Hosted services

ASP.NET MVC Preview 2 (March CTP) - support for shared hosting

Liam Westley — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 23:30:02 GMT

I've been investigating the ASP.NET MVC framework for some months, in between a major client project in January and holidays in Frebruary. In that time the ASP.NET team have been beavering away and released the MVC Preview 2 March CTP (download it here). Jeffrey Palermo has some great blog posts over at codebetter.com which detail some of the improvements.

The big news for me was that I could finally upload any applications to my development site, which is on a shared hosting server at discountasp.net, they have .NET 3.5 hosting as standard which makes life easy. You can now just copy the MVC assemblies into the application bin folder and you have an MVC application installed.

I did hit one issue, in that the MVC handler does not route as required without the formal setup, and the in line comment s in Global.asax.cs suggesting I add the file extension '.mvc' for routing requests for IIS6 compatibility didn't work either. The issue is that the DiscountASP team have not registered '.mvc' for processing by the ASP.NET ISAPI dll. Obviously something I cannot configure on a shared host.

No problems though - I discovered that if I use the file extension '.mvc.aspx' for controller routing in Global.asax.cs the pages get handled by the ASP.NET ISAPI DLL, complete with MVC goodness. Standard .aspx pages are unaffected, and as long as you don't mind the mangled URLs it all works as expected.

If you haven't yet dabbled with the MVC framework now is definitely the time to try. Shared hosting support, combined with the excellent quick start video tutorials over at http://www.asp.net/learn/3.5-extensions-videos/default.aspx#mvc makes life a lot less painful.

P.S. after spending a few hours researching the '.mvc.aspx' solution, I found it was already in the forums on the ASP.NET site - DOH!

hosted-projects.com, 12 months on - now that's what I call customer service

Liam Westley — Sun, 02 Sep 2007 21:20:42 GMT

I signed up to a SubVersion and Trac hosted service nearly 12 months ago with the aim of moving all my source code repositories from my local server onto a centrally managed system hosted by hosted-projects.com.

At first I was concerned about reliability of access, availability levels and the level of customer support I would receive for what is a bargain US$15 per month (with an additional US$15 per month for nightly backups).

Those concerns were completely unfounded. In the past year I have had exceptional service. I can't remember a time I couldn't connect to either SubVersion or Trac, e-mail notifications fly out speedily from SubVersion and Trac, and the unlimited SubVersion/Trac repositories mean I have been able to move all my clients onto a single hosted system without any shared security issues to fight with.

As an example of the level of service, this morning a support ticket was answered within seconds by Michael Goettsche, who had immediately investigated the issue. I then had the embarrassment of having to admit it was my Cute FTP 7.1 client at fault, and that everything was worked OK. All within five minutes of the first support ticket being sent out.

This is exactly what you need from your hosted services - I'm just not used to this from the experience of various ISPs and web hosting providers I've used in the past. So if you need off-site SubVersion and Trac hosting you should certainly include hosted-projects at the top of your list.

hosted-projects.com
***** 5 stars

Very silly bug on Microsoft forums

Liam Westley — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 01:47:24 GMT

I'm sure there is a Microsoft exam on how to handle custom errors in ASP.NET, and even how to verify query strings before processing them. It might be in their forums, http://forums.microsoft.com, but not at this URL, http://forums.microsoft.com/communities/showpost.aspx?postid=fasdjkh&siteid=gh

Yep, we have a Server Error in '/Communities' Application in full display with instructions on how to turn on custom error handling.

Obviously no web application I've every written would do something that grossly stupid as not check for bad query string data, and they all have custom error pages switched on ........ hold on, just got to pop off and inspect my SubVersion repository.

(credit to Matt Barrett for finding this first in a Google search result, rather than a hand typed designed to fail URL)

CI Factory - my final setup

Liam Westley — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 21:08:39 GMT

Here's the culmination of my research into CI Factory and how I'm not using it to develop my open source RapidDB libraries. This is a fairly personal setup, as it only has a single developer (me), two development machines (currently an office desktop PC and a roaming laptop) and a build server which is not publicly accessible via the Internet. An MSDN and Microsoft Partner Action Pack subscription are busy covering my software license requirements.

