Running remote desktop on a Windows Server Core 2008

by Sven De Bont 17. April 2009 09:15

I am currently investigating on running hyper-v server on my development machine. The main reason is the low footprint. However, as it turns out, it is not possible to ‘connect’ to the VM’s hosted on the hyper-v server from the core box itself, as the terminal services component (aka remote desktop) is missing from the Server Core.

According to Jason Hutt’s post at http://jasonhuitt.com/blog/post/Server-Core-2008-No-Built-In-MSTSC.aspx you can add the TS functionality to a Server Core box by copying the following files from a Windows Server 2008 or Vista SP1 machine

  • \Windows\System32\mstsc.exe

  • \Windows\System32\mstscax.dll

  • \Windows\System32\en-US\mstsc.exe.mui

  • \Windows\System32\en-US\mstscax.dll.mui

  • I have not tested this yet, but will update this post as soon as I do.

    Be the first to rate this post

    • Currently 0/5 Stars.
    • 1
    • 2
    • 3
    • 4
    • 5

    Tags:

    Virtualization

    Using javascript in the NavigateUrlFormat property of the SPMenuField

    by Sven De Bont 14. April 2009 16:39

    When you use an SPMenuField in an SPGridView, you can use the NavigateUrlFormat property to specify an url to navigate to when the users clicks the cell. Using the TokenNameAndValueFields and the NavigateUrlFields properties you can specified tokens in the Url that should be replaced with the underlying values from the datasource for each row in the grid. This all works fine, but when you try to use a javascript function in the NavigateUrlFormat property, the javascript function is never rendered.

    SPMenuField colMenu = new SPMenuField();
    
    colMenu.HeaderText = "Company";
    colMenu.TextFields = "Company";
    
    colMenu.MenuTemplateId = "mnuCompany";
    colMenu.TokenNameAndValueFields = "COMPANYID=CompanyId";
    colMenu.NavigateUrlFields = "CompanyId";
    colMenu.NavigateUrlFormat = "javascript:alert('you have clicked company with id {0}');";
    colMenu.SortExpression = "Company";

    When you start digging around in the SharePoint libraries using reflector, you’ll see that reason for this is that the code that renders the menu (Microsoft.SharePoint.WebControls.Menu.Render(HtmlTextWriter)) makes a call to ‘SPHttpUtility.HtmlUrlAttributeEncode(string url)’ passing the value of the NavigateUrlFormat (in the SPMenuField class, the value of NavigateUrlFormat is passed to the NavigateUrl property of an internally create Microsoft.SharePoint.WebControls.Menucontrol).

    The method SPHttpUtitlity.HtmlUrlAttributeEncode makes a call to SPUrlUtility.IsProtocolAllowedto verify is the requested protocol (javascript: in our case) is allowed.

    The list of allowed protocols is an hardcoded string array that is initialized in the constructor of SPUrlUtility.

     

    static SPUrlUtility()
    {
        m_rgstrAllowedProtocols = new string[] { "http://", "https://", "file://", @"file:\\", "ftp://", 
    		"mailto:", "msn:", "news:", "nntp:", "pnm://", "mms://", "outlook:" };
    }

     

    The list of allowed protocols is available through the public AllowedProtocolsproperty, but it is read-only and since it’s an array, it’s not possible to add additional items to it.

    As a workaround, I decided to replace one of the values in the AllowedProtocols array before I render my control in the Render event and set the initial value back when the rendering is done.

    The downside of this approach is that any links using the protocol that you replace in the array will not be rendered (as it is no longer an allowed protocol). Therefore I chose to ‘replace’ one of the lesser used protocols: ‘pnm://’

    As you can imagine, this is not best practice and even not recommended. Although the AllowedProtocols property is public and therefore should always be available (then again, who will stop MS from changing the public interfaces of their classes if they really want to?).

    protected override void Render
    {
    	SPUrlUtility.AllowedProtocols[9] = "javascript:";
    	try
    	{
    
    		base.Render(writer);
    	}
    	Finally
    	{
        	SPUrlUtility.AllowedProtocols[9] = "pnm://";
    	}
    }
    
    protected override void CreateChildControls()
    {
    
    	SPGridView grid = new SPGridView();
    
