David Yardy PE

Permissions for .pem are too open

test@example.com — Sun, 15 Nov 2020 17:16:19 GMT

Connecting to newly created Azure VM via SSH came across the error surrounding permissions on my pem file

PS c:\>ssh –i {pathtopemfile}.pem mailto:azureuser@{ipaddress}

@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
@ WARNING: UNPROTECTED PRIVATE KEY FILE! @
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@

Permissions for '{filename}.pem' are too open.
It is required that your private key files are NOT accessible by others.
This private key will be ignored.

You locate the file in Windows Explorer, right-click on it then select "Properties". Navigate to the "Security" tab and click "Advanced".

a) Change the owner to you

b) Disable inheritance and delete all permissions.

c) Then grant yourself "Full control"

and save the permissions.

Now SSH won't complain about file permission too open anymore. It should look like the following

Rename SQL Server Schema

test@example.com — Tue, 13 Oct 2020 13:50:59 GMT

After copying a SQL Server database I needed to create a new schema and transfer all tables and views and stored procedures from the old schema to the newly created schema. Using the following script made this task much easier.

DECLARE @OldSchema AS varchar(255)
DECLARE @NewSchema AS varchar(255)

SET @OldSchema = 'dbo'
SET @NewSchema = 'StackOverflow'

DECLARE @sql AS varchar(MAX)

DECLARE @Schema AS varchar(MAX)
DECLARE @Obj AS varchar(MAX)

-- First transfer Tables and Views

DECLARE CU_OBJS CURSOR FOR
    SELECT TABLE_SCHEMA, TABLE_NAME
    FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.TABLES
    WHERE TABLE_SCHEMA = @OldSchema

OPEN CU_OBJS

FETCH NEXT FROM CU_OBJS
INTO @Schema, @Obj

WHILE @@FETCH_STATUS = 0
BEGIN
    SELECT @sql = 'ALTER SCHEMA [' + @NewSchema + '] TRANSFER [' + @OldSchema + '].[' + @Obj + ']'
    PRINT @sql
--  EXEC (@sql)

    FETCH NEXT FROM CU_OBJS
    INTO @Schema, @Obj
END

CLOSE CU_OBJS
DEALLOCATE CU_OBJS


-- Now transfer Stored Procedures

DECLARE CU_OBJS CURSOR FOR
    SELECT sys.schemas.name, sys.procedures.name
    FROM sys.procedures,sys.schemas
    WHERE sys.procedures.schema_id=sys.schemas.schema_id and sys.schemas.name = @OldSchema

OPEN CU_OBJS

FETCH NEXT FROM CU_OBJS
INTO @Schema, @Obj

Azure AppService HTTP Error 500.30 ANCM In-Process Start Failure

test@example.com — Fri, 04 Sep 2020 18:56:32 GMT

Again, up against the 500.30 –> really means that something is wrong (usually configuration, appsettings incorrect etc.) which prevents the application from starting up.

Todays, resolution…

- Launch Kudu from the Azure Portal (under Advanced Tools)

- Use Debug console – CMD

- Use command prompt DOS commands to navigate to \site\wwwroot

- Try starting the application via dotnet web.dll (the name of your web application dll)

- With any luck, the output will show log errors and with some thought you can decipher what configuration piece is missing (in this case, my connection string was incorrect and I was missing App_Data directory)

HTTP Error 500.30 - ANCM In-Process Start Failure

Common solutions to this issue:

The application failed to start
The application started but then stopped
The application started but threw an exception during startup

Troubleshooting steps:

Check the system event log for error messages
Enable logging the application process' stdout messages
Attach a debugger to the application process and inspect

Hot Module Reload (HMR) Issues

test@example.com — Fri, 28 Aug 2020 20:50:38 GMT

Using latest vue.js bit and vue-cli to create a project, I immediately came up against HMR not reloading after making changes to .vue files.

What is HMR…

"Hot Reload" is not simply reloading the page when you edit a file. With hot reload enabled, when you edit a *. vue file, all instances of that component will be swapped in without reloading the page. It even preserves the current state of your app and these swapped components!

I started my project npm run serve, opened my browser http://localhost:8080 and navigated around my new app. Great. Within my IDE I modified any vue file, I could see that vue-cli-server (with it’s built in web server) identified that a file had changed and I could see webpack rebuilding my ts/js files. Great. I looked at the browser and my simple html change was not reflected. I could see errors in the chrome dev tools network tab like following.