Summary:

Development PC 1 : Desktop, XP Pro SP2, Program Files on D: drive, C:\Projects for CI Factory tree.
Development PC 2 : Laptop, XP Pro SP2, Program Files on C: drive, C:\Projects for CI Factory tree.
Build Server : Virtual PC 2004 image, XP Pro SP2, C:\Projects for CI Factory tree.
Source code repository : www.hosted-projects.com.

By using Microsoft Virtual PC 2004 (or VPC), which is a free download now, I have the VPC disk image (6.3Gb currently) which is on a portable laptop hard drive, running over USB 2.0. When in the office this connects to my desktop, when out of the office this connects to my laptop. That way, I always have the build server available, where ever I am working. And when my build server finally settles down and I require external access, I can easily install it under Virtual Server on my main Windows Server 2003 box and setup suitable port forwarding on my broadband connection.

Both development PCs and the build server have Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Developer and Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Developer installed. To aid with unit testing, I have created aliases to the servers on all machines as NUnit-Sql2000 and NUnit-Sql2005. This ensures that whatever machine name and instance name I might have used when installing SQL Server, unit tests can use the same alias names across all machines (and please don't flame me that unit tests should not really include database access, I have my reasons).

Build server o/s and tools installation

Windows XP Professional SP2
.NET framework 1.1, .NET framework 2.0, .NET framework 3.0
Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Developer Edition, Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Developer Edition
NCover v1.5.5 (beta)
SubVersion 1.4.3, TortoiseSVN 1.4.3
.NET Framework 1.1 SDK, .NET Framework 2.0 SDK [blog update, 6 June 2007]

CI Factory installation on VPC build server image

.\Install Scripts\Arguments.xml;

Change ProjectName; testproject.
Change the portname number (really important for multiple installations!)
Email details; VPC-Build, vpc.build@yourdomain.co.uk
Developer lists; your.name@yourdomain.co.uk
SVN URI Root; https://svn1.hosted-projects.com/youraccountname
SVN URI ProjectName, Shared Repo; ProjectName" value="${SVN.URI.Root}/${ProjectName}"
SVN.WebRepoURL; https://svn1.hosted-projects.com/youraccountname/${ProjectName}
SVN.Credentials.SafeStorage; true
SVN.Username / SVN.Password; <set to your username/password>

\Packages;

Install NCover 1.5.5 Beta to prog files; C:\Program Files\NCover
Install SubVersion 1.4.3 to prog files; C:\Program Files\Subversion
(optional) Install TortoiseSVN 1.4.3 to prog files; C:\Program Files\TortoiseSVN

CI Factory Installation

Create repository/project for testproject in SubVersion, edit ACL list to include user permissions RW.
Run C:\Tools\CI Factory\run.bat to install.
After install Visual Studio will not start as it doesn't exist on the build server; instead use
   Notepad to edit c:\Projects\testproject\Current\Build\Main.build.xml
   --> look for warnings about first call/last call and move (as in Jay Flower screencast)
   --> (SourceModificationReport.PublishOldSource to first item)
   --> (SourceModificationReport.PublishNewSource to last item)
Commit, Main.build.xml to SubVersion.
Run C:\Projects\testproject\Current\Build\Packages\CSDiff\bin\CSDiff.exe once to store path to CSDiff in registry (used in later scripts).

Post installation configuration; c:\Projects\testproject\Current\Build\ccnetproject.xml

Locate <!ENTITY email line (at top of file)
Edit the from attribute to a suitable 'from' address
Edit the mailhost attribute to by your SMTP server
For authenticated logins add the mailhostUsername and mailhostPassword attributes and enter the login and password used to send e-mails.

Afterwards, it should look something like;
<!ENTITY email '<email from="testproject.build@yourdomain.co.uk" mailhost="mail.yourdomain.co.uk" mailhostUsername="testproject.build@yourdomain.co.uk" mailhostPassword="testprojectbuild" includeDetails="true">

Developer PC 2 - C:\Program Files (99% of users)

You can just check out the tree from SubVersion to C:\Projects\testproject and run C:\Projects\testproject\Current\Build\OpenSolution.bat to load the project into Visual Studio 2005. If you want to run unit tests you will need to have installed the appropriate tools (NUnit for myself, or feel free to use MbUnit which comes with CI Factory).

