Timothy Wright

How To: Install Bugzilla on Windows

Timothy Wright — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 01:55:29 GMT

I won’t complain, because it is free… But (expletive here)…

My Particular Experience was with IIS on Windows Server 2008, but the experience should be about the same for XP, Vista, Server 2003, and 2008. The Apache configuration appears to be well documented in the Win32Install directions https://wiki.mozilla.org/Bugzilla:Win32Install#Install_Modules.

If you’ve installed any open-source software before some of the steps for bugzilla may already be done so I’ll outline the steps and you can skip any that you already have done.

Outline / Checklist

1) Install MySQL (All you need is the Windows Essentials and I highly recommend the MySQL GUI Tools)
2) Create a database named ‘bugzilla’(or whatever name you like)
3) Create a MySQL User Account named ‘bugzilla’ (or whatever name you like)
4) Grant ALL Privileges to the bugzilla database for the bugzilla user account.
5) Download and Install ActivePerl using the Windows .msi installer from www.activeperl.com
6) Run the commands to download all of the needed modules for BugZilla. (Commands are listed below under Perl Modules Install Commands)
7) Download the latest Stable Release (3.4.2 @ time of writing) of BugZilla from www.bugzilla.org
8) Extract those files to C:\inetpub\wwwroot\BugZilla (or wherever you would like to store the web application)
9) In IIS Manager, Create a Virtual Directory that points to the BugZilla files you extracted. (In IIS 7 you can Convert the folder into an application.) (See Caveats)
10) Add the perl cgi script mapping to the Virtual directory. ( Path = *.cgi, Executable = "C:\Perl\bin\perl.exe" -xC:\inetpub\wwwroot\bugzilla -wT "%s" %s )
NOTE: Yes everything following “Executable =” needs to be in the box, including the quotes.
11) Grant Write permissions on the folder for the IIS worker process account. (typically “NT Authority\Network Service”) (See Caveats)
12) From the command prompt, run “perl checksetup.pl”, which is in the BugZilla install directory. (See Caveats)
13) If there are additional modules required to be installed, run the ppm install commands for those modules. (They will be displayed in the command line output)
You will be asked to prove a mail server hostname. If you do not have a mail server, I recommend hMailServer.
You will also be asked for an administrator email and password. (This is your default admin login)
14) Login to Bugzilla as the administrator and change the “urlbase” setting (Located under “Administration” –> “Parameters”) (See Caveats)
15) Congrats you’ve installed Bugzilla!

Caveats:

1) If BugZilla is installed on a server that is separate from you MySQL server, make sure you grant permissions for the user account from the remote server location.

2) If you have trouble installing some perl modules such as “DateTime” and “DateTime-TimeZone” and you are getting the “Can’t determine best” error. (Which is overly explanatory :/ ), Open C:\Perl\lib\ActivePerl\PPM\Package.pm and comment out the following line: push(@dunno, $p); ( Should look like #push(@dunno, $p); after you comment it out. The # sign indicates a comment.)
Save the file and re-run your ppm install commands. (Remove the # sign after you have everything installed.)

3) If you try to browse to http://localhost/Bugzilla or whatever you virtual directory is and you see nothing, try http://localhost/Bugzilla/index.cgi . If this works, then you need to add the index.cgi to the Default Document list.

4) If you have problems saving settings on bugzilla, It is probably because the NT Authority\IUSR account is being used to write to your bugzilla directory. To fix this you need to go into IIS Manager and change the CGI settings for this virtual directory and change “Impersonate User” to False.

5) If you are have browsed to http://localhost/BugZilla/index.cgi and upon logging in you see an big “Software Error:” page with the “Undef to trick_taint” error. Browse to bugzilla installation using the IP address of the server. http://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx/BugZilla/index.cgi

6) If you can login using the IP address, but remote users cannot logon, or you cannot logon with localhost, or you cannot logon with the server name, then you need to login as an administrator using the IP address on the local server. Go to Administration –> Parameters –> “User Authentication” and set the loginnetmask to 32. It will be 0 by default.

