Texas. We messed with you (by cleaning up the beach a bit) and got away scot-free!
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While debugging an Azure project a couple of weeks ago the Azure Emulator startup process kept throwing the unhandled exception “A heap has been corrupted.”
After poking around for a bit looking for x86/x64 settings compat problems I remembered that as a part of some PowerShell v3 testing I’d done earlier in the week on this same machine I’d set a registry key so that PowerShell would use the latest CLR. Unwinding those registry keys seems to have resolved the DFAgent error.
Run these commands to unwind the ‘OnlyUserLatestCLR’ change on your machine (the 2nd line only applies to x64):
reg add hklm\software\microsoft.netframework /v OnlyUseLatestCLR /t REG_DWORD /d 0
reg add hklm\software\wow6432node\microsoft.netframework /v OnlyUseLatestCLR /t REG_DWORD /d 0
If you’re like me you may have be using a specific type of SQL database known as a ‘User Instance’ without knowing what it is or how it works. You’d never known there was anything unusual until you tried to access your database from outside of Visual Studio. For example, in Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio …
Dude, where’s my database?
No worries. First, make sure your app is running. The database is started at app runtime by Visual Studio. Once your app is running execute this SQL statement in SQL Server Management Studio:
SELECT owning_principal_name, instance_pipe_name, heart_beat FROM sys.dm_os_child_instances
Take note of the named pipe that’s alive. That’s where your database is hiding. Copy the pipe name.
Open up the ‘Connect to Server’ dialog and paste in your named pipe address. Hit Connect.
Dude, there’s your database.
60 Second Answer:
Windows Azure is a cloud OS serviced by Microsoft. The Windows Azure cloud OS has three core components: Compute, Storage, and Fabric.
Each Compute instance is a virtual machine. Applications in Windows Azure utilize Compute resources through one or more Compute containers called “roles”. Roles come in three different types: Web (a dedicated web server), Worker (asynchronous, long-running or perpetual tasks independent of user interaction or input), and Virtual Machine (for Legacy apps; a Windows Server 2008 R2 VM).
Storage resources include are available through SQL Azure, BLOB (Binary Large Object) storage, & Table storage (aka NOSQL). SQL Azure allows users to make relational queries against stored data. BLOB Storage is a simple way to store unstructured text or binary data such as video, audio and images. Table Storage stores structured data but it does not provide a way to represent relationships between the data.
Fabric resources are the kernel of Windows Azure distributed cloud OS. They provides scheduling, resource allocation, device management, and fault tolerance for the nodes in the Fabric. They also provides high-level application models for intelligently managing the complete application lifecycle, including deployment, health monitoring, upgrades, and deactivation.
10 Second Answer:
To be continued (soliciting feedback from twitter) …
References:
Yammer SHOULD be in the Chrome App Store but isn’t. Tell them so.
In the meantime, you can add them into your own personal apps by following these 5 simple steps:
Shay Levy did an excellent PowerShellization of ‘netstat’ (link) on his blog back in February. JRich also had an excellent take on implementing NetStat in PowerShell (link). There is also a simple one-liner [net.NetworkInformation.IPGlobalProperties]::GetIPGlobalProperties().GetActiveTcpConnections() that will get you Tcp connection information without the process information but IMHO the info provided is practically useless in most real world scenarios without the process info.
One can argue over which solution is more PowerShellicous, “inlining c#” or “scraping cmd output”. Meanwhile while that flame war is happening I’ll be over here extending either of these solutions because PowerShell is awesome like that. Here I added filtering to the Shay’s solution. Behold:
PS C:\Users\ben> Get-NetworkStatistics skype | ft -AutoSize Protocol LocalAddress LocalPort RemoteAddress RemotePort State ProcessName PID -------- ------------ --------- ------------- ---------- ----- ----------- --- TCP 0.0.0.0 443 0.0.0.0 0 LISTENING Skype 4068 TCP 0.0.0.0 9841 0.0.0.0 0 LISTENING Skype 4068 PS C:\Users\ben> Get-NetworkStatistics -ProcessId 3368 Protocol : TCP LocalAddress : 192.168.10.115 LocalPort : 49899 RemoteAddress : 204.152.18.196 RemotePort : 443 State : ESTABLISHED ProcessName : chrome PID : 3368
Here’s the source:
Change the welcome background image in Windows7:
Set this key value to 1: HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Authentication\LogonUI\Background\OEMBackground
Overwriting this file: %windir%\system32\oobe\info\backgrounds\backgroundDefault.jpg
[video]
I really like the @PowerTip blog series but I find myself wanting to talk back with more than 120 characters. Please enable comments @PowerTip. Comments are enabled for authenticated users. In the meantime, I’ll blog my comments.
function Get-PSOwner($searchString)
{
$foundProcess = ps $searchString
if($foundProcess -eq $null) { return; }
gwmi Win32_Process -Filter ("Handle={0}" -f $foundProcess.id ) |
% { Add-Member `
-InputObject $_ `
-MemberType NoteProperty `
-Name Owner `
-Value ($_.GetOwner().User) `
-PassThru } |
select Name, Handle, Owner
}
The four minor changes I made to the @PowerTip script are: 1) it’s functionized, 2) the input is a search string for process (wildcards accepted), 3) it spits out the correct errors if the process can’t be found, and 4) the process handle is added to the results.
Download the script here: http://bitbucket.org/xcud/powershell-snippets/src/tip/Get-PSOwner.psm1
(tongue set firmly in cheek)
I happened upon Dana Merrick’s blog entry with a ruby script that retrieves an order status from dominos. In the spirit of “anything you can do I can do better” i threw this Psh equivalent together and submitted it to PoshCode.org. It’s phenomenally simple. It makes a request to the Dominos SOAP order status service and selects and displays the order status nodes if they exist.
function Get-DominosOrderStatus($pn) {
[xml]$content = (new-object System.Net.WebClient).DownloadString(
"http://trkweb.dominos.com/orderstorage/GetTrackerData?Phone=$pn");
$statii = select-xml -xml @($content) `
-Namespace @{dominos="http://www.dominos.com/message/"} `
-XPath descendant::dominos:OrderStatus
if($statii.Count -gt 0) { $statii | %{ $_.Node } }
else { "No orders" }
}
Sample Output:
Version : 1.3 OrderAsOfTime : 2008-06-04T16:40:48 StoreAsOfTime : 2008-06-04T16:44:55 StoreID : 3189 OrderID : 2008-06-04#73694 Phone : 3145551234 ServiceMethod : Delivery AdvancedOrderTime : OrderDescription : 2 Small(10") Hand Tossed Pizza OrderTakeCompleteTime : 2008-06-04T16:27:52 TakeTimeSecs : 0 CsrID : Power CsrName : OrderSourceCode : Web OrderStatus : Out the Door StartTime : 2008-06-04T16:27:52 MakeTimeSecs : 237 OvenTime : 2008-06-04T16:31:49 OvenTimeSecs : 360 RackTime : 2008-06-04T16:37:49 RackTimeSecs : 179 RouteTime : 2008-06-04T16:40:48 DriverID : 0818 DriverName : Edna OrderDeliveryTimeSecs : DeliveryTime : OrderKey : 1dRprcnzmWxaOXvlzj06OlFdzuexcIC/ ManagerID : 5560 ManagerName : Danillo #text : Out the Door
You can download it here: http://bitbucket.org/xcud/powershell-snippets/src/tip/Get-DominosOrderStatus.psm1