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Jeroen W. Pluimers on .NET, C#, Delphi, databases, and personal interests

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Archive for the ‘Encoding’ Category

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Fixing hg.exe “ImportError: DLL load failed: %1 is not a valid Win32 application.”

Posted by jpluimers on 2021/07/21

If you get the below error when running hg.exe, then you are mixing a 64-bit Mercurial with 32-bit dependencies:

C:\>hg --version
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "hg", line 43, in 
  File "hgdemandimport\demandimportpy2.pyc", line 150, in __getattr__
  File "hgdemandimport\demandimportpy2.pyc", line 94, in _load
  File "hgdemandimport\demandimportpy2.pyc", line 43, in _hgextimport
  File "mercurial\dispatch.pyc", line 22, in 
  File "hgdemandimport\demandimportpy2.pyc", line 248, in _demandimport
  File "hgdemandimport\demandimportpy2.pyc", line 43, in _hgextimport
  File "mercurial\i18n.pyc", line 28, in 
  File "hgdemandimport\demandimportpy2.pyc", line 150, in __getattr__
  File "hgdemandimport\demandimportpy2.pyc", line 94, in _load
  File "hgdemandimport\demandimportpy2.pyc", line 43, in _hgextimport
  File "mercurial\encoding.pyc", line 24, in 
  File "mercurial\policy.pyc", line 101, in importmod
  File "mercurial\policy.pyc", line 63, in _importfrom
  File "hgdemandimport\demandimportpy2.pyc", line 164, in __doc__
  File "hgdemandimport\demandimportpy2.pyc", line 94, in _load
  File "hgdemandimport\demandimportpy2.pyc", line 43, in _hgextimport
  File "mercurial\cext\parsers.pyc", line 12, in 
  File "mercurial\cext\parsers.pyc", line 10, in __load
ImportError: DLL load failed: %1 is geen geldige Win32-toepassing.

The equivalent English error is [WayBack] “ImportError: DLL load failed: %1 is not a valid Win32 application.” – Google Search.

The problem is the bitness of hg.exe: [WayBack] python – Error while installing Mercurial on IIS7 64bit: “DLL Load Failed: %1 is not a valid Win32 application” – Stack Overflow

You can quickly figure out the bitness of hg.exe:

C:\>where hg
C:\Program Files\Mercurial\hg.exe

C:\>sigcheck "C:\Program Files\Mercurial\hg.exe"

Sigcheck v2.72 - File version and signature viewer
Copyright (C) 2004-2019 Mark Russinovich
Sysinternals - www.sysinternals.com

c:\program files\mercurial\hg.exe:
        Verified:       Unsigned
        Link date:      17:49 9-7-2019
        Publisher:      n/a
        Company:        n/a
        Description:    Fast scalable distributed SCM (revision control, version control) system
        Product:        mercurial
        Prod version:   5.0.2
        File version:   5.0.2
        MachineType:    64-bit

Forcing x86 of Mercurial

Since I use chocolatey for most my installs, I forced x86 the Chocolatey way:

So after these:

choco uninstall --yes hg
choco install --yes --force86 hg

I got this signature check:

C:\>sigcheck "C:\Program Files (x86)\Mercurial\hg.exe"

Sigcheck v2.72 - File version and signature viewer
Copyright (C) 2004-2019 Mark Russinovich
Sysinternals - www.sysinternals.com

c:\program files (x86)\mercurial\hg.exe:
        Verified:       Unsigned
        Link date:      17:50 9-7-2019
        Publisher:      n/a
        Company:        n/a
        Description:    Fast scalable distributed SCM (revision control, version control) system
        Product:        mercurial
        Prod version:   5.0.2
        File version:   5.0.2
        MachineType:    32-bit

–jeroen

Posted in Development, DVCS - Distributed Version Control, Encoding, Mercurial/Hg, Python, Scripting, Software Development, Source Code Management | Leave a Comment »

SQL server: getting database names and IDs

Posted by jpluimers on 2021/06/29

A few statements go get database names and IDs based on these functions or system tables:

Part of it has the assumption that a master database always exists.

