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• What should a programmer's yearly routine be to maximize their technical skills?

  - by sguptaet

  2 years ago I made a big career change into programming. I learned various technologies on my own without any prior experience. I really love it and feel lucky with all the resources around us to help us learn. Books, courses, open-source, etc. There are so many avenues. I'm wondering what a good routine would be to follow to maximize my software development skills. I don't believe just building software is the way, because that leaves no time for learning new concepts or technologies. I'm looking for an answer like this: Take a new concept sabbatical/workshop 2 weeks per year. Read 1 theoretical and 1 practical programming book per year. Learn 1 additional language every 2 years. Take a 1 week vacation every 6 months. Etc. I realize that the above might sound naive and unrealistic as there are so many factors. But I'd like to know the "recipe" that you think is best that will serve as a guide for people.

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• Loign Scren hangs after entering password in Ubuntu 12.04

  - by Ravi

  When I enter my password in the login box nothing happens. It is stucked there. It was running fine earlier. Actually, I installed the package gnome-panel and cairo-dock. Then I logged out and selected gnome classic session. Then I added a ppa from the webupd8.org to install the themes(link). I opened Ubuntu Tweak tool. When I changed the theme to Evolve the whole laptop stopped responding. None of my keyboard and mouse was working. So I was forced to do a forced shutdown. Now after restart I cannot login into ubuntu. I hear a loud sound of my laptop fan when the laptop is stucked. (Probably CPU will be at 100% when it stucked). Please help me. How can I login back to ubuntu? I am using ubuntu 12.04 and have installed all the latest updates..

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• Downclock CPU reaching critical temperature

  - by Draga

  I have an HP tx1250 laptop. It always had serious overheating problems and although usually it runs fine I'm now running a continuous test for my dissertation, this brings the CPU temp close to the critical and from time to time the computer shutdown for reaching it (checked the log). I use to have the same problem on Win XP but I noticed Win Vista and 7 downclock the CPU when is necessary to cool it down so I was thinking if the same is possible on Ubuntu 12. The only program I've found that may do the job is computer temp ( http://computertemp.berlios.de/ ) but it doesn't seems to work under Ubuntu 12. The inside of the laptop is fairly clean, the thermal paste is quite recent, I'm keeping it lifted from the desk and judjung by the sound of the fan that's running fine as well. The pc in now running between 78 and 91 degrees C but about once a day it shut down for reaching 95. I need the results of the test it's running pretty soon so it's important that it runs non-stop. I've though to set the maximum clock of the CPU to slightly less the maximum but then these tests I'm running would take much more time. Thanks! PS: first and last HP laptop for me.

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• How to build a good service layer in ASP.NET?

  - by Swippen

  I have looked through some questions, technologies for building a good service layer but I have some questions regarding this that I need help with. First some information of what I have for requirements. We currently have a number of web applications that talk to each other in a spiderweb looking way (all talking to each other in a confusing way via webservices and database data). We want to change this so that all applications go through a service layer where we can work more with cache and encapsulate common functionality and more. We want this layer to also have a Web API so that 3rd party clients can consume information from the service. The problem I see is that if we build the service layer with say MVC4 Web API don't we need to communicate between the application using the webAPI meaning we have to construct URLs and consume JSON/Xml. That does not sound too effective. I assume a better method would be working with entities and WCF to communicate between the application but then we might loose the Web API magic? So the question is if there is a way to consume a service layer as both a Web API (JSON/XML) and as a more backend service layer with entities. If we are forced to use 2 different service layers we might have to duplicate some functionality and other bad things. Hope the question is clear enough and please ask if you need any more information.

