I never thought that I would write an article on this site of mine about war, peace and a threat to not only an entire nation’s existence, but mine, too. But as this website has some reach (there’s around 75 000 of you each month), I feel that I have a responsibility to say and do something. On February 24th, 2022, the fascist oligarchy known as Russia attacked yet another one of its neighbors. That’s almost not even newsworthy by itself – it’s happened multiple…Continue reading Evil triumphs when good men do nothing
How to solve “Npgsql: 42883: function create_hypertable(…) does not exist”?
Have you run into this puzzling error? It comes in a couple of flavors, but it boils down to you failing miserably when you run the create_hypertable() function on your PostgreSQL TimescaleDB database server! Annoyingly, it might mean that the whole function is missing (extension is not installed or loaded) or that your parameters are not properly parsed (an issue with your command). I know, that it sucks. I have been there. That’s why I wrote this article! Problem You’re trying to transform your PostgreSQL…Continue reading How to solve “Npgsql: 42883: function create_hypertable(…) does not exist”?
How to configure Azure PostgreSQL to allow Cloud Shell connections?
I was setting up a PostgreSQL database in Azure, to be used by a cutesy little Azure Function storing telemetry from a bunch of Azure IoT Edge Devices. But when everything was (supposed to be) configured successfully, my Azure Function failed to store anything anywhere because of a missing database… Oh, right. Entity Framework can’t create PostgreSQL databases, as the connection is made to an existing database – so it can’t be instantiated if the database doesn’t exist on the server already. So, what do…Continue reading How to configure Azure PostgreSQL to allow Cloud Shell connections?
Solving “invalid reference format.” when trying to run “docker whatever”
So another simple one. (I just seem to run into all of the issues whenever I try to do the simplest thing with Docker!) Or with anything, I guess – but yeah, that’s another article then! Problem I was trying to run a Docker container called Syslog-ng, and had to add quite a few parameters in order to map the volumes and ports that I needed. Any time that I would run it, I’d get a really non-descript error message. This is what I ran:…Continue reading Solving “invalid reference format.” when trying to run “docker whatever”
Joining the Omnia team!
Exciting news right after the Easter break (and a bit of a change from the usual flow of technical stuff) – I’ve joined the Omnia team at Precio Fishbone. Over the last 12 months, I have been working mostly on Azure IoT projects and was already debating renaming the blog. The title #SharePointProblems matches the content poorly when most of my new posts are about Docker, Azure DevOps, or Entity Framework. But to those of you worrying about my blog’s Search Engine Optimization, I have…Continue reading Joining the Omnia team!
Upgrade from WSL 1 to WSL 2 in Windows 10 to fix Docker
Okay – another one of the topics that I’m explaining probably more to myself than whoever’s reading this later. But that’s why I write this blog, so please bear with me. 🙂 Anyway, onto the actual issue at hand! I was configuring Docker on WSL on my Windows laptop for development purposes. That’s supposed to be easy – install WSL, install a distribution, install Docker, switch it to using WSL, fire up your WSL command prompt and run any Docker commands there (or deploy from…Continue reading Upgrade from WSL 1 to WSL 2 in Windows 10 to fix Docker
Azure DevOps incoming webhook just won’t fire? Easy (stupid) fix!
This article documents a simple but annoying fix to an issue with Azure DevOps. In this particular case, an incoming webhook (configured as a service connection) would fail to fire, no matter what. It turns out that it’s a bug in Azure DevOps – who would have thought :) Luckily, there’s a fairly simple workaround available! Problem A colleague was configuring a new pipeline in Azure DevOps. It was supposed to fire based on an external webhook that was defined as a service connection to…Continue reading Azure DevOps incoming webhook just won’t fire? Easy (stupid) fix!
How to fix Graph API returning null properties for Users?
This article explains a quick fix to a small but annoying issue: Microsoft Graph API SDK persistently returning null values for most properties of your Microsoft.Graph.User objects. The issue might happen when using either the Graph API SDK or just calling the REST API directly. Both options are entirely acceptable, and in both cases, you’re not getting the properties you wanted. Well, I wasn’t, anyway. Problem The other day, I was developing a thingie that needed to fetch fields like Department from Azure AD. The…Continue reading How to fix Graph API returning null properties for Users?
How to get your Azure IoT Edge runtime to use port 443 instead of using 5671 and 8883?
Are you struggling with your Azure IoT Edge modules not receiving your Direct Method calls? Is EdgeHub reporting transient network issues? Are you seeing “Could not connect to your IoT hub: could not complete TLS handshake” errors? Are your modules experiencing constant 104 errors (connection reset by peer)? Fear not! This article explains how to fix them. Kind of. Problem We were experiencing some major issues with our customer’s Edge devices. Direct Method calls would mostly not go through, message routing between Edge and the…Continue reading How to get your Azure IoT Edge runtime to use port 443 instead of using 5671 and 8883?
How to copy dependent assemblies to the bin folder on build?
This is something that comes up pretty often – when you’re building an application, or maybe a library you’re sharing as a NuGet package to your friends: You’ll need to share a dependency or two with your particular package, and you don’t want your end users having to reference those libraries, too. Sounds easy, right? But alas, it’s not as simple as one would like :) (Well, unless you’re happy running dotnet publish every time – that should work, but I want to have these…Continue reading How to copy dependent assemblies to the bin folder on build?
