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…Continue reading Evil triumphs when good men do nothing
How to verify a private key matches a x509 (.cer) certificate?
This post explains how to verify a private key (possibly a .key file) you somehow got your hands on matches a certificate file (.cer) you also somehow are in possession of. Don’t ask me where I got mine, but I had to figure out how to make sure a key and a certificate matched before I uploaded mine to AKS (Azure Kubernetes Service). Problem This is yet another article where…Continue reading How to verify a private key matches a x509 (.cer) certificate?
How to avoid global.json version conflicts in Azure DevOps
Sometimes in Azure DevOps, you have a project that’s being built with certain .NET version. It’ll require that particular SDK version, and most typically that is defined in global.json file. However, if you also need to install a certain .NET tool, running dotnet tool install MyBuildTool will fail. And it’ll fail before it actually tries to install the version of the tool you wanted to! This article explains how to…Continue reading How to avoid global.json version conflicts in Azure DevOps
How to fix Azure DevOps “Variable reference is not valid. ‘:’ was not followed by a valid variable name character. Consider using ${} to delimit the name”
This article explains one possible reason why you might run into an error like “Variable reference is not valid. ‘:’ was not followed by a valid variable name character. Consider using ${} to delimit the name” when using a PowerShell task in an Azure DevOps pipeline. Confusingly, the offending line might be this: Write-Host (‘##vso[task.debug]$LASTEXITCODE: {0}’ -f $LASTEXITCOD … Not something you even have in your script! What gives? Problem…Continue reading How to fix Azure DevOps “Variable reference is not valid. ‘:’ was not followed by a valid variable name character. Consider using ${} to delimit the name”
Hacktoberfest 2022
… And that’s a wrap! This year, again, I had the chance and the privilege to participate in the month-long celebration for open-source, Hacktoberfest. And unlike last year, now I took the time to write about the experience again! And for someone like me, who doesn’t really do much open-source stuff, it is a bit of an experience. And the event itself has come a long way! 2022: Hacktoberfest has…Continue reading Hacktoberfest 2022
Azure DevOps fails with “Error: The path ‘/home/vsts/work/1/s/your-repo’ does not exist” even though the repository is there for sure?
Eh, this was a weird one. This article explains how to get around an issue where your build tools fail due to weird “path does not exist” errors when you’re using bash to execute a restore to your project. Build would probably succeed nicely, but it fails due to missing dependencies – in my case, at least the whole node_modules folder was missing. And of course it is – restore…Continue reading Azure DevOps fails with “Error: The path ‘/home/vsts/work/1/s/your-repo’ does not exist” even though the repository is there for sure?
One way to fix “Unsupported or invalid query filter clause specified for property” for your Microsoft Graph API queries
This article explains one possible fix to an annoyingly generic exception thrown by the Microsoft Graph API (namely, “Unsupported or invalid query filter clause specified for property”) or an even more generic exception thrown by PnP PowerShell (“Exception of type ‘PnP.PowerShell.Commands.Model.Graph.GraphException’ was thrown.”) when you’re trying to query Graph API with what’s called “Advanced query capabilities” (operators like less than or equal, greater than or equal) instead of just checking…Continue reading One way to fix “Unsupported or invalid query filter clause specified for property” for your Microsoft Graph API queries
Why do you get a “Missing closing ‘)’ in expression.” error when piping a collection to a for loop in PowerShell?
Today, I’m writing about a stupid error. Yeah, I do make those every now and then. After adding a for loop to my PowerShell script, I started to get annoying ParserErrors about my for loop missing a closing bracket. But it was NOT missing one – what gives? Problem So, what I was trying to do was to concatenate a kinda random collection of strings after the first few items.…Continue reading Why do you get a “Missing closing ‘)’ in expression.” error when piping a collection to a for loop in PowerShell?
How to configure your Smart Home wifi devices that fail to connect due to a weak wifi signal?
This article describes a solution to a problem that I have had with pairing different Smart Home devices with my app or some cloud service using wifi. Weirdly, wifi can be strong enough to provide connectivity to any of the devices, but weak enough for the pairing to fail. Fun stuff. You can usually just move the devices closer to your router, but with some devices that might be a…Continue reading How to configure your Smart Home wifi devices that fail to connect due to a weak wifi signal?
How to import an Azure DevOps Git repository… From another Azure DevOps organization?
A while ago, I needed to move an Azure DevOps Git repository from one organization to another. And that was far easier than I thought. For once, a nice surprise from Git _and_ Azure DevOps 😀 So, let me tell you how that’s done! Well, how it’s done if it goes well, anyway. And if still works as it used to when you’re reading this. We’ll see! Solution
How to fix NU3028 and NU3037 errors in Azure DevOps builds?
This article explains a solution to a rather annoying issue, where certificate validation for builds trying to fetch NuGet packages published by Microsoft fails when using .NET 5. This happens at least with Docker build when you’re relying on some Microsoft-provided images… But probably also in a lot of other cases. Problem When running an Azure DevOps pipeline with any task that does any Docker stuff, your build fails. Or…Continue reading How to fix NU3028 and NU3037 errors in Azure DevOps builds?
