Search Results

Search found 29636 results on 1186 pages for 'fine uploader'.

Page 371/1186 | < Previous Page | 367 368 369 370 371 372 373 374 375 376 377 378  | Next Page >

• File server share access intermittent/slow/machine unstable: win2kr2

  - by Jack B.

  I have a file server running Win2k8R2 on an older HP DL380G4. It has nothing set up on it other than file sharing. All drivers/firmware/updates installed. The file server is used as a dump for a bunch of test machines - so essentially a lot of small files are being written to it. It was working fine until it started showing the following symptoms: Shares became either very slow/intermittent or could not access them at all. Logging in the the server, you could use it like normal but windows would start freezing and eventually you had to hard reboot it because nothing was responsive. After rebooting, it would work fine for 20min-2hours and then degrade into this broken state again. Some info after investigation: HP Raid Config utility shows the Raid array as functioning properly (RAID5 btw). Event log shows a bunch of DoS attacks from the test machines, saying it has disconnected the connection a. AFAIK (not part of my job) the test machines haven't changed the way they log information to this server or the amount of them hasn't increased. b. Nothing is infected, this server was scanned fully, and the test machines are re-imaged almost daily. Nothing in performance monitor shows as anything being pegged at maximum (CPU/HD/Network/RAM) I installed MS Network Monitor and it is showing a lot of traffic The server was using one gigabit Ethernet connection, I connected the second one as well with the same results. Forgot to add - one of the commonly written to dirs on the share has over 16k subdirs in it, with a crapton of small files within those dirs. Some of the OS instability was slow access to the drive which has this directory - perfmon doesn't show much activity on the HD though so I'm not sure if this crowded dir is the cause. Here is one important fact: I ran into this issue 2-3 months ago, couldn't figure it out, but I had a spare identical machine so I swapped them out (thought it was related to the machine), and now I have the same issue. Also, the computer will be stable if I turn off file sharing. So is the server just getting DoS'd by the test machines? I've never dealt with such an issue. Is instability in the server's OS common when getting DoS'd? Is there anything I can do to confirm this before telling the owners of the test machines to optimize their traffic? (I'm not sure what they'll be able to do). Is there something within Win2k8R2 that can balance the traffic across the two NICs? Any help would be appreciated. Update: Another thought - the drive with the share is RAID5 across 6 SCSI320 300GB HDs. They are near full capacity about 100GB from 1TB left. Could the amount of tiny files could be causing some weirdness with the parity in this array? I think I've read something about this in the past but I'm no expert on RAID.

  Read the article

• ActiveX component can't create Object Error? Check 64 bit Status

  - by Rick Strahl

  If you're running on IIS 7 and a 64 bit operating system you might run into the following error using ASP classic or ASP.NET with COM interop. In classic ASP applications the error will show up as: ActiveX component can't create object   (Error 429) (actually without error handling the error just shows up as 500 error page) In my case the code that's been giving me problems has been a FoxPro COM object I'd been using to serve banner ads to some of my pages. The code basically looks up banners from a database table and displays them at random. The ASP classic code that uses it looks like this: <% Set banner = Server.CreateObject("wwBanner.aspBanner") banner.BannerFile = "wwsitebanners" Response.Write(banner.GetBanner(-1)) %> Originally this code had no specific error checking as above so the ASP pages just failed with 500 error pages from the Web server. To find out what the problem is this code is more useful at least for debugging: <% ON ERROR RESUME NEXT Set banner = Server.CreateObject("wwBanner.aspBanner") Response.Write(err.Number & " - " & err.Description) banner.BannerFile = "wwsitebanners" Response.Write(banner.GetBanner(-1)) %> which results in: 429 - ActiveX component can't create object which at least gives you a slight clue. In ASP.NET invoking the same COM object with code like this: <% dynamic banner = wwUtils.CreateComInstance("wwBanner.aspBanner") as dynamic; banner.cBANNERFILE = "wwsitebanners"; Response.Write(banner.getBanner(-1)); %> results in: Retrieving the COM class factory for component with CLSID {B5DCBB81-D5F5-11D2-B85E-00600889F23B} failed due to the following error: 80040154 Class not registered (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80040154 (REGDB_E_CLASSNOTREG)). The class is in fact registered though and the COM server loads fine from a command prompt or other COM client. This error can be caused by a COM server that doesn't load. It looks like a COM registration error. There are a number of traditional reasons why this error can crop up of course. The server isn't registered (run regserver32 to register a DLL server or /regserver on an EXE server) Access permissions aren't set on the COM server (Web account has to be able to read the DLL ie. Network service) The COM server fails to load during initialization ie. failing during startup One thing I always do to check for COM errors fire up the server in a COM client outside of IIS and ensure that it works there first - it's almost always easier to debug a server outside of the Web environment. In my case I tried the server in Visual FoxPro on the server with: loBanners = CREATEOBJECT("wwBanner.aspBanner") loBanners.cBannerFile = "wwsitebanners" ? loBanners.GetBanner(-1) and it worked just fine. If you don't have a full dev environment on the server you can also use VBScript do the same thing and run the .vbs file from the command prompt: Set banner = Server.CreateObject("wwBanner.aspBanner") banner.BannerFile = "wwsitebanners" MsgBox(banner.getBanner(-1)) Since this both works it tells me the server is registered and working properly. This leaves startup failures or permissions as the problem. I double checked permissions for the Application Pool and the permissions of the folder where the DLL lives and both are properly set to allow access by the Application Pool impersonated user. Just to be sure I assigned an Admin user to the Application Pool but still no go. So now what? 64 bit Servers Ahoy A couple of weeks back I had set up a few of my Application pools to 64 bit mode. My server is Server 2008 64 bit and by default Application Pools run 64 bit. Originally when I installed the server I set up most of my Application Pools to 32 bit mainly for backwards compatibility. But as more of my code migrates to 64 bit OS's I figured it'd be a good idea to see how well code runs under 64 bit code. The transition has been mostly painless. Until today when I noticed the problem with the code above when scrolling to my IIS logs and noticing a lot of 500 errors on many of my ASP classic pages. The code in question in most of these pages deals with this single simple COM object. It took a while to figure out that the problem is caused by the Application Pool running in 64 bit mode. The issue is that 32 bit COM objects (ie. my old Visual FoxPro COM component) cannot be loaded in a 64 bit Application Pool. The ASP pages using this COM component broke on the day I switched my main Application Pool into 64 bit mode but I didn't find the problem until I searched my logs for errors by pure chance. To fix this is easy enough once you know what the problem is by switching the Application Pool to Enable 32-bit Applications: Once this is done the COM objects started working correctly again. 64 bit ASP and ASP.NET with DCOM Servers This is kind of off topic, but incidentally it's possible to load 32 bit DCOM (out of process) servers from ASP.NET and ASP classic even if those applications run in 64 bit application pools. In fact, in West Wind Web Connection I use this capability to run a 64 bit ASP.NET handler that talks to a 32 bit FoxPro COM server which allows West Wind Web Connection to run in native 64 bit mode without custom configuration (which is actually quite useful). It's probably not a common usage scenario but it's good to know that you can actually access 32 bit COM objects this way from ASP.NET. For West Wind Web Connection this works out well as the DCOM interface only makes one non-chatty call to the backend server that handles all the rest of the request processing. Application Pool Isolation is your Friend For me the recent incident of failure in the classic ASP pages has just been another reminder to be very careful with moving applications to 64 bit operation. There are many little traps when switching to 64 bit that are very difficult to track and test for. I described one issue I had a couple of months ago where one of the default ASP.NET filters was loading the wrong version (32bit instead of 64bit) which was extremely difficult to track down and was caused by a very sneaky configuration switch error (basically 3 different entries for the same ISAPI filter all with different bitness settings). It took me almost a full day to track this down). Recently I've been taken to isolate individual applications into separate Application Pools rather than my past practice of combining many apps into shared AppPools. This is a good practice assuming you have enough memory to make this work. Application Pool isolate provides more modularity and allows me to selectively move applications to 64 bit. The error above came about precisely because I moved one of my most populous app pools to 64 bit and forgot about the minimal COM object use in some of my old pages. It's easy to forget. To 64bit or Not Is it worth it to move to 64 bit? Currently I'd say -not really. In my - admittedly limited - testing I don't see any significant performance increases. In fact 64 bit apps just seem to consume considerably more memory (30-50% more in my pools on average) and performance is minimally improved (less than 5% at the very best) in the load testing I've performed on a couple of sites in both modes. The only real incentive for 64 bit would be applications that require huge data spaces that exceed the 32 bit 4 gigabyte memory limit. However I have a hard time imagining an application that needs 4 gigs of memory in a single Application Pool :-). Curious to hear other opinions on benefits of 64 bit operation. © Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2011Posted in COM   ASP.NET  FoxPro  

  Read the article

• How can I get penetration depth from Minkowski Portal Refinement / Xenocollide?

  - by Raven Dreamer

  I recently got an implementation of Minkowski Portal Refinement (MPR) successfully detecting collision. Even better, my implementation returns a good estimate (local minimum) direction for the minimum penetration depth. So I took a stab at adjusting the algorithm to return the penetration depth in an arbitrary direction, and was modestly successful - my altered method works splendidly for face-edge collision resolution! What it doesn't currently do, is correctly provide the minimum penetration depth for edge-edge scenarios, such as the case on the right: What I perceive to be happening, is that my current method returns the minimum penetration depth to the nearest vertex - which works fine when the collision is actually occurring on the plane of that vertex, but not when the collision happens along an edge. Is there a way I can alter my method to return the penetration depth to the point of collision, rather than the nearest vertex? Here's the method that's supposed to return the minimum penetration distance along a specific direction: public static Vector3 CalcMinDistance(List<Vector3> shape1, List<Vector3> shape2, Vector3 dir) { //holding variables Vector3 n = Vector3.zero; Vector3 swap = Vector3.zero; // v0 = center of Minkowski sum v0 = Vector3.zero; // Avoid case where centers overlap -- any direction is fine in this case //if (v0 == Vector3.zero) return Vector3.zero; //always pass in a valid direction. // v1 = support in direction of origin n = -dir; //get the differnce of the minkowski sum Vector3 v11 = GetSupport(shape1, -n); Vector3 v12 = GetSupport(shape2, n); v1 = v12 - v11; //if the support point is not in the direction of the origin if (v1.Dot(n) <= 0) { //Debug.Log("Could find no points this direction"); return Vector3.zero; } // v2 - support perpendicular to v1,v0 n = v1.Cross(v0); if (n == Vector3.zero) { //v1 and v0 are parallel, which means //the direction leads directly to an endpoint n = v1 - v0; //shortest distance is just n //Debug.Log("2 point return"); return n; } //get the new support point Vector3 v21 = GetSupport(shape1, -n); Vector3 v22 = GetSupport(shape2, n); v2 = v22 - v21; if (v2.Dot(n) <= 0) { //can't reach the origin in this direction, ergo, no collision //Debug.Log("Could not reach edge?"); return Vector2.zero; } // Determine whether origin is on + or - side of plane (v1,v0,v2) //tests linesegments v0v1 and v0v2 n = (v1 - v0).Cross(v2 - v0); float dist = n.Dot(v0); // If the origin is on the - side of the plane, reverse the direction of the plane if (dist > 0) { //swap the winding order of v1 and v2 swap = v1; v1 = v2; v2 = swap; //swap the winding order of v11 and v12 swap = v12; v12 = v11; v11 = swap; //swap the winding order of v11 and v12 swap = v22; v22 = v21; v21 = swap; //and swap the plane normal n = -n; } /// // Phase One: Identify a portal while (true) { // Obtain the support point in a direction perpendicular to the existing plane // Note: This point is guaranteed to lie off the plane Vector3 v31 = GetSupport(shape1, -n); Vector3 v32 = GetSupport(shape2, n); v3 = v32 - v31; if (v3.Dot(n) <= 0) { //can't enclose the origin within our tetrahedron //Debug.Log("Could not reach edge after portal?"); return Vector3.zero; } // If origin is outside (v1,v0,v3), then eliminate v2 and loop if (v1.Cross(v3).Dot(v0) < 0) { //failed to enclose the origin, adjust points; v2 = v3; v21 = v31; v22 = v32; n = (v1 - v0).Cross(v3 - v0); continue; } // If origin is outside (v3,v0,v2), then eliminate v1 and loop if (v3.Cross(v2).Dot(v0) < 0) { //failed to enclose the origin, adjust points; v1 = v3; v11 = v31; v12 = v32; n = (v3 - v0).Cross(v2 - v0); continue; } bool hit = false; /// // Phase Two: Refine the portal int phase2 = 0; // We are now inside of a wedge... while (phase2 < 20) { phase2++; // Compute normal of the wedge face n = (v2 - v1).Cross(v3 - v1); n.Normalize(); // Compute distance from origin to wedge face float d = n.Dot(v1); // If the origin is inside the wedge, we have a hit if (d > 0 ) { //Debug.Log("Do plane test here"); float T = n.Dot(v2) / n.Dot(dir); Vector3 pointInPlane = (dir * T); return pointInPlane; } // Find the support point in the direction of the wedge face Vector3 v41 = GetSupport(shape1, -n); Vector3 v42 = GetSupport(shape2, n); v4 = v42 - v41; float delta = (v4 - v3).Dot(n); float separation = -(v4.Dot(n)); if (delta <= kCollideEpsilon || separation >= 0) { //Debug.Log("Non-convergance detected"); //Debug.Log("Do plane test here"); return Vector3.zero; } // Compute the tetrahedron dividing face (v4,v0,v1) float d1 = v4.Cross(v1).Dot(v0); // Compute the tetrahedron dividing face (v4,v0,v2) float d2 = v4.Cross(v2).Dot(v0); // Compute the tetrahedron dividing face (v4,v0,v3) float d3 = v4.Cross(v3).Dot(v0); if (d1 < 0) { if (d2 < 0) { // Inside d1 & inside d2 ==> eliminate v1 v1 = v4; v11 = v41; v12 = v42; } else { // Inside d1 & outside d2 ==> eliminate v3 v3 = v4; v31 = v41; v32 = v42; } } else { if (d3 < 0) { // Outside d1 & inside d3 ==> eliminate v2 v2 = v4; v21 = v41; v22 = v42; } else { // Outside d1 & outside d3 ==> eliminate v1 v1 = v4; v11 = v41; v12 = v42; } } } return Vector3.zero; } }

  Read the article

• Adaptive ADF/WebCenter template for the iPad

  - by Maiko Rocha

  One of my WebCenter Portal customers was asking about adaptive design with ADF/WebCenter Portal and how they could go about creating an adaptive iPad template for their WebCenter Portal application. They were looking not only for the out-of-the-box support for mobile Safari which is certified against PS5+ (11.1.1.6) for ADF/WebCenter - but also to create a specific template to streamline their workflow on the iPad. Seems like they wanted something in the lines of Yahoo! Mail provides for the iPad - so the example I will use is shamelessly inspired by Y! Mail's iPad UI.  But first, let's quickly understand how can we bake in some adaptive goodness into ADF Faces. First thing we need to understand is, yes, there are a couple of constraints that we will need to work around, namely, the use or layout managers and skins. Please also keep in mind that I'm not and I don't pretend to be a web designer, much less an UX specialist, so feel free to leave your thoughts on the matter in the comments section. Now, back to the limitations. Layout Managers ADF Faces layout managers create an abstraction on top of the generated HTML code for a page so a developer doesn't need to be worried about how to size and dimension the UI layout (eg, af:panelStretchLayout). Although layout managers are very helpful, in this specific situation we will need to know a little bit more of how the final HTML is being rendered so we can apply the CSS class accordingly and create transition containers where the media queries will be applied - now, if you're using 11gR2 (11.1.2.2.3) there's the new component af:panelGridLayout (here and here) that will greatly improve creating responsive templates and pages because it is based on the grid/fluid systems and will generate straight out to DIVs on your final page. For now, I'm limited to PS5 and the af:panelStretchLayout component as a starting point because that's the release my customer is on. Skins You won't be able to use media queries, or use anything with "@" notation on the skin CSS file - the skin pre-processor will remove all extraneous "@" from the CSS file. The solution is to split your CSS in two separate files: a skin CSS file and plain CSS where you will add the media queries. The issue here is that you won't be able to use media queries for any faces components. We can, though, still apply the media queries for the components like af:panelGroupLayout and af:panelBorderLayout through their styleClass property to enable these components to be responsive to to the iPad orientation, by changing its dimensions, font sizes, hide/show areas, etc. Difference between responsive and adaptive design The best definition of adaptive vs responsive web design I could find is this: “Responsive web design,” as coined by Ethan Marcotte, means “fluid grids, fluid images/media & media queries.” “Adaptive web design,” as I use it, is about creating interfaces that adapt to the user’s capabilities (in terms of both form and function). To me, “adaptive web design” is just another term for “progressive enhancement” of which responsive web design can (an often should) be an integral part, but is a more holistic approach to web design in that it also takes into account varying levels of markup, CSS, JavaScript and assistive technology support. Responsive/adapative web design is much more than slapping an HTML template with CSS around your content or application. The content and application themselves are part of your web design - in other words, a responsive template is just an afterthought if it is not originating from a responsive design the involves the whole web application/s. Tips on responsive / adapative design with ADF/WebCenter Some of the tips listed below were already mentioned in multiple blog posts about ADF layout and skinning, but it is still worth remembering: a simple guideline for ADF/WebCenter apps would be to first create a high-level group of devices, for example: smartphones, tablets,  and desktop. For each of these large groups, create the basic structure to provide responsiveness: a page template, a skin, and an external CSS: pagetemplate_smartphone.jspx, smartphone_skin.css, smartphone-responsive.css pagetemplate_tablet.jspx, tablet_skin.css, tablet-responsive.css pagetemplate_desktop.jspx, desktop_skin.css, desktop-responsive.css These three assets can be changed on the fly through an user-agent check on the server side, delivering the right UI to the right device. Within each of the assets, you can make fine adjustments for each subgroup of devices with media queries - for example, smart phones with different screen dimensions and pixel density. Having these three groups and the corresponding assets per group seem to be a good compromise between trying to put everything on a single set of assets - specially considering the constraints above - and going to the other side of the spectrum to create assets per discrete device (iPhone4, iPhone5, Nexus, S3, etc.). Keep in mind that these are my rules and are not in any shape or form a best practice - this is how it fits best for the scenarios I've been working with. If you need to use HTML tags on your page, surround them with af:group to protect the DOM structure For stretchable/fluid layouts: Use non-stretching containers: panelGroupLayout, panelBorderLayout, … panelBorderLayout can be used to approximate HTML table component To avoid multiple scroll bars, do not nest scrolling PanelGroupLayout components. Consider layout="vertical" For stretchable/fluid layouts: Most stretchable ADF components also work in flowing context with dimensionsFrom="auto" To stretch a component horizontally, use styleClass="AFStretchWidth" instead of  "width:100%" Skinning Don't use CSS3 @media, @import, animations, etc. on skin css files. They will be removed. CSS3 properties within a class (box-shadow, transition, etc.) work just fine. Consider resetting some skin classes to better control their rendering: body {color: inherit;font: inherit;} af|document {-tr-inhibit: all;} af|commandLink {-tr-inhibit: all;} af|goLink {-tr-inhibit: all;} af|inputText::content {font: inherit;} Specific meta tags and CSS properties: Use  <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0, minimum-scale=1.0, maximum-scale=1.0"/> to avoid zooming (if you want) Use -webkit-overflow-scrolling: touch to enable native momentum scrolling within overflown areas (here) Use text-rendering: optmizeLegibility to improve readability. (here) User text-overflow: ellipsis to gracefully crop overflown text. (here) The meta-tags are included in each and every page in the metaContainer facet of af:document tag. You can also use a javascript to inject the meta-tags from the template. For the purpose of the example, I wanted to use as few workarounds as possible.   The iPad template and sample application This sample application has been built as a WebCenter Portal application, but you will also be able to reuse the template and techniques on your vanilla ADF application. Keep in mind that I'm neither a designer nor a CSS specialist, so please don't bash me too much on the messy CSS file you'll find on the application.  I've extended the provided PreferencesBean class that comes with WebCenter Portal and added code to dinamically change the template and skin on the fly.   This is the sample application in landscape orientation: This is the sample application in portrait orientation - the left side menu hides automatically based on a CSS media query: Another screenshot with a skinned popup opened: This is a sample application for you to play with - ideally you shouldn't use it as a starting point. On the left side bar you will find links rendered from a WebCenter Portal navigation model - the link triggers a full request through an af:goLink, while the light blue PPR button triggers a PPR navigation. The dark blue toolbar buttons at the top don't have any function,while the Approve and Reject buttons show a skinned popup. The search box of course doesn't have any behavior attahed to it either. There's a known issue right now with some PPR calls that are randomly generating a 403 error redirecting to the login page - I didn't have time to investigate if this is iOS6 specific or not - if you have any insights please let me know your findings. You can download the sample here.

