Drowning In Technical Debt

P2V Windows 10 and Parallels

I have been running Windows 10 since the preview was released. My experience, so far, would be positive. It has been very smooth transition. As someone using a machine without a touchscreen, I would say it is a lot more functional than Windows 8/8.1. I still find the full screen apps lacking, but the operating system is smoother, overall, to me, and I enjoy using it.

I own, and generally enjoy using, a MacBook Pro 15. My only complaint on the MacBook is the lack of physical Home, End, Insert, and Delete keys. I have run Windows of various versions on it in the past using Parallels to great success.

Windows 10 has been happily living on my PC laptop, but I wanted to consolidate it, if I could, onto the MacBook Pro, so I could carry one thing. The resolution on the MacBook Pro is much higher as well and makes some of my work much easier. I am typing this on my Windows 10 VM that was restored onto Parallels on the MacBook Pro, and it's been working for a few days like a champ. I thought I would document the steps I took to move from the Physical machine to this Virtual machine if anyone else needed, as it was not that complicated once I located the information I needed.

1. Make a system image backup of Windows 10
2. Restore the system image backup of Windows 10 onto Parallels VM

That is the high level, now I'm going to go through the steps I took to get there.

1. Make a system image backup of Windows 10
   1. I grabbed a USB drive, and plugged it in where it was recognized as F:
   2. Ran the following command
      1. wbAdmin start backup -backupTarget:F: -include:C: -allCritical -quiet
   3. Note that you will need to replace F: with whatever drive you want to use.
2. Restore the system image backup of Windows 10 onto Parallels VM
   1. Note: This was, for me a little trickier because my VM didn't seem to see my USB drive however I mounted it to the machine, so I used my NAS.
   2. Connected to a share on my NAS from my PC
   3. Copied the folder with the backup from my USB drive to the share.
   4. On Mac, Open Parallels, selected my WinX ISO
   5. Let Parallels do the entire install (I happened to be going somewhere for a while, so this just completed while I was gone. It's not really required)
   6. Held SHIFT and restart to get into the recovery console
   7. Went to repair, advanced, system image recovery (path may be a little different, but as long as you get to system image recovery, it's ok)
   8. Stepped through wizard and mapped drive to NAS share
   9. Picked backup and restored
   10. Restarts happened after that as needed.
   11. Once Windows was started, took a snapshot and began cleaning
   12. Installed Parallels tools and removed the driver software for my hardware I had installed
   13. Took another snapshot when all was stable and start working.

One thing to note is that the Parallels tools need quite a few reboots. So if you are rebooting over and over again manually, you may think something is wrong, but it is probably fine. I wasn't being super observant, but I think it was 4 or 5 reboots that all looked like they did the same thing when they started.

This was my first time using the system image recovery tool, and I have to say compared to Time Machine, it's a bit ridiculous and convoluted. It *did* work though once I found the commands and figured out what to do. By contrast, when I got my new mac, I just pointed it at my Time Machine location (which setup found automatically for me) and pushed a button. I imagine a OSX VM would work the same way. Apple! Why don't you have HOMEENDINSERTDELETE KEYS!!! Then you would be perfect!

=P

For the page that I drew my inspiration from, look here:

http://www.howtogeek.com/167984/how-to-create-and-restore-system-image-backups-on-windows-8.1/

posted @ 2/6/2015 6:44 PM by Roy Ashbrook

Simple RIAK and C# Example

Install It:

1. Have a linux box somewhere. i spun up a new centos 7.0 droplet on digital ocean for 5 bucks and turned it off when i was done with it.
2. http://docs.basho.com/riak/latest/ops/building/installing/rhel-centos/
1. Basically, I logged into my new machine and ran:
2. sudo yum install http://yum.basho.com/gpg/basho-release-5-1.noarch.rpm
3. sudo yum install riak
3. If you want this to be available outside of your machine, you need to modify the ip address riak is bound to.
1. If you were logged in as root, go to the /etc/riak folder and edit the app.config
2. Modify the "http" area to have your public ip address as well as the 'PB' area up top.
4. Run "riak start" to start up riak
5. Check http://<your ip>:8098/riak/status should return some json

Use it:

