wiseonup

Msvs_version not set, VCINSALLDIR not set, unknown version ‘undefined’ found at ….

Thu, 29 Dec 2022 12:00:00 +0530

Here are few things to try –

Install Visual Studio Community edition with payload “Desktop development with C++”.
Set up node-gyp on your machine. Follow this url. For Windows here are the steps –

Once node-gyp is setup, upgrade your dependencies to latest version that are supported by the installed node-gyp. Otherwise install node-gyp of compatible version in previous step.

Browsing google.com shows error page with error code ERR_CERT_COMMON_NAME_INVALID

Wed, 16 Nov 2022 12:00:00 +0530

This issue occurred a month back and I was just not able to access google.com on my machine. Other sites worked just fine but google.com was not working in any of the browser I had – Chrome, Firefox, Edge. In Chrome, it showed this error code that indicated something is wrong with the certificate. However, Edge and Firefox show a slightly different error page. I googled on this topic (of course on my other machine J) and found many articles and youtube videos that gave a generic set of instructions on how to fix this problem. Most of them suggested removing browser cache and things like that. However, nothing worked for me.

What worked for me was something I found by accident. In Edge, go to browser settings –

Search for “manage certificates” and you should see an option with this title.

Click on this option and it will open a popup.

On this pop-up, delete all certificates for google.com.

This should fix this issue for you in all browsers.

How to combine/merge disk partitions with Healthy/Recovery partition in the way

Sun, 13 Nov 2022 12:00:00 +0530

Disk Management tool, the default application that comes preinstalled with Windows does not allow merging two partitions if they have a healthy partition between them. If you want to keep your healthy partition, the only way is to use a third-party tool.

I used NIUBI Partition Editor. This allows you to move a partition to the end of the disk provided the disk space to the right is unallocated. So, the only way to restore healthy partition is to sacrifice the partition on the right of the healthy partition.

Here is how it is done in NIUBI Partition Editor –

Install the free tool by downloading it from their site.
The editor will show the disks and their partitions like below –

Right click on the disk on the right of healthy partition and select Delete and choose Yes on the pop up. Make sure you take back-up of your important stuff from this drive as all data on this drive will be lost.

The space on the right of the recovery partition will show as Unallocated.
Right click on recovery partition and select “Resize/Move volume”. Drag the yellow box to the end of the gray bar and press OK.

The recovery partition show show on the right end of the disk.

Right click on Unallocated space and select “Create new volume”.
Expand the yellow box to take the entire gray space. Now your two drives are combined with recovery drive sitting next to this drive. Press OK to continue.

The final step is the important step. Click Apply to apply all these changes to your system.

How to access SQL server from public network

Wed, 31 Aug 2022 12:00:00 +0530

In order to access SQL server from network, there are couple of things that you need to do in addition to following this article by Microsoft - https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/relational-databases/lesson-2-connecting-from-another-computer?view=sql-server-ver16

After following this article, you will have set up your SQL Express server instance to support TCP protocol and configured a fixed port. You will also have this port added to the inbound rules in windows firewall so that incoming traffic can be allowed on this port.

However, you may still not be able to access your SQL server from public network although it is accessible on your LAN.

The first thing that needs to be in place is a static IP address. Talk to your internet provider and ask him to provide you a static IP address. Once you have a static IP address, you also need to know how to log in to your router (again your internet provider customer care can help you with this). Usually router can be accessed at http://192.168.1.1 (or 0.1) with the credentials given to you.

You may have multiple devices connected on your network and we need a way to redirect incoming traffic to a specific machine that has SQL server installed on it. To do this, we need to add a Port Forwarding Rule in your router settings that forwards all incoming requests on a specific port to this machine on network. In order to add this rule, we need to make sure the local IP address of SQL server machine remains fixed every time it connects on LAN. You can change your PC IP config from "DHCP" (which is your PC asking the router for an IP) to Manual (also known as Static IP). You can use an online guide by searching for "Configuring manual IP address”.

