Search Results

Search found 13560 results on 543 pages for 'free lancer'.

Page 450/543 | < Previous Page | 446 447 448 449 450 451 452 453 454 455 456 457  | Next Page >

  • Have some questions about setting up a VPN to my private cloud servers

    - by Pure.Krome
    I've got a number of Virtual Servers running at a pretty big Cloud provider. They are all running Windows 2008 R2. I have a CISCO ASA firewall in front of them. Currently, I've got all ports blocked except 80/443/21/3386 (for Remote Desktop). I asked to have a VPN enabled on the firewall and they said it's easy to do BUT I need to use the 3rd party Cisco software. Now, I don't want to get into a debate about it .. but we don't want to install anything extra on our -client- computers. We all use Windows 7 and we love using the built in VPN client to connect to other private LANS we have setup in other locations. So i'm wondering what options I have to create a VPN tunnel to our private cloud LAN? All our cloud servers are part of WORKGROUP, so there's no Active Directory .. nor do we want to install all that. Secondly, we know we can open up a firewall port - so any ports for starting a VPN is fine! Lastly, I was thinking of just using one of the existing servers as the VPN server (and using the Windows VPN software) .. but I'm not sure this is a good thing? Remember - we just want to use the baked in VPN software in Windows 7 .. which is PPTP or SSTP or L2TP/IPSEC. I would -LOVE- to use some free OSS software. For usernames/passwords? We'd probably just have one account .. like U:Hithere P:whatever.. so we don't need any hardcore account management, like Active Directory, etc. So does anyone have any ideas?

    Read the article

  • What method of MySQL mirroring should I use for this?

    - by user45745
    I'm running an web application hosting service (basically hosting forums for free), and I have two remote servers at my disposal. The code for the application is stored on both servers and isn't a problem, but I'm wondering how to deal with the databases. When someone goes onto a site *.example-host.com, they are sent to one of the two servers and both must be capable of loading the forums from a database. The database must also have write access, for when new members register or post topics etc. The main requirement is speed, but uptime is also important (if a server goes out, the site should still work). I have a few options, but I'm inexperienced and not sure which to go with: 1) [PHP] Split the forum records 50:50 between the two servers. If a server does not have the record for a forum requested, it can request it from the other by remote MySQL and load it. This idea sounded okay, until I realised that 50% of the time, users would be waiting significantly longer for pages to load. I also realised that if one of the servers went down, half the forums would be inaccessible and registrations would have to be disabled. 2) [MySQL] Dual master replication. This would attempt to mirror the two databases and sounds perfect, but I've heard that it can be very problematic. I don't know how fast this is. 3) [MySQL] Use a standard replication, distribute read only queries on both nodes and read/write queries to the master. This sounds like a good option, but again, I'm not sure on speed. I also don't know what would happen if the master server went down. If you have any other suggestions, please post them :)

    Read the article

  • linux kernel buffer memory is zero

    - by user64772
    Hi all. There are one qestion that i can`t find in google. I have many linux boxes mostly with SLES or openSUSE, diffrent versions and kernels. On some of them i faced with slow oracle transactions problem. It time to time problem and when i log in the box on that time i see that oracle blocked in kernel function sync_page # while :; do ps axo stat,pid,cmd,wchan | egrep '^D|^R'; echo --; sleep 5; done D 3483 hald-addon-storage: polling ide_do_drive_cmd Ds 4635 ora_dbw0_orcl sync_page Ds 4637 ora_lgwr_orcl sync_page Ds 4639 ora_ckpt_orcl sync_page D 11210 oracleorcl (LOCAL=NO) sync_page D 12457 [smtpd] sync_page R+ 12458 ps axo stat,pid,cmd,wchan - -- Ds 4635 ora_dbw0_orcl sync_page Ds 4637 ora_lgwr_orcl sync_page Ds 4639 ora_ckpt_orcl sync_page D 11210 oracleorcl (LOCAL=NO) sync_page R+ 12501 ps axo stat,pid,cmd,wchan - -- Ds 4635 ora_dbw0_orcl sync_page Ds 4637 ora_lgwr_orcl sync_page Ds 4639 ora_ckpt_orcl sync_page D 11210 oracleorcl (LOCAL=NO) sync_page R+ 12535 ps axo stat,pid,cmd,wchan - -- Ds 4635 ora_dbw0_orcl sync_page Ds 4637 ora_lgwr_orcl sync_page Ds 4639 ora_ckpt_orcl sync_page D 11210 oracleorcl (LOCAL=NO) sync_page R+ 12570 ps axo stat,pid,cmd,wchan - -- so i think that box is run out of memory for disk buffers but memry is fine total used free shared buffers cached Mem: 4149084 3994552 154532 0 0 2424328 -/+ buffers/cache: 1570224 2578860 Swap: 3148700 750696 2398004 i think that this is the problem, buffer is zero and we must write directly to disk, but why buffer is zero ? - i try to google it and find nothing - is anyone can help ?

    Read the article

  • Debian on HP ProLiant server hangs (disk i/o is my guess)

    - by Martin
    I installed Debian (2.6.32-5-amd64) on my HP ProLiant MicroServer (purchased recently.) I also added 3 2tb hd in zfs. I've experienced several server froze. Sometimes it showed Soft lockup CUP stuck for 61s! Today I experienced a different problem (I think) and the message looked like this [431336.200002] Call Trace: [431336.200002] [<ffffffff812fcc7c>] ? _write_lock+0xe/0xf [431336.200002] [<ffffffff810d7a86>] ? __vmalloc_node+0x99/0xe2 : : and (in different screen) [431354.222318] Node 0 DMA32 free: 2064kB min:5520kB low:69900kB high:8280kB active_anon:181648kB inactive_anon:61728kB active_file:313152kB inactive_file:832456kB unevictable: 0kB isolated(anon): 0kB isolated(file):0kB present:1922596kB mlocked:0kB dirty:72kB writeback:0kB mapped:25620kB shmem:344kB slab_reclaimable:34460kB slab_unreclaimable:31400kB kernel_stack:2288kB pagetables:7556kB unstable:0kB bounce:0kB writeback_tmp:0kB pages_scanned:0 all_unreclaimable? no [431354.222431] lowmem_reserve[]: 0 0 0 0 : : Is this a hardware problem? What tools/methods can I find out the source of the problem? I've used Debian for years but never had problem like this.

    Read the article

  • Faster caching method

    - by pataroulis
    I have a service that provides HTML code which at some point it is not updated anymore. The code is always generated dynamically from a database with 10 million entries so each HTML code page rendering searches there for say 60 or 70 of those entries and then renders the page. So, for those expired pages, I want to use a caching system which will be VERY simple (like just enter a record with the rendered HTML and (if I need) remove it). I tried to do it file-based but the search for the existence of a file and then passing it through php to actually render it , seems like too much for what I want to do. I was thinking of doing it on mysql with a table with MEDIUMBLOBs (each page is around 100k). It would hold about 150000 such records (for now, at least). My question is: Would it be faster to let mysql do the lookup of the file and the passing to php or is the file-based approach faster? The lookup code for the file based version looks like this: $page = @file_get_contents(getCacheFilename($pageId)); if($page!=NULL) { echo $page; } else { renderAndCachePage($pageId); } which does one lookup whether it finds the file or not. The mysql table would just have an ID (the page id) and the blob entry. The disk of the system is a simple SATA raid 1 , the mysql daemon can grab up to 2.5GB of memory (i have a proxy running too, eating the rest of the 16GB of the machine. ) In general the disk is quite busy already. My not using PEAR cache, is because I think (please feel free to correct me on this) it adds overhead I do not need because the page rendering code is called about 2M times per day and I wouldn't want to go through the whole code each time (and yes, I have eaccelerator to cache the code too). Any pointer to what direction I should go, would be greatly welcome. Thanks!

