An Insomniac Geek: Blog

How to setup DKIM and DomainKeys with SmarterMail

insomniacgeek — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 19:21:40 GMT

First of all, download the DKeyEvent tool and install it.

Send an empty email to check-auth@verifier.port25.com

Now, the response will be a full detailed report with all kinds of technical information. Here I will just show the summary:

==========================================================
Summary of Results
==========================================================
SPF check:          neutral
DomainKeys check:   neutral
DKIM check:         neutral
Sender-ID check:    neutral
SpamAssassin check: ham

We now need to get our mail server setup to pass all of the 4 checks.

SPF Check and Sender-ID check.

You can read more about Sender Policy Framework here. To add the SPF validation is a simple case of adding a TXT record to your DNS setup. I use www.EveryDNS.com and my basic setup looked like this:

To pass the SPF and Sender-ID check you simply need to add a TXT record with content of : v=spf1 a ~all like so:

==========================================================
Summary of Results
==========================================================
SPF check:          pass
DomainKeys check:   neutral
DKIM check:         neutral
Sender-ID check:    pass
SpamAssassin check: ham

Setting up the DKIM records

Start the DKeyEvent program on your mail server and enter you domain/login info in the DKeyEvent SM tab.

Switch to the DKIM section and enter a new domain and a selector name by clicking on the little plus sign at the bottom right corner.

Click Save Settings. Switch to the Domain tab, and select your domain and selector. Click on Generate.

Select all the text in the bottom hand textbox and copy it to the clipboard.

Repeat the steps by doing the same in the DomainKeys

Click Save Settings.

The key should be the same as in the DKIM section.

Now go to your DNS management and add a new A record for the domain key.

Add a new TXT record with the same name as your selector as the prefix, plus your domain key record name and paste in your key from the DKeyEvent program as the value.

Restart your SmarterMail service

Now wait for your DNS changes to be propagated, and send a new test email.

Enjoy the result:

==========================================================
Summary of Results
==========================================================
SPF check:          pass
DomainKeys check:   pass
DKIM check:         pass
Sender-ID check:    pass
SpamAssassin check: ham

Sweden or Switzerland?

insomniacgeek — Tue, 26 May 2009 17:57:28 GMT

I found this blog summary rather funny (note the immediate correction post after the mistake was discovered). Usually, Americans have problems with differentiating Sweden and Switzerland. But PCPro.co.uk is UK based. Come on chaps, can’t you tell the difference between your fellow European countries?

A list of recommended MOSS Service Accounts

insomniacgeek — Fri, 15 May 2009 09:30:07 GMT

Account Type	Purpose	Account Name
MOSS Farm Account	Server Farm Account. This account needs some SQL permissions granting: dbcreator and security admin (do not grant this account SA!). If using ADACM this is the account used for creating objects in the OU specified - so you'll need to delegate permissions on the OU to this user.	svcMOSSFarm1
MOSS App Pool	Identity for the any MOSS Web App Application Pool(s). A separate process identity should be used for each content Web App (this allows for greater security and auditing). Using the site name in the naming is not advisable as although this may make troubleshooting and auditing easier it reduces security by showing the relationship between App Pools and Web Apps.	svcMOSSAppPool1 svcMOSSAppPool2 svcMOSSAppPool3
SSP Service Account	SSP service account	svcMOSSSSP1
SSP App Pool	Identity for the SSP Web App Application Pool	svcMOSSSSPAppPool1
MOSS Search	Account under which the Office SharePoint Server Search runs under.	svcMOSSSearch1
MOSS Content Access	Account used to access content sources to be crawled and indexed. Need to grant this account permission to any NON-MOSS content sources (e.g. NTFS file share, Exchange public folder, websites etc...)Separate accounts may be configured for access to specific content sources using crawl rules.	svcMOSSCrawl1
User profile & Properties Access Account	Account used to access Active Directory for the Profile import	svcMOSSDSA1
WSS Search	Account which the Windows SharePoint Services Search service runs under. Due to the fact the Office SharePoint Server Search service is running this will only index the WSS Help files.	svcMOSSWSSSearch1
WSS Content Access	Account used by WSS search service to crawl content.	svcMOSSWSSCrawl1
MOSS Install Account	Account used to install MOSS and perform all the required configuration changes.As this account will be used to install and configure the SharePoint servers it must be granted local admin on all farms members and have permissions to the SQL instance.This account can be disabled after installation and configuration is complete (it is not advised to delete it).	svcMOSSInstall1
SQL Services	Used to run MS SQL Services	svcSQLSVC1 svcSQLRS1 svcSQLAS1

This list is copied from Matt Grove, thanks Matt.

