December 2007 - Posts
SharePoint lists can now receive e-mail. Discussion Boards, Calendars, DocLibs, Announcements accept incoming mail. Discussion boards maintain e-mail threading and full html messages. Calendars process incoming iCals, DocLibs map attachments to documents. [Copied and paste from http://weblogs.asp.net/erobillard/archive/2005/09/14/425235.aspx. I'm lazy to create the different lists and see if it has incoming email support...]. Of course this blog post is not about what's available out of the box....
What happen if you need incoming email support for other kinds of list? In my work, it is common for me to create custom list definitions, but even if I create a list definition that is simliar to a parent list (e.g. CKS: Enhanced Wiki Edition), you lose the incoming email feature.
So, is that the compromise you need to make when you want to extend SharePoint functionality via custom list definition? Is SharePoint such a lame development platform! Obviously No!
What you need to do, is to create another kind of event receiver, known as Email Event Receiver. Attach this email event receiver to the list definition type using features, and the incoming email link will appear.
Just briefly, the steps you need to do are:
1. Create a class that inherits from SPEmailEventReceiver
2. Override EmailReceived method, and implement your own logic on how to process the email.
3. Create the xml that defines the event, specifying the ListTemplateId, and the type of event (EmailReceived) to attach this event receiver to (among other xml element you need to define)
4. Create the feature definition
5. Deploy!
And you will then notice that incoming email link will appear in the list settings.
I've noticed that all my virtual machines that was previously running on virtual server without giving problems, are now throwing "At least one service or driver failed during system startup" errors whenever they are rebooted. Event log shows that The parrallel port driver service failed to start due to theh following error, The service cannot be started, either because it is disabled or becuase it has no enabled devices associated with it. To solve this,
Go to Device Manager, Click on "View", "Show Hidden Devices".
Under "Non-Plug and Play Driver" you may find that there is a "Parrallel Print Driver" listed there with an exclaimation. If you find that, uninstall that driver.
The main driver to disable is "parvdm". Disable that, and you will no longer see the error.
After blogging about some of the possible pitholes you may encounter when trying out Windows 2008 Hyper-V Beta, which some of them is contradicts documentation provided by blogs (I'm told), my experience with Hyper-V is pretty good so far. Well, to set the stage right, I'm have not been using VMWare since 5.5 days (memory leak was a major problem for me at that time, since I switch virual machines pretty often, and I don't shutdown my laptop if possible), so this post is purely on what I've experienced with Hyper-V.
I used to have 4GB ram on my Core2Duo 6600 desktop, and running exchange already eats up 2GB of ram. I also ran two other virtual machines, windows 2003 AD, and either WSS, or MOSS with PerformancePoint (trying to learn more about this product). That leaves my host with 256 mb ram free, which causes it to be sluggish, but still very usable. But the processor usage was constantly hovering around 1% usage for each virtual machine, which was impressive as CTP processor usage was constantly 100% (Exchange taking most of the CPU)! Since CPU usage is so little, I've decided to upgrade my ram to 8GB to get more ROI out of my desktop, instead of getting another desktop to try out more stuff (pocket not deep enough for it anyway).
Yesterday, I got my extra ram, and immediately, my host performance went up greatly. Today, I up another virtual machine, my "production" moss which I intend to keep all my product information and issues, and other important information, hence that MOSS instance effectively becomes my KM portal. The experience was just as good as running it on the host! Now I'm just looking forward to RTM of Hyper-V, where hopefully, client OS will be supported, and there is a better virtualisation story for Vista. I'm not very happy with the need to uninstall Integration Service and install Virtual Machine Addition to move virtual machine from Windows 2008 to Vista, as well as 64-bit virtual machine support on Vista...
Good work, Hyper-V team!
Performance of the virtual machine is always better if you have integration services (a.k.a. virtual machine additioons) installed. After upgrading from Preview to Beta, obviously I tried to upgrade all the integration services in my virtual machine. Inserting integration services setup disk gives you the option to upgrade your integration services. However, do not upgrade, but uninstall and reinstall your integration services.
