In this blog post I’ll show you a quick an easy way to create a shortcut to the HOSTS file on Windows 7/Server 2008+. By itself that wouldn’t be a huge deal, but I’ll throw in a nice bonus so that you’ll add the “Run as Administrator” property so you can save the edits you make. If you are like me and frequently need to edit the HOSTS file on a computer running with UAC enabled (Vista, Windows 7, Server 2008+) you may have run into the following error when trying to save changes:
“C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts.txt
You don’t have permission to save in this location. Contact the administrator to obtain permission.
Would you like to save in the My Documents folder instead?”
The Issue
The error above is caused by the program you are using to edit the HOSTS (Notepad in my case) isn’t running in “Run as Administrator” mode while trying to modify a system file. As a result it will ask you to save to a location (My Documents) that it does have access to. Unfortunately we do need to save it to the original location.
Background on HOSTS file
For those unfamiliar, the HOSTS file is used to locally map hostnames to IP addresses and will supersede values that come from Domain Name System (DNS). As a developer I use the HOSTS file to point my local machine to a development environment that isn’t registered in DNS or perhaps a specific server in a load balanced server farm.
The Solutions
Yes you read this section title right, I came up with multiple solutions (2 1/2 really) to this issue. If you prefer to see me dazzle you with my PowerShell skills skip ahead to solutions #2 and #3. If you’d like the old-fashioned “by hand” solution check out #1 below.
Solution #1
As stated above, the first solution I would consider more of a manual approach. The first thing you will do is create a shortcut to your favorite text editing software. Since Notepad comes with just about every Windows OS I chose that for simplicity. One way to create the shortcut is to find it in the All Programs of your Start menu and Right Click –> Send To –> Desktop (create shortcut).
When calling Notepad from the command line it is possible to specify the file to open automatically by listing it as a command line argument. If your text editor doesn’t support this you’ll need to find an alternate approach. Once you have the created the shortcut edit the properties by Right Clicking the shortcut and choosing Properties. You will need to add the file location of HOSTS (%windir%\system32\drivers\etc\hosts) to the value already in the Target box shown below. After you have added the file location to Target click the Advanced button in the lower right shown below. 
On the advanced properties window you’ll want to check the box for “Run as administrator” which then allows you to edit the HOSTS file when opened in Notepad. Click OK.
If everything was successful when you double click the shortcut you should be prompted by a UAC box (because we chose to Run as Administrator) that lists the program (Notepad) and the file location (HOSTS file) to be opened. Click Yes.
Solution #2
The first PowerShell solution automates the process of creating the desktop shortcut but with one drawback: you still need to manually set the shortcut to “Run as Administrator”. Just follow the steps from Solution #1 to add that additional piece.
Download the script here.
$wshell = New-Object -comObject WScript.Shell
$desktopPath = $wshell.SpecialFolders.Item('Desktop')
$link = $wshell.CreateShortcut("$desktopPath\HOSTS.lnk")
$link.TargetPath = '%windir%\system32\notepad.exe'
$link.Arguments = '%windir%\system32\drivers\etc\hosts'
$link.Description = 'launches HOSTS file'
$link.WorkingDirectory = '%HOMEDRIVE%%HOMEPATH%'
$link.IconLocation = '%windir%\system32\notepad.exe'
#$link.Hotkey = "CTRL+SHIFT+H"
$link.Save()
Note: You’ll notice that I commented out the line to assign a hotkey. I was using that hotkey as a 3-button quick test of my script results instead of multiple clicks to return to the desktop, find the shortcut, and click it. Feel free to uncomment and use it permanently, just be sure you don’t already have a hotkey mapped to that key combination.
Solution #3 (more like #2b)
Since I couldn’t find a way to automate the setting for “Run as Administrator” in Solution #2 I continued my pursuits by “thinking outside the box.” I thought if I can’t set that property perhaps I can launch the process in elevated mode instead. (Sidenote: anyone familiar with Mythbusters, one of my favorite TV shows, may recognize their philosophy of attempting to recreate the results without necessarily adhering to the exact circumstances originally proposed.) As a result what I ended up with was a shortcut on the desktop that actually runs a PowerShell command that in turn opens the HOSTS file in “Run as Administrator” mode.
Download the script here.