How to install MOSS on Windows Server 2008 R2

insomniacgeek — Fri, 15 May 2009 08:26:00 GMT

First a disclaimer. Microsoft doesn’t support this scenario, so you will be on your own.

When you try to install MOSS 2007 on Windows Server 2008 R2, you will be prompted by this error message:

and you are stuck.

The only way to install MOSS 2007 on Windows Server 2008 R2 is to slipstream MOSS Service Pack 2 into the installation media. I will now run through the steps to do so.

Prerequisites:

MOSS 2007 installation media. (Either the .iso file from MSDN, or the DVD)
WSS 3.0 Service Pack 2 (Remember to get the x64 version, since Windows 2008 R2 is 64bit only)
MOSS 2007 Service Pack 2 (Remember to get the x64 version, since Windows 2008 R2 is 64bit only)

First, extract the contents of your MOSS 2007 media .iso file (or simply copy the files if you are using the DVD) to a temporary installation folder. In my case this will be H:\MOSS Installation Media. There is an TechNet article on how to slipstream updates into MOSS, but I will go through the steps here also.

Open a command prompt and change directory to where you have the service pack files. Extract the contents to the Updates folder of your installation folder.

First the WSS Service Pack files:

officeserver2007sp2-kb953334-x64-fullfile-en-us.exe /extract:"H:\MOSS Installation Media\x64\Updates"

Then the MOSS 2007 service pack files:

officeserver2007sp2-kb953334-x64-fullfile-en-us.exe /extract:"H:\MOSS Installation Media\x64\Updates"

Now, you will need to delete the file wsssetup.dll from the Updated folder, otherwise it will only install the WSS SP2.

You can now install MOSS 2007 SP2 using set setup.cmd found in the installation folder.

How to use multiple Yahoo mail sessions in Internet Explorer 8

insomniacgeek — Mon, 04 May 2009 15:27:14 GMT

After you have installed Internet Explorer 8, you may have noticed that you can’t use multiple Yahoo mail sessions anymore. That is because they have changed on how Internet Explorer works. In IE 8, it remembers the sessions between the processes. You can change this behavior by adding the command line argument –nomerge in the Internet Explorer shortcut.

BI Templates missing in Visual Studio

insomniacgeek — Mon, 04 May 2009 15:22:54 GMT

After doing a installation of all the necessary tools, SQL Server, Visual Studio I suddenly realized that my Business Intelligence Templates were missing in Visual Studio. Here is how to restore them.

Start Visual Studio and go to Tools->Import and Export Settings…

Select Import selected environment settings. Click Next.

Select “Yes, save my current settings” and click Next.

Select the Business Intelligence Settings option and click Next.

Now, my templates were restored.

Sharepoint Service Pack 2 released

insomniacgeek — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 18:47:51 GMT

Microsoft has released the Service Pack 2 for its SharePoint and MOSS products.

SharePoint WSS 3.0 Service Pack 2	Download here (x86 and x64)
MOSS Service Pack 2	Download here (x86 and x64)

Don’t know which version you have installed? Take a look at this post on how to determine your installed version.

How to determine setup version from within an ASP.NET page

insomniacgeek — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 19:57:39 GMT

I read on Stackoverflow that somebody needed the possibility to determine the MSI installer product version used when installing the ASP.NET application. My suggestion is to store the current MSI product version in the web.config file, and later read that from within the web application.

Here are the steps to do this.

Start Visual Studio 2008 and select File->New project.

Select the ASP.NET Web Application template and choose a new for your project. Click Ok.

Open the web.config file and add the following lines within the <appSettings> element:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<configuration>
  ...
  
  <appSettings>
    <add key="SetupVersion" value="x.x" />
  </appSettings>
  
  ....
</configuration>

Add a simple Label control in the Default.aspx file to show the version infomation.

