Category Archives: Troubleshooting

Installing Parallels Tools On Kubuntu 18.04 LTS Virtual Machine

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Another off-topic post from me. And this time, it is for a very interesting issue.

I was trying to install and configure a new virtual machine for Kubuntu 18.04 LTS on my Mac, using Parallels Desktop v13. The installation went on well. My new Kubuntu VM was ready for configuration. All done, except Parallels Tools.

Every time I tried to install Parallels Tools, I received a fatal error and the installation would abruptly stop. Searching this on the Parallels Forum lead me to this post: Fail to build kernel modules on Linux kernel v4.15+.

Trust me, I’m no good at Linux at all. I’m just beginning to explore. So whatever was discussed on this forum post was beyond my limited knowledge. However, on page 2 of this post, there was a link provided which took me to Rudolf Ratusinski‘s step-by-step guide on how to hack Parallels Tools installer and make it work.

Here’s the original link: Parallels Tools fix for Ubuntu 18.04 and other Linux distributions with Kernel version >= 4.15

I must admit. Even I was able to follow the steps and succeed in installing Parallels Tools on my Kubuntu 18.04 VM.

Screen Shot 2018-05-21 at 12.06.48.png

It’s worth noting that Parallels is yet to release a fix for this issue. This hack shouldn’t even be required, had Parallels addressed it straightforwardly.

Till we receive one from them, you may want to read Rudolf’s hack first before trying to install Parallels Tools.

Thanks Rudolf. I really appreciate your time and effort to share this crucial hack with all of us.

Vaidy

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CredSSP Encryption Oracle Remediation Error – Remote Desktop Connection

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Word of Caution: This article contains a procedure to edit/change Windows Registry. Please take necessary precaution before attempting this.

I received an error this morning while trying to connect to one my clients’ server. The message as follows:

Screen Shot 2018-05-10 at 09.45.07.png

With the help of one of my contacts at the client site, also upon searching and following the link provided in the message itself, couple of help pages stood out:

  1. CredSSP updates for CVE-2018-0886
  2. CredSSP encryption oracle remediation

For those who would like to see the solution immediately without having to go through the details from above links, I shall brief the solution itself here.

There are basically two solutions:

  1. Run “Windows Update” on the remote server (or the workstation) to which you are trying to connect. This will ensure that you have the latest patch on the remote box and you wouldn’t be facing this issue again. This would work provided your machine also has got the latest updates applied.
  2. For those who cannot update the remote box for some reason(s), you would have to create a new registry entry as shown below:

Screen Shot 2018-05-10 at 14.24.19.png

Once above registry key is created, you must restart your workstation / client / computer without fail.

All good now to successfully connect to the remote box again.

A note of thanks to Dave.

Vaidy

GP2016 Upgrade – Modified Dictionary Upgrade & Upgrade Troubleshooting

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Over at Dynamics GP Support & Services blog, couple of posts discussing about following are available:

Both posts discuss in detail about how to upgrade modified dictionary and how to troubleshoot upgrade issues. In particular, the upgrade troubleshooting post is crucial for obvious reasons.

Just about 10 days to get my hands on Microsoft Dynamics GP 2016. It’s gonna be fun.

VAIDY

SQL Server Backup Files Cleanup

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I learned something interesting today. Something so simple yet crucial. Alright, let me jump straight on to it.

After going live with GP2015R2, as part of SQL maintenance tasks, I created daily backup schedule in SQL Server. Client’s backup retention policy is 3 prior days. So I created a “Maintenance Cleanup Task” to remove all backup files that are older than 3 days.

All good. Only that, it didn’t work. And we realised that only yesterday. Bummer. Thankfully, it was a new server so we had plenty of space. And size of DBs are quite small. So I could see backup files dating yesterday. Which is nice.

I had to figure out what’s going wrong all this time. It’s a fairly simple setup. Nothing complex. Something must be wrong. I opened the maintenance task definition window. Shown below:

Screen Shot 2016-02-23 at 8.55.04 AM.png

Looks perfectly alright to me. Isn’t it? But nope. Something makes this task fail every night.