$wshell = New-Object -comObject WScript.Shell
$desktopPath = $wshell.SpecialFolders.Item('Desktop')
$link = $wshell.CreateShortcut("$desktopPath\HOSTS.lnk")
$link.TargetPath = 'PowerShell'
$link.Arguments = '-command "Start-Process "notepad.exe" -Verb Runas -ArgumentList "C:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts""'
$link.Description = 'launches HOSTS file'
$link.WorkingDirectory = '%HOMEDRIVE%%HOMEPATH%'
$link.IconLocation = '%windir%\system32\notepad.exe'
#$link.Hotkey = "CTRL+SHIFT+H"
$link.Save()
While I do appreciate that I was able to get the results I wanted there are a few things that I don’t like about this solution. First is that I had to hardcode the “C:\…” file location for HOSTS. While a large percentage of users will have their Windows folder on the C:\ drive, not all will (especially one of my home machines where Windows is on the W: drive.) Technically I could overcome this with enough string manipulations, but I didn’t have time to mess with it. The second issue is that I have an intermediate step of launching the PowerShell console which then runs the open Notepad command. The PowerShell console only shows for a second or two and uses minimal resources but it’s definitely not as efficient as it could be.
Conclusion
So there you have it, 3 different ways to quickly and easily launch the HOSTS file in a save-able manner. The first two solutions have a minor amount of manual steps required while the third is fully automated but with the drawbacks that I pointed out. If anyone reading this knows a way to assign the “Run as Administrator” property through PowerShell I would very much appreciate a link or resource. I spent a good chunk of time researching but came up empty handed. I hope you were able to gain something useful from this post. I know I had a great deal of fun researching for it.
-Frog Out
Links
Solution #2 and #3 script downloads
Solution #2 script
Solution #3 script
Create shortcut PowerShell script adapted from
http://powershell.com/cs/blogs/tips/archive/2009/04/20/create-powershell-shortcuts.aspx
Open with “Run as Admininistrator” PowerShell concept adapted from
http://powershell.com/cs/forums/p/3323/4561.aspx#4561
This is a quick blog post for a fun PowerShell script I got to write today. My client asked me to make a listing of all instances of a particular workflow currently running on one of our SharePoint farms. Since we have dozens of SharePoint lists spread out across numerous sub-sites on this farm I decided to tackle the request with PowerShell.
Here is a quick overview of what the scrip accomplishes. First I get a reference to the site collection in question. Next I get the workflow template from the name of the workflow I’m checking for. Next I search all webs within the site collection and all lists within each web. I filter the lists for any workflow associations with a BaseId matching my workflow template Id while also having at least 1 running instance. Once I know there are running instances on this list I can then loop through all items in the list checking for workflows that are in the “Running” state. I then output the SPWeb name, SPList name, and SPListItem name into a delimited output.
On a side note you may notice that I use $($variable.property) in my “write-output…” command. I do this so that the property values are evaluated first before being passed to the the output stream. If you attempt $variable.property you’ll most likely end up with a default value for $variable (typically ToString()) followed by “.property” which is not the intended result.
Download Script
Click here for a copy of this script off my SkyDrive.
*Note: As I’m currently very busy with SharePoint Saturday Columbus tasks this script is just in draft form so no recursive traversal of site hierarchy, input parameters, comments, etc.
$workflowNameToCheck = "My Sample Workflow"
$url = "http://SharePointDemo"
$spSite = new-object Microsoft.SharePoint.SPSite($url)
$spWeb = $spSite.OpenWeb()
$workflowBase = $spweb.WorkflowTemplates | where {$_.Name -eq $workflowNameToCheck}
$spWeb.Dispose()
foreach($spWeb in $spSite.AllWebs)
{
for($i = 0; $i -lt $spWeb.Lists.Count; $i++)
{
$spList = $spweb.Lists[$i]
$assoc = $spList.WorkflowAssociations | where {$_.BaseId -eq $workflowBase.Id.ToString() `
-and $_.RunningInstances -gt 0}
if($assoc -ne $null)
{
foreach($item in $spList.Items)
{
if(($item.Workflows | where {$_.InternalState -eq "Running"}) -ne $null)
{
write-output "$($spWeb.Name) | $($spList.Title) | $($item.Name)"
}
}
}
}
$spWeb.Dispose()
}
$spSite.Dispose()
Conclusion
This script (very much in draft form) checks for running instances of a given workflow within a site collection. After writing this script today I felt that this is probably a common search for some people so I hope you can glean some useful information from it. If you find it useful or have any questions feel free to let me know. Enjoy!
-Frog Out
Three weeks ago at the Central Ohio Day of .Net 2010 conference (my recap here) I was approached by one of my Sogeti coworkers David Giard to do a guest interview on PowerShell for his popular video series Technology and Friends. If you’ve never gotten a chance to see this series, in each episode David interviews a special guest on topics ranging across all forms of technology. David even puts in some nice production value with music, overlays, and a special unique ending. His series is a great way to get wide exposure to a variety of topics with a personal touch that you may not typically run into in your typical experience. If you have any feedback on the video please feel free to leave comments here. Enjoy the show!
