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• Is this method thread safe?

  - by user

  Are these methods getNewId() & fetchIdsInReserve() thread safe ? public final class IdManager { private static final int NO_OF_USERIDS_TO_KEEP_IN_RESERVE = 200; private static final AtomicInteger regstrdUserIdsCount_Cached = new AtomicInteger(100); private static int noOfUserIdsInReserveCurrently = 0; public static int getNewId(){ synchronized(IdManager.class){ if (noOfUserIdsInReserveCurrently <= 20) fetchIdsInReserve(); noOfUserIdsInReserveCurrently--; } return regstrdUserIdsCount_Cached.incrementAndGet(); } private static synchronized void fetchIdsInReserve(){ int reservedInDBTill = DBCountersReader.readCounterFromDB(....); // read column from DB if (noOfUserIdsInReserveCurrently + regstrdUserIdsCount_Cached.get() != reservedInDBTill) throw new Exception("Unreserved ids alloted by app before reserving from DB"); if (DBUpdater.incrementCounter(....)) //if write back to DB is successful noOfUserIdsInReserveCurrently += NO_OF_USERIDS_TO_KEEP_IN_RESERVE; } }

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• Is it practical to build a web site using strict XHTML and relying on CSS 100% for visual style?

  - by Micah

  I tend to take the academic approach all too often and adhere to strict principles in my development when the reality is that I could have finished the project sooner had I been a little less cautious. I'm looking to find the right amount of practicality. I want to take the "Zen" approach to designing a site which (in my words) says "Use HTML strictly for content structure, and let the CSS magic do the rest". How practical is this in reality? One of the issues I run into is that I want to develop (make functional) the site first, then come back in and design it later. I know structure-wise how I want the site to flow, but I haven't even begun playing with the CSS layout, graphics, or any of the other designy stuff. What is the right approach here?

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• sprintf and % signs in text

  - by Cameron Conner

  A problem I recently ran into was that when trying to update a field in my database using this code would not work. I traced it back to having a % sign in the text being updated ($note, then $note_escaped)... Inserting it with sprintf worked fine though. Should I not be using sprintf for updates, or should it be formed differently? I did some searching but couldn't come up with anything. $id = mysql_real_escape_string($id); $note_escaped = mysql_real_escape_string($note); $editedby = mysql_real_escape_string($author); $editdate = mysql_real_escape_string($date); //insert info from form into database $query= sprintf("UPDATE notes_$suffix SET note='$note_escaped', editedby='$editedby', editdate='$editdate' WHERE id='$id' LIMIT 1"); Thanks much!

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• Python CGI on Amazon AWS EC2 micro-instance -- a how-to!

  - by user595585

  How can you make an EC2 micro instance serve CGI scripts from lighthttpd? For instance Python CGI? Well, it took half a day, but I have gotten Python cgi running on a free Amazon AWS EC2 micro-instance, using the lighttpd server. I think it will help my fellow noobs to put all the steps in one place. Armed with the simple steps below, it will take you only 15 minutes to set things up! My question for the more experienced users reading this is: Are there any security flaws in what I've done? (See file and directory permissions.) Step 1: Start your EC2 instance and ssh into it. [Obviously, you'll need to sign up for Amazon EC2 and save your key pairs to a *.pem file. I won't go over this, as Amazon tells you how to do it.] Sign into your AWS account and start your EC2 instance. The web has tutorials on doing this. Notice that default instance-size that Amazon presents to you is "small." This is not "micro" and so it will cost you money. Be sure to manually choose "micro." (Micro instances are free only for the first year...) Find the public DNS code for your running instance. To do this, click on the instance in the top pane of the dashboard and you'll eventually see the "Public DNS" field populated in the bottom pane. (You may need to fiddle a bit.) The Public DNS looks something like: ec2-174-129-110-23.compute-1.amazonaws.com Start your Unix console program. (On Max OS X, it's called Terminal, and lives in the Applications - Utilities folder.) cd to the directory on your desktop system that has your *.pem file containing your AWS keypairs. ssh to your EC2 instance using a command like: ssh -i <<your *.pem filename>> ec2-user@<< Public DNS address >> So, for me, this was: ssh -i amzn_ec2_keypair.pem [email protected] Your EC2 instance should let you in. Step 2: Download lighttpd to your EC2 instance. To install lighttpd, you will need root access on your EC2 instance. The problem is: Amazon will not let you sign in as root. (Not straightforwardly, at least.) But there is a workaround. Type this command: sudo /bin/bash The system prompt-character will change from $ to #. We won't exit from "sudo" until the very last step in this whole process. Install the lighttpd application (version 1.4.28-1.3.amzn1 for me): yum install lighttpd Install the FastCGI libraries for lighttpd (not needed, but why not?): yum install lighttpd-fastcgi Test that your server is working: /etc/init.d/lighttpd start Step 3: Let the outside world see your server. If you now tried to hit your server from the browser on your desktop, it would fail. The reason: By default, Amazon AWS does not open any ports to your EC2 instance. So, you have to open the ports manually. Go to your EC2 dashboard in your desktop's browser. Click on "Security Groups" in the left pane. One or more security groups will appear in the upper right pane. Choose the one that was assigned to your EC2 instance when you launched your instance. A table called "Allowed Connections" will appear in the lower right pane. A pop-up menu will let you choose "HTTP" as the connection method. The other values in that line of the table should be: tcp, 80, 80, 0.0.0.0/0 Now hit your EC2 instance's server from the desktop in your browser. Use the Public DNS address that you used earlier to SSH in. You should see the lighttpd generic web page. If you don't, I can't help you because I am such a noob. :-( Step 4: Configure lighttpd to serve CGI. Back in the console program, cd to the configuration directory for lighttpd: cd /etc/lighttpd To enable CGI, you want to uncomment one line in the < modules.conf file. (I could have enabled Fast CGI, but baby steps are best!) You can do this with the "ed" editor as follows: ed modules.conf /include "conf.d\/cgi.conf"/ s/#// w q Create the directory where CGI programs will live. (The /etc/lighttpd/lighttpd.conf file determines where this will be.) We'll create our directory in the default location, so we don't have to do any editing of configuration files: cd /var/www/lighttpd mkdir cgi-bin chmod 755 cgi-bin Almost there! Of course you need to put a test CGI program into the cgi-bin directory. Here is one: cd cgi-bin ed a #!/usr/bin/python print "Content-type: text/html\n\n" print "<html><body>Hello, pyworld.</body></html>" . w hellopyworld.py q chmod 655 hellopyworld.py Restart your lighttpd server: /etc/init.d/lighttpd restart Test your CGI program. In your desktop's browser, hit this URL, substituting your EC2 instance's public DNS address: http://<<Public DNS>>/cgi-bin/hellopyworld.py For me, this was: http://ec2-174-129-110-23.compute-1.amazonaws.com/cgi-bin/hellopyworld.py Step 5: That's it! Clean up, and give thanks! To exit from the "sudo /bin/bash" command given earlier, type: exit Acknowledgements: Heaps of thanks to: wiki.vpslink.com/Install_and_Configure_lighttpd www.cyberciti.biz/tips/lighttpd-howto-setup-cgi-bin-access-for-perl-programs.html aws.typepad.com/aws/2010/06/building-three-tier-architectures-with-security-groups.html Good luck, amigos! I apologize for the non-traditional nature of this "question" but I have gotten so much help from Stackoverflow that I was eager to give something back.

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• Bacula windows client could not connect to Bacula director

