Everyone has favorite passwords.
As time goes on it is so difficult to change them.
If you are in the market for new ones, try them out using the following tools:
WordPress – Images appearing in-between text – Line Breaks not helping
Had a whale of a time trying to get things lined up as text and images kept getting wrapped around each other.
Finally, figured it out.
Each image’s property needs to be changed depending on the effect one wants.
To effect:
1] In edit mode
2] Select the image by left clicking on it
3] Two picture buttons will appear, select the first one
4] In the “Edit Image” window, choose the “Alignment” option you want
References:
1] WordPress.Com – Image Buttons -
http://en.support.wordpress.com/images/image-settings/
2] WordPress Tutorial – How to Position an Image and Wrap Text Around an Image Using WordPress
We had a bit of problem in Microsoft SQL Server – Management Studio – v2008.
Though we had granted read permissions to one of our users via:
create user [lab\myGoodUser] from login [lab\myGoodUser]; exec sp_addrolemember [db_datareader], [lab\myGoodUser];
But, still the user upon logging on could not see any of the database objects. Looked everywhere, but no luck. So what to do:
The Query we captured looks like:
SELECT
‘Server[@Name=' + quotename(CAST(serverproperty(N'Servername') AS sysname),'''') + ']‘ + ‘/Database[@Name=' + quotename(db_name(),'''') + ']‘ + ‘/Table[@Name=' + quotename(tbl.name,'''') + ' and @Schema=' + quotename(SCHEMA_NAME(tbl.schema_id),'''') + ']‘ AS [Urn],
tbl.name AS [Name],
SCHEMA_NAME(tbl.schema_id) AS [Schema],
CAST(
case
when tbl.is_ms_shipped = 1 then 1
when (
select
major_id
from
sys.extended_properties
where
major_id = tbl.object_id and
minor_id = 0 and
class = 1 and
name = N’microsoft_database_tools_support’)
is not null then 1
else 0
end
AS bit) AS [IsSystemObject],
tbl.create_date AS [CreateDate]
FROM
sys.tables AS tbl
WHERE
(CAST(
case
when tbl.is_ms_shipped = 1 then 1
when (
select
major_id
from
sys.extended_properties
where
major_id = tbl.object_id and
minor_id = 0 and
class = 1 and
name = N’microsoft_database_tools_support’)
is not null then 1
else 0
end
AS bit)=0)
ORDER BY
[Schema] ASC,[Name] ASC
Tried to understand the query, but it was not as easy. So what to do – Take the Easy way – Google….
SQL SERVER Management Studio 2008 can’t list all tables under SQL2005 database
http://www.sqlservercentral.com/Forums/Topic882092-391-4.aspx
In a nutshell:
To grant access to ‘View Definition’
1) Grant ‘View Definition’ to specific object
–grant view definition on all database objects
use [msdb]
GRANT VIEW DEFINITION ON object::[dbo].[DTA_input] TO [lab\mygoodUser];
2) Grant ‘View Definition’ to specific schemas
use [myDB];
–http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms187940.aspx
–grant ability to view schema definition
–GRANT VIEW DEFINITION ON SCHEMA::<schema> TO [login];
GRANT VIEW DEFINITION ON SCHEMA::dbo TO [lab\myGoodUser];
3) Grant ‘View Definition’ to specific database
–http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms173848.aspx
–grant ability to view database definition
–GRANT VIEW DEFINITION ON DATABASE::<database> TO [login];
GRANT VIEW DEFINITION ON DATABASE::[myDB] TO [lab\mygoodUser];
4) Grant ‘View Definition’ to current database
–GRANT VIEW DEFINITION TO [login];
GRANT VIEW DEFINITION TO [lab\mygoodUser];
5) Grant ‘View Definition’ on all databases
–grant view definition on all database objects
GRANT VIEW ANY DEFINITION TO [lab\mygoodUser];
The problem appears to be with sys.tables.
Data returned from this table is governed based on user’s permission granted via ‘view definition’.
To validate issue query ( select * form sys.tables) against sys.tables and results will vary depending on permissions.
The error will not be a hard-error \ fault, but a bit more subtle.