    	SPMenuField colMenu = new SPMenuField();
    
    	colMenu.HeaderText = "Company";
    	colMenu.TextFields = "Company";
    
    	colMenu.MenuTemplateId = "mnuCompany";
    	colMenu.TokenNameAndValueFields = "COMPANYID=CompanyId";
    	colMenu.NavigateUrlFields = "CompanyId";
    	colMenu.NavigateUrlFormat = "javascript:alert('you have clicked company with id {0}');";
    	colMenu.SortExpression = "Company";
    
    	grid.Columns.Add(colMenu);
    
    	this.Controls.Add(grid);
    
    	... (rest of code ommitted)
    
    }

    Currently rated 5.0 by 1 people

    • Currently 5/5 Stars.
    • 1
    • 2
    • 3
    • 4
    • 5

    Tags:

    SharePoint

    Change the language of SharePoint Site(s)

    by Sven De Bont 16. March 2009 09:36

    Mirjam van Olst of Macaw (http://www.macaw.nl) explains how to update the language of existing SharePoint sites by running a sql statement on the content datbase.

    http://www.sharepointblogs.com/mirjam/archive/2008/04/29/changing-the-language-of-an-existing-sharepoint-site.aspx

    For changing the language of all sites in the content database to Dutch the query would be:

    UPDATE dbo.Webs SET Language = 1043

    Changing the language of one site collection can be done with:

    UPDATE dbo.Webs SET Language = 1043 WHERE SiteId = [[SiteCollectionId]]

    And for changing the language of a single web or subsite you can use:

    UPDATE dbo.Webs SET Language = 1043 WHERE Id = [[WebId]]

    Be the first to rate this post

    • Currently 0/5 Stars.
    • 1
    • 2
    • 3
    • 4
    • 5

    Tags:

    SharePoint

    ‘Error in the application’ when configuring incoming e-mail on a list

    by Sven De Bont 13. March 2009 05:29

    When you try to configure incoming email on a list, you might receive the error ‘Error in the application’ when the ‘Central Admin’ application pool user differs from the ‘Web Application’ application pool user.

    There might be other causes for the same symptom. For more information, see http://blogs.technet.com/jks/archive/2009/03/04/3209136.aspx

    Be the first to rate this post

    • Currently 0/5 Stars.
    • 1
    • 2
    • 3
    • 4
    • 5

    Tags:

    SharePoint

    SharePoint outgoing e-mail with Exchange 2007

    by Sven De Bont 13. March 2009 05:19

    Be the first to rate this post

    • Currently 0/5 Stars.
    • 1
    • 2
    • 3
    • 4
    • 5

    Tags:

    SharePoint

    Which Microsoft Search product is for you?

    by Sven De Bont 9. March 2009 18:30

    Kathy Narvaez sheds some light in the darkness in the following technet blog post:

    http://blogs.technet.com/tothesharepoint/archive/2008/07/17/3090292.aspx

    Be the first to rate this post

    • Currently 0/5 Stars.
    • 1
    • 2
    • 3
    • 4
    • 5

    Tags:

    Handling Postbacks using MenuItemTemplate

    by Sven De Bont 6. March 2009 09:41

    When using a MenuItemTemplate to perform a postback (instead of a navigate), handling the postback can be tricky. If you have several MenuItems, you will end up writing a lot of code to determine the menuitem that caused the postback and parsing the eventargument data.

    Patrick Rodgers came up with a subclassed MenuItemTemplate in this post(http://www.thesug.org/blogs/patrickr/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=18) that targets itself for the postback and raises an event. You simply have to subscribe to the event and handle the postback there.

    Here’s Patrick’s code:

    using System;
    using System.Web.UI;
    using Microsoft.SharePoint.WebControls;
    
    namespace Example
    {
        public class PostBackEventMenuItem : MenuItemTemplate, IPostBackEventHandler
        {
            public PostBackEventMenuItem()
                : base() { }
    
            public PostBackEventMenuItem(string text)
                : base(text) { }
    
            public PostBackEventMenuItem(string text, string imageUrl)
                : base(text, imageUrl) { }
    
            public PostBackEventMenuItem(string text, string imageUrl, string clientOnClickScript)
                : base(text, imageUrl, clientOnClickScript) { }
    
            protected override void EnsureChildControls()
            {
                if (!this.ChildControlsCreated)
                {
                    base.EnsureChildControls();
                    if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(this.ClientOnClickUsingPostBackEvent))
                    {
                        this.ClientOnClickUsingPostBackEventFromControl(this);
                    }
                }
            }
    
            #region IPostBackEventHandler Members
    
            public void RaisePostBackEvent(string eventArgument)
            {
                EventHandler<EventArgs> handler = this.OnPostBackEvent;
                if (handler != null)
                {
                    handler(this, new EventArgs());
                }
            }
    
            #endregion
    
            public event EventHandler<EventArgs> OnPostBackEvent;
        }
    }

    To use the control, register it in an aspx page, add the PostbackEventMenuItem and subscribe to the OnPostBackEvent.

