Joys of Removable Version of MediaWiki and SVN

I have a variety of flash memory devices. I picked a two-Gigabyte device to put a copy of MediaWiki and SVN. I now can access my personal wiki everywhere I go.

Wiki on a Stick

CH Software created MoWeS, an entire WAMP (Windows, Apache, MySQL, and PHP) stack that run without the need to install anything. MoWeS allow selecting which version of Apache, PHP, and MySQL. MediaWiki is an additional option along with other great options like ImageMagick, TYPO3, and SugarCRM. MediaWiki provides an installation page. The instructions are not quite right. Download the packages from CH Software then run moves.exe. That unpacks the files.

SVN on a Stick

I use TortoiseSVN. This integrates SVN with Windows Explorer. TortoiseSVN has the option to create a repository by just right clicking on a directory. This makes it simple to create an SVN repository on a memory stick.

Performance

Performance of SVN is a slow on my two-Gigabyte flash drive. The advantage of taking both my personal wiki and an SVN repository with me anywhere outweighs the performance issues.

ASP MVC 2 – NUnit based unit test project template For Visual Studio 2008

Piotr Kwapin wrote an article about creating a NUnit based unit test project template for ASP MVC2 for Visual Studio 2010. I am still using Visual Studio 2008. This was an interesting learning experience. I never previously delved into project templates.

Piotr Kwapin mentioned this would work with Visual Studio 2008 but did not elaborate. I was able to get it working after some rather scary moments.

Download the Template

The first step is to download the template updated for Visual Studio 2008. The template is a zip file containing the following.

• Controllers
  • AccountControllerTest.cs
  • HomeControllerTest.cs
• Properties
  • AssemblyInfo.cs
• App.config
• MvcApplicationTest.csproj
• MvcWebApplicationNUnitBasedTestProjectTemplate.cs.vstemplate

Put the template file in the template directory. On a PC running a 64-bit operating system, this directory is located here. Do not unzip or extract files from the zip.

c:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\IDE\ProjectTemplates\CSharp\Test\

Download the Registration File

The next step is downloading the updated registration file. Extract the registration file and execute it. Windows will issues several warning and confirmations about running the file.

Running Devenv Setup

Piotr Kwapin did not document the last step as completely. You need to open up a command line as administrator that has the path setup to run devenv.exe. On Windows 7, select Start, All Programs, Visual Studio 2008, and then Visual Studio Tools.

 

Right click on Visual Studio 2008 Command Prompt and select Run as administrator. Enter the following command.

devenv /setup

 

The first time I did that, Visual Studio 2008 forgot about all its templates. I suggest running the command a couple of times. I ran the command around a dozen times as I made minor changes to the files to get them to work with Visual Studio 2008. I documented the changes I made to the files below.

Changes to the VSTemplate File

I changed the version number for Microsoft Visual Studio from 10.0.0.0 to 9.0.0.0. Below is the updated line.

<Assembly>Microsoft.VisualStudio.Web.Mvc.2.0, Version=9.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35</Assembly>

Changes to the CSProj file

I changed the tools version from 4.0 to 3.5. Below is the updated line.

<Project ToolsVersion="3.5" DefaultTargets="Build" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/msbuild/2003">

Changes to the Registration File

I made two changes to the registration file. The first is a change to the name of the template. I compressed the template files into NUnitTestVS9.zip. The second change is the change of the HKEY to Visual Studio 2008. The two lines below show the changes.

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\VisualStudio\9.0\MVC2\TestProjectTemplates\NUnit\C#]

"Template"="NUnitTestVS9.zip"

A New ASP.NET MVC 2 Web Application

Creating a new ASP.Net MVC 2 Web Application in Visual Studio 2008 creates both the project and allows creating a NUnit test project. Below is an example in Solution Explorer.

 

Hudson, SmartFoxServer, Plink, and Running Command as Local System Account

SmartFoxServer is a platform for developing massively multi-user applications. SmartFoxServer is a Java application and supports calling extensions in Java, Action Script, and Python. As a Java application, SmartFoxServer runs well on Windows or Linux.