If you choose to upgrade (which I did, and have to spend few hours to try fix it), installation will fail at vmbus, which will cause your entire virtual machine to reboot. After rebooting, you will see one of these three effect
1. Virtual machine is running, but doesn't take up any cpu (freeze)
2. Virtual machine shows you the blue screen of death
3. Virtual machine just keep rebooting and rebooting.
To solve this, enter safe mode, and uninstall the integration service.
Just when I got my RC1 with Hyper-V preview configured and running for a few days, Microsoft released Hyper-V beta, which promised significant improvements. There are no upgrade path from RC1 with Hyper-V preview to RC1 with Hyper-V beta. I have to reinstall my RC1... :(
Nevermind, i took the time to reinstall RC1 with Hyper-V beta. But I've made a few mistakes. Here is what you should take note of before upgrading (reinstalling)
1. Commit your snapshots... Hyper-V still does not have the ability to add existing virtual machine. There is an import feature, but that doesn't work for me. Because you can't add existing virtual machine, Hyper-V will not recognise your snapshots when you have to add new machines. So in order not to lose your works, commit your snapshots.
2. Take note of this blog entry by Virtual PC Guy. He mentioned that you need to install your RC1 with English (United States). I forgot about it and use English (Singapore) instead. And this causes error when starting the virtual machine manager.
Have fun!
I didn't realised my 20GB virtual harddisk (this harddisk was created long time ago, and at that time, default harddisk space was 20GB. Didn't thought that it was too small for OS partition) that is running my SharePoint development environment was getting very low, leaving only less than 200 MB of harddisk space free. I then need to expand my harddisk, as I wanted to try out PerformancePoint... So I was hunting high and low for disk cloning tool, since Microsoft Virtualisation didn't have the ability to resize your virtual harddisk, unlike VMWare.
I didn't have luck with a few product. They just refuse to install properly on my windows 2003. Then I decided to just look at Hyper-V's options. Click on edit disk, skipping the "Before you Begin" screen, I browsed to my MOSS virtual harddisk. Under action, I was pleasently surprised with the option to expand the capacity of the virtual harddisk! Click next and boot it up, and I see extra space in my OS harddisk... Now too find the tool to resize the partition. I wish Hyper-V could do that too... :)
Sigh, just when I got my exchange 2007 up, consolidating all my various email accounts so that I can activesync to my first Windows Mobile 6 device... (Sure, many have said to me, running exchange 2007 at home for myself, isn't it overkill? But I don't want my personal emails to be on my corporate network... )
Today, I got my hands on RC1, and immediately an upgrade operation on my computer. However, after the upgrade, virtualisation role is gone. Went to the windows folder and found the two hotfix that needs to be installed to enable virtualisation role. Installed it, and the role shows up as HyperV. Proceed to add the role, and Windows 2008 said that my hardware doesn't support virtualisation!
Devastated, as I was so happy / overjoyed / (other happy words) that I can finally play with Exchange 2007. But I just want to make a last attempt to run RC1 instead of RC0, so I popped in the dvd again, and did a fresh installation... Now, I'm waiting for my HyperV to install properly... :)
There are a few things you should do before you migrate your virtual machines to longhorn virtualisation...
1. Longhorn virtualisation has its own Virtual Machine Additions, known as Integration Services Setup Disk. To install that, you need to uninstall your Virtual Machine Additions. While you can still uninstall it when your virtual machine is running on Longhorn virtualisation, you may not be able to uninstall it successfully. I have a development moss 2007 image, which when I uninstall the Virtual Machine Additions, the virtual machine thinks that it is a real machine, and does not allow me to uninstall...
2. Undo disks. Longhorn virtualisation uses another concept called snapshots, instead of undo disks. Hence you need to commit your undo disks first before you can migrate your virtual machines over, or you will lose those changes...