How I got rid of Google

Posted on January 15, 2017January 15, 2017 by Al

For the last couple of years I’ve been gradually removing myself from Google.

Why? Snowden.

Before Snowden I knew, in my heart, that I wasn’t happy with a big company hoovering up data about me (I’d quit Facebook for this very reason). I’d previously convinced myself that Google was OK and that they would “Do no evil”. I still believe that of them today, but what about tomorrow. There’s a great quote which I first encountered due to a post that went viral on metafilter: “If you are not paying for it, you’re not the customer; you’re the product being sold.“. Am I happy with Google having my data as the price for using their services? No, I’m not.

Back on the topic of privacy, I’ve got nothing to hide – that doesn’t mean that my privacy doesn’t matter. Spend 20 minutes to watch this ted talk on Why Privacy Matters.

So, motivation aside, what have I done?

Well let’s list what I used to use and what I now use:

Google Search – Starting with the easiest – I simply switched which search engine I use. My first search engine is now DuckDuckGo (scroll down on their homepage to learn more about them). It’s not as good as Google but it’s good enough and getting better all the time. For the cases that it does let me down I mix and match between bing and google; I realise that’s against the whole point of this post, but I’m ok with it due to the next item in the list …
Google Chrome – I switched to Firefox, simple. AND … I got some plugins. They’re awesome! The following 3 plugins combine to get rid of all tracking by the likes of Google.
- uBlock Origin blocks ads, trackers and malware sites. It’s brilliant. It blocks around 10% of my browsers requests and I don’t notice a thing.
- Self-Destructing Cookes – Once you close a tab it’s cookies are deleted (and you can whitelist for sites that you want cookies for).
- I don’t care about cookies – If you blow up all your cookies you start getting very annoying popups on sites saying “we use cookies, click to acknowledge”. Well, this plugin stops that nonsense.
Gmail – This is when things start getting more difficult. To replace a service like gmail when you’ve been so invested in it for over a decade isn’t as simple as switching your browser. The way I did it was to get my own domain name and run my own email server. I’ve done this before so it didn’t daunt me but I knew it was going to be a lot of effort.
- Server – On the server side I’m running a fairly standard Dovecot and Postfix setup. I put in some extra effort so that accounts and aliases are configured in a mysql database. Later on I also configured Solr for full text search of email – this was always the killer feature in gmail and I’m more than happy with my substitute. All of the emails are indexed and searches on them (server-side) take place in milliseconds. The data migration was a bit of a pain – I used Google Takeout to get all of my emails in one place, then added them to thunderbird and then copied them accross to my email server. It took a while but it worked.
- Web client – Nextcloud (owncloud when this all started but that forked and I moved to Nextcloud). This is a recurring theme on how I replaced google. In a nutshell it is an open-source piece of software that let’s you host your own private cloud. There is a comprehensive suite of plugins available, one of which gives you a web client for email. It’s a nice UI and it does everything I want.
- Mobile client – I run android and there’s an app called K-9 Mail that meets my needs perfectly.
Google Contacts – Nextcloud does this for me. Synchronisation to my android device is done with an app called DAVdroid
Google Calendar – Nextcloud does this for me. Synchronisation to my android device is also done with DAVdroid
Google Photos – Nextcloud does this for me.
Google Drive – Nextcloud does this for me.
Google Maps – OpenStreetMap is perfectly capable for my needs
Google Keep – Nextcloud does this for me. For tasks the synchronisation to my android device is also done with DAVdroid
Google+ – I stopped using it. This took a bit of thinking about but in the end I realised that an online social network has never actually made my life any better.
Google Android – The problem with the android phone you buy in a shop is that it comes with “Google Play Services” already on there. This gives google full access to everything on your phone – eek. The good news is that underneath this software there is the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) which other developers have taken and made awesome without the Google octopus being wrapped around it. Personally I’ve been running omnirom for the best part of 2 years and I love it.
Google Play Services – Running a different rom only solves the first part of the problem with Android. This problem is deeper than it first appears though. Some applications depend on you having Google Play Services installed. Most of these I can live without but there were 2 that this posed a problem for me. The app I use to control my thermostat at home apparently needs Google Play Services to do it. So does the app I use to interface with my burglar alarm (I can understand this more as it uses Google Cloud Messaging to push notifications such as “you have an alarm”). The solution (and this one took a while to get right) was microG. This is an open-source reimplementation of Google Play Services. It works perfectly for me 🙂
Google Instant Upload – Take a photo and have it uploaded – great idea … and, Nextcloud does this for me 🙂
Google Play Store – The place to get apps for an android device. Nicely substituted by f-droid. Even better, every app on there is open-source. This makes me a very happy man.
Google Navigation – OsmAnd is a nice app (open source ofcourse) that does navigation on my android. Good enough for me.
Google Reader – I realise this has been gone for a long time but I’ve never found a replacement I’ve been happy with. I have now, Nextcloud has a plugin that does what I want.

