Month: August 2022

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Initialize and format windows disk with powershell

Sometimes you may need to automatically create windows disk for a virtual server using an automation mechanism. With the below powershell you can initialize a new emtpy disk with GPT partition and format it according to your needs.

You can get your available disks using:

Get-Disk

You can use the below powershell and change the below settings:

DriveLetter : What your drive letter will be
AllocationUnitSize: Default is 4k, but in my case I define 64k
DiskNumber: number of disk from Get-Disk command
NewFileSystemLabel: name of the volume

 Initialize-Disk -number 4 -partitionstyle GPT ; New-Partition -DiskNumber 4 -UseMaximumSize ; Format-Volume -DriveLetter G -FileSystem NTFS -AllocationUnitSize 65536 -NewFileSystemLabel Volume-Name

After applying the volume will be created and initialized.

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Create a wordpress floating button with html and css

In this guide I will explain how you can create a wordpress floating button with plain css and html without using a plugin.

As you can see, I have added as a floating button my Udemy course regarding Azure DevOps and can be found on the right bottom corner.

In order to create such a button you will need to add a new Widget and select custom html.

Then you can paste the below code after modifying it for your case.

<div class="sticky-slider">
<a href="https://www.udemy.com/course/mastering-azure-devops-cicd-pipelines-with-yaml/" class="navi">Check out my Azure DevOps Udemy course</a>
</div>

<style>
	.navi, .navi:visited, .navi:active, .navi:hover {
  border:none !important;
  outline:none !important;
  text-decoration:none !important;
  color:#fff !important;
  -webkit-tap-highlight-color: white;
}
  
.sticky-slider {
  position: fixed;
  bottom: 0.5rem;
  border: none;
  border-radius: 30px;
  background-color: #a435f0;
  color: #fff;
  z-index: 10000;
  padding: 0.7rem 1.2rem;
  margin: 1rem 0;
  right: 1rem;
  font-size: 1rem;
  font-family: Calibri
  }
</style>
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Execute powershell command without username password on Azure virtual machine

You can use az cli task on Azure devops in order to execute a powershell command inside a virtual machine without having to connect on it with username and password. In order to do that you have to use AzureCLI task and invoke a RunPowerShellScript. 

    - task: AzureCLI@2
      displayName: execute command inside vm
      inputs:
        azureSubscription: 'subscription'
        scriptType: 'ps'
        scriptLocation: 'inlineScript'
        inlineScript: 'az vm run-command invoke --command-id RunPowerShellScript --name $(vm_name) -g $(vnet_rg_name) --scripts "hostname"'

You should use your own variables regarding the vm_name and rg_name. This task will execute on a windows-latest machine and will output the hostname of the machine that is given as input with the variables.

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Enable debug logs on Azure DevOps pipelines

In some cases you may need to troubleshoot your azure devops tasks inside a job and get a more detailed output than the default. You can enable a detailed log output using predefined variables. In more detail you can use System.Debug and set it to true.

variables:
  - name: System.Debug
    value: true

By doing so you will get more debug messages as shown in the below screenshot.