    Read the article

  • Can I sort files A-Z and at the same time Z-A?

    - by The_Buff
    I am trying to sort and rename a large number of files that are labeled #####_## The LEFT side of the underscore are numbers (e.g., 32956715, 32956810, etc.) that do not repeat. The RIGHT side of the underscore are also numbers (e.g., 1, 2, 3, etc.) and they do repeat. (The left side is the number of a scan and the right side is the page of that particular scan.) I would like to be able to sort the left side of the underscore Z-A and the right side A-Z. Example: 3_1 3_2 3_3 2_1 2_2 2_3 1_1 1_2 1_3 I am using ReNamer by den4b (easily the best free renamer out there). It supports regular expressions so I believe there should be an easy way to do this, but I don't know how. (I've been trying to learn regular expressions but I don't use them enough to retain anything.) I'm open for any suggestions that achieve the same result. I've spent enough time trying to figure it out that I could have probably just sorted them myself already but this is a reccuring problem so hopefully someone has a solution that will save me lots of time in the long run. Thank You!

    Read the article

  • Downloading Emails locally with Thunderbird

    - by r_honey
    I am using Gmail (web interface) for sometime now, and have well over 20 labels and some thousand mails there archived to different labels in Gmail. Now I want to have a local copy of all my mails and following points are important in the context: The Primary mail access mechanism would continue to be Gmail web for me. I just want a backup of my mail account locally. Ideally the mails should download locally in folders named after Gmail labels (I know this is possible via IMAP but probably not by POP) After all my mails are available locally, I will delete most of them in Gmail to free up space and because I want to archive them. The mails should continue to exist locally and should not be deleted when I delete when from Gmail web interface. I would be syncing my gmail account locally let's say every month. So, the new mails that I have sent/received during this period should come over to my local mailbox in the folders named after Gmail labels. I do understand that Gmail maintains a single copy of email having 2 different labels and such email would get duplicated locally in the 2 folders and I am okay with that. Essentially you can see I just want to archive my mails from the Gmail server to a local backup and then sync (one way from Gmail to locally) new mails at regular intervals. For some points above, POP seems to be the option while IMAP seems for the others. I am really confused and need help in deciding which of POP or IMAP would suit me best. I have currently chosen Thunderbird to be my local email client but would not have a problem switching to Outlook or anything else as long as I get my desired archiving functionality.

    Read the article

  • No Network Connection in WinXP image from Microsoft running on VirtualBox 3.1.6 OSE (Ubuntu 10.04) due to missing CD Rom

    - by Bevor
    I'd like to test local websites in IE7 and IE8.To do that I thought about using the free Microsoft images: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/networking/setup/default.mspx I converted the VHDs to VDIs to make them run in VirtualBox. ( http://www.qc4blog.com/?p=721 ) This works fine. The problem is that in this Windows XP installation there is no Network Adapter configured. Actually nothing at all is configured because it needs the Windows XP CD Rom to do that. If I would have a Windows XP CD Rom, I would not need to run the Microsoft image, so is there some kind of workaround to get an internet connection? Meanwhile I set "bridged" in VirtualBox. But this doesn't help because "ipconfig /all" in the guest system doesn't show any data because nothing is configured. How can I get a connection to my local Apache (Host system). http://localhost would be enough. By the way: I can't install the "Guest additions". When I do that, the 3 days trial period of the guest system is suddenly gone, so I can't use it anymore and it is senseless. Any ideas? Update: I've tried the Vista image and it gets an internet connection. From Vista image I can get to my site with 192.168.1.3/mywebsite in the browser url. So actually I don't care about the WinXP issue anymore but I would be glad if anyone still knows a solution.

    Read the article

  • Win 7 64 with 8 gig of ram, getting running low on memory errors.

    - by John
    I have a new Dell laptop running Win7 64 with 8 meg of ram. If I leave the system running overnight I start getting low memory errors the next day. Looking at task manager it shows 6.27 gig used but looking at the processes list the totals don't show nearly that much. I am showing all processes from all users. I have also looked at the processes with PRocess Explorer and see the same results. Using resource monitor I see 4165 MB in Use, 2328 MB Modified and 1352MB Standby with only about 345 MB free. These numbers don't seem to add up to what I have running. I have Visual Studio 2010 running along with a number of IE8 sessions. I have run the same set of apps with XP SP2 32 bit with 4 gig of memory and never had this sort of problem. What is Modified memory? What is Standby memory? Any suggestions on what might be the issue and what might be a fix? TIA J

    Read the article

  • What would prevent the same ActiveX control from downloading on one internal website but not another?

    - by ProfessionalAmateur
    We have two internal webservers for an application at my company, one is the development server and the other is production. This application server will deploy and install and ActiveX control to allow the use of specific functionality. The ActiveX control is the exact same on both servers. Last week suddenly when trying to install and run this ActiveX control from the development server stopped working. IE will still prompt the user to install it, but when select "Install this Add-on for all users on this computer", nothing happens. Another IE window pops open and immediately closes and that is it. It is almost as if a pop-up blocker is running (but it is not enabled). The kicker which has me completely stumped is that if we try the same thing on the Production server, everything works as we would expect. Items of interest: Both servers are in the 'Trusted Sites' No pop-up blocker in IE is activated ActiveX controls for Trusted and Intranet Sites are all enabled. Has anyone experienced something similar? I'm not a Windows administrator so please feel free to explain things as elementary as you see fit.

    Read the article

  • Computer is dying--what should I be looking for?

    - by Will
    Okay, I'm a bit knowledgeable with pooters and such, but i'm confused. My computer is dying slowly, and I'm not sure what part is causing this. Computer details: Vista, dell machine, intel Q6600, 2.4 Core Duo (quad core), standard memory and drive (unknown manufacturer). Symptoms: I would best describe the symptoms as memory corruption. After a couple days on, I start getting applications crashing or failing to open for a lack of "resources". Sounds are corrupted. Onscreen text gets corrupted; the characters of text are garbled, not the pixels on the screen. Video memory seems untouched as I haven't seen any misplaced pixels. Recently I've lost files on disk. I've also experienced errors reporting a supposed lack of disk space, even though I have fifty gigs free. There was one point where I couldn't get to the POST when booting up. After I cleaned everything (see next) this hasn't happened. Diagnostic steps: First thing I did was clean the case. There was a lot of dust buildup on heatsinks, so I cleaned all that up. No help. Next, I disconnected and reconnected everything, from power cables to memory (did not reseat cpu). No change. Last, I ran the standard vista memory diagnostics and ran checkdisk. Both reported no errors found. I have not run any POST tests, now that I think about it. I'm at a loss at this point. Disk appears fine, memory too. I'd expect motherboard issues to result in the thing not booting up, yet it does every time. What should I be looking at? What more can I do?

    Read the article

  • How to boost playback volume in real time on media recorded with a very low volume.

    - by L Marksman
    I have never heard a satisfactory answer to this often misunderstood question, let me explain. Lets say I have a sound card and earphones/speakers that can play back audio loud enough in most cases. This is great but the problem is that you always find people who do not know how to record audio, from Youtube video's to music. So now you end up with a audio playback that only uses 10% or less of the capacity of your sound hardware, in vista/win 7 you will see this frequently in the mixer with the volume pushed up to max but the green sound level only goes up a millimeter or two. I am looking for (preferably free) software or a method to boost the sound level of any audio from any source in real time to use more of my hardware capacity similar to what VLC media player can do. Oh and please, do not tell me it is impossible. I am not trying to boost the volume past what my hardware is capable of, I am just trying to use my hardware's full capacity. Also please do not tell met to buy new hardware, I know I can use hardware amplification, I don't want to (like many others) spend money on a simple little problem like this. Thanks!

    Read the article

  • VMworkstation Windows 7 vm from physical partition?

