Heartbleed OpenSSL bug – What you need to know

I thought I would give a plug for Troy Hunt’s blog post as he has taken some time to write it all up. If you want to read about the security ‘Heartbleed OpenSSL bug’ then take a look at the link below. Worth a read!

http://www.troyhunt.com/2014/04/everything-you-need-to-know-about.html 

I also did a blog post about creating OpenSSL certificates for development, but I emphased in that post the following statement:

you should purchase a secure SSL certificate for production environments

Greg Olsen
YellowDuckGuy

ReSharper 6 – Beta Available for Download

Today I noticed that a beta version of ReSharper 6 has been made public on the JetBrains website here and thought I would give it a plug on my blog as it’s a brilliant development tool.

What is ReSharper?

ReSharper is a refactoring and productivity extension by JetBrains that extends native functionality of Microsoft Visual Studio 2003, 2005, 2008 and 2010. 

ReSharper brings smart C# code analysis, editing, highlighting and refactoring features to .NET developers. ReSharper extends much of its support to VB.NET, build scripts, ASP.NET, XML, and XAML files. All ReSharper features are available in mixed solutions where different projects use .NET Framework, .NET Compact Framework, Silverlight, as well as other frameworks and tools from the Visual Studio ecosystem.

Latest changes or additions to ReSharper v6.0:

• JavaScript, CSS, and ASP.NET MVC 3 Razor support
• Bundled decompiler: home-grown technology that is now also available in dotPeek
• New navigation actions and valuable additions to existing navigation features
• Code inspections and quick-fixes for on-the-fly code quality control in VB.NET code
• Multiple new code inspections and quick-fixes for C#
• Color assistance (highlighting and color picker) in C#, VB.NET, XAML, and CSS
• In-place refactorings
• A pack of new context actions to manipulate strings
• JavaScript QUnit test runner support
• Bug fixes and new actions in XAML support
• ReSharper suggestions explained right from within quick-fix menus
• Performance Improvements in Solution Wide Analysis and other areas

Resharper Product Page can be found here.

CRM Developers – you can use it to!

ReSharper can be a great extension on top of the native functionality provided by Visual Studio which can also improve productivity and refactoring of code used by CRM Developers. CRM developers can refactor their Plug-in, Silverlight, JavaScript or XML code using this extension within Visual Studio.

Greg Olsen
Yellow Duck Guy

Failed to access IIS metabase

What is this all about? You may get this error when you attempt to browse a site hosted by IIS.

Problem:

The problem can occur due to the order that some of the install components were installed on the machine, normally because the .NET Framework (i.e. .NET 2.0) or Visual Studio 2005 was installed before IIS. Therefore, ASP.NET is not correctly configured to execute. You can also get this error if a particular user account doesn’t have access to IIS metabase.

Solution:

I have successfully been able to fix this issue by running the following command:

aspnet_regiis –i

Run this command from the Visual Studio Command Prompt (from the Visual Studio Tools start menu) or by using DOS command prompt and navigating to the following location C:\Windows\Microsoft.Net\Framework\v2.0.50727 and then run aspnet_regiis –i

The command aspnet_regiis –i will install the ASP.NET and update IIS metabase.

Hope that helps!

Greg Olsen
Yellow Duck Guy

Cannot convert type ‘ASP.login_aspx’ to ‘System.Web.UI.WebControls.Login’

Well I got this error last week on my ASP.NET 2.0 Web Application im currently developing and thought what is happening here? I haven’t hit this error before?

 

THE ERROR:

Compilation Error
Description: An error occurred during the compilation of a resource required to service this request. Please review the following specific error details and modify your source code appropriately.

Compiler Error Message: CS0030: Cannot convert type ‘ASP.login_aspx’ to ‘System.Web.UI.WebControls.Login’

Source Error:

Line 120:        public security_login_aspx() {
Line 121:            string[] dependencies;
Line 122:            ((Login)(this)).AppRelativeVirtualPath = "~/security/login.aspx";
Line 123:            if ((global::ASP.security_login_aspx.@__initialized == false)) {

COMMENTS:
I got this ugly output when I published my Website from within Visual Studio 2005 using the right-click>Publish Website option.  I thought maybe its a clash of names – cause these look basically the same i.e. Login.

So I thought I would do some googling on the issue and stumbled across it within my search and it seems im not the only one who has hit this.

 

From reading a number of posts and Microsoft feedback (see: http://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/ViewFeedback.aspx?FeedbackID=102543) it does relate to the naming of the objects during compilation.

 

SOLUTION:
Be careful when naming aspx pages! 

To get around the issue I simply changed my Login.aspx to SignIn.aspx because I figured I had no controls or objects to clash with this name. I republished and BINGO! no longer do I have the error – all fixed. It seems though you are best to use the class name within your codebehind page (.cs) file and also change the inherits attribute in the aspx page (HTML View) to match.

 

The Web Platform and Tools Team at Microsoft have placed feedback of the following (using the URL above):

If you have used a Page that effectively uses a codebehind classname that is the same as say the Login control, that is Login, e.g. your page was called Login.aspx, then when you pre-compile (publish) the web site as an updateable web site, the aspx is retained and tries to compile against a type called Login in the code behind. It does not resolve to be that in the codebehind assembly

Try using a classname for your codebehind and defined in the inherits that does not clash with a type in System.Web, e.g. LoginPage, or qualify the class and therefore the inherits statement with a namespace, e.g.

<%@ page … inherits="theNs.Login" %.

namespace theNs { public partial class Login : System.Web.UI.Page { .. } }

Many Thanks
The Web Platform and Tools Team.

Hope this helps you if you get this error. If you need anymore clarification then feel free to post a comment with your question.

Yellow Duck Guy
Greg Olsen

 

Create a ASP.NET Membership Security Database

Here I will explain how to add ASP.NET 2.0 Membership Security tables, stored procedures, views to your existing SQL Server database – its simple! Here’s how:

 

Prerequisites:

Visual Studio 2005 installed

SQL Server 2005 installed (with a current database and your windows account with dbo/admin rights)

1. Locate your SQL Database – make sure you have rights to it
2. Locate the Visual Studio Command Prompt (All Programs > Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 > Visual Studio Tools > Visual Studio 2005 Command Prompt)
3. Run the following command: aspnet_regsql -S (local) -E -d MyDatabaseName -A all

Note:  Change (local) to your SQL database server name if it is not local. Change MyDatabaseName to your database name (suggest you create a test database first to test this on – don’t do directly on production database!)

DONE!  Now have a look at your database. You should see a whole lot of new tables and stored procedures etc within your database.

For more help on the switches on the command above, type: aspnet_regsql /? within the Visual Studio 2005 Command Prompt.

Any questions about the above process then feel free to post a comment and I will reply.

Yellow Duck Guy
Greg Olsen