mcgarty

what to do if your encrypted keys get corrupted in SSRS

For some reason my Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services platform stopped working over the weekend. After spending most of the morning trying to get back up and running, I am finally back up and wanted to document some of the pain for next time or for anyone else having this problem.

It started out with all reports ending up with HTTP 401 Errors: Access Denied.

Connections to the DB were fine through Query Analyzer (from local and remote machines).

Checked SSRS Log files C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL.2\Reporting Services\LogFiles

And saw Error 1502, the system log file was full, as in the Windows system log file was full. So I went to Control Panel->Admin->Event Viewer and cleared all events. Still no luck.

Restarted the server (see previous post about rebooting via RDP) and loaded up the reporting page, to find my encrypted keys were corrupted. No big deal, just went to the SSRS configuration tool and deleted them and created new ones. Then loaded up my data source and re-entered my login information—-or so I thought I did. Turns out in addition to deleting the username/pass it also deletes the connection string. I filled in the username/pass, saved (with no error) and tried again. Long story short, filling in the connection string would have solved the hours of troubleshooting (I think).

What is still odd, is that I still can’t connect via osql.exe as described in this
MSDN article. I still get the same painful, useless, generic error:
“Sqlcmd: Error: Microsoft SQL Native Client: An error has occurred while establishing a connection to the server. When connecting to SQL Server 2005, this failure may be caused by the fact that under the default settings SQL Server does not allow remote connections.” Even this MSDN article was useless.

Back to real work now.

rebooting via terminal services (rdp)

In case you ever find yourself needing to reboot a machine via Microsoft Terminal Services (mstsc) or Remote Desktop (RDP), use ctrl-alt-end to load up the task manager in the same way that you use ctrl-alt-del on your machine then select “shut down” and then select restart, shut down, standby, etc…

words of the day

You learn at least one new word a day working around Glenn. Today was almost three, because he worked chattel,a real estate term, which caused me to do a double take.

However the other two

foment: to promote the growth or development of : rouse , incite

abrogating: to abolish by authoritative action

Chilly Hilly Penance

I skipped out on this year’s Chilly Hilly ride, but made up for it with an afternoon 42 mile solo ride around Seattle. I still want to ride the Chilly Hilly route, but not that early in the morning. A little more training and I should be able to tow Thomas the whole route.

Scheduling Salesforce to email reports and dashboards

Salesforce.com recently added the ability to schedule and email reports in the same way you could schedule and email dashboards. However, accessing this feature is impossible if you are using Google Chrome. You need to downgrade to IE to get the drop down on the “Run Report” button to work.

this is a test

hello world