-- gets current database name
select db_name() as name
;
name
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
acc

(1 row affected)

-- gets current database ID
select db_id() as dbid
;
dbid
------
5

(1 row affected)

-- gets all database IDs and names
select dbid,name from sys.sysdatabases
;
dbid   name
------ --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1      master
5      acc

(2 rows affected)

-- gets current database name by ID
select db_name(db_id()) as name
;
name
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
acc

(1 row affected)

-- gets case corrected database name for sys.sysdatabases.name having a case insensitive collation sequence
select dbid,name from sys.sysdatabases 
where name='Master'
;
dbid   name
------ --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1      master

(1 row affected)

-- gets case corrected database name for sys.sysdatabases.name having a case sensitive collation sequence
select dbid,name from sys.sysdatabases 
where name = 'Master' collate Latin1_General_100_CI_AI
;
dbid   name
------ --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1      master

(1 row affected)

Note that:

  • even though by default the SQL server collation sequence is case insensitive, it can make sense to do a case insensitive search, for example by using the upper function, specifying a collation, or casting to binary. I like upper the most, because  – though less efficient – it is a more neutral SQL idiom.
  • the most neutral case insensitive collation seems to be Latin1_General_100_CI_AI

Related:

  • [WayBack] SQL server ignore case in a where expression – Stack Overflow answered by Solomon Rutzky, summarised as:
    • Do not use upper as upper with lower does not always round-trip.
    • Do not use varbinary as it is not case insensitive.
    • Neither the = or like operators are case sensitive by default: both need a collate clause.
    • Find the collation of the column(s) involved; if it contains _CI, then you are done (it is already case insensitive); if it contains _CS, then replace that with _CI (case insensitive) and add that in a collate clause.
    • Collations are per predicate, so not per query, per table, per column nor per database. This means you have to specify them if you want to use a different one than the default.
  • [WayBack] What is Collation in Databases? | Database.Guide
    Latin1_General_100_CI_AI Latin1-General-100, case-insensitive, accent-insensitive, kanatype-insensitive, width-insensitive
  • [WayBack] Collation Info: Information about Collations and Encodings for SQL Server
  • [WayBack] SQL Instance Collation – Language Neutral Required:

    I recommend using Latin1_General_100_CI_AI. I recommend this because:

    …

    1. If Latin1_General_CI_AI is supported, then there’s almost no chance thatLatin1_General_100_CI_AI (which is a far better choice) isn’t also supported. The version 100 collation has about 15,400 more sort weight definitions, plus 438 more uppercase/lowercase mappings. Not having those sort weights means that 15,400 more characters in the non-100 version equate to space, an empty string, and to each other. Not having those case mappings means that 438 more characters in the non-100 version return the character passed in (i.e. no change) for the UPPER() and LOWER() functions. There is no reason at all to want Latin1_General_CI_AI instead of Latin1_General_100_CI_AI. There might be a need if code was put into place to work around these deficiencies, and that code would behave incorrectly under the newer, better version of that collation. However, it’s highly unlikely that code was put into place to account for this, and extremely unlikely that if such code did exist, that it would error or doing things incorrectly due to the newer collation.
  • [WayBack] Differences Between the Various Binary Collations (Cultures, Versions, and BIN vs BIN2) – Sql Quantum Leap
  • [WayBack] How to do a case sensitive search in WHERE clause (I’m using SQL Server)? – Stack Overflow answered by Jonas Lincoln:

    By using collation or casting to binary, like this:

    SELECT *
FROM Users
WHERE   
    Username = @Username COLLATE SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CS_AS
    AND Password = @Password COLLATE SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CS_AS
    AND Username = @Username 
    AND Password = @Password

    The duplication of username/password exists to give the engine the possibility of using indexes. The collation above is a Case Sensitive collation, change to the one you need if necessary.

    The second, casting to binary, could be done like this:

    SELECT *
FROM Users
WHERE   
    CAST(Username as varbinary(100)) = CAST(@Username as varbinary))
    AND CAST(Password as varbinary(100)) = CAST(@Password as varbinary(100))
    AND Username = @Username 
    AND Password = @Password
  • [WayBack] sql – How to get Database name of sqlserver – Stack Overflow

–jeroen

Posted in Database Development, Development, Encoding, internatiolanization (i18n) and localization (l10), SQL Server | Leave a Comment »

“No mapping for the Unicode character exists in the target multi-byte code page”

Posted by jpluimers on 2021/06/24

Usually when I see this error [Wayback] “No mapping for the Unicode character exists in the target multi-byte code page” – Google Search, it is in legacy code that uses string buffers where decoding or decompressing data into.