Perl Module Install Commands:

ppm version
ppm repo add UWinnipeg http://cpan.uwinnipeg.ca/PPMPackages/10xx/
ppm repo add Trouchelle http://trouchelle.com/ppm10/
ppm repo list
ppm upgrade
ppm install AppConfig
ppm install TimeDate
ppm install DBI
ppm install DBD-mysql
ppm install Template-Toolkit
ppm install MailTools
ppm install GD
ppm install Chart
ppm install GDGraph
ppm install PatchReader
ppm install Net-LDAP-Express
ppm install DateTime
ppm install DateTime-TimeZone
ppm install Email-Send
ppm install Email-MIME
ppm install Email-MIME-Encodings
ppm install Email-MIME-Modifier

C# HTTPS File Download

Timothy Wright — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 10:02:50 GMT

Don't Think too hard!!!
Sadly, I did not follow my own advice, thus spurring this post.
Simple Code to Download a file from an HTTPS Source.
Just make sure you trust the certificate being served up.

using System;
using System.IO;
using System.Net;

WebClient webClient = new WebClient();
webClient.Credentials = new NetworkCredential("username", "password", "domain");
webClient.DownloadFile("https://servername/path/documentToDownload.txt", "localPathToSaveFile");

If you want a Stream to read the data from:

HttpWebRequest httpRequest = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create(@"https://httpsServer/fileToDownload.txt");
httpRequest.Credentials = new NetworkCredential("username", "password", "domain");
HttpWebResponse httpResponse = (HttpWebResponse)httpRequest.GetResponse();

// Do stuff with the Stream

responseStream.Close();

C4C 2009 - Reflections

Timothy Wright — Sat, 02 May 2009 02:48:28 GMT

C4C in Kansas City was, once again, an incredible event. There were about 8 charities and probably about 30 developers / designers. We even had our own film crew from KC VideoCore, there to document the event and record the “ninjas” at work. I had the privilege of helping the Focus North America team building an aggregate data interface for personal donation campaigns on the Focus North America Site. The experience taught me, first and foremost, that Joomla is my enemy, but even enemies can work together for good. We (the team) did manage to create a Joomla plug-in that allows Focus NA to place this view of aggregated data onto any page of the site, which was a very proud moment for me personally. I felt that I had conquered a formidable opponent in Joomla.

Joomla, however, was not without its last hurrah. 5 minutes to demo time the Joomla Virtual Appliance refused to get an IP address, making a demonstration of the the wonders we had stored within impossible to reach. Joomla may have won the battle, but I shall win the war! Stay tuned for the conclusion of this epic conflict…

In addition to the Joomla challenge, we were also able to help out a second charity, Mid America Freedom Band with their new site. This one allowed us to go back to our roots, and build the site using .NET and DotNetNuke. I must say that DotNetNuke has come a long way since I last explored it, which was very fortuitous for our team. We were able to very quickly whip together a website with all of the functionality that the Mid America Freedom Band needed.

Shout out to the team:

Lee, Becky, Ionut, James

Good times, good food, good Rock Band!
And we’ll do it all again next year.

IE 8 Love it, but just enough...

Timothy Wright — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 06:25:32 GMT

I'm pretty quick to jump on the band wagon with new Microsoft Technologies. You have to appreciate a company that constantly gives you a free taste of whats next. So I'd like to make it clear that I much enjoy many things Microsoft.....

However... It is no secret that Microsoft can produce some products that do not always work as advertised. At least not with the initial release. Unfortunately IE 8 is no exception.

I am pleased with the speed at which the browser launches and loads pages, It rivals that of Firefox, which is great!
Also, I occasionally end up at Mac related sites for friends and clients so it is great that Apple.com no longer locks up the browser, which I had noticed in IE 7. I was also pleased that most of my recent web projects were not at all negatively affected in the new browser.
I'm also betting the Accelerators will come in handy down the line. So things are looking pretty good for the new generation browser.

So whats the problem?