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• Game Asset Management

  - by user964123

  I am making my first small mobile game in C# XNA. Lets say I have 3 screens, the main menu, options and game screen. A single game session usually lasts for 1 min, so the user will alternate frequently between the main menu and game screen. Therefore, once I load the textures for either screen, I want to keep them in memory to avoid frequent reloading. Both screens share some assets like their background textures, but differ in others. The first solution I came up with is making 2 texture factory classes, MainScreenAssetFactory and GameScreenAssetFactory, each with their own content manager, and ill store them in a globally accessible point so that they persist after either screen is destroyed. There is also a OptionsScreenAssetFactory, but that I dont want to cache it since the options screen is rarely visited. A typical Factory would look something like this public class MainScreenAssetFactory { private readonly ContentManager contentManager; public MainScreenAssetFactory(IServiceProvider serviceProvider, string rootDirectory) { contentManager = new ContentManager(serviceProvider) { RootDirectory = rootDirectory }; } public Texture2D ListElementBackground { get { return return contentManager.Load<Texture2D>("UserTab"); } } public Texture2D ListElementBulletPoint { get { return return contentManager.Load<Texture2D>("TabIcon"); } } public Texture2D LoggedOutUser { get { return return contentManager.Load<Texture2D>("LoggedOutUser"); } } } Since both Main, Options and Game Screen share some common resources, instead of loading them more than once, I created another class CommonAssetTexFactory which holds the common stuff and stays in-memory during the app lifetime. For example, this class gets passed to the options screen when it is created. However, given my small game with its few assets, I am already finding this solution cumbersome and inflexible. Changing anything would require looking to see if its already in the common factory, and if not, modifying existing factories and so on. And this is just considering textures currently, i didnt add sound files yet. I cant imagine bigger games with thousands of resources using this approach. A better idea must exist. Would someone please enlighten me?

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• RequireJS: JavaScript for the Enterprise

  - by Geertjan

  I made a small introduction to RequireJS via some of the many cool new RequireJS features in NetBeans IDE. I believe RequireJS, and the modularity and encapsulation and loading solutions that it brings, provides the tools needed for creating large JavaScript applications, i.e., enterprise JavaScript applications. &amp;amp;lt;span id=&amp;amp;quot;XinhaEditingPostion&amp;amp;quot;&amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;lt;/span&amp;amp;gt; (Sorry for the wobbly sound in the above.) An interesting comment by my colleague John Brock on the above: One other advantage that RequireJS brings, is called lazy loading of resources. In your first example, everyone one of those .js files is loaded when the first file is loaded in the browser. By using the require() call in your modules, your application will only load the javascript modules when they are actually needed. It makes for faster startup in large applications. You could show this by showing the libraries that are loaded in the Network Monitor window. So I did as suggested: Click the screenshot to enlarge it and notice how the Network Monitor is helpful in the context of RequireJS troubleshooting.

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• Noise Canceling Earphones

  - by Mark Treadwell

  I travel a lot. The hours spent droning through the sky can be made more tolerable with an MP3 player and a set of noise-cancelling headphones. Reducing the sound of the airflow and engines is a great relief. For a year or two, I used a pair of folding Sony MDR-NC5 Noise Canceling Headphones, the ear foam covers self-destructed. I replaced them with old washcloth material and was happy, but the DW thought it looked bad.  I switched to a new set of Sony MDR-NC6 Noise Canceling Headphones.  These worked equally well, although they did not fold as small as the MDR-NC5 headphones. Over four years of use, the MDR-NC6 headphones started cutting out and making popping noises.  This was not surprising considering the beating they took on travel in my backpack.  It looked like I needed another new set. The older MDR-NC5 headphones were still on the shelf with the hated washcloth covers.  A quick search online showed a vibrant business in selling replacement ear foams, often at exorbitant prices.  Nowhere did I see ear foam covers made for the oblong MDR-NC5.  I then realized that foam is stretchable and that the shape should not matter.  After another search and some consideration, I purchased 2-5/16" foam pad ear covers that were able to stretch over the MDR-NC5's strange shape.  Problem solved for less than $5.

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• Blank screen during boot after clean Ubuntu 11.10 install (Intel N10 graphics)

