; at least there is source control . There are however a couple of issues that need to be considered. What happens if: you and your team are working on a new set of features and the customer wants a change to his current version? you are working on two features and the customer decides to abandon one of them? you have two teams working on different feature sets and their changes start interfering with each other? I just use labels instead of branches? That's a lot of “what if’s”, but there is a simple way of preventing this. Branching… In TFS, labels are not immutable. This does not mean they are not useful. But labels do not provide a very good development isolation mechanism. Branching allows separate code sets to evolve separately (e.g. Current with hotfixes, and vNext with new development). I don’t see how labels work here. - Bill Heys, VS ALM Ranger & TFS Branching Lead, Microsoft   Figure: Creating a single feature branch means you can isolate the development work on that branch.   Its standard practice for large projects with lots of developers to use Feature branching and you can check the Branching Guidance for the latest recommendations from the Visual Studio ALM Rangers for other methods. In the diagram above you can see my recommendation for branching when using Scrum development with TFS 2010. It consists of a single Sprint branch to contain all the changes for the current sprint. The main branch has the permissions changes so contributors to the project can only Branch and Merge with “Main”. This will prevent accidental check-ins or checkouts of the “Main” line that would contaminate the code. The developers continue to develop on sprint one until the completion of the sprint. Note: In the real world, starting a new Greenfield project, this process starts at Sprint 2 as at the start of Sprint 1 you would have artifacts in version control and no need for isolation.   Figure: Once the sprint is complete the Sprint 1 code can then be merged back into the Main line. There are always good practices to follow, and one is to always do a Forward Integration from Main into Sprint 1 before you do a Reverse Integration from Sprint 1 back into Main. In this case it may seem superfluous, but this builds good muscle memory into your developer’s work ethic and means that no bad habits are learned that would interfere with additional Scrum Teams being added to the Product. The process of completing your sprint development: The Team completes their work according to their definition of done. Merge from “Main” into “Sprint1” (Forward Integration) Stabilize your code with any changes coming from other Scrum Teams working on the same product. If you have one Scrum Team this should be quick, but there may have been bug fixes in the Release branches. (we will talk about release branches later) Merge from “Sprint1” into “Main” to commit your changes. (Reverse Integration) Check-in Delete the Sprint1 branch Note: The Sprint 1 branch is no longer required as its useful life has been concluded. Check-in Done But you are not yet done with the Sprint. The goal in Scrum is to have a “potentially shippable product” at the end of every Sprint, and we do not have that yet, we only have finished code.   Figure: With Sprint 1 merged you can create a Release branch and run your final packaging and testing In 99% of all projects I have been involved in or watched, a “shippable product” only happens towards the end of the overall lifecycle, especially when sprints are short. The in-between releases are great demonstration releases, but not shippable. Perhaps it comes from my 80’s brain washing that we only ship when we reach the agreed quality and business feature bar. - Willy-Peter Schaub, VS ALM Ranger, Microsoft Although you should have been testing and packaging your code all the way through your Sprint 1 development, preferably using an automated process, you still need to test and package with stable unchanging code. This is where you do what at SSW we call a “Test Please”. This is first an internal test of the product to make sure it meets the needs of the customer and you generally use a resource external to your Team. Then a “Test Please” is conducted with the Product Owner to make sure he is happy with the output. You can read about how to conduct a Test Please on our Rules to Successful Projects: Do you conduct an internal "test please" prior to releasing a version to a client?   Figure: If you find a deviation from the expected result you fix it on the Release branch. If during your final testing or your “Test Please” you find there are issues or bugs then you should fix them on the release branch. If you can’t fix them within the time box of your Sprint, then you will need to create a Bug and put it onto the backlog for prioritization by the Product owner. Make sure you leave plenty of time between your merge from the development branch to find and fix any problems that are uncovered. This process is commonly called Stabilization and should always be conducted once you have completed all of your User Stories and integrated all of your branches. Even once you have stabilized and released, you should not delete the release branch as you would with the Sprint branch. It has a usefulness for servicing that may extend well beyond the limited life you expect of it. Note: Don't get forced by the business into adding features into a Release branch instead that indicates the unspoken requirement is that they are asking for a product spin-off. In this case you can create a new Team Project and branch from the required Release branch to create a new Main branch for that product. And you create a whole new backlog to work from.   Figure: When the Team decides it is happy with the product you can create a RTM branch. Once you have fixed all the bugs you can, and added any you can’t to the Product Backlog, and you Team is happy with the result you can create a Release. This would consist of doing the final Build and Packaging it up ready for your Sprint Review meeting. You would then create a read-only branch that represents the code you “shipped”. This is really an Audit trail branch that is optional, but is good practice. You could use a Label, but Labels are not Auditable and if a dispute was raised by the customer you can produce a verifiable version of the source code for an independent party to check. Rare I know, but you do not want to be at the wrong end of a legal battle. Like the Release branch the RTM branch should never be deleted, or only deleted according to your companies legal policy, which in the UK is usually 7 years.   Figure: If you have made any changes in the Release you will need to merge back up to Main in order to finalise the changes. Nothing is really ever done until it is in Main. The same rules apply when merging any fixes in the Release branch back into Main and you should do a reverse merge before a forward merge, again for the muscle memory more than necessity at this stage. Your Sprint is now nearly complete, and you can have a Sprint Review meeting knowing that you have made every effort and taken every precaution to protect your customer’s investment. Note: In order to really achieve protection for both you and your client you would add Automated Builds, Automated Tests, Automated Acceptance tests, Acceptance test tracking, Unit Tests, Load tests, Web test and all the other good engineering practices that help produce reliable software.     Figure: After the Sprint Planning meeting the process begins again. Where the Sprint Review and Retrospective meetings mark the end of the Sprint, the Sprint Planning meeting marks the beginning. After you have completed your Sprint Planning and you know what you are trying to achieve in Sprint 2 you can create your new Branch to develop in. How do we handle a bug(s) in production that can’t wait? Although in Scrum the only work done should be on the backlog there should be a little buffer added to the Sprint Planning for contingencies. One of these contingencies is a bug in the current release that can’t wait for the Sprint to finish. But how do you handle that? Willy-Peter Schaub asked an excellent question on the release activities: In reality Sprint 2 starts when sprint 1 ends + weekend. Should we not cater for a possible parallelism between Sprint 2 and the release activities of sprint 1? It would introduce FI’s from main to sprint 2, I guess. Your “Figure: Merging print 2 back into Main.” covers, what I tend to believe to be reality in most cases. - Willy-Peter Schaub, VS ALM Ranger, Microsoft I agree, and if you have a single Scrum team then your resources are limited. The Scrum Team is responsible for packaging and release, so at least one run at stabilization, package and release should be included in the Sprint time box. If more are needed on the current production release during the Sprint 2 time box then resource needs to be pulled from Sprint 2. The Product Owner and the Team have four choices (in order of disruption/cost): Backlog: Add the bug to the backlog and fix it in the next Sprint Buffer Time: Use any buffer time included in the current Sprint to fix the bug quickly Make time: Remove a Story from the current Sprint that is of equal value to the time lost fixing the bug(s) and releasing. Note: The Team must agree that it can still meet the Sprint Goal. Cancel Sprint: Cancel the sprint and concentrate all resource on fixing the bug(s) Note: This can be a very costly if the current sprint has already had a lot of work completed as it will be lost. The choice will depend on the complexity and severity of the bug(s) and both the Product Owner and the Team need to agree. In this case we will go with option #2 or #3 as they are uncomplicated but severe bugs. Figure: Real world issue where a bug needs fixed in the current release. If the bug(s) is urgent enough then then your only option is to fix it in place. You can edit the release branch to find and fix the bug, hopefully creating a test so it can’t happen again. Follow the prior process and conduct an internal and customer “Test Please” before releasing. You can read about how to conduct a Test Please on our Rules to Successful Projects: Do you conduct an internal "test please" prior to releasing a version to a client?   Figure: After you have fixed the bug you need to ship again. You then need to again create an RTM branch to hold the version of the code you released in escrow.   Figure: Main is now out of sync with your Release. We now need to get these new changes back up into the Main branch. Do a reverse and then forward merge again to get the new code into Main. But what about the branch, are developers not working on Sprint 2? Does Sprint 2 now have changes that are not in Main and Main now have changes that are not in Sprint 2? Well, yes… and this is part of the hit you take doing branching. But would this scenario even have been possible without branching?   Figure: Getting the changes in Main into Sprint 2 is very important. The Team now needs to do a Forward Integration merge into their Sprint and resolve any conflicts that occur. Maybe the bug has already been fixed in Sprint 2, maybe the bug no longer exists! This needs to be identified and resolved by the developers before they continue to get further out of Sync with Main. Note: Avoid the “Big bang merge” at all costs.   Figure: Merging Sprint 2 back into Main, the Forward Integration, and R0 terminates. Sprint 2 now merges (Reverse Integration) back into Main following the procedures we have already established.   Figure: The logical conclusion. This then allows the creation of the next release. By now you should be getting the big picture and hopefully you learned something useful from this post. I know I have enjoyed writing it as I find these exploratory posts coupled with real world experience really help harden my understanding.  Branching is a tool; it is not a silver bullet. Don’t over use it, and avoid “Anti-Patterns” where possible. Although the diagram above looks complicated I hope showing you how it is formed simplifies it as much as possible.   Technorati Tags: Branching,Scrum,VS ALM,TFS 2010,VS2010

