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• Problem setting custom request header "Date" in Opera

  - by Solled Scroll

  I can set any other headers but not "Date". request.setRequestHeader("hi", "world"); works but request.setRequestHeader("Date", "today"); does not. That is in Opera.

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• Purpose of PHP constructors

  - by Bharanikumar

  Hi, I am working with classes and object class structure, but not at a complex level – just classes and functions, then, in one place, instantiation. As to __construct and __destruct, please tell me very simply: what is the purpose of constructors and destructors? I know the school level theoretical explanation, but i am expecting something like in real world, as in which situations we have to use them. Provide also an example, please. Regards

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• Moving from php to rails (Procedural to object oriented programming)

  - by piemesons

  While moving from php to rails (Means procedural language to Object oriented language), what are the various things you should keep in mind. How to think in world of object oriented programming? What are thinks i should kept in mind before starting the things. Any tips?

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• Remove substring from a string

  - by xRobot

  I want to remove the first characters from a string. Is there a function that work like this ?: . a = "BarackObama" print myfunction(4,a) "ckObama" b = "The world is mine" print myfunction(6,b) "rld is mine"

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• What will be the output of this program? And why?

  - by Mac

  I came across a good example written below: class Test { private: int m_iX; public: Test(void): m_iX(0) { } ~Test(void) { } void Show() { printf("Hello World"); } }; int main() { Test* pTemp = NULL; pTemp->Show(); return 0; } But, what does this code mean and do? Thanks

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• What does the '%lt' mean in C++? (NOT modulus, I know what that does)

  - by Keand64

  I once saw this line of code: std::cout %lt;%lt; "Hello world!" %lt;%lt; std:: endl; And am wondering what %lt;%lt; means.

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• How do I fix my resolution after Directx install through Steam?

  - by Justin

  I'm a bit long-winded so see bottom for quick version and specs. Friendly Hello: Hello all on these askUbuntu pages, I just recently built my own computer and decided to switch to Ubuntu for the extra coolness. I've been learning a lot through all this, and mostly been trying to figure out issues on my own (read: Google searches). However, I couldn't seem to find others with this problem so I've come here for help. Detailed Recount: So I just used WINE and WINETRICKS to install Steam. All went well and it worked. Then I went to trying a game out. I remembered that Orcs Must Die! worked from http://www.steamgamesonlinux.com/ so I tried that out. After selecting to download it, that's when the problem occurred. The screen suddenly zoomed in!!! I think it's the resolution right? Half the screen is cut off and I can't see parts of the right side of windows. My theory is that this is due to Direct X being installed through Steam, as Steam automatically installed it as I chose to download the game. It didn't even ask me to install Direct X or not ): It all happened so fast. This all being said, the game works fine! It looks a little strange, as if the resolution was off, but it plays just fine. What I did so far: Restarted my computer. Didn't work -_- Researched Steam installing DirectX on Ubuntu then messing up resolution and couldn't really find anything. Researched uninstalling DirectX from Ubuntu but only found uninstalling DirectX after having been installed with Wine, not through Steam. Got mad and ate my feelings. Tried "xrandr -s 0" but it didn't do anything. Ran xrandr alone and terminal showed this: Screen 0: minimum 8 x 8, current 640 x 480, maximum 16384 x 16384 DVI-I-0 connected 640x480+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 0mm x 0mm 640x480 59.9*+ 320x240 120.1 DVI-I-1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) HDMI-0 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) DP-0 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) DVI-D-0 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) DP-1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) About now I was mad so I played Odin's Sphere then took a nap. Back to it! I entered the following: xrandr --output DVI-I-0 --mode 1024x768 But I was met with this message: xrandr: cannot find mode 1024x768 I get the same messages for 800x600, 1400x1050, and seemingly any other combination of numbers. I then tried Going into System Settings then Displays, then playing around in there. My Resolution is set to 640x480 and there are no other options for me to choose from. Rotation has Normal, Clockwise, Counter Clockwise, and 180 Degrees. It's set to Normal and I haven't messed with that. Launcher Placement has Unknown and All Displays as its two options. It's set to Unknown, but moving it to All Displays doesn't seem to do anything. Finally, when I click Detect Displays, nothing seems to happen. Quick Version: Linux noob. Steam installed with Wine and Winetricks. Steam downloaded and installed game + DirectX. Resolution messed up now (I think; pretty sure), can't fix it, very annoying, no idea what's going on, halp! Specs: Ubuntu Version 12.04 Wine Version 1.4.1 Have not changed any settings in Wine Using Winetricks Graphics Card: http://www.gigabyte.com/products/pro...px?pid=4361#sp Drivers: Proprietary (Installing those were a LOT of fun) Also let it be known that I have a DVI to VGA cord running from my Graphics card to my monitor. If any more information is needed I am ready to report. Thank You: Thanks a lot for your help and all the work you do to support noob ubuntuers like me (:

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• your AdSense account poses a risk of generating invalid activity

  - by Karington

  i received a mail from the adsense team saying: I am not an adsense expert, im actually quite new to it. I spent a lot of time on my site http://www.media1.rs, its a news aggregator with tons of options. In the meantime i discovered the double click service that had a good option to turn on google ads when you don't have any other running so i joined up for google adsense with my company account. Everything went smooth until one day (21.Jul.2011) i got an email... Hello, After reviewing our records, we've determined that your AdSense account poses a risk of generating invalid activity. Because we have a responsibility to protect our AdWords advertisers from inflated costs due to invalid activity, we've found it necessary to disable your AdSense account. Your outstanding balance and Google's share of the revenue will both be fully refunded back to the affected advertisers. Please understand that we need to take such steps to maintain the effectiveness of Google's advertising system, particularly the advertiser-publisher relationship. We understand the inconvenience that this may cause you, and we thank you in advance for your understanding and cooperation. If you have any questions or concerns about the actions we've taken, how you can appeal this decision, or invalid activity in general, you can find more information by visiting http://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?answer=57153. Sincerely, The Google AdSense Team At first i didn't have any idea why... but then it came to me that it was maybe the auto refresh script we had because we publish news very very often and it would be useful for visitors... but i removed it immediately after i got the mail... Then i thought it might be my friends clicking thinking that that will help me (i didn't tell them to do it and don't know if they did) or something like that but than it couldn't be that because everyone can organize 10 people and get anyone who is a start-up banned? right? Anyway i filled out the form that was on the answers page with the previously removed script and got this from them: Hello, Thank you for your appeal. We appreciate the additional information you've provided, as well as your continued interest in the AdSense program. However, after thoroughly re-reviewing your account data and taking your feedback into consideration, our specialists have confirmed that we're unable to reinstate your AdSense account. As a reminder, if you have any questions or concerns about your account, the actions we've taken, or invalid activity in general, you can find more information by visiting http://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?answer=57153. I do understand them that they have to keep things secret in a way but i don't know what I'm supposed to do now? Is there a check list that i can go through and re-apply? Where do i re-apply on the same form? Please help as we are a small company and cant really have a budget for hiring a specialist + don't know any also... p.s. the current ads on the site are my own through doubleclick... Thanks in advance! Best, Karington

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• Is the Cloud ready for an Enterprise Java web application? Seeking a JEE hosting advice.

  - by Jakub Holý

  Greetings to all the smart people around here! I'd like to ask whether it is feasible or a good idea at all to deploy a Java enterprise web application to a Cloud such as Amazon EC2. More exactly, I'm looking for infrastructure options for an application that shall handle few hundred users with long but neither CPU nor memory intensive sessions. I'm considering dedicated servers, virtual private servers (VPSs) and EC2. I've noticed that there is a project called JBoss Cloud so people are working on enabling such a deployment, on the other hand it doesn't seem to be mature yet and I'm not sure that the cloud is ready for this kind of applications, which differs from the typical cloud-based applications like Twitter. Would you recommend to deploy it to the cloud? What are the pros and cons? The application is a Java EE 5 web application whose main function is to enable users to compose their own customized Product by combining the available Parts. It uses stateless and stateful session beans and JPA for persistence of entities to a RDBMS and fetches information about Parts from the company's inventory system via a web service. Aside of external users it's used also by few internal ones, who are authenticated against the company's LDAP. The application should handle around 300-400 concurrent users building their product and should be reasonably scalable and available though these qualities are only of a medium importance at this stage. I've proposed an architecture consisting of a firewall (FW) and load balancer supporting sticky sessions and https (in the Cloud this would be replaced with EC2's Elastic Load Balancing service and FW on the app. servers, in a physical architecture the load-balancer would be a HW), then two physical clustered application servers combined with web servers (so that if one fails, a user doesn't loose his/her long built product) and finally a database server. The DB server would need a slave backup instance that can replace the master instance if it fails. This should provide reasonable availability and fault tolerance and provide good scalability as long as a single RDBMS can keep with the load, which should be OK for quite a while because most of the operations are done in the memory using a stateful bean and only occasionally stored or retrieved from the DB and the amount of data is low too. A problematic part could be the dependency on the remote inventory system webservice but with good caching of its outputs in the application it should be OK too. Unfortunately I've only vague idea of the system resources (memory size, number and speed of CPUs/cores) that such an "average Java EE application" for few hundred users needs. My rough and mostly unfounded estimate based on actual Amazon offerings is that 1.7GB and a single, 2-core "modern CPU" with speed around 2.5GHz (the High-CPU Medium Instance) should be sufficient for any of the two application servers (since we can handle higher load by provisioning more of them). Alternatively I would consider using the Large instance (64b, 7.5GB RAM, 2 cores at 1GHz) So my question is whether such a deployment to the cloud is technically and financially feasible or whether dedicated/VPS servers would be a better option and whether there are some real-world experiences with something similar. Thank you very much! /Jakub Holy PS: I've found the JBoss EAP in a Cloud Case Study that shows that it is possible to deploy a real-world Java EE application to the EC2 cloud but unfortunately there're no details regarding topology, instance types, or anything :-(

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• Cisco ASA not forwarding traffic from one interface to another

  - by Antoine Benkemoun

  Hello ServerFault, I am needing help in the configuration process of my Cisco ASA 5510. I have set up 4 Cisco ASA interconnected together via a big LAN. Each Cisco ASA has 3 or 4 LANs attached to them. The IP routing part is taken care of by OSPF. My problem is on another level. A computer connected to one of the LANs attached to an ASA has no problem communicating with the outside world. The outside world being anything "after" the ASA. My problem is that I am completely unable to have them communicate with another LAN connected to the same ASA. To rephrase this, I am unable to send traffic from one interface of a given ASA to another interface of the same ASA. My configuration is the following : ! hostname Fuji ! interface Ethernet0/0 speed 100 duplex full nameif outside security-level 0 ip address 10.0.0.2 255.255.255.0 no shutdown ! interface Ethernet0/1 speed 100 duplex full nameif cs4 no shutdown security-level 100 ip address 10.1.4.1 255.255.255.0 ! interface Ethernet0/2 speed 100 duplex full no shutdown ! interface Ethernet0/2.15 vlan 15 nameif cs5 security-level 100 ip address 10.1.5.1 255.255.255.0 ! interface Ethernet0/2.16 vlan 16 nameif cs6 security-level 100 ip address 10.1.6.1 255.255.255.0 ! interface Management0/0 speed 100 duplex full nameif management security-level 100 ip address 10.6.0.252 255.255.255.0 ! access-list nat_cs4 extended permit ip 10.1.4.0 255.255.255.0 any access-list acl_cs4 extended permit ip 10.1.4.0 255.255.255.0 any access-list nat_cs5 extended permit ip 10.1.5.0 255.255.255.0 any access-list acl_cs5 extended permit ip 10.1.5.0 255.255.255.0 any access-list nat_cs6 extended permit ip 10.1.6.0 255.255.255.0 any access-list acl_cs6 extended permit ip 10.1.6.0 255.255.255.0 any ! access-list nat_outside extended permit ip any any access-list acl_outside extended permit ip any 10.1.4.0 255.255.255.0 access-list acl_outside extended permit ip any 10.1.5.0 255.255.255.0 access-list acl_outside extended permit ip any 10.1.6.0 255.255.255.0 ! nat (outside) 0 access-list nat_outside nat (cs4) 0 access-list nat_cs4 nat (cs5) 0 access-list nat_cs5 nat (cs6) 0 access-list nat_cs6 ! static (outside,cs4) 0.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 netmask 0.0.0.0 static (outside,cs5) 0.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 netmask 0.0.0.0 static (outside,cs6) 0.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 netmask 0.0.0.0 ! static (cs4,outside) 10.1.4.0 10.1.4.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 static (cs4,cs5) 10.1.4.0 10.1.4.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 static (cs4,cs6) 10.1.4.0 10.1.4.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 ! static (cs5,outside) 10.1.5.0 10.1.5.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 static (cs5,cs4) 10.1.5.0 10.1.5.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 static (cs5,cs6) 10.1.5.0 10.1.5.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 ! static (cs6,outside) 10.1.6.0 10.1.6.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 static (cs6,cs4) 10.1.6.0 10.1.6.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 static (cs6,cs5) 10.1.6.0 10.1.6.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 ! access-group acl_outside in interface outside access-group acl_cs4 in interface cs4 access-group acl_cs5 in interface cs5 access-group acl_cs6 in interface cs6 ! router ospf 1 network 10.0.0.0 255.255.255.0 area 1 network 10.1.4.0 255.255.255.0 area 1 network 10.1.5.0 255.255.255.0 area 1 network 10.1.6.0 255.255.255.0 area 1 log-adj-changes ! There is nothing really complicated in this configuration. It just NATs from one interface to another and that's it. I have tried enabling same-security-traffic permit inter-interface but that doesn't help. I therefore must be missing something a little bit more complicated. Does anyone know why I cannot foward traffic from one interface to another ? Thank you in advance for your help, Antoine

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• Minecraft server Rkit ubuntu upstart [closed]

