response write - Page 648

Disk operations freeze Debian

- by Grzenio

Hi, I have just installed Debian testing on my new desktop and I am not very happy with performance - when I perform a disk intensive operation, e.g. upgrade packages in the system, everything seems to freeze, e.g. changing tabs in Iceweasel takes 3 seconds. I run the Debian on my 3 year old Thinkpad X60 ultra-portable, and I don't have these issues. (every single parameter of the laptop is much worse than the desktop). I am using the default packaged kernel and scripts. I run hdparm -t /dev/sda1 And I got around 96GB/s, which is expected. What else can I try to make it work better? EDIT: grzes:/home/ga# hdparm -i /dev/sda /dev/sda: Model=WDC WD15EARS-00Z5B1, FwRev=80.00A80, SerialNo=WD-WMAVU1362357 Config={ HardSect NotMFM HdSw>15uSec SpinMotCtl Fixed DTR>5Mbs FmtGapReq } RawCHS=16383/16/63, TrkSize=0, SectSize=0, ECCbytes=50 BuffType=unknown, BuffSize=unknown, MaxMultSect=16, MultSect=16 CurCHS=16383/16/63, CurSects=16514064, LBA=yes, LBAsects=2930277168 IORDY=on/off, tPIO={min:120,w/IORDY:120}, tDMA={min:120,rec:120} PIO modes: pio0 pio3 pio4 DMA modes: mdma0 mdma1 mdma2 UDMA modes: udma0 udma1 udma2 udma3 udma4 udma5 *udma6 AdvancedPM=no WriteCache=enabled Drive conforms to: Unspecified: ATA/ATAPI-1,2,3,4,5,6,7 * signifies the current active mode EDIT2: Even my wife said "on this new computer I can't do anything when I copy the photos from the camera and its much worse than on the old one". So it must be serious. EDIT3: Updated to 2.6.32, but still no improvement EDIT4: I forgot to mention that the new disk is ext4, the old was ext3. EDIT5: Still not solved. I have a P43 ASUS P5QL-E board. Lines from dmesg that seem relevant: [ 0.370850] Block layer SCSI generic (bsg) driver version 0.4 loaded (major 253) [ 0.370852] io scheduler noop registered [ 0.370853] io scheduler anticipatory registered [ 0.370854] io scheduler deadline registered [ 0.370876] io scheduler cfq registered (default) ... [ 0.908233] ata_piix 0000:00:1f.2: version 2.13 [ 0.908243] ata_piix 0000:00:1f.2: PCI INT B -> GSI 19 (level, low) -> IRQ 19 [ 0.908246] ata_piix 0000:00:1f.2: MAP [ P0 P2 P1 P3 ] [ 0.908275] ata_piix 0000:00:1f.2: setting latency timer to 64 [ 0.908316] scsi0 : ata_piix [ 0.908374] scsi1 : ata_piix [ 0.909180] ata1: SATA max UDMA/133 cmd 0xa000 ctl 0x9c00 bmdma 0x9480 irq 19 [ 0.909183] ata2: SATA max UDMA/133 cmd 0x9880 ctl 0x9800 bmdma 0x9488 irq 19 [ 0.909199] ata_piix 0000:00:1f.5: PCI INT B -> GSI 19 (level, low) -> IRQ 19 [ 0.909202] ata_piix 0000:00:1f.5: MAP [ P0 -- P1 -- ] [ 0.909228] ata_piix 0000:00:1f.5: setting latency timer to 64 [ 0.909279] scsi2 : ata_piix [ 0.909326] scsi3 : ata_piix [ 0.910021] ata3: SATA max UDMA/133 cmd 0xb000 ctl 0xac00 bmdma 0xa480 irq 19 [ 0.910024] ata4: SATA max UDMA/133 cmd 0xa880 ctl 0xa800 bmdma 0xa488 irq 19 [ 0.915575] FDC 0 is a post-1991 82077 ... [ 1.716062] ata1.00: SATA link up 3.0 Gbps (SStatus 123 SControl 300) [ 1.716074] ata1.01: SATA link down (SStatus 0 SControl 300) [ 1.724318] ata1.00: ATA-8: WDC WD15EARS-00Z5B1, 80.00A80, max UDMA/133 [ 1.724322] ata1.00: 2930277168 sectors, multi 16: LBA48 NCQ (depth 0/32) [ 1.740339] ata1.00: configured for UDMA/133 [ 1.740428] scsi 0:0:0:0: Direct-Access ATA WDC WD15EARS-00Z 80.0 PQ: 0 ANSI: 5 [ 1.746788] scsi 6:0:0:0: CD-ROM ASUS DRW-1608P 1.17 PQ: 0 ANSI: 5 ... [ 1.925981] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] 2930277168 512-byte logical blocks: (1.50 TB/1.36 TiB) [ 1.926005] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Write Protect is off [ 1.926007] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Mode Sense: 00 3a 00 00 [ 1.926020] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Write cache: enabled, read cache: enabled, doesn't support DPO or FUA [ 1.926092] sda:sr0: scsi3-mmc drive: 40x/40x writer cd/rw xa/form2 cdda tray [ 1.931106] Uniform CD-ROM driver Revision: 3.20 [ 1.931191] sr 6:0:0:0: Attached scsi CD-ROM sr0 ... [ 1.941936] sda1 sda2 sda3 sda4 < sda5 sda6 > [ 1.967691] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Attached SCSI disk [ 1.970938] sd 0:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg0 type 0 [ 1.970959] sr 6:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg1 type 5 ... [ 2.500086] EXT4-fs (sda3): mounted filesystem with ordered data mode ... [ 7.150468] EXT4-fs (sda6): mounted filesystem with ordered data mode

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NTFS Permissions - Access Denied even though Explicit Allow and no Deny

- by chris613

I'm hoping someone can help me with this NTFS permissions problem. The short version is that I can't write a new file in F:\SomeDir even though I seem to be granted full permissions via both the "Domain Admins" group and a second unprivileged group. The "Effective Permissions" tab in the explorer permissions UI shows that I have full control, and there are no "Deny"s anywhere in the ACL or anything else that looks unusual. I am logged into the machine over RDP and accessing the disk directly, not through a share. F:\SomeDir>set U USERDNSDOMAIN=THEOFFICE.LOCAL USERDOMAIN=THEOFFICE USERNAME=thisisme USERPROFILE=C:\Users\thisisme F:\SomeDir>icacls . . BUILTIN\Administrators:(I)(F) CREATOR OWNER:(I)(OI)(CI)(IO)(F) THEOFFICE\Domain Admins:(I)(OI)(CI)(F) NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM:(I)(OI)(CI)(F) BUILTIN\Administrators:(I)(OI)(CI)(IO)(F) BUILTIN\Users:(I)(OI)(CI)(RX) Successfully processed 1 files; Failed processing 0 files F:\SomeDir>net group /domain "Domain Admins" The request will be processed at a domain controller for domain THEOFFICE.local. Group name Domain Admins Comment Designated administrators of the domain Members ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Administrator thatguy thisisme The command completed successfully. F:\SomeDir>echo "whyUNoCreateFile?" > whyUNoCreateFile.txt Access is denied. I searched for answers and came across similar problems that lead to UAC (ex. Why does removing the EVERYONE group prevent domain admins from accessing a drive? ). I can't turn off UAC at the moment, so I try a "regular" group that I'm also part of. This group has no special rights assignments and is not part of any administrative groups. Still no dice: [***** This one command executed in an elevated shell *****] F:\SomeDir>icacls . /grant THEOFFICE\iteveryone:(OI)(CI)F processed file: . Successfully processed 1 files; Failed processing 0 files F:\SomeDir>net group /domain "iteveryone" The request will be processed at a domain controller for domain THEOFFICE.local. Group name ITeveryone Comment Members ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Administrator thatguy thisisme otherguy someitguy The command completed successfully. F:\ScanningVMsForIBM>echo y > u Access is denied. As you can see, using a "regular" group didn't help. I have logged out and back in to the server to ensure my login token is up to date, and at any rate I belonged to these groups before the server was created. If I grant explicit permission to myself, it does allow me to write files: [***** This one command executed in an elevated shell *****] F:\SomeDir>icacls . /grant THEOFFICE\thisisme:(OI)(CI)F processed file: . Successfully processed 1 files; Failed processing 0 files F:\SomeDir>echo y > u F:\SomeDir>type u y My requirement is for the "Domain Admins" group to have Full Control, or if that's not possible without disabling UAC, then a second group will do, but I can't get either to work. I'm really stumped. Can someone please point out what I could be overlooking?

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Error installing mysql, any way to fix it?

- by user156355

I was installing mysql with apt-get install mysql-server (like I always did) before that I had done an apt-get update (I am using Debian 6), and when I installed I found this problem, pretty common as I see, but Ive followed all stepts and nothing have worked, Ive tried with apt-get install -f also with apt-get remove mysql-server (and common, and mysql-server-5.1) and also with apt-get purge (every packate) and later install, but nothing... I tried also dpkg-reconfigure mysql-server-5.1 apt-get install --reinstall mysql-server (all runed as Root) Still, nothing worked, any idea??? 130130 10:11:48 InnoDB: Shutdown completed; log sequence number 0 44233 Starting MySQL database server: mysqld . . . . . . . . . . . . . . failed! invoke-rc.d: initscript mysql, action "start" failed. dpkg: error processing mysql-server-5.1 (--configure): subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 1 configured to not write apport reports dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of mysql-server: mysql-server depends on mysql-server-5.1; however: Package mysql-server-5.1 is not configured yet. dpkg: error processing mysql-server (--configure): dependency problems - leaving unconfigured configured to not write apport reports Errors were encountered while processing: mysql-server-5.1 mysql-server E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1) when I tried dpkg-reconfigure mysql-server-5.1 /usr/sbin/dpkg-reconfigure: mysql-server-5.1 is broken or not fully installed the case "Start" on /etc/init.d/mysql is 'start') sanity_checks; # Start daemon log_daemon_msg "Starting MySQL database server" "mysqld" if mysqld_status check_alive nowarn; then log_progress_msg "already running" log_end_msg 0 else # Could be removed during boot test -e /var/run/mysqld || install -m 755 -o mysql -g root -d /var/run/mysqld # Start MySQL! /usr/bin/mysqld_safe > /dev/null 2>&1 & # 6s was reported in #352070 to be too few when using ndbcluster for i in 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14; do sleep 1 if mysqld_status check_alive nowarn ; then break; fi log_progress_msg "." done if mysqld_status check_alive warn; then log_end_msg 0 # Now start mysqlcheck or whatever the admin wants. output=$(/etc/mysql/debian-start) [ -n "$output" ] && log_action_msg "$output" else log_end_msg 1 log_failure_msg "Please take a look at the syslog" fi fi When I make mysql force-reload: Reloading MySQL database server: mysqld/usr/bin/mysqladmin: connect to server at 'localhost' failed error: 'Can't connect to local MySQL server through socket '/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock' (2)' Check that mysqld is running and that the socket: '/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock' exists! root@americandougnuts:/etc/init.d# root@americandougnuts:/etc/init.d# Check that mysqld is running and that the socket: '/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock' exists!

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Understanding NFS4 (Linux server)

- by drumfire

I've been a bit bothered by NFS4 on Linux. Some information 'out there' seems to conflict with other information, and other information appears hard to find. So here are a couple of things that caught my attention, hopefully someone out there can shed some light on this. This question focuses exclusively on NFS4 without Kerberos etc. 1. Exports There is ambiguous information in the exports manpage on the structure of /etc/exports. To quote from exports(5): Also, each line may have one or more specifications for default options after the path name, in the form of a dash ("-") followed by an option list. The option list is used for all subsequent exports on that line only. What does "subsequent exports on that line only" mean? 1.2 fsid=0 not required anymore? I was searching for fsid when I found a comment on the linux-nfs list stating fsid=0 is not required anymore. Now I'm just confused, do I need it with nfs4 or not?! 2. Non-exported directory still mountable Say I have the following tree: /exp /exp/users /exp/distr /exp/distr/archlinux /exp/distr/debian And I have the following entries in this fstab entry: /dev/disk/by-label/users /mnt/users ext4 defaults 0 0 /dev/disk/by-label/distr /mnt/distr ext4 defaults 0 0 /mnt/users /exp/users none bind 0 0 /mnt/distr /exp/distr none bind 0 0 And my exports is exactly this: /exp 192.168.1.0/24(fsid=0,rw,async,no_subtree_check,no_root_squash) /exp/distr 192.168.1.0/24(rw,async,no_subtree_check,no_root_squash) And exportfs -arv shows: exporting 192.168.1.0/24:/exp/distr exporting 192.168.1.0/24:/exp Then why am I able to do this and get no error on a client: mount -t nfs4 server:/exp/users /tmp/test Even though /exp/users is not exported? I didn't export this directory, and while I don't see the contents of /dev/disk/by-label/users unless I specify crossmnt, I am still able to write to the directory. Everything I write to there goes to the underlying directory of /exp/users which can be seen when I umount /exp/users; ls /exp/users.. 3. The odd case of showmount -d server As stated by rpc.mountd(8), this command should display directories that are either currently mounted by clients, or stale entries in /var/lib/nfs/rmtab, as can be read: The rpc.mountd daemon registers every successful MNT request by adding an entry to the /var/lib/nfs/rmtab file. When receivng a UMNT request from an NFS client, rpc.mountd simply removes the matching entry from /var/lib/nfs/rmtab, as long as the access control list for that export allows that sender to access the export. (...) Note, however, that there is little to guarantee that the contents of /var/lib/nfs/rmtab are accurate. A client may continue accessing an export even after invoking UMNT. If the client reboots without sending a UMNT request, stale entries remain for that client in /var/lib/nfs/rmtab. After reading this I surely wonder: Isn't it terribly insecure to just expose this type of client information; Aren't unaware server admins bound to have an rmtab with a lot of stale clients; Is this the reason that clients that mount nfs4 directories with mount -v get to see output like "nothing was mounted" even though something was mounted? I have a lot of other questions regarding nfs4, but I'll keep it at this for the moment.. :)

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Debian Lenny to Debian Squeeze upgrade problems