So to recap by turning things on it’s head, this is what I’m running and what it replaces:

Ubuntu server
- Dovecot, postfix, solr – gmail server
- Nextcloud – Server for contacts, calendar, photos, drive and keep. Web client for gmail, contacts, calendar, photos, drive, keep
Omnirom android – Google android
- Nextcloud client – instant upload, drive
- DavDroid – contacts, calendar, tasks
- K9 – gmail client
- F-Droid – Google Play Store
- microG – Google Play Services
- OsmAnd – Google Navigation
NAS – backups. I have nightly backups running for all of these services, they go across to my NAS which is, in turn, backed up to external drives.
My own domain – For a lot of this to work and to run it out of my own home I needed a few extra services (I don’t have a static IP address)
- No-IP Plus Domain – so that when my IP changes the domain still resolves to me
- Backup MX – if, for whatever reason, my email server was offline I didn’t want to miss any emails, this sorts that problem out.
- Alternate-Port SMTP – some email servers will reject email that comes from specific IP address ranges (e.g. domestic). It’s annoying and wrong but I can’t change it. This service gets around the problem.
Encryption – https achieved thanks to Let’s Encrypt

So here I am, finally Google free. It’s been a long journey that’s taken the best part of 2 years (yes, I could have been quicker but this was a free-time hobby thing and I don’t get a lot of time for that sort of thing).

It’s sort of a hollow victory now though … during this time our wonderful government in the UK passed a law (nicknamed the “Snooper’s Charter”) that says our ISPs have to store all internet activity for a year. The cherry on the cake? It doesn’t apply to our MPs! Fortunately, for now at least, there’s a way around it.

Delete a remote branch when gui’s fail

Posted on January 3, 2017January 6, 2017 by Al

I had a scenario when my git gui wouldn’t delete a remote branch – and neither would the usual command that I use.

In the end, this sorted it for me:

git push origin --delete branchname

1	git push origin --delete branchname

Working with mono-service on a raspberry pi

Posted on May 26, 2015 by Al

I was working with on a .net service that I wanted to run on my raspberry pi. Initially this was fairly easy but then I wanted to run it on startup as a service.

After a bit of digging I found out about mono-service and mono-service2 (for .net 1 and .net 2 respectively)

Working with this is as simply as …

To start a service

mono-service2 something.exe

1	mono-service2 something.exe

To stop a service

kill `cat /tmp/something.exe.lock`

1	kill `cat /tmp/something.exe.lock`

Woah – ok stopping isn’t so straightforward …

Basically when the service starts it puts a lock file in the /tmp folder. This is just a text file that contains the process id (pid) of the exe that is running. By doing the cat, and passing that to kill, the service will stop.

Next up was to get it to run on start up.

I found a useful bash script to start, stop and restart the service … http://www.geekytidbits.com/start-stop-daemon-with-mono-service2/

Unfortunately this didn’t work immediately for me as my version of linux was built differently and didn’t have some of the parts this script depended on.

My finished script now looks like this:

#!/bin/sh

daemon_name=BPI

PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin
DAEMON=/usr/bin/mono/mono-service2
NAME=BPI
DESC=BPI

. /lib/lsb/init-functions

MONOSERVER=$(which mono-service2)
MONOSERVER_PID=$(cat /tmp/BPI.lock)

case "$1" in
 start)
  log_daemon_msg "Starting BPI"
  if [ -z "${MONOSERVER_PID}" ]; then
   ${MONOSERVER} -l:/tmp/BPI.lock -d:/home/pi/bpi/current/ /home/pi/bpi/current/bpi.daemon.exe
   log_end_msg 0
  else -l 
   log_failure_msg "BPI is already running!"
   exit 1
  fi
 ;;
 stop)
  log_daemon_msg "Stopping BPI"
  if [ -n "${MONOSERVER_PID}" ]; then
   kill ${MONOSERVER_PID}
   rm /tmp/BPI.lock
   log_end_msg 0
  else
   log_failure_msg "BPI is not running"
   exit 1
  fi
 ;;
 restart)
  $0 stop
  sleep 1
  $0 start
  log_end_msg 0
 ;;
 *)
  log_action_msg "usage: $0 {start|stop|restart}"
esac

exit 0

log_end_msg 0

#!/bin/sh

daemon_name=BPI

PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin

DAEMON=/usr/bin/mono/mono-service2

NAME=BPI

DESC=BPI

. /lib/lsb/init-functions

MONOSERVER=$(which mono-service2)