Technology and Friends: Brian Jackett on PowerShell
http://technologyandfriends.com/archive/2010/06/28/tf097.aspx
-Frog Out
I’m happy to announce that I’ll be speaking at SPTechCon Boston 2010 this upcoming October 20-22. The presentation I will be giving is titled “Real World Deployment of SharePoint 2007 Solutions” and below is the session abstract. I’m very excited to be speaking at SPTechCon Boston as I attended and live blogged the recent SPTechCon San Francisco this past Feb (link here to recap of that event) and was impressed with all of the people and content I was exposed to. If you have a chance to attend SPTechCon Boston I would highly encourage it. Also on a side note you may notice the nice badge that the SPTechCon organizers provided on the right hand side of my blog. Look forward to seeing you there if you’re attending.
Title: Real-World Deployment of SharePoint 2007 Solutions
Audience and Level: IT Admin, Intermediate
Abstract: “All I have to do is run some STSADM commands to deploy my SharePoint solutions, right?” If you are saying that to yourself, then you are missing out on some of the more advanced processes you can employ to deploy and maintain your SharePoint solutions and farm. In this session, we will cover lessons learned from three years of deploying and automating SharePoint solutions. This will include using a combination of STSADM, PowerShell, SharePoint API and a number of other tools in a real-world situation to deploy an entire suite of custom SharePoint solutions. This session is targeted to farm administrators and developers. Prior experience with SharePoint solutions, STSADM and minimal PowerShell experience is suggested.
-Frog Out
It is with great pleasure that today I can announce the very first SharePoint Saturday Columbus. SharePoint Saturday Columbus 2010 will be happening on August 14th at The Conference Center at OCLC in Dublin, OH. As many of the readers of my blog may be aware I’ve attended or spoken at over half a dozen SharePoint Saturdays in the past 8 months alone, but this will be my first time actually organizing one. Myself and a group of very dedicated individuals have been hard at work the past few months getting the ball rolling and we’re happy to see it taking shape.
Pertinent Resources
What can you do?
There are three main areas that we are looking for your help at this time.
- Spread the word – simply put start spreading the word to friends, coworkers, user groups, clients, and anyone else you think may be interested in SharePoint Saturday Columbus 2010. We’ll be opening registration in early July so look for an announcement with details closer to that timeframe.
- Sponsorship – if your company or a company you know is interested in sponsoring SharePoint Saturday Columbus 2010 we have many opportunity levels available. Email SPSColumbus@Live.com for more information and we’ll send you a sponsorship packet.
- Speakers – if you or someone you know is interested in presenting at SharePoint Saturday Columbus 2010 please fill out a speaker submission form found here and email it to SPSColumbus@Live.com by July 10th.
I hope you can join us for this great event!
-Frog Out
<Update 6/7/2010 with feedback from Kelly Jones on network adapters />
Configuring Remote Desktop (RDP) from a host Hyper-V machine to a guest virtual machine can be tricky, so this post is dedicated to the issues and resolution steps I went through to allow RDP. Cutting to the point, below are the things to look for followed by some explanation about my scenario if you care to read. This is not an exhaustive list of what is required, just the items that were causing problems for my particular scenario.
Requirements
- Allow Remote Desktop Connections in guest OS.
- The network adapter type must allow communication with host machine (e.g. use an “Internal” or “External” virtual adapter.)
- If running Server 2008 R2 on guest, network discovery mode must be turned on.
- If running Server 2008 R2 on guest, the services supporting network discovery mode must be running:
- DNS Client
- Function Discovery Resource Publication
- SSDP Discovery
- UPnP Device Host
My Environment
A quick word about my environment. I am running Windows Server 2008 R2 with Hyper V on my laptop and numerous guest VMs running Windows Server 2003 R2 or Windows Server 2008 R2. I run a domain controller VM and then 1 or 2 SharePoint servers depending on my work needs. I’ve found this setup to work well except when it comes to the display window for my VMs.
The Issue
Ever since I began running Hyper-V I haven’t been able to RDP to my guest VMs which means the resolution for my connection windows ha been limited to what the native Hyper-V connections allow. During personal use I can put the resolution up to 1152 x 864, but during presentations I am usually limited to a measly 800 x 600. That is until today when I decided to fully investigate why I couldn’t connect via RDP.
First a thank you to John Ross (@johnrossjr), Christina Wheeler (@cwheeler76) and Clayton Cobb (@warrtalon) for various suggestions while I was researching tonight. As it turns out I had not 1, not 2, but 3 items preventing me from using RDP. Let’s dig into the requirements above.
