January 2007 - Posts
Time for a bit of a follow up on my server name issues with TFS. As expected there is correct way to alter the names of the various TFS servers, it involves editing the contents of one of the TFS database tables, not any config file.
The best documentation I have found is that for setting up the new ISAPI filter provided with TFS Service Pack 1 to assist in authentication. Have a look at http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-gb/library/aa833872(... the section ISAPI does detail how to alter the names in various locations.
Though I have this ISAPI filter in place I still do not have Internet access to reports or documents in Team Explorer outside my office (though they work in a browser), I still get the small red crosses, but I am still looking for a solution. More later I am sure.
I got the West Yorkshire British Computer Society branch news letter today and I saw there is an extreme programming club being set up locally, the first meeting is in Leeds on Thur 8th Feb at Victoria Hotel, Great George St at 7pm. You can find the blog for the group at http://extremeprogrammingclub.blogspot.com/
I think this is great news, the DeveloperDeveloperDeveloper series of events that I have presented at have shown there is an appetite for community events, so lets hope there is enough interest to get this local group going. I for will will be attending.
I see that the the groups is actually titled an Extreme Programming group, I hope it will be able to extend it remit to all Agile methods, as this is a big area of discussion at the moment. It is an interesting argument whether it is just talk of going agile or agile actually happening - but that is something for this group to find out.
For these who know nothign of Agile methods and want a good overview of the pros and cons listen to the .NET Rocks podcast of the Agile panel at Microsoft TechEd Barcelona 2006
See you at the event in Leeds 
My plan for editing the local copy of the RegProxyFileCache.xml is OK until you restart the system. I need to look further into this
Black Marble are pleased to be hosting this evening event on 31 January.
XNA represents a major milestone in the field of game development,bringing game creators a unified platform and the safety of managedcode. It also greatly reduces the difficulties faced when starting outin game development, closing the gap between idea and workingimplementation. The recent release of XNA Express gives programmers achance to get to grips with the XNA framework and use it to createcontent for both the PC and the XBOX 360.Beginning with an overview ofthe XNA platform and the XNA Express development tools, this demo packedpresentation then moves into the 'nitty gritty' of game developmentusing XNA, leading to a fully realised casual game running on an XBOX360. Whether you are a seasoned games coder, or a programmer thinking ofmoving into game development this session will give you plenty of foodfor thought and information to get you started.
This event will be presented by Rob Miles from the University of Hull, fresh from his stint at TechEd Barcelona.
Rob Miles is a lecturer in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Hull. He is also author of the world famous Rob Miles blog at www.robmiles.com and has been programming for more years than he can (or cares to) remember. His interests include programming, Software Development and Computer Games. Oh, and cheese.
Our annual Technical Update events are running on January 31 but this time, our Technical Update for Developers is changing ... it is now including Martin Parry, a Developer Evangelist for Microsoft.
The Developer Evangelists for Microsoft are taking the developer launch for Office 2007 and Vista on the road in the next few weeks and are now including our Technical Update for Developers in their schedule.
Martin Parry, one of the Developer Evangelists will be speaking for the majority of the afternoon, covering .NET framework 3, programming with the ribbon in Office 2007 and advances in presentation, reliability and security in Vista.
About Martin Parry
Martin Parry is a Developer Evangelist for Microsoft and speaks about many of Microsoft’s latest developer technologies. After graduating in 1992, Martin worked as a software developer on Unix (many flavours), VMS, and Windows. He joined Microsoft in 1999 and worked for a number of years with many of Microsoft’s ISV partners to help them adopt new technologies. As you’d expect, Martin’s major focus today is Windows Vista and Office 2007.
Don't forget, our events are free, and lunch is provided!
NxtGenUG and Dinis Cruz are running 2 day residential courses on Advanced ASP.NET Security training including such topics as Security Principles, .NET Framework Architecture, Threat Modeling, Discovering Vulnerabilities, Penetration Testing Techniques and Secure Coding Techniques.
Those of you who attended the Ed Gibson - On the Road event will be familiar with Dinis, he is totally passionate and committed about his subject.
Linda
I have previously posted on the fun I had getting TFS running in our office. Well thus far it has been stable, other than some 'user too stupid' errors, and we have been fairly happy.
