MSTest, VS 2010 and reflected dlls
I am working on an automation framework based on C#.NET and VS 2010. One of the more annoying attributes of MSTest is that it doesn't copy over all the files from \bin\debug to the 'out' directory where it runs the tests.
Today I found out about 2 ways I can make working in MSTest more palatable (I'm an NUnit guy by nature).
VMWare Fusion: Stuck window, can't resize or move
VMWare Fusion did something strange today: as I switched between full screen and windowed mode on one of my VMs, the VM windows got stuck: It stayed full screen even though it was in windowed mode.
Since this was on a Mac, I had no obvious recourse to solve this problem. Fortunately, I was able to find a solution.
Mac OS X: Disk Image mount point changes in a non-obvious way
I use owncloud to keep greater control over where my 'cloud' data resides. Everything has been working extremely well, so it came as a surprise this morning to find that the owncloud client was giving me this error:
CSync failed to load the state db
Upgrading From Windows 8 to Windows 8.1: Bypass Microsoft Account Creation
I just got around to installing the Windows 8.1 update on my Windows 8 Laptop. It was incredibly annoying to get most of the way through the process only to have Microsoft seem to require me to enter my MS account information. Fortunately I found a way around this seemingly required installation option.
I'll stick to my local account, thank-you-very-much.
namecheap dynamic dns
Our new house isn't in an area with a decent internet service provider, so I can't get a static IP address for my home server. To maintain access with my home datastore I turned to Dynamic DNS. Fortunately for me my domain name was registered with namecheap which provides free dynamic dns service to their customers.
I went the 'non-standard' approach and setup a dynamic dns updater on my home linux server.
IBM P5 Series Server: Recovery boot from serial console
We have some old IBM P5 series servers that run AIX 5.3 which we use for testing. They get powered down rarely, so we don't often have to go through a cold boot cycle. Last week one of the machines was power cycled and would not respond to pings. The guy who normally handles this type of thing was unavailable, so I got to try my hand at restoring the old server to an operational state.
Fortunately for me I was able to succeed. :)
VMWare Fusion PC Migration: A secure connection to the server could not be established
I was given a MacBook to replace my Desktop PC at work. Seeing as I do most of my work in Windows and Visual Studio, I used the Migration Assistant that comes with VMWare Fusion 5 to bring my Windows 7 desktop over to the MacBook as a VM.
Unfortunately this didn't go as well as planned. In the end I was able to get the migration process working, but it took some time.
How to fix: mysql_secure_installation: line 85: .my.cnf.12819: No such file or directory
I installed a LAMP server recently and encountered some strange behavior when I ran the mysql_secure_installation command. Normally I burn through that wizard like nobody's business, but when I get weird messages like these I start wondering what is wrong:
shell-init: error retrieving current directory: getcwd: cannot access parent directories: No such file or directory
/usr/bin/mysql_secure_installation: line 85: .my.cnf.12819: No such file or directory
Virtualized pfSense 2.0.3 and ESXi 5
After running pfSense 1.2.3 for over 1000 days, I decided to move to the latest release. Rather than update the version that is installed on dedicated hardware it seemed like a better idea to run it as a VM on my home ESXi server. This way I can make better utilization of the ESX box (which consistently runs below 30% utilization) and free up the other box to be a dedicated backup server.
Getting things setup took a few hours. I guess my skills get a bit rusty when I wait 3 years to make any major changes to my pfSense configuration.
Base64 Encoding Overhead
While Base64 is a popular way to encode raw byte data and send it over a connection that can only handle text, i wonder about its efficiency. Just how much overhead is involved when I convert by bytes to a Base64 encoded string?
In this article I run some tests to see what kind of overhead I can expect when using the Base64 encoder provided in the .NET framework