MONOSERVER_PID=$(cat /tmp/BPI.lock)

case "$1" in

start)

log_daemon_msg "Starting BPI"

if [ -z "${MONOSERVER_PID}" ]; then

${MONOSERVER} -l:/tmp/BPI.lock -d:/home/pi/bpi/current/ /home/pi/bpi/current/bpi.daemon.exe

log_end_msg 0

else -l

log_failure_msg "BPI is already running!"

exit 1

;;

stop)

log_daemon_msg "Stopping BPI"

if [ -n "${MONOSERVER_PID}" ]; then

kill ${MONOSERVER_PID}

rm /tmp/BPI.lock

log_end_msg 0

else

log_failure_msg "BPI is not running"

exit 1

;;

restart)

$0 stop

sleep 1

$0 start

log_end_msg 0

;;

log_action_msg "usage: $0 {start|stop|restart}"

esac

exit 0

log_end_msg 0

This was put in \etc\init.d\bpi.sh and I did a chmod to make it match the others in that directory.

Note that there are a couple more parameters to our start command … -l to tell it where to put the lock file and -d to give it a start directory (my application writes logs and they would appear in funny places without this).

Finally the following command sets things up to start and stop in different runlevels:

sudo update-rc.d bpi.sh defaults

Creating tasks in Outlook from an external data source

Posted on August 24, 2014January 2, 2017 by Al

I’ve had this script for many years but currently I don’t have a use for it so I’m getting rid of it but putting it here for future reference in case I need it again.

It’s got code to retrieve data from a database and convert it to a tab delimited string. There’s more code which then parses this into tasks. The upshot of this is that I’ve used it in the past to take data from the clipboard (having come from excel).

The code has been anonymised which will have introduced a bug or two but the gist of it is valid.

Dim sqlUserList As String
Dim strConn As String
Dim strOutlookFolder As String
Dim strExternalOwner As String

'Entry point for macro
Sub UpdateData()
    'set global variables here
    sqlUserList = "'mrBob', 'mrBill', 'mrTed'"
    strConn = "Provider=SQLOLEDB;Data Source=myserver;Initial Catalog=mydatabase;User ID=myuser;Password=mypass;"
    strOutlookFolder = "Mailbox - My, Name\Folder Name"
    strExternalOwner = "TheOwner"
    
    Dim strClip As String
    Dim Lines() As String
    
    strClip = GetDataFromExternal()
    Lines = Split(strClip, vbCrLf)

    CreateTasks Lines
    CompleteTasks Lines
End Sub

Function GetDataFromExternal()
    'Define SQL
        strSQL = "SELECT data_1, data_2, data_3 From MyTable WHERE Owner IN (" & sqlUserList & ") ORDER BY data_1, data_2"
    
    'Declare variables'
        Dim objMyConn As ADODB.Connection
        Dim objMyRecordset As ADODB.Recordset

        Set objMyConn = New ADODB.Connection
        Set objMyRecordset = New ADODB.Recordset

    'Open Connection'
        objMyConn.ConnectionString = strConn
        objMyConn.Open

    'Open Recordset'
        objMyRecordset.Open strSQL, objMyConn
        
    'Gather data
        strOutput = ""
        Do Until objMyRecordset.EOF
            For I = 0 To objMyRecordset.Fields.Count - 1
                If I > 0 Then
                    strOutput = strOutput + vbTab
                End If
                strOutput = strOutput + Replace(Replace(CStr(objMyRecordset.Fields(I)), vbCrLf, ""), vbTab, "")
            Next
            strOutput = strOutput + vbCrLf
            objMyRecordset.MoveNext
        Loop
        
    'Clean up
        objMyRecordset.Close
        objMyConn.Close
        Set objMyConn = Nothing
        Set objMyRecordset = Nothing
    
    'Return data
        GetDataFromExternal = strOutput
End Function

Sub CreateTasks(SRLines() As String)
    Dim sr As String
    Dim SRCells() As String
    Dim objTask As Outlook.TaskItem
    Dim targetDate As Date
    Dim targetY As Integer
    Dim targetM As Integer
    Dim targetD As Integer
    