- by Roland Soós

Hi! Yesterday I made a dist-upgrade on my Debian Lenny server. I thought it will be easy as an usual upgrade, but it's not. I got a lot of problem after the update: # apt-get upgrade Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done You might want to run 'apt-get -f install' to correct these. The following packages have unmet dependencies: linux-image-2.6-amd64 : Depends: linux-image-2.6.32-5-amd64 but it is not installed E: Unmet dependencies. Try using -f. Then I tried the suggestion: # apt-get -f install Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done Correcting dependencies... Done The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required: libio-compress-base-perl libatk1.0-0 libts-0.0-0 libmime-types-perl libc-client2007b libgtk2.0-common libxfixes3 libgsf-1-common hicolor-icon-theme libfile-remove-perl libxcomposite1 libltdl3-dev libneon27 libmd5-perl libwmf0.2-7 libilmbase6 libatk1.0-data djvulibre-desktop libdirectfb-1.0-0 fam libxinerama1 libcroco3 libopenexr6 libgsf-1-114 libmail-box-perl libdjvulibre21 openssl-blacklist librsvg2-2 libio-compress-zlib-perl libsysfs2 libbeecrypt6 libxdamage1 libobject-realize-later-perl libuser-identity-perl libgtk2.0-bin libxi6 libxcursor1 portmap libxrandr2 libgtk2.0-0 Use 'apt-get autoremove' to remove them. The following extra packages will be installed: linux-image-2.6.32-5-amd64 Suggested packages: linux-doc-2.6.32 The following NEW packages will be installed: linux-image-2.6.32-5-amd64 0 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 121 not upgraded. 98 not fully installed or removed. Need to get 0 B/28.6 MB of archives. After this operation, 103 MB of additional disk space will be used. Do you want to continue [Y/n]? y perl: warning: Setting locale failed. perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings: LANGUAGE = (unset), LC_ALL = (unset), LANG = "hu_HU.UTF-8" are supported and installed on your system. perl: warning: Falling back to the standard locale ("C"). locale: Cannot set LC_CTYPE to default locale: No such file or directory locale: Cannot set LC_ALL to default locale: Nincs ilyen f?jl vagy k?nyvt?r Preconfiguring packages ... (Reading database ... 37915 files and directories currently installed.) Unpacking linux-image-2.6.32-5-amd64 (from .../linux-image-2.6.32-5-amd64_2.6.32-30_amd64.deb) ... locale: Cannot set LC_CTYPE to default locale: No such file or directory locale: Cannot set LC_ALL to default locale: Nincs ilyen f?jl vagy k?nyvt?r dpkg: error processing /var/cache/apt/archives/linux-image-2.6.32-5-amd64_2.6.32-30_amd64.deb (--unpack): failed in write on buffer copy for backend dpkg-deb during `./lib/modules/2.6.32-5-amd64/kernel/sound/pci/hda/snd-hda-codec-realtek.ko': No space left on device configured to not write apport reports dpkg-deb: subprocess paste killed by signal (Broken pipe) locale: Cannot set LC_CTYPE to default locale: No such file or directory locale: Cannot set LC_ALL to default locale: Nincs ilyen f?jl vagy k?nyvt?r Running postrm hook script /sbin/update-grub. Searching for GRUB installation directory ... found: /boot/grub Searching for default file ... found: /boot/grub/default Testing for an existing GRUB menu.lst file ... found: /boot/grub/menu.lst Searching for splash image ... none found, skipping ... Found kernel: /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.26-2-amd64 Updating /boot/grub/menu.lst ... done Examining /etc/kernel/postrm.d . run-parts: executing /etc/kernel/postrm.d/initramfs-tools 2.6.32-5-amd64 /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.32-5-amd64 Errors were encountered while processing: /var/cache/apt/archives/linux-image-2.6.32-5-amd64_2.6.32-30_amd64.deb E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1) # dpkg-reconfigure locales perl: warning: Setting locale failed. perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings: LANGUAGE = (unset), LC_ALL = (unset), LANG = "hu_HU.UTF-8" are supported and installed on your system. perl: warning: Falling back to the standard locale ("C"). locale: Cannot set LC_CTYPE to default locale: No such file or directory locale: Cannot set LC_ALL to default locale: Nincs ilyen f?jl vagy k?nyvt?r /usr/sbin/dpkg-reconfigure: locales is broken or not fully installed Then I stucked. Do you have any idea how could I solve this?

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How to setup linux permissions the WWW folder?

- by Xeoncross

Updated Summery The /var/www directory is owned by root:root which means that no one can use it and it's entirely useless. Since we all want a web server that actually works (and no-one should be logging in as "root"), then we need to fix this. Only two entities need access. PHP/Perl/Ruby/Python all need access to the folders and files since they create many of them (i.e. /uploads/). These scripting languages should be running under nginx or apache (or even some other thing like FastCGI for PHP). The developers How do they get access? I know that someone, somewhere has done this before. With however-many billions of websites out there you would think that there would be more information on this topic. I know that 777 is full read/write/execute permission for owner/group/other. So this doesn't seem to be needed as it leaves random users full permissions. What permissions are need to be used on /var/www so that... Source control like git or svn Users in a group like "websites" (or even added to "www-data") Servers like apache or lighthttpd And PHP/Perl/Ruby can all read, create, and run files (and directories) there? If I'm correct, Ruby and PHP scripts are not "executed" directly - but passed to an interpreter. So there is no need for execute permission on files in /var/www...? Therefore, it seems like the correct permission would be chmod -R 1660 which would make all files shareable by these four entities all files non-executable by mistake block everyone else from the directory entirely set the permission mode to "sticky" for all future files Is this correct? Update: I just realized that files and directories might need different permissions - I was talking about files above so i'm not sure what the directory permissions would need to be. Update 2: The folder structure of /var/www changes drastically as one of the four entities above are always adding (and sometimes removing) folders and sub folders many levels deep. They also create and remove files that the other 3 entities might need read/write access to. Therefore, the permissions need to do the four things above for both files and directories. Since non of them should need execute permission (see question about ruby/php above) I would assume that rw-rw-r-- permission would be all that is needed and completely safe since these four entities are run by trusted personal (see #2) and all other users on the system only have read access. Update 3: This is for personal development machines and private company servers. No random "web customers" like a shared host. Update 4: This article by slicehost seems to be the best at explaining what is needed to setup permissions for your www folder. However, I'm not sure what user or group apache/nginx with PHP OR svn/git run as and how to change them. Update 5: I have (I think) finally found a way to get this all to work (answer below). However, I don't know if this is the correct and SECURE way to do this. Therefore I have started a bounty. The person that has the best method of securing and managing the www directory wins.

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Is my hard drive about to die?

- by Hristo Deshev

I have two hard drives set up as a RAID 1 array on my server (Linux, software RAID using mdadm) and one of them just got me this "present" in syslog: Nov 23 02:05:29 h2 kernel: [7305215.338153] ata1.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x1 SErr 0x0 action 0x0 Nov 23 02:05:29 h2 kernel: [7305215.338178] ata1.00: irq_stat 0x40000008 Nov 23 02:05:29 h2 kernel: [7305215.338197] ata1.00: failed command: READ FPDMA QUEUED Nov 23 02:05:29 h2 kernel: [7305215.338220] ata1.00: cmd 60/08:00:d8:df:da/00:00:3a:00:00/40 tag 0 ncq 4096 in Nov 23 02:05:29 h2 kernel: [7305215.338221] res 41/40:08:d8:df:da/00:00:3a:00:00/00 Emask 0x409 (media error) <F> Nov 23 02:05:29 h2 kernel: [7305215.338287] ata1.00: status: { DRDY ERR } Nov 23 02:05:29 h2 kernel: [7305215.338305] ata1.00: error: { UNC } Nov 23 02:05:29 h2 kernel: [7305215.358901] ata1.00: configured for UDMA/133 Nov 23 02:05:32 h2 kernel: [7305218.269054] ata1.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x1 SErr 0x0 action 0x0 Nov 23 02:05:32 h2 kernel: [7305218.269081] ata1.00: irq_stat 0x40000008 Nov 23 02:05:32 h2 kernel: [7305218.269101] ata1.00: failed command: READ FPDMA QUEUED Nov 23 02:05:32 h2 kernel: [7305218.269125] ata1.00: cmd 60/08:00:d8:df:da/00:00:3a:00:00/40 tag 0 ncq 4096 in Nov 23 02:05:32 h2 kernel: [7305218.269126] res 41/40:08:d8:df:da/00:00:3a:00:00/00 Emask 0x409 (media error) <F> Nov 23 02:05:32 h2 kernel: [7305218.269196] ata1.00: status: { DRDY ERR } Nov 23 02:05:32 h2 kernel: [7305218.269215] ata1.00: error: { UNC } Nov 23 02:05:32 h2 kernel: [7305218.341565] ata1.00: configured for UDMA/133 Nov 23 02:05:35 h2 kernel: [7305221.193342] ata1.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x1 SErr 0x0 action 0x0 Nov 23 02:05:35 h2 kernel: [7305221.193368] ata1.00: irq_stat 0x40000008 Nov 23 02:05:35 h2 kernel: [7305221.193386] ata1.00: failed command: READ FPDMA QUEUED Nov 23 02:05:35 h2 kernel: [7305221.193408] ata1.00: cmd 60/08:00:d8:df:da/00:00:3a:00:00/40 tag 0 ncq 4096 in Nov 23 02:05:35 h2 kernel: [7305221.193409] res 41/40:08:d8:df:da/00:00:3a:00:00/00 Emask 0x409 (media error) <F> Nov 23 02:05:35 h2 kernel: [7305221.193474] ata1.00: status: { DRDY ERR } Nov 23 02:05:35 h2 kernel: [7305221.193491] ata1.00: error: { UNC } Nov 23 02:05:35 h2 kernel: [7305221.388404] ata1.00: configured for UDMA/133 Nov 23 02:05:38 h2 kernel: [7305224.426316] ata1.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x1 SErr 0x0 action 0x0 Nov 23 02:05:38 h2 kernel: [7305224.426343] ata1.00: irq_stat 0x40000008 Nov 23 02:05:38 h2 kernel: [7305224.426363] ata1.00: failed command: READ FPDMA QUEUED Nov 23 02:05:38 h2 kernel: [7305224.426387] ata1.00: cmd 60/08:00:d8:df:da/00:00:3a:00:00/40 tag 0 ncq 4096 in Nov 23 02:05:38 h2 kernel: [7305224.426388] res 41/40:08:d8:df:da/00:00:3a:00:00/00 Emask 0x409 (media error) <F> Nov 23 02:05:38 h2 kernel: [7305224.426459] ata1.00: status: { DRDY ERR } Nov 23 02:05:38 h2 kernel: [7305224.426478] ata1.00: error: { UNC } Nov 23 02:05:38 h2 kernel: [7305224.498133] ata1.00: configured for UDMA/133 Nov 23 02:05:41 h2 kernel: [7305227.400583] ata1.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x1 SErr 0x0 action 0x0 Nov 23 02:05:41 h2 kernel: [7305227.400608] ata1.00: irq_stat 0x40000008 Nov 23 02:05:41 h2 kernel: [7305227.400627] ata1.00: failed command: READ FPDMA QUEUED Nov 23 02:05:41 h2 kernel: [7305227.400649] ata1.00: cmd 60/08:00:d8:df:da/00:00:3a:00:00/40 tag 0 ncq 4096 in Nov 23 02:05:41 h2 kernel: [7305227.400650] res 41/40:08:d8:df:da/00:00:3a:00:00/00 Emask 0x409 (media error) <F> Nov 23 02:05:41 h2 kernel: [7305227.400716] ata1.00: status: { DRDY ERR } Nov 23 02:05:41 h2 kernel: [7305227.400734] ata1.00: error: { UNC } Nov 23 02:05:41 h2 kernel: [7305227.472432] ata1.00: configured for UDMA/133 From what I read so far, I am not sure if read errors mean that a hard drive is dying on me (no write errors so far). I've had hard drive errors in the past and those always had errors about failing to write to specific sectors in the logs. Not this time. Should I be replacing the drive? Could something else be causing the problem? I've scheduled a smartctl -t long test that will finish in a couple of hours. I hope this will give me some more info.

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How do i change the BIOS boot splash screen?

- by YumYumYum

I have a Dell PC which has very ugly and bad luck looking Alien face on every boot. I want to change it or disable it forever, but in Bios they do not have any options. How can i change this from my linux Fedora or ArchLinux which is running now? Tried following does not work. ( http://www.pixelbeat.org/docs/bios/ ) ./flashrom -r firmware.old #save current flash ROM just in case ./flashrom -wv firmware.new #write and verify new flash ROM image Also tried: $ cat c.c #include <stdio.h> #include <inttypes.h> #include <netinet/in.h> #include <stdlib.h> #include <string.h> #include <sys/types.h> #include <sys/stat.h> #include <fcntl.h> #include <unistd.h> #define lengthof(x) (sizeof(x)/sizeof(x[0])) uint16_t checksum(const uint8_t* data, int len) { uint16_t sum = 0; int i; for (i=0; i<len; i++) sum+=*(data+i); return htons(sum); } void usage(void) { fprintf(stderr,"Usage: therm_limit [0,50,53,56,60,63,66,70]\n"); fprintf(stderr,"Report therm limit of terminal in BIOS\n"); fprintf(stderr,"If temp specifed, it is changed if required.\n"); exit(EXIT_FAILURE); } #define CHKSUM_START 51 #define CHKSUM_END 109 #define THERM_OFFSET 67 #define THERM_SHIFT 0 #define THERM_MASK (0x7 << THERM_SHIFT) #define THERM_OFF 0 uint8_t thermal_limits[]={0,50,53,56,60,63,66,70}; #define THERM_MAX (lengthof(thermal_limits)-1) #define DEV_NVRAM "/dev/nvram" #define NVRAM_MAX 114 uint8_t nvram[NVRAM_MAX]; int main(int argc, char* argv[]) { int therm_request = -1; if (argc>2) usage(); if (argc==2) { if (*argv[1]=='-') usage(); therm_request=atoi(argv[1]); int i; for (i=0; i<lengthof(thermal_limits); i++) if (thermal_limits[i]==therm_request) break; if (i==lengthof(thermal_limits)) usage(); else therm_request=i; } int fd_nvram=open(DEV_NVRAM, O_RDWR); if (fd_nvram < 0) { fprintf(stderr,"Error opening %s [%m]\n", DEV_NVRAM); exit(EXIT_FAILURE); } if (read(fd_nvram, nvram, sizeof(nvram))==-1) { fprintf(stderr,"Error reading %s [%m]\n", DEV_NVRAM); close(fd_nvram); exit(EXIT_FAILURE); } uint16_t chksum = *(uint16_t*)(nvram+CHKSUM_END); printf("%04X\n",chksum); exit(0); if (chksum == checksum(nvram+CHKSUM_START, CHKSUM_END-CHKSUM_START)) { uint8_t therm_byte = *(uint16_t*)(nvram+THERM_OFFSET); uint8_t therm_status=(therm_byte & THERM_MASK) >> THERM_SHIFT; printf("Current thermal limit: %d°C\n", thermal_limits[therm_status]); if ( (therm_status == therm_request) ) therm_request=-1; if (therm_request != -1) { if (therm_status != therm_request) printf("Setting thermal limit to %d°C\n", thermal_limits[therm_request]); uint8_t new_therm_byte = (therm_byte & ~THERM_MASK) | (therm_request << THERM_SHIFT); *(uint8_t*)(nvram+THERM_OFFSET) = new_therm_byte; *(uint16_t*)(nvram+CHKSUM_END) = checksum(nvram+CHKSUM_START, CHKSUM_END-CHKSUM_START); (void) lseek(fd_nvram,0,SEEK_SET); if (write(fd_nvram, nvram, sizeof(nvram))!=sizeof(nvram)) { fprintf(stderr,"Error writing %s [%m]\n", DEV_NVRAM); close(fd_nvram); exit(EXIT_FAILURE); } } } else { fprintf(stderr,"checksum failed. Aborting\n"); close(fd_nvram); exit(EXIT_FAILURE); } return EXIT_SUCCESS; } $ gcc c.c -o bios # ./bios 16DB

