Larry Brouwer

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Installing nopCommerce on Windows Server 2008

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So far, I’ve installed three (3) open source shopping carts; PrestaShop, OpenCart, and TomatoCart. All of these packages have been developed with PHP and MySQL technologies. This morning I’ve decided to see if there are any open source ecommerce packages written in a Microsoft .NET environment.

My first search lead me to the Microsoft Web Gallery. From there, I found nopCommerce. It looks like a reasonable package, so I’ve decided to install it and see what it looks like.

I wanted to first look at the documentation, however, it’s not free! I decided to download the product and install it anyway. I have two (2) choices for installing. The first way is to use the Microsoft Web Platform Installer. The second way is to manually download and install it. I’m choosing the latter, as I want to be sure to get the complete package with source code.

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Copying Sql Server 2008 database from Prod to Dev

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I had the pleasure of refreshing the development instance of the Harris County Master Gardener’s database this morning. Basically, Dev was getting too old to conduct testing on, so took the most recent Production backup (from last night), and using MS SSMS I was able to restore the database without much incident.

However, my troubles then began when I attempted to pull up the Development Web Site. The application couldn’t connect to the database. I’ve had this type of thing happen in the past, but as usual, I’ve forgotten how to fix it.

After some researching on the Web, I came up with a Microsoft Support Article entitled, Troubleshooting Orhpaned Users, and I was able to fix the problem with relative ease. Look under the section “Steps to Resolve Orphaned Users”.

The following are the steps I undertook:

1. Using MS SSMS, connect to the Sql Server instance where the copied database exists.

2. Open a New Query window and enter: Use DataB go sp_change_users_login ‘report’

3. The stored procedure will display output for all of the affected login’s

4. Open a New Query window and enter: Use DataB go sp_change_users_login ‘update_one’, ‘test’, ‘test’ for each login.

That should fix the problem!

Sql Server Administration for HCMGA (cont.)

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This morning, I’m continuing to work with the HCMGA database. I need to get a maintenance plan implemented to keep the database tuned up. The Performance purge job ran well into the night, and when I logged in to the server this morning, the memory was maxed out, and performance in the application was very sluggish. So I rebooted the box and it’s working better now.

Next, I wanted to see if I could shrink down the 50GB Performance.mdf file. I opened SSMS and executed the following query:

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Windows System and SqlServer Administration for HCMGA

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This morning, I decided to have a look at the Harris County Master Gardeners web server to see if everything is ok. I noticed that the hard disk space is dwindling down. So did a search for large files to see what I could find. To perform a search, I Clicked Start | Search | For Files or Folders… . I then clicked advanced search and put *.* in the Name, selected Include non-indexed, hidden, and system files (might be slow), selected Size (KB) is greater than 10000. I also added Size, Path, Attributes, Date accessed, Date created, Date modified to the results window.

So the biggest file by far is performance.mdf (45GB)! Yikes! It’s now on to finally setting up a maintenance plan for the SqlServer database.

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Fixing SqlServer Database Mail for HCMGA

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I got a call this morning that Master Gardener’s system is not sending emails. So now I’m in troubleshooting mode. I first logged onto the server and checked the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) service. It’s running. I then went into the application and sent out a test message. Did not receive it. I then went into SqlServer Management Studio (SSMS) and logged into prod. Clicked on Management. Then right clicked Database Mail and selected Send Test E-Mail. I sent a test email out from there. I did not receive the email. I then right-clicked and selected View Database Mail Log. There are many errors being displayed. The error message follows:

Message
The mail could not be sent to the recipients because of the mail server failure. (Sending Mail using Account 20 (2010-04-28T09:37:27). Exception Message: Cannot send mails to mail server. (Mailbox unavailable. The server response was: 5.7.1 Unable to relay for [email recipient]).)

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