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• Performance of Cluster Shared Volume file copy from SAN

  - by Sequenzia

  I am hoping someone can help me out with a strange issue. We are running a Microsoft Failover Cluster with Server 2008 R2 and an Equallogic PS4000 SAN. Our main configuration has 2 Dell Poweredge T710 Servers in the cluster. We have CSV and Quorm setup. The servers each have 10 Broadcom 1Gb NICs. Right now 4 of the NICS are on the iSCSI network for accessing the SAN. They use MPIO and the Dell HIT pack. We have 5 VMs running on each node and everything runs smooth. No noticeable performance issues or anything. From the SAN I can see the 4 iSCSI connections from each server to each volume (CSV and Quorm). Again, it seems to perform great. The problem I am running into is with backups. I have tried a few backup programs like backupchain and Veeam. The problem is both of them are very very slow to backup the VMs. For instance I have a 500GB (fixed disc) VHD that’s running on the cluster. It takes over 18 hours to backup that VHD and that’s with compression and depuping turned off which is supposed to be the fasted. We also have a separate server that is just for backups. It has a lot of directed attached storage. As part of the troubleshooting I decided to bring that server into the cluster as a node. It now has access to the CSV and can read from C:\clusterstorage\volume1 which is where our VHDs live. This backup server only has 2 NICs. 1 NIC is going to the iSCSI network and the other is just on the main network. It has Intel NICS in it without any sort of MPIO or teaming. So with the 3rd server now in the cluster I started doing some benchmarking. I have a test VHD that’s about 7GBs that’s stored in the CSV. I have tested file copying that VHD from all 3 servers to directed attached storage in the respective server. The 2 Dell servers that are the main nodes in the cluster (they house the VMs) are reading that file at about 20Mbs/Sec. Which at that rate is way to slow for the backups. The other server which only has 1 NIC to the SAN is reading at around 100Mbs/Sec. I spent a few hours on the phone with Dell today about this . We went through all kind of tests and he was pretty dumb founded. He really has no idea why that server with only 1 NIC is reading about 5 times as fast as the servers with 4 NICS and MPIO. We looked at the network utilization of the NICs while the file copy was going on. The servers with the 4 NICs had a small increase of activity during the file copy but they only went up to around 8-10% on all 4 NICs. The other server with the 1 NIC jumped up to over 80% during the file copy. I plan on doing some more testing after hours and calling Dell back tomorrow but I really am confused (and so is Dell’s support rep) why I cannot get faster file copy access to the CSV on those servers. Anyone have any input on this? Any feedback would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

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• Server Cabinet/Room Cooling

  - by user37226

  Hello all. I currently have two desktops and three servers in my office sitting on the floor (I know this is bad). With that many servers the ambient temperature in the room goes up quickly. I am located in Dallas, TX so during the winter, if the heat is kept low, it is not a problem, but during the summer it easily jumps the room +10 degrees. I have decided and found a free 42U server cabinet that a hosting company was throwing away to house all of these systems in. One server is in a rack mount case while the other four servers are housed in mid-tower cases. I have purchased shelves for each computer and plan to lay the towers side ways on these shelves (as replacing the cases costs a heck of a lot of money). I like the idea of housing all of these systems in the cabinet because it will save a lot of room and clean up all of the cabling currently laying all over the office floor. When putting this setup together over the next couple of weeks, I want to address issues with dust and cooling. The server cabinet has a fan on top, front plexiglass door and a rear metal door with vent wholes on the bottom. First the cooling issues. I know I am going to want to have cool air enter the bottom of the cabinet and exit the top. I do not want the room heating up though as this will make my work area hot and then make the servers warmer as the air eventually reenters the cabinet. I had an idea to fix this problem, but am unsure if it will work. I was thinking of taking flexible piping and adapting it to the back fans of the computer having the other end of the pipe at the top close to the cabinet's top mounted fan. I was then thinking of creating a duct around the top fan into the attic. Now I am very concerned that the attic will cause issues with this type of setup because during July/August time frame, the attic is easily 120 degrees F. I could also use the flexible pipe to take it to an attic exhaust vent if it would be better to vent it into the 100 degree air outside (at least there may be wind. The other option would be to buy a small portable air conditioner. This may be a possibility, but do I want to spend the extra money on power? I bet this increases the noise. Plus they are around $250 on Amazon. What would you all recommend? Depending on the solution I end up running with above, I would also like to limit the dust that gets into the cabinet. If I were to cut a whole and mount a second cabinet fan on the bottom of the rear door, could I possibly mount a standard home air filter on the other side of that whole? Thanks in advance for your recommendations. I look forward to reading your interesting ideas.

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• Server Cabinet/Room Cooling

  - by user37226

  Hello all. I currently have two desktops and three servers in my office sitting on the floor (I know this is bad). With that many servers the ambient temperature in the room goes up quickly. I am located in Dallas, TX so during the winter, if the heat is kept low, it is not a problem, but during the summer it easily jumps the room +10 degrees. I have decided and found a free 42U server cabinet that a hosting company was throwing away to house all of these systems in. One server is in a rack mount case while the other four servers are housed in mid-tower cases. I have purchased shelves for each computer and plan to lay the towers side ways on these shelves (as replacing the cases costs a heck of a lot of money). I like the idea of housing all of these systems in the cabinet because it will save a lot of room and clean up all of the cabling currently laying all over the office floor. When putting this setup together over the next couple of weeks, I want to address issues with dust and cooling. The server cabinet has a fan on top, front plexiglass door and a rear metal door with vent wholes on the bottom. First the cooling issues. I know I am going to want to have cool air enter the bottom of the cabinet and exit the top. I do not want the room heating up though as this will make my work area hot and then make the servers warmer as the air eventually reenters the cabinet. I had an idea to fix this problem, but am unsure if it will work. I was thinking of taking flexible piping and adapting it to the back fans of the computer having the other end of the pipe at the top close to the cabinet's top mounted fan. I was then thinking of creating a duct around the top fan into the attic. Now I am very concerned that the attic will cause issues with this type of setup because during July/August time frame, the attic is easily 120 degrees F. I could also use the flexible pipe to take it to an attic exhaust vent if it would be better to vent it into the 100 degree air outside (at least there may be wind. The other option would be to buy a small portable air conditioner. This may be a possibility, but do I want to spend the extra money on power? I bet this increases the noise. Plus they are around $250 on Amazon. What would you all recommend? Depending on the solution I end up running with above, I would also like to limit the dust that gets into the cabinet. If I were to cut a whole and mount a second cabinet fan on the bottom of the rear door, could I possibly mount a standard home air filter on the other side of that whole? Thanks in advance for your recommendations. I look forward to reading your interesting ideas.

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• unattended-upgrades does not reboot

  - by Cheiron

  I am running Debian 7 stable with unattended-upgrades (every morning at 6 AM) to make sure I am always fully updated. I have the following config: $ cat /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/50unattended-upgrades // Automatically upgrade packages from these origin patterns Unattended-Upgrade::Origins-Pattern { // Archive or Suite based matching: // Note that this will silently match a different release after // migration to the specified archive (e.g. testing becomes the // new stable). "o=Debian,a=stable"; "o=Debian,a=stable-updates"; // "o=Debian,a=proposed-updates"; "origin=Debian,archive=stable,label=Debian-Security"; }; // List of packages to not update Unattended-Upgrade::Package-Blacklist { // "vim"; // "libc6"; // "libc6-dev"; // "libc6-i686"; }; // This option allows you to control if on a unclean dpkg exit // unattended-upgrades will automatically run // dpkg --force-confold --configure -a // The default is true, to ensure updates keep getting installed //Unattended-Upgrade::AutoFixInterruptedDpkg "false"; // Split the upgrade into the smallest possible chunks so that // they can be interrupted with SIGUSR1. This makes the upgrade // a bit slower but it has the benefit that shutdown while a upgrade // is running is possible (with a small delay) //Unattended-Upgrade::MinimalSteps "true"; // Install all unattended-upgrades when the machine is shuting down // instead of doing it in the background while the machine is running // This will (obviously) make shutdown slower //Unattended-Upgrade::InstallOnShutdown "true"; // Send email to this address for problems or packages upgrades // If empty or unset then no email is sent, make sure that you // have a working mail setup on your system. A package that provides // 'mailx' must be installed. E.g. "[email protected]" Unattended-Upgrade::Mail "root"; // Set this value to "true" to get emails only on errors. Default // is to always send a mail if Unattended-Upgrade::Mail is set Unattended-Upgrade::MailOnlyOnError "true"; // Do automatic removal of new unused dependencies after the upgrade // (equivalent to apt-get autoremove) //Unattended-Upgrade::Remove-Unused-Dependencies "false"; // Automatically reboot *WITHOUT CONFIRMATION* if a // the file /var/run/reboot-required is found after the upgrade Unattended-Upgrade::Automatic-Reboot "true"; // Use apt bandwidth limit feature, this example limits the download // speed to 70kb/sec //Acquire::http::Dl-Limit "70"; As you can see Automatic-Reboot is true and thus the server should automaticly reboot. Last time I checked the server was online for over 100 days, which means that the update from Debian 7.1 to Debian 7.2 has happened while the server was up (and indeed, all updates were installed), but this involves kernel updates, which means that the server should reboot. It did not. The server was running very slow, so I rebooted which fixed that. I did some research and found out that unattended-upgrades responds to the reboot-required file in /var/run/. I touched this file and waited one week, the file still exists and the server did not reboot. So I think that unattended-uppgrades ignores the auto-reboot part. So, am I doing somthing wrong here? Why did the server not restart? The upgrade part works perfect by the way, its just the reboot part that does not seem to work as it should.

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• Open-source and client-side IRC-Client

  - by user125197

  I'm administrating a homepage with an IRC-Webclient. At the moment, it uses a Java-client, modified to be SSL-compatible and compatible with whatever design I want to use. The usual PJIRC thing, with users wishes and concerns implemented (I'll give you SSL-PJIRC if you want - no problem. The login-script will be improved for IE6-support this weekend, means write the object tag if an old IE is found, that's it. Rest runs perfectly well). But still, the better user experience would be a client that only requires the user to enable JavaScript. So, before I go into rewriting and customizing a complete Java-IRC-solution, I'd like to ask some other people - after researching for half a year of time. The requirements are: a) Free hosting, no cgi-bin is acceptable. A lot of hosters also have CGI supported, but it doesn't allow IRC-access. So, seems you are limited to x10-hosting for CGI:IRC. b) Solution must be open source (not free as in free beer, but free as in free speech - I want to be able to read every line of the code). c) Hosting cannot be limited to Windows-hosting. Free operation systems (anything with Linux, BSD, whatever - I think you get what I mean) must be possible. d) No server-side technology. I'm limited to everything that runs client-side only. (Well, a Java-Applet does...). d) Solution must support SSL. e) The side must be able to move. Means, you register to a new free hoster, load your things up via FileZilla and the thing simply runs. No server-concerning implementations needed. f) Old browsers must be supported. From all my research, there are two ways a) Java-Applet b) Use HTML5-Websockets (it is impossible to use the JavaScript-library I found, as it depends on ActiveX - means, Windows hosting). b) means "you are going to enter very unstable content". I worked with HTML5 for month, and, well ... Though, HTML5 also is not suitable for older browsers (old browser support is an absolutely necessary requirement). PHP by the way is a server side solution ... so no line of PHP. My idea now was a Java Applet, and a fallback which again is embedded and proprietary, but only requieres JavaScript (wsirc or Mibbit are great here, whilst I prefer wsirc ... and zooming fonts that are plainly to small, but worse, cannot read the code). So my question is - with free hosting, not installation on server, plain upload - do you see and open source, complelety client-side, ssl-compatible way to use or write a client? This wouldn't be my first programming project, I'm not afraid of the code. If there was a way and I had to write it, even from scratch, I'd do. From all I know, there sadly is none. But maybe some experienced admin has an idea? Best Wishes, yetanotheruser Sry my English isn't perfect. It's enough for programming at least.