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  • Install Ubuntu Netbook Edition with Wubi Installer

    - by Matthew Guay
    Ubuntu is one of the most popular versions of Linux, and their Netbook Remix edition is especially attractive for netbook owners.  Here we’ll look at how you can easily try out Ubuntu on your netbook without a CD/DVD drive. Netbooks, along with the growing number of thin, full powered laptops, lack a CD/DVD drive.  Installing software isn’t much of a problem since most programs, whether free or for-pay, are available for download.  Operating systems, however, are usually installed from a disk.  You can easily install Windows 7 from a flash drive with our tutorial, but installing Ubuntu from a USB flash drive is more complicated.  However, using Wubi, a Windows installer for Ubuntu, you can easily install it directly on your netbook and even uninstall it with only a few clicks. Getting Started Download and run the Wubi installer for Ubuntu (link below).  In the installer, select the drive you where you wish to install Ubuntu, the size of the installation (this is the amount dedicated to Ubuntu; under 20Gb should be fine), language, username, and desired password.  Also, from the Desktop environment menu, select Ubuntu Netbook to install the netbook edition.  Click Install when your settings are correct. Wubi will automatically download the selected version of Ubuntu and install it on your computer. Windows Firewall may ask if you want to unblock Wubi; select your network and click Allow access. The download will take around an hour on broadband, depending on your internet connection speed.  Once the download is completed, it will automatically install to your computer.  If you’d prefer to have everything downloaded before you start the install, download the ISO of Ubuntu Netbook edition (link below) and save it in the same folder as Wubi. Then, when you run Wubi, select the netbook edition as before and click Install.  Wubi will verify that your download is valid, and will then proceed to install from the downloaded ISO.  This install will only take about 10 minutes. Once the install is finished you will be asked to reboot your computer.  Save anything else you’re working on, and then reboot to finish setting up Ubuntu on your netbook. When your computer reboots, select Ubuntu at the boot screen.  Wubi leaves the default OS as Windows 7, so if you don’t select anything it will boot into Windows 7 after a few seconds. Ubuntu will automatically finish the install when you boot into it the first time.  This took about 12 minutes in our test. When the setup is finished, your netbook will reboot one more time.  Remember again to select Ubuntu at the boot screen.  You’ll then see a second boot screen; press your Enter key to select the default.   Ubuntu only took less than a minute to boot in our test.  When you see the login screen, select your name and enter your password you setup in Wubi.  Now you’re ready to start exploring Ubuntu Netbook Remix. Using Ubuntu Netbook Remix Ubuntu Netbook Remix offers a simple, full-screen interface to take the best advantage of netbooks’ small screens.  Pre-installed applications are displayed in the application launcher, and are organized by category.  Click once to open an application. The first screen on the application launcher shows your favorite programs.  If you’d like to add another application to the favorites pane, click the plus sign beside its icon. Your files from Windows are still accessible from Ubuntu Netbook Remix.  From the home screen, select Files & Folders on the left menu, and then click the icon that says something like 100GB Filesystem under the Volumes section. Now you’ll be able to see all of your files from Windows.  Your user files such as documents, music, and pictures should be located in Documents and Settings in a folder with your user name. You can also easily install a variety of free applications via the Software Installer. Connecting to the internet is also easy, as Ubuntu Netbook Remix automatically recognized the WiFi adaptor on our test netbook, a Samsung N150.  To connect to a wireless network, click the wireless icon on the top right of the screen and select the network’s name from the list. And, if you’d like to customize your screen, right-click on the application launcher and select Change desktop background. Choose a background picture you’d like. Now you’ll see it through your application launcher.  Nice! Most applications are opened full-screen.  You can close them by clicking the x on the right of the program’s name. You can also switch to other applications from their icons on the top left.  Open the home screen by clicking the Ubuntu logo in the far left. Changing Boot Options By default, Wubi will leave Windows as the default operating system, and will give you 10 seconds at boot to choose to boot into Ubuntu.  To change this, boot into Windows and enter Advanced system settings in your start menu search. In this dialog, click Settings under Startup and Recovery. From this dialog, you can select the default operating system and the time to display list of operating systems.  You can enter a lower number to make the boot screen appear for less time. And if you’d rather make Ubuntu the default operating system, select it from the drop-down list.   Uninstalling Ubuntu Netbook Remix If you decide you don’t want to keep Ubuntu Netbook Remix on your computer, you can uninstall it just like you uninstall any normal application.  Boot your computer into Windows, open Control Panel, click Uninstall a Program, and enter ubuntu in the search box.  Select it, and click Uninstall. Click Uninstall at the prompt.  Ubuntu uninstalls very quickly, and removes the entry from the bootloader as well, so your computer is just like it was before you installed it.   Conclusion Ubuntu Netbook Remix offers an attractive Linux interface for netbooks.  We enjoyed trying it out, and found it much more user-friendly than most Linux distros.  And with the Wubi installer, you can install it risk-free and try it out on your netbook.  Or, if you’d like to try out another alternate netbook operating system, check out our article on Jolicloud, another new OS for netbooks. Links Download Wubi Installer for Windows Download Ubuntu Netbook Edition Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Easily Install Ubuntu Linux with Windows Using the Wubi InstallerInstall VMware Tools on Ubuntu Edgy EftHow to install Spotify in Ubuntu 9.10 using WineInstalling PHP5 and Apache on UbuntuInstalling PHP4 and Apache on Ubuntu TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips VMware Workstation 7 Acronis Online Backup DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Explorer++ is a Worthy Windows Explorer Alternative Error Goblin Explains Windows Error Codes Twelve must-have Google Chrome plugins Cool Looking Skins for Windows Media Player 12 Move the Mouse Pointer With Your Face Movement Using eViacam Boot Windows Faster With Boot Performance Diagnostics

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  • From the Tips Box: Comics on the iPad, Android’s Power Bar, and Limiting Spotlight Search on the iPad

    - by Jason Fitzpatrick
    Once a week we dump out our tips box and share some of the great reader submitted tips with you. This week we’re looking at reading comic strips on the iPad, quick access via the Android Power Bar, and limiting the spotlight search on the iPad. Amazon’s New Kindle Fire Tablet: the How-To Geek Review HTG Explains: How Hackers Take Over Web Sites with SQL Injection / DDoS Use Your Android Phone to Comparison Shop: 4 Scanner Apps Reviewed

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  • Windows Azure: Backup Services Release, Hyper-V Recovery Manager, VM Enhancements, Enhanced Enterprise Management Support