More data:
Tables Node Does Not Show All Schemas In SSMSE 2008 by Nicholas Piasecki
https://connect.microsoft.com/SQLServer/feedback/details/387616/tables-node-does-not-show-all-schemas-in-ssmse-2008
Microsoft – Windows 7 (x64) – HP LaserJ 2100 – Can’t we all get along
Another self betrothed Insomnia Night.
Started off last night. Went online looking for a nice dinner to take the old lady.
Found a bunch in San Francisco, but wasn’t so sure as I knew the local team is
playing for the NFC Championship and so places might be crowded or we
might just get caught in Traffic.
Tried to float riding Bart. But, newly done hair and rain does not work for
most ladies.
And, so make a long story short, visited “Check Please SF” (http://blogs.kqed.org/checkplease/) and checked out a bunch
of restaurants.
Made a good long list with web sites, phone numbers, and hours
of Operations; especially for Sunday Nights.
Next in line is to print – Connected to printer server using UNC (\\myprintserver\hplaserj).
But, no printer drivers, etc.
Stupid error messages:
Windows can't find a driver for HP LaserJet 2100 PCL6 on the network. To locate one manually, click OK. Otherwise, click Cancel and consult your network administrator or the printer manufacturer's website.
Visited Control Panel, Device Manager and tried to add printer manually:
See – “HP LaserJet 2100″ is not listed.
Tried the “HP LaserJet 2200 Series PCL 5″, but no luck.
Tried various iterations accessible via “Have Disk”; especially after downloading PCL5 and PCL6
The generic PCL5 & PCL6 Drivers are available via:
HP Universal Print Driver for Windows PCL6
HP Universal Print Driver for Windows PCL5
But, still no joy.
Also read a bunch of relevant links:
HP LaserJet, Color LaserJet, and LaserJet AiO/MFP Products -
Install the driver included in the Windows 7 operating system (OS)
http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/Document.jsp?objectID=c02536257
Windows 7 64 bits driver for HP LaserJet 1200
Windows 7 – HP LaserJet 1200
http://www.sevenforums.com/drivers/6206-hp-laserjet-1200-a.html
Win 7 Drivers for Laserjet 2100
http://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Printer-All-in-One-Software/Win-7-Drivers-for-Laserjet-2100/td-p/257216
But, nothing quite nailed it.
What provided best relieve is:
1) From the run window, Enter the print server name (\\myprintserver)
2) Choose to view “remote printers”
3) Wait until the printers are shown
4) Right click on your printer and choose “properties”
5) In the “Properties” window, access the “Sharing Tab”
6) Choose the “Additional Drivers…” button
7) Ensure that you have selected all the Drivers for each Processor Architecture (x86, x64).
8) For each missing OS (that you need supported), click on the “Add…” button
In our case, the x64 driver was not previously chosen.
You might need Windows 2003 x64 Server, Windows 2008 x64 server CD depending on the OS that is running on your print server.
So go your Print Server, place the Windows 2003 x 64, Windows 2008 x64 CD, etc in your CD plate or install from Network Location.
Once all drivers are installed and available, return to your client workstation, and try connecting to your Network Printer once again.
This time you should receive an option asking whether you will like to “Install Driver”.
Kind of reminds me of “Steve Winwords – Back in the HighLife” again.
References:
Update and Manage Printer Drivers
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc732946.aspx
How to: Add 64-bit print drivers on 32-bit Windows Server 2003 or Windows Server 2008 print server
Installing Windows Vista Print Drivers on Windows Server 2003
How to find a compatible printer driver for a computer that is running a 64-bit version of Windows
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/895612
Windows 7 Compatibility Center
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/compatibility/windows-7/en-us/default.aspx
Playing a bit with Jython lately.