    <%@ Register TagPrefix="SharePoint" 
    	Namespace="Microsoft.SharePoint.WebControls"
        Assembly="Microsoft.SharePoint, Version=12.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, 
    	PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c" %>
    <%@ Register TagPrefix="Utilities" 
    	Namespace="Microsoft.SharePoint.Utilities" 
    	Assembly="Microsoft.SharePoint, Version=12.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, 
    	PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c" %>
    <%@ Register TagPrefix="Example" 
    	Namespace="Example" Assembly="Example, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, 
    	PublicKeyToken=2bb7d29b4348a50b" %>
    <%@ Import Namespace="Microsoft.SharePoint" %>
    <%@ Import Namespace="Microsoft.SharePoint" %>
    <%@ Control Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" 
    	ClassName="Welcome" CompilationMode="Always" %>
    
    <script runat="server">
    
        protected override void OnLoad(EventArgs e)
        {
            base.OnLoad(e);
            if (HttpContext.Current.User.Identity.IsAuthenticated)
            {
                this.ExplicitLogout.Visible = true;
            }
            else
            {
                this.ExplicitLogin.Visible = true;
                this.ExplicitLogin.Attributes.CssStyle.Add("display", "block");
            }
        }
    
        protected void HandlePostback(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            //remove all cookies, redirect to login with current page url
            FormsAuthentication.SignOut();
    
            Response.Redirect(string.Format("/_layouts/Authenticate.aspx?Source={0}", HttpUtility.UrlEncode(HttpContext.Current.Request.Url.AbsoluteUri)));
        }
    
    </script>
    
    <SharePoint:PersonalActions AccessKey="<%$Resources:wss,personalactions_menu_ak%>"
        ToolTip="<%$Resources:wss,open_menu%>" runat="server" 
    	ID="ExplicitLogout" Visible="false">
        <CustomTemplate>
            <SharePoint:FeatureMenuTemplate 
    			runat="server" FeatureScope="Site" 
    			Location="Microsoft.SharePoint.StandardMenu"
                GroupId="PersonalActions" ID="ID_PersonalActionMenu" UseShortId="true">
                <SharePoint:MenuItemTemplate 
    				runat="server" ID="ID_PersonalInformation" 
    				Text="<%$Resources:wss,personalactions_personalinformation%>"
                    Description="<%$Resources:wss,personalactions_personalinformationdescription%>"
                    MenuGroupId="100" Sequence="100" ImageUrl="/_layouts/images/menuprofile.gif"
                    UseShortId="true" />
                <example:postbackeventmenuitem 
    				runat="server" id="Example_LoginAsDifferentUser" 
    				text="<%$Resources:wss,personalactions_loginasdifferentuser%>"
                    description="<%$Resources:wss,personalactions_loginasdifferentuserdescription%>"
                    menugroupid="200" sequence="100" useshortid="true" ononpostbackevent="HandlePostback" />
                <SharePoint:MenuItemTemplate 
    				runat="server" ID="ID_RequestAccess" 
    				Text="<%$Resources:wss,personalactions_requestaccess%>"
                    Description="<%$Resources:wss,personalactions_requestaccessdescription%>" MenuGroupId="200"
                    UseShortId="true" Sequence="200" />
                <SharePoint:MenuItemTemplate 
    				runat="server" ID="ID_Logout" 
    				Text="<%$Resources:wss,personalactions_logout%>"
                    Description="<%$Resources:wss,personalactions_logoutdescription%>" MenuGroupId="200"
                    Sequence="300" UseShortId="true" Visible="true" />           
                <SharePoint:MenuItemTemplate 
    				runat="server" ID="ID_PersonalizePage" 
    				Text="<%$Resources:wss,personalactions_personalizepage%>"
                    Description="<%$Resources:wss,personalactions_personalizepagedescription%>" ImageUrl="/_layouts/images/menupersonalize.gif"
                    ClientOnClickScript="javascript:MSOLayout_ChangeLayoutMode(true);" PermissionsString="AddDelPrivateWebParts,UpdatePersonalWebParts"
                    PermissionMode="Any" MenuGroupId="300" Sequence="100" UseShortId="true" />
                <SharePoint:MenuItemTemplate 
    				runat="server" ID="ID_SwitchView" MenuGroupId="300"
                    Sequence="200" UseShortId="true" />
                <SharePoint:MenuItemTemplate 
    				runat="server" ID="MSOMenu_RestoreDefaults" 
    				Text="<%$Resources:wss,personalactions_restorepagedefaults%>"
                    Description="<%$Resources:wss,personalactions_restorepagedefaultsdescription%>"
                    ClientOnClickNavigateUrl="javascript:MSOWebPartPage_RestorePageDefault()" MenuGroupId="300"
                    Sequence="300" UseShortId="true" />
            </SharePoint:FeatureMenuTemplate>
        </CustomTemplate>
    </SharePoint:PersonalActions>
    <SharePoint:ApplicationPageLink runat="server" ID="ExplicitLogin" ApplicationPageFileName="Authenticate.aspx"
        AppendCurrentPageUrl="true" Text="<%$Resources:wss,login_pagetitle%>" Style="display: none"
        Visible="false" />