    - by rich
    Hi All, i have a machine with 2 disks. my secondary drive has two partitions, one of which is a windows 7 64 boot partition. I have VM workstation and i would like to make a VM from the physical partition (described above). Ideally this would boot from the live disk, but if i can make a vmdk from the two partitions on the secondary drive that would be fine. 1 issue is the drive is 140gig raptor of which the two partitions i want are 40g and 30g partitions. the rest of the space is unallocated. So if i make a vmdk i really need it to be fixed at say 80 gig. I have converter but i don't understand how i can make the vmdk using this... specs Drive 1: this drive is a 120 SSD, running the host OS (Windows 7 64bit) - i've got 95 gigs free on this Drive 2: 140 gig raptor, partition 1 40g is also a windows 7 64bit install, partition 2 is 35 gig with program files folder on it.. sorta of needed to get the vm to work. There is 65gig unallocated on this disk. Drive 1 will host drive 2 as a VM.. my hope.

    Read the article

  • I just deleted my backup file! How do I save it?

    - by Sammy
    I just accidentally deleted a backup file that I need to restore my system. It's an Acronis True Image TIB file. It was stored at H:\My backups and the name of the file was File_backup_2012-10-18.tib. I did a quick scan with Recuva 1.43.623 and it found the file using the recovery wizard, but it was unable to recover it. The "state" of the file is "unrecoverable". So the resulting file is 0 byte. I am trying to do a deep scan with Recuva right now but it takes a lot of time. If it should fail, what other recovery option do I have? Is there any other good file recovery software that's free to use for home users? I do have a second copy of the whole system partition, but I needed this file backup copy because it is more up to date. That's the file, right there! But why is Recuva unable to recover it?

    Read the article

  • please take a look at my server's ram usage

    - by user66779
    Hi, i am a noob with servers. I have a centos5.5 vps with 512mb ram. My goal is to have it host just one magento store. I've installed Magento on the server without any control panel, by just installing lamp myself and whatever php extensions were necessary to get Magento to install. As soon as i visit my magento store, suddenly the ram on the vps is almost completely used, with only about 100mb left. Please see this screenshot of htop taken after just myself visited the website. http://img714.imageshack.us/img714/1944/screenouv.png As you can see there's only around 100mb left. Is that normal? I'm wondering if i might have done something stupid with the server that makes it very resource hungry. I installed apache from the centos base repo, php version 5.3 from the ius repository and mysql 5.1 also from ius repo. I haven't changed any of the default config files for any of these except to make memory_minimum 256 in php.ini. Is there anything i can do to make more ram free? I'm clueless but i see each Apache daemon is using 8% of available ram, and AFAIK each visitor needs one Apache daemon. So i would run out of ram with just a handful of visitors. Thanks for your advice.

    Read the article

  • Linux RHEL : Making disk image efficiently

    - by TheProfoundGeek
    I have a linux box having RHEL. Its disk (hda1) is having free space of about 25GB. I have an another disk (hda2) which is of 250GB having another RHEL instance, it's partitioned for 200GB. Data on the disk occupies about 21GB of data. The image of hda2 needs to be taken and restored on other disk of same specs. What is the best way to make image file of the hda2? Ideally the images size should be around 25GBs as the actual data on the disk is just 21GB. I am aware about the following two methods. Method 1 : Raw Image dd if=/dev/hda2 of=/path/to/image dd if=/path/to/image of=/dev/hda3 Question 1 : Will the above method make a gigantic image of 250GBs? Is it efficient? Method 2 : Compressed Image. dd if=/dev/hda2 | gzip > /path/to/image.gz gzip -dc /path/to/image.gz | dd of=/dev/hda2 Question 2 : I tried the method 2, its taking too long. What are the pit falls of this methods? Which of the above method id efficient and why? Is there any other Linux utility which can do the job? Third party tools are no no.

    Read the article

  • How to merge Windows registry hives directly without converting them to an intermediate text based file?

    - by Registrar
    Help! I'm going to get fired if I can't figure out how to do this by tomorrow. Microsoft Windows stores its registry databases (known as "registry hives" - there's actually a backstory to the origin of this name, but I digress) in a proprietary binary format. Answer this correctly or you lose your job: Let H-sub-A be the registry hive of Computer A, and let H-sub-B be the registry hive of Computer B. Create a registry hive H-sub-A-prime (in the native binary format) that contains all of the registry keys and values in both H-sub-A and H-sub-B. If there is overlap, let the value from H-sub-B overwrite the value in H-sub-A. Sure, you can import a text-based patch file (e.g., "FOO.REG") to modify the registry, but can you merge two registry hives in their native binary format? Answers that involve exporting the registry to a text file (e.g., "FOO.REG") will receive no credit. You may only use software included with Microsoft Windows (any version) and / or third-party tools that are free of charge.

    Read the article

  • Where does Firefox store cerificates and how to delete one?

    - by majid4466
    Hi all, The root cause of my problem is not known to me, whatever it is, I experience frequent DNS failures. When it happens I cannot browse to my Gmail inbox. I use two DNS settings. One is the public DNS server offered by OpenDNS, and the other is Google's free DNS server. When this happens I switch from the active setting to the other one and the problem goes away. But there is a side effect to this. When browsing to Gmail fails to load, after switching the DNS I receive an error saying the security certificate the site uses is only valid for OpenDNS. This my wild guess at what is going on: OpenDNS fails to resolve mail.google.com to its IP, My ISP sends me a page showing search results for 'mail.google.com' Since I have received some sort of page instead of a timeout, the browser, mistakenly, binds the certificate it has cached for 'mail.google.com' to the new domain. This search page is not served by https so not exception is thrown by the wrong binding After switching the DNS, the domain is correctly resolved to Gmail server's IP and since his is on https the handshake is triggered. Now, because of the wrong binding, which passed quietly as no handshake was involved, I receive the error saying the certificate used by 'mail.google.com' is only good for openDNS I don't know much about DNS, less about https and the process of establishing a secure connection. How correct is my explanation? How can I delete the wrong association and/or the certificate? Thanks for listening. P. S. The problem goes away by itself, but sometimes it takes several hours before Gmail works again.

    Read the article

  • Where does Firefox store cerificates and how to delete one?

    - by majid4466
    Hi all, The root cause of my problem is not known to me, whatever it is, I experience frequent DNS failures. When it happens I cannot browse to my Gmail inbox. I use two DNS settings. One is the public DNS server offered by OpenDNS, and the other is Google's free DNS server. When this happens I switch from the active setting to the other one and the problem goes away. But there is a side effect to this. When browsing to Gmail fails to load, after switching the DNS I receive an error saying the security certificate the site uses is only valid for OpenDNS. This my wild guess at what is going on: 1. OpenDNS fails to resolve mail.google.com to its IP, 2. My ISP sends me a page showing search results for 'mail.google.com' 3. Since I have received some sort of page instead of a timeout, the browser, mistakenly, binds the certificate it has cached for 'mail.google.com' to the new domain. This search page is not served by https so not exception is thrown by the wrong binding 4. After switching the DNS, the domain is correctly resolved to Gmail server's IP and since his is on https the handshake is triggered. 5. Now, because of the wrong binding, which passed quietly as no handshake was involved, I receive the error saying the certificate used by 'mail.google.com' is only good for openDNS I don't know much about DNS, less about https and the process of establishing a secure connection. How correct is my explanation? How can I delete the wrong association and/or the certificate? Thanks for listening. P. S. The problem goes away by itself, but sometimes it takes several hours before Gmail works again.

    Read the article

  • What's the proper way to prepare chroot to recover a broken Linux installation?