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APACHE2.2/WIN2003(32-bit)/PHP: How do I configure Apache to Run Background PHP Processes on Win 2003

- by Captain Obvious

I have a script, testforeground.php, that kicks off a background script, testbackground.php, then returns while the background script continues to run until it's finished. Both the foreground and background scripts write to the output file correctly when I run the foreground script from the command line using php-cgi: C:\>php-cgi testforeground.php The above command starts a php-cgi.exe process, then a php-win.exe process, then closes the php-cgi.exe almost immediately, while the php-win.exe continues until it's finished. The same script runs correctly but does not have permission to write to the output file when I run it from the command line using plain php: C:\>php testforeground.php AND when I run the same script from the browser, instead of php-cgi.exe, a single cmd.exe process opens and closes almost instantly, only the foreground script writes to the output file, and it doesn't appear that the 2nd process starts: http://XXX/testforeground.php Here is the server info: OS: Win 2003 32-bit HTTP: Apache 2.2.11 PHP: 5.2.13 Loaded Modules: core mod_win32 mpm_winnt http_core mod_so mod_actions mod_alias mod_asis mod_auth_basic mod_authn_default mod_authn_file mod_authz_default mod_authz_groupfile mod_authz_host mod_authz_user mod_autoindex mod_cgi mod_dir mod_env mod_include mod_isapi mod_log_config mod_mime mod_negotiation mod_setenvif mod_userdir mod_php5 Here's the foreground script: <?php ini_set("display_errors",1); error_reporting(E_ALL); echo "<pre>loading page</pre>"; function run_background_process() { file_put_contents("0testprocesses.txt","foreground start time = " . time() . "\n"); echo "<pre> foreground start time = " . time() . "</pre>"; $command = "start /B \"{$_SERVER['CMS_PHP_HOMEPATH']}\php-cgi.exe\" {$_SERVER['CMS_HOMEPATH']}/testbackground.php"; $rp = popen($command, 'r'); if(isset($rp)) { pclose($rp); } echo "<pre> foreground end time = " . time() . "</pre>"; file_put_contents("0testprocesses.txt","foreground end time = " . time() . "\n", FILE_APPEND); return true; } echo "<pre>calling run_background_process</pre>"; $output = run_background_process(); echo "<pre>output = $output</pre>"; echo "<pre>end of page</pre>"; ?> And the background script: <?php $start = "background start time = " . time() . "\n"; file_put_contents("0testprocesses.txt",$start, FILE_APPEND); sleep(10); $end = "background end time = " . time() . "\n"; file_put_contents("0testprocesses.txt", $end, FILE_APPEND); ?> I've confirmed that the above scripts work correctly using Apache 2.2.3 on Linux. I'm sure I just need to change some Apache and/or PHP config settings, but I'm not sure which ones. I've been muddling over this for too long already, so any help would be appreciated.

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How do I configure Apache 2.2 to Run Background PHP Processes on Win 2003?

- by Captain Obvious

I have a script, testforeground.php, that kicks off a background script, testbackground.php, then returns while the background script continues to run until it's finished. Both the foreground and background scripts write to the output file correctly when I run the foreground script from the command line using php-cgi: C:\>php-cgi testforeground.php The above command starts a php-cgi.exe process, then a php-win.exe process, then closes the php-cgi.exe almost immediately, while the php-win.exe continues until it's finished. The same script runs correctly but does not have permission to write to the output file when I run it from the command line using plain php: C:\>php testforeground.php AND when I run the same script from the browser, instead of php-cgi.exe, a single cmd.exe process opens and closes almost instantly, only the foreground script writes to the output file, and it doesn't appear that the 2nd process starts: http://XXX/testforeground.php Here is the server info: OS: Win 2003 32-bit HTTP: Apache 2.2.11 PHP: 5.2.13 Loaded Modules: core mod_win32 mpm_winnt http_core mod_so mod_actions mod_alias mod_asis mod_auth_basic mod_authn_default mod_authn_file mod_authz_default mod_authz_groupfile mod_authz_host mod_authz_user mod_autoindex mod_cgi mod_dir mod_env mod_include mod_isapi mod_log_config mod_mime mod_negotiation mod_setenvif mod_userdir mod_php5 Here's the foreground script: <?php ini_set("display_errors",1); error_reporting(E_ALL); echo "<pre>loading page</pre>"; function run_background_process() { file_put_contents("0testprocesses.txt","foreground start time = " . time() . "\n"); echo "<pre> foreground start time = " . time() . "</pre>"; $command = "start /B \"{$_SERVER['CMS_PHP_HOMEPATH']}\php-cgi.exe\" {$_SERVER['CMS_HOMEPATH']}/testbackground.php"; $rp = popen($command, 'r'); if(isset($rp)) { pclose($rp); } echo "<pre> foreground end time = " . time() . "</pre>"; file_put_contents("0testprocesses.txt","foreground end time = " . time() . "\n", FILE_APPEND); return true; } echo "<pre>calling run_background_process</pre>"; $output = run_background_process(); echo "<pre>output = $output</pre>"; echo "<pre>end of page</pre>"; ?> And the background script: <?php $start = "background start time = " . time() . "\n"; file_put_contents("0testprocesses.txt",$start, FILE_APPEND); sleep(10); $end = "background end time = " . time() . "\n"; file_put_contents("0testprocesses.txt", $end, FILE_APPEND); ?> I've confirmed that the above scripts work correctly using Apache 2.2.3 on Linux. I'm sure I just need to change some Apache and/or PHP config settings, but I'm not sure which ones. I've been muddling over this for too long already, so any help would be appreciated.

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Can't connect to samba using openVPN

- by Arthur

I'm fairly new to using VPN. For a home project I'm running a OpenVPN server. This server runs within a network 192.168.2.0 and subnet 255.255.255.0 I can connect to this net work using the ip range 5.5.0.0 I guess the subnet is 255.255.255.192, but I'm not really sure about that. When connecting to my VPN network I can access the server via 5.5.0.1 and I can see the samba shares created on that machine. However I'm not allowed to connect to the samba share. When I look at the samba log of the computer which tries to connect I can see these messages: lib/access.c:338(allow_access) Denied connection from 5.5.0.132 (5.5.0.132) These are the share definition in /etc/samba/smb.conf interfaces = 192.168.2.0/32 5.5.0.0/24 security = user # wins-support = no # wins-server = w.x.y.z. // A LOT OF MORE SETTINGS AND COMMENTS hosts allow = 127.0.0.1 192.168.2.0/24 5.5.0.132/24 hosts deny = 0.0.0.0/0 browseable = yes path = [path to share] directory mask = 0755 force create mode = 0755 valid users = [a valid user, which i use to login with] writeable = yes force group = [the group i force to write with] force user = [the user i force to write with] This is the output of the ifconfig command as0t0 Link encap:UNSPEC HWaddr 00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00 inet addr:5.5.0.1 P-t-P:5.5.0.1 Mask:255.255.255.192 UP POINTOPOINT RUNNING NOARP MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:200 RX bytes:0 (0.0 B) TX bytes:0 (0.0 B) as0t1 Link encap:UNSPEC HWaddr 00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00 inet addr:5.5.0.65 P-t-P:5.5.0.65 Mask:255.255.255.192 UP POINTOPOINT RUNNING NOARP MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:200 RX bytes:0 (0.0 B) TX bytes:0 (0.0 B) as0t2 Link encap:UNSPEC HWaddr 00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00 inet addr:5.5.0.129 P-t-P:5.5.0.129 Mask:255.255.255.192 UP POINTOPOINT RUNNING NOARP MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:xxxx errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:xxxx errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:200 RX bytes:xxxx (xxxx MB) TX bytes:12403514 (xxxx MB) as0t3 Link encap:UNSPEC HWaddr 00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00 inet addr:5.5.0.193 P-t-P:5.5.0.193 Mask:255.255.255.192 UP POINTOPOINT RUNNING NOARP MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:7041 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:9797 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:200 RX bytes:xxxx (xxxx KB) TX bytes:xxxx (xxxx MB) eth1 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:0e:2e:61:78:21 inet addr:192.168.2.100 Bcast:192.168.2.255 Mask:255.255.255.0 inet6 addr: xxxx:xxxx:xxxx:xxxx:7821/64 Scope:Link UP BROADCAST RUNNING PROMISC MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:xxxx errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:xxxx errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 RX bytes:xxxx (xxxx MB) TX bytes:xxxx (xxxx MB) Interrupt:16 Base address:0x6000 lo Link encap:Local Loopback inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0 inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1 RX packets:xxxx errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:xxxx errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 RX bytes:xxxx (xxxx MB) TX bytes:xxxx (xxxx MB) Can anyone tell me what is going wrong? My server is running Ubuntu 12.04 LTS

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Causes of sudden massive filesystem damage? ("root inode is not a directory")

- by poolie

I have a laptop running Maverick (very happily until yesterday), with a Patriot Torx SSD; LUKS encryption of the whole partition; one lvm physical volume on top of that; then home and root in ext4 logical volumes on top of that. When I tried to boot it yesterday, it complained that it couldn't mount the root filesystem. Running fsck, basically every inode seems to be wrong. Both home and root filesystems show similar problems. Checking a backup superblock doesn't help. e2fsck 1.41.12 (17-May-2010) lithe_root was not cleanly unmounted, check forced. Resize inode not valid. Recreate? no Pass 1: Checking inodes, blocks, and sizes Root inode is not a directory. Clear? no Root inode has dtime set (probably due to old mke2fs). Fix? no Inode 2 is in use, but has dtime set. Fix? no Inode 2 has a extra size (4730) which is invalid Fix? no Inode 2 has compression flag set on filesystem without compression support. Clear? no Inode 2 has INDEX_FL flag set but is not a directory. Clear HTree index? no HTREE directory inode 2 has an invalid root node. Clear HTree index? no Inode 2, i_size is 9581392125871137995, should be 0. Fix? no Inode 2, i_blocks is 40456527802719, should be 0. Fix? no Reserved inode 3 (<The ACL index inode>) has invalid mode. Clear? no Inode 3 has compression flag set on filesystem without compression support. Clear? no Inode 3 has INDEX_FL flag set but is not a directory. Clear HTree index? no .... Running strings across the filesystems, I can see there are what look like filenames and user data there. I do have sufficiently good backups (touch wood) that it's not worth grovelling around to pull back individual files, though I might save an image of the unencrypted disk before I rebuild, just in case. smartctl doesn't show any errors, neither does the kernel log. Running a write-mode badblocks across the swap lv doesn't find problems either. So the disk may be failing, but not in an obvious way. At this point I'm basically, as they say, fscked? Back to reinstalling, perhaps running badblocks over the disk, then restoring from backup? There doesn't even seem to be enough data to file a meaningful bug... I don't recall that this machine crashed last time I used it. At this point I suspect a bug or memory corruption caused it to write garbage across the disks when it was last running, or some kind of subtle failure mode for the SSD. What do you think would have caused this? Is there anything else you'd try?

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Cisco 678 Will Not Work using PPPoE - Possibly Because I Configured it Incorrectly..?

- by Brian Stinar

I am attempting to configure a Cisco 678 because I am totally sick on my Actiontec. However, I am running into some problems. It seems as though the Cisco is able to train the line, but I am unable to ping out. I am all right at programming, but still learning a lot when it comes to being a system administrator. I apologize in advance if I did something ridiculous, or am attempting to configure this device to do something it was not designed to do. It is almost like I am not correctly configuring the device to grab it's IP using PPPoA (like my Actiontec.) The output from "show running" (below) makes me think this too. Below are the commands I ran in order to configure this: # en # set nvram erase # write # reboot # en # set nat enable # set dhcp server enable # set PPP wan0-0 ipcp 0.0.0.0 # set ppp wan0-0 dns 0.0.0.0 # set PPP wan0-0 login xxxxx // My actual login # set PPP wan0-0 password yyyyy // My actual password # set PPP restart enabled # set int wan0-0 close # set int wan0-0 vpi 0 # set int wan0-0 vci 32 # set int wan0-0 open # write # reboot Here is the output from a few commands I thought could provide some useful information: cbos#ping 74.125.224.113 Sending 1 8 byte ping(s) to 74.125.224.113 every 2 second(s) Request timed out cbos#show version Cisco Broadband Operating System CBOS (tm) 678 Software (C678-I-M), Version v2.4.9 - Release Software Copyright (c) 1986-2001 by cisco Systems, Inc. Compiled Nov 17 2004 15:26:29 DMT FULL firmware version G96 NVRAM image at 0x1030f000 cbos#show errors - Current Error Messages - ## Ticks Module Level Message 0 000:00:00:00 PPP Info IPCP Open Event on wan0-0 1 000:00:00:14 ATM Info Wan0 Up 2 000:00:00:14 PPP Info PPP Up Event on wan0-0 3 000:00:01:54 PPP Info PPP Down Event on wan0-0 Total Number of Error Messages: 4 cbos#show interface wan0 wan0 ADSL Physical Port Line Trained Actual Configuration: Overhead Framing: 3 Trellis Coding: Enabled Standard Compliance: T1.413 Downstream Data Rate: 1184 Kbps Upstream Data Rate: 928 Kbps Interleave S Downstream: 4 Interleave D Downstream: 16 Interleave R Downstream: 16 Interleave S Upstream: 4 Interleave D Upstream: 8 Interleave R Upstream: 16 Modem Microcode: G96 DSP version: 0 Operating State: Showtime/Data Mode Configured: Echo Cancellation: Disabled Overhead Framing: 3 Coding Gain: Auto TX Power Attenuation: 0dB Trellis Coding: Enabled Bit Swapping: Disabled Standard Compliance: T1.413 Remote Standard Compliance: T1.413 Tx Start Bin: 0x6 Tx End Bin: 0x1f Data Interface: Utopia L1 Status: Local SNR Margin: 19.0dB Local Coding Gain: 7.5dB Local Transmit Power: 12.5dB Local Attenuation: 46.0dB Remote Attenuation: 31.0dB Local Counters: Interleaved RS Corrected Bytes: 0 Interleaved Symbols with CRC Errors: 2 No Cell Delineation Interleaved: 0 Out of Cell Delineation Interleaved: 0 Header Error Check Counter Interleaved: 0 Count of Severely Errored Frames: 0 Count of Loss of Signal Frames: 0 Remote Counters: Interleaved RS Corrected Bytes: 0 Interleaved Symbols with CRC Errors: 1 No Cell Delineation Interleaved: 0 Header Error Check Counter Interleaved: 0 Count of Severely Errored Frames: 0 Count of Loss of Signal Frames: 0 cbos#show int wan0-0 WAN0-0 ATM Logical Port PVC (VPI 0, VCI 32) is configured. ScalaRate set to Auto AAL 5 UBR Traffic IP Port Enabled cbos#show running Warning: traffic may pause while NVRAM is being accessed [[ CBOS = Section Start ]] NSOS MD5 Enable Password = XXXX NSOS MD5 Root Password = XXXX NSOS MD5 Commander Password = XXXX [[ PPP Device Driver = Section Start ]] PPP Port User Name = 00, "XXXX" PPP Port User Password = 00, XXXX PPP Port Option = 00, IPCP,IP Address,3,Auto,Negotiation Not Required,Negotiable ,IP,0.0.0.0 PPP Port Option = 00, IPCP,Primary DNS Server,129,Auto,Negotiation Not Required, Negotiable,IP,0.0.0.0 PPP Port Option = 00, IPCP,Secondary DNS Server,131,Auto,Negotiation Not Require d,Negotiable,IP,0.0.0.0 [[ ATM WAN Device Driver = Section Start ]] ATM WAN Virtual Connection Parms = 00, 0, 32, 0 [[ DHCP = Section Start ]] DHCP Server = enabled [[ IP Routing = Section Start ]] IP NAT = enabled [[ WEB = Section Start ]] WEB = enabled cbos# wtf...? Thank you all very much for taking the time to read this, and the help.

