03.Jul.08
Had another lost afternoon today. Same problem. Different server. Previous solution didn’t work. Maddening!
Said “screw it” this time and convinced the developer to “strong name” it and it worked fine from the GAC.
Lost Afternoon
01.Jul.08
One Comment
Lost most of the afternoon today wrestling with the deployment of one of our web applications. Some new “client-specific” code had been developed in our dev environment and it was now time to move it out to QA (quality assurance) and then, hopefully, production.
The dev environment web server is still running Windows 2000 Server. Yeah I know, I know… I haven’t had a chance to upgrade it yet! In fact, I actually have had the replacement (running Windows 2003 Web) ready to go for several months – just no time to switch.
The QA web server runs Windows 2003. The new code I was moving is a .NET assembly that is called by some Classic ASP pages.
Don’t Panic: This is not yet another “how to interface classic ASP and .NET” posts — I promise.
I grabbed the .NET assembly DLL file from the dev server and dropped it into c:\windows\system32 directory as normal. Slight wrinkle though: This one is, for whatever reason, not strongly named so doesn’t go into the GAC.
I ran regasm against it and then had it tested. No luck and we got an error indicating that the object wasn’t found. And from there we spun into a cycle of trying various regasm flags and restarting the IIS web server (ala iisreset /restart) for the next few hours. Dismal and frustrating trial and error.
Well, the key difference between the two servers is that one is Windows 2000 / IIS 5 and the other is Windows 2003 / IIS 6. A bit of research finally taught us that IIS 6 doesn’t look in all the directories for assemblies as one might have become accustomed to in IIS 5.
I unreg’d the assembly and moved it to c:\windows\system32\inetserv and now it works just fine. Just that simple. system32 isn’t part of the “CLR class search” path.
I can just about bet that six months from now I’ll be searching the web for the same issue. Next time, with luck, I’ll find this article and save a few hours.
[picture is Piece by Ice Sabre]
Continuing to Enjoy Ubuntu
30.Jun.08
4 Comments
For the past week I’ve been using Ubuntu (via the Install Inside Windows option) almost full-time on my home machine. I’m digging it so far and am thinking I’ll re-install it as dual-boot to get a bit more performance (although it really runs quite well as the Windows Install as a perk of being on a Raptor hard drive).
I’ve had a few challenges along the way, but nothing too awful yet.
Smooth Fonts
The first couple days I feared going blind, but I finally stumbled over the Fonts tab in the “Appearance Options” settings. Switching over to the “Subpixel smoothing (LCDs)” and then going into Details and setting Hinting to Full has really eliminated all the initial pixelation/jaggies that were driving me nuts.
My article from 2 years ago on font smoothing (Smooth Fonts for Ubuntu) wasn’t quite as effective this time around — but now there’s a control panel thingy, so it’s all good.
Printing
My next challenge was printing. Don’t get me wrong, I have no problems printing to the attached (and rather old) HP 6110 multifunction printer. But when this same machine is running Windows that printer is shared out to all the other home machines.
I installed the Samba stuff and was easily able to share the printer so that the Windows machines all see it. Seemed easy enough at first…
However, when those other home machines connect to the printer they all complain about drivers. So I created a shared directory containing the HP 6110 printer drivers.
But still no dice — now Windows tells me that those drivers don’t match the printer. So I dunno what sort of printer Windows thinks it is, but I’m going on to plan B for this one.
Plan B: Attach printer to wife’s XP machine and share it out. I’m quite confident I’ll be able to print to it from Ubuntu and I already know the other Windows machines won’t have issues.
Remote Access to Work
I have an “ops” machine at work that I use whenever I’m remote. Once connected to that machine I can access the rest of my world and I have several different ways of getting to it.
I have yet to figure out how to create a VPN connection to my Cisco VPN concentrator at the office. I’m sure it’s incredibly simple and I’m just a moron, but whatever. I tabled that though since I have two other options: LogMeIn Free and Hamachi. Interesting that those are now both part of the LogMeIn family of products…
The LogMeIn Free software client is running on my ops machine. Via the wonders of their Firefox extension I can have smooth and responsive remote control access to that machine from any of my others — except this Ubuntu install. For some reason I can NOT get the bloody extension to install in Firefox 3 under Ubuntu (more details in my recent Twitter for Support? article). I need to contact the LMI folks to see if they have ideas.
As an aside, I installed Firefox for Windows with Wine. Works tolerably well, but it can’t do SSL sites without blowing up. Apparently this is a known issue. Same issue with Opera 9.5 under Wine too.
As another aside: I was happy to note how much easier it is to install stuff with Wine these days! Last time around (several years back) it was still a bit arcane…
Fortunately, Hamachi works just fine. I grabbed the Linux client and got the Ubuntu machine added into my “ops network” of machines. Once connected I can use the Terminal Services Client to easily connect to that ops machine and manage my network and servers for work.
With Hamachi working, I next grabbed gHamachi to get a GUI on the Hamachi stuff as it is all command line action. Initially I had no luck. It would start up and then *poof* disappear in a cloud of error messages. Revisiting the site and looking closer at the bottom of the page, I noticed a newer “beta” update from last year on this forum page that works very nicely. It even iconizes to the notification tray when minimized.
Blogging Clients
I’m disappointed with what I’ve found for blogging client options. I’m just too spoiled with Windows Live Writer I suppose.
Conclusion
As I write I realize I’m actually very close to being able to go full time linux at home now. In the past I couldn’t quite do it because of some ties to Windows-only programs (like QuickBooks). Now, however, I can’t think of any ties…
I would still have to have Windows around, but I could easily do that with something like VMware and an XP install — just to have a place for my Visual Studio (and SQL Server) Express installs and, of course, Windows Live Writer.
Hmmm… I’ll keep running it for another week or two and ponder that a bit. I’d probably have to keep a dual-boot option for XP or Vista though — I need to be prepared for Diablo III! 
Twitter for Support?
28.Jun.08
4 Comments
Earlier today I was wrestling with trying to use LogMeIn from my Ubuntu install to remotely manage a machine at work. No matter how I went about it, I couldn’t get things working from Firefox 3.
Eventually I whined on Twitter, because that’s how I (sometimes) roll:
Shortly after that I got two big surprises.
First, twitter finally started showing replies again! I know, can you believe it?!?
When I went to check my replies for the last few days, I had an interesting message waiting for me:
Thomas from Mozilla had opened a case over at Get Satisfaction for my little issue.
Now there’s a slick use of twitter. Cool huh?
Granted, it only works as well as Twitter is available and showing replies, but hey, it’s a nice touch. If I was running support I’d probably have some tracking setup for my companies products too.
Diablo III
28.Jun.08
5 Comments
Words fail me as I try to phrase how excited I am to see the Diablo III page up at Blizzard. I loved the original Diablo and enjoyed Diablo II. To see D3 coming just makes me downright giddy.