    - by ~quack
    This question relates to questions that are asked often. The procedure is frequently mentioned or linked to offsite, but is not often clearly and correctly stated. In an objective to concentrate useful information in one place, this question seeks to provide a clear, correct reference for this procedure. What are the proper steps to prepare a chroot environment for a recovery procedure? In many situations, repairing a broken Linux installation is best done from within the installation. But if the system won't boot, how do you fix it from within? Let's assume you manage to boot into an alternate system. Once there, you need to access your broken installation in order to fix it. Many recovery How-Tos recommend using chroot in order to run programs as if you are actually booted into the broken installation. What is the basic procedure? Are there accepted best-practices to follow? What variables need to be considered in order to adapt the basic preparation steps to a particular recovery task? As this is Community Wiki, feel free to edit this question to improve it as well.

    Read the article

  • Mac OS X: Applications not responding

    - by Robot55
    This happens to me several times a day. I'll quit an app, the window will close, but the app won't finish shutting down. It stays open in the dock, and right clicking and force quit show not responding. Force quit won't work. I can't shut the app down. Starting any other app when this happens causes that app to behave in exactly the same way: the icon opens in the dock, but the app is non-responsive and can't be forced to quit. Can't access terminal when this happens, because it locks up just like all the apps. While I haven't tried to open every app, I think any app I try to open when this is happening will lock up. If I relaunch Finder, it too locks up and then the only thing left is to hold down the power button for a hard reboot. Any app that is running while this is happening will continue to run normally unless I try to shut it down. Repairing disk permissions has no effect. I also did a time machine and a full restore on a brand new MbP - and sure enough, after restore, the new MbP suffers form the same problem. Creating a new user has no effect. Any thoughts? Please help MacBook Pro 15" AG 2.53ghz i5 cpu 8gb RAM 500gb HD (over 200gb free)

    Read the article

  • Do email providers have to tell me which (inter)national agencies/institutes are requesting legal access to my account data?

    - by Juve
    I know this question is not technical, but i did not find the "stackoverflow for legal issues" and I guess all you super users out there might know the answer. Here is my (potential) problem: I have a free email account at a (inter)national email provider. I used the words "wikileaks" and "twitter" lately in my email. Some over-ambitious national security organization legally requests access to all accounts that behaved similarly. Q1: Can I request the who-, when-, and why-information related to this legal request from my provider? Does he have to tell me which (inter)national organizations (legally) requested my account data? Q2: Does the situation change if I live in Germany (and have a German provider)? I guess here are some German users. And I know that such a legal policy exists for our national credit rating agency. I can request who got access to my data, they have to tell me. Please answer only if you know a good answer, I don't want to start a long discussion on this none-technical question. Best regards, Juve

