Don't skimp on resources for GHES for demo instances

I wanted to have a look at some GitHub Enterprise Server (GHES) upgrade scenarios so decided to create a quick GHES install on my local test Hyper-V instance. Due to me skimping on resources, and making a typo, creating this instance was much harder than it should have been. The first issue was I gave it a tiny data disk, this was down to me making a typo in my GB to Bytes conversion when specifying the size....

June 16, 2022 · 2 min · Richard Fennell

Fix for can't add second outlook.com account to Outlook Desktop - requires non-existent PIN

I was recently trying to set up a copy of the Outlook desktop app with two outlook.com email accounts and hit a strange issue. I was able to add the first one without any problems, but when I tried to add the second one I got an error message asking for PIN, and most importantly on the same dialog showing the second outlook.com email address. This is confusing as I know of no way to set a PIN on an outlook....

June 10, 2022 · 1 min · Richard Fennell

On-Demand video available for May's 'Microsoft and GitHub DevOps Forum: DevSecOps'

Did you miss the ‘Microsoft and GitHub DevOps Forum: DevSecOps’ event I presented at earlier in May? Well worry not, the on-demand stream is now available - here

May 17, 2022 · 1 min · Richard Fennell

More examples of using custom variables in Azure DevOps multi-stage YML

I have blogged in the past ( here , here and here) about the complexities and possible areas of confusion with different types of Azure DevOps pipeline variables. Well here is another example of how to use variables and what can trip you up. The key in this example is the scope of a variable, whether it is available outside a job and the syntax to access it Variables local to the Job So, if you create your variable as shown below...

May 5, 2022 · 1 min · Richard Fennell

Updating the Azure Application client_secret used by Packer

As I have posted about previously, we create our Azure DevOps build agent images using the same Packer definitions as used by Microsoft. This time when I ran my Packer command to build an updated VHD I got the error Build ‘vhd’ errored after 135 milliseconds 708 microseconds: adal: Refresh request failed. Status Code = ‘401’. Response body: {“error”:“invalid_client”,“error_description”:“AADSTS7000222: The provided client secret keys for app ‘6425416f-aa94-4c20-8395-XXXXXXX’ are expired. Visit the Azure portal to create new keys for your app: https://aka....

May 3, 2022 · 1 min · Richard Fennell

Speaking at the rescheduled Microsoft and GitHub DevOps Forum on the 4th of May

I’m speaking at the resheduled Microsoft and GitHub DevOps Forum on the 4th of March. To Register: https://mktoevents.com/Microsoft+Event/333304/157-GQE-382?wt.mc_id=AID3045587_QSG_EML_586670

April 7, 2022 · 1 min · Richard Fennell

How to fix Azure Pipeline YAML parsing errors seen after renaming the default Git branch

If in Azure DevOps you rename your Git Repo’s default branch, say from ‘master’ to ‘main’, you will probably see an error in the form ‘Encountered error(s) while parsing pipeline YAML: Could not get the latest source version for repository BlackMarble.NET.App hosted on Azure Repos using ref refs/heads/master.’ when you try to manually queue a pipeline run. You could well think, as I did, ‘all I need to do is update the YAML build files with a find and replace for master to main’, but this does not fix the problem....

November 3, 2021 · 1 min · Richard Fennell

Tidying up local branches with a Git Alias and a PowerShell Script

It is easy to get your local branches in Git out of sync with the upstream repository, leaving old dead branches locally that you can’t remember creating. You can use the prune option on your Git Fetch command to remove the remote branch references, but that command does nothing to remove local branches. A good while ago, I wrote a small PowerShell script to wrapper the running of the Git Fetch and then based on the deletions remove any matching local branches....

March 16, 2021 · 1 min · Richard Fennell

My DDD2020 Session - How can I automatically create Azure DevOps Release Notes and how can I publish them

Really please to say that my DDD2020 session is now available to stream. https://youtube.com/watch?v=xaV3dFoQdV8 Thanks to the organisers and sponsors that allowed this event to ahead this year in this difficult year.

December 21, 2020 · 1 min · Richard Fennell

Black Marble BiteSize MVP Interview

https://www.youtube.com/embed/hU8gSpuPS-4

October 15, 2020 · 1 min · Richard Fennell