Azure Functions suddenly throwing CORS errors when ran locally? Easy fix(es)!
In this article, I’m listing the quick fixes to your Azure Functions suddenly throwing seemingly random and very unexpected CORS errors. I have run into this so many times that I had to list these (admittedly simple) fixes in order of importance purely for myself – but perhaps some of these will help you as well! 😁 CORS issues can be frustrating but the issue is usually, simple to fix – as long as you know what you are doing. But first, let’s take a…Continue reading Azure Functions suddenly throwing CORS errors when ran locally? Easy fix(es)!
How to install IIS (Internet Information Services) on Windows 10?
It’s the roaring twenties again, cloud is the hot stuff, and nobody needs a server anymore. Right? Nope! I’ve been involved in more on-prem or hybrid projects in the last 12 months than in the last 3-4 years combined. There are plenty of industries and valid uses for still setting up on-prem servers. And quite often, that includes setting up IIS (Internet Information Services) on said machines. And of course, there’s the classic use case – local development. Depending on what you’re trying to achieve,…Continue reading How to install IIS (Internet Information Services) on Windows 10?
How to move the Home Assistant SQLite database in Docker on Windows?
This article explains how you can move your Home Assistant’s SQLite database files to another location by mapping them to another volume in Docker. Using Docker on Windows. Which might not be a smart move, but it’s one I went with anyway. The article will explain how to do this with docker-compose, but the steps pretty much apply to vanilla docker as well. With that said – let’s move on! Background Like so many times before, I was quite annoyed by the relatively small number…Continue reading How to move the Home Assistant SQLite database in Docker on Windows?
Groups-based authorization in Blazor WebAssembly
This article will take a look at a neat authorization option for Blazor WebAssembly – utilizing group memberships when defining policies. This isn’t a tutorial or an overview of Blazor – rather, we start from you already having your Blazor WebAssembly project set up, and we’ll be taking a look into modifying it to use group membership claims with policy-based authorization. This is a bit trickier than using roles, which Blazor WebAssembly already supports quite well. But before that – Blazor? That sounds familiar –…Continue reading Groups-based authorization in Blazor WebAssembly
Azure IoT Edge gotchas – and how to overcome them!
This article describes the gotchas and weird one-offs that I’ve encountered with Azure IoT Edge so far. Consider them not-too-thoroughly tested quick fixes that aren’t significant enough to warrant an actual blog post themselves :) Okay – let’s get to them gotchas, then!
How to fix “Cannot start service edgeHubDev: Ports are not available: listen tcp 0.0.0.0:8883”
Here is another fun one for the books! In this article, I will explain how to fix a problem with the Azure IoT Edge dev simulator, when it fails to start due to an underlying problem with Docker not having access to your defined ports. This will probably happen to one of the ports used by the Edge Hub system module by default – 5671, 8883, or 443. Problem So, when you’re trying to run an Azure IoT Edge solution in the simulator, you get…Continue reading How to fix “Cannot start service edgeHubDev: Ports are not available: listen tcp 0.0.0.0:8883”
How to fix “exec user process caused: no such file or directory” in Docker on Windows?
Another one in the series of “random things that break when you try to run Docker on Windows”! I was just minding my own business, trying to run an Azure IoT Edge custom module – a Docker container, really – locally, when suddenly everything broke and one of my Docker containers wouldn’t run anymore, which broke the rest of my stuff pretty badly. Instead, it failed with a cryptic and surprising error “exec user process caused: no such file or directory”. So, let’s take a…Continue reading How to fix “exec user process caused: no such file or directory” in Docker on Windows?
How to run EF Core commands when your entities are in a different project from your dbcontext?
This article explains how to achieve that nice configuration where you can reuse your .NET EF Core (Entity Framework Core) entities in different projects – even being separate from the project holding your DbContexts! You might want to do this if you have a common data model between a number of very different projects – but you will still need to have a way to add new migrations, apply the current ones to a database or possibly remove deprecated migrations. You can do this both…Continue reading How to run EF Core commands when your entities are in a different project from your dbcontext?
How to run SQL commands in a Postgre SQL Docker container?
This article will explain how to run your arbitrary SQL commands against a Postgre SQL database running in a Docker container in Windows. That should be super simple, but since I never remember anything like this by heart, I had to google it – and turns out, either I didn’t know how to google this properly or people haven’t bothered to document this. So, let’s fix that. But first, why did I need to do this, again? Problem So – I meant to run some…Continue reading How to run SQL commands in a Postgre SQL Docker container?
How to modify CORS settings using a .htaccess file
Recently, I needed to host a web-based thingamajiggy in WordPress and needed to include a couple of custom libraries. For the sake of quick iteration, I decided to use a public FTP folder that I already had on the same server in order to host this. So I had configured a subdomain to host the files, and wanted to reference them from my WordPress site. Not quite a CDN, but something a little bit like that. Well, of course, I ran into an issue again.…Continue reading How to modify CORS settings using a .htaccess file