  - by pr0f-r00t

  I have a Bacula server on my Linux Debian squeeze host (Bacula version 5.0.2) and a Bacula client on Windows XP SP3. On my network each client can see each other, can share files and can ping. On my local server I could run bconsole and the server responds but when I run bconsole or bat on my windows client the server does not respond. Here are my configuration files: bacula-dir.conf: # # Default Bacula Director Configuration file # # The only thing that MUST be changed is to add one or more # file or directory names in the Include directive of the # FileSet resource. # # For Bacula release 5.0.2 (28 April 2010) -- debian squeeze/sid # # You might also want to change the default email address # from root to your address. See the "mail" and "operator" # directives in the Messages resource. # Director { # define myself Name = nima-desktop-dir DIRport = 9101 # where we listen for UA connections QueryFile = "/etc/bacula/scripts/query.sql" WorkingDirectory = "/var/lib/bacula" PidDirectory = "/var/run/bacula" Maximum Concurrent Jobs = 1 Password = "Cv70F6pf1t6pBopT4vQOnigDrR0v3L" # Console password Messages = Daemon DirAddress = 127.0.0.1 # DirAddress = 72.16.208.1 } JobDefs { Name = "DefaultJob" Type = Backup Level = Incremental Client = nima-desktop-fd FileSet = "Full Set" Schedule = "WeeklyCycle" Storage = File Messages = Standard Pool = File Priority = 10 Write Bootstrap = "/var/lib/bacula/%c.bsr" } # # Define the main nightly save backup job # By default, this job will back up to disk in /nonexistant/path/to/file/archive/dir Job { Name = "BackupClient1" JobDefs = "DefaultJob" } #Job { # Name = "BackupClient2" # Client = nima-desktop2-fd # JobDefs = "DefaultJob" #} # Backup the catalog database (after the nightly save) Job { Name = "BackupCatalog" JobDefs = "DefaultJob" Level = Full FileSet="Catalog" Schedule = "WeeklyCycleAfterBackup" # This creates an ASCII copy of the catalog # Arguments to make_catalog_backup.pl are: # make_catalog_backup.pl <catalog-name> RunBeforeJob = "/etc/bacula/scripts/make_catalog_backup.pl MyCatalog" # This deletes the copy of the catalog RunAfterJob = "/etc/bacula/scripts/delete_catalog_backup" Write Bootstrap = "/var/lib/bacula/%n.bsr" Priority = 11 # run after main backup } # # Standard Restore template, to be changed by Console program # Only one such job is needed for all Jobs/Clients/Storage ... # Job { Name = "RestoreFiles" Type = Restore Client=nima-desktop-fd FileSet="Full Set" Storage = File Pool = Default Messages = Standard Where = /nonexistant/path/to/file/archive/dir/bacula-restores } # job for vmware windows host Job { Name = "nimaxp-fd" Type = Backup Client = nimaxp-fd FileSet = "nimaxp-fs" Schedule = "WeeklyCycle" Storage = File Messages = Standard Pool = Default Write Bootstrap = "/var/bacula/working/rsys-win-www-1-fd.bsr" #Change this } # job for vmware windows host Job { Name = "arg-michael-fd" Type = Backup Client = nimaxp-fd FileSet = "arg-michael-fs" Schedule = "WeeklyCycle" Storage = File Messages = Standard Pool = Default Write Bootstrap = "/var/bacula/working/rsys-win-www-1-fd.bsr" #Change this } # List of files to be backed up FileSet { Name = "Full Set" Include { Options { signature = MD5 } # # Put your list of files here, preceded by 'File =', one per line # or include an external list with: # # File = <file-name # # Note: / backs up everything on the root partition. # if you have other partitions such as /usr or /home # you will probably want to add them too. # # By default this is defined to point to the Bacula binary # directory to give a reasonable FileSet to backup to # disk storage during initial testing. # File = /usr/sbin } # # If you backup the root directory, the following two excluded # files can be useful # Exclude { File = /var/lib/bacula File = /nonexistant/path/to/file/archive/dir File = /proc File = /tmp File = /.journal File = /.fsck } } # List of files to be backed up FileSet { Name = "nimaxp-fs" Enable VSS = yes Include { Options { signature = MD5 } File = "C:\softwares" File = C:/softwares File = "C:/softwares" } } # List of files to be backed up FileSet { Name = "arg-michael-fs" Enable VSS = yes Include { Options { signature = MD5 } File = "C:\softwares" File = C:/softwares File = "C:/softwares" } } # # When to do the backups, full backup on first sunday of the month, # differential (i.e. incremental since full) every other sunday, # and incremental backups other days Schedule { Name = "WeeklyCycle" Run = Full 1st sun at 23:05 Run = Differential 2nd-5th sun at 23:05 Run = Incremental mon-sat at 23:05 } # This schedule does the catalog. It starts after the WeeklyCycle Schedule { Name = "WeeklyCycleAfterBackup" Run = Full sun-sat at 23:10 } # This is the backup of the catalog FileSet { Name = "Catalog" Include { Options { signature = MD5 } File = "/var/lib/bacula/bacula.sql" } } # Client (File Services) to backup Client { Name = nima-desktop-fd Address = localhost FDPort = 9102 Catalog = MyCatalog Password = "_MOfxEuRzxijc0DIMcBqtyx9iW1tzE7V6" # password for FileDaemon File Retention = 30 days # 30 days Job Retention = 6 months # six months AutoPrune = yes # Prune expired Jobs/Files } # Client file service for vmware windows host Client { Name = nimaxp-fd Address = nimaxp FDPort = 9102 Catalog = MyCatalog Password = "Ku8F1YAhDz5EMUQjiC9CcSw95Aho9XbXailUmjOaAXJP" # password for FileDaemon File Retention = 30 days # 30 days Job Retention = 6 months # six months AutoPrune = yes # Prune expired Jobs/Files } # Client file service for vmware windows host Client { Name = arg-michael-fd Address = 192.168.0.61 FDPort = 9102 Catalog = MyCatalog Password = "b4E9FU6s/9Zm4BVFFnbXVKhlyd/zWxj0oWITKK6CALR/" # password for FileDaemon File Retention = 30 days # 30 days Job Retention = 6 months # six months AutoPrune = yes # Prune expired Jobs/Files } # # Second Client (File Services) to backup # You should change Name, Address, and Password before using # #Client { # Name = nima-desktop2-fd # Address = localhost2 # FDPort = 9102 # Catalog = MyCatalog # Password = "_MOfxEuRzxijc0DIMcBqtyx9iW1tzE7V62" # password for FileDaemon 2 # File Retention = 30 days # 30 days # Job Retention = 6 months # six months # AutoPrune = yes # Prune expired Jobs/Files #} # Definition of file storage device Storage { Name = File # Do not use "localhost" here Address = localhost # N.B. Use a fully qualified name here SDPort = 9103 Password = "Cj-gtxugC4dAymY01VTSlUgMTT5LFMHf9" Device = FileStorage Media Type = File } # Definition of DDS tape storage device #Storage { # Name = DDS-4 # Do not use "localhost" here # Address = localhost # N.B. Use a fully qualified name here # SDPort = 9103 # Password = "Cj-gtxugC4dAymY01VTSlUgMTT5LFMHf9" # password for Storage daemon # Device = DDS-4 # must be same as Device in Storage daemon # Media Type = DDS-4 # must be same as MediaType in Storage daemon # Autochanger = yes # enable for autochanger device #} # Definition of 8mm tape storage device #Storage { # Name = "8mmDrive" # Do not use "localhost" here # Address = localhost # N.B. Use a fully qualified name here # SDPort = 9103 # Password = "Cj-gtxugC4dAymY01VTSlUgMTT5LFMHf9" # Device = "Exabyte 8mm" # MediaType = "8mm" #} # Definition of DVD storage device #Storage { # Name = "DVD" # Do not use "localhost" here # Address = localhost # N.B. Use a fully qualified name here # SDPort = 9103 # Password = "Cj-gtxugC4dAymY01VTSlUgMTT5LFMHf9" # Device = "DVD Writer" # MediaType = "DVD" #} # Generic catalog service Catalog { Name = MyCatalog # Uncomment the following line if you want the dbi driver # dbdriver = "dbi:sqlite3"; dbaddress = 127.0.0.1; dbport = dbname = "bacula"; dbuser = ""; dbpassword = "" } # Reasonable message delivery -- send most everything to email address # and to the console Messages { Name = Standard # # NOTE! If you send to two email or more email addresses, you will need # to replace the %r in the from field (-f part) with a single valid # email address in both the mailcommand and the operatorcommand. # What this does is, it sets the email address that emails would display # in the FROM field, which is by default the same email as they're being # sent to. However, if you send email to more than one address, then # you'll have to set the FROM address manually, to a single address. # for example, a '[email protected]', is better since that tends to # tell (most) people that its coming from an automated source. # mailcommand = "/usr/lib/bacula/bsmtp -h localhost -f \"\(Bacula\) \<%r\>\" -s \"Bacula: %t %e of %c %l\" %r" operatorcommand = "/usr/lib/bacula/bsmtp -h localhost -f \"\(Bacula\) \<%r\>\" -s \"Bacula: Intervention needed for %j\" %r" mail = root@localhost = all, !skipped operator = root@localhost = mount console = all, !skipped, !saved # # WARNING! the following will create a file that you must cycle from # time to time as it will grow indefinitely. However, it will # also keep all your messages if they scroll off the console. # append = "/var/lib/bacula/log" = all, !skipped catalog = all } # # Message delivery for daemon messages (no job). Messages { Name = Daemon mailcommand = "/usr/lib/bacula/bsmtp -h localhost -f \"\(Bacula\) \<%r\>\" -s \"Bacula daemon message\" %r" mail = root@localhost = all, !skipped console = all, !skipped, !saved append = "/var/lib/bacula/log" = all, !skipped } # Default pool definition Pool { Name = Default Pool Type = Backup Recycle = yes # Bacula can automatically recycle Volumes AutoPrune = yes # Prune expired volumes Volume Retention = 365 days # one year } # File Pool definition Pool { Name = File Pool Type = Backup Recycle = yes # Bacula can automatically recycle Volumes AutoPrune = yes # Prune expired volumes Volume Retention = 365 days # one year Maximum Volume Bytes = 50G # Limit Volume size to something reasonable Maximum Volumes = 100 # Limit number of Volumes in Pool } # Scratch pool definition Pool { Name = Scratch Pool Type = Backup } # # Restricted console used by tray-monitor to get the status of the director # Console { Name = nima-desktop-mon Password = "-T0h6HCXWYNy0wWqOomysMvRGflQ_TA6c" CommandACL = status, .status } bacula-fd.conf on client: # # Default Bacula File Daemon Configuration file # # For Bacula release 5.0.3 (08/05/10) -- Windows MinGW32 # # There is not much to change here except perhaps the # File daemon Name # # # "Global" File daemon configuration specifications # FileDaemon { # this is me Name = nimaxp-fd FDport = 9102 # where we listen for the director WorkingDirectory = "C:\\Program Files\\Bacula\\working" Pid Directory = "C:\\Program Files\\Bacula\\working" # Plugin Directory = "C:\\Program Files\\Bacula\\plugins" Maximum Concurrent Jobs = 10 } # # List Directors who are permitted to contact this File daemon # Director { Name = Nima-desktop-dir Password = "Cv70F6pf1t6pBopT4vQOnigDrR0v3L" } # # Restricted Director, used by tray-monitor to get the # status of the file daemon # Director { Name = nimaxp-mon Password = "q5b5g+LkzDXorMViFwOn1/TUnjUyDlg+gRTBp236GrU3" Monitor = yes } # Send all messages except skipped files back to Director Messages { Name = Standard director = Nima-desktop = all, !skipped, !restored } I have checked my firewall and disabled the firewall but it doesn't work.

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• Installing Oracle 11gR2 on RHEL 6.2

  - by Chris

  Hello all I'm having some difficulty installing Oracle 11gR2 on RHEL 6.2 I have compiled a giant list of every single step I have taken so far I installed RHEL 6.2 on VMWARE it did it's easy install automatically I Selected 4gb of memory Selected max size of 80Gb Selected 2 processors Sorry for the bad styling copy paste isn't working correctly The version of oracle i downloaded is Linux x86-64 11.2.0.1 I am installing this on a local machine NOT a remote machine I followed the following documentation http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E11882_01/install.112/e24326/toc.htm I bolded the steps which I was least sure about from my research Easy installed with RHEL 6.2 for VMWARE Registered with red hat so I can get updates Reinstalled vmware-tools by pressing enter at every choice Sudo yum update at the end something about GPG key selected y then y Checked Memory Requirements grep MemTotal /proc/meminfo MemTotal: 3921368 kb uname -m x86_64 grep SwapTotal /proc/meminfo SwapTotal: 6160376 kb free total used free shared buffers cached Mem: 3921368 2032012 1889356 0 76216 1533268 -/+ buffers/cache: 422528 3498840 Swap: 6160376 0 6160376 df -h /dev/shm Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on tmpfs 1.9G 276K 1.9G 1% /dev/shm df -h /tmp Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/sda2 73G 2.7G 67G 4% / df -h Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/sda2 73G 2.7G 67G 4% / tmpfs 1.9G 276K 1.9G 1% /dev/shm /dev/sda1 291M 58M 219M 21% /boot All looked fine to me except maybe for swap? Software Requirements cat /proc/version Linux version 2.6.32-220.el6.x86_64 ([email protected]) (gcc version 4.4.5 20110214 (Red Hat 4.4.5-6) (GCC) ) #1 SMP Wed Nov 9 08:03:13 EST 2011 uname -r 2.6.32-220.el6.x86_64 (same as above but whatever) According to the tutorial should be On Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 2.6.32-71.el6.x86_64 or later These are the versions of software I have installed binutils-2.20.51.0.2-5.28.el6.x86_64 compat-libcap1-1.10-1.x86_64 compat-libstdc++-33-3.2.3-69.el6.x86_64 compat-libstdc++-33.i686 0:3.2.3-69.el6 gcc-4.4.6-3.el6.x86_64 gcc-c++.x86_64 0:4.4.6-3.el6 glibc-2.12-1.47.el6_2.12.x86_64 glibc-2.12-1.47.el6_2.12.i686 glibc-devel-2.12-1.47.el6_2.12.x86_64 glibc-devel.i686 0:2.12-1.47.el6_2.12 ksh.x86_64 0:20100621-12.el6_2.1 libgcc-4.4.6-3.el6.x86_64 libgcc-4.4.6-3.el6.i686 libstdc++-4.4.6-3.el6.x86_64 libstdc++.i686 0:4.4.6-3.el6 libstdc++-devel.i686 0:4.4.6-3.el6 libstdc++-devel-4.4.6-3.el6.x86_64 libaio-0.3.107-10.el6.x86_64 libaio-0.3.107-10.el6.i686 libaio-devel-0.3.107-10.el6.x86_64 libaio-devel-0.3.107-10.el6.i686 make-3.81-19.el6.x86_64 sysstat-9.0.4-18.el6.x86_64 unixODBC-2.2.14-11.el6.x86_64 unixODBC-devel-2.2.14-11.el6.x86_64 unixODBC-devel-2.2.14-11.el6.i686 unixODBC-2.2.14-11.el6.i686 8. Probably screwed up here or step 9 /usr/sbin/groupadd oinstall /usr/sbin/groupadd dba(not sure why this isn't in the tutorial) /usr/sbin/useradd -g oinstall -G dba oracle passwd oracle /sbin/sysctl -a | grep sem Xkernel.sem = 250 32000 32 128 /sbin/sysctl -a | grep shm kernel.shmmax = 68719476736 kernel.shmall = 4294967296 kernel.shmmni = 4096 vm.hugetlb_shm_group = 0 /sbin/sysctl -a | grep file-max Xfs.file-max = 384629 /sbin/sysctl -a | grep ip_local_port_range Xnet.ipv4.ip_local_port_range = 32768 61000 /sbin/sysctl -a | grep rmem_default Xnet.core.rmem_default = 124928 /sbin/sysctl -a | grep rmem_max Xnet.core.rmem_max = 131071 /sbin/sysctl -a | grep wmem_max Xnet.core.wmem_max = 131071 /sbin/sysctl -a | grep wmem_default Xnet.core.wmem_default = 124928 Here is my sysctl.conf file I only added the items that were bigger: Kernel sysctl configuration file for Red Hat Linux # For binary values, 0 is disabled, 1 is enabled. See sysctl(8) and sysctl.conf(5) for more details. Controls IP packet forwarding net.ipv4.ip_forward = 0 Controls source route verification net.ipv4.conf.default.rp_filter = 1 Do not accept source routing net.ipv4.conf.default.accept_source_route = 0 Controls the System Request debugging functionality of the kernel kernel.sysrq = 0 Controls whether core dumps will append the PID to the core filename. Useful for debugging multi-threaded applications. kernel.core_uses_pid = 1 Controls the use of TCP syncookies net.ipv4.tcp_syncookies = 1 Disable netfilter on bridges. net.bridge.bridge-nf-call-ip6tables = 0 net.bridge.bridge-nf-call-iptables = 0 net.bridge.bridge-nf-call-arptables = 0 Controls the maximum size of a message, in bytes kernel.msgmnb = 65536 Controls the default maxmimum size of a mesage queue kernel.msgmax = 65536 Controls the maximum shared segment size, in bytes kernel.shmmax = 68719476736 Controls the maximum number of shared memory segments, in pages kernel.shmall = 4294967296 fs.aio-max-nr = 1048576 fs.file-max = 6815744 kernel.sem = 250 32000 100 128 net.ipv4.ip_local_port_range = 9000 65500 net.core.rmem_default = 262144 net.core.rmem_max = 4194304 net.core.wmem_default = 262144 net.core.wmem_max = 1048576 /sbin/sysctl -p net.ipv4.ip_forward = 0 net.ipv4.conf.default.rp_filter = 1 net.ipv4.conf.default.accept_source_route = 0 kernel.sysrq = 0 kernel.core_uses_pid = 1 net.ipv4.tcp_syncookies = 1 error: "net.bridge.bridge-nf-call-ip6tables" is an unknown key error: "net.bridge.bridge-nf-call-iptables" is an unknown key error: "net.bridge.bridge-nf-call-arptables" is an unknown key kernel.msgmnb = 65536 kernel.msgmax = 65536 kernel.shmmax = 68719476736 kernel.shmall = 4294967296 fs.aio-max-nr = 1048576 fs.file-max = 6815744 kernel.sem = 250 32000 100 128 net.ipv4.ip_local_port_range = 9000 65500 net.core.rmem_default = 262144 net.core.rmem_max = 4194304 net.core.wmem_default = 262144 net.core.wmem_max = 1048576 su - oracle ulimit -Sn 1024 ulimit -Hn 1024 ulimit -Su 1024 ulimit -Hu 30482 ulimit -Su 1024 ulimit -Ss 10240 ulimit -Hs unlimited su - nano /etc/security/limits.conf *added to the end of the file * oracle soft nproc 2047 oracle hard nproc 16384 oracle soft nofile 1024 oracle hard nofile 65536 oracle soft stack 10240 exit exit su - mkdir -p /app/ chown -R oracle:oinstall /app/ chmod -R 775 /app/ 9. THIS IS PROBABLY WHERE I MESSED UP I then exited out of the root account so now I'm back in my account chris then I su - oracle echo $SHELL /bin/bash umask 0022 (so it should be set already to what is neccesary) Also from what I have read I do not need to set the DISPLAY variable because I'm installing this on the localhost I then opened the .bash_profile of the oracle and changed it to the following .bash_profile Get the aliases and functions if [ -f ~/.bashrc ]; then . ~/.bashrc fi User specific environment and startup programs PATH=$PATH:$HOME/bin; export PATH ORACLE_BASE=/app/oracle ORACLE_SID=orcl export ORACLE_BASE ORACLE_SID I then shutdown the virtual machine shared my desktop folder from my windows 7 then turned back on the virtual machine logged in as chris opened up a terminal then: su - for some reason the shared folder didn't appear so I reinstalled vmware tools again and restarted then same as before su - cp -R linux_oracle/database /db; chown -R oracle:oinstall /db; chmod -R 775 /db; ll /db drwxrwxr-x. 8 oracle oinstall 4096 Jun 5 06:20 database exit su - oracle cd /db/database ./runInstaller AND FINALLY THE INFAMOUS JAVA:132 ERROR MESSAGE Starting Oracle Universal Installer... Checking Temp space: must be greater than 80 MB. Actual 65646 MB Passed Checking swap space: must be greater than 150 MB. Actual 6015 MB Passed Checking monitor: must be configured to display at least 256 colors. Actual 16777216 Passed Preparing to launch Oracle Universal Installer from /tmp/OraInstall2012-06-05_06-47-12AM. Please wait ...[oracle@localhost database]$ Exception in thread "main" java.lang.UnsatisfiedLinkError: /tmp/OraInstall2012-06-05_06-47-12AM/jdk/jre/lib/i386/xawt/libmawt.so: libXext.so.6: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory at java.lang.ClassLoader$NativeLibrary.load(Native Method) at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadLibrary0(ClassLoader.java:1751) at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadLibrary(ClassLoader.java:1647) at java.lang.Runtime.load0(Runtime.java:769) at java.lang.System.load(System.java:968) at java.lang.ClassLoader$NativeLibrary.load(Native Method) at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadLibrary0(ClassLoader.java:1751) at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadLibrary(ClassLoader.java:1668) at java.lang.Runtime.loadLibrary0(Runtime.java:822) at java.lang.System.loadLibrary(System.java:993) at sun.security.action.LoadLibraryAction.run(LoadLibraryAction.java:50) at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method) at java.awt.Toolkit.loadLibraries(Toolkit.java:1509) at java.awt.Toolkit.(Toolkit.java:1530) at com.jgoodies.looks.LookUtils.isLowResolution(Unknown Source) at com.jgoodies.looks.LookUtils.(Unknown Source) at com.jgoodies.looks.plastic.PlasticLookAndFeel.(PlasticLookAndFeel.java:122) at java.lang.Class.forName0(Native Method) at java.lang.Class.forName(Class.java:242) at javax.swing.SwingUtilities.loadSystemClass(SwingUtilities.java:1783) at javax.swing.UIManager.setLookAndFeel(UIManager.java:480) at oracle.install.commons.util.Application.startup(Application.java:758) at oracle.install.commons.flow.FlowApplication.startup(FlowApplication.java:164) at oracle.install.commons.flow.FlowApplication.startup(FlowApplication.java:181) at oracle.install.commons.base.driver.common.Installer.startup(Installer.java:265) at oracle.install.ivw.db.driver.DBInstaller.startup(DBInstaller.java:114) at oracle.install.ivw.db.driver.DBInstaller.main(DBInstaller.java:132)