When I looked at this post, Maintenance Cleanup Task (Maintenance Plan), on Microsoft MSDN site, I could not get much help from. It was good, detailed, but not good enough to help me why my task fails every night.

I then did something that I thought is weird, but turned out to be the solution.

I changed the File extension value from .bak to just bak, as shown below:

Screen Shot 2016-02-23 at 8.55.04 AM.png

Saved the definition and ran the task manually to check if it worked.

Voila… It worked…!!!

Those who are reading this and thinking about why I am blogging something as simple as this (as if I found the god particle), well in all honesty, I had absolutely no idea about this till now. Just thought I would share this, as I always do. So please be nice on me.

VAIDY

Management Reporter – Misspelled Account Categories

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This would be second Management Reporter post in a row. This also is about the default reports and how to troubleshoot the issues pertaining to the default reports.

I have an Australian edition of GP installed. Most of the terminologies (such as “Fiscal/Financial”, “Realized/Realised”, etc) are localised in GP. However, default reports in Management Reporter still are in US English, if I am not wrong.

Consider the following default balance sheet row definition:

Screen Shot 2016-02-09 at 04.51.43 PM

I was wondering why balance on this account did not show up on the report. After several minutes, I realised that the account category was misspelled, compared to what’s there in GP. Notice that on the report definition it is “Amortization” with a ‘z’ and in GP it is “Amortisation” with a ‘s’.

After changing the categories with correct ones, by referring to GP, the report started showing the correct figures.

This post is relevant only if you reuse the default reports. It’s irrelevant otherwise.

Happy Reporting!

VAIDY

Management Reporter – This report view contains no data.

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I have been working on a Management Reporter project, for which I wanted to install and configure MR2012 CU14 from the scratch.

Completed the server and client installation, completed the Configuration Console processes, imported data from GP2015R2 (sample company) and reached a point where I wanted to test the default reports.

Ran the report and got the following message:

Screen Shot 2016-02-10 at 09.44.58 AM

I checked everything, including the date range, data available in sample company and everything that I could remember. All were perfectly alright.

I was, however, getting some warning messages while the report was getting generated. Messages as follow:

Screen Shot 2016-02-10 at 09.47.43 AM

This one was familiar. When we install management reporter, we get default reports along with it. It’s a nice and easy way to get started with MR, learn the concepts. However, it comes with its own headaches.

To name one (also most important), each default report row definition would have link to both Dynamics AX and Dynamics GP financial dimensions. To a GP consultant’s dismay, AX dimensions link would be placed in a column before GP dimensions link, as shown below:

Screen Shot 2016-02-10 at 09.56.46 AM

Now let’s go back to the warning message. It says:

The row definition contains more than one financial dimensions link. Since the report does not use the row definition for reporting tree option, the report will use the *first* financial dimensions link to generate the report.

The first here being Microsoft Dynamics AX dimensions link. Thereby, rendering all reports with the message shown in the first screenshot on this post.

Alright, so I know the cause now. I know what I must do to get past this message. However, I had no clue HOW to do that. I mean, I know I must remove AX dimensions link column from the reports, but not sure how.

This community forum post answer from Sue tells us how to remove the link column. Too bad, this post was not marked as an answer.

I would, however, like to point to the standard & the easiest method to remove the unused link (in my case AX dimensions link).

  • Either you can go to the Edit menu and click on “Row Links” as shown below:

Screen Shot 2016-02-10 at 10.08.15 AM

  • Or you can also use the tool bar button for “Row Links” as shown below:

Screen Shot 2016-02-10 at 10.06.30 AM

Once you click on “Row Links” from either of the above steps, you should get the following window:

Screen Shot 2016-02-10 at 10.13.02 AM

Once deleted, your report definition would have only one dimensions link, i.e. to Microsoft Dynamics GP link.

Report would then show the data as expected.