  Read the article

• On Her Majesty's Secret Source Code: .NET Reflector 7 Early Access Builds Now Available

  - by Bart Read

  Dodgy Bond references aside, I'm extremely happy to be able to tell you that we've just released our first .NET Reflector 7 Early Access build. We're going to make these available over the coming weeks via the main .NET Reflector download page at: http://reflector.red-gate.com/Download.aspx Please have a play and tell us what you think in the forum we've set up. Also, please let us know if you run into any problems in the same place. The new version so far comes with numerous decompilation improvements including (after 5 years!) support for iterator blocks - i.e., the yield statement first seen in .NET 2.0. We've also done a lot of work to solidify the support for .NET 4.0. Clive's written about the work he's done to support iterator blocks in much more detail here, along with the odd problem he's encountered when dealing with compiler generated code: http://www.simple-talk.com/community/blogs/clivet/96199.aspx. On the UI front we've started what will ultimately be a rewrite of the entire front-end, albeit broken into stages over two or three major releases. The most obvious addition at the moment is tabbed browsing, which you can see in Figure 1. Figure 1. .NET Reflector's new tabbed decompilation feature. Use CTRL+Click on any item in the assembly browser tree, or any link in the source code view, to open it in a new tab. This isn't by any means finished. I'll be tying up loose ends for the next few weeks, with a major focus on performance and resource usage. .NET Reflector has historically been a largely single-threaded application which has been fine up until now but, as you might expect, the addition of browser-style tabbing has pushed this approach somewhat beyond its limit. You can see this if you refresh the assemblies list by hitting F5. This shows up another problem: we really need to make Reflector remember everything you had open before you refreshed the list, rather than just the last item you viewed - I discovered that it's always done the latter, but it used to hide all panes apart from the treeview after a Refresh, including the decompiler/disassembler window. Ultimately I've got plans to add the whole VS/Chrome/Firefox style ability to drag a tab into the middle of nowhere to spawn a new window, but I need to be mindful of the add-ins, amongst other things, so it's possible that might slip to a 7.5 or 8.0 release. You'll also notice that .NET Reflector 7 now needs .NET 3.5 or later to run. We made this jump because we wanted to offer ourselves a much better chance of adding some really cool functionality to support newer technologies, such as Silverlight and Windows Phone 7. We've also taken the opportunity to start using WPF for UI development, which has frankly been a godsend. The learning curve is practically vertical but, I kid you not, it's just a far better world. Really. Stop using WinForms. Now. Why are you still using it? I had to go back and work on an old WinForms dialog for an hour or two yesterday and it really made me wince. The point is we'll be able to move the UI in some exciting new directions that will make Reflector easier to use whilst continuing to develop its functionality without (and this is key) cluttering the interface. The 3.5 language enhancements should also enable us to be much more productive over the longer term. I know most of you have .NET Fx 3.5 or 4.0 already but, if you do need to install a new version, I'd recommend you jump straight to 4.0 because, for one thing, it's faster, and if you're starting afresh there's really no reason not to. Despite the Fx version jump the Visual Studio add-in should still work fine in Visual Studio 2005, and obviously will continue to work in Visual Studio 2008 and 2010. If you do run into problems, again, please let us know here. As before, we continue to support every edition of Visual Studio exception the Express Editions. Speaking of Visual Studio, we've also been improving the add-in. You can now open and explore decompiled code for any referenced assembly in any project in your solution. Just right-click on the reference, then click Decompile and Explore on the context menu. Reflector will pop up a progress box whilst it decompiles your assembly (Figure 2) - you can move this out of the way whilst you carry on working. Figure 2. Decompilation progress. This isn't modal so you can just move it out of the way and carry on working. Once it's done you can explore your assembly in the Reflector treeview (Figure 3), also accessible via the .NET Reflector Explore Decompiled Assemblies main menu item. Double-click on any item to open decompiled source in the Visual Studio source code view. Use right-click and Go To Definition on the source view context menu to navigate through the code. Figure 3. Using the .NET Reflector treeview within Visual Studio. Double-click on any item to open decompiled source in the source code view. There are loads of other changes and fixes that have gone in, often under the hood, which I don't have room to talk about here, and plenty more to come over the next few weeks. I'll try to keep you abreast of new functionality and changes as they go in. There are a couple of smaller things worth mentioning now though. Firstly, we've reorganised the menus and toolbar in Reflector itself to more closely mirror what you might be used to in other applications. Secondly, we've tried to make some of the functionality more discoverable. For example, you can now switch decompilation target framework version directly from the toolbar - and the default is now .NET 4.0. I think that about covers it for the moment. As I said, please use the new version, and send us your feedback. Here's that download URL again: http://reflector.red-gate.com/Download.aspx. Until next time! Technorati Tags: .net reflector,7,early access,new version,decompilation,tabbing,visual studio,software development,.net,c#,vb

  Read the article

• Routing Issue in ASP.NET MVC 3 RC 2

  - by imran_ku07

       Introduction:             Two weeks ago, ASP.NET MVC team shipped the ASP.NET MVC 3 RC 2 release. This release includes some new features and some performance optimization. This release also fixes most of the bugs but still some minor issues are present in this release. Some of these issues are already discussed by Scott Guthrie at Update on ASP.NET MVC 3 RC2 (and a workaround for a bug in it). In addition to these issues, I have found another issue in this release regarding routing. In this article, I will show you the issue regarding routing and a simple workaround for this issue.       Description:             The easiest way to understand an issue is to reproduce it in the application. So create a MVC 2 application and a MVC 3 RC 2 application. Then in both applications, just open global.asax file and update the default route as below,     routes.IgnoreRoute("{resource}.axd/{*pathInfo}"); routes.MapRoute( "Default", // Route name "{controller}/{action}/{id1}/{id2}", // URL with parameters new { controller = "Home", action = "Index", id1 = UrlParameter.Optional, id2 = UrlParameter.Optional } // Parameter defaults );              Then just open Index View and add the following lines,    <%@ Page Language="C#" MasterPageFile="~/Views/Shared/Site.Master" Inherits="System.Web.Mvc.ViewPage" %> <asp:Content ID="Content1" ContentPlaceHolderID="TitleContent" runat="server"> Home Page </asp:Content> <asp:Content ID="Content2" ContentPlaceHolderID="MainContent" runat="server"> <% Html.RenderAction("About"); %> </asp:Content>             The above view will issue a child request to About action method. Now run both applications. ASP.NET MVC 2 application will run just fine. But ASP.NET MVC 3 RC 2 application will throw an exception as shown below,                  You may think that this is a routing issue but this is not the case here as both ASP.NET MVC 2 and ASP.NET MVC  3 RC 2 applications(created above) are built with .NET Framework 4.0 and both will use the same routing defined in System.Web. Something is wrong in ASP.NET MVC 3 RC 2. So after digging into ASP.NET MVC source code, I have found that the UrlParameter class in ASP.NET MVC 3 RC 2 overrides the ToString method which simply return an empty string.     public sealed class UrlParameter { public static readonly UrlParameter Optional = new UrlParameter(); private UrlParameter() { } public override string ToString() { return string.Empty; } }             In MVC 2 the ToString method was not overridden. So to quickly fix the above problem just replace UrlParameter.Optional default value with a different value other than null or empty(for example, a single white space) or replace UrlParameter.Optional default value with a new class object containing the same code as UrlParameter class have except the ToString method is not overridden (or with a overridden ToString method that return a string value other than null or empty). But by doing this you will loose the benefit of ASP.NET MVC 2 Optional URL Parameters. There may be many different ways to fix the above problem and not loose the benefit of optional parameters. Here I will create a new class MyUrlParameter with the same code as UrlParameter class have except the ToString method is not overridden. Then I will create a base controller class which contains a constructor to remove all MyUrlParameter route data parameters, same like ASP.NET MVC doing with UrlParameter route data parameters early in the request.     public class BaseController : Controller { public BaseController() { if (System.Web.HttpContext.Current.CurrentHandler is MvcHandler) { RouteValueDictionary rvd = ((MvcHandler)System.Web.HttpContext.Current.CurrentHandler).RequestContext.RouteData.Values; string[] matchingKeys = (from entry in rvd where entry.Value == MyUrlParameter.Optional select entry.Key).ToArray(); foreach (string key in matchingKeys) { rvd.Remove(key); } } } } public class HomeController : BaseController { public ActionResult Index(string id1) { ViewBag.Message = "Welcome to ASP.NET MVC!"; return View(); } public ActionResult About() { return Content("Child Request Contents"); } }     public sealed class MyUrlParameter { public static readonly MyUrlParameter Optional = new MyUrlParameter(); private MyUrlParameter() { } }     routes.IgnoreRoute("{resource}.axd/{*pathInfo}"); routes.MapRoute( "Default", // Route name "{controller}/{action}/{id1}/{id2}", // URL with parameters new { controller = "Home", action = "Index", id1 = MyUrlParameter.Optional, id2 = MyUrlParameter.Optional } // Parameter defaults );             MyUrlParameter class is a copy of UrlParameter class except that MyUrlParameter class not overrides the ToString method. Note that the default route is modified to use MyUrlParameter.Optional instead of UrlParameter.Optional. Also note that BaseController class constructor is removing MyUrlParameter parameters from the current request route data so that the model binder will not bind these parameters with action method parameters. Now just run the ASP.NET MVC 3 RC 2 application again, you will find that it runs just fine.             In case if you are curious to know that why ASP.NET MVC 3 RC 2 application throws an exception if UrlParameter class contains a ToString method which returns an empty string, then you need to know something about a feature of routing for url generation. During url generation, routing will call the ParsedRoute.Bind method internally. This method includes a logic to match the route and build the url. During building the url, ParsedRoute.Bind method will call the ToString method of the route values(in our case this will call the UrlParameter.ToString method) and then append the returned value into url. This method includes a logic after appending the returned value into url that if two continuous returned values are empty then don't match the current route otherwise an incorrect url will be generated. Here is the snippet from ParsedRoute.Bind method which will prove this statement.       if ((builder2.Length > 0) && (builder2[builder2.Length - 1] == '/')) { return null; } builder2.Append("/"); ........................................................... ........................................................... ........................................................... ........................................................... if (RoutePartsEqual(obj3, obj4)) { builder2.Append(UrlEncode(Convert.ToString(obj3, CultureInfo.InvariantCulture))); continue; }             In the above example, both id1 and id2 parameters default values are set to UrlParameter object and UrlParameter class include a ToString method that returns an empty string. That's why this route will not matched.            Summary:             In this article I showed you the issue regarding routing and also showed you how to workaround this problem. I explained this issue with an example by creating a ASP.NET MVC 2 and a ASP.NET MVC 3 RC 2 application. Finally I also explained the reason for this issue. Hopefully you will enjoy this article too.   SyntaxHighlighter.all()

  Read the article

• Keeping track of File System Utilization in Ops Center 12c

  - by S Stelting

  Enterprise Manager Ops Center 12c provides significant monitoring capabilities, combined with very flexible incident management. These capabilities even extend to monitoring the file systems associated with Solaris or Linux assets. Depending on your needs you can monitor and manage incidents, or you can fine tune alert monitoring rules to specific file systems. This article will show you how to use Ops Center 12c to Track file system utilization Adjust file system monitoring rules Disable file system rules Create custom monitoring rules If you're interested in this topic, please join us for a WebEx presentation! Date: Thursday, November 8, 2012 Time: 11:00 am, Eastern Standard Time (New York, GMT-05:00) Meeting Number: 598 796 842 Meeting Password: oracle123 To join the online meeting ------------------------------------------------------- 1. Go to https://oracleconferencing.webex.com/oracleconferencing/j.php?ED=209833597&UID=1512095432&PW=NOWQ3YjJlMmYy&RT=MiMxMQ%3D%3D 2. If requested, enter your name and email address. 3. If a password is required, enter the meeting password: oracle123 4. Click "Join". To view in other time zones or languages, please click the link: https://oracleconferencing.webex.com/oracleconferencing/j.php?ED=209833597&UID=1512095432&PW=NOWQ3YjJlMmYy&ORT=MiMxMQ%3D%3D   Monitoring File Systems for OS Assets The Libraries tab provides basic, device-level information about the storage associated with an OS instance. This tab shows you the local file system associated with the instance and any shared storage libraries mounted by Ops Center. More detailed information about file system storage is available under the Analytics tab under the sub-tab named Charts. Here, you can select and display the individual mount points of an OS, and export the utilization data if desired: In this example, the OS instance has a basic root file partition and several NFS directories. Each file system mount point can be independently chosen for display in the Ops Center chart. File Systems and Incident  Reporting Every asset managed by Ops Center has a "monitoring policy", which determines what represents a reportable issue with the asset. The policy is made up of a bunch of monitoring rules, where each rule describes An attribute to monitor The conditions which represent an issue The level or levels of severity for the issue When the conditions are met, Ops Center sends a notification and creates an incident. By default, OS instances have three monitoring rules associated with file systems: File System Reachability: Triggers an incident if a file system is not reachable NAS Library Status: Triggers an incident for a value of "WARNING" or "DEGRADED" for a NAS-based file system File System Used Space Percentage: Triggers an incident when file system utilization grows beyond defined thresholds You can view these rules in the Monitoring tab for an OS: Of course, the default monitoring rules is that they apply to every file system associated with an OS instance. As a result, any issue with NAS accessibility or disk utilization will trigger an incident. This can cause incidents for file systems to be reported multiple times if the same shared storage is used by many assets, as shown in this screen shot: Depending on the level of control you'd like, there are a number of ways to fine tune incident reporting. Note that any changes to an asset's monitoring policy will detach it from the default, creating a new monitoring policy for the asset. If you'd like, you can extract a monitoring policy from an asset, which allows you to save it and apply the customized monitoring profile to other OS assets. Solution #1: Modify the Reporting Thresholds In some cases, you may want to modify the basic conditions for incident reporting in your file system. The changes you make to a default monitoring rule will apply to all of the file systems associated with your operating system. Selecting the File Systems Used Space Percentage entry and clicking the "Edit Alert Monitoring Rule Parameters" button opens a pop-up dialog which allows you to modify the rule. The first screen lets you decide when you will check for file system usage, and how long you will wait before opening an incident in Ops Center. By default, Ops Center monitors continuously and reports disk utilization issues which exist for more than 15 minutes. The second screen lets you define actual threshold values. By default, Ops Center opens a Warning level incident is utilization rises above 80%, and a Critical level incident for utilization above 95% Solution #2: Disable Incident Reporting for File System If you'd rather not report file system incidents, you can disable the monitoring rules altogether. In this case, you can select the monitoring rules and click the "Disable Alert Monitoring Rule(s)" button to open the pop-up confirmation dialog. Like the first solution, this option affects all file system monitoring. It allows you to completely disable incident reporting for NAS library status or file system space consumption. Solution #3: Create New Monitoring Rules for Specific File Systems If you'd like to have the greatest flexibility when monitoring file systems, you can create entirely new rules. Clicking the "Add Alert Monitoring Rule" (the icon with the green plus sign) opens a wizard which allows you to define a new rule.  This rule will be based on a threshold, and will be used to monitor operating system assets. We'd like to add a rule to track disk utilization for a specific file system - the /nfs-guest directory. To do this, we specify the following attribute FileSystemUsages.name=/nfs-guest.usedSpacePercentage The value of name in the attribute allows us to define a specific NFS shared directory or file system... in the case of this OS, we could have chosen any of the values shown in the File Systems Utilization chart at the beginning of this article. usedSpacePercentage lets us define a threshold based on the percentage of total disk space used. There are a number of other values that we could use for threshold-based monitoring of FileSystemUsages, including freeSpace freeSpacePercentage totalSpace usedSpace usedSpacePercentage The final sections of the screen allow us to determine when to monitor for disk usage, and how long to wait after utilization reaches a threshold before creating an incident. The next screen lets us define the threshold values and severity levels for the monitoring rule: If historical data is available, Ops Center will display it in the screen. Clicking the Apply button will create the new monitoring rule and active it in your monitoring policy. If you combine this with one of the previous solutions, you can precisely define which file systems will generate incidents and notifications. For example, this monitoring policy has the default "File System Used Space Percentage" rule disabled, but the new rule reports ONLY on utilization for the /nfs-guest directory. Stay Connected: Twitter |  Facebook |  YouTube |  Linkedin |  Newsletter

  Read the article

• OBJ model loaded in LWJGL has a black area with no texture

  - by gambiting

  I have a problem with loading an .obj file in LWJGL and its textures. The object is a tree(it's a paid model from TurboSquid, so I can't post it here,but here's the link if you want to see how it should look like): http://www.turbosquid.com/FullPreview/Index.cfm/ID/701294 I wrote a custom OBJ loader using the LWJGL tutorial from their wiki. It looks like this: public class OBJLoader { public static Model loadModel(File f) throws FileNotFoundException, IOException { BufferedReader reader = new BufferedReader(new FileReader(f)); Model m = new Model(); String line; Texture currentTexture = null; while((line=reader.readLine()) != null) { if(line.startsWith("v ")) { float x = Float.valueOf(line.split(" ")[1]); float y = Float.valueOf(line.split(" ")[2]); float z = Float.valueOf(line.split(" ")[3]); m.verticies.add(new Vector3f(x,y,z)); }else if(line.startsWith("vn ")) { float x = Float.valueOf(line.split(" ")[1]); float y = Float.valueOf(line.split(" ")[2]); float z = Float.valueOf(line.split(" ")[3]); m.normals.add(new Vector3f(x,y,z)); }else if(line.startsWith("vt ")) { float x = Float.valueOf(line.split(" ")[1]); float y = Float.valueOf(line.split(" ")[2]); m.texVerticies.add(new Vector2f(x,y)); }else if(line.startsWith("f ")) { Vector3f vertexIndicies = new Vector3f(Float.valueOf(line.split(" ")[1].split("/")[0]), Float.valueOf(line.split(" ")[2].split("/")[0]), Float.valueOf(line.split(" ")[3].split("/")[0])); Vector3f textureIndicies = new Vector3f(Float.valueOf(line.split(" ")[1].split("/")[1]), Float.valueOf(line.split(" ")[2].split("/")[1]), Float.valueOf(line.split(" ")[3].split("/")[1])); Vector3f normalIndicies = new Vector3f(Float.valueOf(line.split(" ")[1].split("/")[2]), Float.valueOf(line.split(" ")[2].split("/")[2]), Float.valueOf(line.split(" ")[3].split("/")[2])); m.faces.add(new Face(vertexIndicies,textureIndicies,normalIndicies,currentTexture.getTextureID())); }else if(line.startsWith("g ")) { if(line.length()>2) { String name = line.split(" ")[1]; currentTexture = TextureLoader.getTexture("PNG", ResourceLoader.getResourceAsStream("res/" + name + ".png")); System.out.println(currentTexture.getTextureID()); } } } reader.close(); System.out.println(m.verticies.size() + " verticies"); System.out.println(m.normals.size() + " normals"); System.out.println(m.texVerticies.size() + " texture coordinates"); System.out.println(m.faces.size() + " faces"); return m; } } Then I create a display list for my model using this code: objectDisplayList = GL11.glGenLists(1); GL11.glNewList(objectDisplayList, GL11.GL_COMPILE); Model m = null; try { m = OBJLoader.loadModel(new File("res/untitled4.obj")); } catch (Exception e1) { e1.printStackTrace(); } int currentTexture=0; for(Face face: m.faces) { if(face.texture!=currentTexture) { currentTexture = face.texture; GL11.glBindTexture(GL11.GL_TEXTURE_2D, currentTexture); } GL11.glColor3f(1f, 1f, 1f); GL11.glBegin(GL11.GL_TRIANGLES); Vector3f n1 = m.normals.get((int) face.normal.x - 1); GL11.glNormal3f(n1.x, n1.y, n1.z); Vector2f t1 = m.texVerticies.get((int) face.textures.x -1); GL11.glTexCoord2f(t1.x, t1.y); Vector3f v1 = m.verticies.get((int) face.vertex.x - 1); GL11.glVertex3f(v1.x, v1.y, v1.z); Vector3f n2 = m.normals.get((int) face.normal.y - 1); GL11.glNormal3f(n2.x, n2.y, n2.z); Vector2f t2 = m.texVerticies.get((int) face.textures.y -1); GL11.glTexCoord2f(t2.x, t2.y); Vector3f v2 = m.verticies.get((int) face.vertex.y - 1); GL11.glVertex3f(v2.x, v2.y, v2.z); Vector3f n3 = m.normals.get((int) face.normal.z - 1); GL11.glNormal3f(n3.x, n3.y, n3.z); Vector2f t3 = m.texVerticies.get((int) face.textures.z -1); GL11.glTexCoord2f(t3.x, t3.y); Vector3f v3 = m.verticies.get((int) face.vertex.z - 1); GL11.glVertex3f(v3.x, v3.y, v3.z); GL11.glEnd(); } GL11.glEndList(); The currentTexture is an int - it contains the ID of the currently used texture. So my model looks absolutely fine without textures: (sorry I cannot post hyperlinks since I am a new user) i.imgur.com/VtoK0.png But look what happens if I enable GL_TEXTURE_2D: i.imgur.com/z8Kli.png i.imgur.com/5e9nn.png i.imgur.com/FAHM9.png As you can see an entire side of the tree appears to be missing - and it's not transparent, since it's not in the colour of the background - it's rendered black. It's not a problem with the model - if I load it using Kanji's OBJ loader it works fine(but the thing is,that I need to write my own OBJ loader) i.imgur.com/YDATo.png this is my OpenGL init section: //init display try { Display.setDisplayMode(new DisplayMode(Support.SCREEN_WIDTH, Support.SCREEN_HEIGHT)); Display.create(); Display.setVSyncEnabled(true); } catch (LWJGLException e) { e.printStackTrace(); System.exit(0); } GL11.glLoadIdentity(); GL11.glEnable(GL11.GL_TEXTURE_2D); GL11.glClearColor(1.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f, 1.0f); GL11.glShadeModel(GL11.GL_SMOOTH); GL11.glEnable(GL11.GL_DEPTH_TEST); GL11.glDepthFunc(GL11.GL_LESS); GL11.glDepthMask(true); GL11.glEnable(GL11.GL_NORMALIZE); GL11.glMatrixMode(GL11.GL_PROJECTION); GLU.gluPerspective (90.0f,800f/600f, 1f, 500.0f); GL11.glMatrixMode(GL11.GL_MODELVIEW); GL11.glEnable(GL11.GL_CULL_FACE); GL11.glCullFace(GL11.GL_BACK); //enable lighting GL11.glEnable(GL11.GL_LIGHTING); ByteBuffer temp = ByteBuffer.allocateDirect(16); temp.order(ByteOrder.nativeOrder()); GL11.glMaterial(GL11.GL_FRONT, GL11.GL_DIFFUSE, (FloatBuffer)temp.asFloatBuffer().put(lightDiffuse).flip()); GL11.glMaterialf(GL11.GL_FRONT, GL11.GL_SHININESS,(int)material_shinyness); GL11.glLight(GL11.GL_LIGHT2, GL11.GL_DIFFUSE, (FloatBuffer)temp.asFloatBuffer().put(lightDiffuse2).flip()); // Setup The Diffuse Light GL11.glLight(GL11.GL_LIGHT2, GL11.GL_POSITION,(FloatBuffer)temp.asFloatBuffer().put(lightPosition2).flip()); GL11.glLight(GL11.GL_LIGHT2, GL11.GL_AMBIENT,(FloatBuffer)temp.asFloatBuffer().put(lightAmbient).flip()); GL11.glLight(GL11.GL_LIGHT2, GL11.GL_SPECULAR,(FloatBuffer)temp.asFloatBuffer().put(lightDiffuse2).flip()); GL11.glLightf(GL11.GL_LIGHT2, GL11.GL_CONSTANT_ATTENUATION, 0.1f); GL11.glLightf(GL11.GL_LIGHT2, GL11.GL_LINEAR_ATTENUATION, 0.0f); GL11.glLightf(GL11.GL_LIGHT2, GL11.GL_QUADRATIC_ATTENUATION, 0.0f); GL11.glEnable(GL11.GL_LIGHT2); Could somebody please help me?

  Read the article

• Developer’s Life – Attitude and Communication – They Can Cause Problems – Notes from the Field #027

  - by Pinal Dave

  [Note from Pinal]: This is a 27th episode of Notes from the Field series. The biggest challenge for anyone is to understand human nature. We human have so many things on our mind at any moment of time. There are cases when what we say is not what we mean and there are cases where what we mean we do not say. We do say and things as per our mood and our agenda in mind. Sometimes there are incidents when our attitude creates confusion in the communication and we end up creating a situation which is absolutely not warranted. In this episode of the Notes from the Field series database expert Mike Walsh explains a very crucial issue we face in our career, which is not technical but more to relate to human nature. Read on this may be the best blog post you might read in recent times. In this week’s note from the field, I’m taking a slight departure from technical knowledge and concepts explained. We’ll be back to it next week, I’m sure. Pinal wanted us to explain some of the issues we bump into and how we see some of our customers arrive at problem situations and how we have helped get them back on the right track. Often it is a technical problem we are officially solving – but in a lot of cases as a consultant, we are really helping fix some communication difficulties. This is a technical blog post and not an “advice column” in a newspaper – but the longer I am a consultant, the more years I add to my experience in technology the more I learn that the vast majority of the problems we encounter have “soft skills” included in the chain of causes for the issue we are helping overcome. This is not going to be exhaustive but I hope that sharing four pieces of advice inspired by real issues starts a process of searching for places where we can be the cause of these challenges and look at fixing them in ourselves. Or perhaps we can begin looking at resolving them in teams that we manage. I’ll share three statements that I’ve either heard, read or said and talk about some of the communication or attitude challenges highlighted by the statement. 1 – “But that’s the SAN Administrator’s responsibility…” I heard that early on in my consulting career when talking with a customer who had serious corruption and no good recent backups – potentially no good backups at all. The statement doesn’t have to be this one exactly, but the attitude here is an attitude of “my job stops here, and I don’t care about the intent or principle of why I’m here.” It’s also a situation of having the attitude that as long as there is someone else to blame, I’m fine…  You see in this case, the DBA had a suspicion that the backups were not being handled right.  They were the DBA and they knew that they had responsibility to ensure SQL backups were good to go – it’s a basic requirement of a production DBA. In my “As A DBA Where Do I start?!” presentation, I argue that is job #1 of a DBA. But in this case, the thought was that there was someone else to blame. Rather than create extra work and take on responsibility it was decided to just let it be another team’s responsibility. This failed the company, the company’s customers and no one won. As technologists – we should strive to go the extra mile. If there is a lack of clarity around roles and responsibilities and we know it – we should push to get it resolved. Especially as the DBAs who should act as the advocates of the data contained in the databases we are responsible for. 2 – “We’ve always done it this way, it’s never caused a problem before!” Complacency. I have to say that many failures I’ve been paid good money to help recover from would have not happened had it been for an attitude of complacency. If any thoughts like this have entered your mind about your situation you may be suffering from it. If, while reading this, you get this sinking feeling in your stomach about that one thing you know should be fixed but haven’t done it.. Why don’t you stop and go fix it then come back.. “We should have better backups, but we’re on a SAN so we should be fine really.” “Technically speaking that could happen, but what are the chances?” “We’ll just clean that up as a fast follow” ..and so on. In the age of tightening IT budgets, increased expectations of up time, availability and performance there is no room for complacency. Our customers and business units expect – no demand – the best. Complacency says “we will give you second best or hopefully good enough and we accept the risk and know this may hurt us later. Sometimes an organization will opt for “good enough” and I agree with the concept that at times the perfect can be the enemy of the good. But when we make those decisions in a vacuum and are not reporting them up and discussing them as an organization that is different. That is us unilaterally choosing to do something less than the best and purposefully playing a game of chance. 3 – “This device must accept interference from other devices but not create any” I’ve paraphrased this one – but it’s something the Federal Communications Commission – a federal agency in the United States that regulates electronic communication – requires of all manufacturers of any device that could cause or receive interference electronically. I blogged in depth about this here (http://www.straightpathsql.com/archives/2011/07/relationship-advice-from-the-fcc/) so I won’t go into much detail other than to say this… If we all operated more on the premise that we should do our best to not be the cause of conflict, and to be less easily offended and less upset when we perceive offense life would be easier in many areas! This doesn’t always cause the issues we are called in to help out. Not directly. But where we see it is in unhealthy relationships between the various technology teams at a client. We’ll see teams hoarding knowledge, not sharing well with others and almost working against other teams instead of working with them. If you trace these problems back far enough it often stems from someone or some group of people violating this principle from the FCC. To Sum It Up Technology problems are easy to solve. At Linchpin People we help many customers get past the toughest technological challenge – and at the end of the day it is really just a repeatable process of pattern based troubleshooting, logical thinking and starting at the beginning and carefully stepping through to the end. It’s easy at the end of the day. The tough part of what we do as consultants is the people skills. Being able to help get teams working together, being able to help teams take responsibility, to improve team to team communication? That is the difficult part, and we get to use the soft skills on every engagement. Work on professional development (http://professionaldevelopment.sqlpass.org/) and see continuing improvement here, not just with technology. I can teach just about anyone how to be an excellent DBA and performance tuner, but some of these soft skills are much more difficult to teach. If you want to get started with performance analytics and triage of virtualized SQL Servers with the help of experts, read more over at Fix Your SQL Server. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com)Filed under: Notes from the Field, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL

  Read the article

• RequestValidation Changes in ASP.NET 4.0

  - by Rick Strahl

  There’s been a change in the way the ValidateRequest attribute on WebForms works in ASP.NET 4.0. I noticed this today while updating a post on my WebLog all of which contain raw HTML and so all pretty much trigger request validation. I recently upgraded this app from ASP.NET 2.0 to 4.0 and it’s now failing to update posts. At first this was difficult to track down because of custom error handling in my app – the custom error handler traps the exception and logs it with only basic error information so the full detail of the error was initially hidden. After some more experimentation in development mode the error that occurs is the typical ASP.NET validate request error (‘A potentially dangerous Request.Form value was detetected…’) which looks like this in ASP.NET 4.0: At first when I got this I was real perplexed as I didn’t read the entire error message and because my page does have: <%@ Page Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeBehind="NewEntry.aspx.cs" Inherits="Westwind.WebLog.NewEntry" MasterPageFile="~/App_Templates/Standard/AdminMaster.master" ValidateRequest="false" EnableEventValidation="false" EnableViewState="false" %> WTF? ValidateRequest would seem like it should be enough, but alas in ASP.NET 4.0 apparently that setting alone is no longer enough. Reading the fine print in the error explains that you need to explicitly set the requestValidationMode for the application back to V2.0 in web.config: <httpRuntime executionTimeout="300" requestValidationMode="2.0" /> Kudos for the ASP.NET team for putting up a nice error message that tells me how to fix this problem, but excuse me why the heck would you change this behavior to require an explicit override to an optional and by default disabled page level switch? You’ve just made a relatively simple fix to a solution a nasty morass of hard to discover configuration settings??? The original way this worked was perfectly discoverable via attributes in the page. Now you can set this setting in the page and get completely unexpected behavior and you are required to set what effectively amounts to a backwards compatibility flag in the configuration file. It turns out the real reason for the .config flag is that the request validation behavior has moved from WebForms pipeline down into the entire ASP.NET/IIS request pipeline and is now applied against all requests. Here’s what the breaking changes page from Microsoft says about it: The request validation feature in ASP.NET provides a certain level of default protection against cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks. In previous versions of ASP.NET, request validation was enabled by default. However, it applied only to ASP.NET pages (.aspx files and their class files) and only when those pages were executing. In ASP.NET 4, by default, request validation is enabled for all requests, because it is enabled before the BeginRequest phase of an HTTP request. As a result, request validation applies to requests for all ASP.NET resources, not just .aspx page requests. This includes requests such as Web service calls and custom HTTP handlers. Request validation is also active when custom HTTP modules are reading the contents of an HTTP request. As a result, request validation errors might now occur for requests that previously did not trigger errors. To revert to the behavior of the ASP.NET 2.0 request validation feature, add the following setting in the Web.config file: <httpRuntime requestValidationMode="2.0" /> However, we recommend that you analyze any request validation errors to determine whether existing handlers, modules, or other custom code accesses potentially unsafe HTTP inputs that could be XSS attack vectors. Ok, so ValidateRequest of the form still works as it always has but it’s actually the ASP.NET Event Pipeline, not WebForms that’s throwing the above exception as request validation is applied to every request that hits the pipeline. Creating the runtime override removes the HttpRuntime checking and restores the WebForms only behavior. That fixes my immediate problem but still leaves me wondering especially given the vague wording of the above explanation. One thing that’s missing in the description is above is one important detail: The request validation is applied only to application/x-www-form-urlencoded POST content not to all inbound POST data. When I first read this this freaked me out because it sounds like literally ANY request hitting the pipeline is affected. To make sure this is not really so I created a quick handler: public class Handler1 : IHttpHandler { public void ProcessRequest(HttpContext context) { context.Response.ContentType = "text/plain"; context.Response.Write("Hello World <hr>" + context.Request.Form.ToString()); } public bool IsReusable { get { return false; } } } and called it with Fiddler by posting some XML to the handler using a default form-urlencoded POST content type: and sure enough – hitting the handler also causes the request validation error and 500 server response. Changing the content type to text/xml effectively fixes the problem however, bypassing the request validation filter so Web Services/AJAX handlers and custom modules/handlers that implement custom protocols aren’t affected as long as they work with special input content types. It also looks that multipart encoding does not trigger event validation of the runtime either so this request also works fine: POST http://rasnote/weblog/handler1.ashx HTTP/1.1 Content-Type: multipart/form-data; boundary=------7cf2a327f01ae User-Agent: West Wind Internet Protocols 5.53 Host: rasnote Content-Length: 40 Pragma: no-cache <xml>asdasd</xml>--------7cf2a327f01ae *That* probably should trigger event validation – since it is a potential HTML form submission, but it doesn’t. New Runtime Feature, Global Scope Only? Ok, so request validation is now a runtime feature but sadly it’s a feature that’s scoped to the ASP.NET Runtime – effective scope to the entire running application/app domain. You can still manually force validation using Request.ValidateInput() which gives you the option to do this in code, but that realistically will only work with the requestValidationMode set to V2.0 as well since the 4.0 mode auto-fires before code ever gets a chance to intercept the call. Given all that, the new setting in ASP.NET 4.0 seems to limit options and makes things more difficult and less flexible. Of course Microsoft gets to say ASP.NET is more secure by default because of it but what good is that if you have to turn off this flag the very first time you need to allow one single request that bypasses request validation??? This is really shortsighted design… <sigh>© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2010Posted in ASP.NET  

  Read the article

• Physical Directories vs. MVC View Paths

  - by Rick Strahl

  This post falls into the bucket of operator error on my part, but I want to share this anyway because it describes an issue that has bitten me a few times now and writing it down might keep it a little stronger in my mind. I've been working on an MVC project the last few days, and at the end of a long day I accidentally moved one of my View folders from the MVC Root Folder to the project root. It must have been at the very end of the day before shutting down because tests and manual site navigation worked fine just before I quit for the night. I checked in changes and called it a night. Next day I came back, started running the app and had a lot of breaks with certain views. Oddly custom routes to these controllers/views worked, but stock /{controller}/{action} routes would not. After a bit of spelunking I realized that "Hey one of my View Folders is missing", which made some sense given the error messages I got. I looked in the recycle bin - nothing there, so rather than try to figure out what the hell happened, just restored from my last SVN checkin. At this point the folders are back… but… view access  still ends up breaking for this set of views. Specifically I'm getting the Yellow Screen of Death with: CS0103: The name 'model' does not exist in the current context Here's the full error: Server Error in '/ClassifiedsWeb' Application. Compilation ErrorDescription: An error occurred during the compilation of a resource required to service this request. Please review the following specific error details and modify your source code appropriately.Compiler Error Message: CS0103: The name 'model' does not exist in the current contextSource Error: Line 1: @model ClassifiedsWeb.EntryViewModel Line 2: @{ Line 3: ViewBag.Title = Model.Entry.Title + " - " + ClassifiedsBusiness.App.Configuration.ApplicationName; Source File: c:\Projects2010\Clients\GorgeNet\Classifieds\ClassifiedsWeb\Classifieds\Show.cshtml    Line: 1 Compiler Warning Messages: Show Detailed Compiler Output: Show Complete Compilation Source: Version Information: Microsoft .NET Framework Version:4.0.30319; ASP.NET Version:4.0.30319.272 Here's what's really odd about this error: The views now do exist in the /Views/Classifieds folder of the project, but it appears like MVC is trying to execute the views directly. This is getting pretty weird, man! So I hook up some break points in my controllers to see if my controller actions are getting fired - and sure enough it turns out they are not - but only for those views that were previously 'lost' and then restored from SVN. WTF? At this point I'm thinking that I must have messed up one of the config files, but after some more spelunking and realizing that all the other Controller views work, I give up that idea. Config's gotta be OK if other controllers and views are working. Root Folders and MVC Views don't mix As I mentioned the problem was the fact that I inadvertantly managed to drag my View folder to the root folder of the project. Here's what this looks like in my FUBAR'd project structure after I copied back /Views/Classifieds folder from SVN: There's the actual root folder in the /Views folder and the accidental copy that sits of the root. I of course did not notice the /Classifieds folder at the root because it was excluded and didn't show up in the project. Now, before you call me a complete idiot remember that this happened by accident - an accidental drag probably just before shutting down for the night. :-) So why does this break? MVC should be happy with views in the /Views/Classifieds folder right? While MVC might be happy, IIS is not. The fact that there is a physical folder on disk takes precedence over MVC's routing. In other words if a URL exists that matches a route the pysical path is accessed first. What happens here is that essentially IIS is trying to execute the .cshtml pages directly without ever routing to the Controller methods. In the error page I showed above my clue should have been that the view was served as: c:\Projects2010\Clients\GorgeNet\Classifieds\ClassifiedsWeb\Classifieds\Show.cshtml rather than c:\Projects2010\Clients\GorgeNet\Classifieds\ClassifiedsWeb\Views\Classifieds\Show.cshtml But of course I didn't notice that right away, just skimming to the end and looking at the file name. The reason that /classifieds/list actually fires that file is that the ASP.NET Web Pages engine looks for physical files on disk that match a path. IOW, when calling Web Pages you drop the .cshtml off the Razor page and IIS will serve that just fine. So: /classifieds/list looks and tries to find /classifieds/list.cshtml and executes that script. And that is exactly what's happening. Web Pages is trying to execute the .cshtml file and it fails because Web Pages knows nothing about the @model tag which is an MVC specific template extension. This is why my breakpoints in the controller methods didn't fire and it also explains why the error mentions that the @model key word is invalid (@model is an MVC provided template enhancement to the Razor Engine). The solution of course is super simple: Delete the accidentally created root folder and the problem is solved. Routing and Physical Paths I've run into problems with this before actually. In the past I've had a number of applications that had a physical /Admin folder which also would conflict with an MVC Admin controller. More than once I ended up wondering why the index route (/Admin/) was not working properly. If a physical /Admin folder exists /Admin will not route to the Index action (or whatever default action you have set up, but instead try to list the directory or show the default document in the folder. The only way to force the index page through MVC is to explicitly use /Admin/Index. Makes perfect sense once you realize the physical folder is there, but that's easy to forget in an MVC application. As you might imagine after a few times of running into this I gave up on the Admin folder and moved everything into MVC views to handle those operations. Still it's one of those things that can easily bite you, because the behavior and error messages seem to point at completely different  problems. Moral of the story is: If you see routing problems where routes are not reaching obvious controller methods, always check to make sure there's isn't a physical path being mapped by IIS instead. That way you won't feel stupid like I did after trying a million things for about an hour before discovering my sloppy mousing behavior :-)© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2012Posted in MVC   IIS7   Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

  Read the article

• External usb 3.0 hard drive is not recognised when plugged into usb 3 port (ubuntu natty 64 bit).

  - by kimangroo

  I have an Iomega Prestige Portable External Hard Drive 1TB USB 3.0. It works fine on windows 7 as a usb 3.0 drive. It isn't detected on ubuntu natty 64bit, 2.6.38-8-generic. fdisk -l cannot see it at all: Disk /dev/sda: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Disk identifier: 0x1bed746b Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sda1 1 1689 13560832 27 Unknown /dev/sda2 * 1689 1702 102400 7 HPFS/NTFS /dev/sda3 1702 19978 146805760 7 HPFS/NTFS /dev/sda4 19978 60802 327914497 5 Extended /dev/sda5 25555 60802 283120640 7 HPFS/NTFS /dev/sda6 19978 23909 31571968 83 Linux /dev/sda7 23909 25555 13218816 82 Linux swap / Solaris Partition table entries are not in disk order lsusb can see it: Bus 003 Device 003: ID 059b:0070 Iomega Corp. Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub Bus 002 Device 004: ID 05fe:0011 Chic Technology Corp. Browser Mouse Bus 002 Device 003: ID 0a12:0001 Cambridge Silicon Radio, Ltd Bluetooth Dongle (HCI mode) Bus 002 Device 002: ID 8087:0024 Intel Corp. Integrated Rate Matching Hub Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub Bus 001 Device 005: ID 0489:e00f Foxconn / Hon Hai Bus 001 Device 004: ID 0c45:64b5 Microdia Bus 001 Device 003: ID 08ff:168f AuthenTec, Inc. Bus 001 Device 002: ID 8087:0024 Intel Corp. Integrated Rate Matching Hub Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub And dmesg | grep -i xhci (I may have unplugged the drive and plugged it back in again after booting): [ 1.659060] pci 0000:04:00.0: xHCI HW did not halt within 2000 usec status = 0x0 [ 11.484971] xhci_hcd 0000:04:00.0: PCI INT A -> GSI 18 (level, low) -> IRQ 18 [ 11.484997] xhci_hcd 0000:04:00.0: setting latency timer to 64 [ 11.485002] xhci_hcd 0000:04:00.0: xHCI Host Controller [ 11.485064] xhci_hcd 0000:04:00.0: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 3 [ 11.636149] xhci_hcd 0000:04:00.0: irq 18, io mem 0xc5400000 [ 11.636241] xhci_hcd 0000:04:00.0: irq 43 for MSI/MSI-X [ 11.636246] xhci_hcd 0000:04:00.0: irq 44 for MSI/MSI-X [ 11.636251] xhci_hcd 0000:04:00.0: irq 45 for MSI/MSI-X [ 11.636256] xhci_hcd 0000:04:00.0: irq 46 for MSI/MSI-X [ 11.636261] xhci_hcd 0000:04:00.0: irq 47 for MSI/MSI-X [ 11.639654] xHCI xhci_add_endpoint called for root hub [ 11.639655] xHCI xhci_check_bandwidth called for root hub [ 11.956366] usb 3-1: new SuperSpeed USB device using xhci_hcd and address 2 [ 12.001073] xhci_hcd 0000:04:00.0: WARN: short transfer on control ep [ 12.007059] xhci_hcd 0000:04:00.0: WARN: short transfer on control ep [ 12.012932] xhci_hcd 0000:04:00.0: WARN: short transfer on control ep [ 12.018922] xhci_hcd 0000:04:00.0: WARN: short transfer on control ep [ 12.049139] xhci_hcd 0000:04:00.0: WARN: short transfer on control ep [ 12.056754] xhci_hcd 0000:04:00.0: WARN: short transfer on control ep [ 12.131607] xhci_hcd 0000:04:00.0: WARN no SS endpoint bMaxBurst [ 12.179717] xhci_hcd 0000:04:00.0: WARN: short transfer on control ep [ 12.686876] xhci_hcd 0000:04:00.0: WARN: babble error on endpoint [ 12.687058] xhci_hcd 0000:04:00.0: WARN Set TR Deq Ptr cmd invalid because of stream ID configuration [ 12.687152] xhci_hcd 0000:04:00.0: ERROR Transfer event for disabled endpoint or incorrect stream ring [ 43.330737] usb 3-1: reset SuperSpeed USB device using xhci_hcd and address 2 [ 43.422579] xhci_hcd 0000:04:00.0: WARN: short transfer on control ep [ 43.422658] xhci_hcd 0000:04:00.0: xHCI xhci_drop_endpoint called with disabled ep ffff88014669af00 [ 43.422665] xhci_hcd 0000:04:00.0: xHCI xhci_drop_endpoint called with disabled ep ffff88014669af40 [ 43.422671] xhci_hcd 0000:04:00.0: xHCI xhci_drop_endpoint called with disabled ep ffff88014669af80 [ 43.422677] xhci_hcd 0000:04:00.0: xHCI xhci_drop_endpoint called with disabled ep ffff88014669afc0 [ 43.531159] xhci_hcd 0000:04:00.0: WARN no SS endpoint bMaxBurst [ 125.160248] xhci_hcd 0000:04:00.0: WARN no SS endpoint bMaxBurst [ 903.766466] usb 3-1: new SuperSpeed USB device using xhci_hcd and address 3 [ 903.807789] xhci_hcd 0000:04:00.0: WARN: short transfer on control ep [ 903.813530] xhci_hcd 0000:04:00.0: WARN: short transfer on control ep [ 903.819400] xhci_hcd 0000:04:00.0: WARN: short transfer on control ep [ 903.825104] xhci_hcd 0000:04:00.0: WARN: short transfer on control ep [ 903.855067] xhci_hcd 0000:04:00.0: WARN: short transfer on control ep [ 903.862314] xhci_hcd 0000:04:00.0: WARN: short transfer on control ep [ 903.862597] xhci_hcd 0000:04:00.0: WARN no SS endpoint bMaxBurst [ 903.913211] xhci_hcd 0000:04:00.0: WARN: short transfer on control ep [ 904.424416] xhci_hcd 0000:04:00.0: WARN: babble error on endpoint [ 904.424599] xhci_hcd 0000:04:00.0: WARN Set TR Deq Ptr cmd invalid because of stream ID configuration [ 904.424700] xhci_hcd 0000:04:00.0: ERROR Transfer event for disabled endpoint or incorrect stream ring [ 935.139021] usb 3-1: reset SuperSpeed USB device using xhci_hcd and address 3 [ 935.226075] xhci_hcd 0000:04:00.0: WARN: short transfer on control ep [ 935.226140] xhci_hcd 0000:04:00.0: xHCI xhci_drop_endpoint called with disabled ep ffff880148186b00 [ 935.226148] xhci_hcd 0000:04:00.0: xHCI xhci_drop_endpoint called with disabled ep ffff880148186b40 [ 935.226153] xhci_hcd 0000:04:00.0: xHCI xhci_drop_endpoint called with disabled ep ffff880148186b80 [ 935.226159] xhci_hcd 0000:04:00.0: xHCI xhci_drop_endpoint called with disabled ep ffff880148186bc0 [ 935.343339] xhci_hcd 0000:04:00.0: WARN no SS endpoint bMaxBurst I thought it might be that the firmware wasn't compatible with linux or something, but when booting a live image of partedmagic, (2.6.38.4-pmagic), the drive was detected fine, I could mount it and got usb 3.0 speeds (at least they double the speeds I got from plugging same drive in usb 2 ports). dmesg in partedmagic did say something about no SuperSpeed endpoint which was an error I saw in a previous dmesg of ubuntu: Jun 27 15:49:02 (none) user.info kernel: [ 2.978743] xhci_hcd 0000:04:00.0: PCI INT A -> GSI 18 (level, low) -> IRQ 18 Jun 27 15:49:02 (none) user.debug kernel: [ 2.978771] xhci_hcd 0000:04:00.0: setting latency timer to 64 Jun 27 15:49:02 (none) user.info kernel: [ 2.978781] xhci_hcd 0000:04:00.0: xHCI Host Controller Jun 27 15:49:02 (none) user.info kernel: [ 2.978856] xhci_hcd 0000:04:00.0: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 3 Jun 27 15:49:02 (none) user.info kernel: [ 3.089458] xhci_hcd 0000:04:00.0: irq 18, io mem 0xc5400000 Jun 27 15:49:02 (none) user.debug kernel: [ 3.089541] xhci_hcd 0000:04:00.0: irq 42 for MSI/MSI-X Jun 27 15:49:02 (none) user.debug kernel: [ 3.089544] xhci_hcd 0000:04:00.0: irq 43 for MSI/MSI-X Jun 27 15:49:02 (none) user.debug kernel: [ 3.089546] xhci_hcd 0000:04:00.0: irq 44 for MSI/MSI-X Jun 27 15:49:02 (none) user.debug kernel: [ 3.089548] xhci_hcd 0000:04:00.0: irq 45 for MSI/MSI-X Jun 27 15:49:02 (none) user.debug kernel: [ 3.089550] xhci_hcd 0000:04:00.0: irq 46 for MSI/MSI-X Jun 27 15:49:02 (none) user.warn kernel: [ 3.092857] usb usb3: No SuperSpeed endpoint companion for config 1 interface 0 altsetting 0 ep 129: using minimum values Jun 27 15:49:02 (none) user.info kernel: [ 3.092864] usb usb3: New USB device found, idVendor=1d6b, idProduct=0003 Jun 27 15:49:02 (none) user.info kernel: [ 3.092866] usb usb3: New USB device strings: Mfr=3, Product=2, SerialNumber=1 Jun 27 15:49:02 (none) user.info kernel: [ 3.092867] usb usb3: Product: xHCI Host Controller Jun 27 15:49:02 (none) user.info kernel: [ 3.092869] usb usb3: Manufacturer: Linux 2.6.38.4-pmagic xhci_hcd Jun 27 15:49:02 (none) user.info kernel: [ 3.092870] usb usb3: SerialNumber: 0000:04:00.0 Jun 27 15:49:02 (none) user.debug kernel: [ 3.092961] xHCI xhci_add_endpoint called for root hub Jun 27 15:49:02 (none) user.debug kernel: [ 3.092963] xHCI xhci_check_bandwidth called for root hub Well I have no idea what's going wrong, and I haven't had much luck from google and the forums so far. A number of unanswered threads with people with similar error messages and problems only. Hopefully someone here can help or point me in the right direction?!