[WDS] Disconnected net:: ERR_CONNECTION_TIMED_OUT
http://192.168.1.102:8080/sockjs-node/info?t=1598645595925

Solution….

There are a number of articles regarding setting NODE_ENV=development, as well as articles discussing the vue.config.js file. The solution for me was modifying the package.json script that is used by npm to start the project from

"serve": "vue-cli-service serve",

"serve2": "vue-cli-service serve --host localhost",

I also tried a number of options within the vue.config.js but was able to remove once I identified the solution (above).

// vue.config.js
module.exports = {
    devServer: {
        //host:'localhost'
        //useLocalIp: false,
        //proxy: 'http://localhost:8080',
        //public: '172.23.3.180:8080',
        //watchOptions: {
        // poll: true
        //}
    },
configureWebpack: {
        plugins: [
            //new MyAwesomeWebpackPlugin()
        ]
    }
}

DevOps–Pushing Nuget package to Azure Artifacts Repository

test@example.com — Thu, 11 Jun 2020 20:28:49 GMT

What a journey! I am going to document this for the sole reason that I am aware that I will once again need this information only just a few days from now. Problem: I have a nuget package that I want to push to an Azure Artifact directory. I figured easy enough there is some documentation and I tried with the following:

nuget push -source "MyFeed_feed" -apikey az "C:\tfs\Git\MLayout\MLayout\MLayout\bin\Debug\Layout.1.0.0.nupkg"

I did have to download Nuget and ensure it was found when using the above command via command prompt. Once setup, and re-ran I was prompted for username and password. As many times as I tried it would just continue to fail and eventually would timeout. I am sure this worked just a few weeks ago.

Regardless on to plan B, documentation..

1) I downloaded the latest Nuget.exe

2) Download and install the credential provider (this one was a bit more challenging)

I figured I would use the Automatic approach.

a) I downloaded installcredprovider.ps1 from this github location https://github.com/microsoft/artifacts-credprovider/tree/master/helpers (more information can be found here)

b) Now that I have a file on disk, I have to run it. I started Powershell then proceeded to run this ps1 by typing .\installcredprovider.ps1 at the PS >

d) Now with this installed I retried to push my nuget package with nuget push -source "MyFeed_feed" -apikey az "C:\tfs\Git\MLayout\MLayout\MLayout\bin\Debug\Layout.1.0.0.nupkg"

     No go, so I tried with using the vs.net command prompt.

    I opened up a command prompt from Windows-Start ensuring to pick the “Developer Command Prompt for VS 2019”

Now, I ensured that nuget.exe was available and it was! So I retried my nuget push. You can see finally, that it used the Credential Provider

The entire process probably 1 hour of effort, but essentially using the VS.NET 2019 command prompt, download the ps1 for the credprovider, execute using powershell then retry. Finally.

Azure DevOps–File Transformation Pipeline

test@example.com — Thu, 28 May 2020 15:44:03 GMT

Running locally via Visual Studio and JetBrains Rider and managing the ASPNETCORE_ENVIRONMENT variable has been challenging. Changing and setting ASPNETCORE_ENVIRONMENT within launchSettings.json and/or within Project Properties impacts the web.{envrionment}.config files. Without the appropriate configuration within the publish steps the site was being deployed with incorrect settings and it was time consuming to track it back to the best approach. So for now I have a pipeline build process setup for each AppService ‘slot’ setting different BuildConfiguration within each to ensure the most appropriate web.config is deployed.

This is a .net core asp.net web application so why the web.config? It appears that locally during IIS Express/IIS there is still a dependency on this web.config to identify the hosting model (inprocess) and reference to the exe that would be run. This is of course when deploying to Windows infrastructure.

Project Properties – Environment variables

My launchSettings.json – you can see I can modify before running how IIS or IIS Express identifies the environment variable

The resultant/related web.configs looks like the following for Development and Staging environments.

web.config

web.Staging.config (you can see the addition of the xdt:Transform=”Replace” attribute which informs publish that when building for Staging to replace this variable within web.config with this value)

By default the build process on Azure DevOps – Pipelines was ignoring any file transformation requirements. In order to establish File Transformation on publish notice the –configuration $(BuildConfiguration)

and the respective variable that is used during publish to identify the appropriate configuration to use (development/staging etc.)