The next stage was to expose the TFS server out through our firewall to allow home working. This turned out to not be too bad (expect some posts on our experiences with ISA server soon) but raised an interesting issue.
As far as the Visual Studio Team clients were concerned the TFS server had the physical PC server name in all it's URL e.g http://myserver:8080. This was not an issue with the office as it could be resolved, but a problem on the Internet. Now I suppose we could have put some host file entries to address this but I really wanted to get it working as http://tfs.mydomain.co.uk:8080.
So we created a new DNS entry (both internally and externally resolving to the correct IP address). Once this DNS entry was created, and the firewall setup I could connect to the TFS server and pull down a project list and check files in and out from home. But I was getting those damned little red crosses next to the documents, reports and could not open the project SharePoint sites.
On checking the URL to be used for these services I saw that they were all still pointing to http://myserver with various SharePoint or Reporting Service directories on the end. Firstly, I had not exposed the default SharePoint and Reporting Services ports via the firewall, but that was easy to fix. The real problem was using the old name, how to change these entries? I think the best option would have been to install the TFS with the full name in the first place! But I did not really want to do a reinstall.
So I had search around and found that in C:\Documents and Settings\[name]\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Team Foundation\1.0\Cache\[GUID] directory there is a XML file RegProxyFileCache.xml. This contains the details used by the client and can be edited. I replaced the http://myserver entries with http://tfs.mydomain.co.uk. A snippet is shown below from around Line 250 of the file:
<RegistrationEntry>
<Type>Reports</Type>
<ChangeType>NoChange</ChangeType>
<ServiceInterfaces>
<ServiceInterface>
<Name>BaseReportsUrl</Name>
<Url>http://tfs.mydomain.co.uk/Reports</Url>
</ServiceInterface>
<ServiceInterface>
<Name>DataSourceServer</Name>
<Url>myserver</Url>
</ServiceInterface>
<ServiceInterface>
<Name>ReportsService</Name>
<Url>http://tfs.mydomain/ReportServer/ReportService.asmx</Url>
</ServiceInterface>
</ServiceInterfaces>
<Databases />
<EventTypes />
<RegistrationExtendedAttributes />
<ArtifactTypes />
</RegistrationEntry>
<RegistrationEntry>
<Type>Wss</Type>
<ChangeType>NoChange</ChangeType>
<ServiceInterfaces>
<ServiceInterface>
<Name>BaseServerUrl</Name>
<Url>http://tfs.mydomain.co.uk</Url>
</ServiceInterface>
<ServiceInterface>
<Name>BaseSiteUnc</Name>
<Url>\\myserver\sites</Url>
</ServiceInterface>
<ServiceInterface>
<Name>BaseSiteUrl</Name>
<Url>http://tfs.mydomain.co.uk/sites</Url>
</ServiceInterface>
<ServiceInterface>
<Name>WssAdminService</Name>
<Url>http://myserver:17012/_vti_adm/admin.asmx</Url>
</ServiceInterface>
</ServiceInterfaces>
<Databases />
<EventTypes />
<RegistrationExtendedAttributes />
<ArtifactTypes />
</RegistrationEntry>
After this change is made on reloading Visual Studio the red crosses go away and the various features work.
However this does not answer the larger question of getting it set right in the first place for new clients, you don't really want to have to edit each client config. I suspect making similar edits in the C:\program files\microsoft visual studio 2005 team foundation server\tf Setup\eleadservices.xml might do the trick but I have not confirmed this as yet.
I still hold with the comment that TFS is very much an 'install it right first time' sort of product.
I was given a copy of JPod by Douglas Coupland for Christmas, now I will not be adding anything to the range of reviews to say it is very much Microserf V2.0 - similar story but it is just that people seem not to work as hard (but are still in the office as they have little life outside work) and the strange things that occur to them are very strange indeed. In Microserf you could believe it could happen, but JPod, well it is going a bit far. Also I agree with the comments that this book it is rather self referential.
But that is not my point....
After reading JPod I decide to re-read Microserfs and what a strange experience that was. I was struck by the number of items touched on in this 1995 book as 'hip and new' that are now so main stream. In 1995, if my memory serves me, they were completely left field ideas, or at least were in the UK, I cannot speak for the west coast of the USA.