Allow RDP Connection
This item I had previously taken care of, but it bears repeating because by default Windows Server 2008 R2 does not allow RDP connections. Change the setting from “Don’t allow…” to whichever “Allow connections…” setting suits your needs. I chose the less secure option as this is just my dev laptop.
Network Adapter Type
When I originally configured my VMs I configured each to use 2 network adapters: one using the physical ethernet adapter for internet use and a virtual private adapter for communication between the VMs. The connection for the ethernet adapter is an "”External” adapter and (as my co-worker Kelly Jones pointed out in comments below) does allow connections between host and guest. After he pointed this out though I realized that my ethernet adapter is not always reliably enabled (power cord not in disables NIC.) As such I need a secondary adapter that will always be on to connect the host and guest. The virtual private adapter I had allowed communication ONLY between the VMs and not to my host. There is a third option “Internal” which allows communication between VMs as well as to the host. After finding out this distinction I promptly created an Internal network adapter and assigned that to my VMs.
Turn On Network Discovery
Seems like a pretty common sense thing, but in order to allow remote desktop connections the target computer must able to be found by the source computer (explained here.) One of the settings that controls if a computer can be found on the network is aptly named Network Discovery. By default Windows Server 2008 R2 turns Network Discovery off for security purposes. To enable it open up the Network and Sharing Center. Click “Change Advanced Sharing Settings” on the left. On the following screen select “Turn on network discovery” for the currently used profile and click Save Settings. You may notice though that your selection to turn on network discovery doesn’t save. If this is the case then you most likely don’t have the supporting services running (as was my case.) 
Network Discovery Supporting Services
There are a total of 4 services (listed again below) that need to be running before you can turn on network discovery (explained here.) The below images highlight these services. In my guest VM I found that I had DNS Client already running while the other 3 were disabled. I set them all to enabled and started the ones that were stopped. After this change I returned to the Sharing settings screen and found that Network Discovery was turned on. I’m not sure whether this was picking up my attempt to turn it on previously or if starting those services turned it on. Either way the end result was a success.
- DNS Client
- Function Discovery Resource Publication
- SSDP Discovery
- UPnP Device Host
Before and After Results
The first image is the smaller square shaped viewing window used by the Hyper-V native connection. The second is the full-screen RDP connection in all its widescreen glory.
Conclusion
Over the past few months I’ve found Hyper-V to be very useful for virtualizing my development environments, but I’ve also had a steep learning curve to get various items configured just right. Allowing RDP connections to guest VMs was one area that I hadn’t been able to get right for the longest time. Now that I resolved these issues I hope that others can avoid the pitfalls that I ran into. If you know of any other items I left off feel free to let me know.
-Frog Out
Links
Turning on Network Discovery
http://sqlblog.com/blogs/john_paul_cook/archive/2009/08/15/remote-desktop-connection-on-windows-server-2008-r2.aspx
Services required for Network Discovery
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/winservergen/thread/2e1fea01-3f2b-4c46-a631-a8db34ed4f84
This weekend I presented my “The Power of PowerShell + SharePoint 2007” session at the Central Ohio Day of .Net conference in Wilmington, OH. This is the second year I’ve attended this conference, first time as a presenter. For those unfamiliar Day of .Net conferences are a one-day conference on all things .NET organized by developers for developers. These events are usually offered at no cost to anyone interested in .NET development.
The attendees of my session had some great questions and I hope they all got something worthwhile out of it. Below are my slides and demo scripts (some of which I didn’t have time to demo) along with my sample profiles. If you have any questions, comments, or feedback feel free to leave comments here or send me an email at brian.jackett@gmail.com.
Slides and Files
SkyDrive link
Technology and Friends Interview Experience
On a side note, any of you familiar with one of my Sogeti co-workers in Detroit David Giard may know that he hosts a web series called Technology and Friends. After my session David tracked me down and asked to interview me about PowerShell. I was happy to oblige so we sat down and taped some material. I don’t know when that interview will be going live, but look for it on www.davidgiard.com.
Conclusion
A big thanks goes out to all of the sponsors, speakers, and attendees for the Central Ohio Day of .Net conference. Without all of them this conference couldn’t have been possible. I had a great time at the conference and look forward to coming back next year whether that is as a speaker or attendee.
-Frog Out
The title of this post is pretty self explanatory, but I thought it worth mentioning since I had never run across this rule until just recently. A few weeks ago I was testing out a new workflow attached to a SharePoint 2007 document library. I uploaded various file types to ensure all were handled properly. One of the files I happened to test with was an empty .txt file to which I got the following error.
