Category: Technology

Microsoft Whiteboard Sticky Notes and Text Box

Two ways to add text to Microsoft Whiteboard sessions — ways that aren’t dragging your finger or mouse around in an attempt to draw legible text — are available. I’d like to be able to change the font in the text box — I get that their font choice is meant to evoke hand-written text, but it strikes me as non-professional.

PrivateTmp Strangeness — apachectl v/s systemctl

This is a very strange problem — we had a web server upgraded recently. We use “sudo apachectl start” to bring up the server since the server is maintained by a dedicated Unix support team, and the site worked fine. Until … Sunday morning after the log rotation. Then Box Spout was unable to access the XML data for an Excel file to compress it. Lots of errors:

 

[Mon Sep 14 10:59:39.137728 2020] [:error] [pid 57117] [client 10.1.2.3:49276] PHP Warning: ZipArchive::close(): Zlib error: stream error in /path/to/site/classes/vendor/box/spout/src/Spout/Writer/Common/Helper/ZipHelper.php on line 199, referer: https://hostname.example.com/path/to/code.php
[Mon Sep 14 10:59:39.137785 2020] [:error] [pid 57117] [client 10.1.2.3:49276] PHP Warning: fopen(/tmp/xlsx5f5f934699dcd9.17695276.zip): failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /path/to/site/classes/vendor/box/spout/src/Spout/Writer/Common/Helper/ZipHelper.php on line 213, referer: https://hostname.example.com/path/to/code.php
[Mon Sep 14 10:59:39.137803 2020] [:error] [pid 57117] [client 10.1.2.3:49276] PHP Warning: stream_copy_to_stream() expects parameter 1 to be resource, boolean given in /path/to/site/classes/vendor/box/spout/src/Spout/Writer/Common/Helper/ZipHelper.php on line 214, referer: https://hostname.example.com/path/to/code.php
[Mon Sep 14 10:59:39.137814 2020] [:error] [pid 57117] [client 10.1.2.3:49276] PHP Warning: fclose() expects parameter 1 to be resource, boolean given in /path/to/site/classes/vendor/box/spout/src/Spout/Writer/Common/Helper/ZipHelper.php on line 215, referer: https://hostname.example.com/path/to/code.php
[Mon Sep 14 10:59:39.138360 2020] [:error] [pid 57117] [client 10.1.2.3:49276] PHP Fatal error: Uncaught exception ‘Box\\Spout\\Common\\Exception\\IOException’ with message ‘Cannot perform I/O operation outside of the base folder: /tmp’ in /path/to/site/classes/vendor/box/spout/src/Spout/Common/Helper/FileSystemHelper.php:130\nStack trace:\n#0 /path/to/site/classes/vendor/box/spout/src/Spout/Common/Helper/FileSystemHelper.php(82): Box\\Spout\\Common\\Helper\\FileSystemHelper->throwIfOperationNotInBaseFolder(‘/tmp/xlsx5f5f93…’)\n#1 /path/to/site/classes/vendor/box/spout/src/Spout/Writer/XLSX/Helper/FileSystemHelper.php(369): Box\\Spout\\Common\\Helper\\FileSystemHelper->deleteFile(‘/tmp/xlsx5f5f93…’)\n#2 /path/to/site/classes/vendor/box/spout/src/Spout/Writer/XLSX/Internal/Workbook.php(134): Box\\Spout\\Writer\\XLSX\\Helper\\FileSystemHelper->zipRootFolderAndCopyToStream(Resource id #26)\n#3 /path/to/site/ in /path/to/site/classes/vendor/box/spout/src/Spout/Common/Helper/FileSystemHelper.php on line 130, referer: https://hostname.example.com/path/to/code.php
