I am making a program that schedules the redial of a VPN connection using rasdial however I cannot get my script to pass the correct information to the rasdial.exe program.
For example
Process.Start("rasdial.exe", "VPN Connection " & ""USERNAME!" & "PASSWORD")
However when this starts it just says "Remote access error 625"
It turns out that the best solution is to concatenate the variables before storing them in a database or document because the connection only inputs one parameter.
Related
We have an old Microsoft Access font end that serves as the GUI to our user database. I was never much of a VBA person so as I go through fixing bugs I'm learning as I go.
Our Access DB has a number of commands to sync info to Active Directory. One such command is to add a user to a group. However, whenever the group contains a / the group is never added.
The debug produces this as:
Run-time error -2147463168 (80005000)': Automation Error".
Printing out the targetgroup shows the DN as I expect it. Trying to escape the / before the GetObject doesn't help and causes its own auth error.
Here's the top part of the function -
Function AddGroup(TargetGroup, strUserID, Optional strOptReqBy)
Dim objDL
Set objUser = GetObject("LDAP://" & GetDName(CStr(strUserID)))
Set objDL = GetObject("LDAP://" & TargetGroup)
On Error Resume Next
objDL.Add (objUser.ADsPath)
objDL.SetInfo
On Error GoTo 0
This works fine if the group does not contain a /.
Debug points to Set objDL = GetObject("LDAP://" & TargetGroup)
Looking for some input on why this is happening. Thanks!
In an LDAP path, the / is a separator. Not only is the // used near the beginning, but you can also specify the server you want to connect to, followed by a /, then the DN of the object, like this:
LDAP://example.com/DC=example,DC=com
That's necessary if the computer you're running this from isn't not joined to the same (or trusted) domain than the domain you're connecting to.
So that means that if the DN of the object you want to bind to has a /, it will think that everything before the / is a server to connect to and it explodes.
So you just need to escape it, which, as you've already learned, is done with a \:
LDAP://OU=This\/That,DC=example,DC=com
So yeah, a simple replace will do:
Set objUser = GetObject("LDAP://" & Replace(GetDName(CStr(strUserID)), "/", "\/")
Don't feel bad. Even Microsoft has this bug in their code.
Back Story
I am working with SAGE Mas 200 software, trying to link to it through Access. This software houses date for 300 investors for my company. With EACH investor I have a different investor ID that goes along with my UID and Password upon logging in, therefore EVERY connection string is different.
After many hours of trial and error, I have been successful in connecting via Access to only find out that I can only have one active connection string per database. Since I have 300 investors that I need to pull data from, there is the problem...and I can't figure it out.
I am a newby with VBA so my knowledge is extremely limited. I have read about linking to a 'template' file with the connection strings, but not sure how to format the template file. Can someone show me an example? Also, how would I get it to loop thru each query stored in the database and then pull the appropriate connection string?
Examples
Here is an example of my connection string where 'AAL' is the investor code:
ODBC;DSN=SOTAMAS90;UID=tbard|AAL;PWD=password;Directory=\\mas-200\MAS90;Prefix=\\mas-200\MAS90\SY\, \\mas-200\MAS90\==\;ViewDLL=\\mas-200\MAS90\HOME;SERVER=NotTheServer
The query name for this would be MAS_AAL.
Another investor: SMP, the query name MAS_SMP. Etc, etc, etc...
Can someone be my light at the end of the tunnel and help me out so I don't have to manually run 300 queries. I'm dying over here!!
You can programmatically set the connection string.
There is a MAS 90 / MAS 200 ODBC driver called SOTAMAS90. On MAS installations in the last 5 years, there is both a 32 and a 64 bit driver.
In VBA, if I remember correctly, you would do something like this. (This assumes you already have fetched the Investor object you need, and it has properties called username and password):
Dim conn as new ADODB.Connection()
' Set properties of connection string manually
conn.ConnectionString = "DRIVER = SOTAMAS90; UID=" & myInvestor.username & "; PWD=" & myInvestor.password & "; Company=ABC"
conn.Open()
Another approach is to use a single ODBC connection within Access, to set up a linked ODBC table, using Access' Get External Data feature. Then you can treat it like any other Access table, and just query it directly. The problem with this approach is that Access will keep prompting you for credentials, both when you first open the table, and then if you are inactive for a while. I'm told you can save the UID and password in the SOTAMAS90 ODBC connection, but I've never done it.