Developer PC 1 - D:\Program Files

Check out the tree from SubVersion to C:\Projects\testproject.

Copy C:\Projects\testproject\Current\Build\OpenSolution.bat to C:\Projects\testproject\Current\Build\OpenSolutionVSOnD.bat
Edit OpenSolutionVSOnD.bat in Notepad, and edit the path C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\VC\vcvarsall.bat to be on the D: drive.
Repeat with C:\Projects\testproject\Current\Product\OpenSolution.bat.

Adding your projects

Now you continue with the normal CI Factory process of adding your existing projects into C:\projects\testproject\Current\Product\Production as detailed in the Jay Flowers/CI Factory screen cast.

Conclusion

For those thinking that all this sounds like a whole heap of work to 'reproduce' your existing setup, this is really is not the case. I cannot tell you the relief to have CruiseControl.NET setup for me automatically and have it branching versions seamlessly in the background. It also encourages you down the unit testing path which is not a bad thing at all (although I may be breaking it with database reliant testing).

I have also been impressed by the range of default packages installed by CI Factory. This provides an immediate wake up call to how you might improve the quality of your software by using automated tools, instead of just hoping you have written reliable code that you have tested properly. I have yet to use all the default packages properly, but then, even programmers I know who have in depth experience of Test Driven Development (TDD) and CI have found new tools that CI Factory includes, such as Simian.

Technorati tags: ci factory, Continuous Integration

Update log
6 June 2007 : Updated to include installation of .NET Framework SDK to prevent Unable to load DLL 'svn_client-1' error in build log (as in CI Factory FAQ, here).

CI Factory - getting it working with your development tools in D:\Program Files

Liam Westley — Tue, 03 Apr 2007 16:06:00 GMT

Before we dive in make sure you read my introduction post here, and that you have followed the screen cast on how to setup CI Factory. My notes will basically follow that procedure and highlight the differences when you have development tools on your D: drive.

This is an early list, but hopefully it should give people pointers on how to get going quickly;

I'm assuming that your development PC already has Visual Studio 2005, and SubVersion 1.4.3. In addition I had to install NCover 1.5.5 beta and download the latest CIFactory beta (I used 0.8.0.121) which I unzipped to C:\Tools\CI Factory. I have hosted SubVersion at hosted-projects.com for $15 a month (note: my host area has been changed to xxxxxx on this server for obvious reasons).

Once unzipped, look at C:\Tools\CI Factory;

.\Install Scripts\Arguments.xml (standard edits)

1. Change ProjectName; testproject.
2. Change the port number if you want multiple installations.
3. Edit the email details and developer list e-mails.

4. SVN.URI.Root; https://svn1.hosted-projects.com/xxxxxx
5. SVN.URI.ProjectName, Shared Repo; ProjectName" value="${SVN.URI.Root}/${ProjectName}"

6. SVN.WebRepoURL; https://svn1.hosted-projects.com/xxxxxx/${ProjectName}
7. SVN.Credentials.SafeStorage; true
8. SVN.Username / SVN.Password; <set to known login for hosted-projects.com>

.\Packages (D: drive specific)

1. Install NCover 1.5.5 Beta to program files; D:\Program Files\NCover
2. Edit .\NCover\NCover.Properties.xml; Ncover.ExePath to D:\Program Files\NCover\NCover.Console.exe
3. Edit .\NCover\Install\Properties.xml; Ncover.ExePath to D:\Program Files\NCover\NCover.Console.exe
4. Edit .\MSBuild\Install; %Compile.DevEnv.vsvars32bat% to D:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\VC\vcvarsall.bat
5. Edit .\VS.NETCompile\Install; %Compile.DevEnv.vsvars32bat% to D:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\VC\vcvarsall.bat

.\Power Tools (D: drive specific)

1. OpenSolution.bat; edit C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\VC\vcvarsall.bat to be on D: drive.
2. Still in OpenSolution.bat; edit C:\Program Files\Subversion\bin to D:\Program Files\Subversion\bin

.\Default\Build (D: drive specific)

1. CCNETServer.bat; edit C:\Program Files\Subversion\bin to D:\Program Files\Subversion\bin
2. OpenSolution.bat; edit C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\VC\vcvarsall.bat to C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\VC\vcvarsall.bat.