Well if you're like me and you've learned to live with UAC and the persistent prompt to run as administrator. And if you're also like me and have a habitual compulsion to open every link in a new tab, then you may experience a blank page with "Connecting..." as the title. This almost sent me away from IE 8, but I gave it a second shot and found this gem on the internet, that describe the old Nintendo style fix for a problem. (You know the one where you blow in the cartridge, then only push the game in slightly and stick a second game on top.... Yeah, you've been there.)

You have to Right-Click on an IE shortcut and Run As Administrator, then try to open a link in a new window.
This, of course, won't work, but it'll give you a little hope, because instead of seeing the "Connecting..." title, you'll see the actual link you clicked on as the title.

So what now?
Just close IE and open it again as your regular, underprivileged self.

Anyway, I spent enough time on it that I thought it was worth a post. Gotta love Microsoft...
Happy Surfing!!

Exchange OAB Outlook Sync Trouble

Timothy Wright — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 23:11:55 GMT

So you just bought a shiny new Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 and got it all installed with everything working.
Outlook Web Access is a joy for all of the company users and the rediculously simple Outlook 2007 autodiscover configuration is making you look like a rock star.
You even get yourself a SANs certificate to overcome the autodiscover.domain.com problem with Outlook.
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa995942.aspx

Then it happens....
Someone hits the little Send/Receive button in Outlook and the thing just hangs or you get the ubiquitous 0x8004010F error.
'Microsoft Exchange' reported error (0x8004010F) : 'The operation failed. An object cannot be found.'

After a little bit of research you're thinking... Noooo! The offline address book is broken or corrupt some replication has failed, but, of course, all diagnostics say you have the happiest Exchange server in the world.

Now what did I miss????

Well the answer to that question is probably nothing. You've just run into another one of those.. hmm... Lets call them, "Undocumented Features!".

In my case, everything was configured properly and then I stumbled upon this forum post where the final response gave me the solution I needed.

It was simply a matter of read permissions on a couple of files/folders.
Had to grant read permission on the webconfig and other content in my OAB virtual directory.

So for anyone else chasing their tale on this one. I hope this helps.

Sharepoint Firestarter Event

Timothy Wright — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 07:13:45 GMT

I posted a few months back on getting a good look into the power Sharepoint gives to developers. This was after viewing a great set of presentations on different functionality that can be accessed and used.

Recordings from the Sharepoint Firestarter event presentations are now online. So I just want to share, for those who have not yet viewed these presentations, but are interested in sharepoint or getting started in sharepoint or have interest in a particular feature of sharepoint, but haven't had the chance to explore.

Introduction To Day & Keynote:
https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/mseventsbmo/view?id=1032380419&role=attend

Whirlwind SharePoint on Visual Studio:
https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/mseventsbmo/view?id=1032380419-1&role=attend

Silverlight on SharePoint:
https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/mseventsbmo/view?id=1032380419-2&role=attend

Web Parts on SharePoint:
https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/mseventsbmo/view?id=1032380419-3&role=attend

Web Services on SharePoint:
https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/mseventsbmo/view?id=1032380419-4&role=attend

Workflow on SharePoint:
https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/mseventsbmo/view?id=1032380419-5&role=attend

Event Handlers on SharePoint:
https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/mseventsbmo/view?id=1032380419-6&role=attend

Page Branding on SharePoint:
https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/mseventsbmo/view?id=1032380419-7&role=attend

Enjoy!

Reference: http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/blogs/BenHickman/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=16

Kansas City DODN - jQuery

Timothy Wright — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 10:35:26 GMT

A big Thank you to Lee Brandt for organizing a great event in good ole Kansas City. There was a great turn out for the event and the event was very well organized.

I reluctantly took on presenting jQuery for the Day of Dot Net event, but I am glad I let Lee talk me into it. It feels great to be presenting. (If you can get passed the fear of public speaking.)

For those of you who attended my jQuery presentation, Thank you to you as well. I hope it was enlightening and if you’re not using a javascript library at this point, but you’re doing web development with javascript. I highly recommend jQuery.

As promised, here are the slides and the source project from the presentation. Feel free to email me with any questions.

Happy Scripting!

