Installing Excel. Just any random Excel? No, among all them Excels, it had to be m$ Excel. Don't fall for fakes...
Of course, knowing who I'm dealing with, I set my firewall tight, and of course it has to call home even before it asks for registration. Which it calls activation, they never use regular words. Actually, it's not the installer that calls, it's its runtime, what the setups created in m$'s tools use. Which means that even when Feds setup (for runtimes only, though, my updates are built in Inno Setup Builder), the m$ gets notified. Scum.
During the installation it crapped a lot, kept forgetting where the seedee was, tried to call home few more times... but I didn't let it until it asked for reg... activation.
I bought this (125$!) once when I had to do something for Paige four years ago, I think we were still in A-burg, and now I needed it for work... Which I could have done on Jan's server, but thought it would be easier this way. What a clusterfuck... And of course the installation forgot everything that once was on the previous windowses, total amnesia each time.
Wrote about that on the blogue few days later in much more detail; this time, on 18th, the „Hardware fashions 2“, about trying to install SQL server express 2005 (SSE wherever I'd have to type it), too long and too detailed, all kinds of shit in there, so here's only the conclusion:
Then I try to install the old MSDE (at 18:08). Won't go. Requires the strong password. How did that go... Build a batch file which will, hopefully, have all the parameters in the right format. Run that, "Product: Microsoft SQL Server Desktop Engine -- Installation operation failed.". As a consolation prize, "Performance counters for the MSSQLServer (MSSQLSERVER) service were loaded successfully. The Record Data contains the new index values assigned to this service." I'm so happy about the counters, I'm glad mr Gates isn't at hand so I won't have to do time.
I give up. Then, relieved of pressure to do this, a tiny LED goes off in my head... and I check the comparison between versions of SQL server. Bingo - I got too many processors. One. But it being three-core, in M$'s eyes it counts as three, so SSE won't run, which I was probably supposed to remember from three years ago when I last read it. Because the installer is not ever supposed to give me any meaningful message, like "the Express version will not install on this machine, because ..." or something to that effect. Which seems to be too complicated for all those knowing lawyers in Redmond to compose. So I had to waste some four hours figuring that out - because not a single message was pointing in that direction.
That's not all... I solved this, but leave that for another day.
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* I feel biblical today. See what "to know" means there. I'm too deurinated to explain all this stool in detail.
The saga goes on... As I'm adding these blog entries backwards, from last to first, for this (published on 19th) I still had the patience to reformat and then also translate the ridiculous m$speak into serbian (where it sounds even dumber):
Hardware fashions 3: connecting to SQL Server
The other two parts are just below.
Daughter came to rescue* - she has a full-fledged SQL server on her Vista laptop (a HP, on which the wireless network card fried the motherboard, beyond warranty, HP largely ignored the issue even though it was a mass event, class action may be pending), courtesy of her employer. The laptop is on the cable, so speed should closely emulate what my users are experiencing, perfect.
The scenario would be: create myself as an user on her SQL, connect to it via TCP/IP address through house network, build my databases, resume regular operation.
Her office is upstairs (we're both telecommuters), so after my tenth climb I decided to just connect to my machine [zmajček] from my laptop [nanovo], using Terminal Services**, so I'd have both ends of the game on the same desk. I have the Ubuntu TS client connecting to other machines without a hitch, but... there are a few tricks when opening your machine to it. First, there's a not-so-obvious place to do it: control panel, system applet, remote page - not anywhere in networking, services (but why is it called "Terminal Services", then?). There it offers remote assistance and remote desktop... funny, though, how do you do remote assistance without desktop access? Of course, there's no help on that dialog. At least, the instructions I found said remote desktop will suffice.
Tried logging in using my regular username, no go. Message was something about credentials. Ito created a new user and gave it equal rights, and then it connected. I am about used to cryptic or outright wrong error messages coming from Microsoft, after 23 years of bad experience with their warez, so... no surprise here. OK, connect. Good. Now try again to connect to SQL from my machine.
11.Sep.2009 12:15:08 Login failed for user 'myuser'. The user is not associated with a trusted SQL Server connection. [CLIENT: 192.168.0.101]
Tried eight more times and kept getting the same error. I'm very careful about who I associate with, and well, if I singlehandedly created an user for myself on a SQL server, why wouldn't I trust it?