    Read the article

  • Part 2&ndash;Load Testing In The Cloud

    - by Tarun Arora
    Welcome to Part 2, In Part 1 we discussed the advantages of creating a Test Rig in the cloud, the Azure edge and the Test Rig Topology we want to get to. In Part 2, Let’s start by understanding the components of Azure we’ll be making use of followed by manually putting them together to create the test rig, so… let’s get down dirty start setting up the Test Rig.  What Components of Azure will I be using for building the Test Rig in the Cloud? To run the Test Agents we’ll make use of Windows Azure Compute and to enable communication between Test Controller and Test Agents we’ll make use of Windows Azure Connect.  Azure Connect The Test Controller is on premise and the Test Agents are in the cloud (How will they talk?). To enable communication between the two, we’ll make use of Windows Azure Connect. With Windows Azure Connect, you can use a simple user interface to configure IPsec protected connections between computers or virtual machines (VMs) in your organization’s network, and roles running in Windows Azure. With this you can now join Windows Azure role instances to your domain, so that you can use your existing methods for domain authentication, name resolution, or other domain-wide maintenance actions. For more details refer to an overview of Windows Azure connect. A very useful video explaining everything you wanted to know about Windows Azure connect.  Azure Compute Windows Azure compute provides developers a platform to host and manage applications in Microsoft’s data centres across the globe. A Windows Azure application is built from one or more components called ‘roles.’ Roles come in three different types: Web role, Worker role, and Virtual Machine (VM) role, we’ll be using the Worker role to set up the Test Agents. A very nice blog post discussing the difference between the 3 role types. Developers are free to use the .NET framework or other software that runs on Windows with the Worker role or Web role. Developers can also create applications using languages such as PHP and Java. More on Windows Azure Compute. Each Windows Azure compute instance represents a virtual server... Virtual Machine Size CPU Cores Memory Cost Per Hour Extra Small Shared 768 MB $0.04 Small 1 1.75 GB $0.12 Medium 2 3.50 GB $0.24 Large 4 7.00 GB $0.48 Extra Large 8 14.00 GB $0.96   You might want to review the Windows Azure Pricing FAQ. Let’s Get Started building the Test Rig… Configuration Machine Role Comments VM – 1 Domain Controller for Playpit.com On Premise VM – 2 TFS, Test Controller On Premise VM – 3 Test Agent Cloud   In this blog post I would assume that you have the domain, Team Foundation Server and Test Controller Installed and set up already. If not, please refer to the TFS 2010 Installation Guide and this walkthrough on MSDN to set up your Test Controller. You can also download a preconfigured TFS 2010 VM from Brian Keller's blog, Brian also has some great hands on Labs on TFS 2010 that you may want to explore. I. Lets start building VM – 3: The Test Agent Download the Windows Azure SDK and Tools Open Visual Studio and create a new Windows Azure Project using the Cloud Template                   Choose the Worker Role for reasons explained in the earlier post         The WorkerRole.cs implements the Run() and OnStart() methods, no code changes required. You should be able to compile the project and run it in the compute emulator (The compute emulator should have been installed as part of the Windows Azure Toolkit) on your local machine.                   We will only be making changes to WindowsAzureProject, open ServiceDefinition.csdef. Ensure that the vmsize is small (remember the cost chart above). Import the “Connect” module. I am importing the Connect module because I need to join the Worker role VM to the Playpit domain. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <ServiceDefinition name="WindowsAzureProject2" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/ServiceHosting/2008/10/ServiceDefinition"> <WorkerRole name="WorkerRole1" vmsize="Small"> <Imports> <Import moduleName="Diagnostics" /> <Import moduleName="Connect"/> </Imports> </WorkerRole> </ServiceDefinition> Go to the ServiceConfiguration.Cloud.cscfg and note that settings with key ‘Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.%%%%’ have been added to the configuration file. This is because you decided to import the connect module. See the config below. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <ServiceConfiguration serviceName="WindowsAzureProject2" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/ServiceHosting/2008/10/ServiceConfiguration" osFamily="1" osVersion="*"> <Role name="WorkerRole1"> <Instances count="1" /> <ConfigurationSettings> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Diagnostics.ConnectionString" value="UseDevelopmentStorage=true" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.ActivationToken" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.Refresh" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.WaitForConnectivity" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.Upgrade" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.EnableDomainJoin" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainFQDN" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainControllerFQDN" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainAccountName" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainPassword" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainOU" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.Administrators" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainSiteName" value="" /> </ConfigurationSettings> </Role> </ServiceConfiguration>             Let’s go step by step and understand all the highlighted parameters and where you can find the values for them.       osFamily – By default this is set to 1 (Windows Server 2008 SP2). Change this to 2 if you want the Windows Server 2008 R2 operating system. The Advantage of using osFamily = “2” is that you get Powershell 2.0 rather than Powershell 1.0. In Powershell 2.0 you could simply use “powershell -ExecutionPolicy Unrestricted ./myscript.ps1” and it will work while in Powershell 1.0 you will have to change the registry key by including the following in your command file “reg add HKLM\Software\Microsoft\PowerShell\1\ShellIds\Microsoft.PowerShell /v ExecutionPolicy /d Unrestricted /f” before you can execute any power shell. The other reason you might want to move to os2 is if you wanted IIS 7.5.       Activation Token – To enable communication between the on premise machine and the Windows Azure Worker role VM both need to have the same token. Log on to Windows Azure Management Portal, click on Connect, click on Get Activation Token, this should give you the activation token, copy the activation token to the clipboard and paste it in the configuration file. Note – Later in the blog I’ll be showing you how to install connect on the on premise machine.                       EnableDomainJoin – Set the value to true, ofcourse we want to join the on windows azure worker role VM to the domain.       DomainFQDN, DomainControllerFQDN, DomainAccountName, DomainPassword, DomainOU, Administrators – This information is specific to your domain. I have extracted this information from the ‘service manager’ and ‘Active Directory Users and Computers’. Also, i created a new Domain-OU namely ‘CloudInstances’ so all my cloud instances joined to my domain show up here, this is optional. You can encrypt the DomainPassword – refer to the instructions here. Or hold fire, I’ll be covering that when i come to certificates and encryption in the coming section.       Now once you have filled all this information up, the configuration file should look something like below, <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <ServiceConfiguration serviceName="WindowsAzureProject2" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/ServiceHosting/2008/10/ServiceConfiguration" osFamily="2" osVersion="*"> <Role name="WorkerRole1"> <Instances count="1" /> <ConfigurationSettings> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Diagnostics.ConnectionString" value="UseDevelopmentStorage=true" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.ActivationToken" value="45f55fea-f194-4fbc-b36e-25604faac784" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.Refresh" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.WaitForConnectivity" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.Upgrade" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.EnableDomainJoin" value="true" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainFQDN" value="play.pit.com" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainControllerFQDN" value="WIN-KUDQMQFGQOL.play.pit.com" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainAccountName" value="playpit\Administrator" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainPassword" value="************************" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainOU" value="OU=CloudInstances, DC=Play, DC=Pit, DC=com" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.Administrators" value="Playpit\Administrator" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainSiteName" value="" /> </ConfigurationSettings> </Role> </ServiceConfiguration> Next we will be enabling the Remote Desktop module in to the ServiceDefinition.csdef, we could make changes manually or allow a beautiful wizard to help us make changes. I prefer the second option. So right click on the Windows Azure project and choose Publish       Now once you get the publish wizard, if you haven’t already you would be asked to import your Windows Azure subscription, this is simply the Msdn subscription activation key xml. Once you have done click Next to go to the Settings page and check ‘Enable Remote Desktop for all roles’.       As soon as you do that you get another pop up asking you the details for the user that you would be logging in with (make sure you enter a reasonable expiry date, you do not want the user account to expire today). Notice the more information tag at the bottom, click that to get access to the certificate section. See screen shot below.       From the drop down select the option to create a new certificate        In the pop up window enter the friendly name for your certificate. In my case I entered ‘WAC – Test Rig’ and click ok. This will create a new certificate for you. Click on the view button to see the certificate details. Do you see the Thumbprint, this is the value that will go in the config file (very important). Now click on the Copy to File button to copy the certificate, we will need to import the certificate to the windows Azure Management portal later. So, make sure you save it a safe location.                                Click Finish and enter details of the user you would like to create with permissions for remote desktop access, once you have entered the details on the ‘Remote desktop configuration’ screen click on Ok. From the Publish Windows Azure Wizard screen press Cancel. Cancel because we don’t want to publish the role just yet and Yes because we want to save all the changes in the config file.       Now if you go to the ServiceDefinition.csdef file you will see that the RemoteAccess and RemoteForwarder roles have been imported for you. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <ServiceDefinition name="WindowsAzureProject2" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/ServiceHosting/2008/10/ServiceDefinition"> <WorkerRole name="WorkerRole1" vmsize="Small"> <Imports> <Import moduleName="Diagnostics" /> <Import moduleName="Connect" /> <Import moduleName="RemoteAccess" /> <Import moduleName="RemoteForwarder" /> </Imports> </WorkerRole> </ServiceDefinition> Now go to the ServiceConfiguration.Cloud.cscfg file and you see a whole bunch for setting “Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.RemoteAccess.%%%” values added for you. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <ServiceConfiguration serviceName="WindowsAzureProject2" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/ServiceHosting/2008/10/ServiceConfiguration" osFamily="2" osVersion="*"> <Role name="WorkerRole1"> <Instances count="1" /> <ConfigurationSettings> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Diagnostics.ConnectionString" value="UseDevelopmentStorage=true" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.ActivationToken" value="45f55fea-f194-4fbc-b36e-25604faac784" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.Refresh" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.WaitForConnectivity" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.Upgrade" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.EnableDomainJoin" value="true" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainFQDN" value="play.pit.com" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainControllerFQDN" value="WIN-KUDQMQFGQOL.play.pit.com" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainAccountName" value="playpit\Administrator" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainPassword" value="************************" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainOU" value="OU=CloudInstances, DC=Play, DC=Pit, DC=com" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.Administrators" value="Playpit\Administrator" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainSiteName" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.RemoteAccess.Enabled" value="true" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.RemoteAccess.AccountUsername" value="Administrator" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.RemoteAccess.AccountEncryptedPassword" value="MIIBnQYJKoZIhvcNAQcDoIIBjjCCAYoCAQAxggFOMIIBSgIBADAyMB4xHDAaBgNVBAMME1dpbmRvd 3MgQXp1cmUgVG9vbHMCEGa+B46voeO5T305N7TSG9QwDQYJKoZIhvcNAQEBBQAEggEABg4ol5Xol66Ip6QKLbAPWdmD4ae ADZ7aKj6fg4D+ATr0DXBllZHG5Umwf+84Sj2nsPeCyrg3ZDQuxrfhSbdnJwuChKV6ukXdGjX0hlowJu/4dfH4jTJC7sBWS AKaEFU7CxvqYEAL1Hf9VPL5fW6HZVmq1z+qmm4ecGKSTOJ20Fptb463wcXgR8CWGa+1w9xqJ7UmmfGeGeCHQ4QGW0IDSBU6ccg vzF2ug8/FY60K1vrWaCYOhKkxD3YBs8U9X/kOB0yQm2Git0d5tFlIPCBT2AC57bgsAYncXfHvPesI0qs7VZyghk8LVa9g5IqaM Cp6cQ7rmY/dLsKBMkDcdBHuCTAzBgkqhkiG9w0BBwEwFAYIKoZIhvcNAwcECDRVifSXbA43gBApNrp40L1VTVZ1iGag+3O1" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.RemoteAccess.AccountExpiration" value="2012-11-27T23:59:59.0000000+00:00" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.RemoteForwarder.Enabled" value="true" /> </ConfigurationSettings> <Certificates> <Certificate name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.RemoteAccess.PasswordEncryption" thumbprint="AA23016CF0BDFC344400B5B82706B608B92E4217" thumbprintAlgorithm="sha1" /> </Certificates> </Role> </ServiceConfiguration>          Okay let’s look at them one at a time,       Enabled - Yes, we would like to enable Remote Access.       