    For I = 0 To UBound(SRLines) - 1
        SRCells = Split(SRLines(I), vbTab)
        
        'search for existing task
        Set objTask = FindTask(SRCells(2), SRCells(0) & " - " & SRCells(5))
        If (objTask Is Nothing) Then
            'not found - raise it as new
            If (SRCells(8) <> "01/01/1753") Then
                targetY = Mid(SRCells(8), 7, 4)
                targetM = Mid(SRCells(8), 4, 2)
                targetD = Mid(SRCells(8), 1, 2)
                targetDate = DateSerial(targetY, targetM, targetD)
            Else
                targetDate = DateSerial(0, 0, 0)
            End If
            CreateTask SRCells(2), SRCells(0) & " - " & SRCells(5), SRCells(4) & vbCrLf & SRCells(7) & vbCrLf & SRCells(6), targetDate
        End If
    Next
End Sub

Sub CreateTask(strOwner As String, strSubject As String, strDescription As String, dtDue As Date)
    Dim olTask As Outlook.TaskItem
    Dim olApp As Outlook.Application
    Dim folder As MAPIFolder
    
    'create task in custom named task folder
    Set folder = GetFolder(strOutlookFolder)
    Set olTask = folder.Items.Add(olTaskItem)
    
    'using a custom property to track who the task is assigned to
    Set objProperty = olTask.UserProperties.Add(strExternalOwner, olText)
    If TypeName(objProperty) <> "Nothing" Then
        Select Case strOwner
            Case "MrBob"
                objProperty.Value = "Bob"
            Case "MrBill"
                objProperty.Value = "Bill"
            Case "MrTed"
                objProperty.Value = "Ted"
            Case Default
                objProperty.Value = strOwner
        End Select
    End If
    
    olTask.Body = strDescription
    olTask.Subject = strSubject
    olTask.Categories = "MyCategory"
    If (dtDue <> DateSerial(0, 0, 0)) Then
        olTask.DueDate = dtDue
    End If
    olTask.Save
    
End Sub

Sub CompleteTasks(SRLines() As String)
    Dim objFolder As Outlook.MAPIFolder
    
    Set objFolder = GetFolder(strOutlookFolder)
    CompleteFolderTasks SRLines, objFolder
End Sub

Sub CompleteFolderTasks(SRLines() As String, objFolder As Outlook.MAPIFolder)
    Dim objTasks As Outlook.Items
    Dim objTask As Outlook.TaskItem
    Dim objCategory As Outlook.Category
    Dim SRCells() As String
    Dim taskIsValid As Boolean

    Set objTasks = objFolder.Items
    For Each objTask In objTasks
        'first filter for INC
        If Left(objTask.Subject, 3) = "INC" Then
            'then double check category
            If (InStr(objTask.Categories, "Category") > 0) Then
                'now we have one we need to check if it's in the list of SRLines
                taskIsValid = False
                For I = 0 To UBound(SRLines) - 1
                    SRCells = Split(SRLines(I), vbTab)
                    If (objTask.Subject = SRCells(0) & " - " & SRCells(5)) Then
                        taskIsValid = True
                        Exit For
                    End If
                Next
                
                'found a missing one
                If (taskIsValid = False) Then
                    objTask.Categories = "Category Complete"
                    objTask.Save
                End If
            End If
        End If
    Next
End Sub


'Utility functions
Function FindTask(strOwner As String, strSubject As String)
    Dim objFolder As Outlook.MAPIFolder
    Dim objTasks As Outlook.Items
    Dim objTask As Outlook.TaskItem
    Dim strFind As String
    
    Set objFolder = GetFolder(strOutlookFolder)
    Set objTasks = objFolder.Items
    
    
    'escape special characters
    strSubject = Replace(strSubject, "'", "''")
    strSubject = Replace(strSubject, """", """""")
    
    strFind = "[Subject] = '" & strSubject & "'"
    Set objTask = objTasks.Find(strFind)
    Set FindTask = objTask
End Function


Public Function GetFolder(strFolderPath As String) As MAPIFolder
  ' strFolderPath needs to be something like
  '   "Public Folders\All Public Folders\Company\Sales" or
  '   "Personal Folders\Inbox\My Folder"