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• Configuring dhcp module in FreeRadius (3.0.2 - Centos 6.5)

  - by mixja

  I am using the REST module to authorise a DHCP request. I would like to send an explicit DHCP NAK if the authorisation fails, however the DHCP module seems to return immediately if there is a failure and just ignores the DHCP request without any response. Here is my DHCP module configuration - if rest.authorize is successful, the if (ok) control block is hit, but if rest.authorize fails the if (fail) is never hit. dhcp DHCP-Discover { rest.authorize if (fail) { update reply { DHCP-Message-Type = DHCP-Nak } } if (ok) { update reply { DHCP-Message-Type = DHCP-Offer } update reply { DHCP-Domain-Name-Server = x.x.x.x DHCP-Domain-Name-Server = x.x.x.x DHCP-Subnet-Mask = 255.255.255.0 DHCP-Router-Address = x.x.x.x DHCP-IP-Address-Lease-Time = 3600 DHCP-DHCP-Server-Identifier = x.x.x.x } mac2ip } } Below is the output after a 401 Unauthorized is received. I am wanting to achieve a temporary block on DHCP for a specified (small) period of time. However the FreeRADIUS behaviour is to ignore duplicate requests for same DHCP transaction, meaning DHCP on client is blocked until it begins a new transaction. If a DHCP NAK can be sent, the DHCP client will initiate a new transaction after each NAK (i.e. DHCP Discover), meaning FreeRADIUS will process each DHCP Discover from the client, and the block will be removed much closer to the desired block time. Tue Jun 3 03:00:57 2014 : Debug: (3) rest : Sending HTTP GET to "http://xxxxxx//api/v1/dhcp/80%3Aea%3A96%3A2a%3Ab6%3Aaa" Tue Jun 3 03:00:57 2014 : Debug: (3) rest : Processing response header Tue Jun 3 03:00:57 2014 : Debug: (3) rest : Status : 401 (Unauthorized) Tue Jun 3 03:00:57 2014 : Debug: (3) rest : Skipping attribute processing, no body data received Tue Jun 3 03:00:57 2014 : Debug: rlm_rest (rest): Released connection (4) Tue Jun 3 03:00:57 2014 : Debug: (3) modsingle[authorize]: returned from rest (rlm_rest) for request 3 Tue Jun 3 03:00:57 2014 : Debug: (3) [rest.authorize] = fail Tue Jun 3 03:00:57 2014 : Debug: (3) } # dhcp DHCP-Discover = fail Tue Jun 3 03:00:57 2014 : Debug: (3) Finished request 3. Tue Jun 3 03:00:57 2014 : Debug: Waking up in 0.2 seconds. Tue Jun 3 03:00:58 2014 : Debug: Waking up in 4.6 seconds. Received DHCP-Discover of id 7b0fb2de from 172.19.0.9:67 to 172.19.0.12:67 Tue Jun 3 03:00:59 2014 : Debug: (3) No reply. Ignoring retransmit. Tue Jun 3 03:00:59 2014 : Debug: Waking up in 2.9 seconds. Received DHCP-Discover of id 7b0fb2de from 172.19.0.9:67 to 172.19.0.12:67 Tue Jun 3 03:01:02 2014 : Debug: (3) No reply. Ignoring retransmit. Tue Jun 3 03:01:02 2014 : Debug: Waking up in 0.4 seconds. Tue Jun 3 03:01:02 2014 : Debug: (2) Cleaning up request packet ID 2064626397 with timestamp +56 Tue Jun 3 03:01:02 2014 : Debug: Waking up in 1999991.0 seconds. Received DHCP-Discover of id 7b0fb2de from 172.19.0.9:67 to 172.19.0.12:67 Tue Jun 3 03:01:06 2014 : Debug: (3) No reply. Ignoring retransmit. Tue Jun 3 03:01:06 2014 : Debug: Waking up in 3999983.1 seconds. Received DHCP-Discover of id 7b0fb2de from 172.19.0.9:67 to 172.19.0.12:67 Tue Jun 3 03:01:15 2014 : Debug: (3) No reply. Ignoring retransmit. Tue Jun 3 03:01:15 2014 : Debug: Waking up in 7999966.3 seconds. Received DHCP-Discover of id 7b0fb2de from 172.19.0.9:67 to 172.19.0.12:67 Tue Jun 3 03:01:23 2014 : Debug: (3) No reply. Ignoring retransmit. Tue Jun 3 03:01:23 2014 : Debug: Waking up in 15999942.1 seconds.

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• Publishing an Excel spreadsheet using Microsoft SBS 2008 to a web page that is viewable by mobile ph

  - by Dave Heath

  I am getting well out of my “superuser” depth here and would love some support. At work we have an Excel workbook (*.xls format circa Office 2003) which maintains our “engineers” timesheet. This handles what events we are doing across the year and how many “work units” it is. As far as a workbook goes, it is fairly simple with just a few =SUM(range) cells and some linked across sheets (12 sheets, one for each month) It is stored on a server, in a folder that provides “management” with full access and “engineers” with read-only access. The workbook itself is read-only for “engineers” and full access for “management”. I think these permissions are controlled through Active Directory. The workbook is protected with a password, assumingly to allow “management” to edit it even if they are working at a terminal logged in as an “engineer”. This protection prevents “engineers” from going to certain cells to see formulae and therefore editing them. The workbook has a macro which saves and closes it ten minutes after opening. This is to stop other “management” from being locked out by any one person who has logged in with editing privileges. I hope this is making sense to someone... :S Now then, we have Microsoft Small Business Server 2008. We have a shiny new web-based login for when we are offsite so we can get to Exchange webmail and our internal site (which uses Sharepoint 3.0). “Management” would like to be able to publish this timesheet automatically after changes (they don’t want to have to do anything different to what they are currently doing) so that using an iPhone “engineers” can check on it while out of the office. I am currently having a look at “Excel Services” for Office 2007 on TechNet but I am not sure if I am running down the right garden path at the moment. < EDIT This seems to suggest that I have to have Sharepoint Server 2007, with no mention of Sharepoint 3.0... ... "MOSS builds on WSS by adding both core features as well as end user web parts" - Wikipedia entry for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) this is not good news... "...and using the ASP.NET APIs, web parts can be written to extend the functionality of WSS." Wikipedia entry for Windows Sharepoint Services. Could this bring back what I need? Is this good news? Do I need to start learning ASP.NET? This link here implies that we need MOSS to do what I want and the bosses say we aint' getting it. http://serverfault.com/questions/20198/what-is-some-cool-things-you-can-do-with-sharepoint-2007/22128#22128 Back to the drawing board. < /EDIT Please could someone suggest some “further reading” for me to help point me in the right direction or to put me back on the right track. Many thanks. I will try to keep this up to date with how I get on.

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• Ubuntu server loses exactly 5 minutes once in a while

  - by Harold Smith

  I noticed that my server, an Ubuntu server 12.04, was losing time. I figured the hardware clock was off or maybe dying due to a faulty CMOS battery. I installed NTP to ensure the drift would be corrected, but to no avail. During a day it would lose 20 minutes or so. To debug, I created a small cron job to check against a remote servers time, which I knew to be correct. The script calculates the difference in seconds between local and remote time. The result was interesting. It seems to be losing exactly 5 minutes several times during the day. Look at this log (difference from remote server noted in seconds): Tue Oct 23 03:30:02 CEST 2012: 284 Tue Oct 23 03:35:02 CEST 2012: 284 Tue Oct 23 03:40:01 CEST 2012: 285 Tue Oct 23 03:45:02 CEST 2012: 285 Tue Oct 23 03:50:02 CEST 2012: 285 Tue Oct 23 03:55:02 CEST 2012: 284 Tue Oct 23 04:00:02 CEST 2012: 284 Tue Oct 23 04:05:01 CEST 2012: 285 Tue Oct 23 04:10:01 CEST 2012: 285 Tue Oct 23 04:15:02 CEST 2012: 585 Tue Oct 23 04:20:02 CEST 2012: 584 Tue Oct 23 04:25:02 CEST 2012: 584 Tue Oct 23 04:30:02 CEST 2012: 584 Tue Oct 23 04:35:01 CEST 2012: 585 Tue Oct 23 04:40:01 CEST 2012: 585 Tue Oct 23 04:45:02 CEST 2012: 585 Tue Oct 23 04:50:02 CEST 2012: 584 Tue Oct 23 04:55:02 CEST 2012: 584 Tue Oct 23 05:00:02 CEST 2012: 584 Tue Oct 23 05:05:01 CEST 2012: 585 Tue Oct 23 05:10:01 CEST 2012: 585 Tue Oct 23 05:15:02 CEST 2012: 585 Tue Oct 23 05:20:02 CEST 2012: 584 Tue Oct 23 05:25:02 CEST 2012: 584 Tue Oct 23 05:30:02 CEST 2012: 584 Tue Oct 23 05:35:01 CEST 2012: 585 Tue Oct 23 05:40:01 CEST 2012: 585 Tue Oct 23 05:45:02 CEST 2012: 584 Tue Oct 23 05:50:02 CEST 2012: 584 Tue Oct 23 05:55:02 CEST 2012: 584 Tue Oct 23 06:00:02 CEST 2012: 584 Tue Oct 23 06:05:03 CEST 2012: 584 Tue Oct 23 06:10:02 CEST 2012: 584 Tue Oct 23 06:15:01 CEST 2012: 585 Tue Oct 23 06:20:02 CEST 2012: 584 Tue Oct 23 06:25:02 CEST 2012: 584 Tue Oct 23 06:30:02 CEST 2012: 584 Tue Oct 23 06:35:02 CEST 2012: 584 Tue Oct 23 06:40:02 CEST 2012: 584 Tue Oct 23 06:45:01 CEST 2012: 585 Tue Oct 23 06:50:02 CEST 2012: 584 Tue Oct 23 06:55:01 CEST 2012: 585 Tue Oct 23 07:00:02 CEST 2012: 584 Tue Oct 23 07:05:02 CEST 2012: 584 Tue Oct 23 07:10:02 CEST 2012: 584 Tue Oct 23 07:15:02 CEST 2012: 584 Tue Oct 23 07:20:02 CEST 2012: 584 Tue Oct 23 07:25:02 CEST 2012: 584 Tue Oct 23 07:30:01 CEST 2012: 585 Tue Oct 23 07:35:02 CEST 2012: 584 Tue Oct 23 07:40:02 CEST 2012: 584 Tue Oct 23 07:45:02 CEST 2012: 584 Tue Oct 23 07:50:02 CEST 2012: 584 Tue Oct 23 07:55:02 CEST 2012: 584 Tue Oct 23 08:00:01 CEST 2012: 585 Tue Oct 23 08:05:02 CEST 2012: 584 Tue Oct 23 08:10:02 CEST 2012: 584 Tue Oct 23 08:15:02 CEST 2012: 584 Tue Oct 23 08:20:02 CEST 2012: 584 Tue Oct 23 08:25:02 CEST 2012: 584 Tue Oct 23 08:30:01 CEST 2012: 585 Tue Oct 23 08:35:02 CEST 2012: 584 Tue Oct 23 08:40:02 CEST 2012: 584 Tue Oct 23 08:45:02 CEST 2012: 584 Tue Oct 23 08:50:02 CEST 2012: 584 Tue Oct 23 08:55:02 CEST 2012: 584 Tue Oct 23 09:00:02 CEST 2012: 584 Tue Oct 23 09:05:03 CEST 2012: 584 Tue Oct 23 09:10:02 CEST 2012: 584 Tue Oct 23 09:15:02 CEST 2012: 584 Tue Oct 23 09:20:02 CEST 2012: 584 Tue Oct 23 09:25:02 CEST 2012: 584 Tue Oct 23 09:30:01 CEST 2012: 584 Tue Oct 23 09:35:02 CEST 2012: 584 Tue Oct 23 09:40:02 CEST 2012: 584 Tue Oct 23 09:45:02 CEST 2012: 584 Tue Oct 23 09:50:02 CEST 2012: 584 Tue Oct 23 09:55:02 CEST 2012: 584 Tue Oct 23 10:00:01 CEST 2012: 584 Tue Oct 23 10:05:02 CEST 2012: 584 Tue Oct 23 10:10:07 CEST 2012: 584 Tue Oct 23 10:15:02 CEST 2012: 584 Tue Oct 23 10:20:02 CEST 2012: 884 Tue Oct 23 10:25:02 CEST 2012: 884 Tue Oct 23 10:30:02 CEST 2012: 883 Tue Oct 23 10:35:01 CEST 2012: 884 Tue Oct 23 10:40:02 CEST 2012: 884 Tue Oct 23 10:45:02 CEST 2012: 884 Tue Oct 23 10:50:02 CEST 2012: 884 Tue Oct 23 10:55:02 CEST 2012: 1184 Tue Oct 23 11:00:02 CEST 2012: 1183 Tue Oct 23 11:05:01 CEST 2012: 1184 Tue Oct 23 11:10:02 CEST 2012: 1184 Tue Oct 23 11:15:02 CEST 2012: 1184 Tue Oct 23 11:20:02 CEST 2012: 1184 This does not seem to be faulty CMOS battery in my opinion. But what do you think?