AccountUserName – This is the user name you entered while you were on the publish windows azure role screen, as detailed above.       AccountEncrytedPassword – Try and decode that, the certificate is used to encrypt the password you specified for the user account. Remember earlier i said, either use the instructions or wait and i’ll be showing you encryption, now the user account i am using for rdp has the same password as my domain password, so i can simply copy the value of the AccountEncryptedPassword to the DomainPassword as well.       AccountExpiration – This is the expiration as you specified in the wizard earlier, make sure your account does not expire today.       Remote Forwarder – Check out the documentation, below is how I understand it, -- One role in an application that implements a remote desktop connection must import the RemoteForwarder module. The two modules work together to enable the remote desktop connections to role instances. -- If you have multiple roles defined in the service model, it does not matter which role you add the RemoteForwarder module to, but you must add it to only one of the role definitions.       Certificate – Remember the certificate thumbprint from the wizard, the on premise machine and windows azure role machine that need to speak to each other must have the same thumbprint. More on that when we install Windows Azure connect Endpoints on the on premise machine. As i said earlier, in this blog post, I’ll be showing you the manual process so i won’t be scripting any star up tasks to install the test agent or register the test agent with the TFS Server. I’ll be showing you all this cool stuff in the next blog post, that’s because it’s important to understand the manual side of it, it becomes easier for you to troubleshoot in case something fails. Having said that, the changes we have made are sufficient to spin up the Windows Azure Worker Role aka Test Agent VM, have it connected with the play.pit.com domain and have remote access enabled on it. Before we deploy the Test Agent VM we need to set up Windows Azure Connect on the TFS Server. II. Windows Azure Connect: Setting up Connect on VM – 2 i.e. TFS & Test Controller Glad you made it so far, now to enable communication between the on premise TFS/Test Controller and Azure-ed Test Agent we need to enable communication. We have set up the Azure connect module in the Test Agent configuration, now the connect end points need to be enabled on the on premise machines, let’s have a look at how we can do this. Log on to VM – 2 running the TFS Server and Test Controller Log on to the Windows Azure Management Portal and click on Virtual Network Click on Virtual Network, if you already have a subscription you should see the below screen shot, if not, you would be asked to complete the subscription first        Click on Install Local Endpoints from the top left on the panel and you get a url appended with a token id in it, remember the token i showed you earlier, in theory the token you get here should match the token you added to the Test Agent config file.        Copy the url to the clip board and paste it in IE explorer (important, the installation at present only works out of IE and you need to have cookies enabled in order to complete the installation). As stated in the pop up, you can NOT download and run the software later, you need to run it as is, since it contains a token. Once the installation completes you should see the Windows Azure connect icon in the system tray.                         Right click the Azure Connect icon, choose Diagnostics and refer to this link for diagnostic detail terminology. NOTE – Unfortunately I could not see the Windows Azure connect icon in the system tray, a bit of binging with Google revealed that the azure connect icon is only shown when the ‘Windows Azure Connect Endpoint’ Service is started. So go to services.msc and make sure that the service is started, if not start it, unfortunately again, the service did not start for me on a manual start and i realised that one of the dependant services was disabled, you can look at the service dependencies and start them and then start windows azure connect. Bottom line, you need to start Windows Azure connect service before you can proceed. Please refer here on MSDN for more on Troubleshooting Windows Azure connect. (Follow the next step as well)   Now go back to the Windows Azure Management Portal and from Groups and Roles create a new group, lets call it ‘Test Rig’. Make sure you add the VM – 2 (the TFS Server VM where you just installed the endpoint).       Now if you go back to the Azure Connect icon in the system tray and click ‘Refresh Policy’ you will notice that the disconnected status of the icon should change to ready for connection. III. Importing Certificate in to Windows Azure Management Portal But before that you need to import the certificate you created in Step I in to the Windows Azure Management Portal. Log on to the Windows Azure Management Portal and click on ‘Hosted Services, Storage Accounts & CDN’ and then ‘Management Certificates’ followed by Add Certificates as shown in the screen shot below        Browse to the location where you saved the certificate earlier, remember… Refer to Step I in case you forgot.        Now you should be able to see the imported certificate here, make sure the thumbprint of the certificate matches the one you inserted in the config files        IV. Publish Windows Azure Worker Role aka Test Agent Having completed I, II and III, you are ready to publish the Test Agent VM – 3 to the cloud. Go to Visual Studio and right click the Windows Azure project and select Publish. Verify the infomration in the wizard, from the advanced settings tab, you can also enabled capture of intellitrace or profiling information.         Click Next and Click Publish! From the view menu bar select the Windows Azure Activity Log window.       Now you should be able to see the deployment progress in real time.             In the Windows Azure Management Portal, you should also be able to see the progress of creation of a new Worker Role.       Once the deployment is complete you should be able to RDP (go to run prompt type mstsc and in the pop up the machine name) in to the Test Agent Worker Role VM from the Playpit network using the domain admin user account. In case you are unable to log in to the Test Agent using the domain admin user account it means the process of joining the Test Agent to the domain has failed! But the good news is, because you imported the connect module, you can connect to the Test Agent machine using Windows Azure Management Portal and troubleshoot the reason for failure, you will be able to log in with the user name and password you specified in the config file for the keys ‘RemoteAccess.AccountUsername, RemoteAccess.EncryptedPassword (just that enter the password unencrypted)’, fix it or manually join the machine to the domain. Once you have managed to Join the Test Agent VM to the Domain move to the next step.      So, log in to the Test Agent Worker Role VM with the Playpit Domain Administrator and verify that you can log in, the machine is connected to the domain and the connect service is successfully running. If yes, give your self a pat on the back, you are 80% mission accomplished!         Go to the Windows Azure Management Portal and click on Virtual Network, click on Groups and Roles and click on Test Rig, click Edit Group, the edit the Test Rig group you created earlier. In the Connect to section, click on Add to select the worker role you have just deployed. Also, check the ‘Allow connections between endpoints in the group’ with this you will enable to communication between test controller and test agents and test agents/test agents. Click Save.      Now, you are ready to deploy the Test Agent software on the Worker Role Test Agent VM and configure it to work with the Test Controller. V. Configuring VM – 3: Installing Test Agent and Associating Test Agent to Controller Log in to the Worker Role Test Agent VM that you have just successfully deployed, make sure you log in with the domain administrator account. Download the All Agents software from MSDN, ‘en_visual_studio_agents_2010_x86_x64_dvd_509679.iso’, extract the iso and navigate to where you have extracted the iso. In my case, i have extracted the iso to “C:\Resources\Temp\VsAgentSetup”. Open the Test Agent folder and double click on setup.exe. Once you have installed the Test Agent you should reach the configuration window. If you face any issues installing TFS Test Agent on the VM, refer to the walkthrough on MSDN.       Once you have successfully installed the Test Agent software you will need to configure the test agent. Right click the test agent configuration tool and run as a different user. i.e. an Administrator. This is really to run the configuration wizard with elevated privileges (you might have UAC block something's otherwise).        In the run options, you can select ‘service’ you do not need to run the agent as interactive un less you are running coded UI tests. I have specified the domain administrator to connect to the TFS Test Controller. In real life, i would never do that, i would create a separate test user service account for this purpose. But for the blog post, we are using the most powerful user so that any policies or restrictions don’t block you.        Click the Apply Settings button and you should be all green! If not, the summary usually gives helpful error messages that you can resolve and proceed. As per my experience, you may run in to either a permission or a firewall blocking communication issue.        And now the moment of truth! Go to VM –2 open up Visual Studio and from the Test Menu select Manage Test Controller       Mission Accomplished! You should be able to see the Test Agent that you have just configured here,         VI. Creating and Running Load Tests on your brand new Azure-ed Test Rig I have various blog posts on Performance Testing with Visual Studio Ultimate, you can follow the links and videos below, Blog Posts: - Part 1 – Performance Testing using Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate - Part 2 – Performance Testing using Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate - Part 3 – Performance Testing using Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate Videos: - Test Tools Configuration & Settings in Visual Studio - Why & How to Record Web Performance Tests in Visual Studio Ultimate - Goal Driven Load Testing using Visual Studio Ultimate Now that you have created your load tests, there is one last change you need to make before you can run the tests on your Azure Test Rig, create a new Test settings file, and change the Test Execution method to ‘Remote Execution’ and select the test controller you have configured the Worker Role Test Agent against in our case VM – 2 So, go on, fire off a test run and see the results of the test being executed on the Azur-ed Test Rig. Review and What’s next? A quick recap of the benefits of running the Test Rig in the cloud and what i will be covering in the next blog post AND I would love to hear your feedback! Advantages Utilizing the power of Azure compute to run a heavy virtual user load. Benefiting from the Azure flexibility, destroy Test Agents when not in use, takes < 25 minutes to spin up a new Test Agent. Most important test Network Latency, (network latency and speed of connection are two different things – usually network latency is very hard to test), by placing the Test Agents in Microsoft Data centres around the globe, one can actually test the lag in transferring the bytes not because of a slow connection but because the page has been requested from the other side of the globe. Next Steps The process of spinning up the Test Agents in windows Azure is not 100% automated. I am working on the Worker process and power shell scripts to make the role deployment, unattended install of test agent software and registration of the test agent to the test controller automated. In the next blog post I will show you how to make the complete process unattended and automated. Remember to subscribe to http://feeds.feedburner.com/TarunArora. Hope you enjoyed this post, I would love to hear your feedback! If you have any recommendations on things that I should consider or any questions or feedback, feel free to leave a comment. See you in Part III.   Share this post : CodeProject