    - by ScottGu
    This morning we released a huge set of updates to Windows Azure.  These new capabilities include: Backup Services: General Availability of Windows Azure Backup Services Hyper-V Recovery Manager: Public preview of Windows Azure Hyper-V Recovery Manager Virtual Machines: Delete Attached Disks, Availability Set Warnings, SQL AlwaysOn Configuration Active Directory: Securely manage hundreds of SaaS applications Enterprise Management: Use Active Directory to Better Manage Windows Azure Windows Azure SDK 2.2: A massive update of our SDK + Visual Studio tooling support All of these improvements are now available to use immediately.  Below are more details about them. Backup Service: General Availability Release of Windows Azure Backup Today we are releasing Windows Azure Backup Service as a general availability service.  This release is now live in production, backed by an enterprise SLA, supported by Microsoft Support, and is ready to use for production scenarios. Windows Azure Backup is a cloud based backup solution for Windows Server which allows files and folders to be backed up and recovered from the cloud, and provides off-site protection against data loss. The service provides IT administrators and developers with the option to back up and protect critical data in an easily recoverable way from any location with no upfront hardware cost. Windows Azure Backup is built on the Windows Azure platform and uses Windows Azure blob storage for storing customer data. Windows Server uses the downloadable Windows Azure Backup Agent to transfer file and folder data securely and efficiently to the Windows Azure Backup Service. Along with providing cloud backup for Windows Server, Windows Azure Backup Service also provides capability to backup data from System Center Data Protection Manager and Windows Server Essentials, to the cloud. All data is encrypted onsite before it is sent to the cloud, and customers retain and manage the encryption key (meaning the data is stored entirely secured and can’t be decrypted by anyone but yourself). Getting Started To get started with the Windows Azure Backup Service, create a new Backup Vault within the Windows Azure Management Portal.  Click New->Data Services->Recovery Services->Backup Vault to do this: Once the backup vault is created you’ll be presented with a simple tutorial that will help guide you on how to register your Windows Servers with it: Once the servers you want to backup are registered, you can use the appropriate local management interface (such as the Microsoft Management Console snap-in, System Center Data Protection Manager Console, or Windows Server Essentials Dashboard) to configure the scheduled backups and to optionally initiate recoveries. You can follow these tutorials to learn more about how to do this: Tutorial: Schedule Backups Using the Windows Azure Backup Agent This tutorial helps you with setting up a backup schedule for your registered Windows Servers. Additionally, it also explains how to use Windows PowerShell cmdlets to set up a custom backup schedule. Tutorial: Recover Files and Folders Using the Windows Azure Backup Agent This tutorial helps you with recovering data from a backup. Additionally, it also explains how to use Windows PowerShell cmdlets to do the same tasks. Below are some of the key benefits the Windows Azure Backup Service provides: Simple configuration and management. Windows Azure Backup Service integrates with the familiar Windows Server Backup utility in Windows Server, the Data Protection Manager component in System Center and Windows Server Essentials, in order to provide a seamless backup and recovery experience to a local disk, or to the cloud. Block level incremental backups. The Windows Azure Backup Agent performs incremental backups by tracking file and block level changes and only transferring the changed blocks, hence reducing the storage and bandwidth utilization. Different point-in-time versions of the backups use storage efficiently by only storing the changes blocks between these versions. Data compression, encryption and throttling. The Windows Azure Backup Agent ensures that data is compressed and encrypted on the server before being sent to the Windows Azure Backup Service over the network. As a result, the Windows Azure Backup Service only stores encrypted data in the cloud storage. The encryption key is not available to the Windows Azure Backup Service, and as a result the data is never decrypted in the service. Also, users can setup throttling and configure how the Windows Azure Backup service utilizes the network bandwidth when backing up or restoring information. Data integrity is verified in the cloud. In addition to the secure backups, the backed up data is also automatically checked for integrity once the backup is done. As a result, any corruptions which may arise due to data transfer can be easily identified and are fixed automatically. Configurable retention policies for storing data in the cloud. The Windows Azure Backup Service accepts and implements retention policies to recycle backups that exceed the desired retention range, thereby meeting business policies and managing backup costs. Hyper-V Recovery Manager: Now Available in Public Preview I’m excited to also announce the public preview of a new Windows Azure Service – the Windows Azure Hyper-V Recovery Manager (HRM). Windows Azure Hyper-V Recovery Manager helps protect your business critical services by coordinating the replication and recovery of System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012 SP1 and System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012 R2 private clouds at a secondary location. With automated protection, asynchronous ongoing replication, and orderly recovery, the Hyper-V Recovery Manager service can help you implement Disaster Recovery and restore important services accurately, consistently, and with minimal downtime. Application data in an Hyper-V Recovery Manager scenarios always travels on your on-premise replication channel. Only metadata (such as names of logical clouds, virtual machines, networks etc.) that is needed for orchestration is sent to Azure. All traffic sent to/from Azure is encrypted. You can begin using Windows Azure Hyper-V Recovery today by clicking New->Data Services->Recovery Services->Hyper-V Recovery Manager within the Windows Azure Management Portal.  You can read more about Windows Azure Hyper-V Recovery Manager in Brad Anderson’s 9-part series, Transform the datacenter. To learn more about setting up Hyper-V Recovery Manager follow our detailed step-by-step guide. Virtual Machines: Delete Attached Disks, Availability Set Warnings, SQL AlwaysOn Today’s Windows Azure release includes a number of nice updates to Windows Azure Virtual Machines.  These improvements include: Ability to Delete both VM Instances + Attached Disks in One Operation Prior to today’s release, when you deleted VMs within Windows Azure we would delete the VM instance – but not delete the drives attached to the VM.  You had to manually delete these yourself from the storage account.  With today’s update we’ve added a convenience option that now allows you to either retain or delete the attached disks when you delete the VM:   We’ve also added the ability to delete a cloud service, its deployments, and its role instances with a single action. This can either be a cloud service that has production and staging deployments with web and worker roles, or a cloud service that contains virtual machines.  To do this, simply select the Cloud Service within the Windows Azure Management Portal and click the “Delete” button: Warnings on Availability Sets with Only One Virtual Machine In Them One of the nice features that Windows Azure Virtual Machines supports is the concept of “Availability Sets”.  An “availability set” allows you to define a tier/role (e.g. webfrontends, databaseservers, etc) that you can map Virtual Machines into – and when you do this Windows Azure separates them across fault domains and ensures that at least one of them is always available during servicing operations.  This enables you to deploy applications in a high availability way. One issue we’ve seen some customers run into is where they define an availability set, but then forget to map more than one VM into it (which defeats the purpose of having an availability set).  With today’s release we now display a warning in the Windows Azure Management Portal if you have only one virtual machine deployed in an availability set to help highlight this: You can learn more about configuring the availability of your virtual machines here. Configuring SQL Server Always On SQL Server Always On is a great feature that you can use with Windows Azure to enable high availability and DR scenarios with SQL Server. Today’s Windows Azure release makes it even easier to configure SQL Server Always On by enabling “Direct Server Return” endpoints to be configured and managed within the Windows Azure Management Portal.  Previously, setting this up required using PowerShell to complete the endpoint configuration.  Starting today you can enable this simply by checking the “Direct Server Return” checkbox: You can learn more about how to use direct server return for SQL Server AlwaysOn availability groups here. Active Directory: Application Access Enhancements This summer we released our initial preview of our Application Access Enhancements for Windows Azure Active Directory.  This service enables you to securely implement single-sign-on (SSO) support against SaaS applications (including Office 365, SalesForce, Workday, Box, Google Apps, GitHub, etc) as well as LOB based applications (including ones built with the new Windows Azure AD support we shipped last week with ASP.NET and VS 2013). Since the initial preview we’ve enhanced our SAML federation capabilities, integrated our new password vaulting system, and shipped multi-factor authentication support. We've also turned on our outbound identity provisioning system and have it working with hundreds of additional SaaS Applications: Earlier this month we published an update on dates and pricing for when the service will be released in general availability form.  In this blog post we announced our intention to release the service in general availability form by the end of the year.  