After the build and using App Service Editor my web.config was successfully transformed

Path to Resources (JavaScript, Images etc.) Not Found with Vue.js Build

test@example.com — Tue, 19 May 2020 17:04:54 GMT

Using @vue/cli 4.3.1

With minimal changes to code/solution I found that resources (path to files) was not found after performing npm run build. I was hoping to just run the newly built web application in the client side browser from File Explorer. I ran the page and saw an empty screen. So what was the issue and resolution?

The issue (visible within the screen capture – white screen and ERR_FILE_NOT_FOUND error message from the Chrome Debugger – Network Tools)

Doing a view source the problem started to surface. You can see below the path was relative to the root directory. While running from File Explorer this must be relative path.

< !DOCTYPE html>
< html lang="en">
<head>
    <meta charset="utf-8">
    <meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=edge">
    <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width,initial-scale=1.0">
    <link rel="icon" href="/favicon.ico">
    <title>Cargo</title>
<link href="/js/cargo.js" rel="preload" as="script"><link href="/js/chunk-common.js" rel="preload" as="script"><link href="/js/chunk-vendors.js" rel="preload" as="script"></head>
<body>
    < noscript>
      <strong>We're sorry but Cargo doesn't work properly without JavaScript enabled. Please enable it to continue.</strong>
    </noscript>
    <div id="app"></div>
    
<script type="text/javascript" src="/js/chunk-vendors.js"></script><script type="text/javascript" src="/js/chunk-common.js"></script><script type="text/javascript" src="/js/cargo.js"></script></body>
< /html>

The resolution while difficult to find, was easy to implement. Opening up my vue.config.js I simply referenced the publicPath with a vlaue of publicPath: './'

Finding the documentation, the default value is ‘/’ which is what I was finding.

The base URL your application bundle will be deployed at (known as baseUrl before Vue CLI 3.3). This is the equivalent of webpack's output.publicPath, but Vue CLI also needs this value for other purposes, so you should always use publicPath instead of modifying webpack output.publicPath.

By default, Vue CLI assumes your app will be deployed at the root of a domain, e.g. https://www.my-app.com/. If your app is deployed at a sub-path, you will need to specify that sub-path using this option. For example, if your app is deployed at https://www.foobar.com/my-app/, set publicPath to '/my-app/'.

The value can also be set to an empty string ('') or a relative path (./) so that all assets are linked using relative paths. This allows the built bundle to be deployed under any public path, or used in a file system based environment like a Cordova hybrid app.

Vue CLI Creating a Project–Issue with Hot Reload

test@example.com — Mon, 18 May 2020 21:10:10 GMT

I noticed today after creating a new vue project via “vue create new-app” that hot reload was not working while modifying html within App.vue. How can this be, it is brand new app on the latest bits. Following the instructions on cli.vuejs.org it states that vue-clie-service starts webpack-dev-server out of the box

”The vue-cli-service serve command starts a dev server (based on webpack-dev-server) that comes with Hot-Module-Replacement (HMR) working out of the box.”

Why. Brand new project, with the latest bits and it still did not work.

I found 2 solutions. The first fix was for me, was to add a vue.config.js file to the root directory (alongside the package.json) and add the following devServer property

devServer: {       
   useLocalIp: false,
   proxy: 'http://localhost:8080',
   public: '172.23.3.180:8080'       
}

Note: the public ip address that I used here was from “IPv4 Address” after performing ipconfig in a command prompt. So documenting here will help me find/resolve this next week when this comes up again. But why, and why was it so difficult to find this resolution?

The second solution which I liked better (and seems faster) was as-follows. Again, a modification to the vue.config.js and also adding a new ‘script’ to package.json

configureWebpack: {
   devServer: {
      watchOptions: {
         poll: true
      }
   }
}

The script within package.json. Here you can see I am setting environment NODE_ENV to development using the cross-env npm package (I had to install via npm installl –save-dev cross-env)

"dev": "cross-env NODE_ENV=development vue-cli-service serve --open --host localhost",

WindowsCryptographicException: The system cannot find the file specified.

test@example.com — Fri, 08 May 2020 18:24:50 GMT

Azure – while trying to read pfx (certificate) from disk I came across a number of issues, but thought this might help some out.