To prevent NDepends build errors
Copy D:\WINDOWS\FONTS to C:\WINDOWS\FONTS to prevent error in CCNet Build Report erroring on missing Arial font.

>> INSTALLATION

1. Create repository/project in SubVersion, edit the ACL/permissions list to include user permissions RW for the login you configured.
2. Run C:\Tools\CI Factory\run.bat to install CIFactory components (I left them with the default modules).
3. After install Visual Studio fires up; edit c:\Projects\testproject\Current\Build\Main.build.xml
   --> look for warnings about first call/last call and move (as in the CIFactory screen cast)
   --> (SourceModificationReport.PublishOldSource to first item)
   --> (SourceModificationReport.PublishNewSource to last item)
4. Commit, Main.build.xml to SVN.
5. Run CSDIff once to store path to CSDiff in registry (this is used in later scripts).

>> ADD INITIAL PROJECTS (to C:\Projects\testproject\Current\Product\Production)

1. Run, C:\Projects\testproject\Current\Product\OpenSolution.bat; this should load Visual Studio 2005.
2. Copy your existing projects to C:\Projects\testproject\Current\Product\Production (use TortoiseSVN->Export to get a clean tree with no .svn folders)
3. Add your projects in Visual Studio, check it builds.
4. Add your projects in C:\Projects\testproject\Current\Product\Production, to SVN (remove/exclude the bin/obj directories).
5. Commit your additions, and the changes to the main solution (new projects) to SVN.
6. CruiseControl.NET should now pick up changes and compile your new solution.

Miscellaneous notes

The resource usage for an 'empty' CIFactory install with default modules but none of your own projects came in at 14Mb with SVN on hosted-projects.com (peaked at 17Mb during commit). Important to note if you have usage limits.

The other wrinkle I had was a SubVersion certificate issue; hosted-projects.com are still using a certificate based on the URL http://www.hosted-projects.com/ which was created prior to their configuring multiple servers. My repositories are now on svn1.hosted-projects.com, however they still use the old certificate for encrypting content. This doesn't bother me but it can bother svn.exe, the command line tool, especially when used in an automated mode.

To fix this run SVN.EXE at the command line to your repository;
     svn list https://svn1.hosted-projects.com/xxxxxx/cifactory --username xxxx --password xxxx
You will be asked to accept the certificate, if you choose permanently then the CIFactory and CCNET scripts will work without a problem.

Wake On LAN remotely via your broadband connection - with a LinkSys WRT54G

Liam Westley — Wed, 21 Feb 2007 09:45:00 GMT

The problem

I am moving my server and main development system out of a home office into rented office space. As I'm only going to be in the office two of three days a week, and being a hippy environmental type, I wanted to ensure my file server was not always switched on. Anything to reduce my carbon footprint a fraction.

The solution

WakeOnLan was the perfect solution I thought. I configured the server in the BIOS to start up on a Wake On LAN packet. With this I can turn on the server, and once the server is running I can use RDP (Remote Desktop Protocol) or VNC to remotely connect (I'll configure a proper VPN later). Once I finish using the server I can use RDP to turn off the server again.

It all worked on the local LAN, but getting it working remotely across the Internet was slightly more work. Thanks to Googling some excellent articles it only took around 90 minutes to figure it all out. The Linksys router was the main stumbling block in my setup.

Basically, WakeOnLan uses broadcast technology to send a 'magic packet' to all computers on the LAN. This packet contains the unique MAC address of the LAN card belonging to the PC you wish to turn on. Some forums/blogs suggest port forwarding or port triggering to a specific IP address but neither work on the WRT54G. As the server will not have an IP address if it is not switched on (as the O/S configures this) you cannot port forward in the usual manner. It is possible to port forward to ALL PCs. However, when using the default subnet of 255.255.255.0 the WRT54G does not allow port forwarding to the broadcast address, xxx.xxx.xxx.255. The web interface simply won't allow you to enter xxx.xxx.xxx.255 as a destination IP address.