In my case after assigning a fixed IP address to my sql server machine on LAN, I created a port forwarding rule in router like this –

And after adding this rule, my sql server was accessible from public network. Please note the server name has to be tcp:<Static IP Address>,<Port>

P.S

The sql user (admin) needs to have server role of sysadmin. It was set to public initially which failed and when I added sysadmin role, the connection worked.

How to back-up and restore remote monogo db to local server

Sun, 29 May 2022 12:00:00 +0530

It may sound difficult at first but it is very easy to backup and restore a mongodb database. Here are the steps to achieve this –

Download and install Mongodb CLI db tools from this link on both remote server as well as local machine –

https://www.mongodb.com/try/download/database-tools?tck=docs_databasetools

While installing remember the path where this installer is placing its files. For windows the default mongo db tools path that it took was C:\Program Files\MongoDB\Tools\100\bin

On server, open terminal and make the mongo db tools path as your present working directory and run this command –

mongodump

Since we are not passing any attributes to this command, it will create back up of all running databases under a dump folder which you can now see in present working directory.

Copy the database folder that you want to restore on local and transfer it to your local system.

On your local machine, create a new folder called dump under mongo db tools path and paste the copied folder.
On your local machine, open terminal and make the mongo db tools path as your present working directory and run this command

mongorestore

This will restore/create a database in your local mongodb server.

P.S

Before running these commands, make sure your mongo db server is running.

Can’t connecto to vpn. The L2TP connection attempt failed because the security layer encountered a processing error during initial negotiations with the remote computer

Thu, 27 Jan 2022 12:00:00 +0530

After recent Windows 10 update, you may get this error while trying to connect through Windows 10 in-built VPN client.

Can’t connecto to vpn. The L2TP connection attempt failed because the security layer encountered a processing error during initial negotiations with the remote computer.

The easiest fix is to uninstall the latest windows security update. Open Control Panel -> Programs and Features. Click on “view installed updates” link –

And you should see a Windows security update KB5009543. Uninstall this update. It may require a windows reboot.

To stop Windows from installing this update again, you can turn updates off till the time Windows pushes another update to fix this problem.

reactjs navigation

Tue, 14 Dec 2021 12:00:00 +0530

In this article, I am going to create a demo reactjs app that has navigation implemented to move from one view to another.

Pre-requisites

VS Code editor or any other editor.
Node and npm – download and install the latest stable release from https://nodejs.org/. Node 14 or higher is required for this tutorial.

Create a new react app

npx create-react-app react-navigation

This may take less than a minute and end with this message the end –

As the output from the command suggests, run these commands –

cd react-navigation

npm start

By this time, we have created a blank reactjs app which is running on localhost:3000

And the code looks like this in VS Code –

Time to implement react navigation.

Install react-router-dom with this command

npm install react-router-dom -s

Open app.js in VS Code and make following changes –

This is the most important step to understand react navigation. Here we import BrowserRouter, Routes and Route components from react-router-dom package and use them in App component html. You can add more Route tags as you add more pages to your site.

For this example, we need two react components to act as two different pages. Create these two components under a new directory name pages under src folder

HomePage.js

UserPage.js

Refresh your site (npm start) and you should be able to navigate between home page and user page.

Conclusion

React navigation is an important concept in reactjs and almost every app needs to navigate between its views. This article helps in making this concept easy for you to understand and use the code examples given in this article to get started with react navigation.

Free SSL certificate for your website hosted on IIS

Sun, 12 Dec 2021 12:00:00 +0530

SSL is the basic requirement for a website these days. It affects your site’s credibility if your site is not secure and your visitors are noticing that “Not secure” tag right in the address bar when they visit your site.

SSL certificate is also important to make sure your site’s content is browsed securely and is prevented from middle man attacks and other risks I am not aware of.

So how can we implement SSL for free on a site hosted on IIS? When I googled this subject, I found some sites that provide SSL for free. The only thing was I had to sign up on the site and create an account and create a free SSL certificate for myself. The only problem with this is that over the years I have signed up on too many platforms and I tend to forget passwords and even the platforms entirely.