Ryzing tested running SmartFoxServer on Windows and Linux. We ended up using an Amazon EC2 instance running Ubuntu Linux to host the SmartFoxServer. SmartFoxServer interprets the Action Script extensions. You cannot compile the extensions. SmartFoxServer caches all the Action Script extensions. The server will not reload the extensions if they change. SmartFox developed an admin Flash client application to manage the SmartFoxServer. You can use the Flash admin client to force extensions to reload.

I designed the Hudson build process at Ryzing to push the SmartFoxServer extensions to the Linux server. Fortunately, SmartFox implemented a set of command line tools in addition to the Flash client. The process of pushing the extensions to the server is a simple task in Hudson.

1. Extract the source from SVN
2. Rename some files to match the destination server
3. Push the sources to the server using PSCP
4. Reset the SmartFoxServer

Pscp is an implementation of scp or secure copy that runs on Windows. Pscp is one of the tools included with Putty. The process should be simple. However, there is a problem. The first time Putty, Pscp, or Plink connects to a server, they cache the host key in the registry. You get something like the following.

The server's host key is not cached in the registry. You
have no guarantee that the server is the computer you
think it is.
The server's rsa2 key fingerprint is:
ssh-rsa 2048 hh:hh:hh:hh:hh:hh:hh:hh:hh:hh:hh:hh:hh:hh:hh:hh
If you trust this host, enter "y" to add the key to
PuTTY's cache and carry on connecting.
If you want to carry on connecting just once, without
adding the key to the cache, enter "n".
If you do not trust this host, press Return to abandon the
connection.
Store key in cache? (y/n)

Putty, Pscp, and Plink support a batch option. With the batch option, if the host key is not in the registry cache Putty, Pscp, and Plink automatically exit. The problem is the registry cache is user specific. This causes a problem with Hudson installed as a service running on Windows. When installed as a service, Hudson runs as the Local System Account. Running Pscp as a task in a Hudson project will lock up waiting for the user to press "Y" or "N". If you add the option to run as batch, the command will always fail.

How do you install the host key in the registry for the Local System Account? I am sure there are other solutions. The one I found was to open a command prompt as the Local System Account. Unfortunately, this is not as simple as it sounds. I finally found the solution here: http://johnnycoder.com/blog/2008/11/10/run-cmdexe-as-local-system-account/.

The solution is to use psexec.exe, which is part of PsTools from SysInternals. Microsoft acquired Sysinternals in July 2006. The following opens a command prompt as the Local System Account.

psexec -i -s cmd.exe

After the command window opens, attempt to connect via Pscp or Plink. Answer "Y" to "Store key in cache?"

Now Hudson can copy the files from SVN to the Linux server and restart SmartFoxServer.

Using Hudson for Unusual Tasks

Martin Fowler wrote, "Continuous Integration is a software development practice where members of a team integrate their work frequently, usually each person integrates at least daily - leading to multiple integrations per day. Each integration is verified by an automated build (including test) to detect integration errors as quickly as possible. Many teams find that this approach leads to significantly reduced integration problems and allows a team to develop cohesive software more rapidly." (http://martinfowler.com/articles/continuousIntegration.html)

Hudson is a continuous integration solution. "In a nutshell, Hudson provides an easy-to-use so-called continuous integration system, making it easier for developers to integrate changes to the project, and making it easier for users to obtain a fresh build." (http://wiki.hudson-ci.org/display/HUDSON/Meet+Hudson)

I found somewhat unusual uses for Hudson.

Ryzing follows a standard development setup with a set of servers (or chain) for each stage of development: Alpha, Quality Assurance (or QA), and Production. We chose the Amazon Cloud to host the servers. Three chains mean three separate databases running on three separate database servers. I firmly believe in automating routine tasks. A daily backup is definitely a routine task. My solution to automating the backups was to use our Hudson server.

The Ryzing applications use PostgreSQL as the database server. I installed the full PostgreSQL tool set on the Windows 2008 server dedicated to running Hudson (http://www.postgresql.org/download/windows). I made sure that both the Windows firewall and the Amazon security zones allowed the build server to talk to the database servers in the Alpha, QA, and Production chains.

The project in Hudson is simple. The build process uses a Windows batch command. Below are the commands I used.