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• Clarification On Write-Caching Policy, Its Underlying Options And How It Applies To Hard Drives And Solid-State Drives

  - by Boris_yo

  In last week after doing more research on subject matter, I have been wondering about what I have been neglecting all those years to understand write-caching policy, always leaving it on default setting. Write-caching policy improves writing performance and consists of write-back caching and write-cache buffer flushing. This is how I understand all the above, but correct me if I erred somewhere: Write-through cache / Write-through caching itself is not a part of write caching policy per se and it's when data is written to both cache and storage device so if Windows will need that data later again, it is retrieved from cache and not from storage device which means only improved read performance as there is no need for waiting for storage device to read required data again. Since data is still written to storage device, write performance isn't improved and represents no risk of data loss or corruption in case of power failure or system crash while only data in cache gets lost. This option seems to be enabled by default and is recommended for removable devices with no need to use function of "Safely Remove Hardware" on user's part. Write-back caching is similar to above but without writing data to storage device, periodically releasing data from cache and writing to storage device when it is idle. In my opinion this option improves both read and write performance but represents risk if power failure or system crash occurs with the outcome of not only losing data eventually to be written to storage device, but causing file inconsistencies or corrupted file system. Write-back caching cannot be enabled together with write-through caching and it is not recommended to be enabled if no backup power supply is availabe. Write-cache buffer flushing I reckon is similar to write-back caching but enables immediate release and writing of data from cache to storage device right before power outage occurs but I don't know if it applies also to occasional system crash. This option seem to be complementary to write-back cache reducing or potentially eliminating risk of data loss or corruption of file system. I have questions about relevance of last 2 options to today's modern SSDs in order to get best performance and with less wear on SSDs: I know that traditional hard drives come with onboard cache (I wonder what type of cache that is), but do SSDs also come with cache? Assuming they do, is this cache faster than their NAND flash and system RAM and worth taking the risk of utilizing it by enabling write-back cache? I read somewhere that generally storage device's cache is faster than RAM, but I want to be sure. Additionally I read that write-caching should be enabled since current data that is to be written later to NAND flash is kept for a while in cache and provided there is data that gets modified a lot before finally being written, holding of this data and its periodic release reduces its write times to SSD thereby reducing its wearing. Now regarding to write-cache buffer flushing, I heard that SSD controllers are so fast by themselves that enabling this option is not required, because they manage flushing. However, once again, I don't know if SSDs have their own onboard cache and whether or not it is faster than their NAND flash and system RAM because if it is, keeping this option enabled would make sense. Recently I have posted question about issue with my Intel 330 SSD 120GB which was main reason to do deeper research having suspicion of write-caching policy being the culprit of SSD's freezing issue assuming data being released is what causes freezes. Currently I have write-cache enabled and write-cache buffer flushing disabled because I believe SSD controller's management of write-cache flushing and Windows write-cache buffer flushing are conflicting with each other: Since I want to troubleshoot in small steps to finally determine the source of issue, I have decided to start with write-caching policy and the move to drivers, switching to AHCI later on and finally disabling DIPM (device initiated power management) through registry modification thanks to @TomWijsman

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• How to use Public IP in case of two ISP when two differs from each other

  - by user1471995

  Please bare with my long explanation but this is important to explain the actual problem. Please also pardon my knowledge with PFsense as i am new to this. I have single PFSense box with 3 Ethernet adapter. Before moving to configuration for these, i want to let you know i have two Ethernet based Internet Leased Line Connectivity let's call them ISP A and ISP B. Then last inetrface is LAN which is connected to network switch. Typical network diagram ISP A ----- PFSense ----> Switch ---- > Servers ISP B ----- ISP A (Initially Purchased) WAN IP:- 113.193.X.X /29 Gateway IP :- 113.193.X.A and other 4 usable public IP in same subnet(So the gateway for those IP are also same). ISP B (Recently Purchased) WAN IP:- 115.115.X.X /30 Gateway IP :- 115.115.X.B and other 5 usable public IP in different subnet(So the gateway for those IP is different), for example if 115.119.X.X2 is one of the IP from that list then the gateway for this IP is 115.119.X.X1. Configuration for 3 Interfaces Interface : WAN Network Port : nfe0 Type : Static IP Address : 113.193.X.X /29 Gateway : 113.193.X.A Interface : LAN Network Port : vr0 Type : Static IP Address : 192.168.1.1 /24 Gateway : None Interface : RELWAN Network Port : rl0 Type : Static IP Address : 115.115.X.X /30 (I am not sure of the subnet) Gateway : 115.115.X.B To use Public IP from ISP A i have done following steps a) Created Virtual IP using either ARP or IP Alias. b) Using Firewall: NAT: Port Forward i have created specific natting from one public IP to my internal Lan private IP for example :- WAN TCP/UDP * * 113.193.X.X1 53 (DNS) 192.168.1.5 53 (DNS) WAN TCP/UDP * * 113.193.X.X1 80 (HTTP) 192.168.1.5 80 (HTTP) WAN TCP * * 113.193.X.X2 80 (HTTP) 192.168.1.7 80 (HTTP) etc., c) Current state for Firewall: NAT: Outbound is Manual and whatever default rule are defined for the WAN those are only present. d) If this section in relevant then for Firewall: Rules at WAN tab then following default rule has been generated. * RFC 1918 networks * * * * * Block private networks * Reserved/not assigned by IANA * * * * * * To use Public IP from ISP B i have done following steps a) Created Virtual IP using either ARP or IP Alias. b) Using Firewall: NAT: Port Forward i have created specific natting from one public IP to my internal Lan private IP for example :- RELWAN TCP/UDP * * 115.119.116.X.X1 80 (HTTP) 192.168.1.11 80 (HTTP) c) Current state for Firewall: NAT: Outbound is Manual and whatever default rule are defined for the RELWAN those are only present. d) If this section in relevant then for Firewall: Rules at RELWAN tab then following default rule has been generated. * RFC 1918 networks * * * * * * Reserved/not assigned by IANA * * * * * * Last thing before my actual query is to make you aware that to have multiple Wan setup i have done following steps a) Under System: Gateways at Groups Tab i have created new group as following MultipleGateway WANGW, RELWAN Tier 2,Tier 1 Multiple Gateway Test b) Then Under Firewall: Rules at LAN tab i have created a rule for internal traffic as follows * LAN net * * * MultipleGateway none c) This setup works if unplug first ISP traffic start routing using ISP 2 and vice-versa. Now my main query and problem is i am not able to use public IP address allocated by ISP B, i have tried many small tweaks but not successful in anyone. The notable difference between the two ISP is a) In case of ISP A there Public usable IP address are on same subnet so the gateway used for the WAN ip is same for the other public IP address. b) In case of ISP B there public usable IP address are on different subnet so the obvious the gateway IP for them is different from WAN gateway's IP. Please let me know how to use ISP B public usable IP address, in future also i am going to rely for more IPs from ISP B only.

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• Problems with XP, Office, and PC in general - any ideas?