  - by user1637491

  I have an Intel server running Ubuntu Server 12.04.1 I am working on moving my CraftBukkit Minecraft Server to the new platform. I read the upstart ubuntu cookbook and wrote a .conf file I have a minecraft user (named minecraft) and its home Directory is /home/minecraft it contains prwxrwxrwx 1 minecraft minecraft 0 Sep 19 14:49 command-fifo drwx------ 8 minecraft minecraft 4096 Sep 19 14:50 HDsaves drwx------ 2 minecraft minecraft 4096 Aug 31 15:13 logrolls -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 5 Sep 19 14:49 minecraft.pid drwxrwxrwx 8 minecraft minecraft 180 Sep 19 14:49 ramdisk -rw------- 1 minecraft minecraft 119 Sep 19 10:34 save.sh drwxrwxrwx 9 minecraft minecraft 4096 Sep 19 14:50 server -rw-rw-r-- 1 minecraft minecraft 44 Aug 31 11:40 shutdown.sh the server directory contains drwxrwxrwx 6 minecraft minecraft 4096 Aug 30 13:32 Backups -rwxrwxrwx 1 minecraft minecraft 0 Sep 18 12:26 banned-ips.txt -rwxrwxrwx 1 minecraft minecraft 17 Sep 18 12:26 banned-players.txt drwxrwxrwx 4 minecraft minecraft 4096 Aug 30 12:26 buildcraft -rwxrwxrwx 1 minecraft minecraft 1447 Sep 18 12:26 bukkit.yml -rwxrwxrwx 1 minecraft minecraft 0 Aug 30 11:05 command-fifo drwxrwxrwx 2 minecraft minecraft 4096 Aug 30 12:26 config lrwxrwxrwx 1 minecraft minecraft 23 Sep 19 14:49 craftbukkit.jar -> ramdisk/craftbukkit.jar -rwxrwxrwx 1 minecraft minecraft 17419 Sep 18 12:26 ForgeModLoader-0.log -rwxrwxrwx 1 minecraft minecraft 17420 Sep 18 12:24 ForgeModLoader-1.log -rwxrwxrwx 1 minecraft minecraft 17420 Sep 18 11:53 ForgeModLoader-2.log -rwxrwxrwx 1 minecraft minecraft 2576 Aug 30 11:05 help.yml drwxrwxrwx 2 minecraft minecraft 4096 Aug 30 12:31 lib drwxrwxrwx 3 minecraft minecraft 4096 Sep 19 14:49 logrolls -rwxrwxrwx 1 minecraft minecraft 200035 Sep 4 17:58 Minecraft_RKit.jar lrwxrwxrwx 1 minecraft minecraft 12 Sep 19 14:49 mods -> ramdisk/mods -rwxrwxrwx 1 minecraft minecraft 5 Sep 18 12:26 ops.txt -rwxrwxrwx 1 minecraft minecraft 0 Aug 30 11:05 permissions.yml lrwxrwxrwx 1 minecraft minecraft 15 Sep 19 14:49 plugins -> ramdisk/plugins lrwxrwxrwx 1 minecraft minecraft 16 Sep 19 14:49 redpower -> ramdisk/redpower -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 255 Sep 19 15:10 server.log -rwxrwxrwx 1 minecraft minecraft 464 Sep 8 11:09 server.properties drwxrwxrwx 3 minecraft minecraft 4096 Sep 5 16:05 SpaceModule drwxrwxrwx 3 minecraft minecraft 4096 Aug 30 13:07 toolkit -rwxrwxrwx 1 minecraft minecraft 1433 Sep 14 21:04 wepif.yml -rwxrwxrwx 1 minecraft minecraft 0 Sep 18 12:26 white-list.txt lrwxrwxrwx 1 minecraft minecraft 13 Sep 19 14:49 world -> ramdisk/world lrwxrwxrwx 1 minecraft minecraft 20 Sep 19 14:49 world_nether -> ramdisk/world_nether lrwxrwxrwx 1 minecraft minecraft 21 Sep 19 14:49 world_the_end -> ramdisk/world_the_end the startup .conf file: # Starts the minecraft server after loading JRE from ramdisk # # for now im still working on it description "minecraft-server" start on filesystem or runlevel [2345] stop on runlevel [!2345] oom score -999 kill timeout 60 pre-start script sh /usr/lib/jvm/java.sh end script script cd /home/minecraft echo "$(date) Starting minecraft" sudo cp -r /home/minecraft/HDsaves/* ramdisk sudo chown -R minecraft:minecraft ramdisk sudo chmod -R 777 ramdisk sudo ln -sf ramdisk/* server sudo chown -R minecraft:minecraft server sudo chmod -R 777 server sudo mv server/server.log server/logrolls/ zip server/logrolls/temp.zip server/logrolls/server.log sudo mv server/logrolls/temp.zip server/logrolls/"$(date)".log.zip sudo rm server/logrolls/server.log sudo rm -f command-fifo sudo mkfifo command-fifo sudo chown minecraft:minecraft command-fifo sudo chmod 777 command-fifo echo "$(date) Root commands finished" echo "$(date) Starting Wrapper" cd server sudo -u minecraft java -Xmx30M -Xms30M -XX:MaxPermSize=40M -Djava.awt.headless=true -jar Minecraft_RKit.jar timv:*spoilers* <> /home/minecraft/command-fifo & sudo echo $! >| /home/minecraft/minecraft.pid echo "$(date) Minecraft Started" end script pre-stop script cd /home/minecraft PID=`cat minecraft.pid` if [ "$PID" != "" ]; then echo "Stopping MineCraft Server PID=$PID" sudo echo save-all >> command-fifo sudo echo .stopwrapper >> command-fifo wait $PID sudo rm minecraft.pid sudo rsync -rt --delete ramdisk/* HDsaves/ echo "$(date) ramdisk save complete" echo "MineCraft save-shutdown complete." else echo "MineCraft not running" fi end script so when I start it up the upstart gererated log says: Wed Sep 19 14:49:30 CDT 2012 Starting minecraft adding: server/logrolls/server.log (stored 0%) Wed Sep 19 14:49:56 CDT 2012 Root commands finished Wed Sep 19 14:49:56 CDT 2012 Starting Wrapper Wed Sep 19 14:49:56 CDT 2012 Minecraft Started

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• Why do we need different CPU architecture for server & mini/mainframe & mixed-core?

  - by claws

  Hello, I was just wondering what other CPU architectures are available other than INTEL & AMD. So, found List of CPU architectures on Wikipedia. It categorizes notable CPU architectures into following categories. Embedded CPU architectures Microcomputer CPU architectures Workstation/Server CPU architectures Mini/Mainframe CPU architectures Mixed core CPU architectures I was analyzing the purposes and have few doubts. I taking Microcomputer CPU (PC) architecture as reference and comparing others. Embedded CPU architecture: They are a completely new world. Embedded systems are small & do very specific task mostly real time & low power consuming so we do not need so many & such wide registers available in a microcomputer CPU (typical PC). In other words we do need a new small & tiny architecture. Hence new architecture & new instruction RISC. The above point also clarifies why do we need a separate operating system (RTOS). Workstation/Server CPU architectures I don't know what is a workstation. Someone clarify regarding the workstation. As of the server. It is dedicated to run a specific software (server software like httpd, mysql etc.). Even if other processes run we need to give server process priority therefore there is a need for new scheduling scheme and thus we need operating system different than general purpose one. If you have any more points for the need of server OS please mention. But I don't get why do we need a new CPU Architecture. Why cant Microcomputer CPU architecture do the job. Can someone please clarify? Mini/Mainframe CPU architectures Again I don't know what are these & what miniframes or mainframes used for? I just know they are very big and occupy complete floor. But I never read about some real world problems they are trying to solve. If any one working on one of these. Share your knowledge. Can some one clarify its purpose & why is it that microcomputer CPU archicture not suitable for it? Is there a new kind of operating system for this too? Why? Mixed core CPU architectures Never heard of these. If possible please keep your answer in this format: XYZ CPU architectures Purpose of XYZ Need for a new architecture. why can't current microcomputer CPU architecture work? They go upto 3GHZ & have upto 8 cores. Need for a new Operating System Why do we need a new kind of operating system for this kind of archictures?

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• Puppet gives SSL error because master is not running?

  - by Daniel Huger

  I started with two clean machines this time. My master is running 12.04 Version: 2.7.11-1ubuntu2 Depends: ruby1.8, puppetmaster-common (= 2.7.11-1ubuntu2) My client is 10.04 Version: 2.6.3-0ubuntu1~lucid1 Depends: puppet-common (= 2.6.3-0ubuntu1~lucid1), ruby1.8 To setup Puppet tutorial: http://shapeshed.com/setting-up-puppet-on-ubuntu-10-04/ To connect master and client: http://shapeshed.com/connecting-clients-to-a-puppet-master/ The first time I tried to connect master to client failed with SSL_connect error. So I did rm -rf /etc/puppet/ssl/ to remove all the keys inside ssl folders. It looked like it work.... BUT client# puppet agent --server puppet --waitforce 60 --test /usr/lib/ruby/1.8/facter/util/resolution.rb:46: warning: Insecure world writable dir /etc/condor in PATH, mode 040777 /usr/lib/ruby/1.8/puppet/defaults.rb:67: warning: Insecure world writable dir /etc/condor in PATH, mode 040777 info: Creating a new SSL key for giab10 warning: peer certificate won't be verified in this SSL session info: Caching certificate for ca warning: peer certificate won't be verified in this SSL session warning: peer certificate won't be verified in this SSL session info: Creating a new SSL certificate request for mybox123 info: Certificate Request fingerprint (md5): XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX warning: peer certificate won't be verified in this SSL session warning: peer certificate won't be verified in this SSL session warning: peer certificate won't be verified in this SSL session warning: peer certificate won't be verified in this SSL session info: Caching certificate for mybox123 err: Could not retrieve catalog from remote server: SSL_connect returned=1 errno=0 state=SSLv3 read server certificate B: certificate verify failed warning: Not using cache on failed catalog It cached but then it couldn't retrieve it. Let me stop here.... worrying I would mess something up. But let's check master's status. * master is not running WoW.... ??? master# service puppetmaster start * Starting puppet master [OK] master# service puppetmaster status * master is not running I think time is sync. Well, we are behind a firewall so the port to sync time is disbaled. I checked with date and they seem okay. What about master not running? Is that the cause? Any help is appreciated. Thanks! /var/lib/puppet/log/masterhttp.log [2012-06-30 00:13:25] INFO WEBrick 1.3.1 [2012-06-30 00:13:25] INFO ruby 1.8.7 (2011-06-30) [x86_64-linux] [2012-06-30 00:13:25] WARN TCPServer Error: Address already in use - bind(2) [2012-06-30 00:19:40] INFO WEBrick 1.3.1 [2012-06-30 00:19:40] INFO ruby 1.8.7 (2011-06-30) [x86_64-linux] [2012-06-30 00:19:40] WARN TCPServer Error: Address already in use - bind(2) [2012-06-30 00:28:58] INFO WEBrick 1.3.1 [2012-06-30 00:28:58] INFO ruby 1.8.7 (2011-06-30) [x86_64-linux] [2012-06-30 00:28:58] WARN TCPServer Error: Address already in use - bind(2) [2012-06-30 15:31:25] INFO WEBrick 1.3.1 [2012-06-30 15:31:25] INFO ruby 1.8.7 (2011-06-30) [x86_64-linux] [2012-06-30 15:31:25] WARN TCPServer Error: Address already in use - bind(2) 1 S puppet 5186 1 0 80 0 - 29410 poll_s 15:44 ? 00:00:00 /usr/bin/ruby1.8 /usr/bin/puppet master --masterport=8140 4 S root 5235 5005 0 80 0 - 2344 pipe_w 15:45 pts/0 00:00:00 grep --color=auto puppet kill -9 5186 puppet master service puppetmaster status * master is not running I always have this error, but I always ignored it. http://pastebin.com/exbpArjv What could it mean? Time sync? Package not installed? Then how could we do puppetca in the first place?

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• KVM + Cloudmin + IpTables

  - by Alex

  I have a KVM virtualization on a machine. I use Ubuntu Server + Cloudmin (in order to manage virtual machine instances). On a host system I have four network interfaces: ebadmin@saturn:/var/log$ ifconfig br0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 10:78:d2:ec:16:38 inet addr:192.168.0.253 Bcast:192.168.0.255 Mask:255.255.255.0 inet6 addr: fe80::1278:d2ff:feec:1638/64 Scope:Link UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:589337 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:334357 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 RX bytes:753652448 (753.6 MB) TX bytes:43385198 (43.3 MB) br1 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 6e:a4:06:39:26:60 inet addr:192.168.10.1 Bcast:192.168.10.255 Mask:255.255.255.0 inet6 addr: fe80::6ca4:6ff:fe39:2660/64 Scope:Link UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:16995 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:13309 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 RX bytes:2059264 (2.0 MB) TX bytes:1763980 (1.7 MB) eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 10:78:d2:ec:16:38 UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:610558 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:332382 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 RX bytes:769477564 (769.4 MB) TX bytes:44360402 (44.3 MB) Interrupt:20 Memory:fe400000-fe420000 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:239632 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:239632 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 RX bytes:50738052 (50.7 MB) TX bytes:50738052 (50.7 MB) tap0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 6e:a4:06:39:26:60 inet6 addr: fe80::6ca4:6ff:fe39:2660/64 Scope:Link UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:17821 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:13703 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:500 RX bytes:2370468 (2.3 MB) TX bytes:1782356 (1.7 MB) br0 is connected to a real network, br1 is used to create a private network shared between guest systems. Now I need to configure iptables for network access. First of all I allow ssh sessions on port 8022 on the host system, then I allow all connections in state RELATED, ESTABLISHED. This is working ok. I install another system as guest, it's IP address is 192.168.10.2, and now I have two problems: I want to allow the access from this host to the outside world, cannot accomplish this. I can ssh from the host. I want to be able to ssh to the guest from the outside world using 8023 port. Cannot accomplish this. Full iptables configuration is following: ebadmin@saturn:/var/log$ sudo iptables --list [sudo] password for ebadmin: Chain INPUT (policy DROP) target prot opt source destination ACCEPT all -- anywhere anywhere ACCEPT tcp -- anywhere anywhere tcp dpt:8022 ACCEPT all -- anywhere anywhere state RELATED,ESTABLISHED LOG all -- anywhere anywhere LOG level warning Chain FORWARD (policy ACCEPT) target prot opt source destination LOG all -- anywhere anywhere LOG level warning Chain OUTPUT (policy ACCEPT) target prot opt source destination LOG all -- anywhere anywhere LOG level warning ebadmin@saturn:/var/log$ sudo iptables -t nat --list Chain PREROUTING (policy ACCEPT) target prot opt source destination DNAT tcp -- anywhere anywhere tcp spt:8023 to:192.168.10.2:22 Chain INPUT (policy ACCEPT) target prot opt source destination Chain OUTPUT (policy ACCEPT) target prot opt source destination Chain POSTROUTING (policy ACCEPT) target prot opt source destination The worst of all is that I don't know how to interpret iptables logs. I don't see the final decision of the firewall. Need help urgently.