SET PGPASSWORD=PASSWORD
"C:\Program Files\PostgreSQL\8.4\bin\pg_dump.exe" --no-password --file=DATABASENAME.backup --format=c --host=HOSTNAME --port=HOSTPORT -U USERNAME DATABASENAME

You will need to set the appropriate password, database name, host name, user name, and host port. I checked a Post-Build action to Archive the Artifacts telling Hudson to archive DATABASENAME.backup. I selected the build trigger of building periodically. Each morning the build server runs the backup on each database.

Hudson provides a convenient place to store the database backups along with all our software builds.

The Joys of MeidaWiki and VMware

Wikis are a useful tool. At my current position, I added a lot of technical documentation to the Wiki included in Trac. I wanted a wiki for my personal use.

I program in a variety of languages including C# and Java. Most of my recent work is in C#. I looked for a Wiki in C#. I found two.

1. FlexWiki
2. MiniWiki

I know there are others. Unfortunately, FlexWiki is abandoned. The source code is available. MiniWiki is just that a minimal Wiki. MiniWiki is interesting because it uses the ASP.Net MVC (version 1).

Both include unit tests. I am a bit of a fanatic about unit tests. In Working Effectively with Legacy Code Michael Feathers wrote, "Code without tests is bad code. It doesn't matter how well written it is; it doesn't matter how pretty or object-oriented or well-encapsulated it is. With tests, we can change the behavior of our code quickly and verifiably. Without them, we really don't know if our code is getting better or worse."

MiniWiki uses Moq. FlexWiki uses NUnit. Interesting neither include any logging framework.

What I would like to do, if I ever find the time, is take the Wiki engine from FlexWiki and marry it with the MVC framework using MiniWiki as a start. That is a good long-term project.

In the short term, I need a personal wiki. The solution is MediaWiki and VMware. rPath created a MediaWiki appliance http://wiki.rpath.com/wiki/Appliance:MediaWiki_Appliance

With the appliance I was up and running in minutes.

Last thing to do was to modify the .vmx file in the appliance to use a static MAC address. Comment out the following lines.

ethernet0.addressType = "generated"
ethernet0.generatedAddress = "00:0c:29:43:85:c8"
ethernet0.generatedAddressOffset = "0"

Then add something like the following.

ethernet0.addressType = "static"
ethernet0.address = "00:50:56:00:00:04"

The MAC address you select depends on your network. I want a static MAC address to allow my Netgear router to assign the IP address. This gives the VM a fixed IP address inside my firewall.

Fixing the Certificate Error Problem with VMware Server

I use VMware server for many thing. For example, I own an older version of QuickBooks to bill for consulting projects. I use QuickBooks once a month to create invoices. For me, it is not worth the cost of upgrading to a new version of QuickBooks. I have a VM of Windows XP that runs my copy of QuickBooks.

One problem with VMware Server is Internet Explorer needs the certificate for the VMware Infrastructure Web Access program. Otherwise, you get a certificate error. VMware works fine if you ignore the error but it is easy to fix, once you find out how.

The biggest challenge is finding the certificate. I run Windows 7. The find for Windows is useless. It rarely finds any file I am looking for. A slower, but more reliable solution is the Gnu FindUtils for Windows. You can download a copy here:

http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages/findutils.htm

Another useful utility is Gnu Grep for Windows. You can download a copy here:

http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages/grep.htm

On Windows 6 (64 bit) the installation packages for FindUtils and Grep install the executables in C:\Program Files (x86)\GnuWin32\bin

The standard Windows command find is useless; but makes it impossible to execute the Gnu find. I rename Gnu's find.exe to gnufind.exe. I then add the location to the environment path variable. That allows running grep or gnufind from any command window.

Gnufind located the certificate use by VMware named rui.cert here C:\Program Files (x86)\VMware\VMware Server\SSL.

Once you know find the certificate, installing it is simple.

• Open up Windows Explore and browse to the location of the certificate.
• Double click on rui.cert

The following dialog will display.

Clicking on the Install Certificate brings up the wizard.

Select Place all certificates in the following store. Then click the Browse button.

Select Trusted Root Certificate Authorities.

Click OK

Click Next

Click Finish.

Close the browser. Now when you open up VMware server the cerficate problem is solved.