  - by molecule

  Hi all This may not make a whole lot of sense so pls bear with me... I am about to perform a routine check on one of my user's PC. Some background - the PC has a Xeon processor and 4Gb of RAM and running XP SP3 He has 2xHDD and pagefile is hosted on the secondary HDD (D:) and min/max values are set to 4096. NO pagefile on C: This user has 6 monitors so he has an NVIDIA Quadro NVS440 hosting 4xmonitors and an NVIDIA Quadro NVS290 hosting 2xmonitors. There is a video card driver from NVIDIA which is compatible with both NVS440 and NVS290 and he is on the latest version of that driver. (Note: Make of video cards are different - one is from leadtek and the other from Nvidia) He is a heavy Bloomberg, Outlook, Word, and Excel user and runs two Citrix applications. Other apps are FoxIt PDF and IE. Problems - Outlook and Excel frequently crashes - I am going to perform an Outlook and Excel repair and also check/remove unnecessary addins - will he lose any customizations if I repaired and chose "Restore my shortcuts while repairing" and do not select "Discard my customized settings and restore default settings". Does repair really repair anything? FYI - It stopped crashing ever since i moved a large spreadsheet he has open to his local HDD instead of over the network. This spreadsheet "refreshes" constantly as it is pulling live data to update cells and I suspect it was auto-saving so frequently that it caused crashes if saving over the network. At times, his right click completely fails to respond. His left click works fine but he can't right click on anything in any Window and even on the desktop. Sometimes, he needs to start to close certain applications such as Adobe and the right click will start functioning again. I removed Adobe and installed FoxIt as I figured it was a resource issue but I do not think so as he does have sufficient resources when the problem is happening. Sometimes he can't bring task manager up until he kills certain apps. Definitely sounds like a resource issue but I am not confident that is the root cause. Also not sure if this is related to one of the apps installed but his Start bar flickers (does not completely disappear) intermittently from time to time. The taskbar icons which are hidden appear and then get hidden again as if it was having "fits". I have performed reg scans, malware scans etc but problems do not go away. I am planning to perform sfc /scannow and office repair but would like to know if anyone has any other suggestions. What about setting a "small" pagefile on C:. I have heard that this is recommended and may be the reason why a minidmp file was not generated when he encountered a blue screen. Also, any feedback on his video cards? Do you think different models would cause problems? The drivers seem to work but he only has 2.5Gb out of 4Gb available RAM as I believe the video card chomped up a portion of this. I have recommended creating a new profile for him but due to the amount of customisations he has and the amount of time and effort it will take to get him up and running again, he prefers to bear with the problem than to go down that path. However, at least once a week, his PC acts up and I can't think of any other tools or techniques to rectify his problems. I guess we are at a stage where we just want to "stabilize" things so he won't encounter issues that frequently. Any feedback is very much appreciated.

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• BSOD Code 16, artifacts all over the place (gtx 260)

  - by belinea

  I have a following, quite dated rig E8400 Core 2 Duo cpu Intel Dragontail Peak DP35DP motherboard on Intel Bearlake P35 chipset 4GB ram Geforce 260gtx Corsair 650W PSU Windows 7 64 bit The following things has happened in the last few days. I first decided to update my Nvidia drivers to the latest version. That was 4 days ago. PC worked fine for 2 days and I was able to play few games as well without any problems. Then 2 days ago a first crash happened while playing the new XCOM game. BSOD code 16. Just the blue screen, no artifacts. PC rebooted and worked well again, I continued playing this game for another 2 hours and went to sleep. Next evening I tried to play some BF3 multiplayer (use to play on LOW settings). Approx. 10 minutes into the game red/pink-ish artifacts appeared on the screen and game quit to desktop. Restarted the game and another 3-4 minutes afterwards another crash to desktop but this time followed shortly by BSOD Code 16. From that moment I started to seeing artifacts on random startups, including Windows loading screen and the BIOS itself. Windows would still load but soon enough it would BSOD on a simple task like opening a Internet browser. Today I get tons of artifacts (little small red dashes all over the screen) on BIOS, loading screen, normal Windows mode as well as safe mode. I suspect it wouldn't be drivers but I tried removing and sweeping them entirely in the safe mode. PC would still start with artifacts all over the place but would load the normal mode, just without the driver, in the default lowest resolution. As soon as proper Nvidia drivers are installed though and PC rebooted, Windows doesn't load at all as BSOD now appears on loading screen. However, again, if I go to safe mode and remove drivers, normal mode launches fine. So obviously crash happens only on high resolution. I opened my machine this morning and gave it a proper cleaning even though it wasn't heavily dusted. It didn't help and number of artifacts seems to increase with every PC restart. I write these words in safe mode, which works, but I have to look through all the red dots and dashes. I don't have built in GPU chipset so I can't try removing my Geforce card nor can I borrow A GPU from anyone else. What are my options? I was looking into getting a completely new rig around Christmas so I'm not freaking out about this. If everything points to hardware issue I may simply decide to get the new machine earlier and don't bother with fixing this one. However it would be great to learn more if this is indeed situation that has slim chances of getting sorted. I realize BSOD Code 16 is rather popular topic online but every story seems a bit different and there can be number of issues with it. Hence a new thread.

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• What seems to be plaguing my hard drives?

  - by Craig

  In a little bit of a tech nightmare here. I know oodles about software, not so much more than the above average user about hardware. I recently had to toss an old desktop of mine. It was gradually getting slower and slower, and after shutting the desktop down for long periods of time, it would choke up upon startup. Sometimes it'd give a disk read error, sometimes say no OS was found, etc. Restarting it about 5-15 times would eventually boot properly. Weird. I also noticed that startup programs were going missing, Dropbox was reindexing my entire folder, and Backblaze was backing up less than the number of files that it should. This lead me to believe it was probably a hard drive issue. I began to wonder why I'd have hard drive issues, and came to closure when I assumed it was because of recent power surges and outages. I'm sure that does a number on the drive. I bought a new desktop recently. It's not a beast or anything, but it's enough for what I do. It's an eMachines (I know, I know) Ultra-Slim (http://www.amazon.com/eMachines-Ultra-Slim-ER1401-57-Desktop-PC/dp/B00475OG9U). This is ideal for me because it's small and portable. It comes with an AC adapter and battery, like a laptop. Just to be safe, I bought an uninterruptable power supply on top of that. It's basically protected completely from any outages that might scramble the drive. I set this up a few days ago and for the past few days I've been perfecting settings, downloading the usual applications, etc. Two days ago, I noticed Dropbox was reindexing my entire Dropbox folder. I installed both Dropbox and Backblaze on this system, but it is very much more lightweight than the other. Only about 15 third-party applications installed. I thought that maybe Dropbox and Backblaze were stressing my system, so I turned off Backblaze. Still, Dropbox runs and comes across this infinite reindex issue. I noticed that upon a reboot recently, two applications did not start on startup either. Also, much like my old desktop, every 3rd or 4th reboot, I'll be forced into a chkdsk. This makes me incredibly nervous. What could possibly be going wrong with my old, years-old desktop that is immediately causing the same issues to my new one? I've considered all of the basics. I'm in a very air conditioned room. I take run routine virus scans. I'd like to think I take care of my systems very well. What is this issue that is haunting me? There's always the possibility that this new desktop has a junk hard drive, but it just seems way too coincidental.

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• why is my centos, nginx, php,mysql server using so much memory

  - by kb2tfa

  i'm not sure where the problem lies. I have: centos 6 mysql php php-fpm wordpress (1 site). this is a dedicated server i'm learning on. as soon as i ran the web url the memory slammed to 125% of a 512k server, i had to upgrade to 1gig, so i'm not sure where the problem lies. I thought by switching to nginx from apache i would have more memory free, but i'm still stuck with the problem. before launching the site with nginx and mysqld running the site was about 5% memory. I reanamed my "my-small.cnf" to my.cnf and put in my /etc folder where the original was, but that seems not to have done it. after looking at my TOP results, i'm starting to think it may be php-fpm eating my memory, but not sure. is php-fpm the preferend way or is there something better to use. I read about possible memory leaks in php-fpm. here is what i have: php-fpm.conf ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; ; FPM Configuration ; ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; ; All relative paths in this configuration file are relative to PHP's install ; prefix. ; Include one or more files. If glob(3) exists, it is used to include a bunch of ; files from a glob(3) pattern. This directive can be used everywhere in the ; file. include=/etc/php-fpm.d/*.conf ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; ; Global Options ; ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; [global] ; Pid file ; Default Value: none pid = /var/run/php-fpm/php-fpm.pid ; Error log file ; Default Value: /var/log/php-fpm.log error_log = /var/log/php-fpm/error.log ; Log level ; Possible Values: alert, error, warning, notice, debug ; Default Value: notice ;log_level = notice ; If this number of child processes exit with SIGSEGV or SIGBUS within the time ; interval set by emergency_restart_interval then FPM will restart. A value ; of '0' means 'Off'. ; Default Value: 0 ;emergency_restart_threshold = 0 ; Interval of time used by emergency_restart_interval to determine when ; a graceful restart will be initiated. This can be useful to work around ; accidental corruptions in an accelerator's shared memory. ; Available Units: s(econds), m(inutes), h(ours), or d(ays) ; Default Unit: seconds ; Default Value: 0 ;emergency_restart_interval = 0 ; Time limit for child processes to wait for a reaction on signals from master. ; Available units: s(econds), m(inutes), h(ours), or d(ays) ; Default Unit: seconds ; Default Value: 0 ;process_control_timeout = 0 ; Send FPM to background. Set to 'no' to keep FPM in foreground for debugging. ; Default Value: yes ;daemonize = yes ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; ; Pool Definitions ; ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; ; See /etc/php-fpm.d/*.conf end php-fpm.conf

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• WNDR3700 Router + Cisco SG200-08 + LACP + Dual Uplink

  - by kobaltz

  Background I have a storage server that has several virtual machine images stored on them. I would store them locally, but I have limited space on my desktop (using SSD storage). I would like to increase the bandwidth between the desktop and the storage server by using two NICs on each computer. My original configuration allowed about 55MBps between the desktop and storage server. This storage server also has several TBs of documents, pictures, movies, vms, and ISO/programs. The storage server has 8 1.5TB hard drives in a RAID 10 configuration with a hardware RAID controller. The benchmarks on the RAID 10 are about 300MBps. Configuration In short, I am trying to bridge my switch and router. The switch is a small 8 port Cisco smart switch that supports 802.3ad LACP. I have two computers plugged into the switch, each with 2 Intel Gigabit NICs. The first computer is a Windows 7 machine that has the Intel ANS software installed. I have LACP configured with the computer and now show 3 NICs (2 Physical + 1 TEAM Virtual @ 2Gbps). It looks like this computer is configured correctly. I trunked the two ports that this computer is plugged into with the switch's web interface. The second computer is a homebrew storage box running debian. I also have the bonding enabled on this machine and the switch configured with LACP. Without having the WNDR3700 router in the picture yet, I am able to communicate between the Windows 7 machine and the debian box since they both have static IP addresses. With LACP enabled on both machines I am getting about 106-108MBps speeds. Issue I plug in a network cable from the switch into the router and enable DHCP on the desktop. I saw no need to have a static address on the desktop. My transfer rates are still from 106MBps-108MBps. While this is still a boost, I am trying to figure out how to get about 140-180MBps. I am thinking that I need to increase the bandwidth from the router to the switch. My switch allows 4 groups for port trunking. I plugged in a second network cable from the router to the switch. My question is, what is the proper way to fix this issue. Should I port trunk the two ports that are going from the switch to the router? Keep in mind that the router is a WNDR3700 and is unsure whether or not it supports LACP. I do have OpenWRT installed on the router, but it still wasn't clear in any documentation that I found if it supported 802.3ad LACP standards. I am also wondering if there needs to be anything changed within the Cisco settings. [Edit] - Corrected some numbers, wasn't really paying attention. It looks like the speeds though at least two NICs are bonded with LACP is still reaching the max bandwidth of one port. Is there a way to configure the switch so that I can increase this bandwidth? Also, on the storage server, I had a couple of extra NICs laying around and threw them on there as well. Another EDIT and More Findings I happened to look at the traffic of each individual NIC and think that I see the problem. I tested with a simple transfer for a 4GB file. I noticed that only one of the NICs was taking the load of the traffic. I then copied the file back to the Storage Server and noticed that the other NIC was sending out the traffic. I have 802.3ad LACP enabled on the two NICs and I see that it gets enabled dynamically on the switch's interface. Should I be using Static Link Aggregation?