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Samba with Active Directory - shares are readonly, NT_STATUS_MEDIA_WRITE_PROTECTED

- by froh42

I've set a samba server that seems to work, all shares are seemingly exported as readonly, however. The machine is called "lx". When I'm on lx I can run the following command: froh@lx:~$ smbclient //lx/export -UAdministrator Enter Administrator's password: Domain=[CUSTOMER] OS=[Unix] Server=[Samba 3.5.4] smb: \> mkdir wrzlbrmpf NT_STATUS_MEDIA_WRITE_PROTECTED making remote directory \wrzlbrmpf smb: \> ls . D 0 Fri Dec 3 19:04:20 2010 .. D 0 Sun Nov 28 01:32:37 2010 zork D 0 Fri Dec 3 18:53:33 2010 bar D 0 Sun Nov 28 23:52:43 2010 ork 1 Fri Dec 3 18:53:02 2010 foo 1 Sun Nov 28 23:52:41 2010 gaga D 0 Fri Dec 3 19:04:20 2010 How can I troubleshoot this? What I did: First I set up a fresh install of Ubuntu 10.10 x64. Second I got kerberos working with the following krb5.conf file: [libdefaults] ticket_lifetime = 24000 clock_skew = 300 default_realm = CUSTOMER.LOCAL [realms] CUSTOMER.LOCAL = { kdc = SB4.customer.local:88 admin_server = SB4.customer.local:464 default_domain = CUSTOMER.LOCAL } [domain_realm] .customer.local = CUSTOMER.LOCAL customer.local = CUSTOMER.LOCAL #[login] # krb4_convert = true # krb4_get_tickets = false I also added winbind to group, passwd and shadow in nsswitch.conf. Seemingly Kerberos works: root@lx:~# net ads testjoin Join is OK root@lx:~# wbinfo -a 'Administrator%MYSECRETPASSWORD' plaintext password authentication succeeded challenge/response password authentication succeeded wbinfo -u and wbinfo -g also spit out a list of users and a list of groups respectiveley. I noted that domain accounts did NOT include a domain and they are in german (as on the SBS 2003 that is the domain server). So I get a "Domänenbenutzer" in wbinfo -u's output not a "CUSTOMER+Domain User" or something similar. I'm not sure anymore what I did to the PAM configuration, but here is what I currently have: root@lx:/etc/pam.d# cat samba @include common-auth @include common-account @include common-session-noninteractive root@lx:/etc/pam.d# grep -ve '^#' common-auth auth [success=3 default=ignore] pam_krb5.so minimum_uid=1000 auth [success=2 default=ignore] pam_unix.so nullok_secure try_first_pass auth [success=1 default=ignore] pam_winbind.so krb5_auth krb5_ccache_type=FILE cached_login try_first_pass auth requisite pam_deny.so auth required pam_permit.so root@lx:/etc/pam.d# grep -ve '^#' common-account account [success=2 new_authtok_reqd=done default=ignore] pam_unix.so account [success=1 new_authtok_reqd=done default=ignore] pam_winbind.so account requisite pam_deny.so account required pam_permit.so account required pam_krb5.so minimum_uid=1000 root@lx:/etc/pam.d# grep -ve '^#' common-session-noninteractive session [default=1] pam_permit.so session requisite pam_deny.so session required pam_permit.so session optional pam_krb5.so minimum_uid=1000 session required pam_unix.so session optional pam_winbind.so At some point I joined the linux box into the AD domain. After (manually) creating a home directory on the linux box I can log in using the Adminstrator user with the password taken from AD. Now I run samba with the following setup: [global] netbios name = LX realm = CUSTOMER.LOCAL workgroup = CUSTOMER security = ADS encrypt passwords = yes password server = 192.168.20.244 #IP des Domain Controllers os level = 0 socket options = TCP_NODELAY SO_RCVBUF=16384 SO_SNDBUF=16384 idmap uid = 10000-20000 idmap gid = 10000-20000 winbind enum users = Yes winbind enum groups = Yes preferred master = no winbind separator = + dns proxy = no wins proxy = no # client NTLMv2 auth = Yes log level = 2 logfile = /var/log/samba/log.smbd.%U template homedir = /home/%U template shell = /bin/bash [export] path = /mnt/sdc1/export read only = No public = Yes Currently I don't care whether export is exported to everyone or just one user, I want to see somebody WRITING to that directory before I start fiddling with the authentication settings. (Who may access it). As mentioned, accessing the share from smbclient results in this NT_STATUS_MEDIA_WRITE_PROTECTED . Accessing it from windows shows ACLs that look correct (The user may write) - but it does not work, I can only read files not write. The directory to be exported looks like this: root@lx:/etc/pam.d# ls -ld /mnt/ drwxr-xr-x 5 root root 4096 2010-11-28 01:29 /mnt/ root@lx:/etc/pam.d# ls -ld /mnt/sdc1/ drwxr-xr-x 4 froh froh 4096 2010-11-28 01:32 /mnt/sdc1/ root@lx:/etc/pam.d# ls -ld /mnt/sdc1/export/ drwxrwxrwx+ 5 administrator domÃ¤nen-admins 4096 2010-12-03 19:04 /mnt/sdc1/export/ root@lx:/etc/pam.d# getfacl /mnt/ getfacl: Entferne fÃ¼hrende '/' von absoluten Pfadnamen # file: mnt/ # owner: root # group: root user::rwx group::r-x other::r-x root@lx:/etc/pam.d# getfacl /mnt/sdc1/ getfacl: Entferne fÃ¼hrende '/' von absoluten Pfadnamen # file: mnt/sdc1/ # owner: froh # group: froh user::rwx group::r-x other::r-x root@lx:/etc/pam.d# getfacl /mnt/sdc1/export/ getfacl: Entferne fÃ¼hrende '/' von absoluten Pfadnamen # file: mnt/sdc1/export/ # owner: administrator # group: domÃ¤nen-admins user::rwx group::rwx group:domÃ¤nen-admins:rwx mask::rwx other::rwx default:user::rwx default:group::rwx default:group:domÃ¤nen-admins:rwx default:mask::rwx default:other::rwx My, oh my what am I overlooking? What am I to blind to see?

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Samba with Active Directory - shares are readonly, NT_STATUS_MEDIA_WRITE_PROTECTED

- by froh42

I've set a samba server that seems to work, all shares are seemingly exported as readonly, however. The machine is called "lx". When I'm on lx I can run the following command: froh@lx:~$ smbclient //lx/export -UAdministrator Enter Administrator's password: Domain=[CUSTOMER] OS=[Unix] Server=[Samba 3.5.4] smb: \> mkdir wrzlbrmpf NT_STATUS_MEDIA_WRITE_PROTECTED making remote directory \wrzlbrmpf smb: \> ls . D 0 Fri Dec 3 19:04:20 2010 .. D 0 Sun Nov 28 01:32:37 2010 zork D 0 Fri Dec 3 18:53:33 2010 bar D 0 Sun Nov 28 23:52:43 2010 ork 1 Fri Dec 3 18:53:02 2010 foo 1 Sun Nov 28 23:52:41 2010 gaga D 0 Fri Dec 3 19:04:20 2010 How can I troubleshoot this? What I did: First I set up a fresh install of Ubuntu 10.10 x64. Second I got kerberos working with the following krb5.conf file: [libdefaults] ticket_lifetime = 24000 clock_skew = 300 default_realm = CUSTOMER.LOCAL [realms] CUSTOMER.LOCAL = { kdc = SB4.customer.local:88 admin_server = SB4.customer.local:464 default_domain = CUSTOMER.LOCAL } [domain_realm] .customer.local = CUSTOMER.LOCAL customer.local = CUSTOMER.LOCAL #[login] # krb4_convert = true # krb4_get_tickets = false I also added winbind to group, passwd and shadow in nsswitch.conf. Seemingly Kerberos works: root@lx:~# net ads testjoin Join is OK root@lx:~# wbinfo -a 'Administrator%MYSECRETPASSWORD' plaintext password authentication succeeded challenge/response password authentication succeeded wbinfo -u and wbinfo -g also spit out a list of users and a list of groups respectiveley. I noted that domain accounts did NOT include a domain and they are in german (as on the SBS 2003 that is the domain server). So I get a "Domänenbenutzer" in wbinfo -u's output not a "CUSTOMER+Domain User" or something similar. I'm not sure anymore what I did to the PAM configuration, but here is what I currently have: root@lx:/etc/pam.d# cat samba @include common-auth @include common-account @include common-session-noninteractive root@lx:/etc/pam.d# grep -ve '^#' common-auth auth [success=3 default=ignore] pam_krb5.so minimum_uid=1000 auth [success=2 default=ignore] pam_unix.so nullok_secure try_first_pass auth [success=1 default=ignore] pam_winbind.so krb5_auth krb5_ccache_type=FILE cached_login try_first_pass auth requisite pam_deny.so auth required pam_permit.so root@lx:/etc/pam.d# grep -ve '^#' common-account account [success=2 new_authtok_reqd=done default=ignore] pam_unix.so account [success=1 new_authtok_reqd=done default=ignore] pam_winbind.so account requisite pam_deny.so account required pam_permit.so account required pam_krb5.so minimum_uid=1000 root@lx:/etc/pam.d# grep -ve '^#' common-session-noninteractive session [default=1] pam_permit.so session requisite pam_deny.so session required pam_permit.so session optional pam_krb5.so minimum_uid=1000 session required pam_unix.so session optional pam_winbind.so At some point I joined the linux box into the AD domain. After (manually) creating a home directory on the linux box I can log in using the Adminstrator user with the password taken from AD. Now I run samba with the following setup: [global] netbios name = LX realm = CUSTOMER.LOCAL workgroup = CUSTOMER security = ADS encrypt passwords = yes password server = 192.168.20.244 #IP des Domain Controllers os level = 0 socket options = TCP_NODELAY SO_RCVBUF=16384 SO_SNDBUF=16384 idmap uid = 10000-20000 idmap gid = 10000-20000 winbind enum users = Yes winbind enum groups = Yes preferred master = no winbind separator = + dns proxy = no wins proxy = no # client NTLMv2 auth = Yes log level = 2 logfile = /var/log/samba/log.smbd.%U template homedir = /home/%U template shell = /bin/bash [export] path = /mnt/sdc1/export read only = No public = Yes Currently I don't care whether export is exported to everyone or just one user, I want to see somebody WRITING to that directory before I start fiddling with the authentication settings. (Who may access it). As mentioned, accessing the share from smbclient results in this NT_STATUS_MEDIA_WRITE_PROTECTED . Accessing it from windows shows ACLs that look correct (The user may write) - but it does not work, I can only read files not write. The directory to be exported looks like this: root@lx:/etc/pam.d# ls -ld /mnt/ drwxr-xr-x 5 root root 4096 2010-11-28 01:29 /mnt/ root@lx:/etc/pam.d# ls -ld /mnt/sdc1/ drwxr-xr-x 4 froh froh 4096 2010-11-28 01:32 /mnt/sdc1/ root@lx:/etc/pam.d# ls -ld /mnt/sdc1/export/ drwxrwxrwx+ 5 administrator domÃ¤nen-admins 4096 2010-12-03 19:04 /mnt/sdc1/export/ root@lx:/etc/pam.d# getfacl /mnt/ getfacl: Entferne fÃ¼hrende '/' von absoluten Pfadnamen # file: mnt/ # owner: root # group: root user::rwx group::r-x other::r-x root@lx:/etc/pam.d# getfacl /mnt/sdc1/ getfacl: Entferne fÃ¼hrende '/' von absoluten Pfadnamen # file: mnt/sdc1/ # owner: froh # group: froh user::rwx group::r-x other::r-x root@lx:/etc/pam.d# getfacl /mnt/sdc1/export/ getfacl: Entferne fÃ¼hrende '/' von absoluten Pfadnamen # file: mnt/sdc1/export/ # owner: administrator # group: domÃ¤nen-admins user::rwx group::rwx group:domÃ¤nen-admins:rwx mask::rwx other::rwx default:user::rwx default:group::rwx default:group:domÃ¤nen-admins:rwx default:mask::rwx default:other::rwx My, oh my what am I overlooking? What am I to blind to see?