Automation Exploration 3 Scripting Tools

Timothy Wright — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 02:52:12 GMT

Often I've wanted to automate something, just to avoid some clicks and survive the tedium. Never was it really worth the effort of learning some crazy scripting tool.

There is nothing like a job assignment to get you in the mode to explore new ways to accomplish a goal. I'm sure everyone is familiar with the awesomeness that is AutoIT. It is certainly simpler to understand than VBScript, but if you're wanting to learn VBScripting I would highly recommend you start with AutoIT. It helped me better understand VBScript so when you look at a VBScript example it might make a little more sense.... maybe....

So 3 automation tools I recommend for the scripting junkie.... AutoIT, VBScript and for web automatiion I like Sahi.

Personally I like to see code that make stuff happen rather than a GUI wizard that just does the work behind the scenes.

A look at the True Power of Sharepoint

Timothy Wright — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 08:37:15 GMT

It is hard to really get a grasp of how much control you are given in Sharepoint. Microsoft touts its easy to use web UI and webparts for the end user, but this is just the icing on the cake. It is the ingredients that make it special. Many of those ingredients are exposed in different ways in Sharepoint. There are features, event handlers, web services, and enough XML to make your head explode. These are the parts that make it an exciting development platform.

I was able to get an amazing look at Sharepoint and the many aspects of Sharepoint development and customization in a one day live meeting. So after a full day of Web part development, CSS, features, event handlers, master pages, themes, Silverlight, BDC, and custom content types from the "Sharepoint in Web 2.0 Firestarter" event, I am excited to really dive deep into some Sharepoint development.

I highly encourage anyone interested in Sharepoint development to catch a Firestarter event or webcast when available. Then visit www.MSSharepointDeveloper.com and find your inspiration.

With my new found inspiration I plan to share my experience as I travel the path of the Sharepoint Developer.

Check back for a better look at the true power of Sharepoint.

Command the Installation and Deployment

MrWright — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 03:48:37 GMT

Install IIS, ASP.NET, .NET Framework 3.5, SQL Server 2005 Express /w Reporting Services, a Web Application, create the Web Application database, and Deploy Report files using a batch script... Possible? Yes!!!

I often like to explore possibility and this was my challenge. So here's what I did...

I knew I wanted to have a batch file to start the installation and get everything installed, but I wasn't quite sure how to accomplish such a feat. So after some Google searches I started to put the batch script together. Here is what I found:

IIS and ASP.NET magic command: sysocmgr /i /u
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/222444

.NET Framework 3.5 magic command: dotnetfx35.exe /qb /norestart
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc160716.aspx

SQL Server 2005 magic command: SQLEXPR_ADV.exe /qb /settings
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms144259.aspx

Deploy Report .rdl files magic command: rs.exe -i -s
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms160854.aspx

Virtual Directory created programmatically using .NET:

System.EnterpriseServices.Internal.IISVirtualRoot
System.EnterpriseServices.Internal.IISVirtualRoot.Create()

Web Application Deployment magic command: xcopy /C /E /H /R /Y

Create the Web Application Database magic command: osql -E -S -i

Extras

Modify SQL Server 2005 Surface Area Configuration magic command: sac in -F -DE -BS -N
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms162800.aspx

Using the commands above I was able to deploy all of the required components for my ASP.NET Web Application. This seems to work well for Windows XP and Windows Server 2003.

This is great if you have a clean installation of XP or Server 2003 with the latest services packs and windows installer 3.1. However if the installation has other services running on it or other installations of SQL Server, more care will need to be taken into the creation of the this script and the answer files that support it. For example, by default SQL Server installs to C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL.#\.... If there are other instances of SQL Server installed, then you'll need to know what the exact installation path is. As an added side effect of running this from a batch command, the environment variables for SQL installation locations are not set until after SQL Server is installed. Similar problems appear with the deployment location for the web app and there are no checks to determine if the components are already installed.

Another important caveat is that batch scripts, when starting an external program, do not automatically wait for the program to finish before continuing. For that problem I added some delay loops that look for the application name in the computers running programs list and ping localhost as a delay between checks.

