Linux and Windows event more love with containers (LCOW)

I have noticed "Linux containers on Windows built with LinuxKit" (LCOW)  a while back. Today I found a blog post from briantweet actually running a Windows and Linux container together.
There are a few steps that you need to follow to get things working though.

1. You need to be working on a later release of docker (at least 18.03 I believe)
2. Switch to windows containers:
   
3. and have the experimental features enabled :
   
4. You need to then install the LinuxKit on your machine, which is luckily fairly simple:
1. Download the latest release
2. Run an elevated powershell prompt and execute the following:
   Remove-Item "$env:ProgramFiles\Linux Containers" -Force -Recurse
Expand-Archive release.zip -DestinationPath "$Env:ProgramFiles\Linux Containers\."
5. Now, the first thing I tried was to run the MS-SQL container on Linux (as did brian) and we both ran into the same memory issue. It is a bit hairy to fix, and you may not even need to do this depending on what you are trying to run, but just in case:
1. We need to recompile the docker deamon. Luckily there are steps to do exactly that, in a docker container. Brian explains it quite well, but missed a few steps that I will fill in:
1. You will find the client_local_windows.go file in the libcontainerd directory under the root of the docker source code
2. You will need to find the configuration := &hcsshim.ContainerConfig{
HvPartition: true,
Name: id,
SystemType: "container",
ContainerType: "linux",
Owner: defaultOwner,
TerminateOnLastHandleClosed: true,
} section, round about line 360. Then insert the MemoryMaximumInMB: 4096, in that config
3. When running step 4 (from the steps) to build the images, add the "-m 2GB" arg., else you will have an "out of memory" error
4. Finally, only copy over the "dockerd.exe" file to the original docker install folder under the resources directory. On my machine : C:\Program Files\Docker\Docker\resources

This allowed me to run both the Linux ms-sql image and a windows based dotnet sample image together..

Magic!

Tips and Tricks: Open Workitem in Visual Studio

Problem:

Getting annoyed when working in Visual Studio 2017 and each time you you open a work item from Team Explorer pane, it opens it in the web?

Well according to recent conversations I have had, it appears that not to many people know about the ability to set the behaviour.

Solution:

By default, VS2017 will open the work items in the browser, but there is a way to change it. When you open Visual Studio and select the Tools > Options from the menu. Find the "Work Items" section and under General you can change the behaviour.

Setting it to "Visual Studio (compatibility mode)" will open the work items in Visual Studio as before.

Be warned though, this is option is due to be removed in the next major release of Visual Studio where the default behaviour will be to open the work item in the browser. So use it while you can

Tips and Tricks: User has Allow Delete work items, but no delete button on work item

Problem:

The user in TFS/VSTS has all the rights enabled to delete work items. The problem is that when you open the work items the "Delete" button is missing, and you do not have the option to delete in query lists.

When you look at the inherited rights you see something like this:

All indication is that the permission is allowed, but the end result is that it is denied.

Solution:

This may be that the user is in the "Stakeholder" access level. If you pay close attention to the "unavailable features" you will notice that deleting work items is one of the things a stakeholder can't do.

You can now either acquire a license for the user and move him/her into the basic access level or higher, or the user will need to ask someone that does hove those rights to perform the deletions.

Tips and Tricks: TFS Excel Plugin not loading

Problem:

Close an Excel spreadsheet with/or without having a TFS/VSTS connected list. When you open the spreadsheet again, the Team tab is missing in the ribbon bar.

You then need to go through and re-enable the plugin through Excel options to reload the plugin and get the Team tab back.

This also disconnects your TFS/VSTS linked worksheets, causing you to have to reconnect or re-open a query to carry on working with the work items.

Solution:

1. With Excel closed, open up the registry editor (regedit)
2. Then navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\Excel\Addins , and find the TFCOfficeShim entries:
   
   There may be more than one, and the version number at the end may differ to the image above
3. I simply remove/delete the “older versions”  (I surely do not have to remind you to take a backup of your registry before you make any changes),
4. and then find the “LoadBehavior” in the “folder” and make sure that the value is 3

Now re-open the spreadsheet and see if it will load automatically.

Using Office UI Fabric to create a VSTS Extension

In the beginning

In the beginning god wanted to make earth. So, god found a cool looking bootstrapper and loaded up his favorite command line.
God then stepped through and downloaded all 100’s of packages to be able to run the bootstrapper and then the bootstrapper itself:

npm install create-planet -g

God created earth create-planet earth and all was good for a few days. God then decided he wanted to do more. Humans were missing.

npm install human

+ <human@0.0.1>
added 1702 packages in 5904.903s

God then referenced "humans" in earth.js and tried to compile.

Module not found: Error: Can't resolve sin

Ok, no biggy, npm install sin. Compile.

[at-loader] ./node_modules/@types/Inhabitants/index.d.ts:90:13
TS2403: Subsequent variable declarations must have the same type. Variable
'intellegentlife' must be of type 'Homosapiens', but here has type 'Neanderthal'

Ok, remove package Neanderthal. Compile.

earthpack error -ERROR in earth.js from UglifyUniverse Unexpected token: name (continentParts)

Earthpack.. where did that come from? Ok...
5 hours later, god found the Earthpack config and was able to fix the configuration, and the compile was good.

So god ran earth and was promptly told:
Universe.js Error: Invariant Violation: Minified World error #379.