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• CentOS Client - Unable to Establish iSCSI connection with multiple interfaces on the initiator

  - by slashdot

  So after upgrading to CentOS 6.2, I am seemingly no longer able to login into my iSCSI targets. I have multiple interfaces on different subnets on the system, and I first thought that it had to do with the fact that I may not be binding correct interfaces, which seems to be the case when looking at netstat, as this is clearly wrong: [root]? netstat -na|grep .90 tcp 0 1 10.10.100.60:42354 10.10.8.90:3260 SYN_SENT tcp 0 1 10.10.100.60:40777 10.10.9.90:3260 SYN_SENT I then went ahead and disabled all but one interface, and so as a result netstat appears to be correct, but the issue with login remains. I am positive that the target never sees a packet, because I see nothing by SYN_SENT. I know the problem is on my client, because the target is servicing multiple systems, none of which are CentOS 6.2. At this point I am pretty confident that some things changed between CentOS 6.0/6.1 and 6.2. So, if anyone have any thoughts, or ran into this, I would very much like to hear your thoughts. [root]? iscsiadm --mode node --targetname iqn.2011-12.dom.homer:01:lab-centos-servers-00001 --portal 10.10.8.90:3260,2 --interface=sw-iscsi-0 --login Logging in to [iface: sw-iscsi-0, target: iqn.2011-12.dom.homer:01:lab-centos-servers-00001, portal: 10.10.8.90,3260] (multiple) iscsiadm: Could not login to [iface: sw-iscsi-0, target: iqn.2011-12.dom.homer:01:lab-centos-servers-00001, portal: 10.10.8.90,3260]. iscsiadm: initiator reported error (8 - connection timed out) iscsiadm: Could not log into all portals [root]? netstat -rn Kernel IP routing table Destination Gateway Genmask Flags MSS Window irtt Iface 10.10.8.0 0.0.0.0 255.255.255.0 U 0 0 0 eth2.7 10.10.9.0 0.0.0.0 255.255.255.0 U 0 0 0 eth3.7 10.10.100.0 0.0.0.0 255.255.252.0 U 0 0 0 eth0 169.254.0.0 0.0.0.0 255.255.0.0 U 0 0 0 eth0 169.254.0.0 0.0.0.0 255.255.0.0 U 0 0 0 eth1 169.254.0.0 0.0.0.0 255.255.0.0 U 0 0 0 eth2 169.254.0.0 0.0.0.0 255.255.0.0 U 0 0 0 eth3 169.254.0.0 0.0.0.0 255.255.0.0 U 0 0 0 eth2.7 169.254.0.0 0.0.0.0 255.255.0.0 U 0 0 0 eth3.7 0.0.0.0 10.10.100.1 0.0.0.0 UG 0 0 0 eth0 Output of ip addr show for the two interfaces involved: [root]? for i in 2.7 3.7; do ip addr show eth$i; done 6: eth2.7@eth2: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc noqueue state UP link/ether 00:0c:29:94:5b:8d brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff inet 10.10.8.60/24 brd 10.10.8.255 scope global eth2.7 inet6 fe80::20c:29ff:fe94:5b8d/64 scope link valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever 7: eth3.7@eth3: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc noqueue state UP link/ether 00:0c:29:94:5b:97 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff inet 10.10.9.60/24 brd 10.10.9.255 scope global eth3.7 inet6 fe80::20c:29ff:fe94:5b97/64 scope link valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever Update 01/06/2012: This issue is getting even more interesting by the day it seems. I went a few weeks back and grabbed a snapshot of this system from before upgrading to 6.2. I spun up a new system from the snapshot, and reconfigured interface info and host keys, as well as iSCSI initiator and iscsi interface info to match new MACs. Changed nothing else. Then, I attempted to connect to my targets, and no issues at all. I cannot say that this was unexpected. I then went ahead and compared sysctl settings from both systems and there were differences after the upgrade, but nothing seemingly relevant to iSCSI or IP that could contribute to this. I also noticed that by default now two sessions per connection were enabled after the upgrade, but I changed it back to 1 session in /etc/iscsi/iscsid.conf. On the problematic system we can see that source interface is seemingly wrong, but even when I disable the 10.10.100 interface, problems persist. So, while this may be relevant, I could not validate it for certain. Needless to say, further research is necessary. Something is clearly different between releases. Working system is on 6.1, and non-working is 6.2. ::Working System:: tcp 0 0 10.10.8.210:39566 10.10.8.90:3260 ESTABLISHED tcp 0 0 10.10.9.210:46518 10.10.9.90:3260 ESTABLISHED [root]? ip route show 10.10.8.0/24 dev eth2.6 proto kernel scope link src 10.10.8.210 10.10.9.0/24 dev eth3.7 proto kernel scope link src 10.10.9.210 10.10.100.0/22 dev eth0 proto kernel scope link src 10.10.100.210 169.254.0.0/16 dev eth0 scope link metric 1002 169.254.0.0/16 dev eth2.6 scope link metric 1006 169.254.0.0/16 dev eth3.7 scope link metric 1007 default via 10.10.100.1 dev eth0 ::Non-working System:: tcp 0 1 10.10.100.60:44737 10.10.9.90:3260 SYN_SENT tcp 0 1 10.10.100.60:55479 10.10.8.90:3260 SYN_SENT [root]? ip route show 10.10.8.0/24 dev eth2.6 proto kernel scope link src 10.10.8.60 10.10.9.0/24 dev eth3.7 proto kernel scope link src 10.10.9.60 10.10.100.0/22 dev eth0 proto kernel scope link src 10.10.100.60 169.254.0.0/16 dev eth0 scope link metric 1002 169.254.0.0/16 dev eth2.6 scope link metric 1006 169.254.0.0/16 dev eth3.7 scope link metric 1007 default via 10.10.100.1 dev eth0 And the result is still same: [root]? iscsiadm: Could not login to [iface: sw-iscsi-0, target: iqn.2011-12.dom.homer:01:lab-centos-servers-00001, portal: 10.10.8.90,3260]. iscsiadm: initiator reported error (8 - connection timed out) iscsiadm: Could not login to [iface: sw-iscsi-1, target: iqn.2011-12.dom.homer:02:lab-centos-servers-00001, portal: 10.10.9.90,3260]. iscsiadm: initiator reported error (8 - connection timed out) iscsiadm: Could not log into all portals Update 01/08/2012: I believe I have been able to figure out the answer to my issue. It is quite obscure and I doubt this will happen to anyone else any time soon. It turns out that setting iface.iscsi_ifacename and iface.hwaddress in the interfaces configuration file is not legal. When one manually adds an iscsi target, such as below, all settings from the interface config file are copied into the node config file, that gets created by the below command. Result is parameters iface.iscsi_ifacename and iface.hwaddress together in the same config file. These parameters are seemingly mutually exclusive, which does not exactly make sense, or there is perhaps an oversight in the codepath. Perhaps I will investigate further. # iscsiadm -m node --op new -T iqn.2011-12.dom.homer:01:lab-centos-servers-00001 -p 10.10.8.90,3260,2 -I sw-iscsi-0 # iscsiadm -m node --op new -T iqn.2011-12.dom.homer:02:lab-centos-servers-00001 -p 10.10.9.90,3260,2 -I sw-iscsi-1 Notice, below I commented out iface.hwaddress and iface.ipaddress, after which I re-added targets, with same command as above. All works just fine. [root]? cat * # BEGIN RECORD 2.0-872.33.el6 iface.iscsi_ifacename = sw-iscsi-0 iface.net_ifacename = eth2.6 #iface.hwaddress = XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX #iface.ipaddress = 10.10.8.60 iface.transport_name = tcp iface.vlan_id = 6 iface.vlan_priority = 0 iface.iface_num = 0 iface.mtu = 0 iface.port = 0 # END RECORD # BEGIN RECORD 2.0-872.33.el6 iface.iscsi_ifacename = sw-iscsi-1 iface.net_ifacename = eth3.7 #iface.hwaddress = XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX #iface.ipaddress = 10.10.9.60 iface.transport_name = tcp iface.vlan_id = 7 iface.vlan_priority = 0 iface.iface_num = 0 iface.mtu = 0 iface.port = 0 # END RECORD Again, chances of this happening to someone else are slim to none, so likely waste of time typing this up. But, if someone does encounter this issue, I hope this post will help.

