Steven's Blog

Permanently stopping BEEPS from VM

2010-01-19T17:10:00.002+01:00

This post is again more of a reminder to myself then anything else.
Don't you also hate it when you get does anoying beeps when you start to work on a new virtual machine? After about an hour of torture I start to think: "what was that command to turn of that beep again?".

To help myself (and anyone else who happens to pass by here) here are the commands:

Permanantly: sc config beep start= disabled
Until first reboot: net stop beep

MOSS Themes - Order of loading

2009-07-22T18:22:00.001+02:00

There are already some blog posts on the order with wich SharePoint loads its css files. So I won't go into detail on that.

However I want to give you some info on an issue I had not long ago.

Situation

Custom Masterpage
Custom Theme on Root site
Other Custom Theme on child that touches some similar styles with other colors

Problem

The last css to get loaded was the one of the parent theme

Solution

Moving this tag

<SharePoint:Theme ID="Theme1" runat="server"/>

to be in front of

<asp:ContentPlaceHolder id="PlaceHolderAdditionalPageHead" runat="server">
</asp:ContentPlaceHolder>

More Info

I used a custom masterpage together with a theme. Because I wanted to do all css with the theme I moved the tag to just in front of the tag.
However when you configure a theme on a subsite it gets placed in the "additional page head" wich caused the above mentioned caution.

Moral

When designing your custom masterpage, think twice when moving tags .. and test test test.

Kind regards
Steven

Going for MCPD Web Developer

2009-07-07T19:03:00.001+02:00

After completing the MOSS Configuration examn, i told you all that I didn't know wich would be next. Well .. no I'm here to tell you that Examn: 70-547 (PRO: Designing and Developing Web-Based Applications by Using the Microsoft .NET Framework) is next on my list :)

If anyone has usefull tips about this examn, your welcome to post them here.

I'm planning on using the following book as the basis for my studies. Does it contain enough information combined with the test exam that comes with the book? Or is it required to consult some extra resources?

MCPD Self-Paced Training Kit [Exam 70-547]: Designing and Developing Web-Based Applications Using the Microsoft .NET Framework

Extracting assemblies from the Global Assembly Cache: The Options

2009-07-02T11:07:00.004+02:00

This is mostly ment as a reminder for myself because I keep forgetting it :)

There are several options:
- Command line copy
- Unregistering shfusion.dll
- Bypassing shfusion without unregistering

The last one is definetly my favorite, Just open the run command box (or quick search box in Vista) and enter the following:
%windir%\assembly\gac
This will open an explorer window while bypassing de shfusion.dll file that limits functionality

Exam 70-630: TS MOSS 2007, Configuration

2009-06-29T15:27:00.006+02:00

Friday i went down to the examn center again and passed the 70-630 examn.

If you need a quick moss certification this is certainly a recommendation. If you are used to working and configuring moss, you should have no problem passing this one.

This makes 2 in a month, I'm on a roll :). I'm not sure what the next one will be however.

Exam 70–528: TS: Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 - Web-Based Client Development

2009-05-29T14:00:00.004+02:00

Today I passed Exam 70-528. It's been a while since I took a microsoft certification exam but I'm happy I finally got round to doing it.

Passing this one now makes me: Technology Specialist: .NET Framework 2.0 Web Applications

Next up will be the 70-630 and 70-542. I'm not sure about the order however :)

LL: Document Conversion in MOSS

2009-04-20T21:35:00.003+02:00

1. Automating Document Conversion is always a programmatic step. There is no OOB scheduling or event listener for DC. A good sample can be found here: Document Converter Framework Sample

2. If you convert using the object model, you will need the OOB transformer id's:
Docx: {6dfdc5b4-2a28-4a06-b0c6-ad3901e3a807}
Docm: {888d770d-d3e9-4d60-8267-3c05ab059ef5}
Infopath: {853d58f5-13c3-46f8-8b81-3ca4abcad7b3}
Xsl = {2798ee32-2961-4232-97dd-1a76b9aa6c6f}

3. Document does not work on old .doc-like files. It needs the new XML format of the Word 2007 files like .docx)

4. When configuring DC on your server, always start the Document Load Balancer Service before your Document Launcher service(s).

5. Some more lessons learned can be found here: http://raiumair.wordpress.com/2008/01/07/document-convertors-in-moss-lessons-learnt/

AssetPortalBrowser 403 Access Denied

2009-03-13T11:59:00.000+01:00

Are You familiar with the following Screenshot:

The story:

Some user calls you up and tells you that when he wants to browse for an url, he gets this error page. As admin you can't reproduce the problem but with the reporters user account you can...