It did seem Douglas Coupland really had his finger on a the pulse - especially over the comment that Apple was in trouble as it had no Bill Gates type visionary at the helm - this was in the period before Steve Jobs came back to reinvent the company.
Anyway both books are great reads for you Geek book groups, see what you think about the historic cultural relevant of Microserfs for the 90s (that is assuming you can remember the 90s!) and whether JPob will be as account for the 00s?
Yesterday I posted about problems with accessing remotely the Virtual PCs from the Virtual Server console. It turns out the problem was domain name related. We had a different name on the internal DNS to that on the external side.
In effect the server was trying to call:
vmrc://virtualserver.mydomain.co.uk:5900/my pc
when we should have been calling
vmrc://virtualserver-external.mydomain.co.uk:5900/my pc
even though we had actually accessed the system via
http://virtualserver-external.mydomain.co.uk
This has been fixed by getting all our DNS entries in line.
We have been moving over to ISA Server to allow better management of internet resources, one problem we have had is publishing our Virtual Server so our tele-workers can get remote access to the test systems.
The ISA application publish rule works fine to allow access to the main Virtual Server console page (can create, start stop PC etc) but if you click on a Virtual PC you get a no connection screen, so you cannot actually use the Virtual PC.
However I found a way round this problem. When you get the no connection screen, click the remote connect option on the top right you can enter the URL in the form
vmrc://virtualserver.mydomain.co.uk:5900/my pc
and assuming you have allowed the 5900 access through the ISA firewall it should work.
So it looks like the problem is that when you click the thumbnail of the PC to access it uses some other URL to the form shown above. I will try to find out why this is.
Look out for more posts on ISA on BM Bloggers as we get our teeth into it.
As Black Marble is growing we have decided to start to split out the individual blogs of our more active posters, hence the opening of But it works on my PC! which will just have the postings of Richard Fennell.
You can of course subscribe to this new blog, but all you devotees of BM Bloggers need to do nothing as BM Bloggers will remain an aggregate of this and all future sub blogs. Also there will still be regualr posting directly to BM Bloggers.
I have been fiddling a bit more on my Vista media center PC and I thought I had a solution to the sleep issues I previously posted about
USB Power
Asus (and I think many other brands of motherboard) default the USB ports to have no power during S3 sleep mode - to save power. This means that you cannot use a USB device to trigger wake up by default. For my Media Center PC (with no PS2 input devices) this meant I had no effective way to trigger a restart, bar the buttons on the case. Even when I used the main power button it seemed that on restart/wake-up there was still no power sent to the USB devices until they were unplugged and plugged back in.
This was all addressed by moving some jumpers on the motherboard so that when in sleep mode the USB device have power, so can trigger a input signal to wake up, ad as they have never been without power they still work after a wake up.
Video Post Tests
After doing the jumper changes for the USB power I was still not get a working restart; basically it seemed I got no video output from the PC.
In the power settings in the BIOS I enabled a video post test on wake up, this seemed to kick my ATI video and/or the TV into life.
So it seems I have a Vista system that can sleep and wake up.
Or so I thought.....................
Once all this was changed I set the PC to record a programme in the middle of the night as test and put it too sleep. Even though it had worked before it now refused to go into sleep mode, the disk spun for a while and then after about 5 minutes it just rebooted. In the event log I found an unhelpful 'failed to sleep eventID 41'.
I wondered if it was due to having a PS2 keyboard plugged in whilst test, or a USB mouse. So I put these back in and it had not effect, also I tried going to sleep with MCE desktop open closed and via a whole variety of different means (buttons on keyboard, start menu etc) . I also updated to the latest BIOS (I was only one rev off and the the new one only seemed to add extra CPU model support). All to no effect
So it seemed I have fixed my wakeup, but now have a going to sleep issue. I will continue digging - unless anyone has any ideas, a look round the Internet seems I am not alone with these problems
ps. Still have problem with the ATI graphic driver and palying DVDs, but ATI have yet to fully release a Vista driver hoepfully we will see one when retail Vista is shipped.