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• EC2 instance suddenly refusing SSH connections and won't respond to ping

  - by Chris

  My instance was running fine and this morning I was able to access a Ruby on Rails app hosted on it. An hour later I suddenly wasn't able to access my site, my SSH connection attempts were refused and the server wasn't even responding to ping. I didn't change anything on my system during that hour and reboots aren't fixing it. I've never had any problems connecting or pinging the system before. Can someone please help? This is on my production system! OS: CentOS 5 AMI ID: ami-10b55379 Type: m1.small [] ~% ssh -v *****@meeteor.com OpenSSH_5.2p1, OpenSSL 0.9.8l 5 Nov 2009 debug1: Reading configuration data /etc/ssh_config debug1: Connecting to meeteor.com [184.73.235.191] port 22. debug1: connect to address 184.73.235.191 port 22: Connection refused ssh: connect to host meeteor.com port 22: Connection refused [] ~% ping meeteor.com PING meeteor.com (184.73.235.191): 56 data bytes Request timeout for icmp_seq 0 Request timeout for icmp_seq 1 Request timeout for icmp_seq 2 ^C --- meeteor.com ping statistics --- 4 packets transmitted, 0 packets received, 100.0% packet loss [] ~% ========= System Log ========= Restarting system. Linux version 2.6.16-xenU ([email protected]) (gcc version 4.0.1 20050727 (Red Hat 4.0.1-5)) #1 SMP Mon May 28 03:41:49 SAST 2007 BIOS-provided physical RAM map: Xen: 0000000000000000 - 000000006a400000 (usable) 980MB HIGHMEM available. 727MB LOWMEM available. NX (Execute Disable) protection: active IRQ lockup detection disabled Built 1 zonelists Kernel command line: root=/dev/sda1 ro 4 Enabling fast FPU save and restore... done. Enabling unmasked SIMD FPU exception support... done. Initializing CPU#0 PID hash table entries: 4096 (order: 12, 65536 bytes) Xen reported: 2599.998 MHz processor. Dentry cache hash table entries: 131072 (order: 7, 524288 bytes) Inode-cache hash table entries: 65536 (order: 6, 262144 bytes) Software IO TLB disabled vmalloc area: ee000000-f53fe000, maxmem 2d7fe000 Memory: 1718700k/1748992k available (1958k kernel code, 20948k reserved, 620k data, 144k init, 1003528k highmem) Checking if this processor honours the WP bit even in supervisor mode... Ok. Calibrating delay using timer specific routine.. 5202.30 BogoMIPS (lpj=26011526) Mount-cache hash table entries: 512 CPU: L1 I Cache: 64K (64 bytes/line), D cache 64K (64 bytes/line) CPU: L2 Cache: 1024K (64 bytes/line) Checking 'hlt' instruction... OK. Brought up 1 CPUs migration_cost=0 Grant table initialized NET: Registered protocol family 16 Brought up 1 CPUs xen_mem: Initialising balloon driver. highmem bounce pool size: 64 pages VFS: Disk quotas dquot_6.5.1 Dquot-cache hash table entries: 1024 (order 0, 4096 bytes) Initializing Cryptographic API io scheduler noop registered io scheduler anticipatory registered (default) io scheduler deadline registered io scheduler cfq registered i8042.c: No controller found. RAMDISK driver initialized: 16 RAM disks of 4096K size 1024 blocksize Xen virtual console successfully installed as tty1 Event-channel device installed. netfront: Initialising virtual ethernet driver. mice: PS/2 mouse device common for all mice md: md driver 0.90.3 MAX_MD_DEVS=256, MD_SB_DISKS=27 md: bitmap version 4.39 NET: Registered protocol family 2 Registering block device major 8 IP route cache hash table entries: 65536 (order: 6, 262144 bytes) TCP established hash table entries: 262144 (order: 9, 2097152 bytes) TCP bind hash table entries: 65536 (order: 7, 524288 bytes) TCP: Hash tables configured (established 262144 bind 65536) TCP reno registered TCP bic registered NET: Registered protocol family 1 NET: Registered protocol family 17 NET: Registered protocol family 15 Using IPI No-Shortcut mode md: Autodetecting RAID arrays. md: autorun ... md: ... autorun DONE. kjournald starting. Commit interval 5 seconds EXT3-fs: mounted filesystem with ordered data mode. VFS: Mounted root (ext3 filesystem) readonly. Freeing unused kernel memory: 144k freed *************************************************************** *************************************************************** ** WARNING: Currently emulating unsupported memory accesses ** ** in /lib/tls glibc libraries. The emulation is ** ** slow. To ensure full performance you should ** ** install a 'xen-friendly' (nosegneg) version of ** ** the library, or disable tls support by executing ** ** the following as root: ** ** mv /lib/tls /lib/tls.disabled ** ** Offending process: init (pid=1) ** *************************************************************** *************************************************************** Pausing... 5Pausing... 4Pausing... 3Pausing... 2Pausing... 1Continuing... INIT: version 2.86 booting Welcome to CentOS release 5.4 (Final) Press 'I' to enter interactive startup. Setting clock : Fri Oct 1 14:35:26 EDT 2010 [ OK ] Starting udev: [ OK ] Setting hostname localhost.localdomain: [ OK ] No devices found Setting up Logical Volume Management: [ OK ] Checking filesystems Checking all file systems. [/sbin/fsck.ext3 (1) -- /] fsck.ext3 -a /dev/sda1 /dev/sda1: clean, 275424/1310720 files, 1161123/2621440 blocks [ OK ] Remounting root filesystem in read-write mode: [ OK ] Mounting local filesystems: [ OK ] Enabling local filesystem quotas: [ OK ] Enabling /etc/fstab swaps: [ OK ] INIT: Entering runlevel: 4 Entering non-interactive startup Starting background readahead: [ OK ] Applying ip6tables firewall rules: modprobe: FATAL: Module ip6_tables not found. ip6tables-restore v1.3.5: ip6tables-restore: unable to initializetable 'filter' Error occurred at line: 3 Try `ip6tables-restore -h' or 'ip6tables-restore --help' for more information. [FAILED] Applying iptables firewall rules: [ OK ] Loading additional iptables modules: ip_conntrack_netbios_ns [ OK ] Bringing up loopback interface: [ OK ] Bringing up interface eth0: Determining IP information for eth0... done. [ OK ] Starting auditd: [FAILED] Starting irqbalance: [ OK ] Starting portmap: [ OK ] FATAL: Module lockd not found. Starting NFS statd: [ OK ] Starting RPC idmapd: FATAL: Module sunrpc not found. FATAL: Error running install command for sunrpc Error: RPC MTAB does not exist. Starting system message bus: [ OK ] Starting Bluetooth services:[ OK ] [ OK ] Can't open RFCOMM control socket: Address family not supported by protocol Mounting other filesystems: [ OK ] Starting PC/SC smart card daemon (pcscd): [ OK ] Starting hidd: Can't open HIDP control socket: Address family not supported by protocol [FAILED] Starting autofs: Starting automount: automount: test mount forbidden or incorrect kernel protocol version, kernel protocol version 5.00 or above required. [FAILED] [FAILED] Starting sshd: [ OK ] Starting cups: [ OK ] Starting sendmail: [ OK ] Starting sm-client: [ OK ] Starting console mouse services: no console device found[FAILED] Starting crond: [ OK ] Starting xfs: [ OK ] Starting anacron: [ OK ] Starting atd: [ OK ] % Total % Received % Xferd Average Speed Time Time Time Current Dload Upload Total Spent Left Speed 100 390 100 390 0 0 58130 0 --:--:-- --:--:-- --:--:-- 58130 100 390 100 390 0 0 56984 0 --:--:-- --:--:-- --:--:-- 0 Starting yum-updatesd: [ OK ] Starting Avahi daemon... [ OK ] Starting HAL daemon: [ OK ] Starting OSSEC: [ OK ] Starting smartd: [ OK ] c CentOS release 5.4 (Final) Kernel 2.6.16-xenU on an i686 domU-12-31-39-00-C4-97 login: INIT: Id "2" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes INIT: Id "3" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes INIT: Id "4" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes INIT: Id "5" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes INIT: Id "6" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes

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• Windows periodically disconnects, reconnects to the network

  - by einpoklum

  My setup: I have a PC with a Gigabyte GA-MA78S2H motherboard (Realtek Gigabit wired Ethernet on-board). I have the latest drivers (at least the latest driver for the NIC. I'm connecting via an Edimax BR-6216Mg (again, wired connection). For some reason I experience short periodic disconnects and reconnects. Specifically, Skype disconnects, tries to connect, succeeds after a short while; incoming SFTP sessions get dropped; using a browser, I sometime get stuck in the DNS lookup or connection to the website and a page won't load. A couple of seconds later, a reload works. All this happens with Windows XP SP3. With Windows 7, it also happens. (When I initially wrote this question I didn't notice it.) ipconfig for my adapter: Ethernet adapter Local Area Connection: Connection-specific DNS Suffix . : Description . . . . . . . . . . . : Realtek PCIe GBE Family Controller Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : 00-1D-7D-E9-72-9E Dhcp Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : Yes Autoconfiguration Enabled . . . . : Yes IP Address. . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.0.2 Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0 Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.0.254 DHCP Server . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.0.254 DNS Servers . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.117.235.235 62.219.186.7 Lease Obtained. . . . . . . . . . : Saturday, March 10, 2012 8:28:20 AM Lease Expires . . . . . . . . . . : Friday, January 26, 1906 2:00:04 AM A result of some tests a couple of the disconnects: C:\Documents and Settings\eyalroz.BAKNUNIN>nslookup google.com DNS request timed out. timeout was 2 seconds. *** Can't find server name for address 192.117.235.235: Timed out DNS request timed out. timeout was 2 seconds. *** Can't find server name for address 62.219.186.7: Timed out *** Default servers are not available Server: UnKnown Address: 192.117.235.235 DNS request timed out. timeout was 2 seconds. DNS request timed out. timeout was 2 seconds. *** Request to UnKnown timed-out C:\Documents and Settings\eyalroz.BAKNUNIN>ping 194.90.1.5 Pinging 194.90.1.5 with 32 bytes of data: Control-C ^C C:\Documents and Settings\eyalroz.BAKNUNIN>tracert -d 194.90.1.5 Tracing route to 194.90.1.5 over a maximum of 30 hops 1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms 192.168.0.254 2 * * 11 ms 10.168.128.1 3 14 ms 13 ms 14 ms 212.179.160.142 4 * * * Request timed out. 5 * * * Request timed out. 6 * * 47 ms 62.219.189.169 7 31 ms 27 ms 32 ms 62.219.189.150 8 15 ms 14 ms 16 ms 192.114.65.202 9 15 ms 15 ms 11 ms 212.143.10.66 10 13 ms 29 ms 31 ms 212.143.12.234 11 35 ms 15 ms 18 ms 212.143.8.72 12 22 ms 22 ms 16 ms 194.90.1.5 I usually ping 194.90.1.5 (which is not at my ISP) with 15ms response time and no losses. Things I've done/tried: [2012-03-26] I replaced the cable; I thought that made a difference, but the disconnects were back a while later, so that wasn't it. Updated the NIC driver. Tried reducing the MTU (used a utility called Dr. TCP); there was no effect. I updated my board BIOS revision (which caused all the HW to be "reinstalled" or re-identified - successfully). I installed another NIC, and tried switching to it - same effect with the on-board NIC. A while back I tried another router (although it was an Edimax model) - same problem. Connected the computer directly, with no router. Same problem. ping -t to the router (192.168.0.254) gives pongs, nothing is lost, and time is < 1 ms almost always (sometimes it says 1 or 2 ms). This is the case also during the disconnects.