We also announced that the below features would be available in a free tier with it: SSO to every SaaS app we integrate with – Users can Single Sign On to any app we are integrated with at no charge. This includes all the top SAAS Apps and every app in our application gallery whether they use federation or password vaulting. Application access assignment and removal – IT Admins can assign access privileges to web applications to the users in their active directory assuring that every employee has access to the SAAS Apps they need. And when a user leaves the company or changes jobs, the admin can just as easily remove their access privileges assuring data security and minimizing IP loss User provisioning (and de-provisioning) – IT admins will be able to automatically provision users in 3rd party SaaS applications like Box, Salesforce.com, GoToMeeting, DropBox and others. We are working with key partners in the ecosystem to establish these connections, meaning you no longer have to continually update user records in multiple systems. Security and auditing reports – Security is a key priority for us. With the free version of these enhancements you'll get access to our standard set of access reports giving you visibility into which users are using which applications, when they were using them and where they are using them from. In addition, we'll alert you to un-usual usage patterns for instance when a user logs in from multiple locations at the same time. Our Application Access Panel – Users are logging in from every type of devices including Windows, iOS, & Android. Not all of these devices handle authentication in the same manner but the user doesn't care. They need to access their apps from the devices they love. Our Application Access Panel will support the ability for users to access access and launch their apps from any device and anywhere. You can learn more about our plans for application management with Windows Azure Active Directory here.  Try out the preview and start using it today. Enterprise Management: Use Active Directory to Better Manage Windows Azure Windows Azure Active Directory provides the ability to manage your organization in a directory which is hosted entirely in the cloud, or alternatively kept in sync with an on-premises Windows Server Active Directory solution (allowing you to seamlessly integrate with the directory you already have).  With today’s Windows Azure release we are integrating Windows Azure Active Directory even more within the core Windows Azure management experience, and enabling an even richer enterprise security offering.  Specifically: 1) All Windows Azure accounts now have a default Windows Azure Active Directory created for them.  You can create and map any users you want into this directory, and grant administrative rights to manage resources in Windows Azure to these users. 2) You can keep this directory entirely hosted in the cloud – or optionally sync it with your on-premises Windows Server Active Directory.  Both options are free.  The later approach is ideal for companies that wish to use their corporate user identities to sign-in and manage Windows Azure resources.  It also ensures that if an employee leaves an organization, his or her access control rights to the company’s Windows Azure resources are immediately revoked. 3) The Windows Azure Service Management APIs have been updated to support using Windows Azure Active Directory credentials to sign-in and perform management operations.  Prior to today’s release customers had to download and use management certificates (which were not scoped to individual users) to perform management operations.  We still support this management certificate approach (don’t worry – nothing will stop working).  But we think the new Windows Azure Active Directory authentication support enables an even easier and more secure way for customers to manage resources going forward.  4) The Windows Azure SDK 2.2 release (which is also shipping today) includes built-in support for the new Service Management APIs that authenticate with Windows Azure Active Directory, and now allow you to create and manage Windows Azure applications and resources directly within Visual Studio using your Active Directory credentials.  This, combined with updated PowerShell scripts that also support Active Directory, enables an end-to-end enterprise authentication story with Windows Azure. Below are some details on how all of this works: Subscriptions within a Directory As part of today’s update, we have associated all existing Window Azure accounts with a Windows Azure Active Directory (and created one for you if you don’t already have one). When you login to the Windows Azure Management Portal you’ll now see the directory name in the URI of the browser.  For example, in the screen-shot below you can see that I have a “scottgu” directory that my subscriptions are hosted within: Note that you can continue to use Microsoft Accounts (formerly known as Microsoft Live IDs) to sign-into Windows Azure.  These map just fine to a Windows Azure Active Directory – so there is no need to create new usernames that are specific to a directory if you don’t want to.  In the scenario above I’m actually logged in using my @hotmail.com based Microsoft ID which is now mapped to a “scottgu” active directory that was created for me.  By default everything will continue to work just like you used to before. Manage your Directory You can manage an Active Directory (including the one we now create for you by default) by clicking the “Active Directory” tab in the left-hand side of the portal.  This will list all of the directories in your account.  Clicking one the first time will display a getting started page that provides documentation and links to perform common tasks with it: You can use the built-in directory management support within the Windows Azure Management Portal to add/remove/manage users within the directory, enable multi-factor authentication, associate a custom domain (e.g. mycompanyname.com) with the directory, and/or rename the directory to whatever friendly name you want (just click the configure tab to do this).  You can also setup the directory to automatically sync with an on-premises Active Directory using the “Directory Integration” tab. Note that users within a directory by default do not have admin rights to login or manage Windows Azure based resources.  You still need to explicitly grant them co-admin permissions on a subscription for them to login or manage resources in Windows Azure.  You can do this by clicking the Settings tab on the left-hand side of the portal and then by clicking the administrators tab within it. Sign-In Integration within Visual Studio If you install the new Windows Azure SDK 2.2 release, you can now connect to Windows Azure from directly inside Visual Studio without having to download any management certificates.  You can now just right-click on the “Windows Azure” icon within the Server Explorer and choose the “Connect to Windows Azure” context menu option to do so: Doing this will prompt you to enter the email address of the username you wish to sign-in with (make sure this account is a user in your directory with co-admin rights on a subscription): You can use either a Microsoft Account (e.g. Windows Live ID) or an Active Directory based Organizational account as the email.  The dialog will update with an appropriate login prompt depending on which type of email address you enter: Once you sign-in you’ll see the Windows Azure resources that you have permissions to manage show up automatically within the Visual Studio server explorer and be available to start using: No downloading of management certificates required.  All of the authentication was handled using your Windows Azure Active Directory! Manage Subscriptions across Multiple Directories If you have already have multiple directories and multiple subscriptions within your Windows Azure account, we have done our best to create a good default mapping of your subscriptions->directories as part of today’s update.  If you don’t like the default subscription-to-directory mapping we have done you can click the Settings tab in the left-hand navigation of the Windows Azure Management Portal and browse to the Subscriptions tab within it: If you want to map a subscription under a different directory in your account, simply select the subscription from the list, and then click the “Edit Directory” button to choose which directory to map it to.  Mapping a subscription to a different directory takes only seconds and will not cause any of the resources within the subscription to recycle or stop working.  We’ve made the directory->subscription mapping process self-service so that you always have complete control and can map things however you want. Filtering By Directory and Subscription Within the Windows Azure Management Portal you can filter resources in the portal by subscription (allowing you to show/hide different subscriptions).  If you have subscriptions mapped to multiple directory tenants, we also now have a filter drop-down that allows you to filter the subscription list by directory tenant.  This filter is only available if you have multiple subscriptions mapped to multiple directories within your Windows Azure Account:   Windows Azure SDK 2.2 Today we are also releasing a major update of our Windows Azure SDK.  The Windows Azure SDK 2.2 release adds some great new features including: Visual Studio 2013 Support Integrated Windows Azure Sign-In support within Visual Studio Remote Debugging Cloud Services with Visual Studio Firewall Management support within Visual Studio for SQL Databases Visual Studio 2013 RTM VM Images for MSDN Subscribers Windows Azure Management Libraries for .NET Updated Windows Azure PowerShell Cmdlets and ScriptCenter I’ll post a follow-up blog shortly with more details about all of the above. Additional Updates In addition to the above enhancements, today’s release also includes a number of additional improvements: AutoScale: Richer time and date based scheduling support (set different rules on different dates) AutoScale: Ability to Scale to Zero Virtual Machines (very useful for Dev/Test scenarios) AutoScale: Support for time-based scheduling of Mobile Service AutoScale rules Operation Logs: Auditing support for Service Bus management operations Today we also shipped a major update to the Windows Azure SDK – Windows Azure SDK 2.2.  It has so much goodness in it that I have a whole second blog post coming shortly on it! :-) Summary Today’s Windows Azure release enables a bunch of great new scenarios, and enables a much richer enterprise authentication offering. If you don’t already have a Windows Azure account, you can sign-up for a free trial and start using all of the above features today.  Then visit the Windows Azure Developer Center to learn more about how to build apps with it. Hope this helps, Scott P.S. In addition to blogging, I am also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at: twitter.com/scottgu