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• How to automate org-refile for multiple todo

  - by lawlist

  I'm looking to automate org-refile so that it will find all of the matches and re-file them to a specific location (but not archive). I found a fully automated method of archiving multiple todo, and I am hopeful to find or create (with some help) something similar to this awesome function (but for a different heading / location other than archiving): https://github.com/tonyday567/jwiegley-dot-emacs/blob/master/dot-org.el (defun org-archive-done-tasks () (interactive) (save-excursion (goto-char (point-min)) (while (re-search-forward "\* \\(None\\|Someday\\) " nil t) (if (save-restriction (save-excursion (org-narrow-to-subtree) (search-forward ":LOGBOOK:" nil t))) (forward-line) (org-archive-subtree) (goto-char (line-beginning-position)))))) I also found this (written by aculich), which is a step in the right direction, but still requires repeating the function manually: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7509463/how-to-move-a-subtree-to-another-subtree-in-org-mode-emacs ;; I also wanted a way for org-refile to refile easily to a subtree, so I wrote some code and generalized it so that it will set an arbitrary immediate target anywhere (not just in the same file). ;; Basic usage is to move somewhere in Tree B and type C-c C-x C-m to mark the target for refiling, then move to the entry in Tree A that you want to refile and type C-c C-w which will immediately refile into the target location you set in Tree B without prompting you, unless you called org-refile-immediate-target with a prefix arg C-u C-c C-x C-m. ;; Note that if you press C-c C-w in rapid succession to refile multiple entries it will preserve the order of your entries even if org-reverse-note-order is set to t, but you can turn it off to respect the setting of org-reverse-note-order with a double prefix arg C-u C-u C-c C-x C-m. (defvar org-refile-immediate nil "Refile immediately using `org-refile-immediate-target' instead of prompting.") (make-local-variable 'org-refile-immediate) (defvar org-refile-immediate-preserve-order t "If last command was also `org-refile' then preserve ordering.") (make-local-variable 'org-refile-immediate-preserve-order) (defvar org-refile-immediate-target nil) "Value uses the same format as an item in `org-refile-targets'." (make-local-variable 'org-refile-immediate-target) (defadvice org-refile (around org-immediate activate) (if (not org-refile-immediate) ad-do-it ;; if last command was `org-refile' then preserve ordering (let ((org-reverse-note-order (if (and org-refile-immediate-preserve-order (eq last-command 'org-refile)) nil org-reverse-note-order))) (ad-set-arg 2 (assoc org-refile-immediate-target (org-refile-get-targets))) (prog1 ad-do-it (setq this-command 'org-refile))))) (defadvice org-refile-cache-clear (after org-refile-history-clear activate) (setq org-refile-targets (default-value 'org-refile-targets)) (setq org-refile-immediate nil) (setq org-refile-immediate-target nil) (setq org-refile-history nil)) ;;;###autoload (defun org-refile-immediate-target (&optional arg) "Set current entry as `org-refile' target. Non-nil turns off `org-refile-immediate', otherwise `org-refile' will immediately refile without prompting for target using most recent entry in `org-refile-targets' that matches `org-refile-immediate-target' as the default." (interactive "P") (if (equal arg '(16)) (progn (setq org-refile-immediate-preserve-order (not org-refile-immediate-preserve-order)) (message "Order preserving is turned: %s" (if org-refile-immediate-preserve-order "on" "off"))) (setq org-refile-immediate (unless arg t)) (make-local-variable 'org-refile-targets) (let* ((components (org-heading-components)) (level (first components)) (heading (nth 4 components)) (string (substring-no-properties heading))) (add-to-list 'org-refile-targets (append (list (buffer-file-name)) (cons :regexp (format "^%s %s$" (make-string level ?*) string)))) (setq org-refile-immediate-target heading)))) (define-key org-mode-map "\C-c\C-x\C-m" 'org-refile-immediate-target) It sure would be helpful if aculich, or some other maven, could please create a variable similar to (setq org-archive-location "~/0.todo.org::* Archived Tasks") so users can specify the file and heading, which is already a part of the org-archive-subtree functionality. I'm doing a search and mark because I don't have the wherewithal to create something like org-archive-location for this setup. EDIT: One step closer -- almost home free . . . (defun lawlist-auto-refile () (interactive) (beginning-of-buffer) (re-search-forward "\* UNDATED") (org-refile-immediate-target) ;; cursor must be on a heading to work. (save-excursion (re-search-backward "\* UNDATED") ;; must be written in such a way so that sub-entries of * UNDATED are not searched; or else infinity loop. (while (re-search-backward "\* \\(None\\|Someday\\) " nil t) (org-refile) ) ) )

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• Exchange Server 2007 Send and Receive Connectors

  - by Mistiry

  I have gotten awesome advice from users on here for getting Exchange on Windows SBS 2008 set up. I think this is the final piece and I'm ready for roll-out! I need to set up Exchange so that it RECEIVES mail from our existing mail server as a Forward [aliases on the existing mail server to forward mail from [email protected] to [email protected]] (not using the POP3 Connector), and SENDS mail through that server as well (sends from [email protected] to [email protected] and then out to the world, showing in the headers as from [email protected] or at absolute least have the reply-to set as this). Alternatively, as long as the .net email address doesn't show in the From and replies are directed to the .com account, email can go from Exchange to the outside world without directing through the existing mail server. External Domain: domain.com Internal Domain: domain.local Internet Domain Name Set in SBS Console: domain.net When I go to http://remote.domain.net I get the Remote Web Workspace, and can login to both Sharepoint and OWA. I can send an email from OWA to a GMail account. I receive it from [email protected], which is an alias of [email protected]. I cannot, however, send an email from OWA to ANY domain.com email addresses. I am also not receiving any email to this Exchange account (except for NDRs). When I try sending an email to a domain.com account, here is the error (I had to replace all < and with { and }): Delivery has failed to these recipients or distribution lists: [email protected] The recipient's e-mail address was not found in the recipient's e-mail system. Microsoft Exchange will not try to redeliver this message for you. Please check the e-mail address and try resending this message, or provide the following diagnostic text to your system administrator. Generating server: IFEXCHANGE.domain.local [email protected] #550 5.1.1 RESOLVER.ADR.RecipNotFound; not found ## Original message headers: Received: from IFEXCHANGE.domain.local ([fe80::4d34:abc5:f7fd:e51a]) by IFEXCHANGE.domain.local ([fe80::4d34:abc5:f7fd:e51a%10]) with mapi; Tue, 17 Aug 2010 14:14:14 -0400 Content-Type: application/ms-tnef; name="winmail.dat" Content-Transfer-Encoding: binary From: John Doe {[email protected]} To: "[email protected]" {[email protected]} Date: Tue, 17 Aug 2010 14:14:12 -0400 Subject: asdf Thread-Topic: asdf Thread-Index: AQHLPjf+h6hA5MJ1JUu1WS4I4CiWeA== Message-ID: {E4E10393768D784D8760A51938BA456A029934BA30@IFEXCHANGE.domain.local} Accept-Language: en-US Content-Language: en-US X-MS-Has-Attach: X-MS-TNEF-Correlator: {E4E10393768D784D8760A51938BA456A029934BA30@IFEXCHANGE.domain.local} MIME-Version: 1.0 I hope I explained the situation well enough for someone to be able to explain to me what I'm missing. If I could, I'd be putting a 10K bounty, but unfortunately I've got only 74 reputation (hey, I'm a newbie here!). I'm pretty sure the obvious "RecipNotFound" error is why its not working, my question is how to resolve this. The email account exists, it receives mail just fine, yet when I send it from the Exchange server it fails. EDIT In OC-Hub Transport, the Email Address Policies has 2 entries. "Windows SBS Email Address Policy" is set up to: Include All Recipient Types, no conditions, and SMTP %[email protected]. "Default Policy" set to: Include All Recipient Types, no conditions, and SMTP @domain.net. Three Authoritative Accepted domains domain.com domain.local (Default) domain.net Remote Domains tab has two entries. Default with domain * Windows SBS Company Web Domain with domain companyweb.

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• How To Start Your Own Professional Blog with WordPress

  - by Matthew Guay

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

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• ASP.NET MVC 3 Hosting :: New Features in ASP.NET MVC 3

  - by mbridge

  Razor View Engine The Razor view engine is a new view engine option for ASP.NET MVC that supports the Razor templating syntax. The Razor syntax is a streamlined approach to HTML templating designed with the goal of being a code driven minimalist templating approach that builds on existing C#, VB.NET and HTML knowledge. The result of this approach is that Razor views are very lean and do not contain unnecessary constructs that get in the way of you and your code. ASP.NET MVC 3 Preview 1 only supports C# Razor views which use the .cshtml file extension. VB.NET support will be enabled in later releases of ASP.NET MVC 3. For more information and examples, see Introducing “Razor” – a new view engine for ASP.NET on Scott Guthrie’s blog. Dynamic View and ViewModel Properties A new dynamic View property is available in views, which provides access to the ViewData object using a simpler syntax. For example, imagine two items are added to the ViewData dictionary in the Index controller action using code like the following: public ActionResult Index() {          ViewData["Title"] = "The Title";          ViewData["Message"] = "Hello World!"; } Those properties can be accessed in the Index view using code like this: <h2>View.Title</h2> <p>View.Message</p> There is also a new dynamic ViewModel property in the Controller class that lets you add items to the ViewData dictionary using a simpler syntax. Using the previous controller example, the two values added to the ViewData dictionary can be rewritten using the following code: public ActionResult Index() {     ViewModel.Title = "The Title";     ViewModel.Message = "Hello World!"; } “Add View” Dialog Box Supports Multiple View Engines The Add View dialog box in Visual Studio includes extensibility hooks that allow it to support multiple view engines, as shown in the following figure: Service Location and Dependency Injection Support ASP.NET MVC 3 introduces improved support for applying Dependency Injection (DI) via Inversion of Control (IoC) containers. ASP.NET MVC 3 Preview 1 provides the following hooks for locating services and injecting dependencies: - Creating controller factories. - Creating controllers and setting dependencies. - Setting dependencies on view pages for both the Web Form view engine and the Razor view engine (for types that derive from ViewPage, ViewUserControl, ViewMasterPage, WebViewPage). - Setting dependencies on action filters. Using a Dependency Injection container is not required in order for ASP.NET MVC 3 to function properly. Global Filters ASP.NET MVC 3 allows you to register filters that apply globally to all controller action methods. Adding a filter to the global filters collection ensures that the filter runs for all controller requests. To register an action filter globally, you can make the following call in the Application_Start method in the Global.asax file: GlobalFilters.Filters.Add(new MyActionFilter()); The source of global action filters is abstracted by the new IFilterProvider interface, which can be registered manually or by using Dependency Injection. This allows you to provide your own source of action filters and choose at run time whether to apply a filter to an action in a particular request. New JsonValueProviderFactory Class The new JsonValueProviderFactory class allows action methods to receive JSON-encoded data and model-bind it to an action-method parameter. This is useful in scenarios such as client templating. Client templates enable you to format and display a single data item or set of data items by using a fragment of HTML. ASP.NET MVC 3 lets you connect client templates easily with an action method that both returns and receives JSON data. Support for .NET Framework 4 Validation Attributes and IvalidatableObject The ValidationAttribute class was improved in the .NET Framework 4 to enable richer support for validation. When you write a custom validation attribute, you can use a new IsValid overload that provides a ValidationContext instance. This instance provides information about the current validation context, such as what object is being validated. This change enables scenarios such as validating the current value based on another property of the model. The following example shows a sample custom attribute that ensures that the value of PropertyOne is always larger than the value of PropertyTwo: public class CompareValidationAttribute : ValidationAttribute {     protected override ValidationResult IsValid(object value,              ValidationContext validationContext) {         var model = validationContext.ObjectInstance as SomeModel;         if (model.PropertyOne > model.PropertyTwo) {            return ValidationResult.Success;         }         return new ValidationResult("PropertyOne must be larger than PropertyTwo");     } } Validation in ASP.NET MVC also supports the .NET Framework 4 IValidatableObject interface. This interface allows your model to perform model-level validation, as in the following example: public class SomeModel : IValidatableObject {     public int PropertyOne { get; set; }     public int PropertyTwo { get; set; }     public IEnumerable<ValidationResult> Validate(ValidationContext validationContext) {         if (PropertyOne <= PropertyTwo) {            yield return new ValidationResult(                "PropertyOne must be larger than PropertyTwo");         }     } } New IClientValidatable Interface The new IClientValidatable interface allows the validation framework to discover at run time whether a validator has support for client validation. This interface is designed to be independent of the underlying implementation; therefore, where you implement the interface depends on the validation framework in use. For example, for the default data annotations-based validator, the interface would be applied on the validation attribute. Support for .NET Framework 4 Metadata Attributes ASP.NET MVC 3 now supports .NET Framework 4 metadata attributes such as DisplayAttribute. New IMetadataAware Interface The new IMetadataAware interface allows you to write attributes that simplify how you can contribute to the ModelMetadata creation process. Before this interface was available, you needed to write a custom metadata provider in order to have an attribute provide extra metadata. This interface is consumed by the AssociatedMetadataProvider class, so support for the IMetadataAware interface is automatically inherited by all classes that derive from that class (notably, the DataAnnotationsModelMetadataProvider class). New Action Result Types In ASP.NET MVC 3, the Controller class includes two new action result types and corresponding helper methods. HttpNotFoundResult Action The new HttpNotFoundResult action result is used to indicate that a resource requested by the current URL was not found. The status code is 404. This class derives from HttpStatusCodeResult. The Controller class includes an HttpNotFound method that returns an instance of this action result type, as shown in the following example: public ActionResult List(int id) {     if (id < 0) {                 return HttpNotFound();     }     return View(); } HttpStatusCodeResult Action The new HttpStatusCodeResult action result is used to set the response status code and description. Permanent Redirect The HttpRedirectResult class has a new Boolean Permanent property that is used to indicate whether a permanent redirect should occur. A permanent redirect uses the HTTP 301 status code. Corresponding to this change, the Controller class now has several methods for performing permanent redirects: - RedirectPermanent - RedirectToRoutePermanent - RedirectToActionPermanent These methods return an instance of HttpRedirectResult with the Permanent property set to true. Breaking Changes The order of execution for exception filters has changed for exception filters that have the same Order value. In ASP.NET MVC 2 and earlier, exception filters on the controller with the same Order as those on an action method were executed before the exception filters on the action method. This would typically be the case when exception filters were applied without a specified order Order value. In MVC 3, this order has been reversed in order to allow the most specific exception handler to execute first. As in earlier versions, if the Order property is explicitly specified, the filters are run in the specified order. Known Issues When you are editing a Razor view (CSHTML file), the Go To Controller menu item in Visual Studio will not be available, and there are no code snippets.