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• Moving the swapfiles to a dedicated partition in Snow Leopard

  - by e.James

  I have been able to move Apple's virtual memory swapfiles to a dedicated partition on my hard drive up until now. The technique I have been using is described in a thread on forums.macosxhints.com. However, with the developer preview of Snow Leopard, this method no longer works. Does anyone know how it could be done with the new OS? Update: I have marked dblu's answer as accepted even though it didn't quite work because he gave excellent, detailed instructions and because his suggestion to use plutil ultimately pointed me in the right direction. The complete, working solution is posted here in the question because I don't have enough reputation to edit the accepted answer. Complete solution: 1. Open Terminal and make a backup copy of Apple's default dynamic_pager.plist: $ cd /System/Library/LaunchDaemons $ sudo cp com.apple.dynamic_pager.plist{,_bak} 2. Convert the plist from binary to plain XML: $ sudo plutil -convert xml1 com.apple.dynamic_pager.plist 3. Open the converted plist with your text editor of choice. (I use pico, see dblu's answer for an example using vim): $ sudo pico -w com.apple.dynamic_pager.plist It should look as follows: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs$ <plist version="1.0"> <dict> <key>EnableTransactions</key> <true/> <key>HopefullyExitsLast</key> <true/> <key>Label</key> <string>com.apple.dynamic_pager</string> <key>OnDemand</key> <false/> <key>ProgramArguments</key> <array> <string>/sbin/dynamic_pager</string> <string>-F</string> <string>/private/var/vm/swapfile</string> </array> </dict> </plist> 4. Change the ProgramArguments array (lines 13 through 18) so that it launches an intermediate shell script instead of launching dynamic_pager directly. See note #1 for details on why this is necessary. <key>ProgramArguments</key> <array> <string>/sbin/dynamic_pager_init</string> </array> 5. Save the plist, and return to the terminal prompt. Using pico, the commands would be: <ctrl+o> to save the file <enter> to accept the same filename (com.apple.dynamic_pager.plist) <ctrl+x> to exit 6. Convert the modified plist back to binary: $ sudo plutil -convert binary1 com.apple.dynamic_pager.plist 7. Create the intermediate shell script: $ cd /sbin $ sudo pico -w dynamic_pager_init The script should look as follows (my partition is called 'Swap', and I chose to put the swapfiles in a hidden directory on that partition, called '.vm' be sure that the directory you specify actually exists): Update: This version of the script makes use of wait4path as suggested by ZILjr: #!/bin/bash #launch Apple's dynamic_pager only when the swap volume is mounted echo "Waiting for Swap volume to mount"; wait4path /Volumes/Swap; echo "Launching dynamic pager on volume Swap"; /sbin/dynamic_pager -F /Volumes/Swap/.vm/swapfile; 8. Save and close dynamic_pager_init (same commands as step 5) 9. Modify permissions and ownership for dynamic_pager_init: $ sudo chmod a+x-w /sbin/dynamic_pager_init $ sudo chown root:wheel /sbin/dynamic_pager_init 10. Verify the permissions on dynamic_pager_init: $ ls -l dynamic_pager_init -r-xr-xr-x 1 root wheel 6 18 Sep 15:11 dynamic_pager_init 11. Restart your Mac. If you run into trouble, switch to verbose startup mode by holding down Command-v immediately after the startup chime. This will let you see all of the startup messages that appear during startup. If you run into even worse trouble (i.e. you never see the login screen), hold down Command-s instead. This will boot the computer in single-user mode (no graphical UI, just a command prompt) and allow you to restore the backup copy of com.apple.dynamic_pager.plist that you made in step 1. 12. Once the computer boots, fire up Terminal and verify that the swap files have actually been moved: $ cd /Volumes/Swap/.vm $ ls -l You should see something like this: -rw------- 1 someUser staff 67108864 18 Sep 12:02 swapfile0 13. Delete the old swapfiles: $ cd /private/var/vm $ sudo rm swapfile* 14. Profit! Note 1 Simply modifying the arguments to dynamic_pager in the plist does not always work, and when it fails, it does so in a spectacularly silent way. The problem stems from the fact that dynamic_pager is launched very early in the startup process. If your swap partition has not yet been mounted when dynamic_pager is first loaded (in my experience, this happens 99% of the time), then the system will fake its way through. It will create a symbolic link in your /Volumes directory which has the same name as your swap partition, but points back to the default swapfile location (/private/var/vm). Then, when your actual swap partition mounts, it will be given the name Swap 1 (or YourDriveName 1). You can see the problem by opening up Terminal and listing the contents of your /Volumes directory: $ cd /Volumes $ ls -l You will see something like this: drwxrwxrwx 11 yourUser staff 442 16 Sep 12:13 Swap -> private/var/vm drwxrwxrwx 14 yourUser staff 5 16 Sep 12:13 Swap 1 lrwxr-xr-x 1 root admin 1 17 Sep 12:01 System -> / Note that this failure can be very hard to spot. If you were to check for the swapfiles as I show in step 12, you would still see them! The symbolic link would make it seem as though your swapfiles had been moved, even though they were actually being stored in the default location. Note 2 I was originally unable to get this to work in Snow Leopard because com.apple.dynamic_pager.plist was stored in binary format. I made a copy of the original file and opened it with Apple's Property List Editor (available with Xcode) in order to make changes, but this process added some extended attributes to the plist file which caused the system to ignore it and just use the defaults. As dblu pointed out, using plutil to convert the file to plain XML works like a charm. Note 3 You can check the Console application to see any messages that dynamic_pager_init echos to the screen. If you see the following lines repeated over and over again, there is a problem with the setup. I ran into these messages because I forgot to create the '.vm' directory that I specified in dynamic_pager_init. com.apple.launchd[1] (com.apple.dynamic_pager[176]) Exited with exit code: 1 com.apple.launchd[1] (com.apple.dynamic_pager) Throttling respawn: Will start in 10 seconds When everything is working properly, you may see the above message a couple of times, but you should also see the following message, and then no more of the "Throttling respawn" messages afterwards. com.apple.dynamic_pager[???] Launching dynamic pager on volume Swap This means that the script did have to wait for the partition to load, but in the end it was successful.

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• my server suddenly crashes every 2 days or so. Programmer has no idea, please help find the cause, here is the top

  - by Alex

  Every couple of days my server suddenly crashes and I must request hardware reset at data center to get it back running. Today I came back to my shell and saw the server was dead and "top" was running on it, and see below for the "top" right before the crash. I opened /var/log/messages and scrolled to the reboot time and see nothing, no errors prior to the hard reboot. (I checked in /etc/syslog.conf and I see "*.info;mail.none;authpriv.none;cron.none /var/log/messages" , isn't this good enough to log all problems?) Usually when I look at the top, the swap is never used up like this! I also don't know why mysqld is at 323% cpu (server only runs drupal and its never slow or overloaded). Solver is my application. I don't know whats that 'sh' doing and 'dovecot' doing. Its driving me crazy over the last month, please help me solve this mystery and stop my downtimes. top - 01:10:06 up 6 days, 5 min, 3 users, load average: 34.87, 18.68, 9.03 Tasks: 500 total, 19 running, 481 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie Cpu(s): 0.0%us, 96.6%sy, 0.0%ni, 1.7%id, 1.8%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st Mem: 8165600k total, 8139764k used, 25836k free, 428k buffers Swap: 2104496k total, 2104496k used, 0k free, 8236k cached PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND 4421 mysql 15 0 571m 105m 976 S 323.5 1.3 9:08.00 mysqld 564 root 20 -5 0 0 0 R 99.5 0.0 2:49.16 kswapd1 25767 apache 19 0 399m 8060 888 D 79.3 0.1 0:06.64 httpd 25781 apache 19 0 398m 5648 492 R 79.0 0.1 0:08.21 httpd 25961 apache 25 0 398m 5700 560 R 76.7 0.1 0:17.81 httpd 25980 apache 25 0 10816 668 520 R 75.0 0.0 0:46.95 sh 563 root 20 -5 0 0 0 D 71.4 0.0 3:12.37 kswapd0 25766 apache 25 0 399m 7256 756 R 69.7 0.1 0:39.83 httpd 25911 apache 25 0 398m 5612 480 R 58.8 0.1 0:17.63 httpd 25782 apache 25 0 440m 38m 648 R 55.2 0.5 0:18.94 httpd 25966 apache 25 0 398m 5640 556 R 55.2 0.1 0:48.84 httpd 4588 root 25 0 74860 596 476 R 53.9 0.0 0:37.90 crond 25939 apache 25 0 2776 172 84 R 48.9 0.0 0:59.46 solver 4575 root 25 0 397m 6004 1144 R 48.6 0.1 1:00.43 httpd 25962 apache 25 0 398m 5628 492 R 47.9 0.1 0:14.58 httpd 25824 apache 25 0 440m 39m 680 D 47.3 0.5 0:57.85 httpd 25968 apache 25 0 398m 5612 528 R 46.6 0.1 0:42.73 httpd 4477 root 25 0 6084 396 280 R 46.3 0.0 0:59.53 dovecot 25982 root 25 0 397m 5108 240 R 45.9 0.1 0:18.01 httpd 25943 apache 25 0 2916 172 8 R 44.0 0.0 0:53.54 solver 30687 apache 25 0 468m 63m 1124 D 42.3 0.8 0:45.02 httpd 25978 apache 25 0 398m 5688 600 R 23.8 0.1 0:40.99 httpd 25983 root 25 0 397m 5272 384 D 14.9 0.1 0:18.99 httpd 935 root 10 -5 0 0 0 D 14.2 0.0 1:54.60 kjournald 25986 root 25 0 397m 5308 420 D 8.9 0.1 0:04.75 httpd 4011 haldaemo 25 0 31568 1476 716 S 5.6 0.0 0:24.36 hald 25956 apache 23 0 398m 5872 644 S 5.6 0.1 0:13.85 httpd 18336 root 18 0 13004 1332 724 R 0.3 0.0 1:46.66 top 1 root 18 0 10372 212 180 S 0.0 0.0 0:05.99 init 2 root RT -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.95 migration/0 3 root 34 19 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.01 ksoftirqd/0 4 root RT -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 watchdog/0 5 root RT -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.15 migration/1 6 root 34 19 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00 .06 ksoftirqd/1 here is a normal top, when server is working fine: top - 01:50:41 up 21 min, 1 user, load average: 2.98, 2.70, 1.68 Tasks: 271 total, 2 running, 269 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie Cpu(s): 15.0%us, 1.1%sy, 0.0%ni, 81.4%id, 2.4%wa, 0.1%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st Mem: 8165600k total, 2035856k used, 6129744k free, 60840k buffers Swap: 2104496k total, 0k used, 2104496k free, 283744k cached PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND 2204 apache 17 0 466m 83m 19m S 25.9 1.0 0:22.16 httpd 11347 apache 15 0 466m 83m 19m S 25.9 1.0 0:26.10 httpd 18204 apache 18 0 481m 97m 19m D 25.2 1.2 0:13.99 httpd 4644 apache 18 0 481m 100m 19m D 24.6 1.3 1:17.12 httpd 4727 apache 17 0 481m 99m 19m S 24.3 1.2 1:10.77 httpd 4777 apache 17 0 482m 102m 21m S 23.6 1.3 1:38.27 httpd 8924 apache 15 0 483m 99m 19m S 22.3 1.3 1:13.41 httpd 9390 apache 18 0 483m 99m 19m S 18.9 1.2 1:05.35 httpd 4728 apache 16 0 481m 101m 19m S 14.3 1.3 1:12.50 httpd 4648 apache 15 0 481m 107m 27m S 12.6 1.4 1:18.62 httpd 24955 apache 15 0 467m 82m 19m S 3.3 1.0 0:21.80 httpd 4722 apache 15 0 503m 118m 19m R 1.7 1.5 1:17.79 httpd 4647 apache 15 0 484m 105m 20m S 1.3 1.3 1:40.73 httpd 4643 apache 16 0 481m 100m 20m S 0.7 1.3 1:11.80 httpd 1561 root 15 0 12900 1264 828 R 0.3 0.0 0:00.54 top 4434 mysql 15 0 496m 55m 4812 S 0.3 0.7 0:06.69 mysqld 4646 apache 15 0 481m 100m 19m S 0.3 1.3 1:25.51 httpd 1 root 18 0 10372 692 580 S 0.0 0.0 0:02.09 init 2 root RT -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.03 migration/0 3 root 34 19 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 ksoftirqd/0 4 root RT -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 watchdog/0 5 root RT -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 migration/1 6 root 34 19 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 ksoftirqd/1 7 root RT -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 watchdog/1 8 root RT -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 migration/2 9 root 34 19 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 ksoftirqd/2 10 root RT -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 watchdog/2 11 root RT -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 migration/3 12 root 34 19 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 ksoftirqd/3 13 root RT -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 watchdog/3 14 root RT -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.03 migration/4 15 root 34 19 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 ksoftirqd/4 16 root RT -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 watchdog/4 17 root RT -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.02 migration/5 18 root 34 19 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 ksoftirqd/5 19 root RT -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 watchdog/5 20 root RT -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.01 migration/6 21 root 34 19 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 ksoftirqd/6 22 root RT -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 watchdog/6 23 root RT -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 migration/7