1. Open LINQpad (or whatever you want)
2. NuGet search for riak
3. Install CorrugatedIron
4. Create a app.config file that is something like this:
1. <configuration>
   <configSections>
       <section name="riakConfig" type="CorrugatedIron.Config.RiakClusterConfiguration, CorrugatedIron"/>
   </configSections>
   <riakConfig nodePollTime="5000" defaultRetryWaitTime="200" defaultRetryCount="3">
       <nodes>
           <node name="mynodename" hostAddress="actualnodeaddress" pbcPort="8087" restPort="8098" poolSize="0" />
       </nodes>
   </riakConfig>
   </configuration>
2. I think this file can be named anything really, I actually called it riak.config and included a path down below.
5. try some c# code like this:

void Main()
{
    //config file location
    var fl = @"path to my app.config";
    //name of the config section in the config file above
    var cs = "riakConfig";
    //name of our riak bucket to store things in
    var b = "mybucket";
    //connect to the cluster using our config file
    var clst = RiakCluster.FromConfig(cs,fl);
    //create a client
    var clnt = clst.CreateClient();
    //create an object to store
    var kvp = new KeyValuePair<string,string>("0","zero");
    //put it in a bucket in riak, key it, and drop the object in there
    var o = new RiakObject(b,kvp.Key, kvp);
    //put the object in riak
     clnt.Put(o);
    //go get the object using the same key as above
    var r = clnt.Get(b,kvp.Key);
    //dump the value we got back
    r.Value.GetObject<KeyValuePair<string,string>>().Dump();
}

posted @ 9/10/2014 12:49 AM by Roy Ashbrook

Pulling a Sharepoint 2007 list into Excel as Raw XML

I recently had a need to mash-up some data from a SharePoint 2007 list in an Excel document I was working on. I already knew that I could work with SharePoint 2007 data in Excel by using the following instructions from Microsoft:

1. Do one the following on a SharePoint site:

Windows SharePoint Services 3.0

1. If your list is not already open, click its name on the Quick Launch. If the name of your list doesn't appear, click View All Site Content, and then click the name of your list.
2. On the Actions menu , click Export to Spreadsheet.
3. If you are prompted to confirm the operation, click OK.

Windows SharePoint Services 2.0

1. If your list is not already open, click Documents and Lists, and then click the name of your list.
2. On the page that displays the list, under Actions, click Export to spreadsheet.

1. In the File Download dialog box, click Open.
2. If you are prompted whether to enable data connections on your computer, click Enable if you believe the connection to the data on the SharePoint site is safe to enable.
3. Do one of the following:

• If no workbook is open, Excel creates a new blank workbook and inserts the data as a table on a new worksheet.
• If a workbook is open, do the following in the Import Data dialog box that appears:
  1. Under Select how you want to view this data in your workbook, click Table, PivotTable Report, orPivotChart and PivotTable Report.
  2. Under Where do you want to put the data, click Existing worksheet, New worksheet, or New workbook.

If you click Existing worksheet, click the cell where you want to place the upper-left corner of the list.

1. Click OK.

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/excel-help/import-data-from-a-sharepoint-list-HA010131473.aspx

That’s all very well, but in my case I had an existing spreadsheet with quite a few tables and an existing excel model. I didn’t want to go through these gyrations. Isn’t there some way to just get the data right off the list as a web page?

Yes. Enter the “Import XML data” feature in Excel. MS Offers the following following guidance for getting XML data from a web service:

Import XML data from a Web service

To do the following procedure, you must have access to a server that is running pnSTS11. A default installation of pnSTS11 provides a data retrieval service for connecting to data in SharePoint lists. A SharePoint site administrator can install the Microsoft Office Web Parts and Components to add additional data retrieval services for Microsoft SQL Server and Microsoft Business Solutions. The installation program for Microsoft Office Web Parts and Components is available from the Downloads on Microsoft Office Online.

1. On the Data menu, point to Import External Data, and then click Import Data.
2. Do one of the following:

Open an existing data source

Create and open a new data source connection

1. Select one of the following options:

• XML list in existing worksheet

The contents of the XML data file are imported into an XML list in the existing worksheet at the specified cell location.

• XML list in new worksheet

The contents of the file are imported into an XML list in a new worksheet starting at cell A1.

1. If the XML data file does not refer to a schema, then Excel will infer the schema from the XML data file.
2. To control the behavior of XML data, such as data binding, format, and layout, click Properties which displays the XML Map properties dialog box. For example, existing data in a mapped range will be overwritten when you import data by default, but you can change this.