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• Optimise Apache for EC2 micro instance

  - by Shiyu Sekam

  I'm running apache2 on a EC2 micro instance with ~600 mb RAM. The instance was running for almost a year without problems, but in the last weeks it just keeps crashing, because the server reached MaxClients. The server basically runs few websites, one wordpress blog(not often used), company website(most used) and 2 small sites, which are just internal. The database for the blog runs on RDS, so there's no Mysql running on this web server. When I came to the company, the server already was setup and is running apache + mod_php + prefork. We want to migrate that in the future to a nginx + php-fpm, but it still needs further testing. So for now I have to stick with the old setup. I also use CloudFlare DDOS protection in front of the server, because it was attacked a couple of the times in the last weeks. My company don't want to pay money for a better web server at this point, so I have to stick with the micro instance also. Additionally the code for the website we run is really bad and slow and sometimes a single page load can take up to 15 seconds. The whole website is dynamic and written in PHP, so caching isn't really an option here. It's a customized search for users. I've already turned off KeepAlive, which improved the performance a little bit. My prefork config looks like the following: StartServers 2 MinSpareServers 2 MaxSpareServers 5 ServerLimit 10 MaxClients 10 MaxRequestsPerChild 100 The server just becomes unresponsive after a while running and I've run the following command to see how many connections there are: netstat | grep http | wc -l 75 Trying to restart apache helps for a short moment, but after that a while the apache process(es) become unresponsive again. I've the following modules enabled(output of apache2ctl -M) Loaded Modules: core_module (static) log_config_module (static) logio_module (static) version_module (static) mpm_prefork_module (static) http_module (static) so_module (static) alias_module (shared) authz_host_module (shared) deflate_module (shared) dir_module (shared) expires_module (shared) mime_module (shared) negotiation_module (shared) php5_module (shared) rewrite_module (shared) setenvif_module (shared) ssl_module (shared) status_module (shared) Syntax OK apache2.conf # Security ServerTokens OS ServerSignature On TraceEnable On ServerName "web.example.com" ServerRoot "/etc/apache2" PidFile ${APACHE_PID_FILE} Timeout 30 KeepAlive off User www-data Group www-data AccessFileName .htaccess <Files ~ "^\.ht"> Order allow,deny Deny from all Satisfy all </Files> <Directory /> Options FollowSymLinks AllowOverride None </Directory> DefaultType none HostnameLookups Off ErrorLog /var/log/apache2/error.log LogLevel warn EnableSendfile On #Listen 80 Include /etc/apache2/mods-enabled/*.load Include /etc/apache2/mods-enabled/*.conf Include /etc/apache2/ports.conf LogFormat "%h %l %u %t \"%r\" %>s %b \"%{Referer}i\" \"%{User-Agent}i\"" combined LogFormat "%h %l %u %t \"%r\" %>s %b" common LogFormat "%{Referer}i -> %U" referer LogFormat "%{User-agent}i" agent Include /etc/apache2/conf.d/*.conf Include /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/*.conf Vhost of main site <VirtualHost *:80> ServerName www.example.com ## Vhost docroot DocumentRoot /srv/www/jenkins/Web ## Directories, there should at least be a declaration for /srv/www/jenkins/Web <Directory /srv/www/jenkins/Web> AllowOverride All Order allow,deny Allow from all </Directory> ## Load additional static includes ## Logging ErrorLog /var/log/apache2/www.example.com.error.log LogLevel warn ServerSignature Off CustomLog /var/log/apache2/www.example.com.access.log combined ## Rewrite rules RewriteEngine On RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www.example.com$ RewriteRule ^.*$ http://www.example.com%{REQUEST_URI} [R=301,L] ## Server aliases ServerAlias www.example.invalid ServerAlias example.com ## Custom fragment <Location /srv/www/jenkins/Web/library> Order Deny,Allow Deny from all </Location> <Files ~ "^\.(.+)"> Order deny,allow deny from all </Files> </VirtualHost>

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• Network update solutions for a company of ~20 (5 local, 15 remote)?

  - by Margaret

  Hi all This is probably going to be a bit up in the air, because we're still in the "reaching towards solutions" phase, but I figured I'd see what you guys had to say. Plus I honestly know very little about systems and what is good and bad pratice. My organisation has always more or less worked on the concept of local machines; since it primarily employed contractors who were working from home, each of those people was largely responsible for their own machine and backup procedures and the like. We're now expanding, though we're still reasonably small (we're up to about 20 staff members). Most people still work remotely, but we have a central office where about five people are working. But we're getting large enough that we're starting to think it would be a good idea to have a central file server, and things like that - if someone gets hit by a bus, we want someone else to know where to look for the files to continue their work. A lot of the people who work for us remotely work on projects for other companies as well, so I don't want to force them to log in to our server whenever they're on a network. But I do want to make connection to be as painless as possible to do so, to improve utilisation. The other thing is that we're getting more people who would like to remote into the office server and do their work there. Our current remote connection application is an SSH install that allows people access to the network; the problem is, it's a black box to me, and I've never understood how to even connect to it (despite supposedly being de facto sysadmin). Thus far I've been able to bounce questions about how to get it working to the guy who does know it well, but he's leaving the company soon. So we probably need a solution for this that I actually understand. We were knocking around the idea of implementing a VPN with some form of remote desktop, and someone mentioned that this was largely a matter of purchasing a router capable of it; I'm not sure of the truth of that statement. This is what we have in the office: Two shiny new i7 servers, each running Windows Server 2008. Precise eventual layout is still being debated, a little, but the current suggestion is that one is primary database crunching, while the other is a warm backup of the databases, along with running Reporting Services. They currently have SQL Server 2008 installed on them, which is being connected to via the 'sa' account. We're hoping to make each person use their own account (preferably one tied to the 'central' password we set up, so we can use Windows Authentication). An older server, running XP Pro, that we are currently using as a test bed for a project that requires access to older versions of software. This machine is also being used to take backups, but I'm thinking of moving that functionality elsewhere. A spare desktop from a guy who left the company (XP Pro). We're thinking of bumping up the hard disk space and using it as the magical file server that's going to solve one particular everything. Assorted desktops, laptops, etc, at least one for each person in the office (mix of Win XP and Win 7; occasionally a person who normally works remotely might drop in to the office and bring a laptop bearing Vista, but it's pretty rare). All are set up as local user accounts at the moment; I don't know if it's the best arrangement. Purchasing more hardware is not a big problem, but we figure we might as well make use of what we've got first. Is Active Directory a big magic wand that's going to solve all the world's problems? Is there some other arrangement we should be looking to instead?

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• What networking hardware do I need in this situation (Fairpoint [ISP] "E-DIA" connection)?

  - by Tegeril

  Right away you'd probably want to say, "Well just ask Fairpoint." I've done that, a number of times in as many different ways I can phrase it and just keep hitting a brick wall where they will not commit to giving any useful information and instead recommend contracting an outside firm and spending a pile of money. Anyway... I'm trying to help a family member out with an office connection that is being setup. I've managed to scrape tiny details here and there from our discussions with the ISP (Fairpoint in Maine) about what is going to be done and what is going to be needed. This is the connection that is being setup: http://www.fairpoint.com/enterprise/vantagepoint/e-dia/index.jsp Information I have been given: Via this connection I can get IPs across different C blocks if that were necessary (it is not) Fairpoint is bringing hardware with them that they claim simply does the conversion from whatever line is coming in the building to ethernet, they have referred to this as the "Fairpoint Netvanta" which I know suggests a line of products that I have looked up, but some (most? all?) of those seems to handle all the routing that I saw. Fairpoint says that I need to bring my own router to sit behind their device. They have literally declined to even suggest products that have worked for other clients in the past and fall back on "any business router works, not a home router." That alone makes my head spin. Detail and clarity hit a brick wall from there. At one moment I got them to cough up that the router I provide needs to be able to do VPN tunneling but they typically fall back to "not a home router" and I was even given "just a business router, Cisco or something, it'll be $500-$1000". Now I know that VPN tunneling routers exist well below that price point and since this connection is going to one machine, possibly two only via ethernet, my desire to purchase networking hardware that over-delivers what I need is not very high. They are literally setting all this up, have provided no configuration details for after they finish, and expect me to just plunk a $500+ router behind it and cross my fingers or contract out to a third party company. If there were other options available for the location, I would have dropped them in a second, but there aren't. The device that is connected requires a static IP and I'm honestly a bit hazy on the necessity of an additional router behind their device and generally a bit over my head. I presume that the router needs to be able to serve external static IPs to its clients, but I really don't know what is going to show up when they come to do the install. This was originally going to be run via an ADSL bridge modem with a range of static IPs (which is easy and is currently setup properly) but the location is too far from the telco to get speeds that we really want for upload and this is also a connection that needs high availability. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated (I see a number of options in the Cisco Small Business line and other competitors that aren't going to break the bank…), especially if you've worked with Fairpoint before! Thanks for reading my wall of text.