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• e2fsck extremely slow, although enough memory exists

  - by kaefert

  I've got this external USB-Disk: kaefert@blechmobil:~$ lsusb -s 2:3 Bus 002 Device 003: ID 0bc2:3320 Seagate RSS LLC As can be seen in this dmesg output, there is some problem that prevents that disk from beeing mounted: kaefert@blechmobil:~$ dmesg ... [ 113.084079] usb 2-1: new high-speed USB device number 3 using ehci_hcd [ 113.217783] usb 2-1: New USB device found, idVendor=0bc2, idProduct=3320 [ 113.217787] usb 2-1: New USB device strings: Mfr=2, Product=3, SerialNumber=1 [ 113.217790] usb 2-1: Product: Expansion Desk [ 113.217792] usb 2-1: Manufacturer: Seagate [ 113.217794] usb 2-1: SerialNumber: NA4J4N6K [ 113.435404] usbcore: registered new interface driver uas [ 113.455315] Initializing USB Mass Storage driver... [ 113.468051] scsi5 : usb-storage 2-1:1.0 [ 113.468180] usbcore: registered new interface driver usb-storage [ 113.468182] USB Mass Storage support registered. [ 114.473105] scsi 5:0:0:0: Direct-Access Seagate Expansion Desk 070B PQ: 0 ANSI: 6 [ 114.474342] sd 5:0:0:0: [sdb] 732566645 4096-byte logical blocks: (3.00 TB/2.72 TiB) [ 114.475089] sd 5:0:0:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off [ 114.475092] sd 5:0:0:0: [sdb] Mode Sense: 43 00 00 00 [ 114.475959] sd 5:0:0:0: [sdb] Write cache: enabled, read cache: enabled, doesn't support DPO or FUA [ 114.477093] sd 5:0:0:0: [sdb] 732566645 4096-byte logical blocks: (3.00 TB/2.72 TiB) [ 114.501649] sdb: sdb1 [ 114.502717] sd 5:0:0:0: [sdb] 732566645 4096-byte logical blocks: (3.00 TB/2.72 TiB) [ 114.504354] sd 5:0:0:0: [sdb] Attached SCSI disk [ 116.804408] EXT4-fs (sdb1): ext4_check_descriptors: Checksum for group 3976 failed (47397!=61519) [ 116.804413] EXT4-fs (sdb1): group descriptors corrupted! ... So I went and fired up my favorite partition manager - gparted, and told it to verify and repair the partition sdb1. This made gparted call e2fsck (version 1.42.4 (12-Jun-2012)) e2fsck -f -y -v /dev/sdb1 Although gparted called e2fsck with the "-v" option, sadly it doesn't show me the output of my e2fsck process (bugreport https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=467925 ) I started this whole thing on Sunday (2012-11-04_2200) evening, so about 48 hours ago, this is what htop says about it now (2012-11-06-1900): PID USER PRI NI VIRT RES SHR S CPU% MEM% TIME+ Command 3704 root 39 19 1560M 1166M 768 R 98.0 19.5 42h56:43 e2fsck -f -y -v /dev/sdb1 Now I found a few posts on the internet that discuss e2fsck running slow, for example: http://gparted-forum.surf4.info/viewtopic.php?id=13613 where they write that its a good idea to see if the disk is just that slow because maybe its damaged, and I think these outputs tell me that this is not the case in my case: kaefert@blechmobil:~$ sudo hdparm -tT /dev/sdb /dev/sdb: Timing cached reads: 3562 MB in 2.00 seconds = 1783.29 MB/sec Timing buffered disk reads: 82 MB in 3.01 seconds = 27.26 MB/sec kaefert@blechmobil:~$ sudo hdparm /dev/sdb /dev/sdb: multcount = 0 (off) readonly = 0 (off) readahead = 256 (on) geometry = 364801/255/63, sectors = 5860533160, start = 0 However, although I can read quickly from that disk, this disk speed doesn't seem to be used by e2fsck, considering tools like gkrellm or iotop or this: kaefert@blechmobil:~$ iostat -x Linux 3.2.0-2-amd64 (blechmobil) 2012-11-06 _x86_64_ (2 CPU) avg-cpu: %user %nice %system %iowait %steal %idle 14,24 47,81 14,63 0,95 0,00 22,37 Device: rrqm/s wrqm/s r/s w/s rkB/s wkB/s avgrq-sz avgqu-sz await r_await w_await svctm %util sda 0,59 8,29 2,42 5,14 43,17 160,17 53,75 0,30 39,80 8,72 54,42 3,95 2,99 sdb 137,54 5,48 9,23 0,20 587,07 22,73 129,35 0,07 7,70 7,51 16,18 2,17 2,04 Now I researched a little bit on how to find out what e2fsck is doing with all that processor time, and I found the tool strace, which gives me this: kaefert@blechmobil:~$ sudo strace -p3704 lseek(4, 41026998272, SEEK_SET) = 41026998272 write(4, "\212\354K[_\361\3nl\212\245\352\255jR\303\354\312Yv\334p\253r\217\265\3567\325\257\3766"..., 4096) = 4096 lseek(4, 48404766720, SEEK_SET) = 48404766720 read(4, "\7t\260\366\346\337\304\210\33\267j\35\377'\31f\372\252\ffU\317.y\211\360\36\240c\30`\34"..., 4096) = 4096 lseek(4, 41027002368, SEEK_SET) = 41027002368 write(4, "\232]7Ws\321\352\t\1@[+5\263\334\276{\343zZx\352\21\316`1\271[\202\350R`"..., 4096) = 4096 lseek(4, 48404770816, SEEK_SET) = 48404770816 read(4, "\17\362r\230\327\25\346//\210H\v\311\3237\323K\304\306\361a\223\311\324\272?\213\tq \370\24"..., 4096) = 4096 lseek(4, 41027006464, SEEK_SET) = 41027006464 write(4, "\367yy>x\216?=\324Z\305\351\376&\25\244\210\271\22\306}\276\237\370(\214\205G\262\360\257#"..., 4096) = 4096 lseek(4, 48404774912, SEEK_SET) = 48404774912 read(4, "\365\25\0\21|T\0\21}3t_\272\373\222k\r\177\303\1\201\261\221$\261B\232\3142\21U\316"..., 4096) = 4096 ^CProcess 3704 detached around 16 of these lines every second, so 4 read and 4 write operations every second, which I don't consider to be a lot.. And finally, my question: Will this process ever finish? If those numbers from fseek (48404774912) represent bytes, that would be something like 45 gigabytes, with this beeing a 3 terrabyte disk, which would give me 134 days to go, if the speed stays constant, and e2fsck scans the disk like this completly and only once. Do you have some advice for me? I have most of the data on that disk elsewhere, but I've put a lot of hours into sorting and merging it to this disk, so I would prefer to getting this disk up and running again, without formatting it anew. I don't think that the hardware is damaged since the disk is only a few months and since I can't see any I/O errors in the dmesg output. UPDATE: I just looked at the strace output again (2012-11-06_2300), now it looks like this: lseek(4, 1419860611072, SEEK_SET) = 1419860611072 read(4, "3#\f\2447\335\0\22A\355\374\276j\204'\207|\217V|\23\245[\7VP\251\242\276\207\317:"..., 4096) = 4096 lseek(4, 43018145792, SEEK_SET) = 43018145792 write(4, "]\206\231\342Y\204-2I\362\242\344\6R\205\361\324\177\265\317C\334V\324\260\334\275t=\10F."..., 4096) = 4096 lseek(4, 1419860615168, SEEK_SET) = 1419860615168 read(4, "\262\305\314Y\367\37x\326\245\226\226\320N\333$s\34\204\311\222\7\315\236\336\300TK\337\264\236\211n"..., 4096) = 4096 lseek(4, 43018149888, SEEK_SET) = 43018149888 write(4, "\271\224m\311\224\25!I\376\16;\377\0\223H\25Yd\201Y\342\r\203\271\24eG<\202{\373V"..., 4096) = 4096 lseek(4, 1419860619264, SEEK_SET) = 1419860619264 read(4, ";d\360\177\n\346\253\210\222|\250\352T\335M\33\260\320\261\7g\222P\344H?t\240\20\2548\310"..., 4096) = 4096 lseek(4, 43018153984, SEEK_SET) = 43018153984 write(4, "\360\252j\317\310\251G\227\335{\214`\341\267\31Y\202\360\v\374\307oq\3063\217Z\223\313\36D\211"..., 4096) = 4096 So the numbers in the lseek lines before the reads, like 1419860619264 are already a lot bigger, standing for 1.29 terabytes if those numbers are bytes, so it doesn't seem to be a linear progress on a big scale, maybe there are only some areas that need work, that have big gaps in between them. UPDATE2: Okey, big disappointment, the numbers are back to very small again (2012-11-07_0720) lseek(4, 52174548992, SEEK_SET) = 52174548992 read(4, "\374\312\22\\\325\215\213\23\0357U\222\246\370v^f(\312|f\212\362\343\375\373\342\4\204mU6"..., 4096) = 4096 lseek(4, 46603526144, SEEK_SET) = 46603526144 write(4, "\370\261\223\227\23?\4\4\217\264\320_Am\246CQ\313^\203U\253\274\204\277\2564n\227\177\267\343"..., 4096) = 4096 so either e2fsck goes over the data multiple times, or it just hops back and forth multiple times. Or my assumption that those numbers are bytes is wrong. UPDATE3: Since it's mentioned here http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=282125&page=2 that you can testisk while e2fsck is running, i tried that, though not with a lot of success. When asking testdisk to display the data of my partition, this is what I get: TestDisk 6.13, Data Recovery Utility, November 2011 Christophe GRENIER <[email protected]> http://www.cgsecurity.org 1 P Linux 0 4 5 45600 40 8 732566272 Can't open filesystem. Filesystem seems damaged. And this is what strace currently gives me (2012-11-07_1030) lseek(4, 212460343296, SEEK_SET) = 212460343296 read(4, "\315Mb\265v\377Gn \24\f\205EHh\2349~\330\273\203\3375\206\10\r3=W\210\372\352"..., 4096) = 4096 lseek(4, 47347830784, SEEK_SET) = 47347830784 write(4, "]\204\223\300I\357\4\26\33+\243\312G\230\250\371*m2U\t_\215\265J \252\342Pm\360D"..., 4096) = 4096 (times are in CET)

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• Why is Varnish not caching?

