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All Posts (543)

• 

  Published on

  2021-03-31 10:26 a.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  powershellprinters

  How to change printer paper size using PowerShell?

  This article explains (with conveniently copy-pasteable code samples) how you can query your printers using PowerShell and modify properties, such as paper size, for one or more of them. This is very useful if you have multiple printers and multiple computers that you use.

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• 

  Published on

  2021-03-24 5:25 a.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  activedirectoryazure-ad

  Guide: How to take over and kill a viral AAD tenant?

  Rogue Azure Active Directories don't sound like a huge and widespread problem, but Microsoft's approach of generating unmanaged, viral AAD tenants whenever they encounter the tiniest reason to do so MUST be driven by some weird internal scorecard where "number of tenants" has a lot of weight, because you do get an Azure AD tenant really easily, and getting rid of one is surprisingly laborious. This guide aims to explain what's the quickest way to remove one.

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• 

  Published on

  2021-03-18 8:12 a.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  powershell

  Listing all of the assemblies loaded in a PowerShell session?

  In this article, I'll do my best to explain how to list all loaded assemblies in a PowerShell session. You see, PowerShell is great at caching assemblies in the weirdest possible way, so ending up with all kinds of mismatches in loaded DLL versions is pretty common. Or just being plainly blocked from loading a new one as you already have a cached reference. I mean, I've run into all kinds of issues even if I only use PowerShell occasionally. Maybe that's the reason.

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• 

  Published on

  2021-03-15 2:01 p.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  valo-intranet

  Of Course I Still #ValoLove You

  Long story short: My 6-year career with Valo is now coming to an end. Today was my last day at Valo. This is the longest I've ever worked at a company, and I've had the time of my life in the many positions I've held within Valo / Blue Meteorite. Rarely does a company offer you so many different possibilities and options - and let you grow into the role that you're looking to fill, with any support you might need.

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• 

  Published on

  2021-03-08 4:34 a.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  ef-coreentityframeworkcore

  How to fix "No database provider has been configured for this DbContext" in EF Core?

  I'm using Entity Framework in most of the projects that I'm working on - and for the most part, it's a pleasure to work with. But as always, there are plenty of chances to run into issues... So obviously, I stumbled into all of the rare stuff that IS broken! This one I hadn't really seen before: "No database provider has been configured for this DbContext" . This time I encountered the issue while setting up a new project and getting started working on the model.

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• 

  Published on

  2021-03-04 2:11 p.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  azuredevopsrobotframeworkyaml

  How to run Robot tests on an Azure DevOps hosted agent?

  This short article simply documents how to install the dependencies for running Robot Framework on Azure DevOps' hosted agents. This simple tip comes in handy when you need to run any UI testing for your project after build, as Robot Framework is a great and widely used tool for that. Let's quickly take a look at the background of the issue, after which I'm sharing a highly copy-pasteable piece of YAML for your convenience. Well - and mine.

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• 

  Published on

  2021-03-03 5:42 a.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  azurefunctions

  "Missing value for AzureWebJobsStorage in local.settings.json" when debugging Azure Functions locally?

  Another day, another issue with Azure Functions ! For such a simple and powerful tool, it sure does produce a lot of topics for blog articles! 😁 So, in this article, I'm explaining a couple of possible reasons why you might get an error along the lines of " Missing value for AzureWebJobsStorage " when debugging Azure Functions locally. But before jumping into the solution(s), let's take a closer look at the issue at hand, shall we?

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• 

  Published on

  2021-02-24 11:34 a.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  gutenbergmicrosoftexcelwordpress

  How to copy-paste a table from Excel to WordPress without using plug-ins?

  So, I tried to paste a table from Excel into WordPress, and I failed. Annoying - but not a big problem. I can just paste it into an existing table and it'll "sort itself out", right? Well, no. Exporting the Excel sheet as a html page and copy-pasting the table from there didn't work either. Actually, copy-pasting a table just didn't work at all. So... WordPress is unable to understand HTML tables. Is that really it? Well, no, again, it's not.