  - by Coen

  After a clean install of Ubuntu 11.10 on my Asus eee PC 1005p, Ubuntu seems to boot correctly, except for initialization of the LCD screen. What I observe: I choose Ubuntu 11.10 in the GRUB 2 menu A blank screen with a blinking cursor in the top left of the screen, for 15-20 seconds. The ubuntu logo with 5 red dots in the center of the screen, for 1 second. The LCD screen is entirely blank The startup sound plays (Ubuntu is configured to auto-login) Still, the LCD screen is entirely blank. When I press Fn-F8 (the switch between LCD screen and external VGA), the LCD screen shows my desktop correctly and everything seems to work fine. Except for the adjust contrast buttons (Fn-F5 and Fn-F6), these seem to cycle through random brightness modes. Something like: 0% - 50% - 20% - 0% - 20% - 0% Any ideas what's causing this or how to solve this? coen@elpicu:~$ lspci -v 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation N10 Family Integrated Graphics Controller (prog-if 00 [VGA controller]) Subsystem: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. Device 83ac Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 44 Memory at f7e00000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=512K] I/O ports at dc00 [size=8] Memory at d0000000 (32-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M] Memory at f7d00000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=1M] Expansion ROM at <unassigned> [disabled] Capabilities: <access denied> Kernel driver in use: i915 Kernel modules: i915 00:02.1 Display controller: Intel Corporation N10 Family Integrated Graphics Controller Subsystem: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. Device 83ac Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0 Memory at f7e80000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=512K] Capabilities: <access denied>

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• Identifying elements from data feeds generated by affiliate sites

  - by SPI

  I am working with data feeds from affiliate sites. The basic idea is to provide an interface where the user can paste a link to an XML datafeed (these are huge btw, around 60 mb) that would then be streamed, parsed into small chunks, and mined for the required data which would then be stored in the database. The problem is that different affiliate sites have different Schemas for their XML's. It is a little hard mapping the elements in an XML to your database attributes when you don't actually know which element contains what. My Solution: Use XPath to traverse through the first set of parent and it's descendent's, fetch the elements as well as the data and and ask the user to map this data to the attributes in the database by selecting from a set of radio buttons that represent the attributes from the database. This will be done just once for each new Feed, once the system know's what's what it will automatically upload the data from the XML to the database. Does this sound viable? Is there a better solution? I realize this leaves an uncomfortable opening for human error.. Thanks.

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• What's the best way to handle numerous recurring log entries in game loop?

  - by Kaa

  I have a custom logging system, use of which is scattered all over the engine and game. The system is linked to a "LogStore" that has an std::vector<string> logs[NUM_LOG_TYPES] - each vector corresponds with it's log type (info, error, debug, etc.). There's one extra std::vector that has "coordinates" to all log entries in the order they were received. Now, all the logging output is also displayed inside my development console in the game. The game console is handled by HTML-type GUI and therefore requires a new <p> element being added for each log output. My problem is that the log entries that are generated in the main loop each frame freeze the engine, because they continue to add elements to the in-game console, and if the console or guy generates a warning - that creates an infinite logging loop. I want to solve it by handling the recurring log entries in an elegant way that lets you know that something is critically wrong, but won't freeze the engine - like displaying the count of errors in the last 60 frames instead of displaying errors themselves. But how do you guys handle this? Does anyone know any nifty tricks to do this? I understand the question may sound vague, but if someone came across this type of issue I'm sure they would know exactly what's happening. Example problematic log entries: OpenGL warnings (I actually do check for errors every frame in many places) Really any prints anywhere in the main loop (may be debugging, may be warnings)

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• Can you use programming for a greater good? [closed]

  - by jdoig

  What are the paths one could take to use their programming skills to benefit mankind (good causes, scientific or medical advancement, etc)? Problem: I dropped out of school, learnt programming, on my own, from text books and the internet. I have 7+ years of commercial experience from web applications to big data to mobile apps. But all I seem to do is make rich people richer with the vain hope that one day I'll be the guy with the good idea using other people to make myself richer. I googled for simular posts on the subject and saw a lot of people saying... "Just do your 9-5 job and donate a lot to charity"... I'm sorry to sound selfish but thats not what makes me tick; I need to be invested in and excited about the project at hand; it's not only got to be for a greater good but it's got to kick arse and feel good doing it too... Does that kind of job exist? Does it involve programming? What other skills do I need? (Apologies if this question is too 'fluffy' or 'wishy-washy', but if it is a pointer to where else I could ask it would be appreciated)

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• Full Text Search Strategy For My Website

  - by Hosea146

  I have a website that allows users to search for items in various categories. Each category is a separate area (page) of my website. For example, some categories might be cars, bikes, books etc. At the moment a user has to search for an item by going to the page (for example, cars) and searching for the car they want. I would like to allow the user to search for anything on my site, from my main home page. At the moment, each page (category) has its own set of tables, and I don't really want to turn Full Text Search on for each table (20+ of them) and search each table individually when a search is done. This is going to be slow and tedious. What I'm thinking of doing is creating a single table that will hold all searchable information for each category of item (when an item is saved in its respective table, I would copy all searchable information over to my 'Search' table). I would then turn Full Text Search on for that table, and search that table. Does this sound reasonable? Is there a better way? I've never used Full Text Search before, so this is new to me.