  Dim objApp As Outlook.Application
  Dim objNS As Outlook.NameSpace
  Dim colFolders As Outlook.Folders
  Dim objFolder As Outlook.MAPIFolder
  Dim arrFolders() As String
  Dim I As Long
  On Error Resume Next

  strFolderPath = Replace(strFolderPath, "/", "\")
  arrFolders() = Split(strFolderPath, "\")
  Set objApp = Application
  Set objNS = objApp.GetNamespace("MAPI")
  Set objFolder = objNS.Folders.Item(arrFolders(0))
  If Not objFolder Is Nothing Then
    For I = 1 To UBound(arrFolders)
      Set colFolders = objFolder.Folders
      Set objFolder = Nothing
      Set objFolder = colFolders.Item(arrFolders(I))
      If objFolder Is Nothing Then
        Exit For
      End If
    Next
  End If

  Set GetFolder = objFolder
  Set colFolders = Nothing
  Set objNS = Nothing
  Set objApp = Nothing
End Function

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Dim sqlUserList As String

Dim strConn As String

Dim strOutlookFolder As String

Dim strExternalOwner As String

'Entry point for macro

Sub UpdateData()

'set global variables here

sqlUserList = "'mrBob', 'mrBill', 'mrTed'"

strConn = "Provider=SQLOLEDB;Data Source=myserver;Initial Catalog=mydatabase;User ID=myuser;Password=mypass;"

strOutlookFolder = "Mailbox - My, Name\Folder Name"

strExternalOwner = "TheOwner"

Dim strClip As String

Dim Lines() As String

strClip = GetDataFromExternal()

Lines = Split(strClip, vbCrLf)

CreateTasks Lines

CompleteTasks Lines

End Sub

Function GetDataFromExternal()

'Define SQL

strSQL = "SELECT data_1, data_2, data_3 From MyTable WHERE Owner IN (" & sqlUserList & ") ORDER BY data_1, data_2"

'Declare variables'

Dim objMyConn As ADODB.Connection

Dim objMyRecordset As ADODB.Recordset

Set objMyConn = New ADODB.Connection

Set objMyRecordset = New ADODB.Recordset

'Open Connection'

objMyConn.ConnectionString = strConn

objMyConn.Open

'Open Recordset'

objMyRecordset.Open strSQL, objMyConn

'Gather data

strOutput = ""

Do Until objMyRecordset.EOF

For I = 0 To objMyRecordset.Fields.Count - 1

If I > 0 Then

strOutput = strOutput + vbTab

End If

strOutput = strOutput + Replace(Replace(CStr(objMyRecordset.Fields(I)), vbCrLf, ""), vbTab, "")

strOutput = strOutput + vbCrLf

objMyRecordset.MoveNext

Loop

'Clean up

objMyRecordset.Close

objMyConn.Close

Set objMyConn = Nothing

Set objMyRecordset = Nothing

'Return data

GetDataFromExternal = strOutput

End Function

Sub CreateTasks(SRLines() As String)

Dim sr As String

Dim SRCells() As String

Dim objTask As Outlook.TaskItem

Dim targetDate As Date

Dim targetY As Integer

Dim targetM As Integer

Dim targetD As Integer

For I = 0 To UBound(SRLines) - 1

SRCells = Split(SRLines(I), vbTab)

'search for existing task

Set objTask = FindTask(SRCells(2), SRCells(0) & " - " & SRCells(5))

If (objTask Is Nothing) Then

'not found - raise it as new

If (SRCells(8) <> "01/01/1753") Then

targetY = Mid(SRCells(8), 7, 4)

targetM = Mid(SRCells(8), 4, 2)

targetD = Mid(SRCells(8), 1, 2)

targetDate = DateSerial(targetY, targetM, targetD)

Else

targetDate = DateSerial(0, 0, 0)

End If

CreateTask SRCells(2), SRCells(0) & " - " & SRCells(5), SRCells(4) & vbCrLf & SRCells(7) & vbCrLf & SRCells(6), targetDate

End If

End Sub

Sub CreateTask(strOwner As String, strSubject As String, strDescription As String, dtDue As Date)

Dim olTask As Outlook.TaskItem

Dim olApp As Outlook.Application

Dim folder As MAPIFolder

'create task in custom named task folder

Set folder = GetFolder(strOutlookFolder)

Set olTask = folder.Items.Add(olTaskItem)

'using a custom property to track who the task is assigned to

Set objProperty = olTask.UserProperties.Add(strExternalOwner, olText)

If TypeName(objProperty) <> "Nothing" Then

Select Case strOwner

Case "MrBob"

objProperty.Value = "Bob"