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  • Upgrading Windows 8 boot to VHD to Windows 8.1&ndash;Step by step guide

    - by Liam Westley
    Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/twickers/archive/2013/10/19/upgrading-windows-8-boot-to-vhd-to-windows-8.1ndashstep-by.aspxBoot to VHD – dual booting Windows 7 and Windows 8 became easy When Windows 8 arrived, quite a few people decided that they would still dual boot their machines, and instead of mucking about with resizing disk partitions to free up space for Windows 8 they decided to use the boot from VHD feature to create a huge hard disc image into which Windows 8 could be installed.  Scott Hanselman wrote this installation guide, while I myself used the installation guide from Ed Bott of ZD net fame. Boot to VHD is a great solution, it achieves a dual boot, can be backed up easily and had virtually no effect on the original Windows 7 partition. As a developer who has dual booted Windows operating systems for years, hacking boot.ini files, the boot to VHD was a much easier solution. Upgrade to Windows 8.1 – ah, you can’t do that on a virtual disk installation (boot to VHD) Last week the final version of Windows 8.1 arrived, and I went into the Windows Store to upgrade.  Luckily I’m on a fast download service, and use an SSD, because once the upgrade was downloaded and prepared Windows informed that This PC can’t run Windows 8.1, and provided the reason, You can’t install Windows on a virtual drive.  You can see an image of the message and discussion that sparked my search for a solution in this Microsoft Technet forum post. I was determined not to have to resize partitions yet again and fiddle with VHD to disk utilities and back again, and in the end I did succeed in upgrading to a Windows 8.1 boot to VHD partition.  It takes quite a bit of effort though … tldr; Simple steps of how you upgrade Boot into Windows 7 – make a copy of your Windows 8 VHD, to become Windows 8.1 Enable Hyper-V in your Windows 8 (the original boot to VHD partition) Create a new virtual machine, attaching the copy of your Windows 8 VHD Start the virtual machine, upgrade it via the Windows Store to Windows 8.1 Shutdown the virtual machine Boot into Windows 7 – use the bcedit tool to create a new Windows 8.1 boot to VHD option (pointing at the copy) Boot into the new Windows 8.1 option Reactivate Windows 8.1 (it will have become deactivated by running under Hyper-V) Remove the original Windows 8 VHD, and in Windows 7 use bcedit to remove it from the boot menu Things you’ll need A system that can run Hyper-V under Windows 8 (Intel i5, i7 class CPU) Enough space to have your original Windows 8 boot to VHD and a copy at the same time An ISO or DVD for Windows 8 to create a bootable Windows 8 partition Step by step guide Boot to your base o/s, the real one, Windows 7. Make a copy of the Windows 8 VHD file that you use to boot Windows 8 (via boot from VHD) – I copied it from a folder on C: called VHD-Win8 to VHD-Win8.1 on my N: drive. Reboot your system into Windows 8, and enable Hyper-V if not already present (this may require reboot) Use the Hyper-V manager , create a new Hyper-V machine, using half your system memory, and use the option to attach an existing VHD on the main IDE controller – this will be the new copy you made in Step 2. Start the virtual machine, use Connect to view it, and you’ll probably discover it cannot boot as there is no boot record If this is the case, go to Hyper-V manager, edit the Settings for the virtual machine to attach an ISO of a Windows 8 DVD to the second IDE controller. Start the virtual machine, use Connect to view it, and it should now attempt a fresh installation of Windows 8.  You should select Advanced Options and choose Repair - this will make VHD bootable When the setup reboots your virtual machine, turn off the virtual machine, and remove the ISO of the Windows 8 DVD from the virtual machine settings. Start virtual machine, use Connect to view it.  You will see the devices to be re-discovered (including your quad CPU becoming single CPU).  Eventually you should see the Windows Login screen. You may notice that your desktop background (Win+D) will have turned black as your Windows installation has become deactivate due to the hardware changes between your real PC and Hyper-V. Fortunately becoming deactivated, does not stop you using the Windows Store, where you can select the update to Windows 8.1. You can now watch the progress joy of the Windows 8 update; downloading, preparing to update, checking compatibility, gathering info, preparing to restart, and finally, confirm restart - remember that you are restarting your virtual machine sitting on the copy of the VHD, not the Windows 8 boot to VHD you are currently using to run Hyper-V (confused yet?) After the reboot you get the real upgrade messages; setting up x%, xx%, (quite slow) After a while, Getting ready Applying PC Settings x%, xx% (really slow) Updating your system (fast) Setting up a few more things x%, (quite slow) Getting ready, again Accept license terms Express settings Confirmed previous password Next, I had to set up a Microsoft account – which is possibly now required, and not optional Using the Microsoft account required a 2 factor authorization, via text message, a 7 digit code for me Finalising settings Blank screen, HI .. We're setting up things for you (similar to original Windows 8 install) 'You can get new apps from the Store', below which is ’Installing your apps’ - I had Windows Media Center which is counts as an app from the Store ‘Taking care of a few things’, below which is ‘Installing your apps’ ‘Taking care of a few things’, below ‘Don't turn off your PC’ ‘Getting your apps ready’, below ‘Don't turn off your PC’ ‘Almost ready’, below ‘Don't turn off your PC’ … finally, we get the Windows 8.1 start menu, and a quick Win+D to check the desktop confirmed all the application icons I expected, pinned items on the taskbar, and one app moaning about a missing drive At this point the upgrade is complete – you can shutdown the virtual machine Reboot from the original Windows 8 and return to Windows 7 to configure booting to the Windows 8.1 copy of the VHD In an administrator command prompt do following use the bcdedit tool (from an MSDN blog about configuring VHD to boot in Windows 7) Type bcedit to list the current boot options, so you can copy the GUID (complete with brackets/braces) for the original Windows 8 boot to VHD Create a new menu option, copy of the Windows 8 option; bcdedit /copy {originalguid} /d "Windows 8.1" Point the new Windows 8.1 option to the copy of the VHD; bcdedit /set {newguid} device vhd=[D:]\Image.vhd Point the new Windows 8.1 option to the copy of the VHD; bcdedit /set {newguid} osdevice vhd=[D:]\Image.vhd Set autodetection of the HAL (may already be set); bcdedit /set {newguid} detecthal on Reboot from Windows 7 and select the new option 'Windows 8.1' on the boot menu, and you’ll have some messages to look at, as your hardware is redetected (as you are back from 1 CPU to 4 CPUs) ‘Getting devices ready, blank then %xx, with occasional blank screen, for the graphics driver, (fast-ish) Getting Ready message (fast) You will have to suffer one final reboots, choose 'Windows 8.1' and you can now login to a lovely Windows 8.1 start screen running on non virtualized hardware via boot to VHD After checking everything is running fine, you can now choose to Activate Windows, which for me was a toll free phone call to the automated system where you type in lots of numbers to be given a whole bunch of new activation codes. Once you’re happy with your new Windows 8.1 boot to VHD, and no longer need the Windows 8 boot to VHD, feel free to delete the old one.  I do believe once you upgrade, you are no longer licensed to use it anyway. There, that was simple wasn’t it? Looking at the huge list of steps it took to perform this upgrade, you may wonder whether I think this is worth it.  Well, I think it is worth booting to VHD.  It makes backups a snap (go to Windows 7, copy the VHD, you backed up the o/s) and helps with disk management – want to move the o/s, you can move the VHD and repoint the boot menu to the new location. The downside is that Microsoft has complete neglected to support boot to VHD as an upgradable option.  Quite a poor decision in my opinion, and if you read twitter and the forums quite a few people agree with that view.  It’s a shame this got missed in the work on creating the upgrade packages for Windows 8.1.

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  • 2D Array of 2D Arrays (C# / XNA) [on hold]

    - by Lemoncreme
    I want to create a 2D array that contains many other 2D arrays. The problem is I'm not quite sure what I'm doing but this is the initialization code I have: int[,][,] chunk = new int[64, 64][32, 32]; For some reason Visual Studio doesn't like this and says that it's and 'invalid rank specifier'. Also, I'm not sure how to use the nested arrays once I've declared them... Some help and some insight, please?

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  • 2 Days of Share &amp; Point

