Had another interesting one today whilst trying to deploy locally during a CI build using MSDeploy, I kept getting the error:

Exception calling "SyncTo" with "4" argument(s): "Connected to the destination computer ("localhost") using the Web Management Service, but could not authorize. Make sure that you are using the correct user name and password, that the site you are connecting to exists, and that the credentials represent a user who has permissions to access the site."

I wanted to use integrated security but the Web Management service just wasn't playing.  So I found that you just need to enable NTLM in the registry:

• Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\WebManagement\Server
• Create a new DWord key called "WindowsAuthenticationEnabled"
• Set it's value to 1
• Restart the Web Management Service

When deleting a service using the syntax: sc delete tcbuildagent you might come across the error:

The specified service has been marked for deletion

This is an easy one to fix and no need to reboot, just close down the services window or server manger!

I'm currently looking at implenting sitesearch for one of my client sites, I looked at a few options including Microsoft's Search Server Express 2010 and a commercial solution from http://www.sitesearchasp.net.

Here's my results:

Microsoft Site Search Express 2010

In a nutshell I a spent about half a day trying to get this working, don't waste your time with this crap (being polite as possible) as it's an absolute nightmare.  It's quite a big install and it actually installs SharePoint 2010 as well which I didn't particually want.

See the following blog posts on the "hacks" required to get it working on a non domain server:
http://soerennielsen.wordpress.com/2010/07/15/how-to-install-a-sharepoint-2010-complete-server-without-ad/
http://www.trinkit.com/blog/2009/4/9/the-sharepoint-search-service-and-anonymous-access

After doing all of this I still couldn't get it working with a nice error from Sharepoint:

At this point with nothing sensible coming form the logs I lost the will to live, deleted everything and am currently trying to delete the thought of SharePoint  from my memory.  Lets move on....

SiteSearchAsp.Net

Report coming soon....

Whilst looking at implementing a site search feature for one of my client sites I thought I'd look at Microsoft's free Search Server 2010 Express to see if I can use it to crawl my MVC3 razor website that I'm working on.  

First of all I'd try to install Search Server 2010 but quite quickly found that if you don't have a domain account then you'll receive the following error:
"the account must be a valid domain account"

Thanks that's really useful!  I came across this excellent article which with a bit of PowerShell allows you to work around the problem by:

1.  After install cancel the SharePoint configuration wizard
2.  Drop down to the SharePoint Management Shell
3.  Run New-SPConfigurationDatabase
2.  Now you're good to go with the wizard by running PSConfigUI

As with most of my Windows 2008 administration scripts I prefer to only "touch" the system if it needs updating otherwise leave it alone.  The script below shows how to detect if a service is set to manual, change to automatic and start if required.  Oddly the Get-Service cmdlet doesn't return the start type in PowerShell 2.0 for some reason.  

 function SetServiceStartToAutoMatic($serviceName = $(throw "Service Name was not specified")){  
      $service = Get-Service $serviceName  
      $startType = Get-WmiObject -Query "Select StartMode From Win32_Service Where Name='$($serviceName)'"  
   
      if ($startType.StartMode -eq "Manual"){  
           Set-Service $serviceName –StartupType Automatic  
      }  
 }  
   
 function StartServiceIfStopped($serviceName = $(throw "Service Name was not specified")){  
      $service = Get-Service $serviceName  
      if ($service.Status -eq "Stopped"){  
           Start-Service $serviceName  
      }  
 }  
   
 function Main(){  
      $smtpServiceName = "SMTPSVC"  
      SetServiceStartToAutoMatic $smtpServiceName  
      StartServiceIfStopped $smtpServiceName  
 }  
   
 Main  

I had a nice error on a Windows 2008 R2 server whilst trying to install some server roles/features with PowerShell:

 Import-Module servermanager  
 Get-WindowsFeature  

Resulted in error:

   
 Get-WindowsFeature : Failed to initialize.  
 At line:3 char:19  
 + Get-WindowsFeature <<<<   
   + CategoryInfo     : OperationStopped: (:) [Get-WindowsFeature], COMException  
   + FullyQualifiedErrorId : DiscoveryFailed,Microsoft.Windows.ServerManager.Commands.GetWindowsFeatureCommand  

You might also see this error when opening the Windows 2008 Server Manager Roles or an exception code 0x800B0100.  