Case "MrBill"

objProperty.Value = "Bill"

Case "MrTed"

objProperty.Value = "Ted"

Case Default

objProperty.Value = strOwner

End Select

End If

olTask.Body = strDescription

olTask.Subject = strSubject

olTask.Categories = "MyCategory"

If (dtDue <> DateSerial(0, 0, 0)) Then

olTask.DueDate = dtDue

End If

olTask.Save

End Sub

Sub CompleteTasks(SRLines() As String)

Dim objFolder As Outlook.MAPIFolder

Set objFolder = GetFolder(strOutlookFolder)

CompleteFolderTasks SRLines, objFolder

End Sub

Sub CompleteFolderTasks(SRLines() As String, objFolder As Outlook.MAPIFolder)

Dim objTasks As Outlook.Items

Dim objTask As Outlook.TaskItem

Dim objCategory As Outlook.Category

Dim SRCells() As String

Dim taskIsValid As Boolean

Set objTasks = objFolder.Items

For Each objTask In objTasks

'first filter for INC

If Left(objTask.Subject, 3) = "INC" Then

'then double check category

If (InStr(objTask.Categories, "Category") > 0) Then

'now we have one we need to check if it's in the list of SRLines

taskIsValid = False

For I = 0 To UBound(SRLines) - 1

SRCells = Split(SRLines(I), vbTab)

If (objTask.Subject = SRCells(0) & " - " & SRCells(5)) Then

taskIsValid = True

Exit For

End If

'found a missing one

If (taskIsValid = False) Then

objTask.Categories = "Category Complete"

objTask.Save

End If

End Sub

'Utility functions

Function FindTask(strOwner As String, strSubject As String)

Dim objFolder As Outlook.MAPIFolder

Dim objTasks As Outlook.Items

Dim objTask As Outlook.TaskItem

Dim strFind As String

Set objFolder = GetFolder(strOutlookFolder)

Set objTasks = objFolder.Items

'escape special characters

strSubject = Replace(strSubject, "'", "''")

strSubject = Replace(strSubject, """", """""")

strFind = "[Subject] = '" & strSubject & "'"

Set objTask = objTasks.Find(strFind)

Set FindTask = objTask

End Function

Public Function GetFolder(strFolderPath As String) As MAPIFolder

' strFolderPath needs to be something like

' "Public Folders\All Public Folders\Company\Sales" or

' "Personal Folders\Inbox\My Folder"

Dim objApp As Outlook.Application

Dim objNS As Outlook.NameSpace

Dim colFolders As Outlook.Folders

Dim objFolder As Outlook.MAPIFolder

Dim arrFolders() As String

Dim I As Long

On Error Resume Next

strFolderPath = Replace(strFolderPath, "/", "\")

arrFolders() = Split(strFolderPath, "\")

Set objApp = Application

Set objNS = objApp.GetNamespace("MAPI")

Set objFolder = objNS.Folders.Item(arrFolders(0))

If Not objFolder Is Nothing Then

For I = 1 To UBound(arrFolders)

Set colFolders = objFolder.Folders

Set objFolder = Nothing

Set objFolder = colFolders.Item(arrFolders(I))

If objFolder Is Nothing Then

Exit For

End If

Set GetFolder = objFolder

Set colFolders = Nothing

Set objNS = Nothing

Set objApp = Nothing

End Function

Determine the installed version of .net framework

Posted on July 3, 2014 by Al

Just making a quick reference for myself of the info found on msdn.

Take a look at the following registry keys

Frameworks 1 – 4
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\NET Framework Setup\NDP

Frameworks >= 4.5
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\NET Framework Setup\NDP\v4\Full\Release
where
378389 = .NET Framework 4.5
378675 = .NET Framework 4.5.1 installed with Windows 8.1
378758 = .NET Framework 4.5.1 installed on Windows 8, Windows 7 SP1, or Windows Vista SP2
379893 = .NET Framework 4.5.2

TFS: automating pending change set reminder emails

Posted on June 28, 2014June 28, 2014 by Al

As an admin of a TFS server I wanted to be able to send an email to people reminding them of any pending changes they may have.
I knocked up a quick application and have now configured it to run once a week with a scheduled task.