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amplified reflected attack on dns

- by Mike Janson

The term is new to me. So I have a few questions about it. I've heard it mostly happens with DNS servers? How do you protect against it? How do you know if your servers can be used as a victim? This is a configuration issue right? my named conf file include "/etc/rndc.key"; controls { inet 127.0.0.1 allow { localhost; } keys { "rndc-key"; }; }; options { /* make named use port 53 for the source of all queries, to allow * firewalls to block all ports except 53: */ // query-source port 53; /* We no longer enable this by default as the dns posion exploit has forced many providers to open up their firewalls a bit */ // Put files that named is allowed to write in the data/ directory: directory "/var/named"; // the default pid-file "/var/run/named/named.pid"; dump-file "data/cache_dump.db"; statistics-file "data/named_stats.txt"; /* memstatistics-file "data/named_mem_stats.txt"; */ allow-transfer {"none";}; }; logging { /* If you want to enable debugging, eg. using the 'rndc trace' command, * named will try to write the 'named.run' file in the $directory (/var/named"). * By default, SELinux policy does not allow named to modify the /var/named" directory, * so put the default debug log file in data/ : */ channel default_debug { file "data/named.run"; severity dynamic; }; }; view "localhost_resolver" { /* This view sets up named to be a localhost resolver ( caching only nameserver ). * If all you want is a caching-only nameserver, then you need only define this view: */ match-clients { 127.0.0.0/24; }; match-destinations { localhost; }; recursion yes; zone "." IN { type hint; file "/var/named/named.ca"; }; /* these are zones that contain definitions for all the localhost * names and addresses, as recommended in RFC1912 - these names should * ONLY be served to localhost clients: */ include "/var/named/named.rfc1912.zones"; }; view "internal" { /* This view will contain zones you want to serve only to "internal" clients that connect via your directly attached LAN interfaces - "localnets" . */ match-clients { localnets; }; match-destinations { localnets; }; recursion yes; zone "." IN { type hint; file "/var/named/named.ca"; }; // include "/var/named/named.rfc1912.zones"; // you should not serve your rfc1912 names to non-localhost clients. // These are your "authoritative" internal zones, and would probably // also be included in the "localhost_resolver" view above :

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volume group disappeared after xfs_check run

- by John P

EDIT** I have a volume group consisting of 5 RAID1 devices grouped together into a lvm and formatted with xfs. The 5th RAID device lost its RAID config (cat /proc/mdstat does not show anything). The two drives are still present (sdj and sdk), but they have no partitions. The LVM appeared to be happily using sdj up until recently. (doing a pvscan showed the first 4 RAID1 devices + /dev/sdj) I removed the LVM from the fstab, rebooted, then ran xfs_check on the LV. It ran for about half an hour, then stopped with an error. I tried rebooting again, and this time when it came up, the logical volume was no longer there. It is now looking for /dev/md5, which is gone (though it had been using /dev/sdj earlier). /dev/sdj was having read errors, but after replacing the SATA cable, those went away, so the drive appears to be fine for now. Can I modify the /etc/lvm/backup/dedvol, change the device to /dev/sdj and do a vgcfgrestore? I could try doing a pvcreate --uuid KZron2-pPTr-ZYeQ-PKXX-4Woq-6aNc-AG4rRJ /dev/sdj to make it recognize it, but I'm afraid that would erase the data on the drive UPDATE: just changing the pv to point to /dev/sdj did not work vgcfgrestore --file /etc/lvm/backup/dedvol dedvol Couldn't find device with uuid 'KZron2-pPTr-ZYeQ-PKXX-4Woq-6aNc-AG4rRJ'. Cannot restore Volume Group dedvol with 1 PVs marked as missing. Restore failed. pvscan /dev/sdj: read failed after 0 of 4096 at 0: Input/output error Couldn't find device with uuid 'KZron2-pPTr-ZYeQ-PKXX-4Woq-6aNc-AG4rRJ'. Couldn't find device with uuid 'KZron2-pPTr-ZYeQ-PKXX-4Woq-6aNc-AG4rRJ'. Couldn't find device with uuid 'KZron2-pPTr-ZYeQ-PKXX-4Woq-6aNc-AG4rRJ'. Couldn't find device with uuid 'KZron2-pPTr-ZYeQ-PKXX-4Woq-6aNc-AG4rRJ'. PV /dev/sdd2 VG VolGroup00 lvm2 [74.41 GB / 0 free] PV /dev/md2 VG dedvol lvm2 [931.51 GB / 0 free] PV /dev/md3 VG dedvol lvm2 [931.51 GB / 0 free] PV /dev/md0 VG dedvol lvm2 [931.51 GB / 0 free] PV /dev/md4 VG dedvol lvm2 [931.51 GB / 0 free] PV unknown device VG dedvol lvm2 [1.82 TB / 63.05 GB free] Total: 6 [5.53 TB] / in use: 6 [5.53 TB] / in no VG: 0 [0 ] vgscan Reading all physical volumes. This may take a while... /dev/sdj: read failed after 0 of 4096 at 0: Input/output error /dev/sdj: read failed after 0 of 4096 at 2000398843904: Input/output error Found volume group "VolGroup00" using metadata type lvm2 Found volume group "dedvol" using metadata type lvm2 vgdisplay dedvol --- Volume group --- VG Name dedvol System ID Format lvm2 Metadata Areas 5 Metadata Sequence No 10 VG Access read/write VG Status resizable MAX LV 0 Cur LV 1 Open LV 0 Max PV 0 Cur PV 5 Act PV 5 VG Size 5.46 TB PE Size 4.00 MB Total PE 1430796 Alloc PE / Size 1414656 / 5.40 TB Free PE / Size 16140 / 63.05 GB VG UUID o1U6Ll-5WH8-Pv7Z-Rtc4-1qYp-oiWA-cPD246 dedvol { id = "o1U6Ll-5WH8-Pv7Z-Rtc4-1qYp-oiWA-cPD246" seqno = 10 status = ["RESIZEABLE", "READ", "WRITE"] flags = [] extent_size = 8192 # 4 Megabytes max_lv = 0 max_pv = 0 physical_volumes { pv0 { id = "Msiee7-Zovu-VSJ3-Y2hR-uBVd-6PaT-Ho9v95" device = "/dev/md2" # Hint only status = ["ALLOCATABLE"] flags = [] dev_size = 1953519872 # 931.511 Gigabytes pe_start = 384 pe_count = 238466 # 931.508 Gigabytes } pv1 { id = "ZittCN-0x6L-cOsW-v1v4-atVN-fEWF-e3lqUe" device = "/dev/md3" # Hint only status = ["ALLOCATABLE"] flags = [] dev_size = 1953519872 # 931.511 Gigabytes pe_start = 384 pe_count = 238466 # 931.508 Gigabytes } pv2 { id = "NRNo0w-kgGr-dUxA-mWnl-bU5v-Wld0-XeKVLD" device = "/dev/md0" # Hint only status = ["ALLOCATABLE"] flags = [] dev_size = 1953519872 # 931.511 Gigabytes pe_start = 384 pe_count = 238466 # 931.508 Gigabytes } pv3 { id = "2EfLFr-JcRe-MusW-mfAs-WCct-u4iV-W0pmG3" device = "/dev/md4" # Hint only status = ["ALLOCATABLE"] flags = [] dev_size = 1953519872 # 931.511 Gigabytes pe_start = 384 pe_count = 238466 # 931.508 Gigabytes } pv4 { id = "KZron2-pPTr-ZYeQ-PKXX-4Woq-6aNc-AG4rRJ" device = "/dev/md5" # Hint only status = ["ALLOCATABLE"] flags = [] dev_size = 3907028992 # 1.81935 Terabytes pe_start = 384 pe_count = 476932 # 1.81935 Terabytes } }

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.NET WebRequest.PreAuthenticate not quite what it sounds like

- by Rick Strahl

I’ve run into the problem a few times now: How to pre-authenticate .NET WebRequest calls doing an HTTP call to the server – essentially send authentication credentials on the very first request instead of waiting for a server challenge first? At first glance this sound like it should be easy: The .NET WebRequest object has a PreAuthenticate property which sounds like it should force authentication credentials to be sent on the first request. Looking at the MSDN example certainly looks like it does: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.net.webrequest.preauthenticate.aspx Unfortunately the MSDN sample is wrong. As is the text of the Help topic which incorrectly leads you to believe that PreAuthenticate… wait for it - pre-authenticates. But it doesn’t allow you to set credentials that are sent on the first request. What this property actually does is quite different. It doesn’t send credentials on the first request but rather caches the credentials ONCE you have already authenticated once. Http Authentication is based on a challenge response mechanism typically where the client sends a request and the server responds with a 401 header requesting authentication. So the client sends a request like this: GET /wconnect/admin/wc.wc?_maintain~ShowStatus HTTP/1.1 Host: rasnote User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1.3) Gecko/20090824 Firefox/3.5.3 (.NET CLR 4.0.20506) Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8 Accept-Language: en,de;q=0.7,en-us;q=0.3 Accept-Encoding: gzip,deflate Accept-Charset: ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.7 Keep-Alive: 300 Connection: keep-alive and the server responds with: HTTP/1.1 401 Unauthorized Cache-Control: private Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8 Server: Microsoft-IIS/7.5 WWW-Authenticate: basic realm=rasnote" X-AspNet-Version: 2.0.50727 WWW-Authenticate: Negotiate WWW-Authenticate: NTLM WWW-Authenticate: Basic realm="rasnote" X-Powered-By: ASP.NET Date: Tue, 27 Oct 2009 00:58:20 GMT Content-Length: 5163 plus the actual error message body. The client then is responsible for re-sending the current request with the authentication token information provided (in this case Basic Auth): GET /wconnect/admin/wc.wc?_maintain~ShowStatus HTTP/1.1 Host: rasnote User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1.3) Gecko/20090824 Firefox/3.5.3 (.NET CLR 4.0.20506) Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8 Accept-Language: en,de;q=0.7,en-us;q=0.3 Accept-Encoding: gzip,deflate Accept-Charset: ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.7 Keep-Alive: 300 Connection: keep-alive Cookie: TimeTrakker=2HJ1998WH06696; WebLogCommentUser=Rick Strahl|http://www.west-wind.com/|[email protected]; WebStoreUser=b8bd0ed9 Authorization: Basic cgsf12aDpkc2ZhZG1zMA== Once the authorization info is sent the server responds with the actual page result. Now if you use WebRequest (or WebClient) the default behavior is to re-authenticate on every request that requires authorization. This means if you look in Fiddler or some other HTTP client Proxy that captures requests you’ll see that each request re-authenticates: Here are two requests fired back to back: and you can see the 401 challenge, the 200 response for both requests. If you watch this same conversation between a browser and a server you’ll notice that the first 401 is also there but the subsequent 401 requests are not present. WebRequest.PreAuthenticate And this is precisely what the WebRequest.PreAuthenticate property does: It’s a caching mechanism that caches the connection credentials for a given domain in the active process and resends it on subsequent requests. It does not send credentials on the first request but it will cache credentials on subsequent requests after authentication has succeeded: string url = "http://rasnote/wconnect/admin/wc.wc?_maintain~ShowStatus"; HttpWebRequest req = HttpWebRequest.Create(url) as HttpWebRequest; req.PreAuthenticate = true; req.Credentials = new NetworkCredential("rick", "secret", "rasnote"); req.AuthenticationLevel = System.Net.Security.AuthenticationLevel.MutualAuthRequested; req.UserAgent = ": Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1.3) Gecko/20090824 Firefox/3.5.3 (.NET CLR 4.0.20506)"; WebResponse resp = req.GetResponse(); resp.Close(); req = HttpWebRequest.Create(url) as HttpWebRequest; req.PreAuthenticate = true; req.Credentials = new NetworkCredential("rstrahl", "secret", "rasnote"); req.AuthenticationLevel = System.Net.Security.AuthenticationLevel.MutualAuthRequested; req.UserAgent = ": Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1.3) Gecko/20090824 Firefox/3.5.3 (.NET CLR 4.0.20506)"; resp = req.GetResponse(); which results in the desired sequence: where only the first request doesn’t send credentials. This is quite useful as it saves quite a few round trips to the server – bascially it saves one auth request request for every authenticated request you make. In most scenarios I think you’d want to send these credentials this way but one downside to this is that there’s no way to log out the client. Since the client always sends the credentials once authenticated only an explicit operation ON THE SERVER can undo the credentials by forcing another login explicitly (ie. re-challenging with a forced 401 request). Forcing Basic Authentication Credentials on the first Request On a few occasions I’ve needed to send credentials on a first request – mainly to some oddball third party Web Services (why you’d want to use Basic Auth on a Web Service is beyond me – don’t ask but it’s not uncommon in my experience). This is true of certain services that are using Basic Authentication (especially some Apache based Web Services) and REQUIRE that the authentication is sent right from the first request. No challenge first. Ugly but there it is. Now the following works only with Basic Authentication because it’s pretty straight forward to create the Basic Authorization ‘token’ in code since it’s just an unencrypted encoding of the user name and password into base64. As you might guess this is totally unsecure and should only be used when using HTTPS/SSL connections (i’m not in this example so I can capture the Fiddler trace and my local machine doesn’t have a cert installed, but for production apps ALWAYS use SSL with basic auth). The idea is that you simply add the required Authorization header to the request on your own along with the authorization string that encodes the username and password: string url = "http://rasnote/wconnect/admin/wc.wc?_maintain~ShowStatus"; HttpWebRequest req = HttpWebRequest.Create(url) as HttpWebRequest; string user = "rick"; string pwd = "secret"; string domain = "www.west-wind.com"; string auth = "Basic " + Convert.ToBase64String(System.Text.Encoding.Default.GetBytes(user + ":" + pwd)); req.PreAuthenticate = true; req.AuthenticationLevel = System.Net.Security.AuthenticationLevel.MutualAuthRequested;req.Headers.Add("Authorization", auth); req.UserAgent = ": Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1.3) Gecko/20090824 Firefox/3.5.3 (.NET CLR 4.0.20506)"; WebResponse resp = req.GetResponse(); resp.Close(); This works and causes the request to immediately send auth information to the server. However, this only works with Basic Auth because you can actually create the authentication credentials easily on the client because it’s essentially clear text. The same doesn’t work for Windows or Digest authentication since you can’t easily create the authentication token on the client and send it to the server. Another issue with this approach is that PreAuthenticate has no effect when you manually force the authentication. As far as Web Request is concerned it never sent the authentication information so it’s not actually caching the value any longer. If you run 3 requests in a row like this: string url = "http://rasnote/wconnect/admin/wc.wc?_maintain~ShowStatus"; HttpWebRequest req = HttpWebRequest.Create(url) as HttpWebRequest; string user = "ricks"; string pwd = "secret"; string domain = "www.west-wind.com"; string auth = "Basic " + Convert.ToBase64String(System.Text.Encoding.Default.GetBytes(user + ":" + pwd)); req.PreAuthenticate = true; req.Headers.Add("Authorization", auth); req.UserAgent = ": Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1.3) Gecko/20090824 Firefox/3.5.3 (.NET CLR 4.0.20506)"; WebResponse resp = req.GetResponse(); resp.Close(); req = HttpWebRequest.Create(url) as HttpWebRequest; req.PreAuthenticate = true; req.Credentials = new NetworkCredential(user, pwd, domain); req.UserAgent = ": Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1.3) Gecko/20090824 Firefox/3.5.3 (.NET CLR 4.0.20506)"; resp = req.GetResponse(); resp.Close(); req = HttpWebRequest.Create(url) as HttpWebRequest; req.PreAuthenticate = true; req.Credentials = new NetworkCredential(user, pwd, domain); req.UserAgent = ": Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1.3) Gecko/20090824 Firefox/3.5.3 (.NET CLR 4.0.20506)"; resp = req.GetResponse(); you’ll find the trace looking like this: where the first request (the one we explicitly add the header to) authenticates, the second challenges, and any subsequent ones then use the PreAuthenticate credential caching. In effect you’ll end up with one extra 401 request in this scenario, which is still better than 401 challenges on each request. Getting Access to WebRequest in Classic .NET Web Service Clients If you’re running a classic .NET Web Service client (non-WCF) one issue with the above is how do you get access to the WebRequest to actually add the custom headers to do the custom Authentication described above? One easy way is to implement a partial class that allows you add headers with something like this: public partial class TaxService { protected NameValueCollection Headers = new NameValueCollection(); public void AddHttpHeader(string key, string value) { this.Headers.Add(key,value); } public void ClearHttpHeaders() { this.Headers.Clear(); } protected override WebRequest GetWebRequest(Uri uri) { HttpWebRequest request = (HttpWebRequest) base.GetWebRequest(uri); request.Headers.Add(this.Headers); return request; } } where TaxService is the name of the .NET generated proxy class. In code you can then call AddHttpHeader() anywhere to add additional headers which are sent as part of the GetWebRequest override. Nice and simple once you know where to hook it. For WCF there’s a bit more work involved by creating a message extension as described here: http://weblogs.asp.net/avnerk/archive/2006/04/26/Adding-custom-headers-to-every-WCF-call-_2D00_-a-solution.aspx. FWIW, I think that HTTP header manipulation should be readily available on any HTTP based Web Service client DIRECTLY without having to subclass or implement a special interface hook. But alas a little extra work is required in .NET to make this happen Not a Common Problem, but when it happens… This has been one of those issues that is really rare, but it’s bitten me on several occasions when dealing with oddball Web services – a couple of times in my own work interacting with various Web Services and a few times on customer projects that required interaction with credentials-first services. Since the servers determine the protocol, we don’t have a choice but to follow the protocol. Lovely following standards that implementers decide to ignore, isn’t it? :-}© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2010Posted in .NET CSharp Web Services