    - by Mark Rackley
    Groovy man… SharePoint Saturday Ozarks is back for 2010, bigger and better than before. Join us for a far out time and learn more about SharePoint in one day than you could in a year from the man… Yes! SharePoint Saturday Ozarks is back! SharePoint Saturday Ozarks is the largest SharePoint conference in Arkansas, Southern Missouri, and the very north east tip of Oklahoma. Last year we had a great turn out with 20 speakers, 5 MVPs, and attendees coming from Arkansas, Texas, Oklahoma, Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, Indiana, Ohio, Alabama, Michigan, and Washington. Hey Man… what’s SharePoint Saturday anyway? Sounds like a conspiracy man… Not to worry, SharePoint Saturday is not an arm of the government bent on mind control or any attempt what-so-ever to bring you down man. SharePoint Saturday is grass roots effort started by Michael Lotter (http://www.sharepointsaturday.org/pages/about.aspx). It is a FREE one day event where the best SharePoint speakers gather to present their love, hatred, and frustrations of SharePoint to those lucky individuals who attend. Lessons are learned, contacts are made, prizes are won, food is eaten, assorted beverages are consumed until wee hours of the morning. SharePoint Saturday started with just a few sporadic one day events here and there. However, over the past year SharePoint Saturday has exploded and it’s hard to find a weekend where there is NOT a SharePoint Saturday event happing in some corner of the globe. There are even occasions where there are two SharePoint Saturdays on the same day! Many people are pleasantly surprised at the caliber of speakers at these SharePoint Saturday events. For the most part, these speakers are more eloquent, practiced, and practical than those speakers you find at the major multi-day conferences. These guys aren’t even paid to speak.. they do it out of love man… SharePoint Saturday Ozarks 2009 Alumni We had a star studded cast last year with many returning this year! Just check out the fun that they had… John Ferringer – Admin rockstar… I can still sense the awesomeness   SharePoint poster children Mike Watson & Laura Rogers     Lori Gowin spreading the SharePoint Love Eric Shupps is a little bit country and a little bit rock and roll       Cathy Dew, Sean McDonough, and JD Wade relaxing between gigs Actually, you can see real photos from last year’s SharePoint Saturday ozarks here:  picasaweb.google.com/mrackley/SharePointSaturdayOzarks#    What’s new for SharePoint Saturday Ozarks 2010 SharePoint Saturday Ozarks 2010 will totally blow your mind man. We’re getting the band back to together with many returning speakers and few new faces. Joel Oleson will be speaking this year, maybe he’ll grace us with his song stylings. Sadly, once again, Andrew Connell will not be able to attend SharePoint Saturday Ozarks, however he did feel the need to show his support in his own way. Prizes this year currently include books, software, a Zune HD, and much more! Wait Man… You said 2 days? I thought it was a one day event? Correct you are my herbal smelling friend… SharePoint Saturday Ozarks 2010 will spread the love an additional day this year. The first day will be all about the SharePoint love, on day 2 we will be taking a leisurely float down the Buffalo National River for those interested in a truly unique experience (no banjos allowed please).   Here are the details: WHAT 4 – 5 hour float down the Buffalo National River WHEN & WHERE Sunday June 13th. We will be leaving at 10am from the Parking Lot of: Gordon’s Motel & Canoe Rental Old Highway 7 Jasper, AR 72641 (870) 446-5252 Jasper is about 30 minutes south of Harrison, AR on Highway 7 South. You are responsible for bumming a ride to/from Gordon’s Motel, but they will be shuttling us to/from the river and providing canoes and a boxed lunch. WHAT ELSE? The float trip is dependent on the weather of course, we won’t be floating down the river in a thunderstorm, however I planned SPS Ozarks around a time of year ideal for floating. We aren’t talking class 5 rapids here, you don’t need any real skill, but you need to be okay with possibly tipping your canoe over once or twice. You can bring your own assorted beverages with you, but glass containers are not allowed on the river. I suggest a small cooler with extra snacks and drinks. Also bring clothing you can get wet in (these SharePoint people can get ornery). HOW DO I SIGN UP? When you register for SharePoint Saturday Ozarks, you will have the option to also sign up for the float trip. Seats are limited though! If you do not intend to go, please do not take someone else’s place.  The cost for the float trip will be about $35 dollars per person (which you are responsible for unless we find a sponsor). The price includes shuttle to/from river, canoe, life jackets, paddles, and boxed lunch. Far out man… how do I register??? You can register for SharePoint Saturday Ozarks by going to http://spsozarks.eventbrite.com/ We are limited to 200 people for the conference and 50 people for the float trip, so register today before we are sold out. Lodging for SharePoint Saturday Ozarks will once again take place at the Hotel Seville: Annex Suites are available for $103.20 This is So Groovy.. How can I help? I’m glad you asked! We are still looking for a few sponsors and one or two more speakers. If you are interested please let me know!  You can find out more information at http://www.sharepointsaturday.org/ozarks Hey… wait a minute…. what exactly IS SharePoint man??? Come to SharePoint Saturday Ozarks and find out!!  See you guys there!

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  • Friday Fun: Play 3D Rally Racing in Google Chrome

    - by Asian Angel
    Are you a racing fan in need of a short (or long) break from work? Then get ready to enjoy a mid-day speed boost with the 3D Rally Racing extension for Google Chrome. 3D Rally Racing in Action This is the opening screen for 3D Rally Racing. You can start game play, view current best times, and read through the instructions from here. The first thing that you should do is have a quick look at the instructions to help you get set up and started. Click on “Play” to start the process. Before you can go further you will need to choose a “User Name”. Once you have done that click “Select Track”… Note: The extension will retain your name for later use even if you close your browser. When you first start out you will only have access to two tracks…the others require reaching a certain score/level to unlock them. Once you select a track you will be taken to the next screen. After you have selected a track you will need to choose your car and car color. All that is left to do afterwards is click on “Go Race”. Note: You will be competing against three other vehicles in the race. Here is a look at the “Desert Race Track”… And a look at the “Snow Race Track”. This game moves quickly and it is easy to fall behind if you are not careful! You can have a lot of fun playing this game while you are waiting for the day to end. Conclusion If you love racing games and want a fun way to waste the rest of afternoon at work, then you should definitely give 3D Rally Racing a try. Links Download the 3d Rally Racing extension (Google Chrome Extensions) Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Friday Fun: Uphill RushFriday Fun: Racing Fun with SuperTuxKart RacerHow to Make Google Chrome Your Default BrowserEnable Vista Black Style Theme for Google Chrome in XPIncrease Google Chrome’s Omnibox Popup Suggestion Count With an Undocumented Switch TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 PCmover Professional Enable Check Box Selection in Windows 7 OnlineOCR – Free OCR Service Betting on the Blind Side, a Vanity Fair article 30 Minimal Logo Designs that Say More with Less LEGO Digital Designer – Free Create a Personal Website Quickly using Flavors.me

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  • Friday Fun: Play 3D Rally Racing in Google Chrome

    - by Asian Angel
    Are you a racing fan in need of a short (or long) break from work? Then get ready to enjoy a mid-day speed boost with the 3D Rally Racing extension for Google Chrome. 3D Rally Racing in Action This is the opening screen for 3D Rally Racing. You can start game play, view current best times, and read through the instructions from here. The first thing that you should do is have a quick look at the instructions to help you get set up and started. Click on “Play” to start the process. Before you can go further you will need to choose a “User Name”. Once you have done that click “Select Track”… Note: The extension will retain your name for later use even if you close your browser. When you first start out you will only have access to two tracks…the others require reaching a certain score/level to unlock them. Once you select a track you will be taken to the next screen. After you have selected a track you will need to choose your car and car color. All that is left to do afterwards is click on “Go Race”. Note: You will be competing against three other vehicles in the race. Here is a look at the “Desert Race Track”… And a look at the “Snow Race Track”. This game moves quickly and it is easy to fall behind if you are not careful! You can have a lot of fun playing this game while you are waiting for the day to end. Conclusion If you love racing games and want a fun way to waste the rest of afternoon at work, then you should definitely give 3D Rally Racing a try. Links Download the 3d Rally Racing extension (Google Chrome Extensions) Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Friday Fun: Uphill RushFriday Fun: Racing Fun with SuperTuxKart RacerHow to Make Google Chrome Your Default BrowserEnable Vista Black Style Theme for Google Chrome in XPIncrease Google Chrome’s Omnibox Popup Suggestion Count With an Undocumented Switch TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 PCmover Professional Enable Check Box Selection in Windows 7 OnlineOCR – Free OCR Service Betting on the Blind Side, a Vanity Fair article 30 Minimal Logo Designs that Say More with Less LEGO Digital Designer – Free Create a Personal Website Quickly using Flavors.me

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  • Using a service registry that doesn’t suck part I: UDDI is dead

    - by gsusx
    This is the first of a series of posts on which I am hoping to detail some of the most common SOA governance scenarios in the real world, their challenges and the approach we’ve taken to address them in SO-Aware. This series does not intend to be a marketing pitch about SO-Aware. Instead, I would like to use this to foment an honest dialog between SOA governance technologists. For the starting post I decided to focus on the aspect that was once considered the keystone of SOA governance: service discovery...(read more)

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  • Disable Opera Thumbnail Previews on Windows 7 Taskbar

