This is surely no surprise for many people: you can actually debug managed code with WinDbg (or CDB, if you prefer that one) by using the SOS extension (that ships with the .Net framework) in the debugger. What’s new is that today, Microsoft released Psscor2 which is pretty much an enhanced version of SOS. Now I’m sure that you’ll soon find much information on using Psscor2 on Tom’s blog. I’m much in favor of Psscor2 myself and therefore I’ll try to post useful scripts here as well (if I can come up with some ;-)).
Tag: microsoft
You’ve got to restart that process …
… in order to pick up the changes you’ve recently made to the environment variables.
Alright, to cut a long story short, I’m using the Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard at work. It has these (5) ‘My Favorits’ keys on top to which you can assign custom commands. I typically make heavy use of that to
- Start a new console for the build environment
- Start PowerShell
- Start a lightweight editor with syntax hightlighting for many file types
- Start PaintDotNet
- Start a new (blank) console
I typically use #5 for checking out small things and starting remote user debugging sessions. From time to time, I tweak the environment a little bit by adding new environment variables or modifying existing ones (like e.g. adding new places to the %PATH% environment variable). To verify, I use the command line. Except that existing processes don’t automatically get the new variables. I was recently tricked by this, since I pressed #5 to get a new console and test the changes. Nothing there. Hmmm. When I start %COMSPEC% they are there. So why not with #5?
Well, the process which starts #5 was started when the changes to the environment variables where not yet made. That’s why also the processes started from this process don’t have the changes. So all I’ve got to do in this case is to kill itype.exe and then start it right away again. Now it works!
PowerShell Script to trace OCS Components
Tracing OCS components may be vital in troubleshooting various issues you may face in your deployment. On machines where you have OCS components installed, you’ll typically find a tool called OCSLogger.exe which allows you to start/stop/view traces of OCS components. However, sometimes this is not enough, for instance when you see problems at the startup of a machine. It’s kind of hard to run the GUI if you cannot logon yet. But you can typically run a scheduled task. Or maybe you are — just like me — more like the console guy and thus want to have a script/cmdline tool for everything.
Let’s start with the config file used by the script (TraceConfig.xml) which defines the components you want to trace, to what level the traces are supposed to be and some more things. The sample given here traces mostly the components which are useful in troubleshooting issues related to the Response Group Service of OCS.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <Config> <!-- Levels: TL_FATAL 1 TL_ERROR 2 TL_WARN 3 TL_INFO 4 TL_VERBOSE 5 TL_NOISE 6 Flags: TF_COMPONENT 0x00000001 TF_PROTOCOL 0x00000002 TF_CONNECTION 0x00000004 TF_SECURITY 0x00000008 TF_DIAG 0x00000010 TF_AUTH 0x00000020 TF_PARSE 0x00000040 TF_NETWORK 0x00000080 TF_STACKTRACE 0x00000100 --> <Default Level="6" Flags="0xffff" /> <Paths Tracer="C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Communications Server 2007 R2\Tracing" Etl="D:\Tracing" Log="D:\Tracing" TmfSearchPath="C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Communications Server 2007 R2\Tracing"> </Paths> <Components> <Component Name="LcsWMI" Enabled="no" /> <Component Name="LcsWMIUserServices" Enabled="no" /> <Component Name="PowerShell" Enabled="yes" /> <Component Name="ApplicationServer" Enabled="yes" /> <Component Name="RgsClientsLib" Enabled="yes" /> <Component Name="RgsCommonLibrary" Enabled="yes" /> <Component Name="RgsDatastores" Enabled="yes" /> <Component Name="RgsDeploymentApi" Enabled="yes" /> <Component Name="RgsDeploymentLibrary" Enabled="yes" /> <Component Name="RgsDiagnostics" Enabled="yes" /> <Component Name="RgsHostingFramework" Enabled="yes" /> <Component Name="RgsMatchMakingService" Enabled="yes" /> </Components> </Config>
I added the most importan trace levels and flags in the comment. Right now, the Default element defines the levels and flags for all components, but there’s no reason why you shouldn’t be able to do that per component you want to trace.