Configuring the router

Fortunately I found this blog n01getsout.com which provided the solution. In the Linksys web configuration, you have to specify the subnet for the LAN DHCP pool as 255.255.255.128. You then configure the port forward (on any port, 5850 was one suggestion of a free port) to forward to xxx.xxx.xxx.127 which will forward the magic packet to all PCs on the network. The MAC address within the packet ensures that only that the specified PC turns on. Note: the WakeOnLan packet is not port specific so the destination port does not actually matter.

Wake On LAN utility (to send the magic packet)

The last step is to obtain a WakeOnLan utility to send the magic packet. If you're running Windows there is a great utility from depicus.com which does exactly what you need. You enter the MAC address of your PC (in a command window, ipconfig /all, it is listed as physical address), the public IP allocated by your ISP (I used whatismyipaddress.com for this), a subnet of 255.255.255.255, and the remote port number you configured in your router for port forwarding.

And that was it - now I can remotely switch on my server, do some work and then turn it off when I'm finished.

Is my web site still running - free for one URL

Liam Westley — Fri, 09 Feb 2007 10:08:00 GMT

Most may already know of http://www.siteuptime.com which can verify the availability of your website, but for those who don't you can try out their free service. It's great to monitor the reliability of your hosting provider, and know when any services you might be hosting might be out of action. You receive an e-mail when the site becomes unavailable, and then can optionally receive another e-mail when the site comes back up again.

I've used the free service it to monitor the homepage of my main site hosted on Brinkster. Even with checks limited to every 30 minutes, it is regularly out of action. That is why the site will be moving soon to Discount.ASP, although that's now on another watch (currently hosting my development site) so that I can check out availability of their servers too.

ASP.NET 2.0 hosting - (UK cost, around £50 for 12 months)

Liam Westley — Mon, 14 Nov 2005 11:45:00 GMT

Not wanting to fiddle with my main corporate web site hosted by brinkster.com by bouncing it to ASP.NET 2.0 (it's currently running ASP.NET 1.1), I decided to do some research into 2.0 hosting. I was genuinely surprised at how little it cost to get a development site up and running. I registered a '.co.uk' domain for just over £6 (US$10 or so) with www.123-reg.co.uk, and then setup my hosting with DiscountASP net (try the promotion code http://www.discountasp.net/kbalertz.aspx to get free setup and 6 months free hosting). Total price, US$60 for 12 months hosting, including POP3 e-mail. Even with UK VAT @ 1.175% this is only around £45.

£50 for two years domain registration and 12 months hosting, bargain. By the time the 12 months are up I can decide if I am moving fully over to ASP.NET 2.0 on the main site, and can dispense with the 'development' domain.

I'll let you know my experience of DiscountASP over the coming months.

Reminder to check your domain registration ... now

Liam Westley — Mon, 18 Jul 2005 13:30:00 GMT

The planned launch of my open source web site project at http://rapiddb.tigernews.co.uk was delayed due to the fact that suddenly I couldn't FTP my files to my hosted site on Brinkster (http://www.brinkster.com). This was last Thursday, 14 July 2005. Also, some e-mails to my personal e-mail address were starting to be bounced.

When I went to www.brinkster.com it said the domain had expired and was available. The domain had expired on 12 July 2005. They had forgotten to renew their domain ... so their name servers were no longer resolved, together with FTP upload servers and eventually mail servers for clients hosting their domain with them. OUCH!

So, go check your domain expiry at a WHOIS site now, and get a reminder into your Outlook, preferably with enough notice for your accounts department to process it. Also, as I noticed on the brinkster whois details, don't make your admin e-mail account for the domain reside on that same domain. If your domain did expire, you won't be able to receive any warning e-mails on that account.

Now it's back up and running I'll be updating the rapiddb site over the next few weeks. I'll be blogging the progress and no doubt there might be some requests for help.

Liam