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• Hosting the Razor Engine for Templating in Non-Web Applications

  - by Rick Strahl

  Microsoft’s new Razor HTML Rendering Engine that is currently shipping with ASP.NET MVC previews can be used outside of ASP.NET. Razor is an alternative view engine that can be used instead of the ASP.NET Page engine that currently works with ASP.NET WebForms and MVC. It provides a simpler and more readable markup syntax and is much more light weight in terms of functionality than the full blown WebForms Page engine, focusing only on features that are more along the lines of a pure view engine (or classic ASP!) with focus on expression and code rendering rather than a complex control/object model. Like the Page engine though, the parser understands .NET code syntax which can be embedded into templates, and behind the scenes the engine compiles markup and script code into an executing piece of .NET code in an assembly. Although it ships as part of the ASP.NET MVC and WebMatrix the Razor Engine itself is not directly dependent on ASP.NET or IIS or HTTP in any way. And although there are some markup and rendering features that are optimized for HTML based output generation, Razor is essentially a free standing template engine. And what’s really nice is that unlike the ASP.NET Runtime, Razor is fairly easy to host inside of your own non-Web applications to provide templating functionality. Templating in non-Web Applications? Yes please! So why might you host a template engine in your non-Web application? Template rendering is useful in many places and I have a number of applications that make heavy use of it. One of my applications – West Wind Html Help Builder - exclusively uses template based rendering to merge user supplied help text content into customizable and executable HTML markup templates that provide HTML output for CHM style HTML Help. This is an older product and it’s not actually using .NET at the moment – and this is one reason I’m looking at Razor for script hosting at the moment. For a few .NET applications though I’ve actually used the ASP.NET Runtime hosting to provide templating and mail merge style functionality and while that works reasonably well it’s a very heavy handed approach. It’s very resource intensive and has potential issues with versioning in various different versions of .NET. The generic implementation I created in the article above requires a lot of fix up to mimic an HTTP request in a non-HTTP environment and there are a lot of little things that have to happen to ensure that the ASP.NET runtime works properly most of it having nothing to do with the templating aspect but just satisfying ASP.NET’s requirements. The Razor Engine on the other hand is fairly light weight and completely decoupled from the ASP.NET runtime and the HTTP processing. Rather it’s a pure template engine whose sole purpose is to render text templates. Hosting this engine in your own applications can be accomplished with a reasonable amount of code (actually just a few lines with the tools I’m about to describe) and without having to fake HTTP requests. It’s also much lighter on resource usage and you can easily attach custom properties to your base template implementation to easily pass context from the parent application into templates all of which was rather complicated with ASP.NET runtime hosting. Installing the Razor Template Engine You can get Razor as part of the MVC 3 (RC and later) or Web Matrix. Both are available as downloadable components from the Web Platform Installer Version 3.0 (!important – V2 doesn’t show these components). If you already have that version of the WPI installed just fire it up. You can get the latest version of the Web Platform Installer from here: http://www.microsoft.com/web/gallery/install.aspx Once the platform Installer 3.0 is installed install either MVC 3 or ASP.NET Web Pages. Once installed you’ll find a System.Web.Razor assembly in C:\Program Files\Microsoft ASP.NET\ASP.NET Web Pages\v1.0\Assemblies\System.Web.Razor.dll which you can add as a reference to your project. Creating a Wrapper The basic Razor Hosting API is pretty simple and you can host Razor with a (large-ish) handful of lines of code. I’ll show the basics of it later in this article. However, if you want to customize the rendering and handle assembly and namespace includes for the markup as well as deal with text and file inputs as well as forcing Razor to run in a separate AppDomain so you can unload the code-generated assemblies and deal with assembly caching for re-used templates little more work is required to create something that is more easily reusable. For this reason I created a Razor Hosting wrapper project that combines a bunch of this functionality into an easy to use hosting class, a hosting factory that can load the engine in a separate AppDomain and a couple of hosting containers that provided folder based and string based caching for templates for an easily embeddable and reusable engine with easy to use syntax. If you just want the code and play with the samples and source go grab the latest code from the Subversion Repository at: http://www.west-wind.com:8080/svn/articles/trunk/RazorHosting/ or a snapshot from: http://www.west-wind.com/files/tools/RazorHosting.zip Getting Started Before I get into how hosting with Razor works, let’s take a look at how you can get up and running quickly with the wrapper classes provided. It only takes a few lines of code. The easiest way to use these Razor Hosting Wrappers is to use one of the two HostContainers provided. One is for hosting Razor scripts in a directory and rendering them as relative paths from these script files on disk. The other HostContainer serves razor scripts from string templates… Let’s start with a very simple template that displays some simple expressions, some code blocks and demonstrates rendering some data from contextual data that you pass to the template in the form of a ‘context’. Here’s a simple Razor template: @using System.Reflection Hello @Context.FirstName! Your entry was entered on: @Context.Entered @{ // Code block: Update the host Windows Form passed in through the context Context.WinForm.Text = "Hello World from Razor at " + DateTime.Now.ToString(); } AppDomain Id: @AppDomain.CurrentDomain.FriendlyName Assembly: @Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().FullName Code based output: @{ // Write output with Response object from code string output = string.Empty; for (int i = 0; i < 10; i++) { output += i.ToString() + " "; } Response.Write(output); } Pretty easy to see what’s going on here. The only unusual thing in this code is the Context object which is an arbitrary object I’m passing from the host to the template by way of the template base class. I’m also displaying the current AppDomain and the executing Assembly name so you can see how compiling and running a template actually loads up new assemblies. Also note that as part of my context I’m passing a reference to the current Windows Form down to the template and changing the title from within the script. It’s a silly example, but it demonstrates two-way communication between host and template and back which can be very powerful. The easiest way to quickly render this template is to use the RazorEngine<TTemplateBase> class. The generic parameter specifies a template base class type that is used by Razor internally to generate the class it generates from a template. The default implementation provided in my RazorHosting wrapper is RazorTemplateBase. Here’s a simple one that renders from a string and outputs a string: var engine = new RazorEngine<RazorTemplateBase>(); // we can pass any object as context - here create a custom context var context = new CustomContext() { WinForm = this, FirstName = "Rick", Entered = DateTime.Now.AddDays(-10) }; string output = engine.RenderTemplate(this.txtSource.Text new string[] { "System.Windows.Forms.dll" }, context); if (output == null) this.txtResult.Text = "*** ERROR:\r\n" + engine.ErrorMessage; else this.txtResult.Text = output; Simple enough. This code renders a template from a string input and returns a result back as a string. It  creates a custom context and passes that to the template which can then access the Context’s properties. Note that anything passed as ‘context’ must be serializable (or MarshalByRefObject) – otherwise you get an exception when passing the reference over AppDomain boundaries (discussed later). Passing a context is optional, but is a key feature in being able to share data between the host application and the template. Note that we use the Context object to access FirstName, Entered and even the host Windows Form object which is used in the template to change the Window caption from within the script! In the code above all the work happens in the RenderTemplate method which provide a variety of overloads to read and write to and from strings, files and TextReaders/Writers. Here’s another example that renders from a file input using a TextReader: using (reader = new StreamReader("templates\\simple.csHtml", true)) { result = host.RenderTemplate(reader, new string[] { "System.Windows.Forms.dll" }, this.CustomContext); } RenderTemplate() is fairly high level and it handles loading of the runtime, compiling into an assembly and rendering of the template. If you want more control you can use the lower level methods to control each step of the way which is important for the HostContainers I’ll discuss later. Basically for those scenarios you want to separate out loading of the engine, compiling into an assembly and then rendering the template from the assembly. Why? So we can keep assemblies cached. In the code above a new assembly is created for each template rendered which is inefficient and uses up resources. Depending on the size of your templates and how often you fire them you can chew through memory very quickly. This slighter lower level approach is only a couple of extra steps: // we can pass any object as context - here create a custom context var context = new CustomContext() { WinForm = this, FirstName = "Rick", Entered = DateTime.Now.AddDays(-10) }; var engine = new RazorEngine<RazorTemplateBase>(); string assId = null; using (StringReader reader = new StringReader(this.txtSource.Text)) { assId = engine.ParseAndCompileTemplate(new string[] { "System.Windows.Forms.dll" }, reader); } string output = engine.RenderTemplateFromAssembly(assId, context); if (output == null) this.txtResult.Text = "*** ERROR:\r\n" + engine.ErrorMessage; else this.txtResult.Text = output; The difference here is that you can capture the assembly – or rather an Id to it – and potentially hold on to it to render again later assuming the template hasn’t changed. The HostContainers take advantage of this feature to cache the assemblies based on certain criteria like a filename and file time step or a string hash that if not change indicate that an assembly can be reused. Note that ParseAndCompileTemplate returns an assembly Id rather than the assembly itself. This is done so that that the assembly always stays in the host’s AppDomain and is not passed across AppDomain boundaries which would cause load failures. We’ll talk more about this in a minute but for now just realize that assemblies references are stored in a list and are accessible by this ID to allow locating and re-executing of the assembly based on that id. Reuse of the assembly avoids recompilation overhead and creation of yet another assembly that loads into the current AppDomain. You can play around with several different versions of the above code in the main sample form:   Using Hosting Containers for more Control and Caching The above examples simply render templates into assemblies each and every time they are executed. While this works and is even reasonably fast, it’s not terribly efficient. If you render templates more than once it would be nice if you could cache the generated assemblies for example to avoid re-compiling and creating of a new assembly each time. Additionally it would be nice to load template assemblies into a separate AppDomain optionally to be able to be able to unload assembli es and also to protect your host application from scripting attacks with malicious template code. Hosting containers provide also provide a wrapper around the RazorEngine<T> instance, a factory (which allows creation in separate AppDomains) and an easy way to start and stop the container ‘runtime’. The Razor Hosting samples provide two hosting containers: RazorFolderHostContainer and StringHostContainer. The folder host provides a simple runtime environment for a folder structure similar in the way that the ASP.NET runtime handles a virtual directory as it’s ‘application' root. Templates are loaded from disk in relative paths and the resulting assemblies are cached unless the template on disk is changed. The string host also caches templates based on string hashes – if the same string is passed a second time a cached version of the assembly is used. Here’s how HostContainers work. I’ll use the FolderHostContainer because it’s likely the most common way you’d use templates – from disk based templates that can be easily edited and maintained on disk. The first step is to create an instance of it and keep it around somewhere (in the example it’s attached as a property to the Form): RazorFolderHostContainer Host = new RazorFolderHostContainer(); public RazorFolderHostForm() { InitializeComponent(); // The base path for templates - templates are rendered with relative paths // based on this path. Host.TemplatePath = Path.Combine(Environment.CurrentDirectory, TemplateBaseFolder); // Add any assemblies you want reference in your templates Host.ReferencedAssemblies.Add("System.Windows.Forms.dll"); // Start up the host container Host.Start(); } Next anytime you want to render a template you can use simple code like this: private void RenderTemplate(string fileName) { // Pass the template path via the Context var relativePath = Utilities.GetRelativePath(fileName, Host.TemplatePath); if (!Host.RenderTemplate(relativePath, this.Context, Host.RenderingOutputFile)) { MessageBox.Show("Error: " + Host.ErrorMessage); return; } this.webBrowser1.Navigate("file://" + Host.RenderingOutputFile); } You can also render the output to a string instead of to a file: string result = Host.RenderTemplateToString(relativePath,context); Finally if you want to release the engine and shut down the hosting AppDomain you can simply do: Host.Stop(); Stopping the AppDomain and restarting it (ie. calling Stop(); followed by Start()) is also a nice way to release all resources in the AppDomain. The FolderBased domain also supports partial Rendering based on root path based relative paths with the same caching characteristics as the main templates. From within a template you can call out to a partial like this: @RenderPartial(@"partials\PartialRendering.cshtml", Context) where partials\PartialRendering.cshtml is a relative to the template root folder. The folder host example lets you load up templates from disk and display the result in a Web Browser control which demonstrates using Razor HTML output from templates that contain HTML syntax which happens to me my target scenario for Html Help Builder.   