As in other programming languages & scripting tools needed to invoke another Application. Be it another script or Application, one occasionally needs to spawn another stand-alone app:
So looked at some sample code and ended up with something resembling
import sys
import os
import tempfile
import popen2
script_contents = 'Echo "Hello World"'
script_file = tempfile.mktemp('.cmd')
file = open(script_file, 'w')
file.write(script_contents)
file.close()
command = r'"%s"' % script_file
proc = popen2.Popen3(command, True)
proc.tochild.close()
output = proc.fromchild.read()
errors = proc.childerr.read()
status = proc.wait()
print '[DEBUG] OUTPUT: %s' % output
print '[DEBUG] ERRORS: %s' % errors
print '[DEBUG] RETURN CODE: %s' % status
if os.path.isfile(script_file):
os.remove(script_file)
Though, the above script is a bit watered-down it basically does the following:
As I tried running the app kept getting an error that resembles the error listed below:
Failed to get environment, environ will be empty: (0, 'Failed to execute command ([\'sh\', \'-c\', \'env\']): java.io.IOException: Cannot run program "sh": CreateProcess error=2, The system cannot find the file specified') script_file name is: e:\temp\tempfile.cmd Traceback (innermost last): File "C:\Windows\TEMP\eqscript1323213519948", line 41, in ? File "E:\Program Files (x86)\jython\Lib\popen2.py", line 72, in __init__ File "E:\Program Files (x86)\jython\Lib\javashell.py", line 64, in execute OSError: (0, 'Failed to execute command ([\'sh\', \'-c\', "e:\\\\temp\\\\tempfile.cmd"\']): java.io.IOException: Cannot run program "sh": CreateProcess error=2, The system cannot find the file specified')
Had a bit of difficulty understanding the problem:
To get a bit closer to what was happening behind the scene, commented out the bit of code
that was removing the script file:
Doing so allowed us to preserve the payload and execute the payload file directly (against the OS).
if os.path.isfile(script_file):
os.remove(script_file)
Ended up the at the same place \ space:
Could not execute due to file not found.
More goggling brought us joy. The problem is that sometimes one has to explicitly specify the OS.
The clue came from:
Jython – javaos.getenv() gives “Failed to get environment, environ will be empty”
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/245787/jython-javaos-getenv-gives-failed-to-get-environment-environ-will-be-empty
Try to uncomment and change the os setting in the 'registry' file (it is in the same directory as your jython.jar / i hope) # python.os determines operating-specific features, similar to and overriding the # Java property "os.name". # Some generic values are also supported: 'nt', 'ce' and 'posix'. # Uncomment the following line for the most generic OS behavior available. #python.os=None python.os=nt # try nt or dos
Once we knew we had to deal with the registry file the next question is what is actual name of the registry file, where should it be placed, what determines where the system looks for it:
The easiest path would have being to go back and read the Language’s documentation, but as always took the laziest path. Googled for it:
Found some help along the way via:
The registry file:
In our case, we created a file named registry and added this lone line:
python.os=ntThings worked well once we explicitly specified that our OS is Windows.
It is probably that by default the OS is Unix.
But, as Billy Currington said, thank God for good directions, on the way home went back (after the fact) and read the Jython’s FAQ:
http://jython.org/archive/22/userfaq.html#where-s-the-registry-file
The location and name of the registry was a bit clearer.
Microsoft – SQL Server – Reporting Services – Scheduled Reports not going out ( Error Failure sending mail: Attempted to read or write protected memory. This is often an indication that other memory is corrupt)
From one of our servers scheduled reports were not going out.
Reviewed the “MS Reporting Services” log files and noticed error entries that correlated with the date and time reports were scheduled to go out:
Error Entries:
Failure sending mail: Attempted to read or write protected memory. This is often an indication that other memory is corrupt.
Full Error Message:
ReportingServicesService!emailextension!3!01/19/2012-15:00:03:: Error sending email. System.AccessViolationException: Attempted to read or write protected memory. This is often an indication that other memory is corrupt.
at Microsoft.ReportingServices.EmailDeliveryProvider.EmailProvider.CreateMessage(Notification notification)
at Microsoft.ReportingServices.EmailDeliveryProvider.EmailProvider.Deliver(Notification notification)
Remediation:
Restarted Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services.
From this one host, Connecting to any MS SQL Server Instance on the Network came back with this error:
HResult 0×80090304, Level 16, State 1
SSL Provider: The Local Security Authority cannot be contacted
Tried with the following NCipher \ SSL Configuration Changes:
1) Check the version and date modified for the file dbnetlib.dll located under c:\windows\system32 in your client . If the date modified is not the same then replace the file with the one from working box.
2) Since you are using nCipher, change the following registry key: HKLM\Software\nCipher\Cryptography\UseModulekeys to 0 and reboot, change it back to 1 and reboot and see if that helps.