<%@ Page Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeBehind="Default.aspx.cs" Inherits="CheckSetupVersion._Default" %>

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head runat="server">
  <title></title>
</head>
<body>
  <form id="form1" runat="server">
  <div>
    <asp:Label ID="lblVersion" runat="server" Text="Installed using Setup Version: "></asp:Label>
  </div>
  </form>
</body>
</html>

Add code in the Page_Load event to update the Label with the information from the web.config file.

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Web;
using System.Web.UI;
using System.Web.UI.WebControls;
using System.Configuration;

namespace CheckProdVersion
{
  public partial class _Default : System.Web.UI.Page
  {
    protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
      lblVersion.Text += ConfigurationSettings.AppSettings["SetupVersion"];
    }
  }
}

Add an Install Class to the project by right-clicking on the project in the Solution Explorer and select Add->New Item

Select the Installer Class and choose a name. Click Add.

Right-click the InstallerHelper.cs file in the Solution Explorer and select View Code. Add the following code:

using System;
using System.Collections;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.ComponentModel;
using System.Configuration.Install;
using System.Xml;
using System.Globalization;
using System.Linq;
using System.IO;

namespace CheckProdVersion
{
  [RunInstaller(true)]
  public partial class InstallerHelper : Installer
  {
    public InstallerHelper()
    {
      InitializeComponent();
    }

    public override void Install(IDictionary stateSaver)
    {
      XmlDocument XMLDoc = new XmlDocument();

      string XMLFile = string.Format(CultureInfo.InvariantCulture, @"{0}web.config", this.Context.Parameters["TargetDir"]);

      XMLDoc.Load(XMLFile);

      if (this.Context.Parameters["ProductVersion"] != null)
      {
        XmlNode Node = XMLDoc.SelectSingleNode("//configuration/appSettings/add[@key='SetupVersion']");
        if (Node != null)
        {
          if (Node.Attributes["value"] != null)
          {
            Node.Attributes["value"].Value = this.Context.Parameters["ProductVersion"].ToString();
          }
        }
      }
      XMLDoc.Save(XMLFile);

      base.Install(stateSaver);
    }
  }
}

Right-click the solution in Solution Explorer and select Add->New Project

From the Project Type, select Other Project Types->Setup and Deployment and choose the Setup Wizard template. Enter a name for the Setup Project and click Ok.
Click Next.

Select Create a Setup for a web application and click Next.

Select Content Files and Primary Output files. Click Finish

Click on the Web Application Folder and edit the Virtual Directory to set the name of your Web application. Right-click the Setup Project and select View->Custom Actions.

Right-click the Custom Actions node and select Add Custom Action.

Select the Web Application Folder and select Primary Output. Click Ok.

Click on the Primary output from CheckProdVersion (Active) node and edit the property CustomActionData to contain this line:

/TargetDir="[TARGETDIR]\" /ProductVersion="[ProductVersion]"

Build the solution. Right click on the Setup project and select Build.

Right-click on the Setup project and select Install. Follow the installation wizard and browse to your web application: http://localhost/CheckProdVersion

When you are updating the product version in the setup project, you will get this question:

Click Yes.

Set the Setup Project property RemovePreviousVersions to True, rebuild the Setup and re-install to verify that the version can be updated.

SharePoint: Open with Windows Explorer on Windows Server 2008

insomniacgeek — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 20:18:05 GMT

If you are developing SharePoint solutions on Windows Server 2008, you may have noticed that nothing happens when you click on the Toolbar menu item "Open with Windows Explorer” in a Document Library ?

That is because that this feature uses the WebDAV protocol, which isn’t installed by default on Windows Server 2008. In order to install the WebDAV protocol on Windows Server 2008, you must enable the Desktop Experience feature.

After you have installed the WebDAV protocol, you can also save Office documents directly to your SharePoint site from the Windows Server 2008 client.

Start the Server Manager console.

Click on Add Feature.

Select the Desktop Experience and click Next.

Click Install.

Click on Close to Reboot.

An indexer is not assigned to the Shared Services Provider

insomniacgeek — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 10:25:20 GMT

SharePoint

If you have come across this error message, you have probably done some changes in the search settings, like stopping the search service.

The solution is to re-assign the indexer to the Shared Services Provider.

Here are the steps:

Open the SharePoint 3.0 Central Administration and click on the Shared Services Administration link in the left menu bar.

Right click on your default Service Provider and select Edit Properties.

Now, select the server that you want to use in the Index Server drop down list.