    - by Asian Angel
    If you are one of the people who does not care for the Taskbar Thumbnail Previews in Windows 7 then we have a quick and easy way for you to turn them off in Opera Browser. Before Here is our Opera Browser with four tabs full of HTG Network goodness… Hovering the mouse over the Taskbar Icon gives a nice preview of each tabs content. Looking closer you can see the fanned edge on the Taskbar Icon indicating that there are multiple tabs open. This is all good but what if you just want something simpler? Disabling the Previews If you want to disable the Taskbar Thumbnail Previews in Opera you will need to type opera:config in the Address Bar and press Enter. Once you have done that, you will see a condensed listing for all of Opera’s preferences. There is one Preference Category that we need to look for…User Prefs. Note: While a Quick Find Search could be conducted for the entry that needs to be modified, we have chosen to show the full method here. After scrolling down and finding the User Prefs category you will need to expand the section. Notice the size of the scrollbar in comparison with the screenshot above…there is quite a lot that you can look at and finesse in Opera if desired. Scroll down until you find the Use Windows 7 Taskbar Thumbnails entry. Uncheck the box but do not close the opera:config Tab yet…or your changes will not take effect. Scroll down once more until you reach the end of the User Prefs category and click Save. With this particular modification you will need to restart Opera after clicking OK. After restarting Opera the Taskbar Icon and Taskbar Thumbnail Preview will revert to the minimal Windows 7 default as shown here. You can see Opera’s Tab Bar in the thumbnail and the Taskbar Icon no longer has a “fanned edge”. Conclusion If you want to disable Opera’s Taskbar Thumbnail Previews on your Windows 7 system, then this quick modification will help get it sorted out in just a few moments. Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Disable IE 8 Thumbnail Previews on Windows 7 TaskbarIncrease the size of Taskbar Preview Thumbnails in Windows 7Vista Style Popup Previews for Firefox TabsEnable Thumbnail Previews for Firefox in Windows 7 TaskbarWorkaround for Vista Taskbar Thumbnail Previews Not Showing Correctly TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips All My Movies 5.9 CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server Snagit 10 VMware Workstation 7 10 Superb Firefox Wallpapers OpenDNS Guide Google TV The iPod Revolution Ultimate Boot CD can help when disaster strikes Windows Firewall with Advanced Security – How To Guides

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  • Add SiteAdvisor to Google Chrome

    - by Asian Angel
    With the continued increase in malware knowing when a website is trouble can save you from a painful experience. If you are looking to add a bit more security to your Chromium-based Browser then join us as we look at the SiteAdvisor for Chrome extension. SiteAdvisor for Chrome in Action Once you have installed the extension you should go into the options first. You can choose which style of warning that you would like to receive when encountering a “less then reputable” website. The default setting is for the “Toolbar Icon Warning” but can be easily changed to a full “Webpage Redirect”. Note: The “Toolbar Button/Icon” does not display a drop-down window when clicked on. Here is an example if you go with the default and receive the “Toolbar Icon Warning”. Once again the same website except with the full “Webpage Redirect” in effect…of the two options this is the recommended setting. Notice that details are provided for “why” the website is listed as “less than reputable”. An example of a website that is all good…nothing but checkmarks and green. Terrific! There may be those of you who would be more comfortable with a “double layer” of protection while browsing. As you can see here SiteAdvisor and WOT work nicely together. You can read more about WOT for Chrome here. Conclusion If you worry about “less than reputable” websites SiteAdvisor for Chrome can help provide a layer of security that will warn you when you are getting ready to “browse” into possible trouble. Links Download the SiteAdvisor for Chrome extension (Google Chrome Extensions) Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Find a Website’s Actual Location with Chrome FlagsHow to Make Google Chrome Your Default BrowserEnable Vista Black Style Theme for Google Chrome in XPIncrease Google Chrome’s Omnibox Popup Suggestion Count With an Undocumented SwitchDisable YouTube Comments while using Chrome TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 PCmover Professional Geek Parents – Did you try Parental Controls in Windows 7? Change DNS servers on the fly with DNS Jumper Live PDF Searches PDF Files and Ebooks Converting Mp4 to Mp3 Easily Use Quick Translator to Translate Text in 50 Languages (Firefox) Get Better Windows Search With UltraSearch

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  • MySQL – How to Find mysqld.exe with Command Prompt – Fix: ‘mysql’ is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file

    - by Pinal Dave
    One of the most popular question I get after watching my MySQL courses on Pluralsight is that beginning users are not able to find where they have installed MySQL Server. The error they receive is as follows when they type mysqld command on their default command line. ‘mysql‘ is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file. This error comes up if user try to execute mysqld command on default command prompt. The user should execute this command where mysql.exe file exists.  If you are using Windows Explorer you can easily search on your drive mysqld.exe and find the location of the file and execute the above command there. However, if you want to find out with command prompt the location of mysqld.exe file you can follow the direction here. Step 1: Open a command prompt Open command prompt from Start >> Run >> cmd >> enter Step 2: Change directory You need to change the default directory to root directory, hence type cd\ command on the prompt to change the default directory to c:\ . Here we are assuming that you have installed MySQL on your c: drive. If you have installed it on any other drive change the drive to that letter. Step 3: Search Drive Type the command dir mysqld.exe /s /p on the command prompt. It will search your directories and will list the directory where mysqld.exe is located. Step 4: Change Directory Now once again change your command prompt file location to the folder where your mysqld.exe is located. In my case it is located here in folder C:\Program Files\MySQL\MySQL Server 5.6\bin hence I will run following command: cd C:\Program Files\MySQL\MySQL Server 5.6\bin . Step 5: Execute mysqld.exe Now you can once again mysqld.exe on your command prompt. You can use this method to search pretty much any file with the help of command prompt. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com)Filed under: MySQL, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL

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  • Quick guide to Oracle IRM 11g: Creating your first sealed document

    - by Simon Thorpe
    Quick guide to Oracle IRM 11g indexThe previous articles in this guide have detailed how to install, configure and secure your Oracle IRM 11g service. This article walks you through the process of now creating your first context and securing a document against it. I should mention that it would be worth reviewing the following to ensure your installation is ready for that all important first document. Ensure you have correctly configured the keystore for the IRM wrapper keys. If this is not correctly configured, creating the context below will fail. Make sure the IRM server URL correctly resolves and uses the right protocol (HTTP or HTTPS) ContentsCreate the first contextInstall the Oracle IRM Desktop Seal your first document Create the first contextIn Oracle 11g there is a built in classification and rights system called the "standard rights model" which is based on 10 years of customer use cases and innovation. It is a system which enables IRM to scale massively whilst retaining the ability to balance security and usability and also separate duties by allowing contacts in the business to own classifications. The final article in this guide goes into detail on this inbuilt classification model, but for the purposes of this current article all we need to do is create at least one context to test our system out.With a new IRM server there are a set of predefined context templates and roles which again are setup in a way which reflects the most common use we've learned from our customers. We will use these out of the box configurations as they are to create the first context against which we will seal some content.First login to your Oracle IRM Management Website located at https://irm.company.com/irm_rights/. Currently the system is only configured to use the built in LDAP for users, so use the only account we have at the moment, which by default is weblogic. Once logged in switch to the Contexts tab. Click on the New Context icon () in the menu bar on the left. In the resulting dialog select the Standard context template and enter in a name for the context. Then just hit finish, the weblogic account will automatically be made the manager. You'll now see your brand new context ready for users to be assigned. Now click on the Assign Role icon () in the menu bar and in the resulting dialog search for your only user account, weblogic, and add to the list on the right. Now select a role for this user. Because we need to create a document with this user we must select contributor, as this is the only role which allows for the ability to seal. Finally hit next and then finish. We now have a context with a user that has the rights to create a document. The next step is to configure the IRM Desktop to get these rights from the server. Install the Oracle IRM Desktop Before we can seal a document we need the client software installed. Oracle IRM has a very small, lightweight client called the Oracle IRM Desktop which can be freely downloaded in 27 languages from here. Double click on the installer and click on next... Next again... And finally on install... Very easy. You may get a warning about closing Outlook, Word or another application and most of the time no reboots are required. Once it is installed you will see the IRM Desktop icon running in your tool tray, bottom right of the desktop. Seal your first document Finally the prize is within reach, creating your first sealed document. The server is running, we've got a context ready, a user assigned a role in the context but there is the simple and obvious hoop left to jump through. To seal a document we need to have the users rights cached to the local machine. For this to take place, the IRM Desktop needs to know where the Oracle IRM server is on the network so we can synchronize these rights and then be able to seal a document. The usual way for the IRM Desktop to know about the IRM server is it learns automatically when you open an existing piece of content that someone has sent you... ack. Bit of a chicken or the egg dilemma. The solution is to manually tell the IRM Desktop the location of the IRM Server and then force a synchronization of rights. Right click on the Oracle IRM Desktop icon in the system tray and select Options.... Then switch to the Servers tab in the resulting dialog. There are no servers in the list because you've never opened any content. This list is usually populated automatically but we are going to add a server manually, so click on New.... Into the dialog enter in the full URL to the IRM server. Note that this time you use the path /irm_desktop/ and not /irm_rights/. You can see an example from the image below. Click on the validate button and you'll be asked to authenticate. Enter in your weblogic username and password and also check the Remember my password check box. Click OK and the IRM Desktop will confirm a successful connection to the server. OK all the dialogs and we are ready to Synchronize this users rights to the desktop. Right click once more on the Oracle IRM Desktop icon in the system tray. Now the Synchronize menu option is available. Select this and the IRM Desktop will now talk to the IRM server, authenticate using your weblogic account and get your rights to the context we created. Because this is the first time this users has communicated with the IRM server the IRM Desktop presents a privacy policy dialog. This is a chance for the business to ask users to agree to any policy about the use of IRM before opening secured documents. In our guide we've not bothered to setup this URL so just click on the check box and hit Accept. The IRM Desktop will then talk to the server, get your rights and display a success dialog. Lets protect a documentNow we are ready to seal a piece of content. In my guide i'm going to protect a Microsoft Word document. This mean's I have to have copy of Office installed, in this guide i'm using Microsoft Office 2007. You could also seal a PDF document, you'll need to download and install Adobe Acrobat Reader. A very simple test could be to seal a GIF/JPG/PNG or piece of HTML because this is rendered using Internet Explorer. But as I say, i'm going to protect a Word document. The following example demonstrates choosing a file in Windows Explorer, there are many ways to seal a file and you can watch a few in this video.Open a copy of Windows Explorer and locate the file you wish to seal. Right click on the document and select Seal To -> Context You are now presented with the Select Context dialog. You'll now have a sealed copy of the document sat in the same location. Double click on this document and it will open, again using the credentials you've already provided. That is it, now you just need to add more users, more documents, more classifications and start exploring the different roles and experiment with different offline periods etc. You may wish to setup the server against an existing LDAP or Active Directory environment instead of using the built in WebLogic LDAP store. You can read how to use your corporate directory here. But before we finish this guide, there is one more article and arguably the most important article of all. Next I discuss the all important decision making surrounding the actually implementation of Oracle IRM inside your business. Who has rights to what? How do you map contexts to your existing business practices? It is the next article which actually ensures you deploy a successful IRM solution by looking at the business and understanding how they use your sensitive information and then configuring Oracle IRM to reflect their use.