  - by Justin

  I am troubleshooting the setup of Varnish 3.x on my Ubuntu server. I'm running Drupal 7 on two sites set up on the box, via named-based vhosts. Before trying to get Varnish to play nice with Drupal I'm trying to just get Varnish to a PNG from cache. Here are the headers I get from a curl -I request of the PNG file: HTTP/1.1 200 OK Server: Apache/2.2.22 (Ubuntu) Last-Modified: Sun, 07 Oct 2012 21:18:59 GMT ETag: "a57c2-3850-4cb7ea73db6c0" Accept-Ranges: bytes Content-Length: 14416 Cache-Control: max-age=1209600 Expires: Thu, 25 Oct 2012 22:55:14 GMT Content-Type: image/png Accept-Ranges: bytes Date: Thu, 11 Oct 2012 22:55:14 GMT X-Varnish: 1766703058 Age: 0 Via: 1.1 varnish Connection: keep-alive X-Varnish-Cache: MISS Here is the Varnish VCL file I'm using (It's a default VCL configuration designed for Drupal): # Default backend definition. Set this to point to your content # server. # backend default { .host = "127.0.0.1"; .port = "8080"; } # Respond to incoming requests. sub vcl_recv { # Use anonymous, cached pages if all backends are down. if (!req.backend.healthy) { unset req.http.Cookie; } # Allow the backend to serve up stale content if it is responding slowly. set req.grace = 6h; # Pipe these paths directly to Apache for streaming. #if (req.url ~ "^/admin/content/backup_migrate/export") { # return (pipe); #} # Do not cache these paths. if (req.url ~ "^/status\.php$" || req.url ~ "^/update\.php$" || req.url ~ "^/admin$" || req.url ~ "^/admin/.*$" || req.url ~ "^/flag/.*$" || req.url ~ "^.*/ajax/.*$" || req.url ~ "^.*/ahah/.*$") { return (pass); } # Do not allow outside access to cron.php or install.php. #if (req.url ~ "^/(cron|install)\.php$" && !client.ip ~ internal) { # Have Varnish throw the error directly. # error 404 "Page not found."; # Use a custom error page that you've defined in Drupal at the path "404". # set req.url = "/404"; #} # Always cache the following file types for all users. This list of extensions # appears twice, once here and again in vcl_fetch so make sure you edit both # and keep them equal. if (req.url ~ "(?i)\.(pdf|asc|dat|txt|doc|xls|ppt|tgz|csv|png|gif|jpeg|jpg|ico|swf|css|js)(\?.*)?$") { unset req.http.Cookie; } # Remove all cookies that Drupal doesn't need to know about. We explicitly # list the ones that Drupal does need, the SESS and NO_CACHE. If, after # running this code we find that either of these two cookies remains, we # will pass as the page cannot be cached. if (req.http.Cookie) { # 1. Append a semi-colon to the front of the cookie string. # 2. Remove all spaces that appear after semi-colons. # 3. Match the cookies we want to keep, adding the space we removed # previously back. (\1) is first matching group in the regsuball. # 4. Remove all other cookies, identifying them by the fact that they have # no space after the preceding semi-colon. # 5. Remove all spaces and semi-colons from the beginning and end of the # cookie string. set req.http.Cookie = ";" + req.http.Cookie; set req.http.Cookie = regsuball(req.http.Cookie, "; +", ";"); set req.http.Cookie = regsuball(req.http.Cookie, ";(SESS[a-z0-9]+|SSESS[a-z0-9]+|NO_CACHE)=", "; \1="); set req.http.Cookie = regsuball(req.http.Cookie, ";[^ ][^;]*", ""); set req.http.Cookie = regsuball(req.http.Cookie, "^[; ]+|[; ]+$", ""); if (req.http.Cookie == "") { # If there are no remaining cookies, remove the cookie header. If there # aren't any cookie headers, Varnish's default behavior will be to cache # the page. unset req.http.Cookie; } else { # If there is any cookies left (a session or NO_CACHE cookie), do not # cache the page. Pass it on to Apache directly. return (pass); } } } # Set a header to track a cache HIT/MISS. sub vcl_deliver { if (obj.hits > 0) { set resp.http.X-Varnish-Cache = "HIT"; } else { set resp.http.X-Varnish-Cache = "MISS"; } } # Code determining what to do when serving items from the Apache servers. # beresp == Back-end response from the web server. sub vcl_fetch { # We need this to cache 404s, 301s, 500s. Otherwise, depending on backend but # definitely in Drupal's case these responses are not cacheable by default. if (beresp.status == 404 || beresp.status == 301 || beresp.status == 500) { set beresp.ttl = 10m; } # Don't allow static files to set cookies. # (?i) denotes case insensitive in PCRE (perl compatible regular expressions). # This list of extensions appears twice, once here and again in vcl_recv so # make sure you edit both and keep them equal. if (req.url ~ "(?i)\.(pdf|asc|dat|txt|doc|xls|ppt|tgz|csv|png|gif|jpeg|jpg|ico|swf|css|js)(\?.*)?$") { unset beresp.http.set-cookie; } # Allow items to be stale if needed. set beresp.grace = 6h; } # In the event of an error, show friendlier messages. sub vcl_error { # Redirect to some other URL in the case of a homepage failure. #if (req.url ~ "^/?$") { # set obj.status = 302; # set obj.http.Location = "http://backup.example.com/"; #} # Otherwise redirect to the homepage, which will likely be in the cache. set obj.http.Content-Type = "text/html; charset=utf-8"; synthetic {" <html> <head> <title>Page Unavailable</title> <style> body { background: #303030; text-align: center; color: white; } #page { border: 1px solid #CCC; width: 500px; margin: 100px auto 0; padding: 30px; background: #323232; } a, a:link, a:visited { color: #CCC; } .error { color: #222; } </style> </head> <body onload="setTimeout(function() { window.location = '/' }, 5000)"> <div id="page"> <h1 class="title">Page Unavailable</h1> <p>The page you requested is temporarily unavailable.</p> <p>We're redirecting you to the <a href="/">homepage</a> in 5 seconds.</p> <div class="error">(Error "} + obj.status + " " + obj.response + {")</div> </div> </body> </html> "}; return (deliver); } I'm getting a MISS and age 0 every time. If I'm understanding correctly, this means the file isn't being returned from Varnish's cache. Is there a problem with my Varnish config?

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• Network throughput issue (ARP-related)

  - by Joel Coel

  The small college where I work is having some very strange network issues. I'm looking for any advice or ideas here. We were fine over the summer, but the trouble began few days after students returned to campus in force for the fall term. Symptoms The main symptom is that internet access will work, but it's very slow... often to the point of timeouts. As an example, a typical result from Speedtest.net will return .4Mbps download, but allow 3 to 8 Mbps upload speed. Lesser symptoms may include severely limited performance transferring data to and from our file server, or even in some cases the inability to log in to the computer (cannot reach the domain controller). The issue crosses multiple vlans, and has effected devices on nearly every vlan we operate. The issue does not impact all machines on the network. An unaffected machine will typically see at least 11Mbps download from speedtest.net, and perhaps much more depending on larger campus traffic patterns at the time. There is one variation on the larger issue. We have one vlan where users were unable to log into nearly all of the machines at all. IT staff would log in using a local administrator account (or in some cases cached credentials), and from there a release/renew or pinging the gateway would allow the machine to work... for a while. Complicating this issue is that this vlan covers our computer labs, which use software called Deep Freeze to completely reset the hard drives after a reboot. It could just the same issue manifesting differently because of stale data on machines that have not permanently altered low-level info for weeks. We were able to solve this, however, by creating a new vlan and moving the labs over to the new vlan wholesale. Instigations Eventually we noticed that the effected machines all had recent dhcp leases. We can predict when a machine will become "slow" by watching when a dhcp lease comes up for renewal. We played with setting the lease time very short for a test vlan, but all that did was remove our ability to predict when the machine would become slow. Machines with static IPs have pretty much always worked normally. Manually releasing/renewing an address will never cause a machine to become slow. In fact, in some cases this process has fixed a machine in that state. Most of the time, though, it doesn't help. We also noticed that mobile machines like laptops are likely to become slow when they cross to new vlans. Wireless on campus is divided up into "zones", where each zone maps to a small set of buildings. Moving to a new building can place you in a zone, thereby causing you to get a new address. A machine resuming from sleep mode is also very likely to be slow. Mitigations Sometimes, but not always, clearing the arp cache on an effected machine will allow it to work normally again. As already mentioned, releasing/renewing a local machine's IP address can fix that machine, but it's not guaranteed. Pinging the default gateway can also sometimes help with a slow machine. What seems to help most to mitigate the issue is clearing the arp cache on our core layer-3 switch. This switch is used for our dhcp system as the default gateway on all vlans, and it handles inter-vlan routing. The model is a 3Com 4900SX. To try to mitigate the issue, we have the cache timeout set on the switch all the way down to the lowest possible time, but it hasn't helped. I also put together a script that runs every few minutes to automatically connect to the switch and reset the cache. Unfortunately, this does not always work, and can even cause some machines to end up in the slow state for a short time (though these seem to correct themselves after a few minutes). We currently have a scheduled job that runs every 10 minutes to force the core switch to clear it's ARP cache, but this is far from perfect or desirable. Reproduction We now have a test machine that we can force into the slow state at will. It is connected to a switch with ports set up for each of our vlans. We make the machine slow by connecting to different vlans, and after a new connection or two it will be slow. It's also worth noting in this section that this has happened before at the start of prior terms, but in the past the problem has gone away on it's own after a few days. It solved itself before we had a chance to do much diagnostic work... hence why we've allowed it to drag so long into the term this time 'round; the expectation was this would be a short-lived situation. Other Factors It's worth mentioning that we have had about half a dozen switches just outright fail over the last year. These are mainly 2003/2004-era 3Coms (mostly 4200's) that were all put in at about the same time. They should still be covered under warranty, buy HP has made getting service somewhat difficult. Mostly in power supplies that have failed, but in a couple cases we have used a power supply from a switch with a failed mainboard to bring a switch with a failed power supply back to life. We do have UPS devices on all but three of four switches now, but that was not the case when I started two and a half years ago. Severe budget constraints (we were on the Dept. of Ed's financially challenged institutions list a couple years back) have forced me to look to the likes of Netgear and TrendNet for replacements, but so far these low-end models seem to be holding their own. It's also worth mentioning that the big change on our network this summer was migrating from a single cross-campus wireless SSID to the zoned approach mentioned earlier. I don't think this is the source of the issue, as like I've said: we've seen this before. However, it's possible this is exacerbating the issue, and may be much of the reason it's been so hard to isolate. Diagnosis At first it seemed clear to us, given the timing and persistent nature of the problem, that the source of the issue was an infected (or malicious) student machine doing ARP cache poisoning. However, repeated attempts to isolate the source have failed. Those attempts include numerous wireshark packet traces, and even taking entire buildings offline for brief periods. We have not been able even to find a smoking gun bad ARP entry. My current best guess is an overloaded or failing core switch, but I'm not sure on how to test for this, and the cost of replacing it blindly is steep. Again, any ideas appreciated.

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• SQL SERVER – Fix : Error 3623 – An invalid floating point operation occurred

  - by pinaldave

  Going back in time, I always had a problem with mathematics. It was a great subject and I loved it a lot but I only mastered it after practices a lot. I learned that mathematics problems should be addressed systematically and being verbose is not a trick, I learned to solve any problem. Recently one of reader sent me an email with the title “Mathematics problem – please help!” and I was a bit scared. I was good at mathematics but not the best. When I opened the email I was relieved as it was Mathematics problem with SQL Server. My friend received following error while working with SQL Server. Msg 3623, Level 16, State 1, Line 1 An invalid floating point operation occurred. The reasons for the error is simply that invalid usage of the mathematical function is attempted. Let me give you a few examples of the same. SELECT SQRT(-5); SELECT ACOS(-3); SELECT LOG(-9); If you run any of the above functions they will give you an error related to invalid floating point. Honestly there is no workaround except passing the function appropriate values. SQRT of a negative number will give you result in real numbers which is not supported at this point of time as well LOG of a negative number is not possible (because logarithm is the inverse function of an exponential function and the exponential function is NEVER negative). When I send above reply to my friend he did understand that he was passing incorrect value to the function. As mentioned earlier the only way to fix this issue is finding incorrect value and avoid passing it to the function. Every mathematics function is different and there is not a single solution to identify erroneous value passed. If you are facing this error and not able to figure out the solution. Post a comment and I will do my best to figure out the solution. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Error Messages, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• Pixel Shader, YUV-RGB Conversion failing

  - by TomTom

  I am tasked with playing back a video hthat comes in in a YUV format as an overlay in a larger game. I am not a specialist in Direct3d, so I am struggling. I managed to get a shader working and am rendering 3 textures (Y, V, U). Sadly I am totally unable to get anything like a decent image. Documentation is also failing me. I am currently loading the different data planes (Y,V,U) in three different textures: m_Textures = new Texture[3]; // Y Plane m_Textures[0] = new Texture(m_Device, w, h, 1, Usage.None, Format.L8, Pool.Managed); // V Plane m_Textures[1] = new Texture(m_Device, w2, h2, 1, Usage.None, Format.L8, Pool.Managed); // U Plane m_Textures[2] = new Texture(m_Device, w2, h2, 1, Usage.None, Format.L8, Pool.Managed); When I am rendering them as R, G and B respectively with the following code: float4 Pixel( float2 texCoord: TEXCOORD0) : COLOR0 { float y = tex2D (ytexture, texCoord); float v = tex2D (vtexture, texCoord); float u = tex2D (utexture, texCoord); //R = Y + 1.140 (V -128) //G = Y - 0.395 (U-128) - 0.581 (V-128) //B = Y + 2.028 (U-128) float r = y; //y + 1.140 * v; float g = v; //y - 0.395 * u - 0.581 * v; float b = u; //y + 2.028 * u; float4 result; result.a = 255; result.r = r; //clamp (r, 0, 255); result.g = g; //clamp (g, 0, 255); result.b = b; //clamp (b, 0, 255); return result; } Then the resulting image is - quite funny. I can see the image, but colors are totally distorted, as it should be. The formula I should apply shows up in the comment of the pixel shader, but when I do it, the resulting image is pretty brutally magenta only. This gets me to the question - when I read out an L8 texture into a float, with float y = tex2D (ytexture, texCoord); what is the range of values? The "origin" values are 1 byte, 0 to 255, and the forum I have assumes this. Naturally I am totally off when the values returned are somehow normalized. My Clamp operation at the end also will fail if for example colors in a pixel shader are normalized 0 to 1. Anyone an idea how that works? Please point me also to documentation - I have not found anything in this regard.