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• Exchange 2003 mail non-delivery (NDR), spam activity? events 7002 & 7004

  - by HighTechGeek

  Windows Server 2003 Small Business Server SP2 Exchange Version 6.5 (Build 7638.2: Service Pack 2) This network has been neglected and has been having email problems for years and was on many blacklists. I was called in after the server eventually crashed... I got the server back up and running, but email problems persist. Outgoing mail delivery is sporadic. Sometimes the mail goes through, sometimes a delayed delivery report is generated after a day or more, and sometimes it seems to go through, but the recipient never receives it. Not sure if spammers are successfully using the server as a relay (see event entries below after turning on maximum SMTP logging)... User PCs infected with viruses and server was blacklisted on many sites (I used mxtoolbox.com) I have cleaned all the PCs and changed all passwords (including administrator) I have requested removal from all of the blacklists - most have removed the listing, some take more time. I have setup rDNS pointer records with the ISP (Comcast) - that was one reason for some of the blacklistings. I have tested that it's not an open relay using telnet as described here: www.amset.info/exchange/smtp-openrelay.asp I followed the advise of a Spamhaus & Microsoft article to enable maximum SMTP logging. http://www.spamhaus.org/faq/answers.lasso?section=isp%20spam%20issues#320 which directed me to Microsoft KB article 895853, specifically, the part 2/3 down titled: "If mail relay occurs from an account on an Exchange computer that is not configured as an open relay" . The Application Event Log is filling with this type of activity (Event ID 7002, 7002 & 3018 errors): Event Type: Error Event Source: MSExchangeTransport Event Category: SMTP Protocol Event ID: 7004 Date: 1/18/2011 Time: 7:33:29 AM User: N/A Computer: SERVER Description: This is an SMTP protocol error log for virtual server ID 1, connection #621. The remote host "212.52.84.180", responded to the SMTP command "rcpt" with "550 #5.1.0 Address rejected [email protected] ". The full command sent was "RCPT TO: ". This will probably cause the connection to fail. and this: Event Type: Warning Event Source: MSExchangeTransport Event Category: SMTP Protocol Event ID: 7002 Date: 1/18/2011 Time: 7:33:29 AM User: N/A Computer: SERVER Description: This is an SMTP protocol warning log for virtual server ID 1, connection #620. The remote host "212.52.84.170", responded to the SMTP command "rcpt" with "452 Too many recipients received this hour ". The full command sent was "RCPT TO: ". This may cause the connection to fail. or a variant of: Event Type: Warning Event Source: MSExchangeTransport Event Category: SMTP Protocol Event ID: 7002 Date: 1/18/2011 Time: 8:39:21 AM User: N/A Computer: SERVER Description: This is an SMTP protocol warning log for virtual server ID 1, connection #661. The remote host "82.57.200.133", responded to the SMTP command "rcpt" with "421 Service not available - too busy ". The full command sent was "RCPT TO: ". This may cause the connection to fail. also Event Type: Error Event Source: MSExchangeTransport Event Category: NDR Event ID: 3018 Date: 1/18/2011 Time: 9:49:37 AM User: N/A Computer: SERVER Description: A non-delivery report with a status code of 5.4.0 was generated for recipient rfc822;[email protected] (Message-ID ). Causes: This message indicates a DNS problem or an IP address configuration problem Solution: Check the DNS using nslookup or dnsq. Verify the IP address is in IPv4 literal format. Data: 0000: ef 02 04 c0 ï..À Any guidance and/or suggestions and/or tests to perform would be greatly appreciated.

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• How To Start Your Own Professional Blog with WordPress

  - by Matthew Guay

  Would you like to start your own blog or website?  With a free WordPress  account, it’s free and easy to get started creating your own professional quality blog site. This is the first part in a series on how to create your own professional quality blog site. No, we’re not talking about some cheapo looking blog from Blogger or something on Facebook, but creating a quality blog you can be proud of and present to millions of readers online. WordPress is one of the most popular blogging platforms, powering hundreds of high-profile websites and blogs around the world.  It’s both powerful and easy to use, which makes it great whether you’re just starting out or are a blogging pro.  To start out with your blogging project WordPress is completely free, and you can use the online interface or install the WordPress software on your own server and blog from there. Getting Started You can start a blog in just a few minutes.  Head over to WordPress.com and click Sign up now on the right-hand side of the main page. Enter a username and password, check that you agree with the legal terms, select the “Gimme a blog” bullet, and click Next. WordPress may inform you that your username is already taken, simply choose a new one and try again. Next, choose a domain for your blog.  This will be the address for your site, and cannot be changed, so be sure to choose exactly what you want.  If you’d prefer your address to be yourname.com instead of yourname.wordpress.com, you can add your own domain for a fee after your blog is setup…but we’ll cover that later. Once you click signup, you will be sent a confirmation email.  While you wait for the email to arrive you can go ahead and enter in your name and a short bio about yourself. When you receive your confirmation email, click the link.  Congratulations; you now have your own blog! You can view your new blog immediately, though the default theme isn’t very interesting without your content and pictures. Back on the page you opened from the email, click Login to access your blog’s administration page and to start adding stuff to your blog.  You can also access your blog’s admin page anytime by from yourname.wordpress.com/admin, substituting your own blog name for yourname. Enter your username and password, then click Log in to get started. Adding Content to your WordPress.com Blog When you sign in to your WordPress blog, you’ll first see the WordPress Admin page.  Here you can see recent posts and comments, and you can see stats of how many people have visited your site.  You can also access all of your blog tools and settings right from this page. To add a new post to your blog, click the Posts link on the left, then click “Add New” either on the left menu or on the top of the Edit Posts page.  Or, if you want to edit the default first post, hover over it and select Edit. Or click the New Posts button on the top of the page.  This menu bar is always visible whenever you’re logged in, so it’s an easy way to add a post. The editor lets you easily write anything you want in a Microsoft Word-style editor.  You can format your text, add lists, links, quotes, and more.  When you’re ready to share your content with the world, click Publish on the right side. To add pictures or other files, click the picture icon beside “Upload/Insert”.  Your free blog account can store up to 3Gb of pictures and documents which will definitely give you a good start. Click Select Files, and then choose the pictures or documents you want to add to your post. When the pictures have uploaded, you can add a caption and choose how to position the picture.  When you’re finished, select “Insert into Post”.   Or, if you want to add a video, click the video button.  You have to add a paid upgrade to upload videos directly, but you can add YouTube and other online videos for free. Click the “From URL” tab, and then paste the link to the YouTube video and click Insert into post. If you’re a code geek, click the HTML tab in the editor and edit the HTML of your blog post the geeky way. Once you’ve added all your content and edited it the way you want, click the Publish button on the right of the editor.  Or, you can click Preview to make sure it looks right, and then click Publish. Here’s our blog with the new blog post containing a picture and video.  While you’re getting to know you’re way around the controls in WordPress, the Preview feature will be your best friend while you try to organize the content to your liking.   Conclusion It only takes a couple minutes to get started blogging at WordPress.com. Whether you want to write about your daily life, share pictures of your children, or review the latest books and gadgets, WordPress.com is a great place to get started for free.  But we’ve only covered a small portion of the WordPress features…but this should get you started. Check back for more WordPress and blogging coverage coming up soon! Links Signup for a free WordPress.com account Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Add Social Bookmarking (Digg This!) Links to your Wordpress BlogHow-To Geek SoftwareProtecting Your WordPress Admin Panel From Hackers With .htaccessMake a Backup Copy of your Production Wordpress Blog on UbuntuLinux QuickTip: Downloading and Un-tarring in One Step TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Awe inspiring, inter-galactic theme (Win 7) Case Study – How to Optimize Popular Wordpress Sites Restore Hidden Updates in Windows 7 & Vista Iceland an Insurance Job? Find Downloads and Add-ins for Outlook Recycle !

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• Error on 64 Bit Install of IIS &ndash; LoadLibraryEx failed on aspnet_filter.dll

  - by Rick Strahl

  I’ve been having a few problems with my Windows 7 install and trying to get IIS applications to run properly in 64 bit. After installing IIS and creating virtual directories for several of my applications and firing them up I was left with the following error message from IIS: Calling LoadLibraryEx on ISAPI filter “c:\windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.30319\aspnet_filter.dll” failed This is on Windows 7 64 bit and running on an ASP.NET 4.0 Application configured for running 64 bit (32 bit disabled). It’s also on what is essentially a brand new installation of IIS and Windows 7. So it failed right out of the box. The problem here is that IIS is trying to loading this ISAPI filter from the 32 bit folder – it should be loading from Framework64 folder note the Framework folder. The aspnet_filter.dll component is a small Win32 ISAPI filter used to back up the cookieless session state for ASP.NET on IIS 7 applications. It’s not terribly important because of this focus, but it’s a default loaded component. After a lot of fiddling I ended up with two solutions (with the help and support of some Twitter folks): Switch IIS to run in 32 bit mode Fix the filter listing in ApplicationHost.config Switching IIS to allow 32 Bit Code This is a quick fix for the problem above which enables 32 bit code in the Application Pool. The problem above is that IIS is trying to load a 32 bit ISAPI filter and enabling 32 bit code gets you around this problem. To configure your Application Pool, open the Application Pool in IIS Manager bring up Advanced Options and Enable 32 Bit Applications: And voila the error message above goes away. Fix Filters Enabling 32 bit code is a quick fix solution to this problem, but not an ideal one. If you’re running a pure .NET application that doesn’t need to do COM or pInvoke Interop with 32 bit apps there’s usually no need for enabling 32 bit code in an Application Pool as you can run in native 64 bit code. So trying to get 64 bit working natively is a pretty key feature in my opinion :-) So what’s the problem – why is IIS trying to load a 32 bit DLL in a 64 bit install, especially if the application pool is configured to not allow 32 bit code at all? The problem lies in the server configuration and the fact that 32 bit and 64 bit configuration settings exist side by side in IIS. If I open my Default Web Site (or any other root Web Site) and go to the ISAPI filter list here’s what I see: Notice that there are 3 entries for ASP.NET 4.0 in this list. Only two of them however are specifically scoped to the specifically to 32 bit or 64 bit. As you can see the 64 bit filter correctly points at the Framework64 folder to load the dll, while both the 32 bit and the ‘generic’ entry point at the plain Framework 32 bit folder. Aha! Hence lies our problem. You can edit ApplicationHost.config manually, but I ran into the nasty issue of not being able to easily edit that file with the 32 bit editor (who ever thought that was a good idea???? WTF). You have to open ApplicationHost.Config in a 64 bit native text editor – which Visual Studio is not. Or my favorite editor: EditPad Pro. Since I don’t have a native 64 bit editor handy Notepad was my only choice. Or as an alternative you can use the IIS 7.5 Configuration Editor which lets you interactively browse and edit most ApplicationHost settings. You can drill into the configuration hierarchy visually to find your keys and edit attributes and sub values in property editor type interface. I had no idea this tool existed prior to today and it’s pretty cool as it gives you some visual clues to options available – especially in absence of an Intellisense scheme you’d get in Visual Studio (which doesn’t work). To use the Configuration Editor go the Web Site root and use the Configuration Editor option in the Management Group. Drill into System.webServer/isapiFilters and then click on the Collection’s … button on the right. You should now see a display like this: which shows all the same attributes you’d see in ApplicationHost.config (cool!). These entries correspond to these raw ApplicationHost.config entries: <filter name="ASP.Net_4.0" path="C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.30319\aspnet_filter.dll" enableCache="true" preCondition="runtimeVersionv4.0" /> <filter name="ASP.Net_4.0_64bit" path="C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\v4.0.30319\aspnet_filter.dll" enableCache="true" preCondition="runtimeVersionv4.0,bitness64" /> <filter name="ASP.Net_4.0_32bit" path="C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.30319\aspnet_filter.dll" enableCache="true" preCondition="runtimeVersionv4.0,bitness32" /> The key attribute we’re concerned with here is the preCondition and the bitness subvalue. Notice that the ‘generic’ version – which comes first in the filter list – has no bitness assigned to it, so it defaults to 32 bit and the 32 bit dll path. And this is where our problem comes from. The simple solution to fix the startup problem is to remove the generic entry from this list here or in the filters list shown earlier and leave only the bitness specific versions active. The preCondition attribute acts as a filter and as you can see here it filters the list by runtime version and bitness value. This is something to keep an eye out in general – if a bitness values are missing it’s easy to run into conflicts like this with any settings that are global and especially those that load modules and handlers and other executable code. On 64 bit systems it’s a good idea to explicitly set the bitness of all entries or remove the non-specific versions and add bit specific entries. So how did this get misconfigured? I installed IIS before everything else was installed on this machine and then went ahead and installed Visual Studio. I suspect the Visual Studio install munged this up as I never saw a similar problem on my live server where everything just worked right out of the box. In searching about this problem a lot of solutions pointed at using aspnet_regiis –r from the Framework64 directory, but that did not fix this extra entry in the filters list – it adds the required 32 bit and 64 bit entries, but it doesn’t remove the errand un-bitness set entry. Hopefully this post will help out anybody who runs into a similar situation without having to trouble shoot all the way down into the configuration settings and noticing the bitness settings. It’s a good lesson learned for me – this is my first desktop install of a 64 bit OS and things like this are what I was reluctant to find. Now that I ran into this I have a good idea what to look for with 32/64 bit misconfigurations in IIS at least.© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2011Posted in IIS7   ASP.NET  