  Read the article

• CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, November 23, 2011

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, November 23, 2011Popular ReleasesVisual Leak Detector for Visual C++ 2008/2010: v2.2.1: Enhancements: * strdup and _wcsdup functions support added. * Preliminary support for VS 11 added. Bugs Fixed: * Low performance after upgrading from VLD v2.1. * Memory leaks with static linking fixed (disabled calloc support). * Runtime error R6002 fixed because of wrong memory dump format. * version.h fixed in installer. * Some PVS studio warning fixed.NetSqlAzMan - .NET SQL Authorization Manager: 3.6.0.10: 3.6.0.10 22-Nov-2011 Update: Removed PreEmptive Platform integration (PreEmptive analytics) Removed all PreEmptive attributes Removed PreEmptive.dll assembly references from all projects Added first support to ADAM/AD LDS Thanks to PatBea. Work Item 9775: http://netsqlazman.codeplex.com/workitem/9775Developer Team Article System Management: DTASM v1.3: ?? ??? ???? 3 ????? ???? ???? ????? ??? : - ????? ?????? ????? ???? ?? ??? ???? ????? ?? ??? ? ?? ???? ?????? ???? ?? ???? ????? ?? . - ??? ?? ???? ????? ???? ????? ???? ???? ?? ????? , ?????? ????? ????? ?? ??? . - ??? ??????? ??? ??? ???? ?? ????? ????? ????? .SharePoint 2010 FBA Pack: SharePoint 2010 FBA Pack 1.2.0: Web parts are now fully customizable via html templates (Issue #323) FBA Pack is now completely localizable using resource files. Thank you David Chen for submitting the code as well as Chinese translations of the FBA Pack! The membership request web part now gives the option of having the user enter the password and removing the captcha (Issue # 447) The FBA Pack will now work in a zone that does not have FBA enabled (Another zone must have FBA enabled, and the zone must contain the me...SharePoint 2010 Education Demo Project: Release SharePoint SP1 for Education Solutions: This release includes updates to the Content Packs for SharePoint SP1. All Content Packs have been updated to install successfully under SharePoint SP1SQL Monitor - tracking sql server activities: SQLMon 4.1 alpha 6: 1. improved support for schema 2. added find reference when right click on object list 3. added object rename supportBugNET Issue Tracker: BugNET 0.9.126: First stable release of version 0.9. Upgrades from 0.8 are fully supported and upgrades to future releases will also be supported. This release is now compiled against the .NET 4.0 framework and is a requirement. Because of this the web.config has significantly changed. After upgrading, you will need to configure the authentication settings for user registration and anonymous access again. Please see our installation / upgrade instructions for more details: http://wiki.bugnetproject.c...Anno 2070 Assistant: v0.1.0 (STABLE): Version 0.1.0 Features Production Chains Eco Production Chains (Complete) Tycoon Production Chains (Disabled - Incomplete) Tech Production Chains (Disabled - Incomplete) Supply (Disabled - Incomplete) Calculator (Disabled - Incomplete) Building Layouts Eco Building Layouts (Complete) Tycoon Building Layouts (Disabled - Incomplete) Tech Building Layouts (Disabled - Incomplete) Credits (Complete)Free SharePoint 2010 Sites Templates: SharePoint Server 2010 Sites Templates: here is the list of sites templates to be downloadedVsTortoise - a TortoiseSVN add-in for Microsoft Visual Studio: VsTortoise Build 30 Beta: Note: This release does not work with custom VsTortoise toolbars. These get removed every time when you shutdown Visual Studio. (#7940) Build 30 (beta)New: Support for TortoiseSVN 1.7 added. (the download contains both setups, for TortoiseSVN 1.6 and 1.7) New: OpenModifiedDocumentDialog displays conflicted files now. New: OpenModifiedDocument allows to group items by changelist now. Fix: OpenModifiedDocumentDialog caused Visual Studio 2010 to freeze sometimes. Fix: The installer didn...nopCommerce. Open source shopping cart (ASP.NET MVC): nopcommerce 2.30: Highlight features & improvements: • Performance optimization. • Back in stock notifications. • Product special price support. • Catalog mode (based on customer role) To see the full list of fixes and changes please visit the release notes page (http://www.nopCommerce.com/releasenotes.aspx).WPF Converters: WPF Converters V1.2.0.0: support for enumerations, value types, and reference types in the expression converter's equality operators the expression converter now handles DependencyProperty.UnsetValue as argument values correctly (#4062) StyleCop conformance (more or less)Json.NET: Json.NET 4.0 Release 4: Change - JsonTextReader.Culture is now CultureInfo.InvariantCulture by default Change - KeyValurPairConverter no longer cares about the order of the key and value properties Change - Time zone conversions now use new TimeZoneInfo instead of TimeZone Fix - Fixed boolean values sometimes being capitalized when converting to XML Fix - Fixed error when deserializing ConcurrentDictionary Fix - Fixed serializing some Uris returning the incorrect value Fix - Fixed occasional error when...Media Companion: MC 3.423b Weekly: Ensure .NET 4.0 Full Framework is installed. (Available from http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=17718) Ensure the NFO ID fix is applied when transitioning from versions prior to 3.416b. (Details here) Replaced 'Rebuild' with 'Refresh' throughout entire code. Rebuild will now be known as Refresh. mc_com.exe has been fully updated TV Show Resolutions... Resolved issue #206 - having to hit save twice when updating runtime manually Shrunk cache size and lowered loading times f...Delta Engine: Delta Engine Beta Preview v0.9.1: v0.9.1 beta release with lots of refactoring, fixes, new samples and support for iOS, Android and WP7 (you need a Marketplace account however). If you want a binary release for the games (like v0.9.0), just say so in the Forum or here and we will quickly prepare one. It is just not much different from v0.9.0, so I left it out this time. See http://DeltaEngine.net/Wiki.Roadmap for details.ASP.net Awesome Samples (Web-Forms): 1.0 samples: Demos and Tutorials for ASP.net Awesome VS2008 are in .NET 3.5 VS2010 are in .NET 4.0 (demos for the ASP.net Awesome jQuery Ajax Controls)SharpMap - Geospatial Application Framework for the CLR: SharpMap-0.9-AnyCPU-Trunk-2011.11.17: This is a build of SharpMap from the 0.9 development trunk as per 2011-11-17 For most applications the AnyCPU release is the recommended, but in case you need an x86 build that is included to. For some dataproviders (GDAL/OGR, SqLite, PostGis) you need to also referense the SharpMap.Extensions assembly For SqlServer Spatial you need to reference the SharpMap.SqlServerSpatial assemblyAJAX Control Toolkit: November 2011 Release: AJAX Control Toolkit Release Notes - November 2011 Release Version 51116November 2011 release of the AJAX Control Toolkit. AJAX Control Toolkit .NET 4 - Binary – AJAX Control Toolkit for .NET 4 and sample site (Recommended). AJAX Control Toolkit .NET 3.5 - Binary – AJAX Control Toolkit for .NET 3.5 and sample site (Recommended). Notes: - The current version of the AJAX Control Toolkit is not compatible with ASP.NET 2.0. The latest version that is compatible with ASP.NET 2.0 can be found h...Microsoft Ajax Minifier: Microsoft Ajax Minifier 4.36: Fix for issue #16908: string literals containing ASP.NET replacement syntax fail if the ASP.NET code contains the same character as the string literal delimiter. Also, we shouldn't be changing the delimiter for those literals or combining them with other literals; the developer may have specifically chosen the delimiter used because of possible content inserted by ASP.NET code. This logic is normally off; turn it on via the -aspnet command-line flag (or the Code.Settings.AllowEmbeddedAspNetBl...MVC Controls Toolkit: Mvc Controls Toolkit 1.5.5: Added: Now the DateRanteAttribute accepts complex expressions containing "Now" and "Today" as static minimum and maximum. Menu, MenuFor helpers capable of handling a "currently selected element". The developer can choose between using a standard nested menu based on a standard SimpleMenuItem class or specifying an item template based on a custom class. Added also helpers to build the tree structure containing all data items the menu takes infos from. Improved the pager. Now the developer ...New ProjectsActiveWorlds World Server Admin PowerShell SnapIn: The purpose of this PowerShell SnapIn is to provide a set of tools to administer the world server from PowerShell. It leverages the ActiveWorlds SDK .NET Wrapper to provide this functionality.Aigu: Enter special characters like you would on your mobile phone. For instance, if you want to type 'é', you just hold down 'e' and a menu will appear. Selected the desired character using the arrow keys and press 'enter'. Simple but powerful.Are you workaholic?: Are you a workaholic? Did your Doctor advice you not to stare at the computer monitor for a long time? Then this app is perfectly made for you. It runs in the background, and alerts you to take periodic rests for your eyes and body. What's more, It's open source (MS-PL).ATDIS PoC: privateAuto Version Web Assets: The AVWA project is an HTTP Module written in C# that is designed to allow for versioning of various web assets such as .CSS and .JS files. This allows you to publish new versions of these files without having to force the server or the client browsers to expire cache.Bachelor Thesis Algorithm Test Bed: Algorithm Test Bed for my Bachelor ThesisBase64: Simple application helps converting strings and files from or to Base64 string. You can use any encoding to convert while a sidebar previews decoded string for all other encodings.BoracayExpress: BoracayExpressC++ Framework for Test Driven Development: A testing framework for C++ written in C++.Class2Table: Class2Table aka Entity2Table. Easy tool that allows creation of SQL tables from .Net types.Code for Demos & Experiments: This is where I will post code from demos and presentationsCodeMaker: CodeMaker?????????： 1、?????????? 2、???? 3、????? 4、??Python????????? ConsoleCommand: ConsoleCommand provides certain .Net commands for access from javascript console engines. Included are commands to set the text and background colors, as well as list and extract resources compiled in a .Net dll. Converter: Character code conversion tools ???????? CryptoInator - self contained, self-encrypting, self-decrypting image viewer: Original developed to encrypt and store NemID images in Denmark. DAiBears: Something, something, botDelicious Notify Plugin: Lets you push a blog post straight to Delicious from Live WriterDeveloperFile: Compresses Javascripts using the YUI .NET project. Loops through the root folder and subfolders for files matching the debug extension and creates new files using the release extension. (File extensions must match exactly).DotNetNuke SharePoint File Explorer: A DotNetNuke SharePoint File ExplorerDouban FM: WP7 Douban FM appGame Lib: Game Library is a open-source game library to allow focusing on the fun part of a game. It is developed in C#, but will be ported to C++ and VB.net.Google reader notes to Delicious Export tool (WPF): Google reader discontinued note in reader features. Current google reader allows to export users old notes in JSON format, This App will parse the JSON file & upload it to it delicious , delicious is a good alternative for note in readerHtml Source Transmitter Control: This web control allows getting a source of a web page, that will displayed before submit. So, developer can store a view of the html page, that was before server exception. It helps to reproduce bugs and can be used with other logging systems.Ideopuzzle: A puzzle gameImageShack-Uploader: This project demonstrates how to upload files automated to imageshack.us and other image hosters with C#.Insert Acronym Tags: Lets you insert <acronym> and <abbr> tags into your blog entry more easily.Insert Quick Link: Allows you to paste a link into the Writer window and have the a window similar to the one in Writer where you can change what text is to appear, open in new window, etc.Insert Video Plugin: Allows you to insert a video into a blog entry from a multitude of different sitesIoCWrap: Provides a wrapper to the various IoC container implementations so that it is possible to switch to a different provider without changing any application code.kaveepoj: sharepoint projectKinect Quiz Engine: Fun quiz game for the Kinect.Klaverjas: Test application for testing different new technologies in .NET (WCF, DataServices, C# stuff, Entity...etc.)Man In The Middle: A cyberpunk themed action with puzzle and strategy elements. Made with XNA as part of a game development course at the IT University of Copenhagen by Bo Bendtsen, Jonas Flensbak, Daniel Kromand, Jess Rahbek & Darryl Woodford.MediaSelektor: Simple tool to select mediasMicajah Mindtouch Deki Wiki Copier: Small C# application to move data between 2 Deki Wiki installs or, more importantly, from a wik.is account to a locally installed systemMineFlagger: MineFlagger is a mine clearing game modeled after Microsoft’s Minesweeper. In addition to standard play, MineFlagger incorporates an AI for fun and training.myXbyqwrhjadsfasfhgf: myXbyqwrhjadsfasfhgfnatoop: natoopNauplius.KeyStore: Provides secure application key storage backed by SQL 2008 and Active Directory.ObjectDB: An object database written using C# 4 and Mono.Cecil.PaceR: PaceR is an attempt to encapsulate a lot of the common code functionality I use on different projects. Instead of recreating functionality from memory or worse, copying from older projects, I'd like to have a central location to maintain this common code. Parseq: Parseq is a Parser Combinator library written in C# (version 2.0).PowerShell Network Adapter Configuration module: PowerShell Network Adapter Configuration module is a PowerShell module which provides functions for managing network adapters using WMI.public traffic tracker: This is a university project for a .net course. We develop a public traffic tracker applications for Windows Phone 7 devices, that can give information about the actual positions of the nearest vehicle on a given line. The speciality is that we use only the GPS information of the users' WP7 devices, so this is a completely software solution without any hardware investment. The disatvantage is that for the real operation we would need a lot of active WP7 user.puyo: puyoRadioTroll: Projeto web Radio TrollRead Feed Community: Read Feed CommunityReviewer: Reviewer.dk - Dansk spil og anmeldelsessite.Rollout Sharepoint Solutions - ROSS: ROSS performs the following actions: - Delete sitecollection and restart services - 'Get Latest Version' from SourceSafe - Rebuild Solution - Install all wsp solutions - Create SiteCollections - Check for build en provisioning errors - Send email to developers if errors occurredSchool Management: school managementSQL File Executer: This project is a class library written in c# which is used for executing *.sql files in remote server. Simply one dll file. You include it in your web project, add using statement at the top of your page, pass the parameters inside. Rest, it will do.Startup Manager: Startup Manager launches all startup programs at a managed rate therefore meaning that your computer doesn't crash everytime it starts up and you can use it immediately.stetic: ...Test Infrastructure Guidance: The purpose of this project is to provide guidance to testers in using TFS effectively as an ALM solution. TFS is much more than a simple code repository. Used with Visual Studio it can form a powerful testing solution and remove a lot of pain in dealing with test infrastructure overhead.Tête-à-tête: Tete-a-tete is an address book with a built-in function to send electronic mail over the Internet.Tipeysh! - Add-in that helps you creating C/C++ header files on a single click: Are you also feel miserable when you need to create a new header file in your Visual Studio C/C++ project? Repeatedly choosing "new header file", then writing the annoying (but needed) "#ifndef" section, then writing the class name with it's "private", "protected" and "public" access modifiers... too much clicks and typewriting! Well, there is a solution: Tipeysh! is a simple, easy to use, very handy and configurable Visual Studio Add-In, compatible for both the 2005 and 2008 versions. Once ...UMN Dashboard Project: academic projUsersMOSS: UsersMOSS est une petite application permettant de consulter sur un serveur MOSS les sites web (SPWeb) les users (SPUser), et les groupes (SPGroup). Cette application utilise le modèle objet de MOSS pour inspecter le contenu des objets d'un serveur MOSS. Cette application est loin d'être professionnelle, ou même terminée, mais elle me rend très souvent service. Surtout ne l'utilisez pas sur un serveur de production car le gestion du GC n'est pas faite, ce qui peut provoquer des plantages de v...UtilityLibrary.Win32: UtilityLibrary.Win32UW iLearn: The iLearn activity inference platform is a suite of desktop and mobile tools for logging, modeling, and classifying sensor data for mobile devices. It was created at the University of Washington.VsDocGen: Dynamic javascript documentation generation directly from xml comment documented source code.Windows Live Spaces Photo Album plugin: This is going to be a plugin for Windows Live Writer that will allow you to browse a Windows Live Space Photo Album.Windows Live Writer Plugin for Amazon Books using CueCat: This Windows Live Writer Plugin is for users who use WLW and wish to use their CueCat to scan books. ItemLookups are run against Amazon via its AWS and book image, title, author, and publisher is returned. This project was first created by Scott Hanselman on MSDN's Coding4Fun! X7: X7 makes it easier for win7user to clean the system. You'll no longer have to delete useless stuff in your win7. It's developed in bat.xDT - Commander: Using this application, the user can assign shortcuts (short texts) for various links/URLs. These short texts will be typed into a Textbox to then launch/go to the target (similar to the "Run" program in Windows).

  Read the article

• SQL SERVER – Weekly Series – Memory Lane – #034

  - by Pinal Dave

  Here is the list of selected articles of SQLAuthority.com across all these years. Instead of just listing all the articles I have selected a few of my most favorite articles and have listed them here with additional notes below it. Let me know which one of the following is your favorite article from memory lane. 2007 UDF – User Defined Function to Strip HTML – Parse HTML – No Regular Expression The UDF used in the blog does fantastic task – it scans entire HTML text and removes all the HTML tags. It keeps only valid text data without HTML task. This is one of the quite commonly requested tasks many developers have to face everyday. De-fragmentation of Database at Operating System to Improve Performance Operating system skips MDF file while defragging the entire filesystem of the operating system. It is absolutely fine and there is no impact of the same on performance. Read the entire blog post for my conversation with our network engineers. Delay Function – WAITFOR clause – Delay Execution of Commands How do you delay execution of the commands in SQL Server – ofcourse by using WAITFOR keyword. In this blog post, I explain the same with the help of T-SQL script. Find Length of Text Field To measure the length of TEXT fields the function is DATALENGTH(textfield). Len will not work for text field. As of SQL Server 2005, developers should migrate all the text fields to VARCHAR(MAX) as that is the way forward. Retrieve Current Date Time in SQL Server CURRENT_TIMESTAMP, GETDATE(), {fn NOW()} There are three ways to retrieve the current datetime in SQL SERVER. CURRENT_TIMESTAMP, GETDATE(), {fn NOW()} Explanation and Comparison of NULLIF and ISNULL An interesting observation is NULLIF returns null if it comparison is successful, whereas ISNULL returns not null if its comparison is successful. In one way they are opposite to each other. Here is my question to you - How to create infinite loop using NULLIF and ISNULL? If this is even possible? 2008 Introduction to SERVERPROPERTY and example SERVERPROPERTY is a very interesting system function. It returns many of the system values. I use it very frequently to get different server values like Server Collation, Server Name etc. SQL Server Start Time We can use DMV to find out what is the start time of SQL Server in 2008 and later version. In this blog you can see how you can do the same. Find Current Identity of Table Many times we need to know what is the current identity of the column. I have found one of my developers using aggregated function MAX () to find the current identity. However, I prefer following DBCC command to figure out current identity. Create Check Constraint on Column Some time we just need to create a simple constraint over the table but I have noticed that developers do many different things to make table column follow rules than just creating constraint. I suggest constraint is a very useful concept and every SQL Developer should pay good attention to this subject. 2009 List Schema Name and Table Name for Database This is one of the blog post where I straight forward display script. One of the kind of blog posts, which I still love to read and write. Clustered Index on Separate Drive From Table Location A table devoid of primary key index is called heap, and here data is not arranged in a particular order, which gives rise to issues that adversely affect performance. Data must be stored in some kind of order. If we put clustered index on it then the order will be forced by that index and the data will be stored in that particular order. Understanding Table Hints with Examples Hints are options and strong suggestions specified for enforcement by the SQL Server query processor on DML statements. The hints override any execution plan the query optimizer might select for a query. 2010 Data Pages in Buffer Pool – Data Stored in Memory Cache One of my earlier year article, which I still read it many times and point developers to read it again. It is clear from the Resultset that when more than one index is used, datapages related to both or all of the indexes are stored in Memory Cache separately. TRANSACTION, DML and Schema Locks Can you create a situation where you can see Schema Lock? Well, this is a very simple question, however during the interview I notice over 50 candidates failed to come up with the scenario. In this blog post, I have demonstrated the situation where we can see the schema lock in database. 2011 Solution – Puzzle – Statistics are not updated but are Created Once In this example I have created following situation: Create Table Insert 1000 Records Check the Statistics Now insert 10 times more 10,000 indexes Check the Statistics – it will be NOT updated Auto Update Statistics and Auto Create Statistics for database is TRUE Now I have requested two things in the example 1) Why this is happening? 2) How to fix this issue? Selecting Domain from Email Address This is a straight to script blog post where I explain how to select only domain name from entire email address. Solution – Generating Zero Without using Any Numbers in T-SQL How to get zero digit without using any digit? This is indeed a very interesting question and the answer is even interesting. Try to come up with answer in next 10 minutes and if you can’t come up with the answer the blog post read this post for solution. 2012 Simple Explanation and Puzzle with SOUNDEX Function and DIFFERENCE Function In simple words - SOUNDEX converts an alphanumeric string to a four-character code to find similar-sounding words or names. DIFFERENCE function returns an integer value. The  integer returned is the number of characters in the SOUNDEX values that are the same. Read Only Files and SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) I have come across a very interesting feature in SSMS related to “Read Only” files. I believe it is a little unknown feature as well so decided to write a blog about the same. Identifying Column Data Type of uniqueidentifier without Querying System Tables How do I know if any table has a uniqueidentifier column and what is its value without using any DMV or System Catalogues? Only information you know is the table name and you are allowed to return any kind of error if the table does not have uniqueidentifier column. Read the blog post to find the answer. Solution – User Not Able to See Any User Created Object in Tables – Security and Permissions Issue Interesting question – “When I try to connect to SQL Server, it lets me connect just fine as well let me open and explore the database. I noticed that I do not see any user created instances but when my colleague attempts to connect to the server, he is able to explore the database as well see all the user created tables and other objects. Can you help me fix it?” Importing CSV File Into Database – SQL in Sixty Seconds #018 – Video Here is interesting small 60 second video on how to import CSV file into Database. ColumnStore Index – Batch Mode vs Row Mode Here is the logic behind when Columnstore Index uses Batch Mode and when it uses Row Mode. A batch typically represents about 1000 rows of data. Batch mode processing also uses algorithms that are optimized for the multicore CPUs and increased memory throughput. Follow up – Usage of $rowguid and $IDENTITY This is an excellent follow up blog post of my earlier blog post where I explain where to use $rowguid and $identity.  If you do not know the difference between them, this is a blog with a script example. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Memory Lane, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

  Read the article

• Pet Peeves with the Windows Phone 7 Marketplace

  - by Bil Simser

  Have you ever noticed how something things just gnaw at your very being. This is the case with the WP7 marketplace, the Zune software, and the things that drive me batshit crazy with a side of fries. To go. I wanted to share. XBox Live is Not the Centre of the Universe Okay, it’s fine that the Zune software has an XBox live tag for games so can see them clearly but do we really need to have it shoved down our throats. On every click? Click on Games in the marketplace: The first thing that it defaults to on the filters on the right is XBox Live: Okay. Fine. However if you change it (say to Paid) then click onto a title when you come back from that title is the filter still set to Paid? No. It’s back to XBox Live again. Really? Give us a break. If you change to any filter on any other genre then click on the selected title, it doesn’t revert back to anything. It stays on the selection you picked. Let’s be fair here. The Games genre should behave just like every other one. If I pick Paid then when I come back to the list please remember that. Double Dipping On the subject of XBox Live titles, Microsoft (and developers who have an agreement with Microsoft to produce Live titles, which generally rules out indie game developers) is double dipping with regards to exposure of their titles. Here’s the Puzzle and Trivia Game section on the Marketplace for XBox Live titles: And here’s the same category filtered on Paid titles: See the problem? Two indie titles while the rest are XBox Live ones. So while XBL has it’s filter, they also get to showcase their wares in the Paid and Free filters as well. If you’re going to have an XBox Live filter then use it and stop pushing down indie titles until they’re off the screen (on some genres this is already the case). Free and Paid titles should be just that and not include XBox Live ones. If you’re really stoked that people can’t find the Free XBox Live titles vs. the paid ones, then create a Free XBox Live filter and a Paid XBox Live filter. I don’t think we would mind much. Whose Trial is it Anyways? You might notice apps in the marketplace with titles like “My Fart App Professional Lite” or “Silicon Lamb Spleen Builder Free”. When you submit and app to the marketplace it can either be free or paid. If it’s a paid app you also have the option to submit it with Trial capabilities. It’s up to you to decide what you offer in the trial version but trial versions can be purchased from within the app so after someone trys out your app (for free) and wants to unlock the Super Secret Obama Spy Ring Level, they can just go to the marketplace from your app (if you built that functionality in) and upgrade to the paid version. However it creates a rift of sorts when it comes to visibility. Some developers go the route of the paid app with a trial version, others decide to submit *two* apps instead of one. One app is the “Free” or “Lite” verions and the other is the paid version. Why go to the hassle of submitting two apps when you can just create a trial version in the same app? Again, visibility. There’s no way to tell Paid apps with Trial versions and ones without (it’s an option, you don’t have to provide trial versions, although I think it’s a good idea). However there is a way to see the Free apps from the Paid ones so some submit the two apps and have the Free version have links to buy the paid one (again through the Marketplace tasks in the API). What we as developers need for visibility is a new filter. Trial. That’s it. It would simply filter on Paid apps that have trial capabilities and surface up those apps just like the free ones. If Microsoft added this filter to the marketplace, it would eliminate the need for people to submit their “Free” and “Lite” versions and make it easier for the developer not to have to maintain two systems. I mean, is it really that hard? Can’t be any more difficult than the XBox Live Filter that’s already there. Location is Everything The last thing on my bucket list is about location. When I launch Zune I’m running in my native location setting, Canada. What’s great is that I navigate to the Travel Tools section where I have one of my apps and behold the splendour that I see: There are my apps in the number 1 and number 4 slot for top selling in that category. I show it to my wife to make up for the sleepless nights writing this stuff and we dance around and celebrate. Then I change my location on my operation system to United States and re-launch Zune. WTF? My flight app has slipped to the 10th spot (I’m only showing 4 across here out of the 7 in Zune) and my border check app that was #1 is now in the 32nd spot! End of celebration. Not only is relevance being looked at here, I value the comments people make on may apps as do most developers. I want to respond to them and show them that I’m listening. The next version of my border app will provide multiple camera angles. However when I’m running in my native Canada location, I only see two reviews. Changing over to United States I see fourteen! While there are tools out there to provide with you a unified view, I shouldn’t have to rely on them. My own Zune desktop software should allow me to see everything. I realize that some developers will submit an app and only target it for some locations and that’s their choice. However I shouldn’t have to jump through hoops to see what apps are ahead of mine, or see people comments and ratings. Another proposal. Either unify the marketplace (i.e. when I’m looking at it show me everything combined) or let me choose a filter. I think the first option might be difficult as you’re trying to average out top selling apps across all markets and have to deal with some apps that have been omitted from some markets. Although I think you could come up with a set of use cases that would handle that, maybe that’s too much work. At the very least, let us developers view the markets in a drop down or something from within the Zune desktop. Having to shut down Zune, change our location, and re-launch Zune to see other perspectives is just too onerous. A Call to Action These are just one mans opinion. Do you agree? Disagree? Feel hungry for a bacon sandwich? Let everyone know via the comments below. Perhaps someone from Microsoft will be reading and take some of these ideas under advisement. Maybe not, but at least let’s get the word out that we really want to see some change. Egypt can do it, why not WP7 developers!