Luckily, I found another easier way to install free SSL on IIS. It is a windows console command like utility called win-acme. You can download it from their github release page –

https://github.com/win-acme/win-acme/releases

Under the assets section, look for the one that ends with .x64.trimmed.zip. The latest at the time of this blog is win-acme.v2.1.20.1185.x64.trimmed.zip

Download and extract the contents of this zip into a folder. Open Command Prompt as Administrator.

Change your current working directory to the folder where you extracted the zip and run this command –

wacs.exe

This should start a wizard –

Type N and hit enter. It should show a list of sites hosted on your IIS –

Enter the number of the site you want to create SSL for and hit enter –

Enter A and hit enter –

And that should be it. Your site is hosted on SSL. You can check by visiting your site and making sure the site shows a lock icon in the address bar –

P.S

This solution only works for sites that have been configured with host bindings. So you should have a domain name registered with some provider. Then you should have a CNAME entry under that domain that points to the IP address of your machine where IIS is installed. And finally you should have host name populated with the domain name under Bindings of your site.

If you are new to IIS, you may have to do few more things in configuration to make sure your site is redirecting to https if users try to access it on http. You can simple copy following block inside your web.config under System.WebServer tag –

Make sure you have urlrewrite plugin installed in your IIS before you add this tag to web.config though. You can download it from IIS official site - https://www.iis.net/downloads/microsoft/url-rewrite

Conclusion

In this blog, I have tried to offer simplest way to install SSL certificate on a website that is hosted on IIS. I hope you liked this blog and in case you faced any issues, I would love to help. I can be reached at naveenraina@outlook.com

Create your own blog site in a day with Umbraco

Mon, 06 Dec 2021 10:00:00 +0530

I want to share my experience of how I developed this blog site within a day. This blog site is built with Umbraco and a free plugin Articulate. Although it took me a day to figure out which plugin to use and whether it meets my requirements, I want to make this journey easier for others who are looking to build a blog site in a day.

Pre-requisites

This article is meant for C# and .NET developers. It may not be easy for developers working in other technologies to follow the steps I am going to mention in this article.

You need to have a hosting server with IIS where you can deploy your code. You also need to have rights to change permissions on folders.

Visual Studio 2019 is more suitable for this article but other versions will also work.

Umbraco project setup

In Visual Studio 2019, create a blank ASP.Net web application using .NET Framework.

Enter the project name and leave everything else as it is.

Choose Empty in the dialog that comes next.

Right click on project name in solution explorer and select “Manage NuGet Packages”

Go to “Browse” tab and search for “UmbracoCms” and install the plugin. Make sure the version is 8.x.

It will take some time to set things up. Once done run your application with CTRL+F5. It will ask you to configure your Umbraco. Create a user name and password for yourself and continue with the wizard.

It will take some time to setup Umbraco site. The application may break in Visual Studio couple of time. Just hit F5 and it will continue setup. Once done, it will take you to Umbraco back-end –

Skip the tour dialog. Go to Package menu and search for “Articulate”

Click on the tile and Install the package in next screen. You will have to accept the “terms of use” checkbox. Once install is complete, click on Finish button and it will refresh the page.

Go to Content menu and delete Home node.

And you are ready with your first blog site. You can check your blog site at localhost –

To create/edit/delete a blog, expand Blog node and click on Articles

Here you can create a new blog through Markdown or Rich text. I prefer Rich Text.

And you can enter details of your blog

Once you enter all details, Save and Publish.

The good part about Articulate is the support for categories and tags that help your organize your blogs in a better way out of the box. You can create new categories and tags by typing a new name in the text box and hitting Enter. It also allows you to add Meta description for SEO optimization.

Deployment

You should be able to deploy this site like any other Umbraco site. However, I hit some issues which I will describe in my next blog.

CONCLUSION

In this blog, I have tried to offer simplest way to setup a blog site. I hope you liked this blog and in case you faced any issues, I would love to help. I can be reached at naveenraina@outlook.com