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/excel-help/import-xml-data-HP001042351.aspx#BMimport_xml_data_from_a_web_service

But how to get the URL to call for the XML data? The following link holds the key:

http://{0}/_vti_bin/owssvr.dll?Cmd=Display&List={1}&View={2}&XMLDATA=TRUE

You have to replace {0} with your site URL and the {1} with your GUID for the list ID on SharePoint and {2} with the view GUID. How to get these? Well the easiest way (I think) is to go to your list, then select the view you want. Click view dropdown and select “Modify this view.” This will open the link to the screen where you can modify that view. The URL in the browser should have a View and List value. I stripped the %7B and %7D off as those are the { and } respectively. You don’t need to use a view and can omit that completely if you want to connect directly to the list. But I found I normally wanted to just get a certain view or I wanted to create a special view just for this activity.

Regardless, you can now follow the auto prompts to get the data into a spreadsheet. You can also open the developer tab and dive into the XML itself (see the MS link above for more instructions) and drag and drop the fields to other locations. Now when you get the data it will put it wherever you bound it.

By default it will dump it into a table and will include the schema items which you don’t need. You can open the Developer tab, select “Source” in the XML section and then just deselect the ns2 : Schema element. It will stop syncing those fields and you’ll have to clean up your table to get rid of them. I was able to rename the columns etc as needed, but since this is a read only feed I was typically using it to calculate other columns so I frequently stick with the ows_* columns that are the defaults for the data element.

Screenshot of the XML section from Developer tab in Excel:

Once I figured out I needed to find the XML import stuff for Excel, I was able to find lots of articles on it online to help. The following was my favorite and links to a lot of other ones.

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/kaevans/archive/2009/05/01/getting-xml-data-from-a-sharepoint-list-the-easy-way.aspx

posted @ 7/11/2014 3:39 PM by Roy Ashbrook

New-SelfSignedCertificate and CERT Provider

Well the non-whimsical title aside I must say “hats off “ to those PowerShell gurus at Microsoft. You’ve made my live a bit easier.
This quick post is a look at the New-SelfSignedCertificate CMDLET and how the PowerShell Certificate (CERT) Provider.

I realize both are rather self explanatory, the first creating a self signed certificate where as the other providing directory
like interaction / access within PowerShell to the certificate stores. Essentially making the need to spin ye old mcc certificate
console a moot point.

Suppose you’re tasked with building a functional lab {insert Microsoft software title here} environment, naturally you want to
automate as much as possible yet those pesky certificates cause you to break open IIS to create a self signed certificates.
Sure, it’s only an extra manual step or two but my take, why do manual when automation isn’t but half the effort more?

That said what if the requirements are for a SharePoint 2013 LAB, with a functioning APP Model. The app model requirements bring
along with it the requirements for wildcard certificates.  Now I could be missing something but my testing within IIS8 didn’t allow
for specifying the FQDN (CN).

I guess at this point, one could consider a few options. First one might be inclined to stand up a lab PKI(or leverage an existing one)
Of course a more simple but costly route would be to use public certificates.

If time and money are constraints then our friendly neighborhood PowerShell cmdlet and CERT provider can quickly help us out.  
After all the New-SelfSignedCertificate will let us specify our DNS name or DNS names. Yes…That was plural of names, as in more
than one. And since we are talking DNS names, well then we only find ourselves limited by what is defined in DNS or the server
HOSTS file (none of us do that – right?)

So take this snippet and incorporate it into your automated lab builds or conversely offer your own opinion

#Issue A Self Signed Cert

New-SelfSignedCertificate -CertStoreLocation Cert:\LocalMachine\My -DnsName *.subdomain1.subdomain.domain.org, hostname.subdomain1.subdomain.subdomain.org

#Export Self Signed Cert To Temp Location

Get-ChildItem Cert:\LocalMachine\My | Where {$_.Subject -like "*subdomain.domain.org"} | Export-Certificate -Type CERT -FilePath E:\Temp\SelfSign.cert

#Import To TRUSTED ROOT AUTHORITY – This prevents browser Errors

Import-Certificate -FilePath E:\temp\SelfSign.cert -CertStoreLocation Cert:\LocalMachine\Root

#Clean Up Temp

Remove-Item -Path E:\Temp\SelfSign.cert

#Move Certificate From Personal To WebHosting

Get-ChildItem Cert:\LocalMachine\My | Where {$_.Subject -like "*arlpdevapps.arlp.org"} | Move-Item -Destination Cert:\LocalMachine\WebHosting