Scott Rozman's Blog

Continuous Integration and Version Control

Scott Rozman — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 23:32:15 GMT

Looking into these two issues and here are some resources.

Video of using CruiseControl.NET and SVN

SQL Instance Connection String Issues

Scott Rozman — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 16:47:24 GMT

Recently, we have started moving our MSSQL production databases to another server which has multiple instances of SQL server.

I've been trying to get things to connect from a .NET web app with little success.

I found a great blog post which has been updated over time to include more details regarding the exact issue I've encountered.

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/sql_protocols/archive/2007/05/13/sql-network-interfaces-error-26-error-locating-server-instance-specified.aspx

One potential issue is with the port used to communicate between the web and SQL server. Instances tend to use dynamic port allocations, so setting up a static port is sometimes advisable:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms345327.aspx

I also downloaded PortQryV2, referenced in the first link and that confirmed "UDP port 1434 is LISTENING" and also sent back a listing of all of the SQL instances with the TCP ports they are using.

Lastly, there is the actual connection string. I am trying to connect to a Sitefinity database, so my connection string sits in the DataConfig.config file. However, as a starting point for troubleshooting, I have been working with a static page sitting in the root of the site which just tries to establish a connection to the database through the codefile. If the page loads with no errors, I'm happy.

I am on SQL Server 2005, so have been referencing this for connection string format.

http://www.connectionstrings.com/sql-server-2005

The idea of creating a page which just connects to the db was from forums on Sitefinity.com.

http://www.sitefinity.com/devnet/forums/sitefinity-4-x/general-discussions/openaccessexception.aspx

Finally, I've got something working...

It turns out that if you use the specific port number for the SQL instance, you do not include the name of that instance in the connection string, so I've been able to connect by just including the port number of my instance... now to confirm that the port number will remain the same!

Another helpful article with many examples of connection strings here:

http://weblogs.sqlteam.com/dang/archive/2011/07/10/sql-server-connection-strings.aspx

Sending email from PHP on IIS

Scott Rozman — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 16:54:55 GMT

http://learn.iis.net/page.aspx/751/configure-smtp-e-mail-in-iis-7-and-above/

It seems that if you are sending to a server other than the LocalHost, you can configure just via the PHP.ini.

Setting Anonymous User to App Pool Identity

Scott Rozman — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 19:38:20 GMT

Great video which explains a lot about users and IIS7.

http://dotnetslackers.com/articles/iis/Securing-IIS-Thwarting-the-Hacker-Week-23.aspx

Following the instructions on this site:

http://www.bluevalleytech.com/techtalk/blog/assigning-ntfs-folder-permission-to-iis7-application-pools/

I did not find that typing "IIS APPPOOL\mypoolname" worked.

Using ICACLS put the user into the list and then I could adjust permissions as needed with the GUI.

From the command prompt, I moved to the directory containing a directory that needed the updated permissions. Then I ran:

ICACLS wwwroot /grant "IIS APPPOOL\mypoolname":RX

* note that having a space in from of the ":" gives an invalid parameter message

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc753525(WS.10).aspx

http://salvoz.com/blog/2010/02/02/using-icacls-to-set-permissions-for-apppoolidentities-in-iis-7-5/

SWFObject in Sitefinity

Scott Rozman — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 15:07:00 GMT

Here are some links:

Sitefinity 4.x Script Management

Scott Rozman — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 18:56:54 GMT

Today, I was troubleshooting a widget that I created which uses jQuery with the popeye plugin. My masterpage had a reference to a copy of jQuery that I am hosting on a static domain referenced by multiple websites... like using a CDN, but just have a single server.

When in the backend of Sitefinity, they are using jQuery, so there was a conflict loading multiple copies of jQuery and my widget would not display.

See this jQuery in Firefox forum thread on Sitefinity.com

I've decided to reference Sitefinity's copy of jQuery instead, but now the order my scripts were loading is incorrectly. I had been using the asp:Scriptmanager, but doing that seems to result in those scripts loading before the Sitefinity scripts.

I know that sf:ResourceLinks can be used to load local paths as well, but I do not believe that I can load things from my static domain.

Sitefinity's script widget offers the ability to load scripts from another domain and to decide when they load (head, within content, before closing body tag), but I would rather not drag on multiple widgets for a single area of content, since each of those script widgets will show up visually in the back-end.