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• How To Activate Your Free Office 2007 to 2010 Tech Guarantee Upgrade

  - by Matthew Guay

  Have you purchased Office 2007 since March 5th, 2010?  If so, here’s how you can activate and download your free upgrade to Office 2010! Microsoft Office 2010 has just been released, and today you can purchase upgrades from most retail stores or directly from Microsoft via download.  But if you’ve purchased a new copy of Office 2007 or a new computer that came with Office 2007 since March 5th, 2010, then you’re entitled to an absolutely free upgrade to Office 2010.  You’ll need enter information about your Office 2007 and then download the upgrade, so we’ll step you through the process. Getting Started First, if you’ve recently purchased Office 2007 but haven’t installed it, you’ll need to go ahead and install it before you can get your free Office 2010 upgrade.  Install it as normal.   Once Office 2007 is installed, run any of the Office programs.  You’ll be prompted to activate Office.  Make sure you’re connected to the internet, and then click Next to activate. Get your Free Upgrade to Office 2010 Now you’re ready to download your upgrade to Office 2010.  Head to the Office Tech Guarantee site (link below), and click Upgrade now. You’ll need to enter some information about your Office 2007.  Check that you purchased your copy of Office 2007 after March 5th, select your computer manufacturer, and check that you agree to the terms. Now you’re going to need the Product ID number from Office 2007.  To find this, open Word or any other Office 2007 application.  Click the Office Orb, and select Options on the bottom. Select the Resources button on the left, and then click About. Near the bottom of this dialog, you’ll see your Product ID.  This should be a number like: 12345-123-1234567-12345   Go back to the Office Tech Guarantee signup page in your browser, and enter this Product ID.  Select the language of your edition of Office 2007, enter the verification code, and then click Submit. It may take a few moments to validate your Product ID. When it is finished, you’ll be taken to an order page that shows the edition of Office 2010 you’re eligible to receive.  The upgrade download is free, but if you’d like to purchase a backup DVD of Office 2010, you can add it to your order for $13.99.  Otherwise, simply click Continue to accept. Do note that the edition of Office 2010 you receive may be different that the edition of Office 2007 you purchased, as the number of editions has been streamlined in the Office 2010 release.  Here’s a chart you can check to see what edition you’ll receive.  Note that you’ll still be allowed to install Office on the same number of computers; for example, Office 2007 Home and Student allows you to install it on up to 3 computers in the same house, and your Office 2010 upgrade will allow the same. Office 2007 Edition Office 2010 Upgrade You’ll Receive Office 2007 Home and Student Office Home and Student 2010 Office Basic 2007Office Standard 2007 Office Home and Business 2010 Office Small Business 2007Office Professional 2007Office Ultimate 2007 Office Professional 2010 Office Professional 2007 AcademicOffice Ultimate 2007 Academic Office Professional Academic 2010 Sign in with your Windows Live ID, or create a new one if you don’t already have one. Enter your name, select your country, and click Create My Account.  Note that Office will send Office 2010 tips to your email address; if you don’t wish to receive them, you can unsubscribe from the emails later.   Finally, you’re ready to download Office 2010!  Click the Download Now link to start downloading Office 2010.  Your Product Key will appear directly above the Download link, so you can copy it and then paste it in the installer when your download is finished.  You will additionally receive an email with the download links and product key, so if your download fails you can always restart it from that link. If your edition of Office 2007 included the Office Business Contact Manager, you will be able to download it from the second Download link.  And, of course, even if you didn’t order a backup DVD, you can always burn the installers to a DVD for a backup.   Install Office 2010 Once you’re finished downloading Office 2010, run the installer to get it installed on your computer.  Enter your Product Key from the Tech Guarantee website as above, and click Continue. Accept the license agreement, and then click Upgrade to upgrade to the latest version of Office.   The installer will remove all of your Office 2007 applications, and then install their 2010 counterparts.  If you wish to keep some of your Office 2007 applications instead, click Customize and then select to either keep all previous versions or simply keep specific applications. By default, Office 2010 will try to activate online automatically.  If it doesn’t activate during the install, you’ll need to activate it when you first run any of the Office 2010 apps.   Conclusion The Tech Guarantee makes it easy to get the latest version of Office if you recently purchased Office 2007.  The Tech Guarantee program is open through the end of September, so make sure to grab your upgrade during this time.  Actually, if you find a great deal on Office 2007 from a major retailer between now and then, you could also take advantage of this program to get Office 2010 cheaper. And if you need help getting started with Office 2010, check out our articles that can help you get situated in your new version of Office! Link Activate and Download Your free Office 2010 Tech Guarantee Upgrade Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Remove Office 2010 Beta and Reinstall Office 2007Upgrade Office 2003 to 2010 on XP or Run them Side by SideCenter Pictures and Other Objects in Office 2007 & 2010Change the Default Color Scheme in Office 2010Show Two Time Zones in Your Outlook 2007 Calendar TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips HippoRemote Pro 2.2 Xobni Plus for Outlook All My Movies 5.9 CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server Windows Media Player Plus! – Cool WMP Enhancer Get Your Team’s World Cup Schedule In Google Calendar Backup Drivers With Driver Magician TubeSort: YouTube Playlist Organizer XPS file format & XPS Viewer Explained Microsoft Office Web Apps Guide

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• SharePoint - Summing Calculated Columns By Groups (DVWP)

  - by Mark Rackley

  I had a problem… okay.. okay.. so I have many problems… but let’s focus on one in particular or this blog post would never end… okay? Thank you…. So, I had an electronic timesheet where users entered hours for each day of the week. It also had a “Week Total” column which was a calculated column of the sum. The calculated column looked like this: Pretty easy.. nothing spectacular. So, what’s the problem? WELL……………….. There is a row in the timesheet for each task a person worked on in a given week. So, if you worked on 4 tasks, you would have 4 rows of data, and 4 week totals for that week: This is all fine and dandy, but I want to know what the total was for the entire week. Yes.. I realize the answer is 24 from my example… I mean, I know how to add! I just want SharePoint to display it for me for the executives (we all know, they have math problems).  You may be thinking, hey genius (in a sarcastic tone of course), why don’t you just go to the view and total on the “Week Total” field. What a brilliant idea! Why didn’t I think of that… let’s go to the view and do just that…. Ohhhhhh… you can’t total on a Calculated Column.. it’s not even an option…  Yeah… I had the same moment. So, what do you do? Well… what do you think I did? 1) Googled “SharePoint total calculated column” 2) Said it couldn’t be done 3) Took a nap 4) Asked the question on twitter? The correct answer of course is number 4… followed by number 3… although I may have told my boss number 2 so that I look more brilliant than I am? It’s safe to say I did NOT try to find the solution on my own doing step 1… that would be just WAY to easy… So, anyway, I posted the question on Twitter and it turns out several people had suggestions from using jQuery to using DVWPs. I tend to be a big fan of the DVWP except for the disgusting process of deploying them to another farm.. ugh… just shoot me…. so, that is the solution I went with. Laura Rogers (@WonderLaura) has a super duper easy to follow video on the subject over at EndUserSharePoint.com: SharePoint: Displaying Calculated Column SUMS in a View (Screencast) Laura’s video was very easy to follow and was ALMOST exactly what I needed. She does a great job walking you through every step of summing up a calculated field which was PART of my problem. The other part was my list is grouped by date! So, I wanted to see for a given week, the summed “Week Total” of hours. Laura got me on the right track with her video and I dug a little deeper into the DVWP to accomplish my task. So, here are the steps you follow: 1. Click on the "chevron” (I didn’t know it was actually called that until I heard Laura say it).. I always call it the “little-button-in-the-top-right-corner-with-the-greater-than-sign”.. but “chevron” is much shorter. So, click on the chevron, click on “Sort and Group”. The Add the field you want to group by, in my example it is the “Monday Date” of the timesheet entry. Make sure to check the check boxes for “Show Group Header” AND “Show Group Footer”. Click “OK”. The view now shows the count of each grouped set of data: Interesting, this looks very similar to Laura’s video… right? So, let’s take a look at the code for the Count: Count : <xsl:value-of select="count($nodeset)" /> Wow, also very similar… except in Laura’s video it looks like: Count : <xsl:value-of select="count($Rows)" /> So.. the only difference is that instead of $Rows we have $nodeset. It turns out the $nodeset will go through each Row in the group just like $Rows goes through each row in the entire view. So, using the exact same logic as in Laura’s blog except replacing $Rows with $nodeset we get the functionality of being able to sum up the values for a group. So, I want to replace “Count: #” with the total hours, this is done using the following changes to the above code: Week Total : <xsl:value-of select="sum($nodeset/@Monday)+sum($nodeset/@Tuesday) +sum($nodeset/@Wednesday)+sum($nodeset/@Thursday)+sum($nodeset/@Friday) +sum($nodeset/@Saturday)+sum($nodeset/@Sunday)" /> Our final output has the summed hours for each group! So… long story short… follow Laura’s blog, then group your list, then replace “$Rows” with “$nodeset”. One caveat, this will not work if you group by a person field. For some reason the person field does not go through each row in the group. I haven’t dug into this much yet. Maybe if I find some time… whatever that is… Anyway, Laura did all the work, I just took it one small step forward… as always, feel free to leave any additional insights you may have. We’re all learning here!