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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!) 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The dynamic Type in C# Simplifies COM Member Access from Visual FoxPro

- by Rick Strahl

I’ve written quite a bit about Visual FoxPro interoperating with .NET in the past both for ASP.NET interacting with Visual FoxPro COM objects as well as Visual FoxPro calling into .NET code via COM Interop. COM Interop with Visual FoxPro has a number of problems but one of them at least got a lot easier with the introduction of dynamic type support in .NET. One of the biggest problems with COM interop has been that it’s been really difficult to pass dynamic objects from FoxPro to .NET and get them properly typed. The only way that any strong typing can occur in .NET for FoxPro components is via COM type library exports of Visual FoxPro components. Due to limitations in Visual FoxPro’s type library support as well as the dynamic nature of the Visual FoxPro language where few things are or can be described in the form of a COM type library, a lot of useful interaction between FoxPro and .NET required the use of messy Reflection code in .NET. Reflection is .NET’s base interface to runtime type discovery and dynamic execution of code without requiring strong typing. In FoxPro terms it’s similar to EVALUATE() functionality albeit with a much more complex API and corresponiding syntax. The Reflection APIs are fairly powerful, but they are rather awkward to use and require a lot of code. Even with the creation of wrapper utility classes for common EVAL() style Reflection functionality dynamically access COM objects passed to .NET often is pretty tedious and ugly. Let’s look at a simple example. In the following code I use some FoxPro code to dynamically create an object in code and then pass this object to .NET. An alternative to this might also be to create a new object on the fly by using SCATTER NAME on a database record. How the object is created is inconsequential, other than the fact that it’s not defined as a COM object – it’s a pure FoxPro object that is passed to .NET. Here’s the code: *** Create .NET COM InstanceloNet = CREATEOBJECT('DotNetCom.DotNetComPublisher') *** Create a Customer Object Instance (factory method) loCustomer = GetCustomer() loCustomer.Name = "Rick Strahl" loCustomer.Company = "West Wind Technologies" loCustomer.creditLimit = 9999999999.99 loCustomer.Address.StreetAddress = "32 Kaiea Place" loCustomer.Address.Phone = "808 579-8342" loCustomer.Address.Email = "[email protected]" *** Pass Fox Object and echo back values ? loNet.PassRecordObject(loObject) RETURN FUNCTION GetCustomer LOCAL loCustomer, loAddress loCustomer = CREATEOBJECT("EMPTY") ADDPROPERTY(loCustomer,"Name","") ADDPROPERTY(loCustomer,"Company","") ADDPROPERTY(loCUstomer,"CreditLimit",0.00) ADDPROPERTY(loCustomer,"Entered",DATETIME()) loAddress = CREATEOBJECT("Empty") ADDPROPERTY(loAddress,"StreetAddress","") ADDPROPERTY(loAddress,"Phone","") ADDPROPERTY(loAddress,"Email","") ADDPROPERTY(loCustomer,"Address",loAddress) RETURN loCustomer ENDFUNC Now prior to .NET 4.0 you’d have to access this object passed to .NET via Reflection and the method code to do this would looks something like this in the .NET component: public string PassRecordObject(object FoxObject) { // *** using raw Reflection string Company = (string) FoxObject.GetType().InvokeMember( "Company", BindingFlags.GetProperty,null, FoxObject,null); // using the easier ComUtils wrappers string Name = (string) ComUtils.GetProperty(FoxObject,"Name"); // Getting Address object – then getting child properties object Address = ComUtils.GetProperty(FoxObject,"Address"); string Street = (string) ComUtils.GetProperty(FoxObject,"StreetAddress"); // using ComUtils 'Ex' functions you can use . Syntax string StreetAddress = (string) ComUtils.GetPropertyEx(FoxObject,"AddressStreetAddress"); return Name + Environment.NewLine + Company + Environment.NewLine + StreetAddress + Environment.NewLine + " FOX"; } Note that the FoxObject is passed in as type object which has no specific type. Since the object doesn’t exist in .NET as a type signature the object is passed without any specific type information as plain non-descript object. To retrieve a property the Reflection APIs like Type.InvokeMember or Type.GetProperty().GetValue() etc. need to be used. I made this code a little simpler by using the Reflection Wrappers I mentioned earlier but even with those ComUtils calls the code is pretty ugly requiring passing the objects for each call and casting each element. Using .NET 4.0 Dynamic Typing makes this Code a lot cleaner Enter .NET 4.0 and the dynamic type. Replacing the input parameter to the .NET method from type object to dynamic makes the code to access the FoxPro component inside of .NET much more natural: public string PassRecordObjectDynamic(dynamic FoxObject) { // *** using raw Reflection string Company = FoxObject.Company; // *** using the easier ComUtils class string Name = FoxObject.Name; // *** using ComUtils 'ex' functions to use . Syntax string Address = FoxObject.Address.StreetAddress; return Name + Environment.NewLine + Company + Environment.NewLine + Address + Environment.NewLine + " FOX"; } As you can see the parameter is of type dynamic which as the name implies performs Reflection lookups and evaluation on the fly so all the Reflection code in the last example goes away. The code can use regular object ‘.’ syntax to reference each of the members of the object. You can access properties and call methods this way using natural object language. Also note that all the type casts that were required in the Reflection code go away – dynamic types like var can infer the type to cast to based on the target assignment. As long as the type can be inferred by the compiler at compile time (ie. the left side of the expression is strongly typed) no explicit casts are required. Note that although you get to use plain object syntax in the code above you don’t get Intellisense in Visual Studio because the type is dynamic and thus has no hard type definition in .NET . The above example calls a .NET Component from VFP, but it also works the other way around. Another frequent scenario is an .NET code calling into a FoxPro COM object that returns a dynamic result. Assume you have a FoxPro COM object returns a FoxPro Cursor Record as an object: DEFINE CLASS FoxData AS SESSION OlePublic cAppStartPath = "" FUNCTION INIT THIS.cAppStartPath = ADDBS( JustPath(Application.ServerName) ) SET PATH TO ( THIS.cAppStartpath ) ENDFUNC FUNCTION GetRecord(lnPk) LOCAL loCustomer SELECT * FROM tt_Cust WHERE pk = lnPk ; INTO CURSOR TCustomer IF _TALLY < 1 RETURN NULL ENDIF SCATTER NAME loCustomer MEMO RETURN loCustomer ENDFUNC ENDDEFINE If you call this from a .NET application you can now retrieve this data via COM Interop and cast the result as dynamic to simplify the data access of the dynamic FoxPro type that was created on the fly: int pk = 0; int.TryParse(Request.QueryString["id"],out pk); // Create Fox COM Object with Com Callable Wrapper FoxData foxData = new FoxData(); dynamic foxRecord = foxData.GetRecord(pk); string company = foxRecord.Company; DateTime entered = foxRecord.Entered; This code looks simple and natural as it should be – heck you could write code like this in days long gone by in scripting languages like ASP classic for example. Compared to the Reflection code that previously was necessary to run similar code this is much easier to write, understand and maintain. For COM interop and Visual FoxPro operation dynamic type support in .NET 4.0 is a huge improvement and certainly makes it much easier to deal with FoxPro code that calls into .NET. Regardless of whether you’re using COM for calling Visual FoxPro objects from .NET (ASP.NET calling a COM component and getting a dynamic result returned) or whether FoxPro code is calling into a .NET COM component from a FoxPro desktop application. At one point or another FoxPro likely ends up passing complex dynamic data to .NET and for this the dynamic typing makes coding much cleaner and more readable without having to create custom Reflection wrappers. As a bonus the dynamic runtime that underlies the dynamic type is fairly efficient in terms of making Reflection calls especially if members are repeatedly accessed. © Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2010Posted in COM FoxPro .NET CSharp

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ASP.Net MVC 2 Auto Complete Textbox With Custom View Model Attribute & EditorTemplate

- by SeanMcAlinden

In this post I’m going to show how to create a generic, ajax driven Auto Complete text box using the new MVC 2 Templates and the jQuery UI library. The template will be automatically displayed when a property is decorated with a custom attribute within the view model. The AutoComplete text box in action will look like the following: The first thing to do is to do is visit my previous blog post to put the custom model metadata provider in place, this is necessary when using custom attributes on the view model. http://weblogs.asp.net/seanmcalinden/archive/2010/06/11/custom-asp-net-mvc-2-modelmetadataprovider-for-using-custom-view-model-attributes.aspx Once this is in place, make sure you visit the jQuery UI and download the latest stable release – in this example I’m using version 1.8.2. You can download it here. Add the jQuery scripts and css theme to your project and add references to them in your master page. Should look something like the following: Site.Master <head runat="server"> <title><asp:ContentPlaceHolder ID="TitleContent" runat="server" /></title> <link href="../../Content/Site.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" /> <link href="../../css/ui-lightness/jquery-ui-1.8.2.custom.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" /> <script src="../../Scripts/jquery-1.4.2.min.js" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="../../Scripts/jquery-ui-1.8.2.custom.min.js" type="text/javascript"></script> </head> Once this is place we can get started. Creating the AutoComplete Custom Attribute The auto complete attribute will derive from the abstract MetadataAttribute created in my previous post. It will look like the following: AutoCompleteAttribute using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Web.Mvc; using System.Web.Routing; namespace Mvc2Templates.Attributes { public class AutoCompleteAttribute : MetadataAttribute { public RouteValueDictionary RouteValueDictionary; public AutoCompleteAttribute(string controller, string action, string parameterName) { this.RouteValueDictionary = new RouteValueDictionary(); this.RouteValueDictionary.Add("Controller", controller); this.RouteValueDictionary.Add("Action", action); this.RouteValueDictionary.Add(parameterName, string.Empty); } public override void Process(ModelMetadata modelMetaData) { modelMetaData.AdditionalValues.Add("AutoCompleteUrlData", this.RouteValueDictionary); modelMetaData.TemplateHint = "AutoComplete"; } } } As you can see, the constructor takes in strings for the controller, action and parameter name. The parameter name will be used for passing the search text within the auto complete text box. The constructor then creates a new RouteValueDictionary which we will use later to construct the url for getting the auto complete results via ajax. The main interesting method is the method override called Process. With the process method, the route value dictionary is added to the modelMetaData AdditionalValues collection. The TemplateHint is also set to AutoComplete, this means that when the view model is parsed for display, the MVC 2 framework will look for a view user control template called AutoComplete, if it finds one, it uses that template to display the property. The View Model To show you how the attribute will look, this is the view model I have used in my example which can be downloaded at the end of this post. View Model using System.ComponentModel; using Mvc2Templates.Attributes; namespace Mvc2Templates.Models { public class TemplateDemoViewModel { [AutoComplete("Home", "AutoCompleteResult", "searchText")] [DisplayName("European Country Search")] public string SearchText { get; set; } } } As you can see, the auto complete attribute is called with the controller name, action name and the name of the action parameter that the search text will be passed into. The AutoComplete Template Now all of this is in place, it’s time to create the AutoComplete template. Create a ViewUserControl called AutoComplete.ascx at the following location within your application – Views/Shared/EditorTemplates/AutoComplete.ascx Add the following code: AutoComplete.ascx <%@ Control Language="C#" Inherits="System.Web.Mvc.ViewUserControl" %> <% var propertyName = ViewData.ModelMetadata.PropertyName; var propertyValue = ViewData.ModelMetadata.Model; var id = Guid.NewGuid().ToString(); RouteValueDictionary urlData = (RouteValueDictionary)ViewData.ModelMetadata.AdditionalValues.Where(x => x.Key == "AutoCompleteUrlData").Single().Value; var url = Mvc2Templates.Views.Shared.Helpers.RouteHelper.GetUrl(this.ViewContext.RequestContext, urlData); %> <input type="text" name="<%= propertyName %>" value="<%= propertyValue %>" id="<%= id %>" class="autoComplete" /> <script type="text/javascript"> $(function () { $("#<%= id %>").autocomplete({ source: function (request, response) { $.ajax({ url: "<%= url %>" + request.term, dataType: "json", success: function (data) { response(data); } }); }, minLength: 2 }); }); </script> There is a lot going on in here but when you break it down it’s quite simple. Firstly, the property name and property value are retrieved through the model meta data. These are required to ensure that the text box input has the correct name and data to allow for model binding. If you look at line 14 you can see them being used in the text box input creation. The interesting bit is on line 8 and 9, this is the code to retrieve the route value dictionary we added into the model metada via the custom attribute. Line 11 is used to create the url, in order to do this I created a quick helper class which looks like the code below titled RouteHelper. The last bit of script is the code to initialise the jQuery UI AutoComplete control with the correct url for calling back to our controller action. RouteHelper using System.Web.Mvc; using System.Web.Routing; namespace Mvc2Templates.Views.Shared.Helpers { public static class RouteHelper { const string Controller = "Controller"; const string Action = "Action"; const string ReplaceFormatString = "REPLACE{0}"; public static string GetUrl(RequestContext requestContext, RouteValueDictionary routeValueDictionary) { RouteValueDictionary urlData = new RouteValueDictionary(); UrlHelper urlHelper = new UrlHelper(requestContext); int i = 0; foreach(var item in routeValueDictionary) { if (item.Value == string.Empty) { i++; urlData.Add(item.Key, string.Format(ReplaceFormatString, i.ToString())); } else { urlData.Add(item.Key, item.Value); } } var url = urlHelper.RouteUrl(urlData); for (int index = 1; index <= i; index++) { url = url.Replace(string.Format(ReplaceFormatString, index.ToString()), string.Empty); } return url; } } } See it in action All you need to do to see it in action is pass a view model from your controller with the new AutoComplete attribute attached and call the following within your view: <%= this.Html.EditorForModel() %> NOTE: The jQuery UI auto complete control expects a JSON string returned from your controller action method… as you can’t use the JsonResult to perform GET requests, use a normal action result, convert your data into json and return it as a string via a ContentResult. If you download the solution it will be very clear how to handle the controller and action for this demo. The full source code for this post can be downloaded here. It has been developed using MVC 2 and Visual Studio 2010. As always, I hope this has been interesting/useful. Kind Regards, Sean McAlinden.