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• Laser range finder, what language to use? Beginner advice

  - by DrOnline

  I hope this is the right place. I am a programming beginner, and I want to make a laser range finder, and I need advice about how to proceed etc. In a few weeks I will get a lot of dirt cheap 3-5V lasers and some cheap usb webcams. I will point the laser and webcam in parallel, and somehow use trigonometry and programming to determined distance. I have seen online that others made done it this way, I have purposefully not looked at the details too much because I want to develop it on my own, and learn, but I know the general outline. I have a general idea of how to proceed. The program loads in a picture from the webcam, and I dunno how images work really, but I imagine there is a format that is basically an array of RGB values.. is this right? I will load in the red values, and find the most red one. I know the height difference between the laser and the cam. I know the center dot in the image, I know the redmost dot. I'm sure there's some way to figure out some range there. TO THE POINT: 1) Is my reasoning sound thus far, especially in terms of image analysis? I don't need complete solutions, just general points 2) What I need to figure out, is what platform to use. I have an arduino... apparently, I've read it's too weak to process images. Read that online. I know some C I know some Python I have Matlab. Which is the best option? I do not need high sampling rates, I have not decided on whether it should be automated or whether I should make a GUI with a button to press for samples. I will keep it simple and expand I think. I also do not need it to be super accurate, I'm just having fun here. Advice!

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• What is the best approach for deploying apps to companies

  - by Supercell

  What is the best approach for the following scenario: 1) A publicly available app (available in app stores) which is used by end users to make use of services offered by multiple companies. 2) These companies maintain their services also using a mobile app. I'm not sure on how to solve the second part. Having one app for both enduser and admin functionality, secured by username/password doesn't sound like a good idea. This would leave the only option of developing a separate admin application for the companies. What is the best approach to deploy "admin" like mobile apps to companies only, for Android, iOS and Windows Phone? Some additional information: Public App ---- Servers ----- Multiple Company Apps The public app shows all companies offering their services. An end user uses the public app to order something from a specific company. The order is sent to our servers. Our servers send the order to the associated company. This order is displayed on the company's admin app and given the option to accept the order.

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• What kind of projects are suited as a portfolio? [on hold]

  - by Asyx

  I was thinking about finishing up some hobby projects I used myself or am planing to use myself but I'm not sure if a future employer might be put off by them. For example, if I decided to create a custom website for an online (gaming, maybe) community instead of using an existing CMS, is it a good idea to provide a link to said community website or should I just put up the CMS and pretend like nobody actually uses it? Also, what about very specific things? I like linguistics and constructing languages. Obviously nobody wants to come up with 1000s of words so people usually use word generators or software to emulate sound shift or software to organise everything and produce dictionaries and such. Would such a project be too specific and too abstract for a portfolio or is the "he did programming work simply for enjoyment and his hobby and not just for money or grades" thing more important? It's quite an abstract hobby and most people don't even know that it's a thing and think the languages you hear in Game of Thrones, Avatar or Star Trek are just gibberish. Explaining such things to people is a pain to begin with especially if said people speak no other language. Would such things throw an employer off or is the content itself completely irrelevant? Thanks. Also, if this is not fitting for the programmers stackexchange, then please, don't close the thread right away but tell me where else to go because I got here though a closed question from stackoverflow. Thanks.

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• Is this too much to ask for a game programming and developing enthusiast? Am I doing this wrong?