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• Our Look at Opera 10.50 Web Browser

  - by Asian Angel

  Everyone has been talking about the newest version of Opera recently but perhaps you have not looked at it too closely yet. Today we will take a look at 10.50 and let you see what this “new browser” is all about. The New Engines Carakan JavaScript Engine: Runs web applications up to 7 times faster than its predecessor Futhark Vega Graphics Library: Enables super fast and smooth graphics on everything from tab switching to webpage animation Presto 2.5: Provides support for HTML5, CSS2.1 and the latest CSS3 standards A Look at the Features Available If you have installed or used older versions of Opera before then the default look after a clean install will probably seem rather different. The main differences in appearance are mainly located within the “glass border” areas of the browser. The “Speed Dial” setup looks and works just as well as in previous versions. You can set a favorite wallpaper or image as your background and choose the number of “dials” using the “Configure Speed Dial Command”. One of the “standout” differences is the “O Button”. All of the menus have been condensed into this single access point but it only takes a few moments to find what you are looking for. If you have used the style before in earlier versions of Opera some of the items have been moved around. For those who prefer the “Menu Bar” that can be easily restored using the “Show Menu Bar Command”. If desired you can actually “extend” the “Tab Bar” downwards to display thumbnails of your open tabs. Just use your mouse to grab the bottom of the “Tab Bar” and adjust it to suit your personal needs. The only problem with this feature is that it will quickly use up a good sized portion of your available UI and browser window space. The “Password Manager” is ready to access when needed…the background for the button will turn a shiny metallic blue when you open a webpage that you have “Login Information” saved for. One of the new features is a small “Recycle Bin Button” in the upper right corner. Clicking on this will display a list of recently closed tabs letting you have easy access to any tabs that you may have accidentally closed. This is definitely a great feature to have as an easy access button. For those who were used to how the “Zoom Feature” looked before it has a new “look” to it. Instead of the pop-up menu-type listing of “view sizes” present before you now have a slider button that you can use to adjust the zooming level. For our default setup here the “Sidebar Panels” available were: “Bookmarks, Widgets, Unite, Notes, Downloads, History, & Panels”. Additional panels such as “Links, Windows, Search, Info, etc.” are available if you want and/or need them (accessible using the “Panels Plus Sign Button”). The “Opera Link Button” makes it easy for you to synchronize your “Speed Dial, Bookmarks, Personal Bar, Custom Searches, History & Notes”. Note: “Opera Link” requires an account and can be signed up for using the link provided below. Want to share files with your family and friends? “Unite” allows you to do that and more. With “Unite” you can: “Stream Music, Show Photo Galleries, Share Files and/or Folders, & host webpages directly from your browser”. We have a more in-depth look at “Unite” in our article here. Note: Use of “Unite” requires an Opera account. Got a slow internet connection? “Opera Turbo” can help with that by running the web traffic through their “compression servers” to speed up your web browsing. Keep in mind that “Opera Turbo” will not engage if you are accessing a secure website (i.e. your bank’s website) thus preserving your security. Note: “Opera Turbo” can be set up to automatically detect slow internet connections (i.e. crowded Wi-Fi in a cafe). Opera has a built-in “Private Browsing Mode” now for those who prefer anonymous browsing and want to keep the “history records clean” on their computer. To access it go to “Tabs and windows” and select “New private tab” or “New private window” as desired. When you open your new “Private Tab or Window” you will see the following message with details on how Opera will handle browsing information and a large “door hanger symbol”. Notice that the one tab is locked into “Private Browsing Mode” while the others are still working in “Regular Browsing Mode”. Very nice! A miniature version of the “door hanger symbol” will be present on any tab that is locked into “Private Browsing Mode”. If you are using Windows 7 then you will love how things look from your “Taskbar”. Here you can see four very nice looking thumbnails for the tabs that we had open. All that you have to do is click on the desired thumbnail… The “Context Menu” looks just as lovely as the thumbnails and definitely has some terrific functionality built into it. Add Enhanced Aero Capability If you love “Aero” and want more for your new Opera install then we have the perfect theme for you. The theme’s name is Z1-AV69 and once you have downloaded it you will need to place it in the “Skins Subfolder” in Opera’s “Program Files Folder”. Note: For our example we used version 1.10 but version 2.00 is now available (link provided below). Once you have restarted Opera, go to the “O Menu” and select “Appearance”. When the “Appearance Window” opens click on “Z1-Glass Skin” and then click “OK”. All of a sudden you will have more “Aero Goodness” to enjoy. Compare this screenshot with the one at the top of this article…the only part that is not transparent now is the browser window area itself. Want even more “Aero Goodness”? Right click on the “Tab Bar” and set “Tab Bar Placement” to “Left”. Note: You can achieve the same effect by setting the “Tab Bar Placement” to “Right”. With the “Speed Dial” visible you will be able to see your wallpaper with ease. While this is obviously not for everyone it does make for a great visual trick. Portable Versions Perhaps you need this wonderful new version of Opera to go with you wherever you do during the day. Not a problem…just visit the Opera USB website to choose a version that works best for you. You can select from “Zip or Exe” setup files and if needed update an older portable version using a “Zipped Update Files Package”. If you are updating an older version keep in mind that you will need to delete the old “OperaUSB.exe. File” due to changes with the new setup files. During our tests updating older portable versions went well for the most part but we did experience a few “odd UI quirks” here and there…so we recommend setting up a clean install if possible. Conclusion The new 10.50 release is a pleasure to use and is a recommended install for your system. Whether you are considering trying Opera for the first time or have been using it for a bit we think that you will pleased with everything that the 10.50 release has to offer. For those who would like to add User Scripts to Opera be certain to look at our how-to article here. Links Download Opera 10.50 for your location (Windows) Get the latest Snapshot versions for Linux & Mac Sign up for an Opera Link account View In-Depth detail on Opera 10.50’s features Download the Z1-AV69 Aero Theme Download Portable Opera 10.50 Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Set the Speed Dial as the Opera Startup PageSet Up User Scripts in Opera BrowserScan Files for Viruses Before You Download With Dr.WebTurn Your Computer into a File, Music, and Web Server with Opera UniteSet the Default Browser on Ubuntu From the Command Line TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 PCmover Professional Make your Joomla & Drupal Sites Mobile with OSMOBI Integrate Twitter and Delicious and Make Life Easier Design Your Web Pages Using the Golden Ratio Worldwide Growth of the Internet How to Find Your Mac Address Use My TextTools to Edit and Organize Text

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• LINQ to SQL and missing Many to Many EntityRefs

  - by Rick Strahl

  Ran into an odd behavior today with a many to many mapping of one of my tables in LINQ to SQL. Many to many mappings aren’t transparent in LINQ to SQL and it maps the link table the same way the SQL schema has it when creating one. In other words LINQ to SQL isn’t smart about many to many mappings and just treats it like the 3 underlying tables that make up the many to many relationship. Iain Galloway has a nice blog entry about Many to Many relationships in LINQ to SQL. I can live with that – it’s not really difficult to deal with this arrangement once mapped, especially when reading data back. Writing is a little more difficult as you do have to insert into two entities for new records, but nothing that can’t be handled in a small business object method with a few lines of code. When I created a database I’ve been using to experiment around with various different OR/Ms recently I found that for some reason LINQ to SQL was completely failing to map even to the linking table. As it turns out there’s a good reason why it fails, can you spot it below? (read on :-}) Here is the original database layout: There’s an items table, a category table and a link table that holds only the foreign keys to the Items and Category tables for a typical M->M relationship. When these three tables are imported into the model the *look* correct – I do get the relationships added (after modifying the entity names to strip the prefix): The relationship looks perfectly fine, both in the designer as well as in the XML document: <Table Name="dbo.wws_Item_Categories" Member="ItemCategories"> <Type Name="ItemCategory"> <Column Name="ItemId" Type="System.Guid" DbType="uniqueidentifier NOT NULL" CanBeNull="false" /> <Column Name="CategoryId" Type="System.Guid" DbType="uniqueidentifier NOT NULL" CanBeNull="false" /> <Association Name="ItemCategory_Category" Member="Categories" ThisKey="CategoryId" OtherKey="Id" Type="Category" /> <Association Name="Item_ItemCategory" Member="Item" ThisKey="ItemId" OtherKey="Id" Type="Item" IsForeignKey="true" /> </Type> </Table> <Table Name="dbo.wws_Categories" Member="Categories"> <Type Name="Category"> <Column Name="Id" Type="System.Guid" DbType="UniqueIdentifier NOT NULL" IsPrimaryKey="true" IsDbGenerated="true" CanBeNull="false" /> <Column Name="ParentId" Type="System.Guid" DbType="UniqueIdentifier" CanBeNull="true" /> <Column Name="CategoryName" Type="System.String" DbType="NVarChar(150)" CanBeNull="true" /> <Column Name="CategoryDescription" Type="System.String" DbType="NVarChar(MAX)" CanBeNull="true" /> <Column Name="tstamp" AccessModifier="Internal" Type="System.Data.Linq.Binary" DbType="rowversion" CanBeNull="true" IsVersion="true" /> <Association Name="ItemCategory_Category" Member="ItemCategory" ThisKey="Id" OtherKey="CategoryId" Type="ItemCategory" IsForeignKey="true" /> </Type> </Table> However when looking at the code generated these navigation properties (also on Item) are completely missing: [global::System.Data.Linq.Mapping.TableAttribute(Name="dbo.wws_Item_Categories")] [global::System.Runtime.Serialization.DataContractAttribute()] public partial class ItemCategory : Westwind.BusinessFramework.EntityBase { private System.Guid _ItemId; private System.Guid _CategoryId; public ItemCategory() { } [global::System.Data.Linq.Mapping.ColumnAttribute(Storage="_ItemId", DbType="uniqueidentifier NOT NULL")] [global::System.Runtime.Serialization.DataMemberAttribute(Order=1)] public System.Guid ItemId { get { return this._ItemId; } set { if ((this._ItemId != value)) { this._ItemId = value; } } } [global::System.Data.Linq.Mapping.ColumnAttribute(Storage="_CategoryId", DbType="uniqueidentifier NOT NULL")] [global::System.Runtime.Serialization.DataMemberAttribute(Order=2)] public System.Guid CategoryId { get { return this._CategoryId; } set { if ((this._CategoryId != value)) { this._CategoryId = value; } } } } Notice that the Item and Category association properties which should be EntityRef properties are completely missing. They’re there in the model, but the generated code – not so much. So what’s the problem here? The problem – it appears – is that LINQ to SQL requires primary keys on all entities it tracks. In order to support tracking – even of the link table entity – the link table requires a primary key. Real obvious ain’t it, especially since the designer happily lets you import the table and even shows the relationship and implicitly the related properties. Adding an Id field as a Pk to the database and then importing results in this model layout: which properly generates the Item and Category properties into the link entity. It’s ironic that LINQ to SQL *requires* the PK in the middle – the Entity Framework requires that a link table have *only* the two foreign key fields in a table in order to recognize a many to many relation. EF actually handles the M->M relation directly without the intermediate link entity unlike LINQ to SQL. [updated from comments – 12/24/2009] Another approach is to set up both ItemId and CategoryId in the database which shows up in LINQ to SQL like this: This also work in creating the Category and Item fields in the ItemCategory entity. Ultimately this is probably the best approach as it also guarantees uniqueness of the keys and so helps in database integrity. It took me a while to figure out WTF was going on here – lulled by the designer to think that the properties should be when they were not. It’s actually a well documented feature of L2S that each entity in the model requires a Pk but of course that’s easy to miss when the model viewer shows it to you and even the underlying XML model shows the Associations properly. This is one of the issue with L2S of course – you have to play by its rules and once you hit one of those rules there’s no way around them – you’re stuck with what it requires which in this case meant changing the database.© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2010Posted in ADO.NET  LINQ  

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