Then there was a big bang.

An now…

I took on a project a while back to summarise and write a “quick start” series of posts for the ALM/DevOps Rangers to highlight the usage of Office UI Fabric. This meant that I needed to get my head around changing an existing extension from “simple” Typescript to React while incorporating Office UI components.  As you may have summised from the above analogy, I have spent way to much time trying to get things running the way that I want them to, based off of someone else's concepts, intentions and bootstrapping.

If you are interested in the outcomes, please follow the series posted on the msdn blog:

1. The start

Containers on Azure as part of a CI/CD pipeline

In my previous posts I was speaking about the journey to go from setting up a container and ultimately publishing it in a continuous fashion to a registry using VSTS.

You may have noticed that a lot of time has elapsed since my last post, and there are a couple of reasons for that.

First of all, the impediment of work, secondly, I noticed a trend where it became fairly popular to blog about the journey from where I ended off and I hung back and followed those for a while.

Instead of me going ahead and creating a bunch of posts to show how to publish your container and run it in production, I’m going to hand it off to a bunch of other capable people :-)

To delve deeper, or just for more information, these are all good reads:

• Windows finally came to the party with Windows based containers
• Introduction to Azure Container Service for Kubernetes
• Walk through on managing a Kubernetes container service on Azure
• Webcasts giving a good overview of the DevOps processes around leveraging containers
• Create a CI/CD pipeline for containerized ASP.NET Core projects
• Setting up CI/CD for Docker Container Running in Kubernetes using VSTS
• Running Web API using Docker and Kubernetes
• Team Yoman generator by Donovan Brown, that will create most of the infrastructure for you
• Continuous Deployment, Kubernetes to Azure Container Service

And if you are interested in a brief discussion on how to move to a microservices based architecture this is a good read : Modernizing a Monolithic Application using Microservices and Azure

 

Deploy Docker images to a Private Azure Container Registry

This post continues the journey of creating a dotnet application, containerizing and ultimately deploying the image to production.

The first thing we need to do is to get the source into a source repository (I’m of course going to use VSTS), then we need to configure a build and then push the images to a registry. We will then be able to deploy the images from the registry to our hosts, but more on that later.
Note: Some of these steps may incur some cost, so I would highly recommend at the very least creating a Dev Essentials account. This should cover any costs while we are playing.

I’m assuming you have already pushed your code to a repository in VSTS, so the next step is to create an Azure account, if you have not got one already, and then to setup a container registry.

To create your own private azure container registry to publish the images to:

1. Login to azure
2. Select container registries
    
3. This should give you a list and you will need to click “add” to create a new container registry
4. Fill in the required details and create a new registry
5. Once created, open up the blade and select the Access Key settings. This should contain the registry name, login server and user name and password details (make sure the “Admin User” is enabled)
   

Now lets move on to VSTS.
First we need to “connect” VSTS and your container registry:

1. Login to your VSTS project and under settings, select the services configuration:
   
2. Using the details that were in the Access Key settings on the Azure container registry blade, create a docker registry service with your “Login Server” as the docker registry url and the user name and password:
   

Finally it is time to create the builds. As you would expect, go add a new “empty” build definition that links to your source repository. Instead of selecting the “Hosted” build queue, use the “Hosted Linux Preview” queue. Docker is not available on the normal hosted windows agents yet.
Add 2 command line tasks and 3 docker tasks:


Note: If you do not have the docker tasks, then you will need to go and install them from the market place
Now configure the tasks as follows:

Command Line 1	Tool: dotnet Arguments: restore Advanced/Working Folder : The folder that your source is located in. In my case it was $(build.sourcesdirectory)/dotnet_sample/
Command Line 2	Tool: dotnet Arguments : publish -c release -o $(build.sourcesdirectory)/dotnet_sample/output/ or an "output" folder under your source location Advanced/Working Folder : see above
Docker 1	Docker Registry Connection : the service connection that you created earlier Action : Build an image Docker File : The location of your docker file. In my case it was $(build.sourcesdirectory)/dotnet_sample/dockerfile Build Context: The location of your source code. In my case $(build.sourcesdirectory)/dotnet_sample Image Name: The name and tag that you want to give your image. In my case I just used dotnet_sample:$(Build.BuildId) Advanced/Working Folder : same as the other working folders
Docker 2	Docker Registry Connection : the service connection that you created earlier Action : Run a Docker Command Command : tag dotnet_sample:$(Build.BuildId) $(DockerRegistryUrl)/sample/dotnet_sample:$(Build.BuildId) the name must be the same as in the task above, and the $(DockerRegistryUrl) must be your Azure container registry url or login server Advanced/Working Folder : same as the other working folders
Docker 3	Docker Registry Connection : the service connection that you created earlier Action : Push an image Image Name : The name you passed in when tagging your container above. In my case it was $(DockerRegistryUrl)/sample/dotnet_sample:$(Build.BuildId) Advanced/Working Folder : same as the other working folders

Now you can save and queue the build. Hopefully it will look something like this:


If all has passed, a quick and easy way to see if your image is in your registry is to navigate to your docker registry’s catalogue url : “https://<<registry_url>>/v2/_catalog”. This will likely prompt you to login with the username and password that you setup previously and then you will download a json file. Opening this file will provide you with all the images hosted in your registry.

In this post we have moved from a locally created image to one residing in our private registry. In the next post we will continue the journey a bit further…