  - by I_Question_Things_Deeply

  I have been a computer-fanatic for almost a decade now. I've always loved and wondered how computers work, even from the purest, lowest hardware level to the very smallest pixel on the screen, and all the software around that. That seems to be my problem though ... as I try to write code (I'm pretty fluent at C++) I always sit there enormous amounts of time in front of a text-editor wondering how every line, statement, datum, function, etc. will correspond to every Assembly and machine instruction performed to do absolutely everything necessary for the kernel to allocate memory to run my compiled program, and all of the other hardware being used as well. For example ... I would write cout << "Before memory changed" << endl; and run the debugger to get the Assembly for this, and then try and reverse disassemble the Assembly to machine code based on my ISA, and then research every .dll, library file, linked library, linking process, linker source code of the program, the make file, the kernel I'm using's steps of processing this compilation, the hardware's part aside from the processor (e.g. video card, sound card, chipset, cache latency, byte-sized registers, calling convention use, DDR3 RAM and disk drive, filesystem functioning and so many other things). Am I going about programming wrong? I mean I feel I should know everything that goes on underneath English syntax on a computer program. But the problem is that the more I research every little thing the less I actually accomplish at all. I can never finish anything because of this mentality, yet I feel compelled to know everything... what should I do?

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• Salary Negotiation; How Best to Broach the Subject? [closed]

  - by Ed S.

  So I have an upcoming performance review / salary increase and I am at a point in which I believe I will need to negotiate a larger raise than what is to be proposed. As I suspect this may be the case I have been reading as much information on the subject (negotiation) as possible. I work for a great company and fortunately I work under some really talented and reasonable managers. Unfortunately, I am not sure how best to bring up the subject. I don't want to sound greedy and I don't want to start off on the wrong foot. For the sake of argument, assume that I am actually worth more than I am being paid at the moment and I would like to make a counter offer for a relatively large increase (say, boss says 4%, I would like to counter with 15%. I know that seems very large, but I believe I have a case for it.) My question to you, those who are/have been on the other side of this scenario, is how should I start the conversation? What approach would make you most receptive to my plea? I've never negotiated before and I just don't want to start off on the wrong foot. My direct manager is a very straightforward individual, so sugarcoating is not necessary here, but at the same time, I don't want to seem overly aggressive or demanding. Thanks in advance for any advice you can offer.

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• What makes Ubuntu awesome [closed]

  - by Shagun

  My question may sound stupid or inappropriate for this site in which case I apologize before hand. This thing has bothered me for quiet some time so please correct me if there is anything inappropriate: I have been using Ubuntu for past 1 year and I know how awesome it is and in what terms is it better than windows.But around 2 weeks ago some of my friends asked me to show them something on Ubuntu or tell something about Ubuntu that makes people prefer it over windows. I tried to convince them by telling things like its open-source, that most of the super-computers run on Linux, that its unaffected by virus and other stuff but they seemed unconvinced. Maybe what they we looking for was some mind-boggling feature which only Ubuntu (Linux) has. Since that day I have been thinking but yet don't have anything that will show them the true powers of Linux. Please suggest your response to such a situation as it troubles me that I am not able to explain them one thing that I myself believe in. Thank you. PS : I am not looking for a theoretical answer but would like to hear of one such application which it and only it provides.

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• I am being paid very little(imo), how can I change this? [migrated]

  - by LagWagon

  I am a web developer with about 4 years of relevant work experience in my field. Recently, I went from making $30/hr working from home contracting for large companies to a full time job that only pays 40k/yr. The company I work for now is great, nice people, but a little behind the times. I joined on with very little experience in SQL development but they put me in charge of querying the DB and making reports right away, so I had to go in head first and pick up that skill right away. Which is great, I'm happy I learned more of that, and really make good time when doing SQL now. However, I'm now doing most of their advanced SQL stuff. The day I started, another employee who was running a MVC project based in Yii (which is the sole item that makes this company software) put in his two weeks. Two weeks later, I'm the only one who knows how to use, access, modify, or update this project. Its quite a large responsibility for an "entry level dev", no? I am doing highly advanced jQuery for them to modernize their forms, webpages, amongst other things, a skill that I would bet on few Entry levels being able to do as well as me. I may be wrong, but I feel that what I'm making now is not acceptable. We don't have reviews, ever, so I can't just wait for that.. so I was wondering.. do I sound justified in wanting to be paid more, and how can I make this happen?