As you can see from the error message you aren’t allowed to upload a file that is empty. Fast forward to this week when I was doing some research for my upcoming SharePoint 2010 beta exams. I remembered that error I got a few weeks ago and decided to try out with SharePoint 2010 as well. No surprises I got a similar error.
Conclusion
Next time you are uploading files to a SharePoint 2007 or 2010 document library, make sure the file is not empty. Coincidentally when I tweeted about this issue a few friends replied that they had also found this error recently. I don’t know the internal reasoning why this is prevented but I assume it has something to do with how the blob for the file is stored in the database. I assume that this would still be the case even if you had Remote Blob Storage (RBS) configured for your farm, but don’t have access to such a farm to confirm. If anyone reading this does have access and wants to confirm that would be appreciated, just leave a comment.
-Frog Out
Next time you fire up PowerShell to work with the SharePoint API make sure you launch the proper bit version of PowerShell. Last week I had an interesting error that led to this blog post. Travel back in time a little bit with me to see where this 32 vs. 64 bit debate started.
History
Ever since the first pre-beta bits of Office 2010 landed in my lap I have been questioning whether it’s better to run 32 or 64 bit applications on a 64 bit host operating system. In relation to Office 2010 I heard a number of arguments for 32 bit including this link from the Office 2010 Engineering team. Given my typical usage scenarios 32 bit seemed the way to go since I wasn’t a “super RAM hungry” Excel user or the like.
The Problem
Since I had chosen 32 bit Office 2010, I tried to stick with 32 bit version of other programs that I run assuming the same benefits and rules applied to other applications. This is where I was wrong. Last week I was attempting to use 32 bit PowerShell ISE (Integrated Scripting Environment) on a 64 bit WSS 3.0 server. When trying to reference the 64 bit SharePoint DLLs I got the following errors about not being able to find the web application.
I have run into these errors when I have hosts file issues or improper permissions to the farm / site collection but these were not the case. After taking a quick spin around the interwebs I ran across the below forum post comment and another MSDN forum reply that explained the error. Turns out that sometimes it’s not possible to run 32 bit applications against a 64 bit OS / farm / assembly / etc.
…the problem could also be because your SharePoint is 64-Bit but your app is running in 32-bit mode
I quickly exited 32 bit PowerShell ISE and ran the same code under 64 bit PowerShell ISE. All errors were gone and the script ran successfully.
Conclusion
The rules of 32 vs. 64 bit interoperability do not always apply evenly across all applications and scenarios. In my case I wasn’t able to run 32 bit PowerShell against 64 bit SharePoint DLLs. I’m updating all of my links and shortcuts to use 64 bit PowerShell where appropriate. I’m quite surprised it has taken me this long to run into this error, but sometimes blind luck is all that keeps you from running into errors. Lesson learned and hopefully this can benefit you as well. Happy SharePointing all!
-Frog Out
Links
http://blogs.technet.com/b/office2010/archive/2010/02/23/understanding-64-bit-office.aspx
http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/sharepointdevelopment/thread/a732cb83-c2ef-4133-b04e-86477b72bbe3/
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/266255/filenotfoundexception-with-the-spsite-constructor-whats-the-problem
Wow! This past weekend I attended SharePoint Saturday Washington DC (SPSDC) which was quite an event to say the least. For those unfamiliar, SharePoint Saturday is a community driven event where various speakers gather to present at a FREE conference on all topics related to SharePoint. This made my fifth SharePoint Saturday attended and fourth I’ve spoken at. SPSDC was a bit different than most SharePoint Saturdays mostly due to the scale of it. We had almost 950 attendees, over 80 speakers presenting close to 90 sessions, and dozens of sponsors. A big thanks goes out to the organizers of this event. They put in a lot of hard work and time to pull this event off and should be very proud of the end result.
For SPSDC I presented “The Power of PowerShell + SharePoint 2007”. I want to thank all of the attendees of my session for coming and asking some great questions. Below you can find the slides and demo scripts for this session. I also took some photos throughout the day (not as many as usual since so much going on) so check them out. If you have any follow up questions feel free to drop me a line in the comments or the contact link at the top of the site.
Slides and Scripts
Click here for the demo scripts and slides posted on my SkyDrive.
VERY IMPORTANT NOTE: One thing I forgot to mention in my presentation. In order to run code against the SharePoint API you need to load the Microsoft.SharePoint.dll assembly first. Run the below command on the PowerShell console line to complete that:
[void][System.Reflection.Assembly]::LoadWithPartialName("Microsoft.SharePoint")
Photos
Facebook album
-or-
My album on Windows Live site (higher res shots).
-Frog Out