The Razor Engine Wrapper Project The project I created to wrap Razor hosting has a fair bit of code and a number of classes associated with it. Most of the components are internally used and as you can see using the final RazorEngine<T> and HostContainer classes is pretty easy. The classes are extensible and I suspect developers will want to build more customized host containers for their applications. Host containers are the key to wrapping up all functionality – Engine, BaseTemplate, AppDomain Hosting, Caching etc in a logical piece that is ready to be plugged into an application. When looking at the code there are a couple of core features provided: Core Razor Engine Hosting This is the core Razor hosting which provides the basics of loading a template, compiling it into an assembly and executing it. This is fairly straightforward, but without a host container that can cache assemblies based on some criteria templates are recompiled and re-created each time which is inefficient (although pretty fast). The base engine wrapper implementation also supports hosting the Razor runtime in a separate AppDomain for security and the ability to unload it on demand. Host Containers The engine hosting itself doesn’t provide any sort of ‘runtime’ service like picking up files from disk, caching assemblies and so forth. So my implementation provides two HostContainers: RazorFolderHostContainer and RazorStringHostContainer. The FolderHost works off a base directory and loads templates based on relative paths (sort of like the ASP.NET runtime does off a virtual). The HostContainers also deal with caching of template assemblies – for the folder host the file date is tracked and checked for updates and unless the template is changed a cached assembly is reused. The StringHostContainer similiarily checks string hashes to figure out whether a particular string template was previously compiled and executed. The HostContainers also act as a simple startup environment and a single reference to easily store and reuse in an application. TemplateBase Classes The template base classes are the base classes that from which the Razor engine generates .NET code. A template is parsed into a class with an Execute() method and the class is based on this template type you can specify. RazorEngine<TBaseTemplate> can receive this type and the HostContainers default to specific templates in their base implementations. Template classes are customizable to allow you to create templates that provide application specific features and interaction from the template to your host application. How does the RazorEngine wrapper work? You can browse the source code in the links above or in the repository or download the source, but I’ll highlight some key features here. Here’s part of the RazorEngine implementation that can be used to host the runtime and that demonstrates the key code required to host the Razor runtime. The RazorEngine class is implemented as a generic class to reflect the Template base class type: public class RazorEngine<TBaseTemplateType> : MarshalByRefObject where TBaseTemplateType : RazorTemplateBase The generic type is used to internally provide easier access to the template type and assignments on it as part of the template processing. The class also inherits MarshalByRefObject to allow execution over AppDomain boundaries – something that all the classes discussed here need to do since there is much interaction between the host and the template. The first two key methods deal with creating a template assembly: /// <summary> /// Creates an instance of the RazorHost with various options applied. /// Applies basic namespace imports and the name of the class to generate /// </summary> /// <param name="generatedNamespace"></param> /// <param name="generatedClass"></param> /// <returns></returns> protected RazorTemplateEngine CreateHost(string generatedNamespace, string generatedClass) { Type baseClassType = typeof(TBaseTemplateType); RazorEngineHost host = new RazorEngineHost(new CSharpRazorCodeLanguage()); host.DefaultBaseClass = baseClassType.FullName; host.DefaultClassName = generatedClass; host.DefaultNamespace = generatedNamespace; host.NamespaceImports.Add("System"); host.NamespaceImports.Add("System.Text"); host.NamespaceImports.Add("System.Collections.Generic"); host.NamespaceImports.Add("System.Linq"); host.NamespaceImports.Add("System.IO"); return new RazorTemplateEngine(host); } /// <summary> /// Parses and compiles a markup template into an assembly and returns /// an assembly name. The name is an ID that can be passed to /// ExecuteTemplateByAssembly which picks up a cached instance of the /// loaded assembly. /// /// </summary> /// <param name="namespaceOfGeneratedClass">The namespace of the class to generate from the template</param> /// <param name="generatedClassName">The name of the class to generate from the template</param> /// <param name="ReferencedAssemblies">Any referenced assemblies by dll name only. Assemblies must be in execution path of host or in GAC.</param> /// <param name="templateSourceReader">Textreader that loads the template</param> /// <remarks> /// The actual assembly isn't returned here to allow for cross-AppDomain /// operation. If the assembly was returned it would fail for cross-AppDomain /// calls. /// </remarks> /// <returns>An assembly Id. The Assembly is cached in memory and can be used with RenderFromAssembly.</returns> public string ParseAndCompileTemplate( string namespaceOfGeneratedClass, string generatedClassName, string[] ReferencedAssemblies, TextReader templateSourceReader) { RazorTemplateEngine engine = CreateHost(namespaceOfGeneratedClass, generatedClassName); // Generate the template class as CodeDom GeneratorResults razorResults = engine.GenerateCode(templateSourceReader); // Create code from the codeDom and compile CSharpCodeProvider codeProvider = new CSharpCodeProvider(); CodeGeneratorOptions options = new CodeGeneratorOptions(); // Capture Code Generated as a string for error info // and debugging LastGeneratedCode = null; using (StringWriter writer = new StringWriter()) { codeProvider.GenerateCodeFromCompileUnit(razorResults.GeneratedCode, writer, options); LastGeneratedCode = writer.ToString(); } CompilerParameters compilerParameters = new CompilerParameters(ReferencedAssemblies); // Standard Assembly References compilerParameters.ReferencedAssemblies.Add("System.dll"); compilerParameters.ReferencedAssemblies.Add("System.Core.dll"); compilerParameters.ReferencedAssemblies.Add("Microsoft.CSharp.dll"); // dynamic support! // Also add the current assembly so RazorTemplateBase is available compilerParameters.ReferencedAssemblies.Add(Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().CodeBase.Substring(8)); compilerParameters.GenerateInMemory = Configuration.CompileToMemory; if (!Configuration.CompileToMemory) compilerParameters.OutputAssembly = Path.Combine(Configuration.TempAssemblyPath, "_" + Guid.NewGuid().ToString("n") + ".dll"); CompilerResults compilerResults = codeProvider.CompileAssemblyFromDom(compilerParameters, razorResults.GeneratedCode); if (compilerResults.Errors.Count > 0) { var compileErrors = new StringBuilder(); foreach (System.CodeDom.Compiler.CompilerError compileError in compilerResults.Errors) compileErrors.Append(String.Format(Resources.LineX0TColX1TErrorX2RN, compileError.Line, compileError.Column, compileError.ErrorText)); this.SetError(compileErrors.ToString() + "\r\n" + LastGeneratedCode); return null; } AssemblyCache.Add(compilerResults.CompiledAssembly.FullName, compilerResults.CompiledAssembly); return compilerResults.CompiledAssembly.FullName; } Think of the internal CreateHost() method as setting up the assembly generated from each template. Each template compiles into a separate assembly. It sets up namespaces, and assembly references, the base class used and the name and namespace for the generated class. ParseAndCompileTemplate() then calls the CreateHost() method to receive the template engine generator which effectively generates a CodeDom from the template – the template is turned into .NET code. The code generated from our earlier example looks something like this: //------------------------------------------------------------------------------ // <auto-generated> // This code was generated by a tool. // Runtime Version:4.0.30319.1 // // Changes to this file may cause incorrect behavior and will be lost if // the code is regenerated. // </auto-generated> //------------------------------------------------------------------------------ namespace RazorTest { using System; using System.Text; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.IO; using System.Reflection; public class RazorTemplate : RazorHosting.RazorTemplateBase { #line hidden public RazorTemplate() { } public override void Execute() { WriteLiteral("Hello "); Write(Context.FirstName); WriteLiteral("! Your entry was entered on: "); Write(Context.Entered); WriteLiteral("\r\n\r\n"); // Code block: Update the host Windows Form passed in through the context Context.WinForm.Text = "Hello World from Razor at " + DateTime.Now.ToString(); WriteLiteral("\r\nAppDomain Id:\r\n "); Write(AppDomain.CurrentDomain.FriendlyName); WriteLiteral("\r\n \r\nAssembly:\r\n "); Write(Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().FullName); WriteLiteral("\r\n\r\nCode based output: \r\n"); // Write output with Response object from code string output = string.Empty; for (int i = 0; i < 10; i++) { output += i.ToString() + " "; } } } } Basically the template’s body is turned into code in an Execute method that is called. Internally the template’s Write method is fired to actually generate the output. Note that the class inherits from RazorTemplateBase which is the generic parameter I used to specify the base class when creating an instance in my RazorEngine host: var engine = new RazorEngine<RazorTemplateBase>(); This template class must be provided and it must implement an Execute() and Write() method. Beyond that you can create any class you chose and attach your own properties. My RazorTemplateBase class implementation is very simple: public class RazorTemplateBase : MarshalByRefObject, IDisposable { /// <summary> /// You can pass in a generic context object /// to use in your template code /// </summary> public dynamic Context { get; set; } /// <summary> /// Class that generates output. Currently ultra simple /// with only Response.Write() implementation. /// </summary> public RazorResponse Response { get; set; } public object HostContainer {get; set; } public object Engine { get; set; } public RazorTemplateBase() { Response = new RazorResponse(); } public virtual void Write(object value) { Response.Write(value); } public virtual void WriteLiteral(object value) { Response.Write(value); } /// <summary> /// Razor Parser implements this method /// </summary> public virtual void Execute() {} public virtual void Dispose() { if (Response != null) { Response.Dispose(); Response = null; } } } Razor fills in the Execute method when it generates its subclass and uses the Write() method to output content. As you can see I use a RazorResponse() class here to generate output. This isn’t necessary really, as you could use a StringBuilder or StringWriter() directly, but I prefer using Response object so I can extend the Response behavior as needed. The RazorResponse class is also very simple and merely acts as a wrapper around a TextWriter: public class RazorResponse : IDisposable { /// <summary> /// Internal text writer - default to StringWriter() /// </summary> public TextWriter Writer = new StringWriter(); public virtual void Write(object value) { Writer.Write(value); } public virtual void WriteLine(object value) { Write(value); Write("\r\n"); } public virtual void WriteFormat(string format, params object[] args) { Write(string.Format(format, args)); } public override string ToString() { return Writer.ToString(); } public virtual void Dispose() { Writer.Close(); } public virtual void SetTextWriter(TextWriter writer) { // Close original writer if (Writer != null) Writer.Close(); Writer = writer; } } The Rendering Methods of RazorEngine At this point I’ve talked about the assembly generation logic and the template implementation itself. What’s left is that once you’ve generated the assembly is to execute it. The code to do this is handled in the various RenderXXX methods of the RazorEngine class. Let’s look at the lowest level one of these which is RenderTemplateFromAssembly() and a couple of internal support methods that handle instantiating and invoking of the generated template method: public string RenderTemplateFromAssembly( string assemblyId, string generatedNamespace, string generatedClass, object context, TextWriter outputWriter) { this.SetError(); Assembly generatedAssembly = AssemblyCache[assemblyId]; if (generatedAssembly == null) { this.SetError(Resources.PreviouslyCompiledAssemblyNotFound); return null; } string className = generatedNamespace + "." + generatedClass; Type type; try { type = generatedAssembly.GetType(className); } catch (Exception ex) { this.SetError(Resources.UnableToCreateType + className + ": " + ex.Message); return null; } // Start with empty non-error response (if we use a writer) string result = string.Empty; using(TBaseTemplateType instance = InstantiateTemplateClass(type)) { if (instance == null) return null; if (outputWriter != null) instance.Response.SetTextWriter(outputWriter); if (!InvokeTemplateInstance(instance, context)) return null; // Capture string output if implemented and return // otherwise null is returned if (outputWriter == null) result = instance.Response.ToString(); } return result; } protected virtual TBaseTemplateType InstantiateTemplateClass(Type type) { TBaseTemplateType instance = Activator.CreateInstance(type) as TBaseTemplateType; if (instance == null) { SetError(Resources.CouldnTActivateTypeInstance + type.FullName); return null; } instance.Engine = this; // If a HostContainer was set pass that to the template too instance.HostContainer = this.HostContainer; return instance; } /// <summary> /// Internally executes an instance of the template, /// captures errors on execution and returns true or false /// </summary> /// <param name="instance">An instance of the generated template</param> /// <returns>true or false - check ErrorMessage for errors</returns> protected virtual bool InvokeTemplateInstance(TBaseTemplateType instance, object context) { try { instance.Context = context; instance.Execute(); } catch (Exception ex) { this.SetError(Resources.TemplateExecutionError + ex.Message); return false; } finally { // Must make sure Response is closed instance.Response.Dispose(); } return true; } The RenderTemplateFromAssembly method basically requires the namespace and class to instantate and creates an instance of the class using InstantiateTemplateClass(). It then invokes the method with InvokeTemplateInstance(). These two methods are broken out because they are re-used by various other rendering methods and also to allow subclassing and providing additional configuration tasks to set properties and pass values to templates at execution time. In the default mode instantiation sets the Engine and HostContainer (discussed later) so the template can call back into the template engine, and the context is set when the template method is invoked. The various RenderXXX methods use similar code although they create the assemblies first. If you’re after potentially cashing assemblies the method is the one to call and that’s exactly what the two HostContainer classes do. More on that in a minute, but before we get into HostContainers let’s talk about AppDomain hosting and the like. Running Templates in their own AppDomain With the RazorEngine class above, when a template is parsed into an assembly and executed the assembly is created (in memory or on disk – you can configure that) and cached in the current AppDomain. In .NET once an assembly has been loaded it can never be unloaded so if you’re loading lots of templates and at some time you want to release them there’s no way to do so. If however you load the assemblies in a separate AppDomain that new AppDomain can be unloaded and the assemblies loaded in it with it. In order to host the templates in a separate AppDomain the easiest thing to do is to run the entire RazorEngine in a separate AppDomain. Then all interaction occurs in the other AppDomain and no further changes have to be made. To facilitate this there is a RazorEngineFactory which has methods that can instantiate the RazorHost in a separate AppDomain as well as in the local AppDomain. The host creates the remote instance and then hangs on to it to keep it alive as well as providing methods to shut down the AppDomain and reload the engine. Sounds complicated but cross-AppDomain invocation is actually fairly easy to implement. Here’s some of the relevant code from the RazorEngineFactory class. Like the RazorEngine this class is generic and requires a template base type in the generic class name: public class RazorEngineFactory<TBaseTemplateType> where TBaseTemplateType : RazorTemplateBase Here are the key methods of interest: /// <summary> /// Creates an instance of the RazorHost in a new AppDomain. This /// version creates a static singleton that that is cached and you /// can call UnloadRazorHostInAppDomain to unload it. /// </summary> /// <returns></returns> public static RazorEngine<TBaseTemplateType> CreateRazorHostInAppDomain() { if (Current == null) Current = new RazorEngineFactory<TBaseTemplateType>(); return Current.GetRazorHostInAppDomain(); } public static void UnloadRazorHostInAppDomain() { if (Current != null) Current.UnloadHost(); Current = null; } /// <summary> /// Instance method that creates a RazorHost in a new AppDomain. /// This method requires that you keep the Factory around in /// order to keep the AppDomain alive and be able to unload it. /// </summary> /// <returns></returns> public RazorEngine<TBaseTemplateType> GetRazorHostInAppDomain() { LocalAppDomain = CreateAppDomain(null); if (LocalAppDomain == null) return null; /// Create the instance inside of the new AppDomain /// Note: remote domain uses local EXE's AppBasePath!!! RazorEngine<TBaseTemplateType> host = null; try { Assembly ass = Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly(); string AssemblyPath = ass.Location; host = (RazorEngine<TBaseTemplateType>) LocalAppDomain.CreateInstanceFrom(AssemblyPath, typeof(RazorEngine<TBaseTemplateType>).FullName).Unwrap(); } catch (Exception ex) { ErrorMessage = ex.Message; return null; } return host; } /// <summary> /// Internally creates a new AppDomain in which Razor templates can /// be run. /// </summary> /// <param name="appDomainName"></param> /// <returns></returns> private AppDomain CreateAppDomain(string appDomainName) { if (appDomainName == null) appDomainName = "RazorHost_" + Guid.NewGuid().ToString("n"); AppDomainSetup setup = new AppDomainSetup(); // *** Point at current directory setup.ApplicationBase = AppDomain.CurrentDomain.BaseDirectory; AppDomain localDomain = AppDomain.CreateDomain(appDomainName, null, setup); return