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• What differences should I know? I just upgraded to 13.10 from 10.10 [on hold]

  - by test

  I ran Ubuntu 10.10 for a long time because I liked the menu style. The change in GUI with the upgrades drove me nuts but I finally gave in and downloaded Saucy Salamander 13.10 x64. It's a fresh install running as a virtual machine guest in VMWare Workstation 9 on a Windows 7 x64 host. Well it looks like all those icons are still there on the side which I would be OK with if there were some way to bring back my menus. I have no organized way of accessing things now, or do I? That is the purpose for this question, maybe there is some functionality I just can't find but is there. Also all my fine tuning was gone. I used to be able to change DPI but that's gone. I went ahead and installed Unity Tweak Tool via sudo apt-get install unity-tweak-tool but I couldn't find an icon for it after I installed it.. because again no menu. So I did a search for it and found it there. I've changed the font and which side the window buttons appear on which is good enough for now. Anyway... any suggestions you may have for me I'm game. I'm a Windows 7 user primarily but I use Ubuntu every once in a while. I really liked the old style where everything was categorized like for Applications there was Accessories, Games, Graphics, Internet, Office, Sound & Video, Wine.

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• Time Service will not start on Windows Server - System error 1290

  - by paradroid

  I have been trying to sort out some time sync issues involving two domain controllers and seem to have ended up with a bigger problem. It's horrible. They are both virtual machines (one being on Amazon EC2), which I think may complicate things regarding time servers. The primary DC with all the FSMO roles is on the LAN. I reset its time server configuration like this (from memory): net stop w32time w23tm /unregister shutdown /r /t 0 w32tm /register w32tm /config /manualpeerlist:”0.uk.pool.ntp.org,1.uk.pool.ntp.org,2.uk.pool.ntp.org,3.uk.pool.ntp.org” /syncfromflags:manual /reliable:yes /update W32tm /config /update net start w32time reg QUERY HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\W32Time\Config /v AnnounceFlags I checked to see if it was set to 0x05, which it was. The output for... w32tm /query /status Leap Indicator: 0(no warning) Stratum: 1 (primary reference - syncd by radio clock) Precision: -6 (15.625ms per tick) Root Delay: 0.0000000s Root Dispersion: 10.0000000s ReferenceId: 0x4C4F434C (source name: "LOCL") Last Successful Sync Time: 10/04/2012 15:03:27 Source: Local CMOS Clock Poll Interval: 6 (64s) While this was not what was intended, I thought I would sort it out after I made sure that the remote DC was syncing with it first. On the Amazon EC2 remote replica DC (Windows Server 2008 R2 Core)... net stop w32time w32tm /unregister shutdown /r /t 0 w32time /register net start w32time This is where it all goes wrong System error 1290 has occurred. The service start failed since one or more services in the same process have an incompatible service SID type setting. A service with restricted service SID type can only coexist in the same process with other services with a restricted SID type. If the service SID type for this service was just configured, the hosting process must be restarted in order to start this service. I cannot get the w32time service to start. I've tried resetting the time settings and tried to reverse what I have done. The Ec2Config service cannot start either, as it depends on the w32time service. All the solutions I have seen involve going into the telephony service registry settings, but as it is Server Core, it does not have that role, and I cannot see the relationship between that and the time service. w32time runs in the LocalService group and this telephony service which does not exist on Core runs in the NetworkService group. Could this have something to do with the process (svchost.exe) not being able to be run as a domain account, as it now a domain controller, but originally it ran as a local user group, or something like that? There seem to be a lot of cases of people having this problem, but the only solution has to do with the (non-existant on Core) telephony service. Who even uses that?

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• Automating the choice between JPEG and PNG with a script