The PS1 script itself (Tracer.ps1) heavily relies on the OcsTracer.exe tool which also comes with OCS and is typically installed in the same place as OcsLogger.exe. It has four main actions:
- Start tracing components
- Stop tracing components and format the traces
- Format traces of ETL files (e.g. from a different machine)
- Show the configuration details from a particular config XML file
<# .SYNOPSIS Starts or Stops tracing of Office Communications Server components. .DESCRIPTION Starts or Stops tracing of Office Communications Server components. .PARAMETER Action The action to perform. Must be one of 'Start', 'Stop', 'Config' or 'Format'. .PARAMETER ConfigPath The path to the configuration XML file. If not specified, "TraceConfig.xml" is used. .LINK This script was originally posted to http://www.cymbeline.ch/post/2009/12/11/PowerShell-Script-to-trace-OCS-Components.aspx .EXAMPLE .\Tracer.ps1 Start Starts tracing all the enabled components from the "TraceConfig.xml" file. .EXAMPLE .\Tracer.ps1 Stop Stops tracing all the enabled components from the "TraceConfig.xml" file and formats the traces. .EXAMPLE .\Tracer.ps1 Format "MyOtherConfig.xml" Formats the traces of the enabled components from the "MyOtherConfig.xml" file with all the settings from the "MyOtherConfig.xml" file. .EXAMPLE .\Tracer.ps1 Config Shows the configuration of the "TraceConfig.xml" file. #> param( [Parameter(Mandatory=$true)] [ValidateSet("Start", "Stop", "Config", "Format", IgnoreCase=$true)] [String] $Action, [String] $ConfigPath = "TraceConfig.xml" ) $configXml = ((Get-Content $ConfigPath)) $tracerPath = $configXml.Config.Paths.Tracer $etlDir = $configXml.Config.Paths.Etl $logDir = $configXml.Config.Paths.Log $tmfSearchPath = $configXml.Config.Paths.TmfSearchPath # Construct the parameters for the 'Start' command to OcsTracer.exe function getStartParams() { $ret = @() $configXml.Config.Components.Component | ? {$_.Enabled -eq "yes"} | foreach { $ret = $ret + ("/Component:" + $_.Name + "," + $configXml.Config.Default.Level + "," + $configXml.Config.Default.Flags + " ") } return $ret } # Construct the parameters for the 'Stop' command to OcsTracer.exe function getStopParams() { $ret = @() $configXml.Config.Components.Component | ? {$_.Enabled -eq "yes"} | foreach { $ret = $ret + ("/Component:" + $_.Name) } return $ret } # Format the ETL files for enabled components to a human readable format function formatFiles( [Parameter(Mandatory=$true)] [String] $Timestamp ) { md $logDir\$timestamp -ea silentlycontinue | Out-Null $configXml.Config.Components.Component | ? {$_.Enabled -eq "yes"} | foreach { $etlFile = $_.Name + ".etl"; if (Test-Path $etlFile) { $logFile = $Timestamp + "\" + $Timestamp + "_" + $_.Name + ".log"; & "$tracerPath\OcsTracer.exe" Format /LogFilePath:"$etlDir\$etlFile" /OutputFile:"$logDir\$logFile" /TmfSearchPath:"$tmfSearchPath" | Write-Verbose } else { Write-Warning "File $etlFile not found."; } } } Write-Host "Using Config File: $ConfigPath" $timestamp = Get-Date -format "yyyy-MM-dd_HH.mm.ss" if ($Action -eq "start") { Write-Host "Removing all .etl files ..." ls $etlDir *.etl | ri Write-Host "Start tracing components ..." $params = getStartParams & "$tracerPath\OcsTracer.exe" Start $params /LogFileFolder:"$etlDir" | Write-Verbose } elseif ($Action -eq "stop") { Write-Host "Stop tracing components ..." $params = getStopParams md $logDir\$timestamp | Out-Null & "$tracerPath\OcsTracer.exe" Stop $params /OutputFile:"$logDir\$timestamp\$($timestamp)_All.log" /TmfSearchPath:"$tmfSearchPath" | Write-Verbose if (!$?) { rd $logDir\$timestamp | Out-Null } else { Write-Host "Sessions stopped. Start formatting ..." formatFiles $timestamp } } elseif ($Action -eq "format") { Write-Host "Formatting traces from ETL files ..." formatFiles $timestamp } elseif ($Action -eq "config") { Write-Host "Default values" Write-Host "--------------" $configXml.Config.Default | ft Level,Flags Write-Host "Paths" Write-Host "-----" $configXml.Config.Paths | fl Write-Host "Components" Write-Host "----------" $configXml.Config.Components.Component | ft Name,Enabled } else { Write-Error "Unknown action." }
For samples on how to run the script, please run man .\Tracer.ps1 -Examples
Have fun 🙂
Finding the Private Key File of Certificates
At work, I have created multiple tools which we used to analyse and fix issues related to certificates that we use with Office Communications Server and their respective private key files. To summarize, a user/service who wants to use the certificate for authentication needs to have read access on the private key. If it doesn’t, you’ll typically see a strange error which many people don’t relate to missing ACLs on the private key file.
Now these days, you don’t need to write such tools anymore. PowerShell allows you to pretty much do everything you need in this area. Let’s look at the following PS script (let’s call it FindPrivateKey.ps1) which accepts a parameter of type System.Security.Cryptography.X509Certificates.X509Certificate2, i.e. a reference to the certificate you want to analyze.
param( [Parameter(Mandatory=$true)] [System.Security.Cryptography.X509Certificates.X509Certificate2] $Certificate ) echo "Looking for private key file of certificate" echo $Certificate echo "" echo "The private key file is '$($Certificate.PrivateKey.CspKeyContainerInfo.UniqueKeyContainerName)'" echo "" $file = ls $env:userprofile -Filter $Certificate.PrivateKey.CspKeyContainerInfo.UniqueKeyContainerName -Recurse -Force -EA SilentlyContinue echo "It is located at '$($file.FullName)'."
I guess I do not need to mention that you can easily find the certificate you’re interested in by running something like
pushd cert:\CurrentUser\My ls $cert = gci 0DAC31905AEB722D8561BFAF3F3BFD2F551AA197 popd .\FindPrivateKey.ps1 $cert
where ‘0DAC31905AEB722D8561BFAF3F3BFD2F551AA197’ is simply the thumbprint of the certificate we’re interested in. From here on it should be easy to check what ACLs the file has (run $file.GetAccessControl()) and to modify them (run $file.SetAccessControl()).