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• 

  Published on

  2021-02-17 9:44 p.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  sharepointlistssharepoint-online

  How to create a new SharePoint list based on a List template (.stp)?

  New Microsoft Lists are here!. They are awesome, and a great move by Microsoft to reap even more value from the old warhorse. Wait - old warhorse? Well, behind the scenes, they're actually "just" normal SharePoint lists with a bit of added sparkles and gizmos - namely, an app, a few automations to make users' lives easier, and an application page to display the lists. Great move by Microsoft, launch quite well done, and a pretty good user experience so far. But it's not all good.

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• 

  Published on

  2021-02-08 10:24 p.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  sharepointlistssharepoint-online

  How to enable saving a list as a template on SharePoint Online?

  Another day, another fun little task in SharePoint Online... :) This time, I needed to be able to migrate 10 or so lists with some very specific fields and plenty of content from one site to another one. What's the best way to do that now?

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• 

  Published on

  2021-02-02 5:51 a.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  azureazurecliazurefunctions

  How to change Azure Functions from Consumption to Premium Elastic plan?

  Sometimes, you need to change the hosting model (or tier) for your resources on Azure. Maybe you've outgrown whatever you've originally selected, maybe you've got too much cash on your hands, or maybe you're like me, and you get absolutely and completely fed up with the cold starts for your Azure Function apps on the Consumption plan and want to use the Premium Elastic plan instead. For these situations, you have the possibility of changing the hosting tier - the plan - you're on.

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• 

  Published on

  2021-01-26 9:06 a.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  azuredevopsdevopsnugetvisual-studio

  Azure DevOps Pipelines Caching

  Azure DevOps pipelines have a pretty handy feature called Pipeline Caching . It'll help you avoid annoyingly long NuGet package restores in your builds. And that makes sense - why would you restore packages again and again and again, if you're not updating your dependencies meanwhile?

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• 

  Published on

  2021-01-20 9:00 a.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  certificatespfx

  How to recover the private key of a (.pfx) certificate?

  Recently, I ran into a problem that I definitely caused myself. I had a certificate, that was created to authenticate an app against Azure AD. The encryption key for the .pfx file was, however, lost. I could just create a new certificate, configure the app service to use that, and replace the old certificate... But that's manual labor and where's the fun in that? I prefer a solution that included a bit more coding!

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• 

  Published on

  2021-01-12 7:23 p.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  azurefunctions

  How to fix "System.IO.FileSystem: Could not find a part of the path - - Value cannot be null. (Parameter 'provider')", when running Azure Functions locally?

  Well, that title is a mouthful. But it's the topic for today, so what can you do? That said, this article should be pretty topical, as the issue started popping up only a few days ago. Chances are it'll be patched soon enough, but in the meantime, it's always useful to document the fix! Problem When running or debugging Azure Functions locally, your runtime just blurts our this error and fails to compile your functions: [2021-01-11T10:28:11.

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• 

  Published on

  2021-01-11 1:06 p.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  visual-studio

  How to nuke the Identity Cache in Visual Studio?

  This article explains one easy workaround to a lot of Visual Studio authentication issues. Personally, it's helped me multiple times when Cloud Explorer has gotten into a weird authentication loop or Visual Studio stops seeing my MSDN subscription.

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• 

  Published on

  2021-01-06 4:53 a.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  aspnetcorenetcore3nuget

  Fixing unexpected Microsoft.AspNetCore package errors after a dependency update

  This was a fun one! Suddenly, while running or debugging my ASP.NET Core 3.1 application, I started getting errors about missing assemblies, along the lines of "FileNotFoundException: Could not load file or assembly Microsoft.AspNetCore.Components.Forms". These DLL files were not required a minute earlier - nor did requiring them really make much sense in my mind - but there was a nonsensical, easy fix, so in the end, it was all good! But let's go through this thing in order.

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• 

  Published on

  2020-12-31 2:27 a.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  yearreview

  2020 - Year Review

  Like is almost customary at this point in the year, I decided to take a look at 2020 - which goals I had set for myself if I hit them, and what happened on koskila.net during the year. And like last year, I thought I'd set myself a few new goals! In my last year review post, I commented on 2019: 2019 was borderline tumultuous – in 2020, I hope it’ll be slightly smoother sailing. Me, in my 2019 review Oof. Overall, 2020 was definitely not "smoother sailing".

