Daniel2ThePoint

After presenting at both the MCT Virtual Summit and the MCT Live Summit in York this year I will also be presenting at SEF (SharePoint Exchange Forum). This time I will present on one of the topics I have come to love very much this year even if I hated it before I quite got the hang of it: Claims. I'll walk you trough claims authentication, how it works, the anatomy behind it and how you need to implement it in your enviroment. Please join SEF and listen to me and many of my collegues, visit http://www.seforum.se/Pages/default.aspx to register now!

Today I finally got time to go to the test center and write some of the exams for SharePoint 2010. So today I passed the 070-667 (TS: Microsoft SharePoint 2010, Configuring) and the 070-668 (PRO: Microsoft SharePoint 2010, Administrator). I'm still thinking about the developer certs, I'm no developer and I will never need them. It does take some time to write the exams, especially the PRO exams where the scenario texts are incredible long. I feel this completes pretty good for me together with my SharePoint 2010 Ignite Trainer appointment but let's see if I have the time soon again for some certs..

If you have been working with 2010 for a couple of months and have previous experiences with SharePoint 2007 you should be alright. The official exams are for IT-Pro:

• 70-667 TS: Microsoft SharePoint 2010, Configuring
  Microsoft Official Curriculum: Will cover configuration of SharePoint 2010 including deployment, upgrade, management, and operation on a server farm.

• 70-668 PRO: SharePoint 2010, Administrator
  Microsoft Official Curriculum: Will cover advanced SharePoint 2010 topics including capacity planning, topology designing, and performance tuning.

If you are partner see https://partner.microsoft.com/40121316?msp_id=sharepoint2010ready for more information about how to get ready.

I'm on my third week of vaccation now and the sun shines almost every day, the ocean is fantastic. I have a quota of time everyday (assigned by Wife 1.0)  for the computer, even have a sunshade for my laptop. Just wanted to remind you abou the upcomming Microsoft Camp 2010 in Stockholm and the MCT Summit 2010 in York and also to bring some attention to my last pet/hobby project: Android. I have now published a beta for my Operator Check application, check it out in the menu.. Hope to see you all soon and don't forget to go out in the sun!

I have already posted about the MCT Live Summit in York this year and the fantastic line-up of sessions, speakers and community. Well soon the early bird discount will be to a end so don't delay your registration! My fellow co-organizer Andrew Bettany is fighting the good fight and promoting the event in TechEd North-America currently under way in New Orleans. Here is a video of Joey, Andrew, Tjeerd and Andy telling you why YOU should attend - from the floor of TechEd NA 2010.

View the video at YouTube and then Register at http://www.mctsummit.eu

I will present a whole day session about SharePoint 2010 for IT-pro in Stockholm at Microsoft Sommarkollo.

The session will be in swedish and here is the swedish description SharePoint 2010 - kickstart för it-Pro: Vi tittar närmre SharePoint 2010 och de nya funktionerna som finns för it-proffs. Följ med förbi listor och libraries, in i central admin och den nya mer skalbara och feltoleranta arkitekturen, bakom kulisserna där vi som it-proffs jobbar. Tips & trix i PowerShell och automatisering, samt hur vi egentligen bör uppdatera vår befintliga miljö.

Registration and info about sommarkollo: http://www.microsoft.com/sverige/sommarkollo/default.html

MCTs and Educators from everywhere will gather in York, UK, this August for the MCT Live Summit 2010. This is a project arranged together with Myself, Andrew Bettany, MCT Europe and Microsoft Learning and lot's of sponsors. I'm really excited, the sessions have now been selected and the programme have been published, we are really excited about the selection which have been voted forward with the help of hundreds of MCTs from all over the world!! Ps. I will present some really new and exciting sessions about the IPv6 courses and about MDT/WDS and classroom installs!

Please visit http://www.mctsummit.eu and register now! Se you in york!

Have you ever needed to run a command as a different user? Perhaps they should run a command in a user context they normally cannot? Usually used for quick fixes you could create a simple script using some vb-script and expose the password or use a runas command in a batch file? But you don't want the user to have the password, right? Well the answer is a quick utility I coded up using .net 2.0:

Userexec.exe is a command line program that basically works just as runas except: it can accept passwords on the command line, and it can accept a encrypted command line. The encryption is a basic quick one but should keep average Joe from getting your password. This is NOT a best practice and probably there is a better way of solving the problem.. but anyways find it attached to my post.

            UserExec by Daniel Sörlöv, daniel@sorlov.com, all rights reserved 2010.
            
