freenas.local not working (can't ping or access web UI)

All of a sudden, http://freenas.local stopped working however, the IP address still worked.

ping would respond like this:

ping freenas.local

Pinging freenas.local [92.242.140.21] with 32 bytes of data:
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.

What's that IP address? Nothing on my network...

tracert shows this:

tracert freenas.local

Tracing route to freenas.local [92.242.140.21]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

  1     1 ms     1 ms     1 ms  HughesRouter004 [10.190.87.249]
  2     1 ms     1 ms     1 ms  192.168.1.1
  3    14 ms     8 ms     8 ms  unallocated.barefruit.co.uk [92.242.140.21]


Apparently this is my ISP's (Verizon FIOS) DNS server doing this...

The fix:  I updated my router settings to use google's DNS servers 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4

InstallShield Basic MSI missing Icon in Control Panel's "Programs and Features"

I ran into an issue when creating my latest Basic MSI installer project.  For some reason, my installer always showed the default Icon in the "Programs and Features" list.



The General configuration tab of the installer project has a simple setting to specify the icon to be displayed.



This can either be an ICO file or an EXE that contains an icon resource.

The specified icon is converted into the file ARPPRODUCTICON.exe that gets installed into "C:\Windows\Installer\{}" which is then used by the "Programs and Features" control panel.  Seems simple enough but didn't work.

It turns out, that InstallShield doesn't like spaces in the ICO file name.  Removed the spaces and normality was restored.

InstallShield prerequiste "Appears to have failed" but actually worked.

I've been developing some basic MSI installation setup.exe packages that I wanted to include in a parent installer using the built in prerequisite mechanism.

Easy enough, or so I thought

1. Create the .prq with conditions and command lines
2. Add the .prq files to the SetupPrerequites folder
3. Add prerequisites to the parent install project
4. Run!

Argh! The installation appears to have failed.  Continue with the installation?

But wait, the installation didn't fail.  In fact it hadn't even finished when the error occurs.

Hmm.

Turns out, the registry setting used in the condition didn't exist at the time that the outer installer checked the value to see if the prerequisite completed successfully.

But why?  Turns out the Setup.exe was returning before the MSI was finished.  OK.

lets use the /w option

/w

Basic MSI, InstallScript MSI

For a Basic MSI project, the /w option forces Setup.exe to wait until the installation is complete before exiting. Note: If you are using the /w option in a batch file, you may want to precede the entire Setup.exe command-line option with start /WAIT. A properly formatted example of this usage is as follows: start /WAIT setup.exe /w

Perfect!  Right? Nope :( still not waiting.

Now what?  Lets try /clone_wait.

/clone_wait

InstallScript

This parameter indicates that the original setup should wait for the cloned setup process to complete before exiting.

But that doesn't apply to Basic MSI projects or does it.  At this point I'll try anything.

Guess what, it worked.  Now the prerequisites install as they should.

Command that worked, for me.
cmdline="/w /clone_wait /v/qr" cmdlinesilent="/w /clone_wait /vqr"

FYI:  I'm using InstallShield 2015.

Installshield IsCmdBld - ISDEV : fatal error -6199: Internal build error

So I've been using the InstallShield command line build utility with Jenkins successfully for many years now but hit a weird error today.

Historically I've used InstallScript MSI projects but decided to use the Basic MSI for my latest project as they seem to handle silent installs better (No answer file needed).  I created the project and configured Jenkins with a tried and trusted "Execute Windows batch" build step with a command similar to:

IsCmdBld.exe -p "%workspace%\MyInstaller.ism" -r "Default" -c COMP -a "Main" 

Only to be confronted with the generic error:
 
ISDEV : fatal error -6199: Internal build error

After some fruitless Google searches and some choice words I discovered that if the InstallShield project file was set to XML instead of the default "Binary" the error mysteriously went away. 

Hope that saves someone some time.

FYI:  Another tip I learned was to only allow one Jenkins executor to run on my installer build system.  If more than one ISCmdBld runs concurrently random errors occurred due to InstallShield fighting itself over shared files.

Running .Net 3.5 MSTest unit tests with Gallio.

Like all projects of a certain size there comes a time when there is a desire to have a dash board to quickly see the current state of affairs. 

For the dash board there is a growing open source solution called Sonar (http://www.sonarsource.org/) that is able to run all manner of plugins.  Perfect!

One of the supported plugins for .Net projects is another open source project called Gallio (http://www.gallio.org/).  Gallio has the ability to run all manner of unit test frameworks (MSTest, NUnit ,etc.) under a common API.  Nice!

One small gotcha:  Out of the box Gallio won't run .Net 3.5 unit test projects :(

The errors that were encountered were:

• Mixed mode assembly is built against version 'v2.0.50727'
• This method explicitly uses CAS policy, which has been obsoleted by ... please use the NetFx40_LegacySecurityPolicy configuration switch.
• The plugin enable condition was not satisfied. Please note that this is the intended behavior for plugins that must be hosted inside third party applications in order to work. Enable condition: '${process:DEVENV.EXE} or ${process:VSTESTHOST.EXE} or ${process:QTAGENT.EXE} or ${process:QTAGENT32.EXE} or ${process:QTDCAGENT.EXE} or ${process:QTDCAGENT32.EXE} or {process:MSTEST.EXE}'

After much researching I found the solution.