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• 

  Published on

  2020-12-29 10:03 p.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  graph-apigraphexplorer

  Graph API throws "$count is not currently supported." when you KNOW it's supported?

  Hey, another funny case. "Funny" as in "the error message is misleading and googling didn't really help", but also as in "a colleague knew the answer right off the bat because he already fixed it in another project". This time the documentation was in fact there , it just wasn't there to be found . Anyway - what have I broken this time? Problem When you're calling Graph API with both $filter and $count, for example: https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/users/$count?

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• 

  Published on

  2020-12-08 4:21 a.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  ef-coreentityframeworkcore

  "An assembly specified in the application dependencies manifest was not found" when running Add-Migration in Entity Framework Core?

  Another quick one - I'm sure this doesn't apply to all cases, but I'm still logging it in case someone (like myself) stumbles upon the issue and finds help here.

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• 

  Published on

  2020-12-01 2:08 p.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  aadazure-ad

  How to fix Visual Studio Cloud Explorer being unable to access your subscriptions

  This article will describe a number of fixes to a situation, where your Visual Studio Cloud Explorer fails to show you the Azure Subscriptions you (should) have access to. Problem Your Cloud explorer might load for a long while, and finally, fail to display anything meaningful. Instead, you might see an error like the below: "Subscriptions could not be loaded. Please try reentering "Subscriptions could not be loaded.

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• 

  Published on

  2020-11-24 1:21 p.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  azuredevopspulumi

  Pulumi task on Azure DevOps fails with error "azureblob.OpenBucket: accountName is required"

  This article explains how to fix one of the many issues you might face when configuring Pulumi deployments for your Azure DevOps Pipelines! The particular error you may run into was "azureblob.OpenBucket: accountName is required" - what a descriptive one, when there's no accountName to be specified anywhere! But first - let's get through the basics. Namely... " Pulumi ?", you ask - " What's that? " Well, let me give you a 1-line response to that. What is Pulumi?

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• 

  Published on

  2020-11-17 7:23 a.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  githubhacktoberfest

  Hacktoberfest 2020

  Another year, another Hacktoberfest, another haphazard participation, and - as usual - another blog post a little bit late. Still, better late than never! And the event has become such a phenomenon that I am happy that I did finish the challenge (or like DigitalOcean calls it - the celebration)! The event has a special place in my heart, as it did (in 2017, I think?

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• 

  Published on

  2020-11-11 11:09 a.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  sharepointappcatalogsharepoint-app-partsharepoint-online

  How to access the site collection app catalog in SharePoint

  This article explains how to access the Site Collection App Catalog in SharePoint Online. I mean - yeah, I had to google it after getting back to SPFx dev stuff after a while and realized the first few results were useless. Of course. So how did you do this now... Turned out to be pretty easy, and borderline obvious! Still, yet another thing to document. Solution So, back to basics - how do you access the Site Collection App Catalog on a SharePoint Online Site (or Site Collection)?

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• 

  Published on

  2020-11-04 6:23 a.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  worxlandroid

  Frequently Asked Robot Lawn Mower Questions

  This article is my attempt at documenting my experiences with Worx Landroid L2000. It's a phenomenal little helper in your garden, but it will run into issues - and it will make your work a bit in order to get it to run efficiently! This article contains all of the gotchas I've run into so far, wrapped in a handy FAQ format for your convenience (and mine, to be fair - I'll be back to consult my notes later)!

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• 

  Published on

  2020-10-29 9:01 a.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  azureazurefunctions

  How to inject EF Core DbContext in an Azure Function

  Ah, one more on the related topics of different configurations for your Azure Function apps. In this article, I will describe how you can configure the Entity Framework Core database context to be injected into your Azure Functions App. In my experience, this is a very typical and often-needed model to structure your Azure Functions. Therefore, while tooling and templates aren't quite there, it's worthwhile to document how to do this somewhere - well, here.

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