    Read the article

  • How to capture live camera frames in RGB with DirectShow

    - by Jonny Boy
    I'm implementing live video capture through DirectShow for live processing and display. (Augmented Reality app). I can access the pixels easily enough, but it seems I can't get the SampleGrabber to provide RGB data. The device (an iSight -- running VC++ Express in VMWare) only reports MEDIASUBTYPE_YUY2. After extensive Googling, I still can't figure out whether DirectShow is supposed to provide built-in color space conversion for this sort of thing. Some sites report that there is no YUV<-RGB conversion built in, others report that you just have to call SetMediaType on your ISampleGrabber with an RGB subtype. Any advice is greatly appreciated, I'm going nuts on this one. Code provided below. Please note that The code works, except that it doesn't provide RGB data I'm aware that I can implement my own conversion filter, but this is not feasible because I'd have to anticipate every possible device format, and this is a relatively small project // Playback IGraphBuilder *pGraphBuilder = NULL; ICaptureGraphBuilder2 *pCaptureGraphBuilder2 = NULL; IMediaControl *pMediaControl = NULL; IBaseFilter *pDeviceFilter = NULL; IAMStreamConfig *pStreamConfig = NULL; BYTE *videoCaps = NULL; AM_MEDIA_TYPE **mediaTypeArray = NULL; // Device selection ICreateDevEnum *pCreateDevEnum = NULL; IEnumMoniker *pEnumMoniker = NULL; IMoniker *pMoniker = NULL; ULONG nFetched = 0; HRESULT hr = CoInitializeEx(NULL, COINIT_MULTITHREADED); // Create CreateDevEnum to list device hr = CoCreateInstance(CLSID_SystemDeviceEnum, NULL, CLSCTX_INPROC_SERVER, IID_ICreateDevEnum, (PVOID *)&pCreateDevEnum); if (FAILED(hr)) goto ReleaseDataAndFail; // Create EnumMoniker to list devices hr = pCreateDevEnum->CreateClassEnumerator(CLSID_VideoInputDeviceCategory, &pEnumMoniker, 0); if (FAILED(hr)) goto ReleaseDataAndFail; pEnumMoniker->Reset(); // Find desired device while (pEnumMoniker->Next(1, &pMoniker, &nFetched) == S_OK) { IPropertyBag *pPropertyBag; TCHAR devname[256]; // bind to IPropertyBag hr = pMoniker-&gt;BindToStorage(0, 0, IID_IPropertyBag, (void **)&amp;pPropertyBag); if (FAILED(hr)) { pMoniker-&gt;Release(); continue; } VARIANT varName; VariantInit(&amp;varName); HRESULT hr = pPropertyBag-&gt;Read(L"DevicePath", &amp;varName, 0); if (FAILED(hr)) { pMoniker-&gt;Release(); pPropertyBag-&gt;Release(); continue; } char devicePath[DeviceInfo::STRING_LENGTH_MAX] = ""; wcstombs(devicePath, varName.bstrVal, DeviceInfo::STRING_LENGTH_MAX); if (strcmp(devicePath, deviceId) == 0) { // Bind Moniker to Filter pMoniker-&gt;BindToObject(0, 0, IID_IBaseFilter, (void**)&amp;pDeviceFilter); break; } pMoniker-&gt;Release(); pPropertyBag-&gt;Release(); } if (pDeviceFilter == NULL) goto ReleaseDataAndFail; // Create sample grabber IBaseFilter *pGrabberF = NULL; hr = CoCreateInstance(CLSID_SampleGrabber, NULL, CLSCTX_INPROC_SERVER, IID_IBaseFilter, (void**)&pGrabberF); if (FAILED(hr)) goto ReleaseDataAndFail; hr = pGrabberF->QueryInterface(IID_ISampleGrabber, (void**)&pGrabber); if (FAILED(hr)) goto ReleaseDataAndFail; // Create FilterGraph hr = CoCreateInstance(CLSID_FilterGraph, NULL, CLSCTX_INPROC, IID_IGraphBuilder, (LPVOID *)&pGraphBuilder); if (FAILED(hr)) goto ReleaseDataAndFail; // create CaptureGraphBuilder2 hr = CoCreateInstance(CLSID_CaptureGraphBuilder2, NULL, CLSCTX_INPROC, IID_ICaptureGraphBuilder2, (LPVOID *)&pCaptureGraphBuilder2); if (FAILED(hr)) goto ReleaseDataAndFail; // set FilterGraph hr = pCaptureGraphBuilder2->SetFiltergraph(pGraphBuilder); if (FAILED(hr)) goto ReleaseDataAndFail; // get MediaControl interface hr = pGraphBuilder->QueryInterface(IID_IMediaControl, (LPVOID *)&pMediaControl); if (FAILED(hr)) goto ReleaseDataAndFail; // Add filters hr = pGraphBuilder->AddFilter(pDeviceFilter, L"Device Filter"); if (FAILED(hr)) goto ReleaseDataAndFail; hr = pGraphBuilder->AddFilter(pGrabberF, L"Sample Grabber"); if (FAILED(hr)) goto ReleaseDataAndFail; // Set sampe grabber options AM_MEDIA_TYPE mt; ZeroMemory(&mt, sizeof(AM_MEDIA_TYPE)); mt.majortype = MEDIATYPE_Video; mt.subtype = MEDIASUBTYPE_RGB32; hr = pGrabber->SetMediaType(&mt); if (FAILED(hr)) goto ReleaseDataAndFail; hr = pGrabber->SetOneShot(FALSE); if (FAILED(hr)) goto ReleaseDataAndFail; hr = pGrabber->SetBufferSamples(TRUE); if (FAILED(hr)) goto ReleaseDataAndFail; // Get stream config interface hr = pCaptureGraphBuilder2->FindInterface(NULL, &MEDIATYPE_Video, pDeviceFilter, IID_IAMStreamConfig, (void **)&pStreamConfig); if (FAILED(hr)) goto ReleaseDataAndFail; int streamCapsCount = 0, capsSize, bestFit = -1, bestFitPixelDiff = 1000000000, desiredPixelCount = _width * _height, bestFitWidth = 0, bestFitHeight = 0; float desiredAspectRatio = (float)_width / (float)_height; hr = pStreamConfig->GetNumberOfCapabilities(&streamCapsCount, &capsSize); if (FAILED(hr)) goto ReleaseDataAndFail; videoCaps = (BYTE *)malloc(capsSize * streamCapsCount); mediaTypeArray = (AM_MEDIA_TYPE **)malloc(sizeof(AM_MEDIA_TYPE *) * streamCapsCount); for (int i = 0; i < streamCapsCount; i++) { hr = pStreamConfig->GetStreamCaps(i, &mediaTypeArray[i], videoCaps + capsSize * i); if (FAILED(hr)) continue; VIDEO_STREAM_CONFIG_CAPS *currentVideoCaps = (VIDEO_STREAM_CONFIG_CAPS *)(videoCaps + capsSize * i); int closestWidth = MAX(currentVideoCaps-&gt;MinOutputSize.cx, MIN(currentVideoCaps-&gt;MaxOutputSize.cx, width)); int closestHeight = MAX(currentVideoCaps-&gt;MinOutputSize.cy, MIN(currentVideoCaps-&gt;MaxOutputSize.cy, height)); int pixelDiff = ABS(desiredPixelCount - closestWidth * closestHeight); if (pixelDiff &lt; bestFitPixelDiff &amp;&amp; ABS(desiredAspectRatio - (float)closestWidth / (float)closestHeight) &lt; 0.1f) { bestFit = i; bestFitPixelDiff = pixelDiff; bestFitWidth = closestWidth; bestFitHeight = closestHeight; } } if (bestFit == -1) goto ReleaseDataAndFail; AM_MEDIA_TYPE *mediaType; hr = pStreamConfig->GetFormat(&mediaType); if (FAILED(hr)) goto ReleaseDataAndFail; VIDEOINFOHEADER *videoInfoHeader = (VIDEOINFOHEADER *)mediaType->pbFormat; videoInfoHeader->bmiHeader.biWidth = bestFitWidth; videoInfoHeader->bmiHeader.biHeight = bestFitHeight; //mediaType->subtype = MEDIASUBTYPE_RGB32; hr = pStreamConfig->SetFormat(mediaType); if (FAILED(hr)) goto ReleaseDataAndFail; pStreamConfig->Release(); pStreamConfig = NULL; free(videoCaps); videoCaps = NULL; free(mediaTypeArray); mediaTypeArray = NULL; // Connect pins IPin *pDeviceOut = NULL, *pGrabberIn = NULL; if (FindPin(pDeviceFilter, PINDIR_OUTPUT, 0, &pDeviceOut) && FindPin(pGrabberF, PINDIR_INPUT, 0, &pGrabberIn)) { hr = pGraphBuilder->Connect(pDeviceOut, pGrabberIn); if (FAILED(hr)) goto ReleaseDataAndFail; } else { goto ReleaseDataAndFail; } // start playing hr = pMediaControl->Run(); if (FAILED(hr)) goto ReleaseDataAndFail; hr = pGrabber->GetConnectedMediaType(&mt); // Set dimensions width = bestFitWidth; height = bestFitHeight; _width = bestFitWidth; _height = bestFitHeight; // Allocate pixel buffer pPixelBuffer = (unsigned *)malloc(width * height * 4); // Release objects pGraphBuilder->Release(); pGraphBuilder = NULL; pEnumMoniker->Release(); pEnumMoniker = NULL; pCreateDevEnum->Release(); pCreateDevEnum = NULL; return true;