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Where does ASP.NET Web API Fit?

- by Rick Strahl

With the pending release of ASP.NET MVC 4 and the new ASP.NET Web API, there has been a lot of discussion of where the new Web API technology fits in the ASP.NET Web stack. There are a lot of choices to build HTTP based applications available now on the stack - we've come a long way from when WebForms and Http Handlers/Modules where the only real options. Today we have WebForms, MVC, ASP.NET Web Pages, ASP.NET AJAX, WCF REST and now Web API as well as the core ASP.NET runtime to choose to build HTTP content with. Web API definitely squarely addresses the 'API' aspect - building consumable services - rather than HTML content, but even to that end there are a lot of choices you have today. So where does Web API fit, and when doesn't it? But before we get into that discussion, let's talk about what a Web API is and why we should care. What's a Web API? HTTP 'APIs' (Microsoft's new terminology for a service I guess) are becoming increasingly more important with the rise of the many devices in use today. Most mobile devices like phones and tablets run Apps that are using data retrieved from the Web over HTTP. Desktop applications are also moving in this direction with more and more online content and synching moving into even traditional desktop applications. The pending Windows 8 release promises an app like platform for both the desktop and other devices, that also emphasizes consuming data from the Cloud. Likewise many Web browser hosted applications these days are relying on rich client functionality to create and manipulate the browser user interface, using AJAX rather than server generated HTML data to load up the user interface with data. These mobile or rich Web applications use their HTTP connection to return data rather than HTML markup in the form of JSON or XML typically. But an API can also serve other kinds of data, like images or other binary files, or even text data and HTML (although that's less common). A Web API is what feeds rich applications with data. ASP.NET Web API aims to service this particular segment of Web development by providing easy semantics to route and handle incoming requests and an easy to use platform to serve HTTP data in just about any content format you choose to create and serve from the server. But .NET already has various HTTP Platforms The .NET stack already includes a number of technologies that provide the ability to create HTTP service back ends, and it has done so since the very beginnings of the .NET platform. From raw HTTP Handlers and Modules in the core ASP.NET runtime, to high level platforms like ASP.NET MVC, Web Forms, ASP.NET AJAX and the WCF REST engine (which technically is not ASP.NET, but can integrate with it), you've always been able to handle just about any kind of HTTP request and response with ASP.NET. The beauty of the raw ASP.NET platform is that it provides you everything you need to build just about any type of HTTP application you can dream up from low level APIs/custom engines to high level HTML generation engine. ASP.NET as a core platform clearly has stood the test of time 10+ years later and all other frameworks like Web API are built on top of this ASP.NET core. However, although it's possible to create Web APIs / Services using any of the existing out of box .NET technologies, none of them have been a really nice fit for building arbitrary HTTP based APIs. Sure, you can use an HttpHandler to create just about anything, but you have to build a lot of plumbing to build something more complex like a comprehensive API that serves a variety of requests, handles multiple output formats and can easily pass data up to the server in a variety of ways. Likewise you can use ASP.NET MVC to handle routing and creating content in various formats fairly easily, but it doesn't provide a great way to automatically negotiate content types and serve various content formats directly (it's possible to do with some plumbing code of your own but not built in). Prior to Web API, Microsoft's main push for HTTP services has been WCF REST, which was always an awkward technology that had a severe personality conflict, not being clear on whether it wanted to be part of WCF or purely a separate technology. In the end it didn't do either WCF compatibility or WCF agnostic pure HTTP operation very well, which made for a very developer-unfriendly environment. Personally I didn't like any of the implementations at the time, so much so that I ended up building my own HTTP service engine (as part of the West Wind Web Toolkit), as have a few other third party tools that provided much better integration and ease of use. With the release of Web API for the first time I feel that I can finally use the tools in the box and not have to worry about creating and maintaining my own toolkit as Web API addresses just about all the features I implemented on my own and much more. ASP.NET Web API provides a better HTTP Experience ASP.NET Web API differentiates itself from the previous Microsoft in-box HTTP service solutions in that it was built from the ground up around the HTTP protocol and its messaging semantics. Unlike WCF REST or ASP.NET AJAX with ASMX, it’s a brand new platform rather than bolted on technology that is supposed to work in the context of an existing framework. The strength of the new ASP.NET Web API is that it combines the best features of the platforms that came before it, to provide a comprehensive and very usable HTTP platform. Because it's based on ASP.NET and borrows a lot of concepts from ASP.NET MVC, Web API should be immediately familiar and comfortable to most ASP.NET developers. Here are some of the features that Web API provides that I like: Strong Support for URL Routing to produce clean URLs using familiar MVC style routing semantics Content Negotiation based on Accept headers for request and response serialization Support for a host of supported output formats including JSON, XML, ATOM Strong default support for REST semantics but they are optional Easily extensible Formatter support to add new input/output types Deep support for more advanced HTTP features via HttpResponseMessage and HttpRequestMessage classes and strongly typed Enums to describe many HTTP operations Convention based design that drives you into doing the right thing for HTTP Services Very extensible, based on MVC like extensibility model of Formatters and Filters Self-hostable in non-Web applications Testable using testing concepts similar to MVC Web API is meant to handle any kind of HTTP input and produce output and status codes using the full spectrum of HTTP functionality available in a straight forward and flexible manner. Looking at the list above you can see that a lot of functionality is very similar to ASP.NET MVC, so many ASP.NET developers should feel quite comfortable with the concepts of Web API. The Routing and core infrastructure of Web API are very similar to how MVC works providing many of the benefits of MVC, but with focus on HTTP access and manipulation in Controller methods rather than HTML generation in MVC. There’s much improved support for content negotiation based on HTTP Accept headers with the framework capable of detecting automatically what content the client is sending and requesting and serving the appropriate data format in return. This seems like such a little and obvious thing, but it's really important. Today's service backends often are used by multiple clients/applications and being able to choose the right data format for what fits best for the client is very important. While previous solutions were able to accomplish this using a variety of mixed features of WCF and ASP.NET, Web API combines all this functionality into a single robust server side HTTP framework that intrinsically understands the HTTP semantics and subtly drives you in the right direction for most operations. And when you need to customize or do something that is not built in, there are lots of hooks and overrides for most behaviors, and even many low level hook points that allow you to plug in custom functionality with relatively little effort. No Brainers for Web API There are a few scenarios that are a slam dunk for Web API. If your primary focus of an application or even a part of an application is some sort of API then Web API makes great sense. HTTP ServicesIf you're building a comprehensive HTTP API that is to be consumed over the Web, Web API is a perfect fit. You can isolate the logic in Web API and build your application as a service breaking out the logic into controllers as needed. Because the primary interface is the service there's no confusion of what should go where (MVC or API). Perfect fit. Primary AJAX BackendsIf you're building rich client Web applications that are relying heavily on AJAX callbacks to serve its data, Web API is also a slam dunk. Again because much if not most of the business logic will probably end up in your Web API service logic, there's no confusion over where logic should go and there's no duplication. In Single Page Applications (SPA), typically there's very little HTML based logic served other than bringing up a shell UI and then filling the data from the server with AJAX which means the business logic required for data retrieval and data acceptance and validation too lives in the Web API. Perfect fit. Generic HTTP EndpointsAnother good fit are generic HTTP endpoints that to serve data or handle 'utility' type functionality in typical Web applications. If you need to implement an image server, or an upload handler in the past I'd implement that as an HTTP handler. With Web API you now have a well defined place where you can implement these types of generic 'services' in a location that can easily add endpoints (via Controller methods) or separated out as more full featured APIs. Granted this could be done with MVC as well, but Web API seems a clearer and more well defined place to store generic application services. This is one thing I used to do a lot of in my own libraries and Web API addresses this nicely. Great fit. Mixed HTML and AJAX Applications: Not a clear Choice For all the commonality that Web API and MVC share they are fundamentally different platforms that are independent of each other. A lot of people have asked when does it make sense to use MVC vs. Web API when you're dealing with typical Web application that creates HTML and also uses AJAX functionality for rich functionality. While it's easy to say that all 'service'/AJAX logic should go into a Web API and all HTML related generation into MVC, that can often result in a lot of code duplication. Also MVC supports JSON and XML result data fairly easily as well so there's some confusion where that 'trigger point' is of when you should switch to Web API vs. just implementing functionality as part of MVC controllers. Ultimately there's a tradeoff between isolation of functionality and duplication. A good rule of thumb I think works is that if a large chunk of the application's functionality serves data Web API is a good choice, but if you have a couple of small AJAX requests to serve data to a grid or autocomplete box it'd be overkill to separate out that logic into a separate Web API controller. Web API does add overhead to your application (it's yet another framework that sits on top of core ASP.NET) so it should be worth it .Keep in mind that MVC can generate HTML and JSON/XML and just about any other content easily and that functionality is not going away, so just because you Web API is there it doesn't mean you have to use it. Web API is not a full replacement for MVC obviously either since there's not the same level of support to feed HTML from Web API controllers (although you can host a RazorEngine easily enough if you really want to go that route) so if you're HTML is part of your API or application in general MVC is still a better choice either alone or in combination with Web API. I suspect (and hope) that in the future Web API's functionality will merge even closer with MVC so that you might even be able to mix functionality of both into single Controllers so that you don't have to make any trade offs, but at the moment that's not the case. Some Issues To think about Web API is similar to MVC but not the Same Although Web API looks a lot like MVC it's not the same and some common functionality of MVC behaves differently in Web API. For example, the way single POST variables are handled is different than MVC and doesn't lend itself particularly well to some AJAX scenarios with POST data. Code Duplication I already touched on this in the Mixed HTML and Web API section, but if you build an MVC application that also exposes a Web API it's quite likely that you end up duplicating a bunch of code and - potentially - infrastructure. You may have to create authentication logic both for an HTML application and for the Web API which might need something different altogether. More often than not though the same logic is used, and there's no easy way to share. If you implement an MVC ActionFilter and you want that same functionality in your Web API you'll end up creating the filter twice. AJAX Data or AJAX HTML On a recent post's comments, David made some really good points regarding the commonality of MVC and Web API's and its place. One comment that caught my eye was a little more generic, regarding data services vs. HTML services. David says: I see a lot of merit in the combination of Knockout.js, client side templates and view models, calling Web API for a responsive UI, but sometimes late at night that still leaves me wondering why I would no longer be using some of the nice tooling and features that have evolved in MVC ;-) You know what - I can totally relate to that. On the last Web based mobile app I worked on, we decided to serve HTML partials to the client via AJAX for many (but not all!) things, rather than sending down raw data to inject into the DOM on the client via templating or direct manipulation. While there are definitely more bytes on the wire, with this, the overhead ended up being actually fairly small if you keep the 'data' requests small and atomic. Performance was often made up by the lack of client side rendering of HTML. Server rendered HTML for AJAX templating gives so much better infrastructure support without having to screw around with 20 mismatched client libraries. Especially with MVC and partials it's pretty easy to break out your HTML logic into very small, atomic chunks, so it's actually easy to create small rendering islands that can be used via composition on the server, or via AJAX calls to small, tight partials that return HTML to the client. Although this is often frowned upon as to 'heavy', it worked really well in terms of developer effort as well as providing surprisingly good performance on devices. There's still plenty of jQuery and AJAX logic happening on the client but it's more manageable in small doses rather than trying to do the entire UI composition with JavaScript and/or 'not-quite-there-yet' template engines that are very difficult to debug. This is not an issue directly related to Web API of course, but something to think about especially for AJAX or SPA style applications. Summary Web API is a great new addition to the ASP.NET platform and it addresses a serious need for consolidation of a lot of half-baked HTTP service API technologies that came before it. Web API feels 'right', and hits the right combination of usability and flexibility at least for me and it's a good fit for true API scenarios. However, just because a new platform is available it doesn't meant that other tools or tech that came before it should be discarded or even upgraded to the new platform. There's nothing wrong with continuing to use MVC controller methods to handle API tasks if that's what your app is running now - there's very little to be gained by upgrading to Web API just because. But going forward Web API clearly is the way to go, when building HTTP data interfaces and it's good to see that Microsoft got this one right - it was sorely needed! Resources ASP.NET Web API AspConf Ask the Experts Session (first 5 minutes) © Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2012Posted in Web Api Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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Android - creating a custom preferences activity screen