  Read the article

• Inventory Management concepts in XNA game

  - by user1332755

  I am trying to code the inventory system in my first real game so I have very little experience in both c# and game engine development. Basically, I need some general guidance and tips with how to structure and organize these sorts of systems. Please tell me if I am on the right track or not before I get too deep into making some badly structured system. It's fine if you don't feel like looking through my code, suggestions about general structure would also be appreciated. What I am aiming to end up with is some sort of system like Minecraft or Terraria. It must include: main inventory GUI (items can be dragged and placed in whatever slot desired Itembar outside of the main inventory which can be assigned to certain items the ability to use items from either location So far, I have 4 main classes: Inventory holds the general info and methods, inventoryslot holds info for individual slots, Itembar holds all info and methods for itself, and finally, ItemManager to manage interactions between the two and hold a master list of items. So far, my itembar works perfectly and interacts well with mousedragging items into and out of it as well as activating the item effect. Here is the code I have so far: (there is a lot but I will try to keep it relevant) This is the code for the itembar on the main screen: class Itembar { public Texture2D itembarfull, iSelected; public static Rectangle itembar = new Rectangle(5, 218, 40, 391); public Rectangle box1 = new Rectangle(itembar.X, 218, 40, 40); //up to 10 Rectangles for each slot public int Selected = 0; private ItemManager manager; public Itembar(Texture2D texture, Texture2D texture3, ItemManager mann) { itembarfull = texture; iSelected = texture3; manager = mann; } public void Update(GameTime gametime) { } public void Draw(SpriteBatch spriteBatch) { spriteBatch.Draw( itembarfull, new Vector2 (itembar.X, itembar.Y), null, Color.White, 0.0f, Vector2.Zero, 1.0f, SpriteEffects.None, 1.0f); if (Selected == 1) spriteBatch.Draw(iSelected, new Rectangle(box1.X-3, box1.Y-3, box1.Width+6, box1.Height+6), Color.White); //goes up to 10 slots } public int Box1Query() { foreach (Item item in manager.items) { if(box1.Contains(item.BoundingBox)) return manager.items.IndexOf(item); } return 999; } //10 different box queries It is working fine right now. I just put an Item in there and the box will query things like the item's effects, stack number, consumable or not etc...This one is basically almost complete. Here is the main inventory class: class Inventory { public bool isActive; public List<Rectangle> mainSlots = new List<Rectangle>(24); public List<InventorySlot> mainSlotscheck = new List<InventorySlot>(24); public static Rectangle inv = new Rectangle(841, 469, 156, 231); public Rectangle invfull = new Rectangle(inv.X, inv.Y, inv.Width, inv.Height); public Rectangle inv1 = new Rectangle(inv.X + 4, inv.Y +3, 32, 32); //goes up to inv24 resulting in a 6x4 grid of Rectangles public Inventory() { mainSlots.Add(inv1); mainSlots.Add(inv2); mainSlots.Add(inv3); mainSlots.Add(inv4); //goes up to 24 foreach (Rectangle slot in mainSlots) mainSlotscheck.Add(new InventorySlot(slot)); } //update and draw methods are empty because im not too sure what to put there public int LookforfreeSlot() { int slotnumber = 999; for (int x = 0; x < mainSlots.Count; x++) { if (mainSlotscheck[x].isFree) { slotnumber = x; break; } } return slotnumber; } } } LookforFreeSlot() method is meant to be called when I do AddtoInventory(). I'm kinda stumped about what other things I need to put in this class. Here is the inventorySlot class: (its main purpose is to check the bool "isFree" to see whether or not something already occupies the slot. But i guess it can also do other stuff like get item info.) class InventorySlot { public int X, Y; public int Width = 32, Height = 32; public Vector2 Position; public int slotnumber; public bool free = true; public int? content = null; public bool isFree { get { return free; } set { free = value; } } public InventorySlot(Rectangle slot) { slot = new Rectangle(X, Y, Width, Height); } } } Finally, here is the ItemManager (I am omitting the master list because it is too long) class ItemManager { public List<Item> items = new List<Item>(20); public List<Item> inventory1 = new List<Item>(24); public List<Item> inventory2 = new List<Item>(24); public List<Item> inventory3 = new List<Item>(24); public List<Item> inventory4 = new List<Item>(24); public Texture2D icon, filta; private Rectangle msRect; MouseState mouseState; public int ISelectedIndex; Inventory inventory; SpriteFont font; public void GenerateItems() { items.Add(new Item(new Rectangle(0, 0, 32, 32), icon, font)); items[0].name = "Grass Chip"; items[0].itemID = 0; items[0].consumable = true; items[0].stackable = true; items[0].maxStack = 99; items.Add(new Item(new Rectangle(32, 0, 32, 32), icon, font)); //master list continues. it will generate all items in the game; } public ItemManager(Inventory inv, Texture2D itemsheet, Rectangle mouseRectt, MouseState ms, Texture2D fil, SpriteFont f) { icon = itemsheet; msRect = mouseRectt; filta = fil; mouseState = ms; inventory = inv; font = f; } //once again, no update or draw public void mousedrag() { items[0].DestinationRect = new Rectangle (msRect.X, msRect.Y, 32, 32); items[0].dragging = true; } public void AddtoInventory(Item item) { int index = inventory.LookforfreeSlot(); if (index == 999) return; item.DestinationRect = inventory.mainSlots[index]; inventory.mainSlotscheck[index].content = item.itemID; inventory.mainSlotscheck[index].isFree = false; item.IsActive = true; } } } The mousedrag works pretty well. AddtoInventory doesn't work because LookforfreeSlot doesn't work. Relevant code from the main program: When I want to add something to the main inventory, I do something like this: foreach (Particle ether in ether1.ethers) { if (ether.isCollected) itemmanager.AddtoInventory(itemmanager.items[14]); } This turned out to be much longer than I had expected :( But I hope someone is interested enough to comment.

  Read the article

• first install for windows eight.....da beta

  - by raysmithequip

  The W8 preview is now installed and I am enjoying it.  I remember the learning curve of my first unix machine back in the eighties, this ain't that.It is normal for me to do the first os install with a keyboard and low end monitor...you never know what you'll encounter out in the field.  The OS took like a fish to water.  I used a low end INTEL motherboard dp55w I gathered on the cheap, an 1157 i5 from the used bin a pair of 6 gig ddr3 sticks, a rosewell 550 watt power supply a cheap used twenty buck sub 200g wd sata drive, a half working dvd burner and an asus fanless nvidia vid card, not a great one but Sub 50.00 on newey eggey...I did have to hunt the ms forums for a key and of course to activate the thing, if dos would of needed this outmoded ritual, we would still be on cpm and osborne would be a household name, of course little do people know that this ritual was common as far back as the seventies on att unix installs....not, but it was possible, I used to joke about when I ran a bbs, what hell would of been wrought had dos 3.2 machines been required to dial into my bbs to send fido mail to ms and wait for an acknowledgement.  All in all the thing was pushing a seven on the ms richter scale, not including the vid card, sadly it came in at just a tad over three....I wanted to evaluate it for a possible replacement on critical machines that in the past went down due to a vid card fan failure....you have no idea what a customer thinks when you show them a failed vid card fan..."you mean that little plastic piece of junk caused all this!!??!!!"...yea man.  Some production machines don't need any sort of vid, I will at least keep it on the maybe list for those, MTBF is a very important factor, some big box stores should put percentage of failure rate within 24 month estimates on the outside of the carton for sure.  And a warning that the power supplies are already at their limit.  Let's face it, today even 550w can be iffy.A few neat eye candy improvements over the earlier windows is nice, the metro screen is nice, anyone who has used a newer phone recently will intuitively drag their fingers across the screen....lot of good that was with no mouse or touch screen though.  Lucky me, I have been using windows since day one, I still have a copy of win 2.0 (and every other version) for no good reason.  Still the old ix collection of disks is much larger, recompiling any kernal is another silly ritual, same machine, different day, same recompile...argh. Rh is my all time fav, mandrake was always missing something, like it rewrote the init file or something, novell is ok as long as you stay on the beaten path and of course ubuntu normally recompiles with the same errors consistantly....makes life easy that way....no errors on windows eight, just a screen that did not match the installed hardware, natuarally I alt tabbed right out of it, then hit the flag key to find the start menu....no start button. I miss the start button already. Keyboard cowboy funnin and I was browsing the harddrive, nothing stunning there, I like that, means I can find stuff. Only I can't find what I want, the start button....the start menu is that first screen for touch tablets. No biggie for useruser, that is where they will want to be, I can see that. Admins won't want to be there, it is easy enough to get the control panel a bazzilion other ways though, just not the start button. (see a pattern here?). Personally, from the keyboard I find it fun to hit the carets along the location bar at the top of the explorer screen with tabs and arrows and choose SHOW ALL CONTROL PANEL ITEMS, or thereabouts. Bottom line, I love seven and I'll love eight even more!...very happy I did not have to follow the normal rule of thumb (a customer watching me build a system and asking questions said "oh I get it, so every piece you put in there is basically a hundred bucks, right?)...ok, sure, pretty much, more or less, well, ya dude.  It will be WAY past october till I get a real touch screen but I did pick up a pair of cheap tatungs so I can try the NEW main start screen, I parse a lot of folders and have a vision of how a pair of touch screens will be easier than landing a rover on mars.  Ok.  fine, they are way smallish, and I don't expect multitouch to work but we are talking a few percent of a new 21 inch viewsonic touch screen.  Will this OS be a game changer?  I don't know.  Bottom line with all the pads and droids in the world, it is more of a catch up move at first glance.  Not something ms is used to.  An app store?  I can see ms's motivation, the others have it.  I gather there will not be gadgets there, go ahead and see what ms did  to the once populated gadget page...go ahead, google gadgets and take a gander, used to hundreds of gadgets, they are already gone.  They replaced gadgets?  sort of, I'll drop that, it's a bit of a sore point for me.  More of interest was what happened when I downloaded stuff off codeplex and some other normal programs that I like, like orbitron, top o' my list!!...cardware it is...anyways, click on the exe, get a screen, normal for windows, this one indicated that I was not running a normal windows program and had a button for  exit the install, naw, I hit details, a hidden run program anyways came into view....great, my path to the normal windows has detected a program tha.....yea ok, acl is on, fine, moving along I got orbitron installed in record time and was tracking the iss on the newest Microsoft OS, beta of course, felt like the first time I setup bsd all those year ago...FUN!!...I suppose I gotta start to think about budgeting for the real os when it comes out in october, by then I should have a rasberry pi and be done with fedora remixed.  Of course that sounds like fun too!!  I would use this OS on a tablet or phone.  I don't like the idea of being hearded to an app store, don't like that on anything, we are americans and want real choices not marketed hype, lest you are younger with opm (other peoples money).   This os would be neat on a zune, but I suspect the zune is a gonner, I am rooting for microsoft, after all their default password is not admin anymore, nor alpine,  it's blank. Others force a password, my first fawn password was so long I could not even log into it with the password in front of me, who the heck uses %$# anyways, and if I was writing a brute force attack what the heck kinda impasse is that anyways at .00001 microseconds of a code execution cycle (just a non qualified number, not a real clock speed)....AI is where it will be before too long, MS is on that path, perhaps soon someone will sit down and write an app for the kinect that watches your eyes while you scan the new main start screen, clicking on the big E icon when you blink.....boy is that going to be fun!!!! sure. Blink,dammit,blink,dammit...... OPM no doubt.I like windows eight, we are moving forwards, better keep a close eye on ubuntu.  The real clinch comes when open source becomes paid source......don't blink, I already see plenty of very expensive 'ix apps, some even in app stores already.  more to come.......

  Read the article

• DBA Best Practices - A Blog Series: Episode 1 - Backups

  - by Argenis

    This blog post is part of the DBA Best Practices series, on which various topics of concern for daily database operations are discussed. Your feedback and comments are very much welcome, so please drop by the comments section and be sure to leave your thoughts on the subject. Morning Coffee When I was a DBA, the first thing I did when I sat down at my desk at work was checking that all backups had completed successfully. It really was more of a ritual, since I had a dual system in place to check for backup completion: 1) the scheduled agent jobs to back up the databases were set to alert the NOC in failure, and 2) I had a script run from a central server every so often to check for any backup failures. Why the redundancy, you might ask. Well, for one I was once bitten by the fact that database mail doesn't work 100% of the time. Potential causes for failure include issues on the SMTP box that relays your server email, firewall problems, DNS issues, etc. And so to be sure that my backups completed fine, I needed to rely on a mechanism other than having the servers do the taking - I needed to interrogate the servers and ask each one if an issue had occurred. This is why I had a script run every so often. Some of you might have monitoring tools in place like Microsoft System Center Operations Manager (SCOM) or similar 3rd party products that would track all these things for you. But at that moment, we had no resort but to write our own Powershell scripts to do it. Now it goes without saying that if you don't have backups in place, you might as well find another career. Your most sacred job as a DBA is to protect the data from a disaster, and only properly safeguarded backups can offer you peace of mind here. "But, we have a cluster...we don't need backups" Sadly I've heard this line more than I would have liked to. You need to understand that a cluster is comprised of shared storage, and that is precisely your single point of failure. A cluster will protect you from an issue at the Operating System level, and also under an outage of any SQL-related service or dependent devices. But it will most definitely NOT protect you against corruption, nor will it protect you against somebody deleting data from a table - accidentally or otherwise. Backup, fine. How often do I take a backup? The answer to this is something you will hear frequently when working with databases: it depends. What does it depend on? For one, you need to understand how much data your business is willing to lose. This is what's called Recovery Point Objective, or RPO. If you don't know how much data your business is willing to lose, you need to have an honest and realistic conversation about data loss expectations with your customers, internal or external. From my experience, their first answer to the question "how much data loss can you withstand?" will be "zero". In that case, you will need to explain how zero data loss is very difficult and very costly to achieve, even in today's computing environments. Do you want to go ahead and take full backups of all your databases every hour, or even every day? Probably not, because of the impact that taking a full backup can have on a system. That's what differential and transaction log backups are for. Have I answered the question of how often to take a backup? No, and I did that on purpose. You need to think about how much time you have to recover from any event that requires you to restore your databases. This is what's called Recovery Time Objective. Again, if you go ask your customer how long of an outage they can withstand, at first you will get a completely unrealistic number - and that will be your starting point for discussing a solution that is cost effective. The point that I'm trying to get across is that you need to have a plan. This plan needs to be practiced, and tested. Like a football playbook, you need to rehearse the moves you'll perform when the time comes. How often is up to you, and the objective is that you feel better about yourself and the steps you need to follow when emergency strikes. A backup is nothing more than an untested restore Backups are files. Files are prone to corruption. Put those two together and realize how you feel about those backups sitting on that network drive. When was the last time you restored any of those? Restoring your backups on another box - that, by the way, doesn't have to match the specs of your production server - will give you two things: 1) peace of mind, because now you know that your backups are good and 2) a place to offload your consistency checks with DBCC CHECKDB or any of the other DBCC commands like CHECKTABLE or CHECKCATALOG. This is a great strategy for VLDBs that cannot withstand the additional load created by the consistency checks. If you choose to offload your consistency checks to another server though, be sure to run DBCC CHECKDB WITH PHYSICALONLY on the production server, and if you're using SQL Server 2008 R2 SP1 CU4 and above, be sure to enable traceflags 2562 and/or 2549, which will speed up the PHYSICALONLY checks further - you can read more about this enhancement here. Back to the "How Often" question for a second. If you have the disk, and the network latency, and the system resources to do so, why not backup the transaction log often? As in, every 5 minutes, or even less than that? There's not much downside to doing it, as you will have to clear the log with a backup sooner than later, lest you risk running out space on your tlog, or even your drive. The one drawback to this approach is that you will have more files to deal with at restore time, and processing each file will add a bit of extra time to the entire process. But it might be worth that time knowing that you minimized the amount of data lost. Again, test your plan to make sure that it matches your particular needs. Where to back up to? Network share? Locally? SAN volume? This is another topic where everybody has a favorite choice. So, I'll stick to mentioning what I like to do and what I consider to be the best practice in this regard. I like to backup to a SAN volume, i.e., a drive that actually lives in the SAN, and can be easily attached to another server in a pinch, saving you valuable time - you wouldn't need to restore files on the network (slow) or pull out drives out a dead server (been there, done that, it’s also slow!). The key is to have a copy of those backup files made quickly, and, if at all possible, to a remote target on a different datacenter - or even the cloud. There are plenty of solutions out there that can help you put such a solution together. That right there is the first step towards a practical Disaster Recovery plan. But there's much more to DR, and that's material for a different blog post in this series.

  Read the article

• 5 Ways Android Still Disappoints (Me)

  - by TStewartDev

  Let me make this clear: I'm annoyed with Apple. I don't like their current policies and I don't like where Steve Jobs is taking the company. In general, I don't like it when any one company gets too much control in a market. When that happens, the leading company dictates the game and as consumers, our options all but disappear. That said, I'm still going to buy a new iPhone next week. My Apple-hating friends seem to desperately want me to go Android instead, but frankly, it's not good enough for me, and here are the reasons why. The Modern WinMo One of the reasons that Microsoft has identified for Windows Mobile's rapid decline is the breadth of hardware. They exercised little control over manufacturer's implementations. In theory, that sounds great. We as consumers have lots of choice. In practice, though, it meant among other things that updates to the devices were left up to the manufacturers. As a result, that rarely happened. (I'm still bitter at Toshiba for leaving me hanging back in 2002.) And now, Google is doing the same thing with Android. Case in point: my wife has a Motorola Backflip that we bought in April. It was released in March. Motorola says it will get Android 2.1 "sometime in Q3". Great. Meanwhile, I pull down the latest version of iPhone OS (now iOS) and install it the same day it's released. You may say that I can't judge Android by one lazy manufacturer. Yup, I sure can. With Apple, my original iPhone has been supported perfectly for 3 years. With Android, I will have to wait for upgrades after Google releases them, possibly indefinitely. Not cool. AT&T We signed a new contract with AT&T in April to get my wife's phone. I've had a reasonable experience with them. I don't imagine my experience with Verizon would be any better, and I'm relatively confident that Sprint doesn't have the coverage it takes to work well for us. The fact is, AT&T, for whatever reason, doesn't have jack for Android phones. May not be Android's fault, but it's still a shortcoming that prevents me from having it just like the iPhone's exclusivity keeps some folks on other networks from having it. Innovation? What Innovation? Android has a nice dashboard and a great notification system and… nothing else original. I keep reading about how disappointing the iPhone is nowadays. "It has no innovation," people say. Who does? Android has modeled its behavior after the iPhone. That's fine, but if all you've got is a similar product and I'm invested both skill-wise and app-wise in my current platform, why should I change? Microsoft's new Windows Phone 7 looks somewhat innovative, and I'm pretty excited to see what they'll bring to the table, but that's another six months away, at least. I've got a 3 year old phone that has some annoying issues now (thanks to recent encounters with water). I need a new phone now. Is This Going to Work? There's no shortage of criticism of Apple over its App Store policies, and I've vented my own anger about it. However, I will give them credit: their screening of apps has done a great job of weeding out the crap and gives an excellent indication that the app will work on my device. How about Android? Nope. It might work on your phone. Maybe. You'll have to try it to see. Get burned by it? Well, write a nasty review to try to keep others from making the mistake you did. If you don't mind doing that stuff, then Android is the platform for you. Personally, I'd rather have a receptionist screening out the telemarketing and survey calls than hang up on them myself, but that's your call. Slow, Slowing, Slower All this yapping about multitasking. This is an area I've been on Apple's side from the beginning. Sorry folks, but this is the number one reason I hated Windows Mobile: the longer you use it, the slower it gets because it doesn't kill apps. I'm with Steve Jobs on this one: if you see a task manager, we're doing it wrong. I don't want to have to manually kill apps. I hate doing that on Windows let alone on a mobile device. To me, priority one should be keeping the device speedy. Waiting for your device to respond is unacceptable. Bonus! Taken from iPhone Letdown? 8 Things Apple Didn't Announce, here are my responses: 4G Yeah, let me know if your area actually has it. I live in Lincoln, Nebraska. No carrier is going to have 4G here for at least 3 years. Meanwhile, you still get to pay for it. Yay! Cloud iTunes/OTA Sync You got me here. Of course, whether or not your Android device will be able to do it is always a good question. 3G Video Chat You got me here, too. I'm sure you spent countless hours in front of your phone with video chat. Also, I can't wait for the "No Video Chat While Driving" laws. Mobile Hotspot This is a neat feature, but as the author points out, it's left up to the carrier whether to implement it or not. Pretty sure any Android phones that come to AT&T won't have this enabled in the foreseeable future. Is Verizon even allowing this? I just figured Sprint was because they're failing so hard at keeping customers. Free MobileMe I use Google's services with my iPhone. The only people I know who use MobileMe are Apple fanboys and fangirls. If you choose to pay for a service that you can get for free, that's your decision, not Apple's. Voice Input Voice input has been available on phones (even "dumb" phones) for years now. iPhone does have the ability, though limited. Why don't I hear people telling their phones what to do? Maybe because it's still easier to use your fingers than talk to it. Get back to me when this becomes an important feature. Free Navigation Maybe this will be a bigger deal to me now that I'm getting a phone with GPS, but when using my buddy's 3gs, Google maps has worked just fine. Maybe I just don't trust turn-by-turn navigation enough to want it. Dashboard The only legitimate complaint on this list, to me. iPhone's home screen is pathetic, doubly so for the iPad. What a waste of perfectly usable space. I also want to add notifications to this list. Android's notification panel is far superior to the iPhone's. I don't want to hunt all over my screen to find little red dots. Put 'em in one place, Apple.