  - by MHC

  Choosing the right format to save your images in is crucial for preserving image quality and reducing artifacts. Different formats follow different compression methods and come with their own set of advantages and disadvantages. JPG, for instance is suited for real life photographs that are rich in color gradients. The lossless PNG, on the other hand, is far superior when it comes to schematic figures: Picking the right format can be a chore when working with a large number of files. That's why I would love to find a way to automate it. A little bit of background on my particular use case: I am working on a number of handouts for a series of lectures at my unversity. The handouts are rich in figures, which I have to extract from PDF-formatted slides. Extracting these images gives me lossless PNGs, which are needlessly large at times. Converting these particular files to JPEG can reduce their size to up to less than 20% of their original file size, while maintaining the same quality. This is important as working with hundreds of large images in word processors is pretty crash-prone. Batch converting all extracted PNGs to JPEGs is not an option I am willing to follow, as many if not most images are better suited to be formatted as PNGs. Converting these would result in insignificant size reductions and sometimes even increases in filesize - that's at least what my test runs showed. What we can take from this is that file size after compression can serve as an indicator on what format is suited best for a particular image. It's not a particularly accurate predictor, but works well enough. So why not use it in form of a script: I included inotifywait because I would prefer for the script be executed automatically as soon as I drag an extracted image into a folder. This is a simpler version of the script that I've been using for the last couple of weeks: #!/bin/bash inotifywait -m --format "%w%f" --exclude '.jpg' -r -e create -e moved_to --fromfile '/home/MHC/.scripts/Workflow/Conversion/include_inotifywait' | while read file; do mogrify -format jpg -quality 92 "$file" done The advanced version of the script would have to be able to handle spaces in file names and directory names preserve the original file names flatten PNG images if an alpha value is set compare the file size between the temporary converted image and its original determine if the difference is greater than a given precentage act accordingly The actual conversion could be done with imagemagick tools: convert -quality 92 -flatten -background white file.png file.jpg Unfortunately, my bash skills aren't even close to advanced enough to convert the scheme above into an actual script, but I am sure many of you can. My reputation points on here are pretty low, but I will gladly award the most helpful answer with the highest bounty I can set. References: http://www.formortals.com/introducing-cnb-imageguide/, http://www.turnkeylinux.org/blog/png-vs-jpg Edit: Also see my comments below for some more information on why I think this script would be the best solution to the problem I am facing.

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• Using smartctl to get vendor specific Attributes from ssd drive behind a SmartArray P410 controller

  - by Lairsdragon

  Hi! Recently I have deployed some HP server with SSD's behind a SmartArray P410 controller. While not official supported from HP the server work well sofar. Now I like to get wear level info's, error statistics etc from the drive. While the SA P410 supports a passthru of the SMART Command to a single drive in the array the output I was not able to the the interesting things from the drive. In this case especially the value the Wear level indicator is from interest for me (Attr.ID 233), but this is ony present if the drive is directly attanched to a SATA Controller. smartctl on directly connected ssd: # smartctl -A /dev/sda smartctl version 5.38 [x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu] Copyright (C) 2002-8 Bruce Allen Home page is http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net/ === START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION === SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 5 Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds: ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME FLAG VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE UPDATED WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE 3 Spin_Up_Time 0x0000 100 000 000 Old_age Offline In_the_past 0 4 Start_Stop_Count 0x0000 100 000 000 Old_age Offline In_the_past 0 5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct 0x0002 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 0 9 Power_On_Hours 0x0002 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 8561 12 Power_Cycle_Count 0x0002 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 55 192 Power-Off_Retract_Count 0x0002 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 29 232 Unknown_Attribute 0x0003 100 100 010 Pre-fail Always - 0 233 Unknown_Attribute 0x0002 088 088 000 Old_age Always - 0 225 Load_Cycle_Count 0x0000 198 198 000 Old_age Offline - 508509 226 Load-in_Time 0x0002 255 000 000 Old_age Always In_the_past 0 227 Torq-amp_Count 0x0002 000 000 000 Old_age Always FAILING_NOW 0 228 Power-off_Retract_Count 0x0002 000 000 000 Old_age Always FAILING_NOW 0 smartctl on P410 connected ssd: # ./smartctl -A -d cciss,0 /dev/cciss/c1d0 smartctl 5.39.1 2010-01-28 r3054 [x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu] (local build) Copyright (C) 2002-10 by Bruce Allen, http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net (Right, it is complety empty) smartctl on P410 connected hdd: # ./smartctl -A -d cciss,0 /dev/cciss/c0d0 smartctl 5.39.1 2010-01-28 r3054 [x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu] (local build) Copyright (C) 2002-10 by Bruce Allen, http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net Current Drive Temperature: 27 C Drive Trip Temperature: 68 C Vendor (Seagate) cache information Blocks sent to initiator = 1871654030 Blocks received from initiator = 1360012929 Blocks read from cache and sent to initiator = 2178203797 Number of read and write commands whose size <= segment size = 46052239 Number of read and write commands whose size > segment size = 0 Vendor (Seagate/Hitachi) factory information number of hours powered up = 3363.25 number of minutes until next internal SMART test = 12 Do I hunt here a bug, or is this a limitation of the p410 SMART cmd Passthru?