3) I can see a number of cases where the issue occur when nCipher is the default CSP. Set SQL Server as the default CSP for the SQL Servers.
4) If the below key is enabled, disable it. This is only for SQL 2008 (which support nCipher) so for other SQL server we need to disable it
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SecurityProviders\Schannel\Protocols\TLS 1.0\Server]
“Enabled”=hex:00,00
But, nothing quite helped until we un-installed the NCipher\nFast Client.
We went this route as we were no longer using NCipher\nFast on that box.
Trying to connect to a MS SQL Server Instance using sqlcmd.exe and got the error message below:
Sqlcmd: Error: Connection failure. SQL Native Client is not installed correctly.
Of course, Googled and discovered that it is probably a Windows Path issue (manifested by the system picking up a wrong \ mismatched dll).
Errors such as this is common in cases where multiple SQL Server Binaries are loaded on the system.
As a work-around:
To fix:
One of our end-users upon issuing a Linked-Server Query was getting an error that read
“Microsoft – SQLServer – Msg 7302 – Cannot create an Instance of OLE DB Provider “OraOLEB.Oracle” for Linked Server”.
I re-issued a similar query and confirmed that that the exact query was working for me.
This led me to believe that the error was user or permission related.
There are a few tools and areas that one use to gather more diagnostic information:
Tools:
1) Use Microsoft\SysInternals Process Monitor tool
a) Initiate a Process Monitor Session
b) From MS Windows Task Manager, determine the “Process ID” for the MS SQL Server Service
c) filter for all events excluding those whose result is marked “success”
2) Using Local Policy, ensure that Object access failures are logged in the Event Viewer
Using the result from the areas briefly discussed above led us to determine that the user account lacked
some permissions.
To augment the user’s account:
1) Via Component Services, offer more permissions by default to all DCOM objects
2) Via Component Services, offer more permissions to specific DCOM Objects
a) MSDAINITIALIZE (DCOM Configuration \ MSDAINITIALIZE)
b) OraOLEDB.Oracle (DCOM Configuration \ OraOLEDB.Oracle)
3) Determine Account incubator Group – which group will “carry” the permissions
a) local or Machine “Distributed Com Users” group
b) Custom Active Directory Group
c) Default Active Directory group such as “Domain Users’
Related Error Messages:
1) The machine-default permissions settings do not grant Local Activation permission for the Com Server application with CLSID {2206CDB0-19C1-11D1-89E0-00C04FD7A829} to the User <xxxx>. Thus security permissions can be modified using the Component Services Administration tool.
Images:
Results of running “Microsoft\SysInternals” Tool:
Filtered on:
Results of running “Microsoft\SysInternals” Tool:
Review list of modules loaded:
a) msdaora.dll
Results of enabling auditing on failed object access (via Local Policy):
What to look for
a) Source –> DCOM
b) Type –> Error
c) Event ID –> 10016
References:
Microsoft – Windows – Network Connections is empty
Earlier today, post MS Windows XP – SP3 upgrade ended up with a problem where the “Network Connection” network applet was empty.
Also, noticed the error pasted below:
The COM+ Event System detected a bad return code during its internal processing. HRESULT was 80070005 from line 44 of d:\comxp_sp3\com\com1x\src\events\tier1\eventsystemobj.cpp. Please contact Microsoft Product Support Services to report this error.
The web has a few very interesting article:
1) You may experience various problems after you install the Microsoft Security Bulletin
MS05-051 for COM+ and MS DTC
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/909444
2) How to troubleshoot missing network connections icons in Windows Server 2003 and in Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/825826
3) Device Manager may not show any devices and Network Connections may not show any network connections after you install Windows XP Service Pack 3 (SP3)
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/953979
The steps that worked for us are:
1) Downloading and running KB 953979 (via http://support.microsoft.com/kb/953979)
2) Per KB 909444 – Restore Permissons on the Com+ Catalog
In the %windir%/registration folder:
a) Make sure that the Everyone group has Read permissions
b) Make sure that the Administrator group and system user has full permissons
c) For each *.db file, ensure that the
“Allow inheritable auditing entries from the parent to propagate to
this object and all objects.” is granted
d) Using the ”Local Policies” MMC, granting “Bypass traverse checking” to the
Everyone Group