Now that we know this works, but requires a bit more diligence if the circumstances are not perfect, lets look at exactly what I did.

First, I install IIS using sysocmgr.exe and I pass it 2 parameters

/i:%windir%\inf\sysoc.inf // this is required
/u:"%CD%\iis\iis_install.txt" // This is the path to my answer file that tells sysocmgr what to install.

That iis_install.txt simply contains tags set to on or off and the file looks like this:
[Components]
aspnet=on
iis_asp=on
iis_serversideincludes=on
iis_common=on
iis_www=on
iis_inetmer=on
fp_extensions=on
iis_doc=on

Second, I install the .NET Framework 3.5 using the switches:

/qb // Shows the progress, but does not require user input.
/norestart // Keeps the computer from reboot after installation.

Third, I installed SQL Server 2005 Express /w Advanced Services passing 2 parameters:

/qb // Shows the progress, but does not require user input
/settings "%CD%\SQL\sql_install.ini" // This is the path to the answer file that tells SQLEXPR_ADV.exe what I want to install.

That sql_install.ini file looks like this:
[Options]
INSTANCENAME=SQLExpress
ADDLOCAL=SQL_Engine,SQL_Data_Files,SQL_SSMSEE,RS_Server,RS_Web_Interface,Client_Components,Connectivity
SQLAUTOSTART=1
AGAUTOSTART=1
RSAUTOSTART=1
SECURITYMODE=SQL
SAPWD=password
RSCONFIGURATION=Default
RSSQLLOCAL=1
DISABLENETWORKPROTOCOLS=0

Fourth, I modified the install SQL Surface Area configuration using a previously exported configuration from my test deployment:

"%programfiles%\Microsoft SQL Server\90\Shared\sac.exe" in "%CD%\SQL\sqlsac.out" -F -DE -BS -N // This imports the configuration and the switches determine which components to import.

Fifth, I use osql to connect to the SQL Server instance and run my transact SQL script to create the database.

Sixth, I have to call my custom .NET Console application VirtualDirectoryInstaller.exe to create the folder in the wwwroot directory and create the virtual directory in IIS. For easy modification later I created an XML document that contains the parameters for the Create() method and the folder path. That source code looks like this:

XmlDocument xDoc = new XmlDocument();
xDoc.Load("InstallPaths.xml");

// Load the required information to create the Virtual directory
string folderPath = xDoc.SelectSingleNode("//iisFolder").Attributes["value"].Value;
string virtualDirectory = xDoc.SelectSingleNode("//iisVirtualDirectory").Attributes["value"].Value;
string iisRoot = xDoc.SelectSingleNode("//iisDefaultSiteRoot").Attributes["value"].Value;

// Create the folder
System.IO.Directory.CreateDirectory(folderPath);

// Create the virtual Directory
System.EnterpriseServices.Internal.IISVirtualRoot vr = new System.EnterpriseServices.Internal.IISVirtualRoot();
string sError;
vr.Create(iisRoot, folderPath, virtualDirectory, out sError);
Console.WriteLine(sError.ToString());

Seventh, I used xcopy to deploy the web application to the virtual directory:
xcopy "WebApp\*" "C:\inetpub\wwwroot\WebApp\*" /C /E /H /R /Y

Eigth and finally, I create the required data source and deploy the report files using rs.exe utility that is install with Reporting Services, passing it 2 parameters:

-i "%CD%\Reports\ReportsDeploy.rss" // This is the path to my report deployment script, which is basically a VB.NET code file with a .rss extension.