  Read the article

• DBA Best Practices - A Blog Series: Episode 1 - Backups

  - by Argenis

    This blog post is part of the DBA Best Practices series, on which various topics of concern for daily database operations are discussed. Your feedback and comments are very much welcome, so please drop by the comments section and be sure to leave your thoughts on the subject. Morning Coffee When I was a DBA, the first thing I did when I sat down at my desk at work was checking that all backups have completed successfully. It really was more of a ritual, since I had a dual system in place to check for backup completion: 1) the scheduled agent jobs to back up the databases were set to alert the NOC in failure, and 2) I had a script run from a central server every so often to check for any backup failures. Why the redundancy, you might ask. Well, for one I was once bitten by the fact that database mail doesn't work 100% of the time. Potential causes for failure include issues on the SMTP box that relays your server email, firewall problems, DNS issues, etc. And so to be sure that my backups completed fine, I needed to rely on a mechanism other than having the servers do the taking - I needed to interrogate the servers and ask each one if an issue had occurred. This is why I had a script run every so often. Some of you might have monitoring tools in place like Microsoft System Center Operations Manager (SCOM) or similar 3rd party products that would track all these things for you. But at that moment, we had no resort but to write our own Powershell scripts to do it. Now it goes without saying that if you don't have backups in place, you might as well find another career. Your most sacred job as a DBA is to protect the data from a disaster, and only properly safeguarded backups can offer you peace of mind here. "But, we have a cluster...we don't need backups" Sadly I've heard this line more than I would have liked to. You need to understand that a cluster is comprised of shared storage, and that is precisely your single point of failure. A cluster will protect you from an issue at the Operating System level, and also under an outage of any SQL-related service or dependent devices. But it will most definitely NOT protect you against corruption, nor will it protect you against somebody deleting data from a table - accidentally or otherwise. Backup, fine. How often do I take a backup? The answer to this is something you will hear frequently when working with databases: it depends. What does it depend on? For one, you need to understand how much data your business is willing to lose. This is what's called Recovery Point Objective, or RPO. If you don't know how much data your business is willing to lose, you need to have an honest and realistic conversation about data loss expectations with your customers, internal or external. From my experience, their first answer to the question "how much data loss can you withstand?" will be "zero". In that case, you will need to explain how zero data loss is very difficult and very costly to achieve, even in today's computing environments. Do you want to go ahead and take full backups of all your databases every hour, or even every day? Probably not, because of the impact that taking a full backup can have on a system. That's what differential and transaction log backups are for. Have I answered the question of how often to take a backup? No, and I did that on purpose. You need to think about how much time you have to recover from any event that requires you to restore your databases. This is what's called Recovery Time Objective. Again, if you go ask your customer how long of an outage they can withstand, at first you will get a completely unrealistic number - and that will be your starting point for discussing a solution that is cost effective. The point that I'm trying to get across is that you need to have a plan. This plan needs to be practiced, and tested. Like a football playbook, you need to rehearse the moves you'll perform when the time comes. How often is up to you, and the objective is that you feel better about yourself and the steps you need to follow when emergency strikes. A backup is nothing more than an untested restore Backups are files. Files are prone to corruption. Put those two together and realize how you feel about those backups sitting on that network drive. When was the last time you restored any of those? Restoring your backups on another box - that, by the way, doesn't have to match the specs of your production server - will give you two things: 1) peace of mind, because now you know that your backups are good and 2) a place to offload your consistency checks with DBCC CHECKDB or any of the other DBCC commands like CHECKTABLE or CHECKCATALOG. This is a great strategy for VLDBs that cannot withstand the additional load created by the consistency checks. If you choose to offload your consistency checks to another server though, be sure to run DBCC CHECKDB WITH PHYSICALONLY on the production server, and if you're using SQL Server 2008 R2 SP1 CU4 and above, be sure to enable traceflags 2562 and/or 2549, which will speed up the PHYSICALONLY checks further - you can read more about this enhancement here. Back to the "How Often" question for a second. If you have the disk, and the network latency, and the system resources to do so, why not backup the transaction log often? As in, every 5 minutes, or even less than that? There's not much downside to doing it, as you will have to clear the log with a backup sooner than later, lest you risk running out space on your tlog, or even your drive. The one drawback to this approach is that you will have more files to deal with at restore time, and processing each file will add a bit of extra time to the entire process. But it might be worth that time knowing that you minimized the amount of data lost. Again, test your plan to make sure that it matches your particular needs. Where to back up to? Network share? Locally? SAN volume? This is another topic where everybody has a favorite choice. So, I'll stick to mentioning what I like to do and what I consider to be the best practice in this regard. I like to backup to a SAN volume, i.e., a drive that actually lives in the SAN, and can be easily attached to another server in a pinch, saving you valuable time - you wouldn't need to restore files on the network (slow) or pull out drives out a dead server (been there, done that, it’s also slow!). The key is to have a copy of those backup files made quickly, and, if at all possible, to a remote target on a different datacenter - or even the cloud. There are plenty of solutions out there that can help you put such a solution together. That right there is the first step towards a practical Disaster Recovery plan. But there's much more to DR, and that's material for a different blog post in this series.

  Read the article

• I'm a contract developer and I think I'm about to get screwed [closed]

  - by kagaku

  I do contract development on the side. You could say that I'm a contract developer? Considering I've only ever had one client I'd say that's not exactly the truth - more like I took a side job and needed some extra cash. It started out as a "rebuild our website and we'll pay you $10k" type project. Once that was complete (a bit over schedule, but certainly not over budget), the company hired me on as a "long term support" contractor. The contract is to go from March of this year, expiring on December 31st of this year - 10 months. Over which a payment is to be paid on the 30th of each month for a set amount. I've been fulfilling my end of the contract on all points - doing server maintenence, application and database changes, doing huge rush changes and pretty much just going above and beyond. Currently I'm in the middle of development of an iPhone mobile application (PhoneGap based) which is nearing completion (probably 3-4 weeks from submission). It has not been all peaches and flowers though. Each and every month when my paycheck comes due, there always seems to be an issue of sorts. These issues did not occur during the initial project, only during the support contract. The actual contract states that my check should be mailed out on the 30th of the month. I have received my check on time approximately once (on time being about 2-3 days within the 30th). I've received my paycheck as late as the 15th of the next month - over two weeks late. I've put up with it because I need the paycheck. There have been promises and promises of "we'll send it out on time next time! I promise" - only to receive it just as late the next month. When I ask about payment they give me a vibe like "why are you only worried about money?" - unfortunately I don't have the luxury of not worrying about money. The last straw was with my August payment, which should have been mailed on August 30th. I received it on September 12th. The reason for the delay? "USPS is delaying it man! we sent it out on the 1st!" is the reason I got. When I finally got the check in the mail, the postage on the envelope was marked September 10th - the date it was run through the postage machine. I've been outright lied to, at this point. I carry on working, because again - I need a paycheck. I orchestrated the move of our application to a new server, developed a bunch of new changes and continued work on the iPhone app. All told I probably went over my hourly allotment (I'm paid for 40 hours a month, I probably put in at least 50). On Saturday, the 1st, I gave the main contact at the company (a company of 3, by the way - this is not some big corporation) a ring and filled him in on the status of my work for the past two weeks. Unusually I hadn't heard from him since the middle of September. His response was "oh... well, that is nice and uh.. good job. well, we've been talking within the company about things and we've certainly got some decisions ahead of us..." - not verbatim but you get the idea (I hope?). I got out of this conversation that the site is not doing very well (which it's not) and they're considering pulling the plug. Crap, this contract is going to end early - there goes Christmas! Fine, that's alright, no problem. I'll get paid for the last months work and call it a day. Unfortunately I still haven't gotten last months check, and I'm getting dicked around now. "Oh.. we had problems transferring funds, we'll try and mail it out tomorrow" and "I left a VM with the finance guy, but I can't get ahold of him". So I'm getting the feeling I'm not getting paid for all the work I put in for September. This is obviously breach of contract, and I am pissed. Thinking irrationally, I considered changing all their passwords and holding their stuff hostage. Before I think it through (by the way, I am NOT going to do this, realized it would probably get me in trouble), I go and try some passwords for our various accounts. Google Apps? Oh, I'm no longer administrator here. Godaddy? Whoops, invalid password. Disqus? Nope, invalid password here too. Google Adsense / Analytics? Invalid password. Dedicated server account manager? Invalid password. Now, I have the servers root password - I just built the box last week and haven't had a chance to send the guy the root password. Wasn't in a rush, I manage the server and they never touch it. Now all of a sudden all the passwords except this one are changed; the writing is on the wall - I am out. Here's the conundrum. I have the root password, they do not. If I give them this password all the leverage I have is gone, out the door and out of my hands. During this argument of why am I not getting paid the guy sends me an email saying "oh by the way, what's the root username and password to the server?". Considering he knows absolutely nothing, I gave him an "admin" account which really has almost no rights. I still have exclusive access to the server, I just don't know where to go. I can hold their data hostage, but I'm almost positive this is the wrong thing to do. I'd consider it blackmail, regardless of whether or not I have gotten paid yet. I can "break" something on the server and give them the whole "well, if you were paying me I could fix it!" spiel. This works from a "well he's not holding their stuff hostage" point of view, but what stops them from hiring some one else to just fix the issue at hand? For all I know the guys nephew is a "l33t hax0r" and can figure it out for free. I can give in, document as much as I can and take him to small claims court. This is breach of contract, I'm not getting paid. I have a case, right? ???? Does anyone have any experience in this? What can I do? What are my options? I'm broke, I can't afford a lawyer and I can barely afford not getting this paycheck. My wife doesn't work (I work two jobs so she doesn't have to work - we have a 1 year old) and is already looking at getting a part time job to cover the bills. Long term we'll be fine, but this has pissed me off beyond belief! Help me out, I'm about to get screwed.

  Read the article

• Nginx and client certificates from hierarchical OpenSSL-based certification authorities

  - by Fmy Oen

  I'm trying to set up root certification authority, subordinate certification authority and to generate the client certificates signed by any of this CA that nginx 0.7.67 on Debian Squeeze will accept. My problem is that root CA signed client certificate works fine while subordinate CA signed one results in "400 Bad Request. The SSL certificate error". Step 1: nginx virtual host configuration: server { server_name test.local; access_log /var/log/nginx/test.access.log; listen 443 default ssl; keepalive_timeout 70; ssl_protocols SSLv3 TLSv1; ssl_ciphers AES128-SHA:AES256-SHA:RC4-SHA:DES-CBC3-SHA:RC4-MD5; ssl_certificate /etc/nginx/ssl/server.crt; ssl_certificate_key /etc/nginx/ssl/server.key; ssl_client_certificate /etc/nginx/ssl/client.pem; ssl_verify_client on; ssl_session_cache shared:SSL:10m; ssl_session_timeout 5m; location / { proxy_pass http://testsite.local/; } } Step 2: PKI infrastructure organization for both root and subordinate CA (based on this article): # mkdir ~/pki && cd ~/pki # mkdir rootCA subCA # cp -v /etc/ssl/openssl.cnf rootCA/ # cd rootCA/ # mkdir certs private crl newcerts; touch serial; echo 01 > serial; touch index.txt; touch crlnumber; echo 01 > crlnumber # cp -Rvp * ../subCA/ Almost no changes was made to rootCA/openssl.cnf: [ CA_default ] dir = . # Where everything is kept ... certificate = $dir/certs/rootca.crt # The CA certificate ... private_key = $dir/private/rootca.key # The private key and to subCA/openssl.cnf: [ CA_default ] dir = . # Where everything is kept ... certificate = $dir/certs/subca.crt # The CA certificate ... private_key = $dir/private/subca.key # The private key Step 3: Self-signed root CA certificate generation: # openssl genrsa -out ./private/rootca.key -des3 2048 # openssl req -x509 -new -key ./private/rootca.key -out certs/rootca.crt -config openssl.cnf Enter pass phrase for ./private/rootca.key: You are about to be asked to enter information that will be incorporated into your certificate request. What you are about to enter is what is called a Distinguished Name or a DN. There are quite a few fields but you can leave some blank For some fields there will be a default value, If you enter '.', the field will be left blank. ----- Country Name (2 letter code) [AU]: State or Province Name (full name) [Some-State]: Locality Name (eg, city) []: Organization Name (eg, company) [Internet Widgits Pty Ltd]: Organizational Unit Name (eg, section) []: Common Name (eg, YOUR name) []:rootca Email Address []: Step 4: Subordinate CA certificate generation: # cd ../subCA # openssl genrsa -out ./private/subca.key -des3 2048 # openssl req -new -key ./private/subca.key -out subca.csr -config openssl.cnf Enter pass phrase for ./private/subca.key: You are about to be asked to enter information that will be incorporated into your certificate request. What you are about to enter is what is called a Distinguished Name or a DN. There are quite a few fields but you can leave some blank For some fields there will be a default value, If you enter '.', the field will be left blank. ----- Country Name (2 letter code) [AU]: State or Province Name (full name) [Some-State]: Locality Name (eg, city) []: Organization Name (eg, company) [Internet Widgits Pty Ltd]: Organizational Unit Name (eg, section) []: Common Name (eg, YOUR name) []:subca Email Address []: Please enter the following 'extra' attributes to be sent with your certificate request A challenge password []: An optional company name []: Step 5: Subordinate CA certificate signing by root CA certificate: # cd ../rootCA/ # openssl ca -in ../subCA/subca.csr -extensions v3_ca -config openssl.cnf Using configuration from openssl.cnf Enter pass phrase for ./private/rootca.key: Check that the request matches the signature Signature ok Certificate Details: Serial Number: 1 (0x1) Validity Not Before: Feb 4 10:49:43 2013 GMT Not After : Feb 4 10:49:43 2014 GMT Subject: countryName = AU stateOrProvinceName = Some-State organizationName = Internet Widgits Pty Ltd commonName = subca X509v3 extensions: X509v3 Subject Key Identifier: C9:E2:AC:31:53:81:86:3F:CD:F8:3D:47:10:FC:E5:8E:C2:DA:A9:20 X509v3 Authority Key Identifier: keyid:E9:50:E6:BF:57:03:EA:6E:8F:21:23:86:BB:44:3D:9F:8F:4A:8B:F2 DirName:/C=AU/ST=Some-State/O=Internet Widgits Pty Ltd/CN=rootca serial:9F:FB:56:66:8D:D3:8F:11 X509v3 Basic Constraints: CA:TRUE Certificate is to be certified until Feb 4 10:49:43 2014 GMT (365 days) Sign the certificate? [y/n]:y 1 out of 1 certificate requests certified, commit? [y/n]y ... # cd ../subCA/ # cp -v ../rootCA/newcerts/01.pem certs/subca.crt Step 6: Server certificate generation and signing by root CA (for nginx virtual host): # cd ../rootCA # openssl genrsa -out ./private/server.key -des3 2048 # openssl req -new -key ./private/server.key -out server.csr -config openssl.cnf Enter pass phrase for ./private/server.key: You are about to be asked to enter information that will be incorporated into your certificate request. What you are about to enter is what is called a Distinguished Name or a DN. There are quite a few fields but you can leave some blank For some fields there will be a default value, If you enter '.', the field will be left blank. ----- Country Name (2 letter code) [AU]: State or Province Name (full name) [Some-State]: Locality Name (eg, city) []: Organization Name (eg, company) [Internet Widgits Pty Ltd]: Organizational Unit Name (eg, section) []: Common Name (eg, YOUR name) []:test.local Email Address []: Please enter the following 'extra' attributes to be sent with your certificate request A challenge password []: An optional company name []: # openssl ca -in server.csr -out certs/server.crt -config openssl.cnf Step 7: Client #1 certificate generation and signing by root CA: # openssl genrsa -out ./private/client1.key -des3 2048 # openssl req -new -key ./private/client1.key -out client1.csr -config openssl.cnf Enter pass phrase for ./private/client1.key: You are about to be asked to enter information that will be incorporated into your certificate request. What you are about to enter is what is called a Distinguished Name or a DN. There are quite a few fields but you can leave some blank For some fields there will be a default value, If you enter '.', the field will be left blank. ----- Country Name (2 letter code) [AU]: State or Province Name (full name) [Some-State]: Locality Name (eg, city) []: Organization Name (eg, company) [Internet Widgits Pty Ltd]: Organizational Unit Name (eg, section) []: Common Name (eg, YOUR name) []:Client #1 Email Address []: Please enter the following 'extra' attributes to be sent with your certificate request A challenge password []: An optional company name []: # openssl ca -in client1.csr -out certs/client1.crt -config openssl.cnf Step 8: Client #1 certificate converting to PKCS12 format: # openssl pkcs12 -export -out certs/client1.p12 -inkey private/client1.key -in certs/client1.crt -certfile certs/rootca.crt Step 9: Client #2 certificate generation and signing by subordinate CA: # cd ../subCA/ # openssl genrsa -out ./private/client2.key -des3 2048 # openssl req -new -key ./private/client2.key -out client2.csr -config openssl.cnf Enter pass phrase for ./private/client2.key: You are about to be asked to enter information that will be incorporated into your certificate request. What you are about to enter is what is called a Distinguished Name or a DN. There are quite a few fields but you can leave some blank For some fields there will be a default value, If you enter '.', the field will be left blank. ----- Country Name (2 letter code) [AU]: State or Province Name (full name) [Some-State]: Locality Name (eg, city) []: Organization Name (eg, company) [Internet Widgits Pty Ltd]: Organizational Unit Name (eg, section) []: Common Name (eg, YOUR name) []:Client #2 Email Address []: Please enter the following 'extra' attributes to be sent with your certificate request A challenge password []: An optional company name []: # openssl ca -in client2.csr -out certs/client2.crt -config openssl.cnf Step 10: Client #2 certificate converting to PKCS12 format: # openssl pkcs12 -export -out certs/client2.p12 -inkey private/client2.key -in certs/client2.crt -certfile certs/subca.crt Step 11: Passing server certificate and private key to nginx (performed with OS superuser privileges): # cd ../rootCA/ # cp -v certs/server.crt /etc/nginx/ssl/ # cp -v private/server.key /etc/nginx/ssl/ Step 12: Passing root and subordinate CA certificates to nginx (performed with OS superuser privileges): # cat certs/rootca.crt > /etc/nginx/ssl/client.pem # cat ../subCA/certs/subca.crt >> /etc/nginx/ssl/client.pem client.pem file look like this: # cat /etc/nginx/ssl/client.pem -----BEGIN CERTIFICATE----- MIID6TCCAtGgAwIBAgIJAJ/7VmaN048RMA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBBQUAMFYxCzAJBgNV BAYTAkFVMRMwEQYDVQQIEwpTb21lLVN0YXRlMSEwHwYDVQQKExhJbnRlcm5ldCBX aWRnaXRzIFB0eSBMdGQxDzANBgNVBAMTBnJvb3RjYTAeFw0xMzAyMDQxMDM1NTda ... -----END CERTIFICATE----- Certificate: Data: Version: 3 (0x2) Serial Number: 1 (0x1) ... -----BEGIN CERTIFICATE----- MIID4DCCAsigAwIBAgIBATANBgkqhkiG9w0BAQUFADBWMQswCQYDVQQGEwJBVTET MBEGA1UECBMKU29tZS1TdGF0ZTEhMB8GA1UEChMYSW50ZXJuZXQgV2lkZ2l0cyBQ dHkgTHRkMQ8wDQYDVQQDEwZyb290Y2EwHhcNMTMwMjA0MTA0OTQzWhcNMTQwMjA0 ... -----END CERTIFICATE----- It looks like everything is working fine: # service nginx reload # Reloading nginx configuration: Enter PEM pass phrase: # nginx. # Step 13: Installing *.p12 certificates in browser (Firefox in my case) gives the problem I've mentioned above. Client #1 = 200 OK, Client #2 = 400 Bad request/The SSL certificate error. Any ideas what should I do? Update 1: Results of SSL connection test attempts: # openssl s_client -connect test.local:443 -CAfile ~/pki/rootCA/certs/rootca.crt -cert ~/pki/rootCA/certs/client1.crt -key ~/pki/rootCA/private/client1.key -showcerts Enter pass phrase for tmp/testcert/client1.key: CONNECTED(00000003) depth=1 C = AU, ST = Some-State, O = Internet Widgits Pty Ltd, CN = rootca verify return:1 depth=0 C = AU, ST = Some-State, O = Internet Widgits Pty Ltd, CN = test.local verify return:1 --- Certificate chain 0 s:/C=AU/ST=Some-State/O=Internet Widgits Pty Ltd/CN=test.local i:/C=AU/ST=Some-State/O=Internet Widgits Pty Ltd/CN=rootca -----BEGIN CERTIFICATE----- MIIDpjCCAo6gAwIBAgIBAjANBgkqhkiG9w0BAQUFADBWMQswCQYDVQQGEwJBVTET MBEGA1UECBMKU29tZS1TdGF0ZTEhMB8GA1UEChMYSW50ZXJuZXQgV2lkZ2l0cyBQ dHkgTHRkMQ8wDQYDVQQDEwZyb290Y2EwHhcNMTMwMjA0MTEwNjAzWhcNMTQwMjA0 ... -----END CERTIFICATE----- 1 s:/C=AU/ST=Some-State/O=Internet Widgits Pty Ltd/CN=rootca i:/C=AU/ST=Some-State/O=Internet Widgits Pty Ltd/CN=rootca -----BEGIN CERTIFICATE----- MIID6TCCAtGgAwIBAgIJAJ/7VmaN048RMA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBBQUAMFYxCzAJBgNV BAYTAkFVMRMwEQYDVQQIEwpTb21lLVN0YXRlMSEwHwYDVQQKExhJbnRlcm5ldCBX aWRnaXRzIFB0eSBMdGQxDzANBgNVBAMTBnJvb3RjYTAeFw0xMzAyMDQxMDM1NTda ... -----END CERTIFICATE----- --- Server certificate subject=/C=AU/ST=Some-State/O=Internet Widgits Pty Ltd/CN=test.local issuer=/C=AU/ST=Some-State/O=Internet Widgits Pty Ltd/CN=rootca --- Acceptable client certificate CA names /C=AU/ST=Some-State/O=Internet Widgits Pty Ltd/CN=rootca /C=AU/ST=Some-State/O=Internet Widgits Pty Ltd/CN=subca --- SSL handshake has read 3395 bytes and written 2779 bytes --- New, TLSv1/SSLv3, Cipher is AES256-SHA Server public key is 2048 bit Secure Renegotiation IS supported Compression: zlib compression Expansion: zlib compression SSL-Session: Protocol : TLSv1 Cipher : AES256-SHA Session-ID: 15BFC2029691262542FAE95A48078305E76EEE7D586400F8C4F7C516B0F9D967 Session-ID-ctx: Master-Key: 23246CF166E8F3900793F0A2561879E5DB07291F32E99591BA1CF53E6229491FEAE6858BFC9AACAF271D9C3706F139C7 Key-Arg : None PSK identity: None PSK identity hint: None SRP username: None TLS session ticket: 0000 - c2 5e 1d d2 b5 6d 40 23-b2 40 89 e4 35 75 70 07 .^...m@#[email protected]. 0010 - 1b bb 2b e6 e0 b5 ab 10-10 bf 46 6e aa 67 7f 58 ..+.......Fn.g.X 0020 - cf 0e 65 a4 67 5a 15 ba-aa 93 4e dd 3d 6e 73 4c ..e.gZ....N.=nsL 0030 - c5 56 f6 06 24 0f 48 e6-38 36 de f1 b5 31 c5 86 .V..$.H.86...1.. ... 0440 - 4c 53 39 e3 92 84 d2 d0-e5 e2 f5 8a 6a a8 86 b1 LS9.........j... Compression: 1 (zlib compression) Start Time: 1359989684 Timeout : 300 (sec) Verify return code: 0 (ok) --- Everything seems fine with Client #2 and root CA certificate but request returns 400 Bad Request error: # openssl s_client -connect test.local:443 -CAfile ~/pki/rootCA/certs/rootca.crt -cert ~/pki/subCA/certs/client2.crt -key ~/pki/subCA/private/client2.key -showcerts Enter pass phrase for tmp/testcert/client2.key: CONNECTED(00000003) depth=1 C = AU, ST = Some-State, O = Internet Widgits Pty Ltd, CN = rootca verify return:1 depth=0 C = AU, ST = Some-State, O = Internet Widgits Pty Ltd, CN = test.local verify return:1 ... Compression: 1 (zlib compression) Start Time: 1359989989 Timeout : 300 (sec) Verify return code: 0 (ok) --- GET / HTTP/1.0 HTTP/1.1 400 Bad Request Server: nginx/0.7.67 Date: Mon, 04 Feb 2013 15:00:43 GMT Content-Type: text/html Content-Length: 231 Connection: close <html> <head><title>400 The SSL certificate error</title></head> <body bgcolor="white"> <center><h1>400 Bad Request</h1></center> <center>The SSL certificate error</center> <hr><center>nginx/0.7.67</center> </body> </html> closed Verification fails with Client #2 certificate and subordinate CA certificate: # openssl s_client -connect test.local:443 -CAfile ~/pki/subCA/certs/subca.crt -cert ~/pki/subCA/certs/client2.crt -key ~/pki/subCA/private/client2.key -showcerts Enter pass phrase for tmp/testcert/client2.key: CONNECTED(00000003) depth=1 C = AU, ST = Some-State, O = Internet Widgits Pty Ltd, CN = rootca verify error:num=19:self signed certificate in certificate chain verify return:0 ... Compression: 1 (zlib compression) Start Time: 1359990354 Timeout : 300 (sec) Verify return code: 19 (self signed certificate in certificate chain) --- GET / HTTP/1.0 HTTP/1.1 400 Bad Request ... Still getting 400 Bad Request error with concatenated CA certificates and Client #2 (but still everything ok with Client #1): # cat certs/rootca.crt ../subCA/certs/subca.crt > certs/concatenatedca.crt # openssl s_client -connect test.local:443 -CAfile ~/pki/rootCA/certs/concatenatedca.crt -cert ~/pki/subCA/certs/client2.crt -key ~/pki/subCA/private/client2.key -showcerts Enter pass phrase for tmp/testcert/client2.key: CONNECTED(00000003) depth=1 C = AU, ST = Some-State, O = Internet Widgits Pty Ltd, CN = rootca verify return:1 depth=0 C = AU, ST = Some-State, O = Internet Widgits Pty Ltd, CN = test.local verify return:1 --- ... Compression: 1 (zlib compression) Start Time: 1359990772 Timeout : 300 (sec) Verify return code: 0 (ok) --- GET / HTTP/1.0 HTTP/1.1 400 Bad Request ... Update 2: I've managed to recompile nginx with enabled debug. Here is the part of successfull conection by Client #1 track: 2013/02/05 14:08:23 [debug] 38701#0: *119 accept: <MY IP ADDRESS> fd:3 2013/02/05 14:08:23 [debug] 38701#0: *119 event timer add: 3: 60000:2856497512 2013/02/05 14:08:23 [debug] 38701#0: *119 kevent set event: 3: ft:-1 fl:0025 2013/02/05 14:08:23 [debug] 38701#0: *119 malloc: 28805200:660 2013/02/05 14:08:23 [debug] 38701#0: *119 malloc: 28834400:1024 2013/02/05 14:08:23 [debug] 38701#0: *119 posix_memalign: 28860000:4096 @16 2013/02/05 14:08:23 [debug] 38701#0: *119 http check ssl handshake 2013/02/05 14:08:23 [debug] 38701#0: *119 https ssl handshake: 0x16 2013/02/05 14:08:23 [debug] 38701#0: *119 SSL server name: "test.local" 2013/02/05 14:08:23 [debug] 38701#0: *119 SSL_do_handshake: -1 2013/02/05 14:08:23 [debug] 38701#0: *119 SSL_get_error: 2 2013/02/05 14:08:23 [debug] 38701#0: *119 SSL handshake handler: 0 2013/02/05 14:08:23 [debug] 38701#0: *119 verify:1, error:0, depth:1, subject:"/C=AU /ST=Some-State/O=Internet Widgits Pty Ltd/CN=rootca",issuer: "/C=AU/ST=Some-State/O=Internet Widgits Pty Ltd/CN=rootca" 2013/02/05 14:08:23 [debug] 38701#0: *119 verify:1, error:0, depth:0, subject:"/C=AU/ST=Some-State/O=Internet Widgits Pty Ltd/CN=Client #1",issuer: "/C=AU/ST=Some-State/O=Internet Widgits Pty Ltd/CN=rootca" 2013/02/05 14:08:23 [debug] 38701#0: *119 SSL_do_handshake: 1 2013/02/05 14:08:23 [debug] 38701#0: *119 SSL: TLSv1, cipher: "AES256-SHA SSLv3 Kx=RSA Au=RSA Enc=AES(256) Mac=SHA1" 2013/02/05 14:08:23 [debug] 38701#0: *119 http process request line 2013/02/05 14:08:23 [debug] 38701#0: *119 SSL_read: -1 2013/02/05 14:08:23 [debug] 38701#0: *119 SSL_get_error: 2 2013/02/05 14:08:23 [debug] 38701#0: *119 http process request line 2013/02/05 14:08:23 [debug] 38701#0: *119 SSL_read: 1 2013/02/05 14:08:23 [debug] 38701#0: *119 SSL_read: 524 2013/02/05 14:08:23 [debug] 38701#0: *119 SSL_read: -1 2013/02/05 14:08:23 [debug] 38701#0: *119 SSL_get_error: 2 2013/02/05 14:08:23 [debug] 38701#0: *119 http request line: "GET / HTTP/1.1" And here is the part of unsuccessfull conection by Client #2 track: 2013/02/05 13:51:34 [debug] 38701#0: *112 accept: <MY_IP_ADDRESS> fd:3 2013/02/05 13:51:34 [debug] 38701#0: *112 event timer add: 3: 60000:2855488975 2013/02/05 13:51:34 [debug] 38701#0: *112 kevent set event: 3: ft:-1 fl:0025 2013/02/05 13:51:34 [debug] 38701#0: *112 malloc: 28805200:660 2013/02/05 13:51:34 [debug] 38701#0: *112 malloc: 28834400:1024 2013/02/05 13:51:34 [debug] 38701#0: *112 posix_memalign: 28860000:4096 @16 2013/02/05 13:51:34 [debug] 38701#0: *112 http check ssl handshake 2013/02/05 13:51:34 [debug] 38701#0: *112 https ssl handshake: 0x16 2013/02/05 13:51:34 [debug] 38701#0: *112 SSL server name: "test.local" 2013/02/05 13:51:34 [debug] 38701#0: *112 SSL_do_handshake: -1 2013/02/05 13:51:34 [debug] 38701#0: *112 SSL_get_error: 2 2013/02/05 13:51:34 [debug] 38701#0: *112 SSL handshake handler: 0 2013/02/05 13:51:34 [debug] 38701#0: *112 SSL_do_handshake: -1 2013/02/05 13:51:34 [debug] 38701#0: *112 SSL_get_error: 2 2013/02/05 13:51:34 [debug] 38701#0: *112 SSL handshake handler: 0 2013/02/05 13:51:34 [debug] 38701#0: *112 verify:0, error:20, depth:1, subject:"/C=AU/ST=Some-State/O=Internet Widgits Pty Ltd/CN=subca",issuer: "/C=AU/ST=Some-State/O=Internet Widgits Pty Ltd/CN=rootca" 2013/02/05 13:51:34 [debug] 38701#0: *112 verify:0, error:27, depth:1, subject:"/C=AU/ST=Some-State/O=Internet Widgits Pty Ltd/CN=subca",issuer: "/C=AU/ST=Some-State/O=Internet Widgits Pty Ltd/CN=rootca" 2013/02/05 13:51:34 [debug] 38701#0: *112 verify:1, error:27, depth:0, subject:"/C=AU/ST=Some-State/O=Internet Widgits Pty Ltd/CN=Client #2",issuer: "/C=AU/ST=Some-State/O=Internet Widgits Pty Ltd/CN=subca" 2013/02/05 13:51:34 [debug] 38701#0: *112 SSL_do_handshake: 1 2013/02/05 13:51:34 [debug] 38701#0: *112 SSL: TLSv1, cipher: "AES256-SHA SSLv3 Kx=RSA Au=RSA Enc=AES(256) Mac=SHA1" 2013/02/05 13:51:34 [debug] 38701#0: *112 http process request line 2013/02/05 13:51:34 [debug] 38701#0: *112 SSL_read: 1 2013/02/05 13:51:34 [debug] 38701#0: *112 SSL_read: 524 2013/02/05 13:51:34 [debug] 38701#0: *112 SSL_read: -1 2013/02/05 13:51:34 [debug] 38701#0: *112 SSL_get_error: 2 2013/02/05 13:51:34 [debug] 38701#0: *112 http request line: "GET / HTTP/1.1" So I'm getting OpenSSL error #20 and then #27. According to verify documentation: 20 X509_V_ERR_UNABLE_TO_GET_ISSUER_CERT_LOCALLY: unable to get local issuer certificate the issuer certificate could not be found: this occurs if the issuer certificate of an untrusted certificate cannot be found. 27 X509_V_ERR_CERT_UNTRUSTED: certificate not trusted the root CA is not marked as trusted for the specified purpose.