The fix was adding the final parameter X509KeyStorageFlags

var cert = new X509Certificate2($"{Environment.ContentRootPath}/App_Data/mycert.pfx", "{password}", X509KeyStorageFlags.MachineKeySet);

Other references:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/950090/installing-a-pfx-file-using-x509certificate-from-a-standard-net-applic
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/52750160/what-is-the-rationale-for-all-the-different-x509keystorageflags

An unhandled exception occurred while processing the request.
WindowsCryptographicException: The system cannot find the file specified.
System.Security.Cryptography.CngKey.Open(string keyName, CngProvider provider, CngKeyOpenOptions openOptions)

Exception: An error was encountered while handling the remote login.
Microsoft.AspNetCore.Authentication.RemoteAuthenticationHandler<TOptions>.HandleRequestAsync()

Stack Query Cookies Headers Routing
WindowsCryptographicException: The system cannot find the file specified.
System.Security.Cryptography.CngKey.Open(string keyName, CngProvider provider, CngKeyOpenOptions openOptions)
System.Security.Cryptography.CngKey.Open(string keyName, CngProvider provider)
Internal.Cryptography.Pal.CertificatePal.GetPrivateKey<T>(Func<CspParameters, T> createCsp, Func<CngKey, T> createCng)
Internal.Cryptography.Pal.CertificatePal.GetRSAPrivateKey()
System.Security.Cryptography.X509Certificates.X509Certificate2.get_PrivateKey()
Microsoft.IdentityModel.Tokens.X509SecurityKey.get_PrivateKey()
Microsoft.IdentityModel.Tokens.X509SecurityKey.get_PrivateKeyStatus()
Microsoft.IdentityModel.Tokens.AsymmetricSignatureProvider.FoundPrivateKey(SecurityKey key)
Microsoft.IdentityModel.Tokens.AsymmetricSignatureProvider..ctor(SecurityKey key, string algorithm, bool willCreateSignatures)
Microsoft.IdentityModel.Tokens.AsymmetricSignatureProvider..ctor(SecurityKey key, string algorithm, bool willCreateSignatures, CryptoProviderFactory cryptoProviderFactory)
Microsoft.IdentityModel.Tokens.CryptoProviderFactory.CreateSignatureProvider(SecurityKey key, string algorithm, bool willCreateSignatures)
Microsoft.IdentityModel.Tokens.CryptoProviderFactory.CreateForSigning(SecurityKey key, string algorithm)
Microsoft.IdentityModel.JsonWebTokens.JwtTokenUtilities.CreateEncodedSignature(string input, SigningCredentials signingCredentials)
System.IdentityModel.Tokens.Jwt.JwtSecurityTokenHandler.WriteToken(SecurityToken token)
Sample.Idp.Startup+<>c__DisplayClass7_0.<ConfigureServices>b__8(AuthorizationCodeReceivedContext context) in Startup.cs
Microsoft.AspNetCore.Authentication.OpenIdConnect.OpenIdConnectEvents.AuthorizationCodeReceived(AuthorizationCodeReceivedContext context)
Microsoft.AspNetCore.Authentication.OpenIdConnect.OpenIdConnectHandler.RunAuthorizationCodeReceivedEventAsync(OpenIdConnectMessage authorizationResponse, ClaimsPrincipal user, AuthenticationProperties properties, JwtSecurityToken jwt)
Microsoft.AspNetCore.Authentication.OpenIdConnect.OpenIdConnectHandler.HandleRemoteAuthenticateAsync()

Synchronous operations are disallowed. Call ReadAsync or set AllowSynchronousIO to true instead.

test@example.com — Wed, 22 Apr 2020 18:48:09 GMT

Using JetBrains Rider using IIS Express to run asp.net core 3.1 web application, my httpcontext was null and had issues getting request bodies etc. The exception message was

Synchronous operations are disallowed. Call ReadAsync or set AllowSynchronousIO to true instead.

I could run the application with Visual Studio 2019 without any issue (on IIS Express), definitely confusing.

The issue was related to the following..

https://github.com/dotnet/aspnetcore/issues/8302

https://github.com/dotnet/aspnetcore/issues/7644

The solution…

public void ConfigureServices(IServiceCollection services)
{
    // If using Kestrel:
    services.Configure<KestrelServerOptions>(options =>
    {
        options.AllowSynchronousIO = true;
    });

    // If using IIS:
    services.Configure<IISServerOptions>(options =>
    {
        options.AllowSynchronousIO = true;
    });
}