The TR tag and borders

Scott Rozman — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 15:01:01 GMT

Yesterday, I was trying to apply a top border on a table row, but no matter what I could not get it show up.

I could change the background color of the rows in question using a particular class, but trying to change border properties would not work.

.dirTable tr {border-top:1px solid gray; border-left:none; border-right:none; border-bottom:none; margin: 0; padding: 0; background-color:red;}

Using the above, I would see red in the background of my table, but no gray borders and a small white border on all of the cells in the table.

It was so frustrating because, I had used nearly identical markup on another site which was still working as expected.

It turns out that the original site makes use of the Eric Meyers CSS Reset and the new site has a section for CSS reset included in the 1140 CSS Grid.

The key difference was the Meyers reset contains:

table { border-collapse: collapse; border-spacing: 0

Adding the border-collapse property to my table class fixed the problem:

.dirTable {border-collapse:collapse;border-left:1px solid gray;border-right:1px solid gray;border-bottom:1px solid gray;}

While looking for this solution, Sarven Capadisli's Blog post from 2006 got me on the right track! Seems like a simple problem, but it wasted too much of my time. Hopefully my post will help someone else save time... or at least help me remember the next time I run across it.

Visual Studio Save Lag

Scott Rozman — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 15:46:31 GMT

I've been having weird, slow saving issues in Visual Studio 2010.

I just tried some of the suggestions on

http://richarddingwall.name/2009/08/24/does-your-visual-studio-run-slow/

cleared out the temp files and the project MRU list; initial results are promising.

jQuery Shuffle

Scott Rozman — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 21:02:07 GMT

Just used a helpful plugin to put some list items in a random order.

http://yelotofu.com/2008/08/jquery-shuffle-plugin/

Image Scroller with Random Order

Scott Rozman — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 18:14:28 GMT

I just needed to make a scroller of some books, the option to view them larger and to have the order different every time the page loads.

For the slide show or scroller effect, I used the jQuery popeye plugin. This also offers the ability to view the images as a larger version.

For the randomization, this "Shuffle plugin" at Yelotofu.com did the trick.

On the popeye code, I also used the jQuery.noconflict which is described in an earlier blog post.

PDF form JavaScript

Scott Rozman — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 21:42:30 GMT

Today, I was working on a PDF with a form in Acrobat which I wanted to set up for emailing.

After creating a button, I needed to know how to add some JavaScript to the mousedown action on the button.

Here are two useful resources I found:

http://www.adobe.com/content/dam/Adobe/en/devnet/acrobat/pdfs/Acro6JSGuide.pdf

This got me starting on sending email, but my first crack at using the field value to change the BCC on the email did not work.

http://www.codingforums.com/showthread.php?t=231405

This example gave me the missing piece.

I also wanted to confirm that required fields were filled before allowing the submit button to generate the email.

This link was useful:

http://acrobatusers.com/forum/javascript/check-required-fields-emailing-document

Backing up MySQL data

Scott Rozman — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 18:24:28 GMT

Here are a couple of resources that I used for research:

http://kb.liquidweb.com/how-to-back-up-mysql-databases-from-the-command-line/

Restoring data can be done with the MySQL Workbench tool.

For MySQL running on Windows servers, you can manage the server if WMI is available.

http://www.poweradmin.com/help/enableWMI.aspx

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa822854%28v=vs.85%29.aspx

In order to avoid the giant ibdata file and have one file per database, please see:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3456159/how-to-shrink-purge-ibdata1-file-in-mysql

Using PHP on IIS

Scott Rozman — Fri, 15 Jul 2011 14:33:00 GMT

I've just started working with supporting some php applications on IIS. Time to experiment a bit and take some notes.

It seems that PHP is happy to run under any settings for the Application Pool. v4.0, v2.0, Integrated or Classic.

Wildcard SSL on single IP

Scott Rozman — Wed, 13 Jul 2011 15:53:12 GMT

Looks like it is possible to do this with multiple domain sub-domains, single IP and a wildcard certificate:

http://forums.iis.net/t/1117559.aspx

Here is how to get it working in IIS7:

http://www.sslshopper.com/article-ssl-host-headers-in-iis-7.html

How-to Scheduled Backup in MS SQL 2005

Scott Rozman — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 15:37:06 GMT

I just had to set this up, so thought I'd save this video resource and this link to Microsoft documentation.