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• Gateway GT5220 Boot/POST Failure

  - by John Rudy

  I have a Gateway GT5220 I'm troubleshooting. It is, in fact, the machine I just gave my father for his birthday a couple months ago. (Prior to that, it was my home PC. My home PC is now the MacBook on which I'm writing this.) Before going any further, I suspect that the answer will be, "It's worse than that, it's dead, Jim, it's dead, Jim, it's dead, Jim." At least, mobo and/or CPU. The initial symptoms were as follows: Turn on power All fans fire up (thus making it so I can't hear if the hard drive is spinning or not, nor are my hands sensitive enough anymore to feel it) No LEDs remained lit on the front panel. (Initially, the hard drive indicator flashed briefly.) No beep, no video, no nothing. Following some advice I found here, I tried to "drain the stored power." After following those steps, the new symptoms were: Turn on power All fans fire up The front panel LEDs remained lit! After about 20, maybe 30 seconds, we had video! Sort of. We got to the Gateway splash/POST screen, which appeared thoroughly corrupted. How corrupted? Well, I imagine it's what a POST screen would look like after reading the wrong passage out of the Necronomicon: It stayed there. I gave it at least 5, maybe 6 minutes, and it didn't move. So I shut her down, started her up again, and now (this is where we currently stand, symptomatically) we have this: Turn on power All fans fire up The front panel LEDs remain lit No video, no beep, no nothing. I'm a software guy; haven't done real hardware troubleshooting in years. My gut tells me that the mobo and/or CPU is fried, and unfortunately my gut didn't get to be as big as it is being wrong all the time. :( In addition to the link above, I have read all of the following (trying to save you some LMGTFY trouble): Gateway Support POST Error Messages and Handling About a zillion (useless) POST beep code sites A kioskea.net post indicating that most likely we're at what I consider "total loss" (mobo and/or CPU) My questions: Are there any conditions other than mobo/CPU that could cause symptoms like these? Is it worth my time to try the next hardware troubleshooting step?(IE, remove all non-critical hardware from the machine, try to boot, systematically replace one by one until we find the failing component) Which mobos will fit in the Gateway GT5220 case (with rear ports correctly aligned)? (Why this is not a dupe: I wouldn't have posted this question if it hadn't been for the funkadelic possessed video display on the one occasion we got video out. I think that justified this not being an exact dupe. Of course, if the community overrules, I will understand.)

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• Sysadmin 101: How can I figure out why my server crashes and monitor performance?

  - by bflora

  I have a Drupal-powered site that seems to have neverending performance problems. It was butt-slow about 5 months ago. I brought in some guys who installed nginx for anonymous visitors, ajaxified a few queries so they wouldn't fire during page load, and helped me find a few bottlenecks in the code. For about a month, the site was significantly faster, though not "fast" by any stretch of the word. Meanwhile, I'm now shelling out $400/month to Slicehost to host a site that gets less than 5,000/uniques a day. Yes, you read that right. Go Drupal. Recently the site started crashing again and is slow again. I can't afford to hire people to come in, study my code from top to bottom, and make changes that may or may not help anymore. And I can't afford to throw more hardware at the problem. So I need to figure out what the problem is myself. Questions: When apache crashes, is it possible to find out what caused it to crash? There has to be a way, right? If so, how can I do this? Is there software I can use that will tell me which process caused my server to die? (e.g. "Apache crashed because someone visited page X." or "Apache crashed because you were importing too many RSS items from feed X.") There's got to be a way to learn this, right? What's a good, noob-friendly way to monitor my current apache performance? My developer friends tell me to "just use Top, dude," but Top shows me a bunch of numbers without any context. I have no clue what qualifies as a bad number or a good number in Top, or which processes are relevant and which aren't. Are there any noob-friendly server monitoring tools out there? Ideally, I could have a page that would give me a color-coded indicator about how apache is performing and then show me a list of processes or pages that are sucking right now. This way, I could know when performance is bad and then what's causing it to be so bad. Why does PHP memory matter? My apparently has a 30MB memory foot print. Will it run faster if I bring that number down? Thanks for any advice. I spent a year or so trying to boost my advertising income so I could hire a contractor to solve my performance woes. I didn't want to have to learn all this sysadmin voodoo. I'm now resigned to the fact that might not have a choice.

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