localDomain; } /// <summary> /// Allow unloading of the created AppDomain to release resources /// All internal resources in the AppDomain are released including /// in memory compiled Razor assemblies. /// </summary> public void UnloadHost() { if (this.LocalAppDomain != null) { AppDomain.Unload(this.LocalAppDomain); this.LocalAppDomain = null; } } The static CreateRazorHostInAppDomain() is the key method that startup code usually calls. It uses a Current singleton instance to an instance of itself that is created cross AppDomain and is kept alive because it’s static. GetRazorHostInAppDomain actually creates a cross-AppDomain instance which first creates a new AppDomain and then loads the RazorEngine into it. The remote Proxy instance is returned as a result to the method and can be used the same as a local instance. The code to run with a remote AppDomain is simple: private RazorEngine<RazorTemplateBase> CreateHost() { if (this.Host != null) return this.Host; // Use Static Methods - no error message if host doesn't load this.Host = RazorEngineFactory<RazorTemplateBase>.CreateRazorHostInAppDomain(); if (this.Host == null) { MessageBox.Show("Unable to load Razor Template Host", "Razor Hosting", MessageBoxButtons.OK, MessageBoxIcon.Exclamation); } return this.Host; } This code relies on a local reference of the Host which is kept around for the duration of the app (in this case a form reference). To use this you’d simply do: this.Host = CreateHost(); if (host == null) return; string result = host.RenderTemplate( this.txtSource.Text, new string[] { "System.Windows.Forms.dll", "Westwind.Utilities.dll" }, this.CustomContext); if (result == null) { MessageBox.Show(host.ErrorMessage, "Template Execution Error", MessageBoxButtons.OK, MessageBoxIcon.Exclamation); return; } this.txtResult.Text = result; Now all templates run in a remote AppDomain and can be unloaded with simple code like this: RazorEngineFactory<RazorTemplateBase>.UnloadRazorHostInAppDomain(); this.Host = null; One Step further – Providing a caching ‘Runtime’ Once we can load templates in a remote AppDomain we can add some additional functionality like assembly caching based on application specific features. One of my typical scenarios is to render templates out of a scripts folder. So all templates live in a folder and they change infrequently. So a Folder based host that can compile these templates once and then only recompile them if something changes would be ideal. Enter host containers which are basically wrappers around the RazorEngine<t> and RazorEngineFactory<t>. They provide additional logic for things like file caching based on changes on disk or string hashes for string based template inputs. The folder host also provides for partial rendering logic through a custom template base implementation. There’s a base implementation in RazorBaseHostContainer, which provides the basics for hosting a RazorEngine, which includes the ability to start and stop the engine, cache assemblies and add references: public abstract class RazorBaseHostContainer<TBaseTemplateType> : MarshalByRefObject where TBaseTemplateType : RazorTemplateBase, new() { public RazorBaseHostContainer() { UseAppDomain = true; GeneratedNamespace = "__RazorHost"; } /// <summary> /// Determines whether the Container hosts Razor /// in a separate AppDomain. Seperate AppDomain /// hosting allows unloading and releasing of /// resources. /// </summary> public bool UseAppDomain { get; set; } /// <summary> /// Base folder location where the AppDomain /// is hosted. By default uses the same folder /// as the host application. /// /// Determines where binary dependencies are /// found for assembly references. /// </summary> public string BaseBinaryFolder { get; set; } /// <summary> /// List of referenced assemblies as string values. /// Must be in GAC or in the current folder of the host app/ /// base BinaryFolder /// </summary> public List<string> ReferencedAssemblies = new List<string>(); /// <summary> /// Name of the generated namespace for template classes /// </summary> public string GeneratedNamespace {get; set; } /// <summary> /// Any error messages /// </summary> public string ErrorMessage { get; set; } /// <summary> /// Cached instance of the Host. Required to keep the /// reference to the host alive for multiple uses. /// </summary> public RazorEngine<TBaseTemplateType> Engine; /// <summary> /// Cached instance of the Host Factory - so we can unload /// the host and its associated AppDomain. /// </summary> protected RazorEngineFactory<TBaseTemplateType> EngineFactory; /// <summary> /// Keep track of each compiled assembly /// and when it was compiled. /// /// Use a hash of the string to identify string /// changes. /// </summary> protected Dictionary<int, CompiledAssemblyItem> LoadedAssemblies = new Dictionary<int, CompiledAssemblyItem>(); /// <summary> /// Call to start the Host running. Follow by a calls to RenderTemplate to /// render individual templates. Call Stop when done. /// </summary> /// <returns>true or false - check ErrorMessage on false </returns> public virtual bool Start() { if (Engine == null) { if (UseAppDomain) Engine = RazorEngineFactory<TBaseTemplateType>.CreateRazorHostInAppDomain(); else Engine = RazorEngineFactory<TBaseTemplateType>.CreateRazorHost(); Engine.Configuration.CompileToMemory = true; Engine.HostContainer = this; if (Engine == null) { this.ErrorMessage = EngineFactory.ErrorMessage; return false; } } return true; } /// <summary> /// Stops the Host and releases the host AppDomain and cached /// assemblies. /// </summary> /// <returns>true or false</returns> public bool Stop() { this.LoadedAssemblies.Clear(); RazorEngineFactory<RazorTemplateBase>.UnloadRazorHostInAppDomain(); this.Engine = null; return true; } … } This base class provides most of the mechanics to host the runtime, but no application specific implementation for rendering. There are rendering functions but they just call the engine directly and provide no caching – there’s no context to decide how to cache and reuse templates. The key methods are Start and Stop and their main purpose is to start a new AppDomain (optionally) and shut it down when requested. The RazorFolderHostContainer – Folder Based Runtime Hosting Let’s look at the more application specific RazorFolderHostContainer implementation which is defined like this: public class RazorFolderHostContainer : RazorBaseHostContainer<RazorTemplateFolderHost> Note that a customized RazorTemplateFolderHost class template is used for this implementation that supports partial rendering in form of a RenderPartial() method that’s available to templates. The folder host’s features are: Render templates based on a Template Base Path (a ‘virtual’ if you will) Cache compiled assemblies based on the relative path and file time stamp File changes on templates cause templates to be recompiled into new assemblies Support for partial rendering using base folder relative pathing As shown in the startup examples earlier host containers require some startup code with a HostContainer tied to a persistent property (like a Form property): // The base path for templates - templates are rendered with relative paths // based on this path. HostContainer.TemplatePath = Path.Combine(Environment.CurrentDirectory, TemplateBaseFolder); // Default output rendering disk location HostContainer.RenderingOutputFile = Path.Combine(HostContainer.TemplatePath, "__Preview.htm"); // Add any assemblies you want reference in your templates HostContainer.ReferencedAssemblies.Add("System.Windows.Forms.dll"); // Start up the host container HostContainer.Start(); Once that’s done, you can render templates with the host container: // Pass the template path for full filename seleted with OpenFile Dialog // relativepath is: subdir\file.cshtml or file.cshtml or ..\file.cshtml var relativePath = Utilities.GetRelativePath(fileName, HostContainer.TemplatePath); if (!HostContainer.RenderTemplate(relativePath, Context, HostContainer.RenderingOutputFile)) { MessageBox.Show("Error: " + HostContainer.ErrorMessage); return; } webBrowser1.Navigate("file://" + HostContainer.RenderingOutputFile); The most critical task of the RazorFolderHostContainer implementation is to retrieve a template from disk, compile and cache it and then deal with deciding whether subsequent requests need to re-compile the template or simply use a cached version. Internally the GetAssemblyFromFileAndCache() handles this task: /// <summary> /// Internally checks if a cached assembly exists and if it does uses it /// else creates and compiles one. Returns an assembly Id to be /// used with the LoadedAssembly list. /// </summary> /// <param name="relativePath"></param> /// <param name="context"></param> /// <returns></returns> protected virtual CompiledAssemblyItem GetAssemblyFromFileAndCache(string relativePath) { string fileName = Path.Combine(TemplatePath, relativePath).ToLower(); int fileNameHash = fileName.GetHashCode(); if (!File.Exists(fileName)) { this.SetError(Resources.TemplateFileDoesnTExist + fileName); return null; } CompiledAssemblyItem item = null; this.LoadedAssemblies.TryGetValue(fileNameHash, out item); string assemblyId = null; // Check for cached instance if (item != null) { var fileTime = File.GetLastWriteTimeUtc(fileName); if (fileTime <= item.CompileTimeUtc) assemblyId = item.AssemblyId; } else item = new CompiledAssemblyItem(); // No cached instance - create assembly and cache if (assemblyId == null) { string safeClassName = GetSafeClassName(fileName); StreamReader reader = null; try { reader = new StreamReader(fileName, true); } catch (Exception ex) { this.SetError(Resources.ErrorReadingTemplateFile + fileName); return null; } assemblyId = Engine.ParseAndCompileTemplate(this.ReferencedAssemblies.ToArray(), reader); // need to ensure reader is closed if (reader != null) reader.Close(); if (assemblyId == null) { this.SetError(Engine.ErrorMessage); return null; } item.AssemblyId = assemblyId; item.CompileTimeUtc = DateTime.UtcNow; item.FileName = fileName; item.SafeClassName = safeClassName; this.LoadedAssemblies[fileNameHash] = item; } return item; } This code uses a LoadedAssembly dictionary which is comprised of a structure that holds a reference to a compiled assembly, a full filename and file timestamp and an assembly id. LoadedAssemblies (defined on the base class shown earlier) is essentially a cache for compiled assemblies and they are identified by a hash id. In the case of files the hash is a GetHashCode() from the full filename of the template. The template is checked for in the cache and if not found the file stamp is checked. If that’s newer than the cache’s compilation date the template is recompiled otherwise the version in the cache is used. All the core work defers to a RazorEngine<T> instance to ParseAndCompileTemplate(). The three rendering specific methods then are rather simple implementations with just a few lines of code dealing with parameter and return value parsing: /// <summary> /// Renders a template to a TextWriter. Useful to write output into a stream or /// the Response object. Used for partial rendering. /// </summary> /// <param name="relativePath">Relative path to the file in the folder structure</param> /// <param name="context">Optional context object or null</param> /// <param name="writer">The textwriter to write output into</param> /// <returns></returns> public bool RenderTemplate(string relativePath, object context, TextWriter writer) { // Set configuration data that is to be passed to the template (any object) Engine.TemplatePerRequestConfigurationData = new RazorFolderHostTemplateConfiguration() { TemplatePath = Path.Combine(this.TemplatePath, relativePath), TemplateRelativePath = relativePath, }; CompiledAssemblyItem item = GetAssemblyFromFileAndCache(relativePath); if (item == null) { writer.Close(); return false; } try { // String result will be empty as output will be rendered into the // Response object's stream output. However a null result denotes // an error string result = Engine.RenderTemplateFromAssembly(item.AssemblyId, context, writer); if (result == null) { this.SetError(Engine.ErrorMessage); return false; } } catch (Exception ex) { this.SetError(ex.Message); return false; } finally { writer.Close(); } return true; } /// <summary> /// Render a template from a source file on disk to a specified outputfile. /// </summary> /// <param name="relativePath">Relative path off the template root folder. Format: path/filename.cshtml</param> /// <param name="context">Any object that will be available in the template as a dynamic of this.Context</param> /// <param name="outputFile">Optional - output file where output is written to. If not specified the /// RenderingOutputFile property is used instead /// </param> /// <returns>true if rendering succeeds, false on failure - check ErrorMessage</returns> public bool RenderTemplate(string relativePath, object context, string outputFile) { if (outputFile == null) outputFile = RenderingOutputFile; try { using (StreamWriter writer = new StreamWriter(outputFile, false, Engine.Configuration.OutputEncoding, Engine.Configuration.StreamBufferSize)) { return RenderTemplate(relativePath, context, writer); } } catch (Exception ex) { this.SetError(ex.Message); return false; } return true; } /// <summary> /// Renders a template to string. Useful for RenderTemplate /// </summary> /// <param name="relativePath"></param> /// <param name="context"></param> /// <returns></returns> public string RenderTemplateToString(string relativePath, object context) { string result = string.Empty; try { using (StringWriter writer = new StringWriter()) { // String result will be empty as output will be rendered into the // Response object's stream output. However a null result denotes // an error if (!RenderTemplate(relativePath, context, writer)) { this.SetError(Engine.ErrorMessage); return null; } result = writer.ToString(); } } catch (Exception ex) { this.SetError(ex.Message); return null; } return result; } The idea is that you can create custom host container implementations that do exactly what you want fairly easily. Take a look at both the RazorFolderHostContainer and RazorStringHostContainer classes for the basic concepts you can use to create custom implementations. Notice also that you can set the engine’s PerRequestConfigurationData() from the host container: // Set configuration data that is to be passed to the template (any object) Engine.TemplatePerRequestConfigurationData = new RazorFolderHostTemplateConfiguration() { TemplatePath = Path.Combine(this.TemplatePath, relativePath), TemplateRelativePath = relativePath, }; which when set to a non-null value is passed to the Template’s InitializeTemplate() method. This method receives an object parameter which you can cast as needed: public override void InitializeTemplate(object configurationData) { // Pick up configuration data and stuff into Request object RazorFolderHostTemplateConfiguration config = configurationData as RazorFolderHostTemplateConfiguration; this.Request.TemplatePath = config.TemplatePath; this.Request.TemplateRelativePath = config.TemplateRelativePath; } With this data you can then configure any custom properties or objects on your main template class. It’s an easy way to pass data from the HostContainer all the way down into the template. The type you use is of type object so you have to cast it yourself, and it must be serializable since it will likely run in a separate AppDomain. This might seem like an ugly way to pass data around – normally I’d use an event delegate to call back from the engine to the host, but since this is running over AppDomain boundaries events get really tricky and passing a template instance back up into the host over AppDomain boundaries doesn’t work due to serialization issues. So it’s easier to pass the data from the host down into the template using this rather clumsy approach of set and forward. It’s ugly, but it’s something that can be hidden in the host container implementation as I’ve done here. It’s also not something you have to do in every implementation so this is kind of an edge case, but I know I’ll need to pass a bunch of data in some of my applications and this will be the easiest way to do so. Summing Up Hosting the Razor runtime is something I got jazzed up about quite a bit because I have an immediate need for this type of templating/merging/scripting capability in an application I’m working on. I’ve also been using templating in many apps and it’s always been a pain to deal with. The Razor engine makes this whole experience a lot cleaner and more light weight and with these wrappers I can now plug .NET based templating into my code literally with a few lines of code. That’s something to cheer about… I hope some of you will find this useful as well… Resources The examples and code require that you download the Razor runtimes. Projects are for Visual Studio 2010 running on .NET 4.0 Platform Installer 3.0 (install WebMatrix or MVC 3 for Razor Runtimes) Latest Code in Subversion Repository Download Snapshot of the Code Documentation (CHM Help File) © Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2010Posted in ASP.NET  .NET  