The fix:

- Download and install the System Update Readniess Tool: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/947821/en-us
 -When prompted install the KB patch/fix.

Here's a PowerShell script that determines if the OS is Windows Server 2008 and enables a list of windows features.  To get a list of features and enabled status run Get-WindowsFeature (after importing the  servermanager module).

 Import-Module servermanager  
   
 function IsWindows2008(){  
   $operatingSystem = gwmi win32_operatingSystem | select name  
   return $operatingSystem.name.contains("Server 2008")  
 }  
   
 function EnableWindowsFeatures($featureList) {  
   foreach ($feature in $featureList) {  
     $featureInfo = Get-WindowsFeature $feature  
     if (!$featureInfo.installed){  
       Add-WindowsFeature $feature  
     }  
   }  
 }  
   
 function Main() {  
   if(IsWindows2008){  
     $features = "Web-Windows-Auth", "Web-Asp-Net"  
     EnableWindowsFeatures $features  
   }  
 }  
   
 Main  
   

I'm currently looking at integrating Sonar into our build environment which intially didn't go too well interms of installation so I thought I'd document what I did and what was required for future reference.  In this first part I will show you how to configure Sonar to run with a basic out of the box setup that uses the inbuilt Derby database, localhost web and Core/Squid C# plugins.

PREREQUISITES - VERY IMPORTANT!

1. Download Java JDK, it's works with 1.5+ but I installed 1.7.  
   http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/java-se-jdk-7-download-432154.html

INSTALL SONAR

1. Download Sonar:
   http://sonar.codehaus.org/downloads/
2. Extract to a directory i.e. c:\Sonar
3. Run \bin\windows-x86-32\StartSonar.bat or \bin\windows-x86-64\StartSonar.bat depending on your OS
4. Navigate to http://localhost:9000 to view the default console
   
   At this point Sonar is configured to use the default database.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

wrapper  | --> Wrapper Started as Console
wrapper  | Java Service Wrapper Community Edition 3.3.0
wrapper  |   Copyright (C) 1999-2008 Tanuki Software, Inc.  All Rights
Reserved.
wrapper  |     http://wrapper.tanukisoftware.org
wrapper  |
wrapper  | Launching a JVM...
jvm 1    | WrapperManager: Initializing...
jvm 1    | 2009-12-07 16:33:29.166::INFO:  Logging to STDERR via
org.mortbay.log.StdErrLog
jvm 1    | 2009-12-07 16:33:29.211::INFO:  jetty-6.1.17
jvm 1    | 2009-12-07 16:33:29.350::WARN:  Failed startup of context
org.mortbay.jetty.webapp.WebAppContext@635f44d4{/,null}
jvm 1    | java.lang.NullPointerException

fix: I came across this error when I reinstalled Sonar over an existing installation, I had to remove and reinstall from fresh to get around this error

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Exception in thread "main" org.sonar.batch.bootstrapper.BootstrapException: org.picocontainer.PicoLifecycleException: PicoLifecycleException: method 'public void org.sonar.batch.index.DefaultIndex.start()', instance 'org.sonar.batch.index.DefaultIndex@39da8a, java.lang.RuntimeException: wrapper at org.sonar.runner.Runner.delegateExecution(Runner.java:155) at org.sonar.runner.Runner.execute(Runner.java:58)at org.sonar.runner.Main.main(Main.java:52)
Caused by: org.picocontainer.PicoLifecycleException: PicoLifecycleException: method 'public void org.sonar.batch.index.DefaultIndex.start()', instance 'org.sonar.batch.index.DefaultIndex@39da8a, java.lang.RuntimeException: wrapper

FIX: sonar-runner can't find a sonar-project.properties file!

In the next part I'll dive into enabling the extra plugins such as Gallio and incorporate NCover reports.