    Read the article

  • Autocorrelation returns random results with mic input (using a high pass filter)

    - by Niall
    Hello, Sorry to ask a similar question to the one i asked before (FFT Problem (Returns random results)), but i've looked up pitch detection and autocorrelation and have found some code for pitch detection using autocorrelation. Im trying to do pitch detection of a users singing. Problem is, it keeps returning random results. I've got some code from http://code.google.com/p/yaalp/ which i've converted to C++ and modified (below). My sample rate is 2048, and data size is 1024. I'm detecting pitch of both a sine wave and mic input. The frequency of the sine wave is 726.0, and its detecting it to be 722.950820 (which im ok with), but its detecting the pitch of the mic as a random number from around 100 to around 1050. I'm now using a High pass filter to remove the DC offset, but it's not working. Am i doing it right, and if so, what else can i do to fix it? Any help would be greatly appreciated! double* doHighPassFilter(short *buffer) { // Do FFT: int bufferLength = 1024; float *real = malloc(bufferLength*sizeof(float)); float *real2 = malloc(bufferLength*sizeof(float)); for(int x=0;x<bufferLength;x++) { real[x] = buffer[x]; } fft(real, bufferLength); for(int x=0;x<bufferLength;x+=2) { real2[x] = real[x]; } for (int i=0; i < 30; i++) //Set freqs lower than 30hz to zero to attenuate the low frequencies real2[i] = 0; // Do inverse FFT: inversefft(real2,bufferLength); double* real3 = (double*)real2; return real3; } double DetectPitch(short* data) { int sampleRate = 2048; //Create sine wave double *buffer = malloc(1024*sizeof(short)); double amplitude = 0.25 * 32768; //0.25 * max length of short double frequency = 726.0; for (int n = 0; n < 1024; n++) { buffer[n] = (short)(amplitude * sin((2 * 3.14159265 * n * frequency) / sampleRate)); } doHighPassFilter(data); printf("Pitch from sine wave: %f\n",detectPitchCalculation(buffer, 50.0, 1000.0, 1, 1)); printf("Pitch from mic: %f\n",detectPitchCalculation(data, 50.0, 1000.0, 1, 1)); return 0; } // These work by shifting the signal until it seems to correlate with itself. // In other words if the signal looks very similar to (signal shifted 200 data) than the fundamental period is probably 200 data // Note that the algorithm only works well when there's only one prominent fundamental. // This could be optimized by looking at the rate of change to determine a maximum without testing all periods. double detectPitchCalculation(double* data, double minHz, double maxHz, int nCandidates, int nResolution) { //-------------------------1-------------------------// // note that higher frequency means lower period int nLowPeriodInSamples = hzToPeriodInSamples(maxHz, 2048); int nHiPeriodInSamples = hzToPeriodInSamples(minHz, 2048); if (nHiPeriodInSamples <= nLowPeriodInSamples) printf("Bad range for pitch detection."); if (1024 < nHiPeriodInSamples) printf("Not enough data."); double *results = new double[nHiPeriodInSamples - nLowPeriodInSamples]; //-------------------------2-------------------------// for (int period = nLowPeriodInSamples; period < nHiPeriodInSamples; period += nResolution) { double sum = 0; // for each sample, find correlation. (If they are far apart, small) for (int i = 0; i < 1024 - period; i++) sum += data[i] * data[i + period]; double mean = sum / 1024.0; results[period - nLowPeriodInSamples] = mean; } //-------------------------3-------------------------// // find the best indices int *bestIndices = findBestCandidates(nCandidates, results, nHiPeriodInSamples - nLowPeriodInSamples - 1); //note findBestCandidates modifies parameter // convert back to Hz double *res = new double[nCandidates]; for (int i=0; i < nCandidates;i++) res[i] = periodInSamplesToHz(bestIndices[i]+nLowPeriodInSamples, 2048); double pitch2 = res[0]; free(res); free(results); return pitch2; } /// Finds n "best" values from an array. Returns the indices of the best parts. /// (One way to do this would be to sort the array, but that could take too long. /// Warning: Changes the contents of the array!!! Do not use result array afterwards. int* findBestCandidates(int n, double* inputs,int length) { //int length = inputs.Length; if (length < n) printf("Length of inputs is not long enough."); int *res = new int[n]; double minValue = 0; for (int c = 0; c < n; c++) { // find the highest. double fBestValue = minValue; int nBestIndex = -1; for (int i = 0; i < length; i++) { if (inputs[i] > fBestValue) { nBestIndex = i; fBestValue = inputs[i]; } } // record this highest value res[c] = nBestIndex; // now blank out that index. if(nBestIndex!=-1) inputs[nBestIndex] = minValue; } return res; } int hzToPeriodInSamples(double hz, int sampleRate) { return (int)(1 / (hz / (double)sampleRate)); } double periodInSamplesToHz(int period, int sampleRate) { return 1 / (period / (double)sampleRate); } Thanks, Niall. Edit: Changed the code to implement a high pass filter with a cutoff of 30hz (from What Are High-Pass and Low-Pass Filters?, can anyone tell me how to convert the low-pass filter using convolution to a high-pass one?) but it's still returning random results. Plugging it into a VST host and using VST plugins to compare spectrums isn't an option to me unfortunately.

    Read the article

< Previous Page | 446 447 448 449 450 451 452 453 454 455 456 457  | Next Page >