The main logic to get pending change sets is (where _vcs is a VersionControlServer from the Microsoft.TeamFoundation.VersionControl.Client namespace):

var itemSpecs = new[] { new ItemSpec("$/", RecursionType.Full) };
var pendingSets = _vcs.QueryPendingSets(itemSpecs, null, null);

var pendingChanges = (from pendingSet in pendingSets
					  from pendingChange in pendingSet.PendingChanges
					  orderby pendingSet.OwnerDisplayName, pendingChange.ServerItem
					  select new PendingChange
					  {
						  OwnerDisplayName = pendingSet.OwnerDisplayName,
						  OwnerName = pendingSet.OwnerName,
						  LocalItem = pendingChange.LocalItem,
						  ServerItem = pendingChange.ServerItem,
						  PendingSetName = pendingChange.PendingSetName + " [" + pendingSet.Computer + "]"
					  }).ToList();

var itemSpecs = new[] { new ItemSpec("$/", RecursionType.Full) };

var pendingSets = _vcs.QueryPendingSets(itemSpecs, null, null);

var pendingChanges = (from pendingSet in pendingSets

from pendingChange in pendingSet.PendingChanges

orderby pendingSet.OwnerDisplayName, pendingChange.ServerItem

select new PendingChange

{

OwnerDisplayName = pendingSet.OwnerDisplayName,

OwnerName = pendingSet.OwnerName,

LocalItem = pendingChange.LocalItem,

ServerItem = pendingChange.ServerItem,

PendingSetName = pendingChange.PendingSetName + " [" + pendingSet.Computer + "]"

}).ToList();

The PendingChange class is a simple POCO:

public class PendingChange
{
	public string OwnerDisplayName { get; set; }
	public string OwnerName { get; set; }
	public string LocalItem { get; set; }
	public string ServerItem { get; set; }
	public string PendingSetName { get; set; }
}

public class PendingChange

{

public string OwnerDisplayName { get; set; }

public string OwnerName { get; set; }

public string LocalItem { get; set; }

public string ServerItem { get; set; }

public string PendingSetName { get; set; }

}

After that it was a simple case of looping through the PendingChanges List<> building up emails and sending them.

Find a SharePoint feature with PowerShell

Posted on June 26, 2014 by Al

As I keep having to figure this out every time I come to do it I’m leaving it here for reference.

To find a SharePoint feature when you only know part of the name of it the following command can be used:

Get-SPFeature | where { $_.DisplayName -like "*something*" } | format-list -property displayname

1	Get-SPFeature \| where { $_.DisplayName -like "something" } \| format-list -property displayname

VPN goes mainstream

Posted on June 25, 2014 by Al

I’m beginning to hear a lot more about VPN’s (personal use for anonymity) in the press and I’m a bit worried it’s not understood enough.

Sales pitch: Get a VPN and your internet anonymity is restored.
Truth: It can be, but you have to be careful.

Other people will know more than me – there more than likely will be more to worry about than this. My main concern: cookies.

You get a lovely new vpn and then you use the same browser and user account to get on the net. BAM! You’re not anonymous any more!

A lot of the VPN providers sell the fact that it’s good for internet cafes. This is partly true – it will stop the others on the same wifi from snooping. The problem is that as soon as you log on to Facebook via your VPN you’re not anonymous. These are two different uses for a VPN and they’re not compatible. If you’re looking for anonymity what are you doing on a social network?! Scared of your ISP? You should be just as scared of any website you need to log on to!

My steps for a nice clean VPN:

Get a VPN service (don’t use it yet!)
Set up a fresh windows user account (some may say this is overkill but it’s saved me a few times. If you have a separate windows account then you don’t have to worry about your normal browser accidentally being opened and sending cookies.)
login to that user account and download firefox as the first thing you do
From now on, when on your VPN, only use your new windows account and firefox as your browser
Change the cookie settings to never allow cookies from a third party site (I’ve gone a bit further than this and ban all cookies and only re-enable source-cookies if I have a specific problem)
Install the NoScript firefox addon
Now you can start using your VPN
Never log on to any site – if you must log on to some sites then:
1. get a new anonymous email account that is unrelated to everything else
2. use that account for everything while you’re on your VPN
3. never use those accounts while not on your VPN

All for now …

Clone a web application

Posted on April 29, 2014 by Al

I needed to set up a new web application that was a copy of an existing web application. The constraint was that there was only one farm available to work with (I did have other farms but they were running different versions of SQL server).

Approach 1
I’ll first point out that this didn’t work, skip ahead if you’re not interested.
I went through the following steps:

perform a SQL backup of the content database
restore the backup into a new database
created a new web application
marked the content database that this created as offline
attached the cloned database to the web application with the powershell command Mount-SPContentDatabase – I was sure to pass in the -AssignNewDatabaseId parameter

The result was the database attached but it had no site collections in it.

