Programming

Running MSDEPLOY from PowerShell

I had to spend quite a bit of time figuring this out. So hopefully this will help someone out there. To launch MSDEPLOY from PowerShell, make sure you escape any quote or comma characters.

The “2>&1” at the end allows Powershell to detect errors and bail out if you have $ErrorActionPreference = “Stop”

If you still have problems, download and use EchoArgs.exe to see exactly what PowerShell sees.

Example

function Get-MSWebDeployInstallPath(){
  $path = (get-childitem "HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\IIS Extensions\MSDeploy" | Select -last 1).GetValue("InstallPath")
  $path = "${path}msdeploy.exe"

  if (!(Test-Path "$path")) {
    throw "MSDEPLOY.EXE is not installed. See http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9278654"
  }

  return $path
}

$msdeploy = Get-MSWebDeployInstallPath

& $msDeploy -verb:sync -source:recycleApp `
  -dest:recycleApp=`"${webSiteName}`"`,recycleMode=StopAppPool`,wmsvc=${server}`,userName="${userName}"`,password="${password}" `
  -allowuntrusted -debug 2>&1

Error 1053 starting Web Deployment Agent Service

If you are getting error 1053 starting “Web Deployment Agent Service” (part of Microsoft Web Deploy or MSDEPLOY), below is a possible fix.

This is the error I got when trying to start Web Deployment Agent Service: “Web Deployment Agent Service” on some of my servers. The exact error message is: “Windows could not start the Web Deployment Agent Service service on Local Computer. Error 1053: The service did not respond to the start or control request in a timely fashion.”

In the System Events Log, there are these generic service start-up error messages:

  • The Web Deployment Agent Service service failed to start due to the following error: The service did not respond to the start or control request in a timely fashion.”
  • A timeout was reached (30000 milliseconds) while waiting for the Web Deployment Agent Service service to connect.

The fix for me was to uninstall any previous version of Web Deploy, then re-install the latest version (Microsoft Web Deploy 3.5), and choosing “Complete” at the “Choose Setup Type” page.

My environment: Windows Server 2008 64-bit SP2.

Removing Excess Whitespace from a String

I was looking for the most efficient way to remove excess white space from a string and wrote the following benchmark. Guess which algorithm is faster?

const int iterations = 200000;
const string expr = " Hello    world! Why    are so    many spaces?  Testing One   two three    four    five.";

// Remove excess space using Regex
var doRegex = new Action(() =>
{
    for (int i = 0; i < iterations; i++)
    {
        var newStr = Regex.Replace(expr, @"\s{2,}", " ");
    }
});


// Remove excess space using Split/Join
var doSplit = new Action(() =>
{
    for (int i = 0; i < iterations; i++)
    {
        var newStr = String.Join(" ", expr.Split(new[] { ' ' }, StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries));
    }
});

var benchMark = new Func<string, Action, long>((name, a) => {
    var sw = Stopwatch.StartNew();
    a();
    sw.Stop();
    Console.WriteLine(name + ": " + sw.ElapsedMilliseconds);
    return sw.ElapsedMilliseconds;
});

// Warming up
Console.WriteLine("Warming up.");
doRegex();
doSplit();

// Run benchmark
long regexElapsed = benchMark("Regex", doRegex);
long splitElapsed = benchMark("Split", doSplit);

On my PC, the Split method is about 7.5 times faster than Regex.

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Transactional File Manager Version 1.2 .1 Released

Version 1.2 of Transactional File Manager is now available on CodePlex.

Here’s the release notes:

Release Notes

This is a minor bug-fix/minor refactor release.
Fixes:

  • Copy now uses the overwrite parameter correctly.
  • Fixes crashing problem on some machines due to use of GetsequentialGuid.
  • CreateDirectory now supports rolling back nested directories.
  • RollbackFile Rollback() may throw exception when original directory has been deleted.
  • Security issue when writing to event logs.

Enhancements:

  • Upgrade solution/project files to Visual Studio 2010
  • Use NUnit instead of VSTS framework
  • Changes to support Visual Studio Express

Thanks to karbuke and dorong for their contributions.

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