[Mon Sep 14 10:59:39.139468 2020] [:error] [pid 57117] [client 10.1.2.3:49276] PHP Warning: ZipArchive::close(): Zlib error: stream error in /path/to/site/classes/vendor/box/spout/src/Spout/Writer/Common/Helper/ZipHelper.php on line 199, referer: https://hostname.example.com/path/to/code.php
[Mon Sep 14 10:59:39.139504 2020] [:error] [pid 57117] [client 10.1.2.3:49276] PHP Warning: fopen(/tmp/xlsx5f5f934699dcd9.17695276.zip): failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /path/to/site/classes/vendor/box/spout/src/Spout/Writer/Common/Helper/ZipHelper.php on line 213, referer: https://hostname.example.com/path/to/code.php
[Mon Sep 14 10:59:39.139515 2020] [:error] [pid 57117] [client 10.1.2.3:49276] PHP Warning: stream_copy_to_stream() expects parameter 1 to be resource, boolean given in /path/to/site/classes/vendor/box/spout/src/Spout/Writer/Common/Helper/ZipHelper.php on line 214, referer: https://hostname.example.com/path/to/code.php
[Mon Sep 14 10:59:39.139533 2020] [:error] [pid 57117] [client 10.1.2.3:49276] PHP Warning: fclose() expects parameter 1 to be resource, boolean given in /path/to/site/classes/vendor/box/spout/src/Spout/Writer/Common/Helper/ZipHelper.php on line 215, referer: https://hostname.example.com/path/to/code.php
[Mon Sep 14 10:59:39.139599 2020] [:error] [pid 57117] [client 10.1.2.3:49276] PHP Fatal error: Uncaught exception ‘Box\\Spout\\Common\\Exception\\IOException’ with message ‘Cannot perform I/O operation outside of the base folder: /tmp’ in /path/to/site/classes/vendor/box/spout/src/Spout/Common/Helper/FileSystemHelper.php:130\nStack trace:\n#0 /path/to/site/classes/vendor/box/spout/src/Spout/Common/Helper/FileSystemHelper.php(82): Box\\Spout\\Common\\Helper\\FileSystemHelper->throwIfOperationNotInBaseFolder(‘/tmp/xlsx5f5f93…’)\n#1 /path/to/site/classes/vendor/box/spout/src/Spout/Writer/XLSX/Helper/FileSystemHelper.php(369): Box\\Spout\\Common\\Helper\\FileSystemHelper->deleteFile(‘/tmp/xlsx5f5f93…’)\n#2 /path/to/site/classes/vendor/box/spout/src/Spout/Writer/XLSX/Internal/Workbook.php(134): Box\\Spout\\Writer\\XLSX\\Helper\\FileSystemHelper->zipRootFolderAndCopyToStream(Resource id #26)\n#3 /path/to/site in /path/to/site/classes/vendor/box/spout/src/Spout/Common/Helper/FileSystemHelper.php on line 130, referer: https://hostname.example.com/path/to/code.php