Screen Shot 2016-02-10 at 10.16.26 AM

Of course, this would be the case if you want to reuse the default reports. This post would be irrelevant for those who design reports from the scratch.

Happy Reporting!

VAIDY

GP Upgrade – “Please Select a Company” Message

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This one’s quite simple, yet intriguing.

I am working on a test upgrade; from GP2010 to GP 2015 R2. I decided to only take production company databases and left all test companies, for all logical reasons.

After applying GP 2010 SP4, I decided to perform a unit testing. After logging in to GP, I received following message, without having any issues later on. It was just this message:

Company Message

(Above screenshot courtesy: Ugan)

As a thumb rule, I searched on GP community and stumbled across two most relevant forum questions and suggestions.

  1. Please select a company message after company has been selected and logged into
  2. Dynamics GP 2015R2 Upgrade – Please select a company

None of them is answered.

I had a suspicion that this must be something to do with “Remember this company” option on “User and Company” window. I decided to use GP Power Tools (previously Support Debugging Tool – SDT) and SQL profiler to study this message in depth.

As suspected, results pointed to the option “Remember this company”. Now, if you remember what I said earlier, I took only the production companies for test upgrade and not the test companies. Previous consultant who was working with this client had selected a test company as his (SA’s) default company.

Now, you must also recollect that we have a SQL script to clean up missing companies’ affiliation across DYNAMICS database.

I ran the above script on the test environment and logged on to GP. This time, I was required to select a company and the message never appeared back.

Happy troubleshooting!

VAIDY

OFF-TOPIC: Windows 10 and Microsoft File Transfer Manager (FTM) Issues (UPDATE)

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This is my first post from Perth, WA. It’s been an excellent journey and so far so good. More about my Perth life later.

This is something that I never experienced before. When you download any file from PartnerSource or CustomerSource, Microsoft would let you do that only through it’s File Transfer Manager program. If you have that installed already, any download initiation would first invoke this program and then let you set the path/folder to take in that download and etc.

However, when I tried to do that from my new Windows 10 machine, the FTM did not open. I tried to figure that out, but later remembered this same issue happening on my Windows 8.1 machine.

Basically, from Windows 8.1, for some reason, calling the FTM from Internet Explorer worked only on a 32 bit Internet Explorer.

Looks like Microsoft has not fixed that yet. If you are wondering why your FTM didn’t work, this is the reason. Open your IE 32 bit mode and then try to download the file that you wanted to.

UPDATE (05-Oct-2015): Above did not work for me today. So further researching led me to this post which resolved my issue: Work around for getting File Transfer Manager to download from TechNet/MSDN

VAIDY

GP 2015 R2 Upgrade Issues & Possible Solutions

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There is a GP community forum question that discuss about GP 2015 R2 upgrade errors. As always, contributors have poured in their thoughts and possible solutions to fix these issues.

Read the question here: GP 2015 R2 errors during update & Fixes

I recommend this post to everyone who are planning to upgrade to GP2015 R2 soon. This may save a lot of time.

Thank you GP community for being selfless, informative and helpful.

Vaidy

CBM Cash Receipt Customer GL Posting Account Error

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A user reported this issue when he tried to enter a cash receipt in CBM module. Following error message prevented him from continuing further.

Screen Shot 2015-02-23 at 3.10.24 PM

This error was confirmed to be happening only for one particular customer record. For all other customers, it worked.

We basically do not have posting accounts setup for each customer or customer class. So it is absolutely no way due to missing posting accounts. Several minutes later, decided to compare customer records between this particular customer and one other customer that’s working.

REASON: Customer Class ID for this customer record was wrong and was not part of the list of customer classes that we have setup on our company. Because this class ID was wrong, posting accounts validation stopped right there and threw a message that was totally irrelevant to actual reason.

RESOLUTION: I changed the customer class ID for this customer with an existing one. User could then enter a cash receipt in CBM.

Troubleshooting issues successfully is probably the best way to end a business day!

VAIDY