    Be the first to rate this post

    • Currently 0/5 Stars.
    • 1
    • 2
    • 3
    • 4
    • 5

    Tags:

    SharePoint

    Hyper-V networking reset when copying VHD or creating ‘differencing VM’

    by Sven De Bont 5. March 2009 00:27

    Whenever you create a new Virtual Machine for an existing (previously configured) VHD (either by copying the VHD or using differencing disks), the networking configuration of the VM is reset.

    This is because when creating a new VM, the Network Adapter(s) you assign receive a new Guid and are treated by the OS as new hardware.

    The following post explains this behavior in detail:

    http://blogs.technet.com/jhoward/archive/2008/07/22/hyper-v-why-is-networking-reset-in-my-vm-when-i-copy-a-vhd.aspx

    Be the first to rate this post

    • Currently 0/5 Stars.
    • 1
    • 2
    • 3
    • 4
    • 5

    Tags:

    Virtualization

    MakeCab file length limitation

    by Sven De Bont 3. March 2009 16:25

    Apparently, there is a limitation to the maximum length of the source file in a DDF file that MakeCab can handle. When the file name exeeds 100 characters, you will receive a File not found error when running makecab.exe

    See Michael Blumenthal's post at http://blumenthalit.net/blog/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=75 for full details.

    Be the first to rate this post

    • Currently 0/5 Stars.
    • 1
    • 2
    • 3
    • 4
    • 5

    Tags: , ,

    SharePoint log files grow extremely large

    by Sven De Bont 17. February 2009 15:50

    Today I ran into a strange issue where the SharePoint log files (located in c:\program files\common files\microsoft shared\web server extensions\12\logs) on one of my development VPC’s would rapidly grow in size (5GB+) until I ran out of disk space.

    The log file would fill up with the following message (up to 800 occurrences in just 3 thousands of a second!):

    02/17/2009 10:57:14.96     OWSTIMER.EXE (0x0DF4)                       0x0E08    Windows SharePoint Services       Timer                             5uuf    Monitorable    The previous instance of the timer job 'Config Refresh', id '{1520A0E0-E8C6-47F8-BA89-5BEBE5774DFD}' for service '{25FB833C-D7DD-4776-AD50-58105B3A46F0}' is still running, so the current instance will be skipped.  Consider increasing the interval between jobs.

    After searching the web for a little while, I found the solution was to clear the SharePoint Configuration Cache as described in this post by Joe Rodgers.

    1. Stop the OWSTIMER service on ALL of the MOSS servers in the farm.
    2. On the Index server, navigate to %ALLUSERSPROFILE% \Application Data\Microsoft\SharePoint\Config\<GUID> and delete all the XML files from the directory.
    3. Edit cache.ini and reset the number in the file to 1.
    4. Start the OWSTIMER service on the Index server and wait for XML files to begin to reappear in the directory.
    5. After you see XML files appearing on the Index server, repeat steps 2, 3 & 4 on the query server(s), waiting for XML files to appear before moving to subsequent servers.
    6. After the query servers have all been cleared, proceed to the WFE and Application servers in the farm, following steps 2, 3 & 4. for each server.

    Be the first to rate this post

    • Currently 0/5 Stars.
    • 1
    • 2
    • 3
    • 4
    • 5

    Tags: , ,

    SharePoint

    Powered by BlogEngine.NET 1.4.5.0
    Theme by Mads Kristensen