Visual Studio Code behind a proxy

Mario Majcica April 7, 2016 4 Comments

This post is kind of a continuation of Tough life behind a proxy series. This time is the moment of Visual Studio Code. This application does require the web access when it come to plugin installation. If you are behind a proxy, it will not be the easiest thing to achieve.

To set the proxy in Visual Studio Code you need to edit the User Settings. You can do so by opening them from the Preference menu:

Once you open it you will be presented with a screen showing the default settings and your user settings file that does override the default settings:

Now you can enter the following:

// Place your settings in this file to overwrite the default settings
{
 "http.proxy": "http://my.proxy.address:8080",
 "https.proxy": "http://my.proxy.address:8080",
 "http.proxyStrictSSL": false
}

Some of these information is quite easy to retrieve on interweb, however often they do not mention https and disabling strict SSL. In order to install your extension this is a necessary setting.
Make sure you have the latest version of Visual Studio Code installed before testing this as in some older versions this was not supported.

Save your settings and restart Visual Studio Code. Try now installing an extension, it should be a success.
If you are unaware on how to install an extension in Visual Studio Code, you can find more about this argument in the following blog post Announcing PowerShell language support for Visual Studio Code and more! under “Installing the extension” paragraph. To check the available extensions, please visit Visual Studio Marketplace.

Cheers

TFS 2015 behind a proxy

Mario Majcica March 8, 2016 2 Comments

In many enterprise realities it is quite common that all of the internet access is made via a proxy server. Recently I wrote a post about a Tough life behind a proxy, you may check that for some of my rants and tips. What if your servers do also require internet access? Although it may seem it doesn’t, TFS 2015 has a need to access the web. Not having the access to web will not compromise any of it’s core functionality, however it will continue logging an error in the event log. It has to do with the News panel that is shown (or not) on your main portal page. As you can see on the following screenshot next to the Recent team rooms panel, on the right side, the usual News panel is not shown.

If you check your event log, you will probably find the following error:

System.Net.WebException: Unable to connect to the remote server ---> System.Net.Sockets.SocketException: A connection attempt failed because the connected party did not properly respond after a period of time, or established connection failed because connected host has failed to respond 23.198.69.66:80
       at System.Net.Sockets.Socket.DoConnect(EndPoint endPointSnapshot, SocketAddress socketAddress)
       at System.Net.ServicePoint.ConnectSocketInternal(Boolean connectFailure, Socket s4, Socket s6, Socket& socket, IPAddress& address, ConnectSocketState state, IAsyncResult asyncResult, Exception& exception)
       --- End of inner exception stack trace ---
       at System.Net.HttpWebRequest.GetResponse()
       at System.Xml.XmlDownloadManager.GetNonFileStream(Uri uri, ICredentials credentials, IWebProxy proxy, RequestCachePolicy cachePolicy)
       at System.Xml.XmlUrlResolver.GetEntity(Uri absoluteUri, String role, Type ofObjectToReturn)
       at System.Xml.XmlTextReaderImpl.FinishInitUriString()
       at System.Xml.XmlTextReaderImpl..ctor(String uriStr, XmlReaderSettings settings, XmlParserContext context, XmlResolver uriResolver)
       at System.Xml.XmlReaderSettings.CreateReader(String inputUri, XmlParserContext inputContext)
       at Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Server.WebAccess.Controllers.ApiCommonController.GetNews(Int32 maxCount)

This is how it looks like in the log:

It is pretty clear that the action called GetNews on the ApiCommonControler was unable to fulfill the Http request it made. This is because my TFS is behind a proxy server for what concerns the web access.
In order to set the access for the TFS application via a proxy, you need to locate the correct web.config file, which in may case is present in C:\Program Files\Microsoft Team Foundation Server 14.0\Application Tier\Web Services.
What you will need to do is to edit that file and under the system.net section add the following:

<system.net>
    <defaultProxy>
    	<proxy usesystemdefault="True" proxyaddress="http://swg.eu.myproxy.com:8080" bypassonlocal="True"/>
    </defaultProxy>
</system.net>

Make sure the correct proxyaddress is set and give your TFS main portal page a go. If all went as expected and your settings are valid, you should see the following:

That’s it. It may not be an essential setting, however it is nice to see that there are no errors in the event log and that your users do get a full experience.

Cheers