Luke Browning | Tech, Dev & Web

Stop IIS Binding to all IP Addresses

On a number of occasions I have tried setting up a piece of software with a web interface that listens on port 80 to avoid having to type the port number in the address bar and allowing me to set up a simple, descriptive name in my DNS server (e.g. typing backup takes me to my backup software’s web interface). Now, I understand that only a single process can listen on a specific port at a time and thus often add additional IP addresses to my servers. The problem comes when IIS (Internet Information Services) is also installed on the same machine.

Port Forwarding (Redirection) under Windows Server for Plex

I recently installed Plex server to test it out as an alternative to XBMC after a number of friends have suggested it and I liked the ability to stream video straight to my Chromecast. Whilst testing the server component I came across an annoying issue with the fact that the web interface listens on an unobvious high port (32400 I think it is). And worse – it doesn’t seem to be configurable (along with the IP address it is bound to). What I wanted to achieve was to get the web interface listening on port 80 with DNS set up to simplify access for myself. So, the goal was to go from this: http://192.168.1.2:32400/web/ to this: http://plex.domain.local/web/. Sadly, theres not much I could do about the web/ subdirectory (please comment if you figure something out!).

Responsive Redesign

Being a web developer, I use frameworks such as Bootstrap every day to build responsive websites that look great on any size screen or device. I therefore decided it was about time I updated this site to make use of a couple of those technologies.

Windows 8.1 VPN Connection Freeze/Failure

I had a problem recently on Windows 8.1 where trying to create a VPN connection would just cause the Windows interface to freeze and no connection made. After clicking connect, a number of different WAN Miniport adapters appear in Device manager under Network adapters (they may also be visible by clicking View > Show hidden devices) with yellow exclamation marks. They are mostly different types of VPN connections such as PPTP and L2TP. The way to fix them is to uninstall and then reinstall the devices – unfortunately, they aren’t as easy to remove as normal devices and do not allow you to uninstall. These are the steps I followed to uninstall and reinstall the devices;

Windows Server 2012 – WinRM Corrupt or Missing

I recently had an issue with a Windows Server 2012 machine where if I ever tried to add or remove a feature I would receive the following error:

Failed to open the runspace pool. The Server Manager WinRM plug-in might be corrupted or missing.

Windows 8 to 8.1 Upgrade Breaks IIS

After performing an upgrade from Windows 8 to 8.1, my IIS server returns a 503 error for every page on every site. It turns out that the culprit is the URL Rewrite Module (v2). The fix for the issue is very easy;

Uninstall the URL Rewrite Module from Programs and Features.
Reinstall from either the web or the Web Platform Installer.

Microsoft.ApplicationServer.Caching.Client.dll Missing from AppFabric 1.1 Installation

I came across and issue today after doing a clean install of Windows and reinstalling AppFabric where the Microsoft.ApplicationServer.Caching.Client.dll was missing from the installed files. The dll is used to interact with the distributed AppFabric Cache in .net so it was important I got it working.

Touch Screen Chromium Kiosk on the Raspberry Pi

I have recently received a new 10″ touchscreen from Chalkboard Electronics and have been looking into getting a web site to run full screen on my Raspberry Pi. Based on the instructions posted here by lokir, I have got Chromium up and running under Raspbian and have added some instructions for improving touch screen support in the browser.

Umbraco Examine Search [Part 2]: Postbacks in Razor Scripts

This second post is aimed at building the search box that will be used for sending the query to the page containing the search results. Normally this would be an easy task of just creating a form and setting the action url to your results page. Due to the way we are creating cleaner URL’s, it isn’t quite as straightforward.

Umbraco 6 Custom Error Page

After upgrading my Umbraco installation from 4.9.1 to 6.0.0 I came across an issue where my custom error pages were no longer being displayed and instead the default IIS 404 page was being shown.