Hope that helps.
Aaron
Im trying to run an update statement and when i go to data sources to grab the connection string it has a " in it which means when i try to add it to the line;
OleDbConnection(Provider=Microsoft.ACE.OLEDB.12.0;Data Source="C:\Users\Student\Documents\Visual Studio 2010\Projects\MasterDB.accdb")
It wont accept it, I tried to & & it but then i still need double speech marks.
is there some sort of way to force vb.net to ignore the speechmark?
Any help is much appreciated.
I need to verify that my app can connect to the default C$ share on a remote server on the network. Does anyone have a really bulletprrof way I can do this? Initially I was doing something like this:
Dim ProcessStartInfo As New System.Diagnostics.ProcessStartInfo
ProcessStartInfo.FileName = "net"
ProcessStartInfo.Arguments = "use \\" & strComputer & "\c$ /USER:" & strUsername & " " & strPassword
ProcessStartInfo.WindowStyle = ProcessWindowStyle.Hidden
System.Diagnostics.Process.Start(ProcessStartInfo)
But this can be flakey sometimes and hang, take too long to return etc. Whatever method I use needs to be able to supply credentials and if at all possible, when the connection fails I need to know why it failed.
I solved this another way but can't find the thread.
Dim dir As New IO.DirectoryInfo("\\10.101.1.200\c$")
dir.exists will then tell you if it was able to connect.
This will try to connect as the account the program was run from. If you need different credentials you may need to look in to Impersonation.
You could directly call the windows functions via pInvoke, but that gets more complex. An example can be found here. C#: How to logon to a share when using DirectoryInfo
I'm using the following code (System.Data.SQLite within VB.net):
Dim SQLconnect As New SQLite.SQLiteConnection()
Dim SQLcommand As SQLiteCommand
SQLconnect.ConnectionString = "Data Source=vault.db;"
SQLconnect.Open()
SQLcommand = SQLconnect.CreateCommand
SQLcommand.CommandText = "INSERT INTO entries VALUES ('" & appinput.Text & "','" & userinput.Text & "','" & passinput.Text & "')"
SQLcommand.ExecuteNonQuery()
SQLcommand.Dispose()
SQLconnect.Close()
Me.Hide()
I get an error back that says it can't find the table "entries"
I know the table exists because I can write to it via the command line through sqlite and through Autoit and can see it and edit it in the SQLite browser when I open the database. I don't understand why VB can't see it (I know it sees and opens the database file just fine). Any ideas?
Most likely your problem is with relative paths (directories).
sqlite will create a database file if it does not exist so you will never get a "db file not found message". The first indication of an incorrect path is "table missing".
My personal experience is that although it goes against my programmers instinct is to alway use an absolute (fully qualified) path/file name for an sqlite database.
If you put in the full file location like "/var/myapp/vault.db" you should be OK.
If this is likly to move around store pick up the file name from a properties/config file -- 'config file not found' is much easier to deal with than "table not found".
Argh! There are 3 big issues in that code. Please update it like this to fix two of them:
Using cn As New SQLite.SQLiteConnection("Data Source=vault.db;"), _
cmd As New SQLiteCommand("INSERT INTO entries VALUES (#AppInput, #UserInput, #PassInput)", cn)
cmd.Parameters.AddWithValue("#AppInput", appinput.Text);
cmd.Parameters.AddWithValue("#UserInput", userinput.Text);
cmd.Parameters.AddWithValue("#PassInput", passinput.Text);
cn.Open()
cmd.ExecuteNonQuery()
End Using
This will prevent sql injection by parameterizing your query instead of substituting values directly and prevent db locking issues by making sure your connection is disposed properly, even if an exception is thrown.
The third problem is that you should NEVER store plain-text passwords in your database (or anywhere else for that matter). Go read up on how to hash values in .Net and hash and salt your password before storing or comparing it.
Once you've done that re-test your code to see if you still get the same errors reported as before. We need to make sure this didn't solve the problem or introduce something new. Then we can start addressing the missing table issue, perhaps by checking your connection string.
I had a similar error with SQLite (via .Net) refusing to believe the table existed, even though direct access confirmed it was there. The error could be produced only on one individual machine and not others. Hard coding the path didn't seem to fix the problem. The fix was either to run the program as Administrator or change the DB file to be available to Everyone. Apparently the .Net assembly raises a missing table error when the actual problem is access restrictions.