-s http://localhost/reportserver$sqlexpress // This is the path to the server where these reports should be deployed

That ReportsDeploy.rss file looks similiar to this:

'=============================================================================
' File: ReportsDeply.rss
'
'
' 1.3.1 Use the script to publish the reports to a report server.
'
' rs -i ReportsDeply.rss -s http://localhost/reportserver$sqlexpress
'

Dim definition As [Byte]() = Nothing
Dim warnings As Warning() = Nothing
Dim parentFolder As String = ""
Dim parentPath As String = "/" + parentFolder
Dim filePath As String = "WebAppReports\"

Public Sub Main()

    rs.Credentials = System.Net.CredentialCache.DefaultCredentials
    'Create the WebApp shared data sources
    CreateSampleDataSource("dsWebApp", "SQL", "data source=(local)\SQLExpress;initial catalog=WebAppDatabase;User Id=webappusr;Password=password")

    'Publish the reports
    PublishReport("Report 1")
    PublishReport("Report 2")
    PublishReport("Report 3")
    PublishReport("Report 4")
    PublishReport("Report 5")
End Sub

'==================================================================

The CreateSampleDataSource() and PublishReport() functions are from the PublishSampleReports.rss, which you can either install with SQL Server installation or Reporting Services Samples from CodePlex here:
http://www.codeplex.com/SqlServerSamples#ssrs

And that is it. If you were ever wondering how you can install all of the necessary components for a Web application using the command line, here it is.

Below you will find the full batch script that makes it all happen.

**************************************
The Full Batch Script

**************************************

@echo # Installing IIS
sysocmgr /i:%windir%\inf\sysoc.inf /u:"%CD%\iis\iis_install.txt"

echo off
:loopIIS

tasklist | find /i "sysocmgr.exe" >nul

if %errorlevel% EQU 0 (
    ping 127.0.0.1 -n 3 >nul
    goto loopIIS
)
echo on

@echo # Installing .NET Framework 3.5
DotNet\dotNetFx35.exe /qb /norestart

echo off
:loopDOTNET

tasklist | find /i "dotnetfx35.exe" >nul

if %errorlevel% EQU 0 (
    ping 127.0.0.1 -n 3 >nul
    goto loopDOTNET
)
echo on

@echo # Installing SQL Server 2005 Express w/ Reporting Services
SQL\SQLEXPR_ADV.exe /settings "%CD%\SQL\sql_install.ini" /qb

echo off
:loopSQL

tasklist | find /i "setup.exe" >nul

if %errorlevel% EQU 0 (
    ping 127.0.0.1 -n 3 >nul
    goto loopSQL
)
echo on

@echo # Modify the Surface Area Configuration to allow remote connections
"%programfiles%\Microsoft SQL Server\90\Shared\sac.exe" in "%CD%\SQL\sqlsac.out" -F -DE -BS -N

@echo # Grant NT Authority\Network Service RSExecRole
"%programfiles%\Microsoft SQL Server\90\Tools\Binn\osql" -E -S .\SQLExpress -i "%CD%\DatabaseScripts\GrantNTAuthoritySQLRS.sql"

:loopNETWORKSERVICE

tasklist | find /i "osql.exe" >nul

if %errorlevel% EQU 0 (
    ping 127.0.0.1 -n 3 >nul
    goto loopNETWORKSERVICE
)

@echo # Installing Database
"%programfiles%\Microsoft SQL Server\90\Tools\Binn\osql" -E -S .\SQLExpress -i "%CD%\DatabaseScripts\install.sql"

:loopDATABASE

tasklist | find /i "osql.exe" >nul

if %errorlevel% EQU 0 (
    ping 127.0.0.1 -n 3 >nul
    goto loopDATABASE
)

@echo # Installing Application Files
@echo # Create the Virtual Directory in IIS
VirtualDirectoryInstaller.exe

echo off
:loopWebApp

tasklist | find /i "VirtualDirectoryInstaller.exe" >nul

if %errorlevel% EQU 0 (
    ping 127.0.0.1 -n 3 >nul
    goto loopWebApp
)
echo on

@echo # Copy the web application files to the new virtual directory
xcopy "WebApp\*" "C:\inetpub\wwwroot\WebApp\*" /C /E /H /R /Y

@echo # Deploy the Reports
"%programfiles%\Microsoft SQL Server\90\Tools\Binn\rs.exe" -i "%CD%\Reports\ReportsDeploy.rss" -s http://localhost/reportserver$sqlexpress

@echo # Restart SQL Server for changes to take effect
net stop "SQL Server (SQLEXpress)" && net start "SQL Server (SQLExpress)"