 

The postupdate script is “systemctl reload httpd.service” — so not exactly the same thing we used to launch the service originally. But I’ve never seen differing behavior between apachectl and systemctl started HTTPD instances. Quick/dirty solution is to disable PrivateTmp, but I’m hoping to be able to isolate why exactly the postupdate script appears to break the service’s access to the private tmp space.

30 November 2020 addendum — In discussing the issue with RedHat, they suggested using either

/sbin/killall -HUP httpd

or

/bin/systemctl restart httpd.service > /dev/null 2>/dev/null || true

Doing this has allowed continual access to the Private Tmp space after log rotation. Woohoo! Not sure why the default configuration that came from the Apache httpd package didn’t work (i.e. it’s not like we built some funky weird log rotation script). But success is good enough for me.

Python Time-Expiring Cache

I needed to post information into a SharePoint Online list. There’s an auth header required to post data, but the authentication expires every couple of minutes. Obviously, I could just get a new auth string each time … but that’s terribly inefficient. I could also use what I had and refresh it when it fails … inelegant but effective. I wanted, instead, to have a value cached for a duration slightly less than the server-side expiry on the auth string. This decorator allows me to use the cached auth header string for some period of time and actually run the function that grabs the auth header string before the string is invalidated. 

import functools
import time
from datetime import datetime

def timed_cache(iMaxAge, iMaxSize=128, boolTyped=False):
    #######################################
    # LRU cache decorator with expiry time
    #
    # Args:
    #    iMaxAge: Seconds to live for cached results. 
    #    iMaxSize: Maximum cache size (see functools.lru_cache).
    #    boolTyped: Cache on distinct input types (see functools.lru_cache).
    #######################################
    def _decorator(fn):
        @functools.lru_cache(maxsize=iMaxSize, typed=boolTyped)
        def _new(*args, __time_salt, **kwargs):
            return fn(*args, **kwargs)

        @functools.wraps(fn)
        def _wrapped(*args, **kwargs):
            return _new(*args, **kwargs, __time_salt=int(time.time() / iMaxAge))
        return _wrapped

    return _decorator

# Usage example -- 23 second cache expiry
@timed_cache(23)
def slow_function(iSleepTime: int):
    datetimeStart = datetime.now()
    time.sleep(iSleepTime)
    return f"test started at {datetimeStart} and ended at at {datetime.now()}"


print(f"Start at {datetime.now()}")

for i in range(1, 50):
    print(slow_function(5))
    
    if i % 5 is 0:
        print(f"sleeping 5 at {datetime.now()}")
        time.sleep(5)
        print(f"done sleeping at {datetime.now()}\n\n")

print(f"Ended at at {datetime.now()}")

VSCode — Shortcut for Uppercase and Lowercase Conversion

While you can run a command to convert the selected text to upper (or lower) case, there doesn’t appear to be a quick way to do it. Luckily, you can define your own keyboard shortcuts and map those shortcuts to commands. From the File menu, select “Preferences” and “Keyboard Shortcuts” (or use the Ctrl-K Ctrl-S combo).

In the upper right-hand corner, click this icon to open the custom keyboard shortcut JSON file

Add JSON elements for the shortcuts you want to define — the key combination, the command to run, and on what to run the command

Sample key command bindings:

[
 {
    "key": "ctrl+shift+u",
    "command": "editor.action.transformToUppercase",
    "when": "editorTextFocus"
 },
 {
    "key": "ctrl+shift+l",
    "command": "editor.action.transformToLowercase",
    "when": "editorTextFocus"
 }
]

Save … voila, a keyboard shortcut to change to upper and lower case.

Listing Modules In Dynamically Linked Shared Object Libraries

We had to rebuild a server over the weekend — it’s a lot harder to get Apache and PHP set up when you don’t have root access to just install things from the yum repository. And, unlike the servers where I built httpd and php from source … we basically relayed requests to the Unix admin to have packages installed. One of the confusions during the whole process was that we didn’t know what to use as the module name for PHP to load in the httpd.conf file. The line from our old server (LoadModule php5_module /etc/httpd/modules/libphp5.so) produced an error that there was no such thing to load.

When a library fails to load with some error, I know to use ldd … but I didn’t know there was a way to list out the modules in a library. Fortunately, one of my coworkers had already run nm and listed out the modules — nm -D –defined-only sharedLibraryFile | grep module — and we were able to identify that the libphp5.so that we had wasn’t anything like the one on the old server. By listing the modules for each of the shared object libraries installed by the php package, we got the proper module name for httpd.conf

Testing A New Web Server Without DNS Changes

When migrating to a new server, it’s good to validate site functionality before redirecting users to the new host. i.e. I have anya.rushworth.us set up in the httpd config on both server1 and server2. DNS currently points traffic to server1, but I need to test the site on server2.

