Installing VSTS has not been easy. But at least progress is being made.

My first big hurdle was getting past the problem where the instructions said to configure ADAM using one set of port numbers, while my computer refused to do so. I solved that in my last VSTS post, by accepting my computers defaults and ignoring the instructions.

My second big hurdle came during the install of the application server (Team Foundation). If you'll recall, I am installing the application tier in a Virtual PC 2004 instance. I tried installing VSTF directly from the DVD. I tried it a couple of times, but each time it failed reading one of the files from the DVD. I tried accessing that file directly from Windows Explorer inside Virtual PC, and no luck.

My first suspect was the DVD (media) itself. I tried that DVD in a different computer and it worked. So it appears the DVD is fine.

So of course I then suspected the external DVD player I was using. So I downloaded and installed the latest firmware upgrades from the manufacturer and retried the install. No luck.

Now I realize that you can “Capture an ISO” and use it as a drive image. So I tried buring this DVD to ISO. No luck - Virtual PC did not recognize it as a valid ISO.

Finally, I just XCOPY'ed the files into a shared folder. That worked.

It turns out, from this Ask Burton blog entry, that Virtual PC does not support DVD's over 2GB. What? Well, several hours of my life lost for nothing.

That problem solved, I am now facing my third major hurdle. This time, I am really getting frustrated. The install goes all the way to the end, apparently creates a bunch of databases, and then dies with a mysterious 26201 and 26204 errors. Ask Burton again has some hints.

My problem is that the database tier almost completely installs. So I know we have connectivity, the database is running, app server has rights to the database, etc. Ugh. I am painstakingly cleaning the DB server up after each attempt.

I think I might finally worked past the SQL DB issues, but I am not sure. The last time I ran the install, it completed everything and then did a rollback on its own. I'll give it one last try tonight.

In February of this year, I noted that the U.S. federal government debt reached $7 trillion for the first time.

As of October 5, eight months later, the official debt stands at $7.414 trillion. You know, I'm tempted to write the whole number out, because when you start rounding off at the billion dollar mark, that's still a lot of money. $7,414,024,541,823.04 for those keeping score.

That exceeds, by the way, the legal limit on debt. $7.384 trillion is the current ceiling as defined by law, and it takes an act of congress and the President's signature to increase that. So someone is breaking the law.

Still, in 8 months the U.S. government burned through more than $400 billion. News reports say the Defense Department is borrowing money from an emergency fund it keeps ($25 billion) to pay its bills until congress sends it more money. So the real debt is closer to $7.5 trillion...

From Baltimore Chronicle and Sentinel:

No Congress or Presidential Administration ever likes to approve increasing the debt ceiling, because it puts the spotlight on their profligate spending and lack of fiscal control. They certainly don't like doing one in an election year. God forbid they are forced to approve one in the weeks or days before an actual election--especially this election.

From CBS MarketWatch:

Technically, on its current spending course, the government is expected to run out of money in "early October." But the administration can employ emergency accounting mechanisms to avoid hitting the $7.38 trillion mandatory limit until "mid-November," the Treasury estimates.

It's funny that noone minds talking about the need to increase the debt ceiling, and even some of the accounting tricks they will use to avoid hitting it until after the election, but noone wants to actually increase the ceiling now. It's as if their spending problem will magically go away after the election. Actually, it's more likely that the spending will still occur at the same pace, just that it will no longer be  a problem.

Evan Williams, founder of Pyra Labs which was acquired by Google last year, has announced he is leaving to start something new. Pyra Labs created Blogger, which was a major factor in the success of blogging. I started blogging at Blogger, and still maintain a few blogs there.

I've been following Evan's EvHead blog for months. Thankfully, he thinks he will continue blogging, so he will be gone from Google but not gone-gone.

Good luck Evan. If you ever want to start a business, give me a call. I'll go in with you 50-50.

OK, I had to backtrack a little on installing Team System.

* I reinstalled SQL Server 2005 to include all components, including Reporting Services. I'm not sure how this matters, but the instructions say to include all components.

* I removed DNS Server, DHCP Server and Active Directory Server as roles from the application server. This is because ADAM was refusing to install on the indicated ports. I may have to turn the database server into an Active Directory Server.

Note: After reading Darren J's blog again, I see that I should let ADAM use the other port settings instead of worrying about the exact numbers.

* So, I reinstalled a primary Active Directory domain and DNS.

* I added the database server to the domain.

* I finished installing ADAM. No issues.

* I installed .NET Framework 2.0 Beta.

Lesson for today: read the install instructions.

Well, as soon I a stuck the Team System DVD into the drive, the install instructions came up. They are excellent - well written and helpful. I just wish I saw them earlier today.

So it turns out I missed several important steps.

* Both the application and database server needs to have the Application Server role configured. The application server needs ASP.NET while the database server does not. Neither server uses Frontpage Extensions.

* I had to download all the Windows Updates. There were a lot (22).

* I had to download and install SharePoint Services 2.0. Then had to download and install the Windows Update for that.

* I had to download and install ADAM (Active Directory Application Mode). I'm currently stuck, as the install instructions appear to require ADAM running on a specific port number, but my server says that port (SSL) is already in use.

Anyways, it's way past my bed time. I'll have to tackle the rest of this tomorrow.

I am just about to start installing Team System. I must admit I am a bit intimidated by it. It's a three-tier install:

• SQL Server 2005 Beta 2
• Team System Foundation Server
• Visual Studio 2005 Client Beta 1

The SQL Server bits do not coexist peacefully with the Team System Foundation bits, and even if they did I would be afraid of the CPU/memory overload of running all three on one box. And since I want to use Virtual PC, the lack of speed will likely kill me.

So I decided to install SQL Server 2005 on my laptop. Now I run XP Home on my laptop, and that is not one of the supported operating systems. So I will have to install Windows Server 2003 as a dual boot to get the database installed.

Foundation Server should run fine in a Virtual PC instance on my main PC. I will install Windows Server 2003 as the Operating System for that.

And of course the client can run natively in Windows XP Professional on my main PC.

So here goes:

Sun Oct 3

3:30 pm: Repartitioned laptop, to free up 10GB for dual boot OS.
4:00 pm: Started Windows Server 2003 install in new partition.
5:30 pm: Windows Server 2003 install finished without problem. Started SQL Server 2005 install.
5:45 pm: Created new Virtual PC image on my main PC, and began Windows Server 2003 install on it.
(Took a break for dinner and a movie.)
8:00 pm: SQL Server 2005 installed without problem. It looks quite different from SQL Server 2000 - so this is one more thing I will have to play around with and learn.
11:00 pm: Windows Server 2003 installed without problem.

Still To Do

I am going to set the Win2K3 on my main PC as the domain controller. I have read that the server components must run under a domain. I need to install the Team System Foundation Server bits into that VPC instance. Finally, I need to install the client components under Windows XP Professional.

Darren J has an excellent blog entry on how he was able to install Visual Studio 2005 Team System Beta 1 Refresh onto a single PC using Virtual PC. The most telling line was the last, however:

If you haven’t got 2GB ram on your laptop and your running this on VPCs, you best get an upgrade.

Uh oh. I'm going to do the install this afternoon. I might need to run out to Best Buy really quick!