Googled around... and it turned out that the story about SQL server handling its own security is not really an option anymore. That is, in SQL 2005 you can still have the username defined inside the database, and it will check the password if you really like, but if Windows doesn't recognize the user, it just won't connect. This used to work fine with SQL 2000 and SQL 7. So it's a direct misnomer there in the message - "trusted SQL Server connection" is not a SQL Server connection at all, it's a Windows login.
So OK, I created myself as an user on daughter's machine, though I didn't really want to - for exactly the security reasons. I have just too many rights on my machine, and if anything ever wants to walk through the home network, I shouldn't be logged in anywhere else. I just want that one port open. Never mind, all our machine are belong to Microsoft (except my Ubuntu laptop :), anyway. Next:
11.Sep.2009 12:47:56 Login failed for user ''. The user is not associated with a trusted SQL Server connection. [CLIENT: 192.168.0.101] I guess this would count as progress. I've lost a name, now that I have created a name on the Vista. Among the lame and cryptic error messages, this is pretty much a champion so far.
...
Fast forward to the evening. After giving up several times, googling to imbecility and back, no closer than before. Dinner, then a lightbulb for dessert: I didn't set up a password on my machine, but did on hers. So I set up the same password (!) on mine and... all of a sudden it works. So let me get this straight - Windows security
This means, to me, that the only way for a remote user to connect to SQL server (imagine I have an app that needs only that from the server, no other connection needed), I actually have to replicate his user/pass on the server or domain, and fiddle with rights. The reasons M$ ditched (or defanged) SQL's own authentication are beyond me.
- requires that the same username exists on both machines (or, I guess, at the domain level), so it will allow connection to SQL server
- they must have the same password
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* later I learned it's always „the rescue“, because there's only one; if two are needed simultaneously, tough shit, the one is taken already, the other unlucky guy dies.
** "Terminal Services" sounds like something to do upon termination. A funeral.
I think I soon learned a few tricks, which were impossible to find from m$'s documentation, despite two programmers wasting a whole day searching. It can be all done inside SQL server, and I did it dozens of times later, but the point is that m$ is not advertising it at all. They'd love to have everybody login to SQL through the authentication in Windowses, preferably at the domain level... where you need an admin etc, who'd have to pay to attend courses where they teach the proper ways to do this. For us, small players or home shops, it's like this, until you find the paragraph somewhere, which explains the whole thing.
It's even simpler, all you need is „trusted_connection=no“ in the connectstring. Composing a connectstring is scattered across instructions for the tools which use it, namely those used to write client code, which are then several versions late, and surely don't refer to the new features. On the server side, those options are scattered, the instructions how to write a connectstring I never found on m$'s sites, instead we had to make do with connection wizard, which builds the string in the background, and saves it into some file with a funny extension which nothing will open. It's actually an ordinary textfile, and differs from a real connectstring by having options separated into paragraphs instead of by semicolons. It also doesn't explain that „trusted connection“ actually means „use login from Windowses“. Even ten years later I met colleagues who didn't know that this file can be opened in a simple text editor.
And Lena earned 40$ - held private lessons on, guess, chemistry (or maybe maths, didn't quite catch what) to a cousin of her yoga instructor. She'll do that once a week, until who knows when.
I'm shredding the magnolia leaves to rot faster, and leaving it to lie there. It being so leathery, it's a bit harder to chop, but I invented a trick: I stab the pitchfork through a heap, then approach it sideways with the small graswhipper that I use to mow the lawn. The pieces I get are sized no larger than a postage stamp, and they lie low on the ground, the wind doesn't disperse them. At least they'll keep the moisture below.
The feferone* bear fruit like crazy. Off the ten stalks we picked some sixty already, and a dozen more this morning... will be about a hundred in the end. Something bit one off, we found it tossed away beneath Nina's car. The wee beast must have ran away screaming - whatever it may be, a rat or a raccoon or an opposum, even a squirrel, or something two-legged.
On thudsday evening there was a fender bender by the corner of our building. The black girl living near its end came down a tad faster and, who knows why, knocked into a parked car. Not a scratch on her - the bags blew as they should. She got out, took the kids from the rear seat, and carried them running to her door, then came back. Meanwhile the whole neighborhood appeared - who'd ever say there's so many of us in the street. Everyone went out, even Ender, Nina and Lena. We ddn't see much of her car and in what condition it was, but the parked [one] comes across as if its rear left wheel is in the middle of the rear seat. Police came, firem... firepers... firefighters, saw nobody was hurt and left, cops stayed to take pictures, we retreated in.
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* hot peppers, aka pepperoni, in the original meaning - not the sausage, not the pizza.
16-II-2022 - 5-VII-2026