  Read the article

• dynamic multiple instance of swfupload (firefox vs IE)

  - by jean27

  We have this dynamic uploader which creates a new instance of swfupload. I'm a little bit confused with the outputs produced by firefox and ie. Firefox have the same output as chrome, safari and opera. Whenever I clicked a button for adding a new instance, the previous instances of swfupload in firefox refresh while IE don't. I have this debug information: For Firefox: SWF DEBUG OUTPUT IN FIREFOX ---SWFUpload Instance Info--- Version: 2.2.0 2009-03-25 Movie Name: SWFUpload_0 Settings: upload_url: /86707/listing/asynchronousuploadphoto/87085/15/E1ptdReNMwcU/cUkx4p689ChPRZYMKkLZQ== flash_url: /content/swfupload.swf?preventswfcaching=1272512466022 use_query_string: false requeue_on_error: false http_success: assume_success_timeout: 0 file_post_name: Filedata post_params: [object Object] file_types: .jpg;.gif;.png;.bmp file_types_description: Image Files file_size_limit: 1MB file_upload_limit: 1 file_queue_limit: 1 debug: true prevent_swf_caching: true button_placeholder_id: file-1_swf button_placeholder: Not Set button_image_url: /content/images/blankButton.png button_width: 109 button_height: 22 button_text: button_text_style: color: #000000; font-size: 16pt; button_text_top_padding: 1 button_text_left_padding: 30 button_action: -110 button_disabled: false custom_settings: [object Object] Event Handlers: swfupload_loaded_handler assigned: true file_dialog_start_handler assigned: true file_queued_handler assigned: true file_queue_error_handler assigned: true upload_start_handler assigned: true upload_progress_handler assigned: true upload_error_handler assigned: true upload_success_handler assigned: true upload_complete_handler assigned: true debug_handler assigned: true SWF DEBUG: SWFUpload Init CompleteSWF DEBUG: SWF DEBUG: ----- SWF DEBUG OUTPUT ---- SWF DEBUG: Build Number: SWFUPLOAD 2.2.0 SWF DEBUG: movieName: SWFUpload_0 SWF DEBUG: Upload URL: /86707/listing/asynchronousuploadphoto/87085/15/E1ptdReNMwcU/cUkx4p689ChPRZYMKkLZQ== SWF DEBUG: File Types String: .jpg;.gif;.png;.bmp SWF DEBUG: Parsed File Types: jpg,gif,png,bmp SWF DEBUG: HTTP Success: 0 SWF DEBUG: File Types Description: Image Files (.jpg;.gif;.png;.bmp) SWF DEBUG: File Size Limit: 1048576 bytes SWF DEBUG: File Upload Limit: 1 SWF DEBUG: File Queue Limit: 1 SWF DEBUG: Post Params: SWF DEBUG: ----- END SWF DEBUG OUTPUT ---- SWF DEBUG: SWF DEBUG: Event: fileDialogStart : Browsing files. Multi Select. Allowed file types: .jpg;.gif;.png;.bmpSWF DEBUG: Select Handler: Received the files selected from the dialog. Processing the file list...SWF DEBUG: Event: fileQueued : File ID: SWFUpload_0_0SWF DEBUG: Event: fileDialogComplete : Finished processing selected files. Files selected: 1. Files Queued: 1---SWFUpload Instance Info--- Version: 2.2.0 2009-03-25 Movie Name: SWFUpload_1 Settings: upload_url: /86707/listing/asynchronousuploadphoto/87085/15/E1ptdReNMwcU/cUkx4p689ChPRZYMKkLZQ== flash_url: /content/swfupload.swf?preventswfcaching=1272512476357 use_query_string: false requeue_on_error: false http_success: assume_success_timeout: 0 file_post_name: Filedata post_params: [object Object] file_types: .jpg;.gif;.png;.bmp file_types_description: Image Files file_size_limit: 1MB file_upload_limit: 1 file_queue_limit: 1 debug: true prevent_swf_caching: true button_placeholder_id: file-2_swf button_placeholder: Not Set button_image_url: /content/images/blankButton.png button_width: 109 button_height: 22 button_text: button_text_style: color: #000000; font-size: 16pt; button_text_top_padding: 1 button_text_left_padding: 30 button_action: -110 button_disabled: false custom_settings: [object Object] Event Handlers: swfupload_loaded_handler assigned: true file_dialog_start_handler assigned: true file_queued_handler assigned: true file_queue_error_handler assigned: true upload_start_handler assigned: true upload_progress_handler assigned: true upload_error_handler assigned: true upload_success_handler assigned: true upload_complete_handler assigned: true debug_handler assigned: true SWF DEBUG: SWFUpload Init CompleteSWF DEBUG: SWF DEBUG: ----- SWF DEBUG OUTPUT ---- SWF DEBUG: Build Number: SWFUPLOAD 2.2.0 SWF DEBUG: movieName: SWFUpload_1 SWF DEBUG: Upload URL: /86707/listing/asynchronousuploadphoto/87085/15/E1ptdReNMwcU/cUkx4p689ChPRZYMKkLZQ== SWF DEBUG: File Types String: .jpg;.gif;.png;.bmp SWF DEBUG: Parsed File Types: jpg,gif,png,bmp SWF DEBUG: HTTP Success: 0 SWF DEBUG: File Types Description: Image Files (.jpg;.gif;.png;.bmp) SWF DEBUG: File Size Limit: 1048576 bytes SWF DEBUG: File Upload Limit: 1 SWF DEBUG: File Queue Limit: 1 SWF DEBUG: Post Params: SWF DEBUG: ----- END SWF DEBUG OUTPUT ---- SWF DEBUG: SWF DEBUG: SWFUpload Init CompleteSWF DEBUG: SWF DEBUG: ----- SWF DEBUG OUTPUT ---- SWF DEBUG: Build Number: SWFUPLOAD 2.2.0 SWF DEBUG: movieName: SWFUpload_0 SWF DEBUG: Upload URL: /86707/listing/asynchronousuploadphoto/87085/15/E1ptdReNMwcU/cUkx4p689ChPRZYMKkLZQ== SWF DEBUG: File Types String: .jpg;.gif;.png;.bmp SWF DEBUG: Parsed File Types: jpg,gif,png,bmp SWF DEBUG: HTTP Success: 0 SWF DEBUG: File Types Description: Image Files (.jpg;.gif;.png;.bmp) SWF DEBUG: File Size Limit: 1048576 bytes SWF DEBUG: File Upload Limit: 1 SWF DEBUG: File Queue Limit: 1 SWF DEBUG: Post Params: SWF DEBUG: ----- END SWF DEBUG OUTPUT ---- SWF DEBUG: SWF DEBUG: Event: fileDialogStart : Browsing files. Multi Select. Allowed file types: .jpg;.gif;.png;.bmpSWF DEBUG: Select Handler: Received the files selected from the dialog. Processing the file list...SWF DEBUG: Event: fileQueued : File ID: SWFUpload_1_0SWF DEBUG: Event: fileDialogComplete : Finished processing selected files. Files selected: 1. Files Queued: 1SWF DEBUG: StartUpload: First file in queueSWF DEBUG: StartUpload(): No files found in the queue.SWF DEBUG: StartUpload: First file in queueSWF DEBUG: Event: uploadStart : File ID: SWFUpload_1_0SWF DEBUG: ReturnUploadStart(): File accepted by startUpload event and readied for upload. Starting upload to /86707/listing/asynchronousuploadphoto/87085/15/E1ptdReNMwcU/cUkx4p689ChPRZYMKkLZQ== for File ID: SWFUpload_1_0SWF DEBUG: Event: uploadProgress (OPEN): File ID: SWFUpload_1_0SWF DEBUG: Event: uploadProgress: File ID: SWFUpload_1_0. Bytes: 30218. Total: 30218SWF DEBUG: Event: uploadSuccess: File ID: SWFUpload_1_0 Response Received: true Data: 65-AddClassification.pngSWF DEBUG: Event: uploadComplete : Upload cycle complete. For IE: SWF DEBUG OUTPUT IN IE ---SWFUpload Instance Info--- Version: 2.2.0 2009-03-25 Movie Name: SWFUpload_0 Settings: upload_url: /86707/listing/asynchronousuploadphoto/87085/15/E1ptdReNMwcU/cUkx4p689ChPRZYMKkLZQ== flash_url: /content/swfupload.swf?preventswfcaching=1272512200531 use_query_string: false requeue_on_error: false http_success: assume_success_timeout: 0 file_post_name: Filedata post_params: [object Object] file_types: .jpg;.gif;.png;.bmp file_types_description: Image Files file_size_limit: 1MB file_upload_limit: 1 file_queue_limit: 1 debug: true prevent_swf_caching: true button_placeholder_id: file-1_swf button_placeholder: Not Set button_image_url: /content/images/blankButton.png button_width: 109 button_height: 22 button_text: Browse... button_text_style: color: #000000; font-size: 16pt; button_text_top_padding: 1 button_text_left_padding: 30 button_action: -110 button_disabled: false custom_settings: [object Object] Event Handlers: swfupload_loaded_handler assigned: true file_dialog_start_handler assigned: true file_queued_handler assigned: true file_queue_error_handler assigned: true upload_start_handler assigned: true upload_progress_handler assigned: true upload_error_handler assigned: true upload_success_handler assigned: true upload_complete_handler assigned: true debug_handler assigned: true SWF DEBUG: SWFUpload Init CompleteSWF DEBUG: SWF DEBUG: ----- SWF DEBUG OUTPUT ---- SWF DEBUG: Build Number: SWFUPLOAD 2.2.0 SWF DEBUG: movieName: SWFUpload_0 SWF DEBUG: Upload URL: /86707/listing/asynchronousuploadphoto/87085/15/E1ptdReNMwcU/cUkx4p689ChPRZYMKkLZQ== SWF DEBUG: File Types String: .jpg;.gif;.png;.bmp SWF DEBUG: Parsed File Types: jpg,gif,png,bmp SWF DEBUG: HTTP Success: 0 SWF DEBUG: File Types Description: Image Files (.jpg;.gif;.png;.bmp) SWF DEBUG: File Size Limit: 1048576 bytes SWF DEBUG: File Upload Limit: 1 SWF DEBUG: File Queue Limit: 1 SWF DEBUG: Post Params: SWF DEBUG: ----- END SWF DEBUG OUTPUT ---- SWF DEBUG: Removing Flash functions hooks (this should only run in IE and should prevent memory leaks)SWF DEBUG: Event: fileDialogStart : Browsing files. Multi Select. Allowed file types: .jpg;.gif;.png;.bmpSWF DEBUG: Select Handler: Received the files selected from the dialog. Processing the file list...SWF DEBUG: Event: fileQueued : File ID: SWFUpload_0_0SWF DEBUG: Event: fileDialogComplete : Finished processing selected files. Files selected: 1. Files Queued: 1---SWFUpload Instance Info--- Version: 2.2.0 2009-03-25 Movie Name: SWFUpload_1 Settings: upload_url: /86707/listing/asynchronousuploadphoto/87085/15/E1ptdReNMwcU/cUkx4p689ChPRZYMKkLZQ== flash_url: /content/swfupload.swf?preventswfcaching=1272512222093 use_query_string: false requeue_on_error: false http_success: assume_success_timeout: 0 file_post_name: Filedata post_params: [object Object] file_types: .jpg;.gif;.png;.bmp file_types_description: Image Files file_size_limit: 1MB file_upload_limit: 1 file_queue_limit: 1 debug: true prevent_swf_caching: true button_placeholder_id: file-2_swf button_placeholder: Not Set button_image_url: /content/images/blankButton.png button_width: 109 button_height: 22 button_text: Browse... button_text_style: color: #000000; font-size: 16pt; button_text_top_padding: 1 button_text_left_padding: 30 button_action: -110 button_disabled: false custom_settings: [object Object] Event Handlers: swfupload_loaded_handler assigned: true file_dialog_start_handler assigned: true file_queued_handler assigned: true file_queue_error_handler assigned: true upload_start_handler assigned: true upload_progress_handler assigned: true upload_error_handler assigned: true upload_success_handler assigned: true upload_complete_handler assigned: true debug_handler assigned: true SWF DEBUG: SWFUpload Init CompleteSWF DEBUG: SWF DEBUG: ----- SWF DEBUG OUTPUT ---- SWF DEBUG: Build Number: SWFUPLOAD 2.2.0 SWF DEBUG: movieName: SWFUpload_1 SWF DEBUG: Upload URL: /86707/listing/asynchronousuploadphoto/87085/15/E1ptdReNMwcU/cUkx4p689ChPRZYMKkLZQ== SWF DEBUG: File Types String: .jpg;.gif;.png;.bmp SWF DEBUG: Parsed File Types: jpg,gif,png,bmp SWF DEBUG: HTTP Success: 0 SWF DEBUG: File Types Description: Image Files (.jpg;.gif;.png;.bmp) SWF DEBUG: File Size Limit: 1048576 bytes SWF DEBUG: File Upload Limit: 1 SWF DEBUG: File Queue Limit: 1 SWF DEBUG: Post Params: SWF DEBUG: ----- END SWF DEBUG OUTPUT ---- SWF DEBUG: Removing Flash functions hooks (this should only run in IE and should prevent memory leaks)SWF DEBUG: ExternalInterface reinitializedSWF DEBUG: Event: fileDialogStart : Browsing files. Multi Select. Allowed file types: .jpg;.gif;.png;.bmpSWF DEBUG: Select Handler: Received the files selected from the dialog. Processing the file list...SWF DEBUG: Event: fileQueued : File ID: SWFUpload_1_0SWF DEBUG: Event: fileDialogComplete : Finished processing selected files. Files selected: 1. Files Queued: 1SWF DEBUG: StartUpload: First file in queueSWF DEBUG: Event: uploadStart : File ID: SWFUpload_0_0SWF DEBUG: StartUpload: First file in queueSWF DEBUG: Event: uploadStart : File ID: SWFUpload_1_0SWF DEBUG: ReturnUploadStart(): File accepted by startUpload event and readied for upload. Starting upload to /86707/listing/asynchronousuploadphoto/87085/15/E1ptdReNMwcU/cUkx4p689ChPRZYMKkLZQ== for File ID: SWFUpload_0_0SWF DEBUG: ReturnUploadStart(): File accepted by startUpload event and readied for upload. Starting upload to /86707/listing/asynchronousuploadphoto/87085/15/E1ptdReNMwcU/cUkx4p689ChPRZYMKkLZQ== for File ID: SWFUpload_1_0SWF DEBUG: Event: uploadProgress (OPEN): File ID: SWFUpload_0_0SWF DEBUG: Event: uploadProgress: File ID: SWFUpload_0_0. Bytes: 29151. Total: 29151SWF DEBUG: Event: uploadProgress (OPEN): File ID: SWFUpload_1_0SWF DEBUG: Event: uploadProgress: File ID: SWFUpload_1_0. Bytes: Total: 30218SWF DEBUG: Event: uploadSuccess: File ID: SWFUpload_0_0 Response Received: true Data: 62-Greenwich_-_Branches.pngSWF DEBUG: Event: uploadComplete : Upload cycle complete.