            USEREXEC USAGE:
            
            USEREXEC /u:<username> /p:<password> /c:<command> 
                    [ /l | /h | /m | /x | /a:<arguments> ]
            
            USEREXEC /e:<string-to-encrypt>

               /l   Causes the users profile to be loaded
               /h   Hides the requested application
               /m   Runs the command minimized
               /s Specifies the path on which to start
               /x   Use encrypted command line
            
            Examples:
            > userexec /l /u:mydomain\administrator /p:mypass /c:"cmd.exe"
            > userexec /e:<string to encrypt>
            > userexec /h /u:mydomain\administrator /p:mypass /c:"cmd.exe" /a:"/c auto.bat"

Use it if you need it, send me reports if something fails and perhaps I will fix it. The tools is without guarantee and without support but could be quite usefull. Download here

I bought a Android phone (HTC Desire) a couple of weeks ago and I have never been so happy with a phone ever. Extensible etc. One thing I wanted is to check which operator a contact has so it will be simple determine how much it will cost to call them.. there was no such application so I started to write one inspired by the application KtoryOperator already on the Android Market. After a couple of days, writing, adapting and changing it's ready. So if you have a swedish phone number in your contacts and wish to look it up just download the "Vilken Operator?" software from Android Market and you can check your phone book.. comments are appreciated and also bug reports (this is my first ever java-project).. send them by email!

This year there is many hot topics at TechEd North America and here is my sessions for all you fans out there.. =)

"We Come in Peace, or IPv6 Does Not Bite " Tuesday, June 8, 8:00AM, Room 353

"IPv6: Time to Wake Up!" Tuesday, June 8, 1:30PM, Room 354

"How do you build or strengthen local developer and IT Pro communities?" Wednesday June 9, 5:00PM, Room 355

Spam. We all get it in bundles, again and again, over and over.. I decided to just do some math (yes I was really bored during a chick-flick my wife "convinced" me to see)

During March the following have happened to me according to spammers:

72 relatives whom I never knew have died, leaving me about $452,000,000 USD
16 Nigerian bank executives contacted me with over $30,000,000,000 USD in unclaimed money
502 letters about cheaper Viagra
64 mails from my "bank" about my password and credit card needing changing
22 mails from "face book" about my account being deleted
47 policy changes on my mail server requiring me to download a new settings.exe file

...and all I had to do was to pay some taxes or give them my credit card number.. lucky me.. soon a millionarie..
This was just a short note about nothing but pure frustration.. =)

Live long and prosper.

Not all to seldom situations arise where you have a application where the installer just won't do as you want it to Often this is true when it comes to automation, and that makes us script and do other stuff to install simple programs in very "engineered" ways.. However there are tools to "re-package" applications, one of those are Advanced Installer. What basically is the difference to other re-packaging solutions are price. The software does not have  a nightmare price-tag as many others do and still boosts all the features others do!

Anyways; I will just walk you trough creating a MSI installer for 7-Zip. I know there already are a MSI for that but nothing is like home-made.. ;P
I love to use this tool to re-package HP-drivers for instance which are deployed as EXE and not easy to manage MSI-packages.

Get Advanced Installer (including Advanced Repackager) demo at http://www.advancedinstaller.com/download.html

Step 1. Start Advanced Repackager.
The applications runs as Administrator.
Make sure you already downloaded the EXE installer.

Step 2 Locate the package and give it some parameters.
Command line can be used to silence the install for instance. In my case repackaging 7zip
I have selected not do anything specific (yes, 7-zip already exists as a MSI but I just took a
exe installer laying around)..

Step 3: Snapshots
The packager works from snapshots, it takes one snapshot before install and one after and then
compares thees to get the "what did the installer do"-sum. You can also save a base of the
system to reuse between sessions. I feel the process is quite quick and there really is no need.

Step 4: Output and filters
The output from repackager will be a MSI and where do we want to save it..

Step 5: Performing the install..
The install will now commence. Make sure no other applications are running since they
will pollute the capture. But you are most likely to do this install on a virtual machine thats
used only for this purpose..

Step 6: Pre-install scan
The system scans and then launches the installer with the params you specified in step 1.

Step 7: The installer commences...

Step 8: After install scan..
After the installer have exited the system waits, if you wish to do some additional actions in the
system before commencing the after-install scan. Perfect for creating shortcuts etc.

Step 9: Done!
The package is done. And its almost done I think, since I have the full Advanced Installer package
it also offers to open the MSI in the studio where I can customize it even more..

Optional last step.. customize in Advanced installer..

Just a simple quick tips for all you guys out there. A couple of students have come back and asked me - "How did you enable that really nice dashbord". It's simple, easy and safe.

If you think the below is to much, then check out Wiktor Wiléns blog for a nice farm scoped feature moving this into the gui (and some other stuff also)
http://www.wictorwilen.se/Post/SharePoint-2010-Developer-Dashboard-configuration-feature.aspx

Anyways, here you go:

Via STSADM: stsadm -o setproperty -pn developer-dashboard -pv OnDemand 
Via PowerShell: (Get-SPFarm).PerformanceMonitor.DeveloperDashboardLevel = "OnDemand"

The value OnDemand can also be On or Off (On=Always shown, OnDemand=Shown of request, Off=Never shown)