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  • Change or Reset Windows Password from a Ubuntu Live CD

    - by Trevor Bekolay
    If you can’t log in even after trying your twelve passwords, or you’ve inherited a computer complete with password-protected profiles, worry not – you don’t have to do a fresh install of Windows. We’ll show you how to change or reset your Windows password from a Ubuntu Live CD. This method works for all of the NT-based version of Windows – anything from Windows 2000 and later, basically. And yes, that includes Windows 7. You’ll need a Ubuntu 9.10 Live CD, or a bootable Ubuntu 9.10 Flash Drive. If you don’t have one, or have forgotten how to boot from the flash drive, check out our article on creating a bootable Ubuntu 9.10 flash drive. The program that lets us manipulate Windows passwords is called chntpw. The steps to install it are different in 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Ubuntu. Installation: 32-bit Open up Synaptic Package Manager by clicking on System at the top of the screen, expanding the Administration section, and clicking on Synaptic Package Manager. chntpw is found in the universe repository. Repositories are a way for Ubuntu to group software together so that users are able to choose if they want to use only completely open source software maintained by Ubuntu developers, or branch out and use software with different licenses and maintainers. To enable software from the universe repository, click on Settings > Repositories in the Synaptic window. Add a checkmark beside the box labeled “Community-maintained Open Source software (universe)” and then click close. When you change the repositories you are selecting software from, you have to reload the list of available software. In the main Synaptic window, click on the Reload button. The software lists will be downloaded. Once downloaded, Synaptic must rebuild its search index. The label over the text field by the Search button will read “Rebuilding search index.” When it reads “Quick search,” type chntpw in the text field. The package will show up in the list. Click on the checkbox near the chntpw name. Click on Mark for Installation. chntpw won’t actually be installed until you apply the changes you’ve made, so click on the Apply button in the Synaptic window now. You will be prompted to accept the changes. Click Apply. The changes should be applied quickly. When they’re done, click Close. chntpw is now installed! You can close Synaptic Package Manager. Skip to the section titled Using chntpw to reset your password. Installation: 64-bit The version of chntpw available in Ubuntu’s universe repository will not work properly on a 64-bit machine. Fortunately, a patched version exists in Debian’s Unstable branch, so let’s download it from there and install it manually. Open Firefox. Whether it’s your preferred browser or not, it’s very readily accessible in the Ubuntu Live CD environment, so it will be the easiest to use. There’s a shortcut to Firefox in the top panel. Navigate to http://packages.debian.org/sid/amd64/chntpw/download and download the latest version of chntpw for 64-bit machines. Note: In most cases it would be best to add the Debian Unstable branch to a package manager, but since the Live CD environment will revert to its original state once you reboot, it’ll be faster to just download the .deb file. Save the .deb file to the default location. You can close Firefox if desired. Open a terminal window by clicking on Applications at the top-left of the screen, expanding the Accessories folder, and clicking on Terminal. In the terminal window, enter the following text, hitting enter after each line: cd Downloadssudo dpkg –i chntpw* chntpw will now be installed. Using chntpw to reset your password Before running chntpw, you will have to mount the hard drive that contains your Windows installation. In most cases, Ubuntu 9.10 makes this simple. Click on Places at the top-left of the screen. If your Windows drive is easily identifiable – usually by its size – then left click on it. If it is not obvious, then click on Computer and check out each hard drive until you find the correct one. The correct hard drive will have the WINDOWS folder in it. When you find it, make a note of the drive’s label that appears in the menu bar of the file browser. If you don’t already have one open, start a terminal window by going to Applications > Accessories > Terminal. In the terminal window, enter the commands cd /medials pressing enter after each line. You should see one or more strings of text appear; one of those strings should correspond with the string that appeared in the title bar of the file browser earlier. Change to that directory by entering the command cd <hard drive label> Since the hard drive label will be very annoying to type in, you can use a shortcut by typing in the first few letters or numbers of the drive label (capitalization matters) and pressing the Tab key. It will automatically complete the rest of the string (if those first few letters or numbers are unique). We want to switch to a certain Windows directory. Enter the command: cd WINDOWS/system32/config/ Again, you can use tab-completion to speed up entering this command. To change or reset the administrator password, enter: sudo chntpw SAM SAM is the file that contains your Windows registry. You will see some text appear, including a list of all of the users on your system. At the bottom of the terminal window, you should see a prompt that begins with “User Edit Menu:” and offers four choices. We recommend that you clear the password to blank (you can always set a new password in Windows once you log in). To do this, enter “1” and then “y” to confirm. If you would like to change the password instead, enter “2”, then your desired password, and finally “y” to confirm. If you would like to reset or change the password of a user other than the administrator, enter: sudo chntpw –u <username> SAM From here, you can follow the same steps as before: enter “1” to reset the password to blank, or “2” to change it to a value you provide. And that’s it! Conclusion chntpw is a very useful utility provided for free by the open source community. It may make you think twice about how secure the Windows login system is, but knowing how to use chntpw can save your tail if your memory fails you two or eight times! Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Reset Your Ubuntu Password Easily from the Live CDChange Your Forgotten Windows Password with the Linux System Rescue CDHow to Create and Use a Password Reset Disk in Windows Vista & Windows 7Reset Your Forgotten Password the Easy Way Using the Ultimate Boot CD for WindowsHow to install Spotify in Ubuntu 9.10 using Wine TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Add a Custom Title in IE using Spybot or Spyware Blaster When You Need to Hail a Taxi in NYC Live Map of Marine Traffic NoSquint Remembers Site Specific Zoom Levels (Firefox) New Firefox release 3.6.3 fixes 1 Critical bug Dark Side of the Moon (8-bit)

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