Enable the 2008 Test Runner Plugin

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3672093/is-there-a-way-to-run-ms-test-using-gallio

By default the “Visual Studio 2008 Integration Shell” and “Visual Studio 2008 Test Runner plugin” are disable due to a failing prerequisite check.

To enable the plugins remove the “enableCondition” attribute and its value from the following files:

C:\Program Files\Gallio\bin\VisualStudio\v9.0\

• Gallio.VisualStudio.Tip90.plugin
• Gallio.VisualStudio.Shell90.plugin 

Enable Testing of unit tests authored in .Net 3.5

The command line utility “Gallio.Echo.exe” is a .Net 4.0 application that Sonar uses to run the unit tests.  This application needs to be configured to allow .Net 3.5 policies.

Update Gallio.Echo.exe.config to enable the testing of .Net 3.5 unit tests.

1).  Update the "runtime" configuration section to include the element: <NetFx40_LegacySecurityPolicy enabled="true"/>.
Example:
<runtime>
    <!-- Don't kill application on first uncaught exception.
         We don't want the test runner to terminate itself unexpectedly
         without reporting the test failure associated with that exception. -->
    <legacyUnhandledExceptionPolicy enabled="1" />

    <!-- Enable loading assemblies over the network in .Net 4.0 -->
    <loadFromRemoteSources enabled="true" />

    <NetFx40_LegacySecurityPolicy enabled="true"/>
  </runtime>

2).  Update the "startup" configuration section to include the attribute useLegacyV2RuntimeActivationPolicy="true"
Example:
<startup useLegacyV2RuntimeActivationPolicy="true">
    <supportedRuntime version="v4.0.30319" />
    <supportedRuntime version="v2.0.50727" />
  </startup>

   

Now Sonar is running all of the unit test projects, providing test and code coverage reports.  Life is good!

Using Firebird ISQL to create embedded database files

ISQL is a command line tool that enables the execution of SQL statements either interactively or by input script file.

I was struggling to get ISQL to work with my Firebird Embedded database files until I stumbled upon a little nugget of information in one of my many google searches.

The problem was that ISQL wasn't using the embedded client! Doh!

The fix was simple! To get ISQL working the way I needed it to all I had to do was:

• Copy isql.exe into the Firebird embedded directory.

• Rename fbembed.dll to fbclient.dll

Now I can create and connect to embedded database files using the ISQL command line tool.

isql.exe" -q -i myDatabase.sql

where the file myDatabase.sql contains:
CREATE DATABASE 'TEST.FDB'
USER 'SYSDBA' PASSWORD 'masterkey'
PAGE_SIZE 8192
DEFAULT CHARACTER SET NONE;

CREATE ROLE RDB$ADMIN;

CREATE TABLE MYTABLE(
ID INTEGER NOT NULL,
NAME VARCHAR(500) NOT NULL
);

ALTER TABLE MYTABLE
ADD CONSTRAINT PK_MYTABLE_1
PRIMARY KEY (ID);

COMMIT;

Why did I want to do this?
My want was driven by a desire to have my build server create/modify database files for our product install. Treating the database creation scripts like code negates the need for a "Golden" database file that no one, other than myself, knows how to create.

Firebird embedded with .Net

Here's a simple getting started with Firebird embedded

Step one: Download FireBird embedded and the .Net provider

There are numerous options available for download but I opted for the zip packages as only the assemblies and supporting files are needed.
http://www.firebirdsql.org/en/server-packages/
http://www.firebirdsql.org/en/net-provider/
http://www.firebirdsql.org/manual/ufb-cs-embedded.html#ufb-cs-embedded-windows

Step two: Create your database file

There are many administrative tools available for FireBird but I opted to use FlameRobin as its free. http://www.flamerobin.org/

In order to get flame robin to communicate with an embedded FireBird database there are a couple of steps required.
Copy the following FireBird embedded client files to the FlameRobin installation folder (Default C:\Program Files\FlameRobin)
fbembed.dll (Rename to fbclient.dll)
firebird.msg
icudt30.dll
icuin30.dll
icuuc30.dll

Register Server

Display name
leave hostname and port empty
Create a new database







Step 3: Create your .Net project.
Add a reference to the .Net Provider.
FirebirdSql.Data.FirebirdClient.dll
The files icudt30.dll and icuuc30.dll need to be in the build directory. Add them to the project (I added as a link as all my third party components live in a single place) and set to copy to output build directory.

Step 4: Write the code.

using System;
using FirebirdSql.Data.FirebirdClient;

namespace FirebirdClient
{
class Program
{
static void Main(string[] args)
{
var builder = new FbConnectionStringBuilder
{
UserID = "SYSDBA",
Password = "masterkey",
ServerType = FbServerType.Embedded,
Dialect = 3,
Database = @"C:\MyDatabases\MyDB1.fb"
};

using (var conn = new FbConnection(builder.ConnectionString))
{
conn.Open();

using (var cmd = new FbCommand("select * from MyTable", conn))
using (var reader = cmd.ExecuteReader())
{
while (reader.Read())
{
Console.WriteLine(string.Format("{0} {1}", reader["MyCol1"], reader["MyCol2"]));
}
}
}

Console.ReadLine();
}
}
}