You say to yourself: No problem, It's jus a matter of giving the user some rights ... hmm but what rights?

The Solution:

Well for this, I make a separate Permission Level called "Browse". I do this because I don't want to mess with the existing levels, and I can decide in a flexible way who can browse what. This Permission Level has 3 Site Permissions flagged:

Browse Directories - Enumerate files and folders in a Web site using SharePoint Designer and Web DAV interfaces
View Pages - View pages in a web site
Open - Allow users to open a Web site, list, or folder in order to access items inside that container

For the people who have a Dutch installation:

Zoeken in mappen - Bestanden en Mappen van een website inventariseren met SharePoint Designer en Web DAV interfaces
Pagina's bekijken - Pagina's weergeven op een website
Openen - Stelt gebruikers in staat een website, lijst of map te openen zodat ze toegang hebben to items in dat onderdeel

You're feeling pretty good about yourself by now, so you apply the Permission Level to the group/person reporting the problem on that site. Problem fixed !?!

Or isn't it? Are you sure you applied the permission to the correct site?
There is a small gotcha here. SharePoint is so user friendly that it saves the last selected browse location on a per user basis. When you don't fill in the Selected URL textbox and just click on browse, SharePoint looks up that URL and tries to display the content.
Now if for any reason, the user lost rights on that site (maybe he moved to a different team), he is going to get the 403 Error.
A simple workaround here is this:

Fill in the url of the current page in the textbox, and then click browse.
You will see that Location (URL) points to the current page
Click OK
You've just overwritten the old invalid url! Job done, Go have yourself a cup of Tea/Coffee

Let me know if this helps any of you.

Greets Steven

Oracle DataPump INCLUDE/EXCLUDE Part 2

2009-01-19T16:35:00.001+01:00

Hi all,

I ran into another little problem with the expdp utility off oracle.
For my purposes i called the utility with a parfile, this parfile was generated by another step in the scripting progress.

The oracle documentation listed that i could repeat INCLUDE statemets, so my script generates something like this:

INCLUDE=FUNCTION:"='FUNC_NAME'"
INCLUDE=FUNCTION:"='FUNC_NAME_OTHER'"
INCLUDE=FUNCTION:"='FUNCY_NAME'"
INCLUDE=PACKAGE:"='THE_PACKAGE'"

However when running this, i kept getting the error:
- ORA-39168: Object path function was not found.

It took a while but i finally found out that you CAN repeat include statements but you CANT repeat object paths.

above sample should thus be:

INCLUDE=FUNCTION:"IN ('FUNC_NAME','FUNC_NAME_OTHER','FUNCY_NAME')"
INCLUDE=PACKAGE:"='THE_PACKAGE'"

Here you go, Some more 'wisdom' shared with the internet-connected world

Oracle DataPump INCLUDE/EXCLUDE

2009-01-16T16:16:00.001+01:00

Hi

I needed to create some oracle scripts for a project i am working on.
However when making my datapump scripts for the export I ran into some trouble:

ORA-39168: Object path function was not found.

After some searching I find out that I was using the wrong export type to be using that path.
The question is how did I find this out?

well ...
Just use the DATAPUMP_PATHS view in oracle !
It's a realy handy little thing :)

Edit: In Part 2 You can find another reason for this error ;)

SharePoint: Content Deployment Paths and Jobs

2008-06-24T11:17:00.000+02:00

Today I was using the content deployment functionality of SharePoint. All configuration seemed to go well but when i started the Job it just kept hanging on Preparing.

After a simple google search I found out that many people had ran into this problem, but most had not found an answer.

For some it was the Windows SharePoint Timer Service that had to be started, for some it was the target Site collection that had to be created based on a Blank Site template ...

For me however I only got it working by changing the "Content Deployment Settings" on both servers so that in the "Connection Security" part both had the "Do not require encryption" functionality selected.

Maybe this can help somebody, someday, somewhere ;)

For a good start ...

2008-06-09T21:03:00.000+02:00

I'm going to try something new for myself, and that something is ...

yeah you guessed it! It's writing a blog :)
Because I don't believe you can start off with the serious stuff all of a sudden, I'm going to start of with something easier. Last month a colleague stumbled upon the movies of 'Greg the architect'.

For people in the IT business, I certainly recommend having a look. Me and my colleagues had a good laugh with them.

www.gregthearchitect.com

Cya next blog