This is almost always wrong no matter what kind of data you use, as it will depend in your string encoding.

I have seen it happen especially in these cases:

  • base64 decoding from string to string (solution: decode from a string stream into a binary stream, then post-process from there)
  • zip or zlib decompress from binary stream to string stream, then reading the string stream (solution: decompress from binary stream to binary stream, then post-process from there)

Most cases I encountered were in Delphi and C code, but surprisingly I also bumped into C# exhibiting this behaviour.

I’m not alone, just see these examples from the above Google search:

–jeroen

Posted in .NET, base64, C, C#, C++, Delphi, Development, Encoding, Software Development, Unicode | Leave a Comment »

VMware ESXi 6 and 7: checking and setting/clearing maintenance mode from the console

Posted by jpluimers on 2021/04/21

Every now and then it is useful to be able to do maintenance work from the ESXi console addition to the ESXi web-user interface.

I know there are many sites having this information, but many of them forgot to format the statements with code markup, so parameters with two dashes -- (each a Wayback Unicode Character ‘HYPHEN-MINUS’ (U+002D)) now have become an [Wayback] Unicode Character ‘EN DASH’ (U+2013) which is incompatible with most console programs, especially the ESXi ones (as they are Busybox based to minimise footprint).

Note you can use this small site (which runs in-browser, so does not phone home) to get the unicode code points for any string: [Wayback] What Unicode character is this ?.

Links like below (most on the vmware.com domain) have this EN DASH and make me document things on my blog instead of trying code directly from blogs or forum posts:

So below are three commands I use that have to do with the maintenance mode (the mode that for instance you can use to update an ESXi host to the latest patch level).

    1. Check the maintenance mode (which returns Enabled or Disabled):
      esxcli system maintenanceMode get
    2. Enable maintenance mode (which returns nothing when succeeded, and Maintenance mode is already enabled. when failed):
      esxcli system maintenanceMode set --enable true
    3. Disable maintenance mode (which returns nothing when succeeded, and Maintenance mode is already disabled. when failed):
      esxcli system maintenanceMode get

Some examples, especially an the various output possibilities (commands in bold, output in italic):

# esxcli system maintenanceMode get
Disabled
# esxcli system maintenanceMode set --enable false
Maintenance mode is already disabled.
# esxcli system maintenanceMode set --enable true 
# esxcli system maintenanceMode get
Enabled
# esxcli system maintenanceMode set --enable true
Maintenance mode is already enabled.
# esxcli system maintenanceMode set --enable false
# esxcli system maintenanceMode get
Disabled

I made these scripts for this:

  • esxcli-maintenanceMode-show.sh:
    #!/bin/sh
esxcli system maintenanceMode get
  • esxcli-maintenanceMode-enter.sh:
    #!/bin/sh
esxcli system maintenanceMode set --enable true
  • esxcli-maintenanceMode-exit.sh:
    #!/bin/sh
esxcli system maintenanceMode set --enable false

Note I have not checked the exit codes for these esxcli commands yet, but did blog about how to do that: Busybox sh (actually ash derivative dash): checking exit codes.

–jeroen

Posted in BusyBox, Development, Encoding, ESXi6, ESXi6.5, ESXi6.7, ESXi7, Power User, Software Development, Unicode, Virtualization, VMware, VMware ESXi | Leave a Comment »

Plastic SCM: show the current changeset abstract (without files) on the commandline

Posted by jpluimers on 2021/04/14

I could not find a syntax for “current changeset”, but since cm log accepts the output of cm status as changeset identifier:

for /F "tokens=*" %l in ('call cm status --nochanges') do (call cm log %l --itemformat )

Or in batch file form:

for /F "tokens=*" %%l in ('call cm status --nochanges') do (call cm log %%l --itemformat )

Two important parts of the trick that ensure each command only outputs what is needed:

  1. The empty --itemformat specification for cm log indicates that no details about files should be logged.Without it, cm log will list both the changeset information and information about each item in the changeset.
  2. The other trick is --nochanges for cm status: it only shows the status line, and no other changes.Without it, cm status will emit one line per changed file.

–jeroen

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Development, Encoding, PlasticSCM, Software Development, Source Code Management | Leave a Comment »

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