Approach #1 – With administrative access to the host

Edit your hosts file – open an administrative command prompt

Edit %SYSTEMROOT%\system32\drivers\etc\hosts and add lines with the IP address WHITESPACE and the hostname(s). E.G.
127.0.0.1 lisatest lisatest.rushworth.us lisatest2 lisatest2.rushworth.us
10.1.2.3 otherhost otherhost.rushworth.us
10.2.3.4 anya anya.rushworth.us

Clear your DNS cache (ipconfig /flushdns) and navigate to the URL. You’ll be directed the IP address from your hosts file instead of the DNS registered address.

Approach #2 – No admin access

Install ModHeader in your Chrome browser and click the extension to modify the headers or install ModHeader in your Firefox browser. Click on the extension icon to set a header value.

Add a “Host” header with the value of the virtual host name you need to test

Navigate to the hostname of the new server – https://server2.rushworth.us – but the web server will receive the Host header you configured in ModHeader and serve the web site based on that host header.

 

Exporting A Microsoft Teams Chat

There’s no export functionality in MS Teams chats and conversations. From Microsoft’s standpoint, this makes sense — customer retention. From the customer standpoint, however? There are times I really want to transfer a conversation elsewhere for some reason. You can copy/paste individual text bubbles. If you only need to get one or two bubbles, manually copying the text is going to be quicker. And, for those with special access, there’s the Security & Compliance discovery export stuff as well as an approach using the Graph API. But for the rest of us general users, there’s no easy way to export the bunch of little chat bubbles that comprise a MS Teams chat.  There is, however, a not-too-hard way to do it in the Teams web client.

I’ll prefix these instructions with a disclaimer – your company may have document retention in Teams. When you export your chat content, you’ll need to maintain appropriate retention policies yourself. In IT, we had a few information categories where retention was “useful life” – we could retain system documentation as long as the system was used. If you’re exporting a chat to keep something you are allowed to keep and then keep it outside of Teams … that’s awesome. If you are trying to keep something the company’s retention policy says should be removed … that’s probably not awesome.

Once you’ve determined that the info you are exporting is OK to export and maintain elsewhere, here’s how to export a Teams chat from within the Teams web client. Step 1, of course, is to lot into Teams at https://teams.microsoft.com and go to the chat you want to export. Scroll up to the top of the chat. If you have a really long chat, it may not be possible to export the entire thing using this approach. I might play around with it in the future, by most of my conversations are in Teams channels so I don’t have a chat that’s more than 30 or so messages.

Once you are at the top of the chat, open the developer tools (ctrl-shift-i in Chrome). Clear the errors — they clutter up the screen.

Paste the following script into the console and hit enter:

var strRunningText = "";
var collectionMessageBubbles = document.querySelectorAll('.message-body-content, .message-datetime');

for (let objMessageBubble of collectionMessageBubbles) {
     strRunningText = strRunningText + "\n" + objMessageBubble.textContent;
}

console.log(strRunningText);

If you have a long series of chat messages, you’ll get some of the chat displayed and a button to copy the entire chat content to your clipboard.

If you have a shorter series of chat messages, you’ll have the text of the chat in the console window. You can highlight it and copy/paste the text elsewhere.

There’s a little cleanup that can be done – the content of the message-datetime elements have a beginning and trailing newline character along with a bunch of whitespace. You can get a cleaner timestamp (but, if you embed code within your messages … which I do … the code sections have a lot of extraneous newlines):

var strRunningText = "";
var collectionMessageBubbles = document.querySelectorAll('.message-body-content, .message-datetime');

for (let objMessageBubble of collectionMessageBubbles) {
     strRunningText = strRunningText + "\n" + objMessageBubble.innerText;
}

console.log(strRunningText);

The same JavaScript works in the Teams channel conversations except the channel conversations tend to be longer … so you’re going to export some subset of the channel conversation around where you are in the web browser.

* I realized, during a multi-person chat last week, that I don’t grab the name of the individual who posted the message to the chat. Grabbing the person’s name should just entail adding the identifier for the name element into the querySelectorAll list … but that’s not something I’ve had an opportunity to check yet.