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• Week in Geek: New Security Flaw Confirmed for Internet Explorer Edition

  - by Asian Angel

  This week we learned how to use a PC to stay entertained while traveling for the holidays, create quality photo prints with free software, share links between any browser and any smartphone, create perfect Christmas photos using How-To Geek’s 10 best how-to photo guides, and had fun decorating Firefox with a collection of Holiday 2010 Personas themes. Photo by Repoort. Random Geek Links Photo by Asian Angel. Critical 0-Day Flaw Affects All Internet Explorer Versions, Microsoft Warns Microsoft has confirmed a zero-day vulnerability affecting all supported versions of Internet Explorer, including IE8, IE7 and IE6. Note: Article contains link to Microsoft Security Advisory detailing two work-arounds until a security update is released. Hackers targeting human rights, indie media groups Hackers are increasingly hitting the Web sites of human rights and independent media groups in an attempt to silence them, says a new study released this week by Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society. OpenBSD: audits give no indication of back doors So far, the analyses of OpenBSD’s crypto and IPSec code have not provided any indication that the system contains back doors for listening to encrypted VPN connections. But the developers have already found two bugs during their current audits. Sophos: Beware Facebook’s new facial-recognition feature Facebook’s new facial recognition software might result in undesirable photos of users being circulated online, warned a security expert, who urged users to keep abreast with the social network’s privacy settings to prevent the abovementioned scenario from becoming a reality. Microsoft withdraws flawed Outlook update Microsoft has withdrawn update KB2412171 for Outlook 2007, released last Patch Tuesday, after a number of user complaints. Skype: Millions still without service Skype was still working to right itself going into the holiday weekend from a major outage that began this past Wednesday. Mozilla improves sync setup and WebGL in Firefox 4 beta 8 Firefox 4.0 beta 8 brings better support for WebGL and introduces an improved setup process for Firefox Sync that simplifies the steps for configuring the synchronization service across multiple devices. Chrome OS the litmus test for cloud The success or failure of Google’s browser-oriented Chrome OS will be the litmus test to decide if the cloud is capable of addressing user needs for content and services, according to a new Ovum report released Monday. FCC Net neutrality rules reach mobile apps The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) finally released its long-expected regulations on Thursday and the related explanations total a whopping 194 pages. One new item that was not previously disclosed: mobile wireless providers can’t block “applications that compete with the provider’s” own voice or video telephony services. KDE and the Document Foundation join Open Invention Network The KDE e.V. and the Document Foundation (TDF) have both joined the Open Invention Network (OIN) as licensees, expanding the organization’s roster of supporters. Report: SEC looks into Hurd’s ousting from HP The scandal surrounding Mark Hurd’s departure from the world’s largest technology company in August has officially drawn attention from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Report: Google requests delay of new Google TVs Google TV is apparently encountering a bit of static that has resulted in a programming change. Geek Video of the Week This week we have a double dose of geeky video goodness for you with the original Mac vs PC video and the trailer for the sequel. Photo courtesy of Peacer. Mac vs PC Photo courtesy of Peacer. Mac vs PC 2 Trailer Random TinyHacker Links Awesome Tools To Extract Audio From Video Here’s a list of really useful, and free tools to rip audio from videos. Getting Your iPhone Out of Recovery Mode Is your iPhone stuck in recovery mode? This tutorial will help you get it out of that state. Google Shared Spaces Quickly create a shared space and collaborate with friends online. McAfee Internet Security 2011 – Upgrade not worthy of a version change McAfee has released their 2011 version of security products. And as this review details, the upgrades are minimal when compared to their 2010 products. For more information, check out the review. 200 Countries Plotted Hans Rosling’s famous lectures combine enormous quantities of public data with a sport’s commentator’s style to reveal the story of the world’s past, present and future development. Now he explores stats in a way he has never done before – using augmented reality animation. Super User Questions Enjoy looking through this week’s batch of popular questions and answers from Super User. How to restore windows 7 to a known working state every time it boots? Is there an easy way to mass-transfer all files between two computers? Coffee spilled inside computer, damaged hard drive Computer does not boot after ram upgrade Keyboard not detected when trying to install Ubuntu 10.10 How-To Geek Weekly Article Recap Have you had a super busy week while preparing for the holiday weekend? Then here is your chance to get caught up on your reading with our five hottest articles for the week. Ask How-To Geek: Rescuing an Infected PC, Installing Bloat-free iTunes, and Taming a Crazy Trackpad How to Use the Avira Rescue CD to Clean Your Infected PC Eight Geektacular Christmas Projects for Your Day Off VirtualBox 4.0 Rocks Extensions and a Simplified GUI Ask the Readers: How Many Monitors Do You Use with Your Computer? One Year Ago on How-To Geek Here are more great articles from one year ago for you to read and enjoy during the holiday break. Enjoy Distraction-Free Writing with WriteMonkey Shutter is a State of Art Screenshot Tool for Ubuntu Get Hex & RGB Color Codes the Easy Way Find User Scripts for Your Favorite Websites the Easy Way Access Your Unsorted Bookmarks the Easy Way (Firefox) The Geek Note That “wraps” things up for this week and we hope that everyone enjoys the rest of their holiday break! Found a great tip during the break? Then be sure to send it in to us at [email protected]. Photo by ArSiSa7. Latest Features How-To Geek ETC How to Use the Avira Rescue CD to Clean Your Infected PC The Complete List of iPad Tips, Tricks, and Tutorials Is Your Desktop Printer More Expensive Than Printing Services? 20 OS X Keyboard Shortcuts You Might Not Know HTG Explains: Which Linux File System Should You Choose? HTG Explains: Why Does Photo Paper Improve Print Quality? Simon’s Cat Explores the Christmas Tree! [Video] The Outdoor Lights Scene from National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation [Video] The Famous Home Alone Pizza Delivery Scene [Classic Video] Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader Theme for Windows 7 Cardinal and Rabbit Sharing a Tree on a Cold Winter Morning Wallpaper An Alternate Star Wars Christmas Special [Video]

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• Ajax Control Toolkit Now Supports jQuery

  - by Stephen.Walther

  I’m excited to announce the September 2013 release of the Ajax Control Toolkit, which now supports building new Ajax Control Toolkit controls with jQuery. You can download the latest release of the Ajax Control Toolkit from http://AjaxControlToolkit.CodePlex.com or you can install the Ajax Control Toolkit directly within Visual Studio by executing the following NuGet command: The New jQuery Extender Base Class This release of the Ajax Control Toolkit introduces a new jQueryExtender base class. This new base class enables you to create Ajax Control Toolkit controls with jQuery instead of the Microsoft Ajax Library. Currently, only one control in the Ajax Control Toolkit has been rewritten to use the new jQueryExtender base class (only one control has been jQueryized). The ToggleButton control is the first of the Ajax Control Toolkit controls to undergo this dramatic transformation. All of the other controls in the Ajax Control Toolkit are written using the Microsoft Ajax Library. We hope to gradually rewrite these controls as jQuery controls over time. You can view the new jQuery ToggleButton live at the Ajax Control Toolkit sample site: http://www.asp.net/ajaxLibrary/AjaxControlToolkitSampleSite/ToggleButton/ToggleButton.aspx Why are we rewriting Ajax Control Toolkits with jQuery? There are very few developers actively working with the Microsoft Ajax Library while there are thousands of developers actively working with jQuery. Because we want talented developers in the community to continue to contribute to the Ajax Control Toolkit, and because almost all JavaScript developers are familiar with jQuery, it makes sense to support jQuery with the Ajax Control Toolkit. Also, we believe that the Ajax Control Toolkit is a great framework for Web Forms developers who want to build new ASP.NET controls that use JavaScript. The Ajax Control Toolkit has great features such as automatic bundling, minification, caching, and compression. We want to make it easy for ASP.NET developers to build new controls that take advantage of these features. Instantiating Controls with data-* Attributes We took advantage of the new JQueryExtender base class to change the way that Ajax Control Toolkit controls are instantiated. In the past, adding an Ajax Control Toolkit to a page resulted in inline JavaScript being injected into the page. For example, adding the ToggleButton control to a page injected the following HTML and script: <input id="ctl00_SampleContent_CheckBox1" name="ctl00$SampleContent$CheckBox1" type="checkbox" checked="checked" /> <script type="text/javascript"> //<![CDATA[ Sys.Application.add_init(function() { $create(Sys.Extended.UI.ToggleButtonBehavior, {"CheckedImageAlternateText":"Check", "CheckedImageUrl":"ToggleButton_Checked.gif", "ImageHeight":19, "ImageWidth":19, "UncheckedImageAlternateText":"UnCheck", "UncheckedImageUrl":"ToggleButton_Unchecked.gif", "id":"ctl00_SampleContent_ToggleButtonExtender1"}, null, null, $get("ctl00_SampleContent_CheckBox1")); }); //]]> </script> Notice the call to the JavaScript $create() method at the bottom of the page. When using the Microsoft Ajax Library, this call to the $create() method is necessary to create the Ajax Control Toolkit control. This inline script looks pretty ugly to a modern JavaScript developer. Inline script! Horrible! The jQuery version of the ToggleButton injects the following HTML and script into the page: <input id="ctl00_SampleContent_CheckBox1" name="ctl00$SampleContent$CheckBox1" type="checkbox" checked="checked" data-act-togglebuttonextender="imageWidth:19, imageHeight:19, uncheckedImageUrl:'ToggleButton_Unchecked.gif', checkedImageUrl:'ToggleButton_Checked.gif', uncheckedImageAlternateText:'I don&#39;t understand why you don&#39;t like ASP.NET', checkedImageAlternateText:'It&#39;s really nice to hear from you that you like ASP.NET'" /> Notice that there is no script! There is no call to the $create() method. In fact, there is no inline JavaScript at all. The jQuery version of the ToggleButton uses an HTML5 data-* attribute instead of an inline script. The ToggleButton control is instantiated with a data-act-togglebuttonextender attribute. Using data-* attributes results in much cleaner markup (You don’t need to feel embarrassed when selecting View Source in your browser). Ajax Control Toolkit versus jQuery So in a jQuery world why is the Ajax Control Toolkit needed at all? Why not just use jQuery plugins instead of the Ajax Control Toolkit? For example, there are lots of jQuery ToggleButton plugins floating around the Internet. Why not just use one of these jQuery plugins instead of using the Ajax Control Toolkit ToggleButton control? There are three main reasons why the Ajax Control Toolkit continues to be valuable in a jQuery world: Ajax Control Toolkit controls run on both the server and client jQuery plugins are client only. A jQuery plugin does not include any server-side code. If you need to perform any work on the server – think of the AjaxFileUpload control – then you can’t use a pure jQuery solution. Ajax Control Toolkit controls provide a better Visual Studio experience You don’t get any design time experience when you use jQuery plugins within Visual Studio. Ajax Control Toolkit controls, on the other hand, are designed to work with Visual Studio. For example, you can use the Visual Studio Properties window to set Ajax Control Toolkit control properties. Ajax Control Toolkit controls shield you from working with JavaScript I like writing code in JavaScript. However, not all developers like JavaScript and some developers want to completely avoid writing any JavaScript code at all. The Ajax Control Toolkit enables you to take advantage of JavaScript (and the latest features of HTML5) in your ASP.NET Web Forms websites without writing a single line of JavaScript. Better ToolkitScriptManager Documentation With this release, we have added more detailed documentation for using the ToolkitScriptManager. In particular, we added documentation that describes how to take advantage of the new bundling, minification, compression, and caching features of the Ajax Control Toolkit. The ToolkitScriptManager documentation is part of the Ajax Control Toolkit sample site and it can be read here: http://www.asp.net/ajaxLibrary/AjaxControlToolkitSampleSite/ToolkitScriptManager/ToolkitScriptManager.aspx Other Fixes This release of the Ajax Control Toolkit includes several important bug fixes. For example, the Ajax Control Toolkit Twitter control was completely rewritten with this release. Twitter is in the process of retiring the first version of their API. You can read about their plans here: https://dev.twitter.com/blog/planning-for-api-v1-retirement We completely rewrote the Ajax Control Toolkit Twitter control to use the new Twitter API. To take advantage of the new Twitter API, you must get a key and access token from Twitter and add the key and token to your web.config file. Detailed instructions for using the new version of the Ajax Control Toolkit Twitter control can be found here: http://www.asp.net/ajaxLibrary/AjaxControlToolkitSampleSite/Twitter/Twitter.aspx   Summary We’ve made some really great changes to the Ajax Control Toolkit over the last two releases to modernize the toolkit. In the previous release, we updated the Ajax Control Toolkit to use a better bundling, minification, compression, and caching system. With this release, we updated the Ajax Control Toolkit to support jQuery. We also continue to update the Ajax Control Toolkit with important bug fixes. I hope you like these changes and I look forward to hearing your feedback.

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• Week in Geek: 4chan Falls Victim to DDoS Attack Edition

  - by Asian Angel

  This week we learned how to tweak the low battery action on a Windows 7 laptop, access an eBook collection anywhere in the world, “extend iPad battery life, batch resize photos, & sync massive music collections”, went on a reign of destruction with Snow Crusher, and had fun decorating our desktops with abstract icon collections. Photo by pasukaru76. Random Geek Links We have included extra news article goodness to help you catch up on any developments that you may have missed during the holiday break this past week. Note: The three 27C3 articles listed here represent three different presentations at the 27th Chaos Communication Congress hacker conference. 4chan victim of DDoS as FBI investigates role in PayPal attack Users of 4chan may have gotten a taste of their own medicine after the site was knocked offline by a DDoS attack from an unknown origin early Thursday morning. Report: FBI seizes server in probe of WikiLeaks attacks The FBI has seized a server in Texas as part of its hunt for the groups behind the pro-WikiLeaks denial-of-service attacks launched in December against PayPal, Visa, MasterCard, and others. Mozilla exposes older user-account database Mozilla has disabled 44,000 older user accounts for its Firefox add-ons site after a security researcher found part of a database of the account information on a publicly available server. Data breach affects 4.9 million Honda customers Japanese automaker Honda has put some 2.2 million customers in the United States on a security breach alert after a database containing information on the owners and their cars was hacked. Chinese Trojan discovered in Android games An Android-based Trojan called “Geinimi” has been discovered in the wild and the Trojan is capable of sending personal information to remote servers and exhibits botnet-like behavior. 27C3 presentation claims many mobiles vulnerable to SMS attacks According to security experts, an ‘SMS of death’ threatens to disable many current Sony Ericsson, Samsung, Motorola, Micromax and LG mobiles. 27C3: GSM cell phones even easier to tap Security researchers have demonstrated how open source software on a number of revamped, entry-level cell phones can decrypt and record mobile phone calls in the GSM network. 27C3: danger lurks in PDF documents Security researcher Julia Wolf has pointed out numerous, previously hardly known, security problems in connection with Adobe’s PDF standard. Critical update for WordPress A critical update has been made available for WordPress in the form of version 3.0.4. The update fixes a security bug in WordPress’s KSES library. McAfee Labs Predicts Geolocation, Mobile Devices and Apple Will Top the List of Targets for Emerging Threats in 2011 The list comprises 2010’s most buzzed about platforms and services, including Google’s Android, Apple’s iPhone, foursquare, Google TV and the Mac OS X platform, which are all expected to become major targets for cybercriminals. McAfee Labs also predicts that politically motivated attacks will be on the rise. Windows Phone 7 piracy materializes with FreeMarketplace A proof-of-concept application, FreeMarketplace, that allows any Windows Phone 7 application to be downloaded and installed free of charge has been developed. Empty email accounts, and some bad buzz for Hotmail In the past few days, a number of Hotmail users have been complaining about a rather disconcerting issue: their Hotmail accounts, some up to 10 years old, appear completely empty.  No emails, no folders, nothing, just what appears to be a new account. Reports: Nintendo warns of 3DS risk for kids Nintendo has reportedly issued a warning that the 3DS, its eagerly awaited glasses-free 3D portable gaming device, should not be used by children under 6 when the gadget is in 3D-viewing mode. Google eyes ‘cloaking’ as next antispam target Google plans to take a closer look at the practice of “cloaking,” or presenting one look to a Googlebot crawling one’s site while presenting another look to users. Facebook, Twitter stock trading drawing SEC eye? The high degree of investor interest in shares of hot Silicon Valley companies that aren’t yet publicly traded–like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Zynga–may be leading to scrutiny from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Random TinyHacker Links Photo by jcraveiro. Exciting Software Set for Release in 2011 A few bloggers from great websites such as How-To Geek, Guiding Tech and 7 Tutorials took the time to sit down and talk about their software wishes for 2011. Take the time to read it and share… Wikileaks Infopr0n An infographic detailing the quest to plug WikiLeaks. The New York Times Guide to Mobile Apps A growing collection of all mobile app coverage by the New York Times as well as lists of favorite apps from Times writers. 7,000,000,000 (Video) A fascinating look at the world’s population via National Geographic Magazine. Super User Questions Check out the great answers to these hot questions from Super User. How to use a Personal computer as a Linux web server for development purposes? How to link processing power of old computers together? Free virtualization tool for testing suspicious files? Why do some actions not work with Remote Desktop? What is the simplest way to send a large batch of pictures to a distant friend or colleague? How-To Geek Weekly Article Recap Had a busy week and need to get caught up on your HTG reading? Then sit back and relax while enjoying these hot posts full of how-to roundup goodness. The 50 Best How-To Geek Windows Articles of 2010 The 20 Best How-To Geek Explainer Topics for 2010 The 20 Best How-To Geek Linux Articles of 2010 How to Search Just the Site You’re Viewing Using Google Search Ask the Readers: Backing Your Files Up – Local Storage versus the Cloud One Year Ago on How-To Geek Need more how-to geekiness for your weekend? Then look through this great batch of articles from one year ago that focus on dual-booting and O.S. installation goodness. Dual Boot Your Pre-Installed Windows 7 Computer with Vista Dual Boot Your Pre-Installed Windows 7 Computer with XP How To Setup a USB Flash Drive to Install Windows 7 Dual Boot Your Pre-Installed Windows 7 Computer with Ubuntu Easily Install Ubuntu Linux with Windows Using the Wubi Installer The Geek Note We hope that you and your families have had a terrific holiday break as everyone prepares to return to work and school this week. Remember to keep those great tips coming in to us at [email protected]! Photo by pjbeardsley. Latest Features How-To Geek ETC The 20 Best How-To Geek Linux Articles of 2010 The 50 Best How-To Geek Windows Articles of 2010 The 20 Best How-To Geek Explainer Topics for 2010 How to Disable Caps Lock Key in Windows 7 or Vista How to Use the Avira Rescue CD to Clean Your Infected PC The Complete List of iPad Tips, Tricks, and Tutorials Tune Pop Enhances Android Music Notifications Another Busy Night in Gotham City Wallpaper Classic Super Mario Brothers Theme for Chrome and Iron Experimental Firefox Builds Put Tabs on the Title Bar (Available for Download) Android Trojan Found in the Wild Chaos, Panic, and Disorder Wallpaper