- by Bill Osuch

Android applications can maintain their own internal preferences (and allow them to be modified by users) with very little coding. In fact, you don't even need to write an code to explicitly save these preferences, it's all handled automatically! Create a new Android project, with an intial activity title Main. Create two more activities: ShowPrefs, which extends Activity Set Prefs, which extends PreferenceActivity Add these two to your AndroidManifest.xml file: <activity android:name=".SetPrefs"></activity> <activity android:name=".ShowPrefs"></activity> Now we'll work on fleshing out each activity. First, open up the main.xml layout file and add a couple of buttons to it: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <LinearLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android" android:orientation="vertical" android:layout_width="fill_parent" android:layout_height="fill_parent"> <Button android:text="Edit Preferences" android:id="@+id/prefButton" android:layout_width="wrap_content" android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:layout_gravity="center_horizontal"/> <Button android:text="Show Preferences" android:id="@+id/showButton" android:layout_width="wrap_content" android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:layout_gravity="center_horizontal"/> </LinearLayout> Next, create a couple button listeners in Main.java to handle the clicks and start the other activities: Button editPrefs = (Button) findViewById(R.id.prefButton); editPrefs.setOnClickListener(new View.OnClickListener() { public void onClick(View view) { Intent myIntent = new Intent(view.getContext(), SetPrefs.class); startActivityForResult(myIntent, 0); } }); Button showPrefs = (Button) findViewById(R.id.showButton); showPrefs.setOnClickListener(new View.OnClickListener() { public void onClick(View view) { Intent myIntent = new Intent(view.getContext(), ShowPrefs.class); startActivityForResult(myIntent, 0); } }); Now, we'll create the actual preferences layout. You'll need to create a file called preferences.xml inside res/xml, and you'll likely have to create the xml directory as well. Add the following xml: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <PreferenceScreen xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"> </PreferenceScreen> First we'll add a category, which is just a way to group similar preferences... sort of a horizontal bar. Add this inside the PreferenceScreen tags: <PreferenceCategory android:title="First Category"> </PreferenceCategory> Now add a Checkbox and an Edittext box (inside the PreferenceCategory tags): <CheckBoxPreference android:key="checkboxPref" android:title="Checkbox Preference" android:summary="This preference can be true or false" android:defaultValue="false"/> <EditTextPreference android:key="editTextPref" android:title="EditText Preference" android:summary="This allows you to enter a string" android:defaultValue="Nothing"/> The key is how you will refer to the preference in code, the title is the large text that will be displayed, and the summary is the smaller text (this will make sense when you see it). Let's say we've got a second group of preferences that apply to a different part of the app. Add a new category just below the first one: <PreferenceCategory android:title="Second Category"> </PreferenceCategory> In there we'll a list with radio buttons, so add: <ListPreference android:key="listPref" android:title="List Preference" android:summary="This preference lets you select an item in a array" android:entries="@array/listArray" android:entryValues="@array/listValues" /> When complete, your full xml file should look like this: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <PreferenceScreen xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"> <PreferenceCategory android:title="First Category"> <CheckBoxPreference android:key="checkboxPref" android:title="Checkbox Preference" android:summary="This preference can be true or false" android:defaultValue="false"/> <EditTextPreference android:key="editTextPref" android:title="EditText Preference" android:summary="This allows you to enter a string" android:defaultValue="Nothing"/> </PreferenceCategory> <PreferenceCategory android:title="Second Category"> <ListPreference android:key="listPref" android:title="List Preference" android:summary="This preference lets you select an item in a array" android:entries="@array/listArray" android:entryValues="@array/listValues" /> </PreferenceCategory> </PreferenceScreen> However, when you try to save it, you'll get an error because you're missing your array definition. To fix this, add a file called arrays.xml in res/values, and paste in the following: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <resources> <string-array name="listArray"> <item>Value 1</item> <item>Value 2</item> <item>Value 3</item> </string-array> <string-array name="listValues"> <item>1</item> <item>2</item> <item>3</item> </string-array> </resources> Finally (for the preferences screen at least...) add the code that will display the preferences layout to the SetPrefs.java file: @Override public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) { super.onCreate(savedInstanceState); addPreferencesFromResource(R.xml.preferences); } OK, so now we've got an activity that will set preferences, and save them without the need to write custom save code. Let's throw together an activity to work with the saved preferences. Create a new layout called showpreferences.xml and give it three Textviews: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <LinearLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android" android:orientation="vertical" android:layout_width="fill_parent" android:layout_height="fill_parent"> <TextView android:id="@+id/textview1" android:layout_width="fill_parent" android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:text="textview1"/> <TextView android:id="@+id/textview2" android:layout_width="fill_parent" android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:text="textview2"/> <TextView android:id="@+id/textview3" android:layout_width="fill_parent" android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:text="textview3"/> </LinearLayout> Open up the ShowPrefs.java file and have it use that layout: setContentView(R.layout.showpreferences); Then add the following code to load the DefaultSharedPreferences and display them: SharedPreferences prefs = PreferenceManager.getDefaultSharedPreferences(this); TextView text1 = (TextView)findViewById(R.id.textview1); TextView text2 = (TextView)findViewById(R.id.textview2); TextView text3 = (TextView)findViewById(R.id.textview3); text1.setText(new Boolean(prefs.getBoolean("checkboxPref", false)).toString()); text2.setText(prefs.getString("editTextPref", "<unset>"));; text3.setText(prefs.getString("listPref", "<unset>")); Fire up the application in the emulator and click the Edit Preferences button. Set various things, click the back button, then the Edit Preferences button again. Notice that your choices have been saved. Now click the Show Preferences button, and you should see the results of what you set: There are two more preference types that I did not include here: RingtonePreference - shows a radioGroup that lists your ringtones PreferenceScreen - allows you to embed a second preference screen inside the first - it opens up a new set of preferences when clicked

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Ajax Control Toolkit and Superexpert

- by Stephen Walther

Microsoft has asked my company, Superexpert Consulting, to take ownership of the development and maintenance of the Ajax Control Toolkit moving forward. In this blog entry, I discuss our strategy for improving the Ajax Control Toolkit. Why the Ajax Control Toolkit? The Ajax Control Toolkit is one of the most popular projects on CodePlex. In fact, some have argued that it is among the most successful open-source projects of all time. It consistently receives over 3,500 downloads a day (not weekends -- workdays). A mind-boggling number of developers use the Ajax Control Toolkit in their ASP.NET Web Forms applications. Why does the Ajax Control Toolkit continue to be such a popular project? The Ajax Control Toolkit fills a strong need in the ASP.NET Web Forms world. The Toolkit enables Web Forms developers to build richly interactive JavaScript applications without writing any JavaScript. For example, by taking advantage of the Ajax Control Toolkit, a Web Forms developer can add modal dialogs, popup calendars, and client tabs to a web application simply by dragging web controls onto a page. The Ajax Control Toolkit is not for everyone. If you are comfortable writing JavaScript then I recommend that you investigate using jQuery plugins instead of the Ajax Control Toolkit. However, if you are a Web Forms developer and you don’t want to get your hands dirty writing JavaScript, then the Ajax Control Toolkit is a great solution. The Ajax Control Toolkit is Vast The Ajax Control Toolkit consists of 40 controls. That’s a lot of controls (For the sake of comparison, jQuery UI consists of only 8 controls – those slackers J). Furthermore, developers expect the Ajax Control Toolkit to work on browsers both old and new. For example, people expect the Ajax Control Toolkit to work with Internet Explorer 6 and Internet Explorer 9 and every version of Internet Explorer in between. People also expect the Ajax Control Toolkit to work on the latest versions of Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, and Google Chrome. And, people expect the Ajax Control Toolkit to work with different operating systems. Yikes, that is a lot of combinations. The biggest challenge which my company faces in supporting the Ajax Control Toolkit is ensuring that the Ajax Control Toolkit works across all of these different browsers and operating systems. Testing, Testing, Testing Because we wanted to ensure that we could easily test the Ajax Control Toolkit with different browsers, the very first thing that we did was to set up a dedicated testing server. The dedicated server -- named Schizo -- hosts 4 virtual machines so that we can run Internet Explorer 6, Internet Explorer 7, Internet Explorer 8, and Internet Explorer 9 at the same time (We also use the virtual machines to host the latest versions of Firefox, Chrome, Opera, and Safari). The five developers on our team (plus me) can each publish to a separate FTP website on the testing server. That way, we can quickly test how changes to the Ajax Control Toolkit affect different browsers. QUnit Tests for the Ajax Control Toolkit Introducing regressions – introducing new bugs when trying to fix existing bugs – is the concern which prevents me from sleeping well at night. There are so many people using the Ajax Control Toolkit in so many unique scenarios, that it is difficult to make improvements to the Ajax Control Toolkit without introducing regressions. In order to avoid regressions, we decided early on that it was extremely important to build good test coverage for the 40 controls in the Ajax Control Toolkit. We’ve been focusing a lot of energy on building automated JavaScript unit tests which we can use to help us discover regressions. We decided to write the unit tests with the QUnit test framework. We picked QUnit because it is quickly becoming the standard unit testing framework in the JavaScript world. For example, it is the unit testing framework used by the jQuery team, the jQuery UI team, and many jQuery UI plugin developers. We had to make several enhancements to the QUnit framework in order to test the Ajax Control Toolkit. For example, QUnit does not support tests which include postbacks. We modified the QUnit framework so that it works with IFrames so we could perform postbacks in our automated tests. At this point, we have written hundreds of QUnit tests. For example, we have written 135 QUnit tests for the Accordion control. The QUnit tests are included with the Ajax Control Toolkit source code in a project named AjaxControlToolkit.Tests. You can run all of the QUnit tests contained in the project by opening the Default.aspx page. Automating the QUnit Tests across Multiple Browsers Automated tests are useless if no one ever runs them. In order for the QUnit tests to be useful, we needed an easy way to run the tests automatically against a matrix of browsers. We wanted to run the unit tests against Internet Explorer 6, Internet Explorer 7, Internet Explorer 8, Internet Explorer 9, Firefox, Chrome, and Safari automatically. Expecting a developer to run QUnit tests against every browser after every check-in is just too much to expect. It takes 20 seconds to run the Accordion QUnit tests. We are testing against 8 browsers. That would require the developer to open 8 browsers and wait for the results after each change in code. Too much work. Therefore, we built a JavaScript Test Server. Our JavaScript Test Server project was inspired by John Resig’s TestSwarm project. The JavaScript Test Server runs our QUnit tests in a swarm of browsers (running on different operating systems) automatically. Here’s how the JavaScript Test Server works: 1. We created an ASP.NET page named RunTest.aspx that constantly polls the JavaScript Test Server for a new set of QUnit tests to run. After the RunTest.aspx page runs the QUnit tests, the RunTest.aspx records the test results back to the JavaScript Test Server. 2. We opened the RunTest.aspx page on instances of Internet Explorer 6, Internet Explorer 7, Internet Explorer 8, Internet Explorer 9, FireFox, Chrome, Opera, Google, and Safari. Now that we have the JavaScript Test Server setup, we can run all of our QUnit tests against all of the browsers which we need to support with a single click of a button. A New Release of the Ajax Control Toolkit Each Month The Ajax Control Toolkit Issue Tracker contains over one thousand five hundred open issues and feature requests. So we have plenty of work on our plates J At CodePlex, anyone can vote for an issue to be fixed. Originally, we planned to fix issues in order of their votes. However, we quickly discovered that this approach was inefficient. Constantly switching back and forth between different controls was too time-consuming. It takes time to re-familiarize yourself with a control. Instead, we decided to focus on two or three controls each month and really focus on fixing the issues with those controls. This way, we can fix sets of related issues and avoid the randomization caused by context switching. Our team works in monthly sprints. We plan to do another release of the Ajax Control Toolkit each and every month. So far, we have competed one release of the Ajax Control Toolkit which was released on April 1, 2011. We plan to release a new version in early May. Conclusion Fortunately, I work with a team of smart developers. We currently have 5 developers working on the Ajax Control Toolkit (not full-time, they are also building two very cool ASP.NET MVC applications). All the developers who work on our team are required to have strong JavaScript, jQuery, and ASP.NET MVC skills. In the interest of being as transparent as possible about our work on the Ajax Control Toolkit, I plan to blog frequently about our team’s ongoing work. In my next blog entry, I plan to write about the two Ajax Control Toolkit controls which are the focus of our work for next release.

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Creating a dynamic proxy generator with c# – Part 2 – Interceptor Design

- by SeanMcAlinden

Creating a dynamic proxy generator – Part 1 – Creating the Assembly builder, Module builder and caching mechanism For the latest code go to http://rapidioc.codeplex.com/ Before getting too involved in generating the proxy, I thought it would be worth while going through the intended design, this is important as the next step is to start creating the constructors for the proxy. Each proxy derives from a specified type The proxy has a corresponding constructor for each of the base type constructors The proxy has overrides for all methods and properties marked as Virtual on the base type For each overridden method, there is also a private method whose sole job is to call the base method. For each overridden method, a delegate is created whose sole job is to call the private method that calls the base method. The following class diagram shows the main classes and interfaces involved in the interception process. I’ll go through each of them to explain their place in the overall proxy. IProxy Interface The proxy implements the IProxy interface for the sole purpose of adding custom interceptors. This allows the created proxy interface to be cast as an IProxy and then simply add Interceptors by calling it’s AddInterceptor method. This is done internally within the proxy building process so the consumer of the API doesn’t need knowledge of this. IInterceptor Interface The IInterceptor interface has one method: Handle. The handle method accepts a IMethodInvocation parameter which contains methods and data for handling method interception. Multiple classes that implement this interface can be added to the proxy. Each method override in the proxy calls the handle method rather than simply calling the base method. How the proxy fully works will be explained in the next section MethodInvocation. IMethodInvocation Interface & MethodInvocation class The MethodInvocation will contain one main method and multiple helper properties. Continue Method The method Continue() has two functions hidden away from the consumer. When Continue is called, if there are multiple Interceptors, the next Interceptors Handle method is called. If all Interceptors Handle methods have been called, the Continue method then calls the base class method. Properties The MethodInvocation will contain multiple helper properties including at least the following: Method Name (Read Only) Method Arguments (Read and Write) Method Argument Types (Read Only) Method Result (Read and Write) – this property remains null if the method return type is void Target Object (Read Only) Return Type (Read Only) DefaultInterceptor class The DefaultInterceptor class is a simple class that implements the IInterceptor interface. Here is the code: DefaultInterceptor namespace Rapid.DynamicProxy.Interception { /// <summary> /// Default interceptor for the proxy. /// </summary> /// <typeparam name="TBase">The base type.</typeparam> public class DefaultInterceptor<TBase> : IInterceptor<TBase> where TBase : class { /// <summary> /// Handles the specified method invocation. /// </summary> /// <param name="methodInvocation">The method invocation.</param> public void Handle(IMethodInvocation<TBase> methodInvocation) { methodInvocation.Continue(); } } } This is automatically created in the proxy and is the first interceptor that each method override calls. It’s sole function is to ensure that if no interceptors have been added, the base method is still called. Custom Interceptor Example A consumer of the Rapid.DynamicProxy API could create an interceptor for logging when the FirstName property of the User class is set. Just for illustration, I have also wrapped a transaction around the methodInvocation.Coninue() method. This means that any overriden methods within the user class will run within a transaction scope. MyInterceptor public class MyInterceptor : IInterceptor<User<int, IRepository>> { public void Handle(IMethodInvocation<User<int, IRepository>> methodInvocation) { if (methodInvocation.Name == "set_FirstName") { Logger.Log("First name seting to: " + methodInvocation.Arguments[0]); } using (TransactionScope scope = new TransactionScope()) { methodInvocation.Continue(); } if (methodInvocation.Name == "set_FirstName") { Logger.Log("First name has been set to: " + methodInvocation.Arguments[0]); } } } Overridden Method Example To show a taster of what the overridden methods on the proxy would look like, the setter method for the property FirstName used in the above example would look something similar to the following (this is not real code but will look similar): set_FirstName public override void set_FirstName(string value) { set_FirstNameBaseMethodDelegate callBase = new set_FirstNameBaseMethodDelegate(this.set_FirstNameProxyGetBaseMethod); object[] arguments = new object[] { value }; IMethodInvocation<User<IRepository>> methodInvocation = new MethodInvocation<User<IRepository>>(this, callBase, "set_FirstName", arguments, interceptors); this.Interceptors[0].Handle(methodInvocation); } As you can see, a delegate instance is created which calls to a private method on the class, the private method calls the base method and would look like the following: calls base setter private void set_FirstNameProxyGetBaseMethod(string value) { base.set_FirstName(value); } The delegate is invoked when methodInvocation.Continue() is called within an interceptor. The set_FirstName parameters are loaded into an object array. The current instance, delegate, method name and method arguments are passed into the methodInvocation constructor (there will be more data not illustrated here passed in when created including method info, return types, argument types etc.) The DefaultInterceptor’s Handle method is called with the methodInvocation instance as it’s parameter. Obviously methods can have return values, ref and out parameters etc. in these cases the generated method override body will be slightly different from above. I’ll go into more detail on these aspects as we build them. Conclusion I hope this has been useful, I can’t guarantee that the proxy will look exactly like the above, but at the moment, this is pretty much what I intend to do. Always worth downloading the code at http://rapidioc.codeplex.com/ to see the latest. There will also be some tests that you can debug through to help see what’s going on. Cheers, Sean.

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