It turns out that this approach could work but only if you attach it to a different farm. You can then backup that database and restore/attach it back on the source farm.

As I stated at the beginning – I didn’t have the luxury of a second farm.

Approach 2
The only option left that I could think of was to backup and restore each site collection manually.
I knocked up the following powershell script to automate this and it worked …

$sourceApp = "http://source.example.com"
$targetApp = "http://target.example.com"

$app = Get-SPWebApplication -Identity $sourceApp

foreach ($site in $app.Sites)
{
      Write-Host performing backup of $site.URL
      Backup-SPSite -Identity $site.URL -Path "c:\backup\migration.bak" -force

      $newurl = $site.URL -replace $sourceApp, $targetApp

      Write-Host restoring into $newurl
      Restore-SPSite -Identity $newurl -Path "c:\backup\migration.bak" -force -confirm:$false
}

$sourceApp = "http://source.example.com"

$targetApp = "http://target.example.com"

$app = Get-SPWebApplication -Identity $sourceApp

foreach ($site in $app.Sites)

{

Write-Host performing backup of $site.URL

Backup-SPSite -Identity $site.URL -Path "c:\backup\migration.bak" -force

$newurl = $site.URL -replace $sourceApp, $targetApp

Write-Host restoring into $newurl

Restore-SPSite -Identity $newurl -Path "c:\backup\migration.bak" -force -confirm:$false

}

Scripting new Active Directory users

Posted on April 14, 2014April 14, 2014 by Al

I needed an easy way to create users in Active Directory.

PowerShell to the rescue … although it didn’t work out.

The PowerShell command New-ADUser depends on AD having web services enabled which is a feature that came out with 2008 R2 – needless to say the AD server I was working with didn’t have this. So I fell back to the good old fashioned command line: dsadd user.

I put together an excel with columns like this:

 A - Company Name
 B - User Prefix
 C - First Name
 D - Last Name
 E - Email Address
 F - Password
 G - a formula to generate the command using data in the row ...

A - Company Name

B - User Prefix

C - First Name

D - Last Name

E - Email Address

F - Password

G - a formula to generate the command using data in the row ...

=CONCATENATE("dsadd user ""CN=", C2, " ", D2, ",OU=users,OU=my,DC=dc,DC=path"" -samid """, B2, "-", D2, """ -upn """, B2, "-", D2, "@dc.path"" -pwd """, F2, """ -fn """, C2, """ -ln """, D2, """ -email """, E2, """ -desc """, A2, " - User"" -d ""dc.path"" -display """, C2, " ", D2, """")

1	=CONCATENATE("dsadd user ""CN=", C2, " ", D2, ",OU=users,OU=my,DC=dc,DC=path"" -samid """, B2, "-", D2, """ -upn """, B2, "-", D2, "@dc.path"" -pwd """, F2, """ -fn """, C2, """ -ln """, D2, """ -email """, E2, """ -desc """, A2, " - User"" -d ""dc.path"" -display """, C2, " ", D2, """")

So for this data

 A - acme corp
 B - acme
 C - John
 D - Smith
 E - John.Smith@AcmeCorp.com
 F - Password1

A - acme corp

B - acme

C - John

D - Smith

E - John.Smith@AcmeCorp.com

F - Password1

The following command is generated:

dsadd user "CN=John Smith,OU=users,OU=my,DC=dc,DC=path" -samid "acme-Smith" -upn "acme-Smith@dc.path" -pwd "Password1" -fn "John" -ln "Smith" -email "John.Smith@AcmeCorpm.com" -desc "acme corp - User" -d "dc.path" -display "John Smith"

1	dsadd user "CN=John Smith,OU=users,OU=my,DC=dc,DC=path" -samid "acme-Smith" -upn "acme-Smith@dc.path" -pwd "Password1" -fn "John" -ln "Smith" -email "John.Smith@AcmeCorpm.com" -desc "acme corp - User" -d "dc.path" -display "John Smith"

This is going to save me minutes – literally minutes – every month!

Blue Phone Box

A personal site of tech, games, rpg's, pi and stuff

Tech

How I got rid of Google

Delete a remote branch when gui’s fail

Working with mono-service on a raspberry pi

Creating tasks in Outlook from an external data source

Determine the installed version of .net framework

TFS: automating pending change set reminder emails

Find a SharePoint feature with PowerShell

VPN goes mainstream

Clone a web application

Scripting new Active Directory users