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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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• Tips on installing Visual Studio 2010 SP1

  - by Jon Galloway

  Visual Studio SP1 went up on MSDN downloads (here) on March 8, and will be released publicly on March 10 here. Release announcements: Soma: Visual Studio 2010 enhancements Jason Zander: Announcing Visual Studio 2010 Service Pack 1 I started on this post with tips on installing VS2010 SP1 when I realized I’ve been writing these up for Visual Studio and .NET framework SP releases for a while (e.g. VS2008 / .NET 3.5 SP1 post, VS2005 SP1 post). Looking back the years of Visual Studio SP installs (and remembering when we’d get up to SP6 for a Visual Studio release), I’m happy to see that it just keeps getting easier. Service Packs are a lot less finicky about requiring beta software to be uninstalled, install more quickly, and are just generally a lot less scary. If I can’t have a jetpack, at least my future provided me faster, easier service packs. Disclaimer: These tips are just general things I've picked up over the years. I don't have any inside knowledge here. If you see anything wrong, be sure to let me know in the comments. You may want to check the readme file before installing - it's short, and it's in that new-fangled HTML format. On with the tips! Before starting, uninstall Visual Studio features you don't use Visual Studio service packs (and other Microsoft service packs as well) install patches for the specific features you’ve got installed. This is a big reason to always do a custom install when you first install Visual Studio, but it’s not difficult to update your existing installation. Here’s the quick way to do that: Tap the windows key and type “add or remove programs” and press enter (or click on the “Add or remove programs” link if you must).   Type “Visual Studio 2010” in the search box in the upper right corner, click on the Visual Studio program (the one with the VS infinity looking logo) and click on Uninstall/Change. Click on Add or Remove Features The next part’s up to you – what features do you actually use? I’ve been doing primarily ASP.NET MVC development in C# lately, so I selected Visual C# and Visual Web Developer. Remember that you can install features later if needed, and can also install the express versions if you want. Selecting everything just because it’s there - or you paid for it – means that you install updates for everything, every time. When you’ve made your changes, click on the Update button to uninstall unused features. Shut down all instances of Visual Studio It probably goes without saying that you should close a program down before installing it, partly to avoid the file-in-use-reboot-after-install horror. Additional "hunch / works on my machine" quality tip: On one computer I saw a note in the setup log about Visual Studio a prompt for user input to close Visual Studio, although I never saw the prompt. Just to  be sure, I'd personally open up Task Manager and kill any devenv.exe processes I saw running, as it couldn't hurt. Use the web installer I use the Web Installers whenever possible. There’s no point in downloading the DVD unless you’re doing multiple installs or won’t have internet access. The DVD IS is 1.5GB, since it needs to be able to service every possible supported installation option on both x86 and x64. The web installer is 776 KB (smaller than calc.exe), so you can start the installation right away. Like other web installers, the real benefit is that it only installs the updates you need (hence the reason for step 1 – uninstalling unused components). Instead of 1.5GB, my download was roughly 530MB. If you’re installing from MSDN (this link takes you right to the Visual Studio installs), select the first one on the list: The first step in the installation process is to analyze the machine configuration and tell you what needs to be installed. Since I've trimmed down my features, that's a pretty short list. The time's not far off where I may not install SQL Server on my dev machines, just using SQL Server Compact - that would shorten the list further. When I hit next, you can see that the download size has shrunk considerably. When I start the install, note that the installation begins while other components are downloading - another benefit of the web install. On my mid-range desktop machine, the install took 25 minutes. What if it takes longer? According to Heath Stewart (Visual Studio installer guru), average SP1 installs take roughly 45 minutes. An installation which takes hours to complete may be a sign of a problem: see his post Visual Studio 2010 Service Pack 1 installing for over 2 hours could be a sign of a problem. Why so long? Yes, even 25 minutes is a while. Heath's got another blog post explaining why the update can take longer than the initial install (see: A patch may take as long or longer to install than the target product) which explains all the additional steps and complexities a patch needs to deal with, as well as some mitigation steps that deployment authors can take to mitigate the impact. Other things to know about Visual Studio 2010 SP1 Installs over Visual Studio 2010 SP1 Beta That's nice. Previous Visual Studio versions did a number of annoying things when you installed SP's over beta's - fail with weird errors, get part way through and tell you needed to cancel and uninstall first, etc. I've installed this on two machines that had random beta stuff installed without tears. That Readme file you didn't read I mentioned the readme file earlier (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=210711 ). Some interesting things I picked up in there: 2.1.3. Visual Studio 2010 Service Pack 1 installation may fail when a USB drive or other removeable drive is connected 2.1.4. Visual Studio must be restarted after Visual Studio 2010 SP1 tooling for SQL Server Compact (Compact) 4.0 is installed 2.2.1. If Visual Studio 2010 Service Pack 1 is uninstalled, Visual Studio 2010 must be reinstalled to restore certain components 2.2.2. If Visual Studio 2010 Service Pack 1 is uninstalled, Visual Studio 2010 must be reinstalled before SP1 can be installed again 2.4.3.1. Async CTP If you installed the pre-SP1 version of Async CTP but did not uninstall it before you installed Visual Studio 2010 SP1, then your computer will be in a state in which the version of the C# compiler in the .NET Framework does not match the C# compiler in Visual Studio. To resolve this issue: After you install Visual Studio 2010 SP1, reinstall the SP1 version of the Async CTP from here. Hardware acceleration for Visual Studio is disabled on Windows XP Visual Studio 2010 SP1 disables hardware acceleration when running on Windows XP (only on XP). You can turn it back on in the Visual Studio options, under Environment / General, as shown below. See Jason Zander's post titled Performance Troubleshooting Article and VS2010 SP1 Change.

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• Introducing Oracle VM Server for SPARC

  - by Honglin Su

  As you are watching Oracle's Virtualization Strategy Webcast and exploring the great virtualization offerings of Oracle VM product line, I'd like to introduce Oracle VM Server for SPARC --  highly efficient, enterprise-class virtualization solution for Sun SPARC Enterprise Systems with Chip Multithreading (CMT) technology. Oracle VM Server for SPARC, previously called Sun Logical Domains, leverages the built-in SPARC hypervisor to subdivide supported platforms' resources (CPUs, memory, network, and storage) by creating partitions called logical (or virtual) domains. Each logical domain can run an independent operating system. Oracle VM Server for SPARC provides the flexibility to deploy multiple Oracle Solaris operating systems simultaneously on a single platform. Oracle VM Server also allows you to create up to 128 virtual servers on one system to take advantage of the massive thread scale offered by the CMT architecture. Oracle VM Server for SPARC integrates both the industry-leading CMT capability of the UltraSPARC T1, T2 and T2 Plus processors and the Oracle Solaris operating system. This combination helps to increase flexibility, isolate workload processing, and improve the potential for maximum server utilization. Oracle VM Server for SPARC delivers the following: Leading Price/Performance - The low-overhead architecture provides scalable performance under increasing workloads without additional license cost. This enables you to meet the most aggressive price/performance requirement Advanced RAS - Each logical domain is an entirely independent virtual machine with its own OS. It supports virtual disk mutipathing and failover as well as faster network failover with link-based IP multipathing (IPMP) support. Moreover, it's fully integrated with Solaris FMA (Fault Management Architecture), which enables predictive self healing. CPU Dynamic Resource Management (DRM) - Enable your resource management policy and domain workload to trigger the automatic addition and removal of CPUs. This ability helps you to better align with your IT and business priorities. Enhanced Domain Migrations - Perform domain migrations interactively and non-interactively to bring more flexibility to the management of your virtualized environment. Improve active domain migration performance by compressing memory transfers and taking advantage of cryptographic acceleration hardware. These methods provide faster migration for load balancing, power saving, and planned maintenance. Dynamic Crypto Control - Dynamically add and remove cryptographic units (aka MAU) to and from active domains. Also, migrate active domains that have cryptographic units. Physical-to-virtual (P2V) Conversion - Quickly convert an existing SPARC server running the Oracle Solaris 8, 9 or 10 OS into a virtualized Oracle Solaris 10 image. Use this image to facilitate OS migration into the virtualized environment. Virtual I/O Dynamic Reconfiguration (DR) - Add and remove virtual I/O services and devices without needing to reboot the system. CPU Power Management - Implement power saving by disabling each core on a Sun UltraSPARC T2 or T2 Plus processor that has all of its CPU threads idle. Advanced Network Configuration - Configure the following network features to obtain more flexible network configurations, higher performance, and scalability: Jumbo frames, VLANs, virtual switches for link aggregations, and network interface unit (NIU) hybrid I/O. Official Certification Based On Real-World Testing - Use Oracle VM Server for SPARC with the most sophisticated enterprise workloads under real-world conditions, including Oracle Real Application Clusters (RAC). Affordable, Full-Stack Enterprise Class Support - Obtain worldwide support from Oracle for the entire virtualization environment and workloads together. The support covers hardware, firmware, OS, virtualization, and the software stack. SPARC Server Virtualization Oracle offers a full portfolio of virtualization solutions to address your needs. SPARC is the leading platform to have the hard partitioning capability that provides the physical isolation needed to run independent operating systems. Many customers have already used Oracle Solaris Containers for application isolation. Oracle VM Server for SPARC provides another important feature with OS isolation. This gives you the flexibility to deploy multiple operating systems simultaneously on a single Sun SPARC T-Series server with finer granularity for computing resources.  For SPARC CMT processors, the natural level of granularity is an execution thread, not a time-sliced microsecond of execution resources. Each CPU thread can be treated as an independent virtual processor. The scheduler is naturally built into the CPU for lower overhead and higher performance. Your organizations can couple Oracle Solaris Containers and Oracle VM Server for SPARC with the breakthrough space and energy savings afforded by Sun SPARC Enterprise systems with CMT technology to deliver a more agile, responsive, and low-cost environment. Management with Oracle Enterprise Manager Ops Center The Oracle Enterprise Manager Ops Center Virtualization Management Pack provides full lifecycle management of virtual guests, including Oracle VM Server for SPARC and Oracle Solaris Containers. It helps you streamline operations and reduce downtime. Together, the Virtualization Management Pack and the Ops Center Provisioning and Patch Automation Pack provide an end-to-end management solution for physical and virtual systems through a single web-based console. This solution automates the lifecycle management of physical and virtual systems and is the most effective systems management solution for Oracle's Sun infrastructure. Ease of Deployment with Configuration Assistant The Oracle VM Server for SPARC Configuration Assistant can help you easily create logical domains. After gathering the configuration data, the Configuration Assistant determines the best way to create a deployment to suit your requirements. The Configuration Assistant is available as both a graphical user interface (GUI) and terminal-based tool. Oracle Solaris Cluster HA Support The Oracle Solaris Cluster HA for Oracle VM Server for SPARC data service provides a mechanism for orderly startup and shutdown, fault monitoring and automatic failover of the Oracle VM Server guest domain service. In addition, applications that run on a logical domain, as well as its resources and dependencies can be controlled and managed independently. These are managed as if they were running in a classical Solaris Cluster hardware node. Supported Systems Oracle VM Server for SPARC is supported on all Sun SPARC Enterprise Systems with CMT technology. UltraSPARC T2 Plus Systems ·   Sun SPARC Enterprise T5140 Server ·   Sun SPARC Enterprise T5240 Server ·   Sun SPARC Enterprise T5440 Server ·   Sun Netra T5440 Server ·   Sun Blade T6340 Server Module ·   Sun Netra T6340 Server Module UltraSPARC T2 Systems ·   Sun SPARC Enterprise T5120 Server ·   Sun SPARC Enterprise T5220 Server ·   Sun Netra T5220 Server ·   Sun Blade T6320 Server Module ·   Sun Netra CP3260 ATCA Blade Server Note that UltraSPARC T1 systems are supported on earlier versions of the software.Sun SPARC Enterprise Systems with CMT technology come with the right to use (RTU) of Oracle VM Server, and the software is pre-installed. If you have the systems under warranty or with support, you can download the software and system firmware as well as their updates. Oracle Premier Support for Systems provides fully-integrated support for your server hardware, firmware, OS, and virtualization software. Visit oracle.com/support for information about Oracle's support offerings for Sun systems. For more information about Oracle's virtualization offerings, visit oracle.com/virtualization.

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