  Read the article

• Perl cron job stays running

  - by Dylan

  I'm currently using a cron job to have a Perl script that tells my Arduino to cycle my aquaponics system and all is well, except the Perl script doesn't die as intended. Here is my cron job: */15 * * * * /home/dburke/scripts/hal/bin/main.pl cycle And below is my Perl script: #!/usr/bin/perl -w # Sample Perl script to transmit number # to Arduino then listen for the Arduino # to echo it back use strict; use Device::SerialPort; use Switch; use Time::HiRes qw ( alarm ); $|++; # Set up the serial port # 19200, 81N on the USB ftdi driver my $device = '/dev/arduino0'; # Tomoc has to use a different tty for testing #$device = '/dev/ttyS0'; my $port = new Device::SerialPort ($device) or die('Unable to open connection to device');; $port->databits(8); $port->baudrate(19200); $port->parity("none"); $port->stopbits(1); my $lastChoice = ' '; my $pid = fork(); my $signalOut; my $args = shift(@ARGV); # Parent must wait for child to exit before exiting itself on CTRL+C $SIG{'INT'} = sub { waitpid($pid,0) if $pid != 0; exit(0); }; # What child process should do if($pid == 0) { # Poll to see if any data is coming in print "\nListening...\n\n"; while (1) { my $incmsg = $port->lookfor(9); # If we get data, then print it if ($incmsg) { print "\nFrom arduino: " . $incmsg . "\n\n"; } } } # What parent process should do else { if ($args eq "cycle") { my $stop = 0; sleep(1); $SIG{ALRM} = sub { print "Expecting plant bed to be full; please check.\n"; $signalOut = $port->write('2'); # Signal to set pin 3 low print "Sent cmd: 2\n"; $stop = 1; }; $signalOut = $port->write('1'); # Signal to arduino to set pin 3 High print "Sent cmd: 1\n"; print "Waiting for plant bed to fill...\n"; alarm (420); while ($stop == 0) { sleep(2); } die "Done."; } else { sleep(1); my $choice = ' '; print "Please pick an option you'd like to use:\n"; while(1) { print " [1] Cycle [2] Relay OFF [3] Relay ON [4] Config [$lastChoice]: "; chomp($choice = <STDIN>); switch ($choice) { case /1/ { $SIG{ALRM} = sub { print "Expecting plant bed to be full; please check.\n"; $signalOut = $port->write('2'); # Signal to set pin 3 low print "Sent cmd: 2\n"; }; $signalOut = $port->write('1'); # Signal to arduino to set pin 3 High print "Sent cmd: 1\n"; print "Waiting for plant bed to fill...\n"; alarm (420); $lastChoice = $choice; } case /2/ { $signalOut = $port->write('2'); # Signal to set pin 3 low print "Sent cmd: 2"; $lastChoice = $choice; } case /3/ { $signalOut = $port->write('1'); # Signal to arduino to set pin 3 High print "Sent cmd: 1"; $lastChoice = $choice; } case /4/ { print "There is no configuration available yet. Please stab the developer."; } else { print "Please select a valid option.\n\n"; } } } } } Why wouldn't it die from the statement die "Done.";? It runs fine from the command line and also interprets the 'cycle' argument fine. When it runs in cron it runs fine, however, the process never dies and while each process doesn't continue to cycle the system it does seem to be looping in some way due to the fact that it ups my system load very quickly. If you'd like more information, just ask. EDIT: I have changed to code to: #!/usr/bin/perl -w # Sample Perl script to transmit number # to Arduino then listen for the Arduino # to echo it back use strict; use Device::SerialPort; use Switch; use Time::HiRes qw ( alarm ); $|++; # Set up the serial port # 19200, 81N on the USB ftdi driver my $device = '/dev/arduino0'; # Tomoc has to use a different tty for testing #$device = '/dev/ttyS0'; my $port = new Device::SerialPort ($device) or die('Unable to open connection to device');; $port->databits(8); $port->baudrate(19200); $port->parity("none"); $port->stopbits(1); my $lastChoice = ' '; my $signalOut; my $args = shift(@ARGV); # Parent must wait for child to exit before exiting itself on CTRL+C if ($args eq "cycle") { open (LOG, '>>log.txt'); print LOG "Cycle started.\n"; my $stop = 0; sleep(2); $SIG{ALRM} = sub { print "Expecting plant bed to be full; please check.\n"; $signalOut = $port->write('2'); # Signal to set pin 3 low print "Sent cmd: 2\n"; $stop = 1; }; $signalOut = $port->write('1'); # Signal to arduino to set pin 3 High print "Sent cmd: 1\n"; print "Waiting for plant bed to fill...\n"; print LOG "Alarm is being set.\n"; alarm (420); print LOG "Alarm is set.\n"; while ($stop == 0) { print LOG "In while-sleep loop.\n"; sleep(2); } print LOG "The loop has been escaped.\n"; die "Done."; print LOG "No one should ever see this."; } else { my $pid = fork(); $SIG{'INT'} = sub { waitpid($pid,0) if $pid != 0; exit(0); }; # What child process should do if($pid == 0) { # Poll to see if any data is coming in print "\nListening...\n\n"; while (1) { my $incmsg = $port->lookfor(9); # If we get data, then print it if ($incmsg) { print "\nFrom arduino: " . $incmsg . "\n\n"; } } } # What parent process should do else { sleep(1); my $choice = ' '; print "Please pick an option you'd like to use:\n"; while(1) { print " [1] Cycle [2] Relay OFF [3] Relay ON [4] Config [$lastChoice]: "; chomp($choice = <STDIN>); switch ($choice) { case /1/ { $SIG{ALRM} = sub { print "Expecting plant bed to be full; please check.\n"; $signalOut = $port->write('2'); # Signal to set pin 3 low print "Sent cmd: 2\n"; }; $signalOut = $port->write('1'); # Signal to arduino to set pin 3 High print "Sent cmd: 1\n"; print "Waiting for plant bed to fill...\n"; alarm (420); $lastChoice = $choice; } case /2/ { $signalOut = $port->write('2'); # Signal to set pin 3 low print "Sent cmd: 2"; $lastChoice = $choice; } case /3/ { $signalOut = $port->write('1'); # Signal to arduino to set pin 3 High print "Sent cmd: 1"; $lastChoice = $choice; } case /4/ { print "There is no configuration available yet. Please stab the developer."; } else { print "Please select a valid option.\n\n"; } } } } }

  Read the article

• Tip/Trick: Fix Common SEO Problems Using the URL Rewrite Extension

  - by ScottGu

  Search engine optimization (SEO) is important for any publically facing web-site.  A large % of traffic to sites now comes directly from search engines, and improving your site’s search relevancy will lead to more users visiting your site from search engine queries.  This can directly or indirectly increase the money you make through your site. This blog post covers how you can use the free Microsoft URL Rewrite Extension to fix a bunch of common SEO problems that your site might have.  It takes less than 15 minutes (and no code changes) to apply 4 simple URL Rewrite rules to your site, and in doing so cause search engines to drive more visitors and traffic to your site.  The techniques below work equally well with both ASP.NET Web Forms and ASP.NET MVC based sites.  They also works with all versions of ASP.NET (and even work with non-ASP.NET content). [In addition to blogging, I am also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at: twitter.com/scottgu] Measuring the SEO of your website with the Microsoft SEO Toolkit A few months ago I blogged about the free SEO Toolkit that we’ve shipped.  This useful tool enables you to automatically crawl/scan your site for SEO correctness, and it then flags any SEO issues it finds.  I highly recommend downloading and using the tool against any public site you work on.  It makes it easy to spot SEO issues you might have in your site, and pinpoint ways to optimize it further. Below is a simple example of a report I ran against one of my sites (www.scottgu.com) prior to applying the URL Rewrite rules I’ll cover later in this blog post:   Search Relevancy and URL Splitting Two of the important things that search engines evaluate when assessing your site’s “search relevancy” are: How many other sites link to your content.  Search engines assume that if a lot of people around the web are linking to your content, then it is likely useful and so weight it higher in relevancy. The uniqueness of the content it finds on your site.  If search engines find that the content is duplicated in multiple places around the Internet (or on multiple URLs on your site) then it is likely to drop the relevancy of the content. One of the things you want to be very careful to avoid when building public facing sites is to not allow different URLs to retrieve the same content within your site.  Doing so will hurt with both of the situations above.  In particular, allowing external sites to link to the same content with multiple URLs will cause your link-count and page-ranking to be split up across those different URLs (and so give you a smaller page rank than what it would otherwise be if it was just one URL).  Not allowing external sites to link to you in different ways sounds easy in theory – but you might wonder what exactly this means in practice and how you avoid it. 4 Really Common SEO Problems Your Sites Might Have Below are 4 really common scenarios that can cause your site to inadvertently expose multiple URLs for the same content.  When this happens external sites linking to yours will end up splitting their page links across multiple URLs - and as a result cause you to have a lower page ranking with search engines than you deserve. SEO Problem #1: Default Document IIS (and other web servers) supports the concept of a “default document”.  This allows you to avoid having to explicitly specify the page you want to serve at either the root of the web-site/application, or within a sub-directory.  This is convenient – but means that by default this content is available via two different publically exposed URLs (which is bad).  For example: http://scottgu.com/ http://scottgu.com/default.aspx SEO Problem #2: Different URL Casings Web developers often don’t realize URLs are case sensitive to search engines on the web.  This means that search engines will treat the following links as two completely different URLs: http://scottgu.com/Albums.aspx http://scottgu.com/albums.aspx SEO Problem #3: Trailing Slashes Consider the below two URLs – they might look the same at first, but they are subtly different. The trailing slash creates yet another situation that causes search engines to treat the URLs as different and so split search rankings: http://scottgu.com http://scottgu.com/ SEO Problem #4: Canonical Host Names Sometimes sites support scenarios where they support a web-site with both a leading “www” hostname prefix as well as just the hostname itself.  This causes search engines to treat the URLs as different and split search rankling: http://scottgu.com/albums.aspx/ http://www.scottgu.com/albums.aspx/ How to Easily Fix these SEO Problems in 10 minutes (or less) using IIS Rewrite If you haven’t been careful when coding your sites, chances are you are suffering from one (or more) of the above SEO problems.  Addressing these issues will improve your search engine relevancy ranking and drive more traffic to your site. The “good news” is that fixing the above 4 issues is really easy using the URL Rewrite Extension.  This is a completely free Microsoft extension available for IIS 7.x (on Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows 7 and Windows Vista).  The great thing about using the IIS Rewrite extension is that it allows you to fix the above problems *without* having to change any code within your applications.  You can easily install the URL Rewrite Extension in under 3 minutes using the Microsoft Web Platform Installer (a free tool we ship that automates setting up web servers and development machines).  Just click the green “Install Now” button on the URL Rewrite Spotlight page to install it on your Windows Server 2008, Windows 7 or Windows Vista machine: Once installed you’ll find that a new “URL Rewrite” icon is available within the IIS 7 Admin Tool: Double-clicking the icon will open up the URL Rewrite admin panel – which will display the list of URL Rewrite rules configured for a particular application or site: Notice that our rewrite rule list above is currently empty (which is the default when you first install the extension).  We can click the “Add Rule…” link button in the top-right of the panel to add and enable new URL Rewriting logic for our site.  Scenario 1: Handling Default Document Scenarios One of the SEO problems I discussed earlier in this post was the scenario where the “default document” feature of IIS causes you to inadvertently expose two URLs for the same content on your site.  For example: http://scottgu.com/ http://scottgu.com/default.aspx We can fix this by adding a new IIS Rewrite rule that automatically redirects anyone who navigates to the second URL to instead go to the first one.  We will setup the HTTP redirect to be a “permanent redirect” – which will indicate to search engines that they should follow the redirect and use the new URL they are redirected to as the identifier of the content they retrieve.  Let’s look at how we can create such a rule.  We’ll begin by clicking the “Add Rule” link in the screenshot above.  This will cause the below dialog to display: We’ll select the “Blank Rule” template within the “Inbound rules” section to create a new custom URL Rewriting rule.  This will display an empty pane like below: Don’t worry – setting up the above rule is easy.  The following 4 steps explain how to do so: Step 1: Name the Rule Our first step will be to name the rule we are creating.  Naming it with a descriptive name will make it easier to find and understand later.  Let’s name this rule our “Default Document URL Rewrite” rule: Step 2: Setup the Regular Expression that Matches this Rule Our second step will be to specify a regular expression filter that will cause this rule to execute when an incoming URL matches the regex pattern.   Don’t worry if you aren’t good with regular expressions - I suck at them too. The trick is to know someone who is good at them or copy/paste them from a web-site.  Below we are going to specify the following regular expression as our pattern rule: (.*?)/?Default\.aspx$ This pattern will match any URL string that ends with Default.aspx. The "(.*?)" matches any preceding character zero or more times. The "/?" part says to match the slash symbol zero or one times. The "$" symbol at the end will ensure that the pattern will only match strings that end with Default.aspx.  Combining all these regex elements allows this rule to work not only for the root of your web site (e.g. http://scottgu.com/default.aspx) but also for any application or subdirectory within the site (e.g. http://scottgu.com/photos/default.aspx.  Because the “ignore case” checkbox is selected it will match both “Default.aspx” as well as “default.aspx” within the URL.   One nice feature built-into the rule editor is a “Test pattern” button that you can click to bring up a dialog that allows you to test out a few URLs with the rule you are configuring: Above I've added a “products/default.aspx” URL and clicked the “Test” button.  This will give me immediate feedback on whether the rule will execute for it.  Step 3: Setup a Permanent Redirect Action We’ll then setup an action to occur when our regular expression pattern matches the incoming URL: In the dialog above I’ve changed the “Action Type” drop down to be a “Redirect” action.  The “Redirect Type” will be a HTTP 301 Permanent redirect – which means search engines will follow it. I’ve also set the “Redirect URL” property to be: {R:1}/ This indicates that we want to redirect the web client requesting the original URL to a new URL that has the originally requested URL path - minus the "Default.aspx" in it.  For example, requests for http://scottgu.com/default.aspx will be redirected to http://scottgu.com/, and requests for http://scottgu.com/photos/default.aspx will be redirected to http://scottgu.com/photos/ The "{R:N}" regex construct, where N >= 0, is called a back-reference and N is the back-reference index. In the case of our pattern "(.*?)/?Default\.aspx$", if the input URL is "products/Default.aspx" then {R:0} will contain "products/Default.aspx" and {R:1} will contain "products".  We are going to use this {R:1}/ value to be the URL we redirect users to.  Step 4: Apply and Save the Rule Our final step is to click the “Apply” button in the top right hand of the IIS admin tool – which will cause the tool to persist the URL Rewrite rule into our application’s root web.config file (under a <system.webServer/rewrite> configuration section): <configuration>     <system.webServer>         <rewrite>             <rules>                 <rule name="Default Document" stopProcessing="true">                     <match url="(.*?)/?Default\.aspx$" />                     <action type="Redirect" url="{R:1}/" />                 </rule>             </rules>         </rewrite>     </system.webServer> </configuration> Because IIS 7.x and ASP.NET share the same web.config files, you can actually just copy/paste the above code into your web.config files using Visual Studio and skip the need to run the admin tool entirely.  This also makes adding/deploying URL Rewrite rules with your ASP.NET applications really easy. Step 5: Try the Rule Out Now that we’ve saved the rule, let’s try it out on our site.  Try the following two URLs on my site: http://scottgu.com/ http://scottgu.com/default.aspx Notice that the second URL automatically redirects to the first one.  Because it is a permanent redirect, search engines will follow the URL and should update the page ranking of http://scottgu.com to include links to http://scottgu.com/default.aspx as well. Scenario 2: Different URL Casing Another common SEO problem I discussed earlier in this post is that URLs are case sensitive to search engines on the web.  This means that search engines will treat the following links as two completely different URLs: http://scottgu.com/Albums.aspx http://scottgu.com/albums.aspx We can fix this by adding a new IIS Rewrite rule that automatically redirects anyone who navigates to the first URL to instead go to the second (all lower-case) one.  Like before, we will setup the HTTP redirect to be a “permanent redirect” – which will indicate to search engines that they should follow the redirect and use the new URL they are redirected to as the identifier of the content they retrieve. To create such a rule we’ll click the “Add Rule” link in the URL Rewrite admin tool again.  This will cause the “Add Rule” dialog to appear again: Unlike the previous scenario (where we created a “Blank Rule”), with this scenario we can take advantage of a built-in “Enforce lowercase URLs” rule template.  When we click the “ok” button we’ll see the following dialog which asks us if we want to create a rule that enforces the use of lowercase letters in URLs: When we click the “Yes” button we’ll get a pre-written rule that automatically performs a permanent redirect if an incoming URL has upper-case characters in it – and automatically send users to a lower-case version of the URL: We can click the “Apply” button to use this rule “as-is” and have it apply to all incoming URLs to our site.  Because my www.scottgu.com site uses ASP.NET Web Forms, I’m going to make one small change to the rule we generated above – which is to add a condition that will ensure that URLs to ASP.NET’s built-in “WebResource.axd” handler are excluded from our case-sensitivity URL Rewrite logic.  URLs to the WebResource.axd handler will only come from server-controls emitted from my pages – and will never be linked to from external sites.  While my site will continue to function fine if we redirect these URLs to automatically be lower-case – doing so isn’t necessary and will add an extra HTTP redirect to many of my pages.  The good news is that adding a condition that prevents my URL Rewriting rule from happening with certain URLs is easy.  We simply need to expand the “Conditions” section of the form above We can then click the “Add” button to add a condition clause.  This will bring up the “Add Condition” dialog: Above I’ve entered {URL} as the Condition input – and said that this rule should only execute if the URL does not match a regex pattern which contains the string “WebResource.axd”.  This will ensure that WebResource.axd URLs to my site will be allowed to execute just fine without having the URL be re-written to be all lower-case. Note: If you have static resources (like references to .jpg, .css, and .js files) within your site that currently use upper-case characters you’ll probably want to add additional condition filter clauses so that URLs to them also don’t get redirected to be lower-case (just add rules for patterns like .jpg, .gif, .js, etc).  Your site will continue to work fine if these URLs get redirected to be lower case (meaning the site won’t break) – but it will cause an extra HTTP redirect to happen on your site for URLs that don’t need to be redirected for SEO reasons.  So setting up a condition clause makes sense to add. When I click the “ok” button above and apply our lower-case rewriting rule the admin tool will save the following additional rule to our web.config file: <configuration>     <system.webServer>         <rewrite>             <rules>                 <rule name="Default Document" stopProcessing="true">                     <match url="(.*?)/?Default\.aspx$" />                     <action type="Redirect" url="{R:1}/" />                 </rule>                 <rule name="Lower Case URLs" stopProcessing="true">                     <match url="[A-Z]" ignoreCase="false" />                     <conditions logicalGrouping="MatchAll" trackAllCaptures="false">                         <add input="{URL}" pattern="WebResource.axd" negate="true" />                     </conditions>                     <action type="Redirect" url="{ToLower:{URL}}" />                 </rule>             </rules>         </rewrite>     </system.webServer> </configuration> Try the Rule Out Now that we’ve saved the rule, let’s try it out on our site.  Try the following two URLs on my site: http://scottgu.com/Albums.aspx http://scottgu.com/albums.aspx Notice that the first URL (which has a capital “A”) automatically does a redirect to a lower-case version of the URL.  Scenario 3: Trailing Slashes Another common SEO problem I discussed earlier in this post is the scenario of trailing slashes within URLs.  The trailing slash creates yet another situation that causes search engines to treat the URLs as different and so split search rankings: http://scottgu.com http://scottgu.com/ We can fix this by adding a new IIS Rewrite rule that automatically redirects anyone who navigates to the first URL (that does not have a trailing slash) to instead go to the second one that does.  Like before, we will setup the HTTP redirect to be a “permanent redirect” – which will indicate to search engines that they should follow the redirect and use the new URL they are redirected to as the identifier of the content they retrieve.  To create such a rule we’ll click the “Add Rule” link in the URL Rewrite admin tool again.  This will cause the “Add Rule” dialog to appear again: The URL Rewrite admin tool has a built-in “Append or remove the trailing slash symbol” rule template.  When we select it and click the “ok” button we’ll see the following dialog which asks us if we want to create a rule that automatically redirects users to a URL with a trailing slash if one isn’t present: Like within our previous lower-casing rewrite rule we’ll add one additional condition clause that will exclude WebResource.axd URLs from being processed by this rule.  This will avoid an unnecessary redirect for happening for those URLs. When we click the “OK” button we’ll get a pre-written rule that automatically performs a permanent redirect if the URL doesn’t have a trailing slash – and if the URL is not processed by either a directory or a file.  This will save the following additional rule to our web.config file: <configuration>     <system.webServer>         <rewrite>             <rules>                 <rule name="Default Document" stopProcessing="true">                     <match url="(.*?)/?Default\.aspx$" />                     <action type="Redirect" url="{R:1}/" />                 </rule>                 <rule name="Lower Case URLs" stopProcessing="true">                     <match url="[A-Z]" ignoreCase="false" />                     <conditions logicalGrouping="MatchAll" trackAllCaptures="false">                         <add input="{URL}" pattern="WebResource.axd" negate="true" />                     </conditions>                     <action type="Redirect" url="{ToLower:{URL}}" />                 </rule>                 <rule name="Trailing Slash" stopProcessing="true">                     <match url="(.*[^/])$" />                     <conditions logicalGrouping="MatchAll" trackAllCaptures="false">                         <add input="{REQUEST_FILENAME}" matchType="IsDirectory" negate="true" />                         <add input="{REQUEST_FILENAME}" matchType="IsFile" negate="true" />                         <add input="{URL}" pattern="WebResource.axd" negate="true" />                     </conditions>                     <action type="Redirect" url="{R:1}/" />                 </rule>             </rules>         </rewrite>     </system.webServer> </configuration> Try the Rule Out Now that we’ve saved the rule, let’s try it out on our site.  Try the following two URLs on my site: http://scottgu.com http://scottgu.com/ Notice that the first URL (which has no trailing slash) automatically does a redirect to a URL with the trailing slash.  Because it is a permanent redirect, search engines will follow the URL and update the page ranking. Scenario 4: Canonical Host Names The final SEO problem I discussed earlier are scenarios where a site works with both a leading “www” hostname prefix as well as just the hostname itself.  This causes search engines to treat the URLs as different and split search rankling: http://www.scottgu.com/albums.aspx http://scottgu.com/albums.aspx We can fix this by adding a new IIS Rewrite rule that automatically redirects anyone who navigates to the first URL (that has a www prefix) to instead go to the second URL.  Like before, we will setup the HTTP redirect to be a “permanent redirect” – which will indicate to search engines that they should follow the redirect and use the new URL they are redirected to as the identifier of the content they retrieve.  To create such a rule we’ll click the “Add Rule” link in the URL Rewrite admin tool again.  This will cause the “Add Rule” dialog to appear again: The URL Rewrite admin tool has a built-in “Canonical domain name” rule template.  When we select it and click the “ok” button we’ll see the following dialog which asks us if we want to create a redirect rule that automatically redirects users to a primary host name URL: Above I’m entering the primary URL address I want to expose to the web: scottgu.com.  When we click the “OK” button we’ll get a pre-written rule that automatically performs a permanent redirect if the URL has another leading domain name prefix.  This will save the following additional rule to our web.config file: <configuration>     <system.webServer>         <rewrite>             <rules>                 <rule name="Cannonical Hostname">                     <match url="(.*)" />                     <conditions logicalGrouping="MatchAll" trackAllCaptures="false">                         <add input="{HTTP_HOST}" pattern="^scottgu\.com$" negate="true" />                     </conditions>                     <action type="Redirect" url="http://scottgu.com/{R:1}" />                 </rule>                 <rule name="Default Document" stopProcessing="true">                     <match url="(.*?)/?Default\.aspx$" />                     <action type="Redirect" url="{R:1}/" />                 </rule>                 <rule name="Lower Case URLs" stopProcessing="true">                     <match url="[A-Z]" ignoreCase="false" />                     <conditions logicalGrouping="MatchAll" trackAllCaptures="false">                         <add input="{URL}" pattern="WebResource.axd" negate="true" />                     </conditions>                     <action type="Redirect" url="{ToLower:{URL}}" />                 </rule>                 <rule name="Trailing Slash" stopProcessing="true">                     <match url="(.*[^/])$" />                     <conditions logicalGrouping="MatchAll" trackAllCaptures="false">                         <add input="{REQUEST_FILENAME}" matchType="IsDirectory" negate="true" />                         <add input="{REQUEST_FILENAME}" matchType="IsFile" negate="true" />                         <add input="{URL}" pattern="WebResource.axd" negate="true" />                     </conditions>                     <action type="Redirect" url="{R:1}/" />                 </rule>             </rules>         </rewrite>     </system.webServer> </configuration> Try the Rule Out Now that we’ve saved the rule, let’s try it out on our site.  Try the following two URLs on my site: http://www.scottgu.com/albums.aspx http://scottgu.com/albums.aspx Notice that the first URL (which has the “www” prefix) now automatically does a redirect to the second URL which does not have the www prefix.  Because it is a permanent redirect, search engines will follow the URL and update the page ranking. 4 Simple Rules for Improved SEO The above 4 rules are pretty easy to setup and should take less than 15 minutes to configure on existing sites you already have.  The beauty of using a solution like the URL Rewrite Extension is that you can take advantage of it without having to change code within your web-site – and without having to break any existing links already pointing at your site.  Users who follow existing links will be automatically redirected to the new URLs you wish to publish.  And search engines will start to give your site a higher search relevancy ranking – which will list your site higher in search results and drive more traffic to it. Customizing your URL Rewriting rules further is easy to-do either by editing the web.config file directly, or alternatively, just double click the URL Rewrite icon within the IIS 7.x admin tool and it will list all the active rules for your web-site or application: Clicking any of the rules above will open the rules editor back up and allow you to tweak/customize/save them further. Summary Measuring and improving SEO is something every developer building a public-facing web-site needs to think about and focus on.  If you haven’t already, download and use the SEO Toolkit to analyze the SEO of your sites today. New URL Routing features in ASP.NET MVC and ASP.NET Web Forms 4 make it much easier to build applications that have more control over the URLs that are published.  Tools like the URL Rewrite Extension that I’ve talked about in this blog post make it much easier to improve the URLs that are published from sites you already have built today – without requiring you to change a lot of code. The URL Rewrite Extension provides a bunch of additional great capabilities – far beyond just SEO - as well.  I’ll be covering these additional capabilities more in future blog posts. Hope this helps, Scott

  Read the article

< Previous Page | 367 368 369 370 371 372 373 374 375 376 377 378  | Next Page >