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• West Wind WebSurge - an easy way to Load Test Web Applications

  - by Rick Strahl

  A few months ago on a project the subject of load testing came up. We were having some serious issues with a Web application that would start spewing SQL lock errors under somewhat heavy load. These sort of errors can be tough to catch, precisely because they only occur under load and not during typical development testing. To replicate this error more reliably we needed to put a load on the application and run it for a while before these SQL errors would flare up. It’s been a while since I’d looked at load testing tools, so I spent a bit of time looking at different tools and frankly didn’t really find anything that was a good fit. A lot of tools were either a pain to use, didn’t have the basic features I needed, or are extravagantly expensive. In  the end I got frustrated enough to build an initially small custom load test solution that then morphed into a more generic library, then gained a console front end and eventually turned into a full blown Web load testing tool that is now called West Wind WebSurge. I got seriously frustrated looking for tools every time I needed some quick and dirty load testing for an application. If my aim is to just put an application under heavy enough load to find a scalability problem in code, or to simply try and push an application to its limits on the hardware it’s running I shouldn’t have to have to struggle to set up tests. It should be easy enough to get going in a few minutes, so that the testing can be set up quickly so that it can be done on a regular basis without a lot of hassle. And that was the goal when I started to build out my initial custom load tester into a more widely usable tool. If you’re in a hurry and you want to check it out, you can find more information and download links here: West Wind WebSurge Product Page Walk through Video Download link (zip) Install from Chocolatey Source on GitHub For a more detailed discussion of the why’s and how’s and some background continue reading. How did I get here? When I started out on this path, I wasn’t planning on building a tool like this myself – but I got frustrated enough looking at what’s out there to think that I can do better than what’s available for the most common simple load testing scenarios. When we ran into the SQL lock problems I mentioned, I started looking around what’s available for Web load testing solutions that would work for our whole team which consisted of a few developers and a couple of IT guys both of which needed to be able to run the tests. It had been a while since I looked at tools and I figured that by now there should be some good solutions out there, but as it turns out I didn’t really find anything that fit our relatively simple needs without costing an arm and a leg… I spent the better part of a day installing and trying various load testing tools and to be frank most of them were either terrible at what they do, incredibly unfriendly to use, used some terminology I couldn’t even parse, or were extremely expensive (and I mean in the ‘sell your liver’ range of expensive). Pick your poison. There are also a number of online solutions for load testing and they actually looked more promising, but those wouldn’t work well for our scenario as the application is running inside of a private VPN with no outside access into the VPN. Most of those online solutions also ended up being very pricey as well – presumably because of the bandwidth required to test over the open Web can be enormous. When I asked around on Twitter what people were using– I got mostly… crickets. Several people mentioned Visual Studio Load Test, and most other suggestions pointed to online solutions. I did get a bunch of responses though with people asking to let them know what I found – apparently I’m not alone when it comes to finding load testing tools that are effective and easy to use. As to Visual Studio, the higher end skus of Visual Studio and the test edition include a Web load testing tool, which is quite powerful, but there are a number of issues with that: First it’s tied to Visual Studio so it’s not very portable – you need a VS install. I also find the test setup and terminology used by the VS test runner extremely confusing. Heck, it’s complicated enough that there’s even a Pluralsight course on using the Visual Studio Web test from Steve Smith. And of course you need to have one of the high end Visual Studio Skus, and those are mucho Dinero ($$$) – just for the load testing that’s rarely an option. Some of the tools are ultra extensive and let you run analysis tools on the target serves which is useful, but in most cases – just plain overkill and only distracts from what I tend to be ultimately interested in: Reproducing problems that occur at high load, and finding the upper limits and ‘what if’ scenarios as load is ramped up increasingly against a site. Yes it’s useful to have Web app instrumentation, but often that’s not what you’re interested in. I still fondly remember early days of Web testing when Microsoft had the WAST (Web Application Stress Tool) tool, which was rather simple – and also somewhat limited – but easily allowed you to create stress tests very quickly. It had some serious limitations (mainly that it didn’t work with SSL),  but the idea behind it was excellent: Create tests quickly and easily and provide a decent engine to run it locally with minimal setup. You could get set up and run tests within a few minutes. Unfortunately, that tool died a quiet death as so many of Microsoft’s tools that probably were built by an intern and then abandoned, even though there was a lot of potential and it was actually fairly widely used. Eventually the tools was no longer downloadable and now it simply doesn’t work anymore on higher end hardware. West Wind Web Surge – Making Load Testing Quick and Easy So I ended up creating West Wind WebSurge out of rebellious frustration… The goal of WebSurge is to make it drop dead simple to create load tests. It’s super easy to capture sessions either using the built in capture tool (big props to Eric Lawrence, Telerik and FiddlerCore which made that piece a snap), using the full version of Fiddler and exporting sessions, or by manually or programmatically creating text files based on plain HTTP headers to create requests. I’ve been using this tool for 4 months now on a regular basis on various projects as a reality check for performance and scalability and it’s worked extremely well for finding small performance issues. I also use it regularly as a simple URL tester, as it allows me to quickly enter a URL plus headers and content and test that URL and its results along with the ability to easily save one or more of those URLs. A few weeks back I made a walk through video that goes over most of the features of WebSurge in some detail: Note that the UI has slightly changed since then, so there are some UI improvements. Most notably the test results screen has been updated recently to a different layout and to provide more information about each URL in a session at a glance. The video and the main WebSurge site has a lot of info of basic operations. For the rest of this post I’ll talk about a few deeper aspects that may be of interest while also giving a glance at how WebSurge works. Session Capturing As you would expect, WebSurge works with Sessions of Urls that are played back under load. Here’s what the main Session View looks like: You can create session entries manually by individually adding URLs to test (on the Request tab on the right) and saving them, or you can capture output from Web Browsers, Windows Desktop applications that call services, your own applications using the built in Capture tool. With this tool you can capture anything HTTP -SSL requests and content from Web pages, AJAX calls, SOAP or REST services – again anything that uses Windows or .NET HTTP APIs. Behind the scenes the capture tool uses FiddlerCore so basically anything you can capture with Fiddler you can also capture with Web Surge Session capture tool. Alternately you can actually use Fiddler as well, and then export the captured Fiddler trace to a file, which can then be imported into WebSurge. This is a nice way to let somebody capture session without having to actually install WebSurge or for your customers to provide an exact playback scenario for a given set of URLs that cause a problem perhaps. Note that not all applications work with Fiddler’s proxy unless you configure a proxy. For example, .NET Web applications that make HTTP calls usually don’t show up in Fiddler by default. For those .NET applications you can explicitly override proxy settings to capture those requests to service calls. The capture tool also has handy optional filters that allow you to filter by domain, to help block out noise that you typically don’t want to include in your requests. For example, if your pages include links to CDNs, or Google Analytics or social links you typically don’t want to include those in your load test, so by capturing just from a specific domain you are guaranteed content from only that one domain. Additionally you can provide url filters in the configuration file – filters allow to provide filter strings that if contained in a url will cause requests to be ignored. Again this is useful if you don’t filter by domain but you want to filter out things like static image, css and script files etc. Often you’re not interested in the load characteristics of these static and usually cached resources as they just add noise to tests and often skew the overall url performance results. In my testing I tend to care only about my dynamic requests. SSL Captures require Fiddler Note, that in order to capture SSL requests you’ll have to install the Fiddler’s SSL certificate. The easiest way to do this is to install Fiddler and use its SSL configuration options to get the certificate into the local certificate store. There’s a document on the Telerik site that provides the exact steps to get SSL captures to work with Fiddler and therefore with WebSurge. Session Storage A group of URLs entered or captured make up a Session. Sessions can be saved and restored easily as they use a very simple text format that simply stored on disk. The format is slightly customized HTTP header traces separated by a separator line. The headers are standard HTTP headers except that the full URL instead of just the domain relative path is stored as part of the 1st HTTP header line for easier parsing. Because it’s just text and uses the same format that Fiddler uses for exports, it’s super easy to create Sessions by hand manually or under program control writing out to a simple text file. You can see what this format looks like in the Capture window figure above – the raw captured format is also what’s stored to disk and what WebSurge parses from. The only ‘custom’ part of these headers is that 1st line contains the full URL instead of the domain relative path and Host: header. The rest of each header are just plain standard HTTP headers with each individual URL isolated by a separator line. The format used here also uses what Fiddler produces for exports, so it’s easy to exchange or view data either in Fiddler or WebSurge. Urls can also be edited interactively so you can modify the headers easily as well: Again – it’s just plain HTTP headers so anything you can do with HTTP can be added here. Use it for single URL Testing Incidentally I’ve also found this form as an excellent way to test and replay individual URLs for simple non-load testing purposes. Because you can capture a single or many URLs and store them on disk, this also provides a nice HTTP playground where you can record URLs with their headers, and fire them one at a time or as a session and see results immediately. It’s actually an easy way for REST presentations and I find the simple UI flow actually easier than using Fiddler natively. Finally you can save one or more URLs as a session for later retrieval. I’m using this more and more for simple URL checks. Overriding Cookies and Domains Speaking of HTTP headers – you can also overwrite cookies used as part of the options. One thing that happens with modern Web applications is that you have session cookies in use for authorization. These cookies tend to expire at some point which would invalidate a test. Using the Options dialog you can actually override the cookie: which replaces the cookie for all requests with the cookie value specified here. You can capture a valid cookie from a manual HTTP request in your browser and then paste into the cookie field, to replace the existing Cookie with the new one that is now valid. Likewise you can easily replace the domain so if you captured urls on west-wind.com and now you want to test on localhost you can do that easily easily as well. You could even do something like capture on store.west-wind.com and then test on localhost/store which would also work. Running Load Tests Once you’ve created a Session you can specify the length of the test in seconds, and specify the number of simultaneous threads to run each session on. Sessions run through each of the URLs in the session sequentially by default. One option in the options list above is that you can also randomize the URLs so each thread runs requests in a different order. This avoids bunching up URLs initially when tests start as all threads run the same requests simultaneously which can sometimes skew the results of the first few minutes of a test. While sessions run some progress information is displayed: By default there’s a live view of requests displayed in a Console-like window. On the bottom of the window there’s a running total summary that displays where you’re at in the test, how many requests have been processed and what the requests per second count is currently for all requests. Note that for tests that run over a thousand requests a second it’s a good idea to turn off the console display. While the console display is nice to see that something is happening and also gives you slight idea what’s happening with actual requests, once a lot of requests are processed, this UI updating actually adds a lot of CPU overhead to the application which may cause the actual load generated to be reduced. If you are running a 1000 requests a second there’s not much to see anyway as requests roll by way too fast to see individual lines anyway. If you look on the options panel, there is a NoProgressEvents option that disables the console display. Note that the summary display is still updated approximately once a second so you can always tell that the test is still running. Test Results When the test is done you get a simple Results display: On the right you get an overall summary as well as breakdown by each URL in the session. Both success and failures are highlighted so it’s easy to see what’s breaking in your load test. The report can be printed or you can also open the HTML document in your default Web Browser for printing to PDF or saving the HTML document to disk. The list on the right shows you a partial list of the URLs that were fired so you can look in detail at the request and response data. The list can be filtered by success and failure requests. Each list is partial only (at the moment) and limited to a max of 1000 items in order to render reasonably quickly. Each item in the list can be clicked to see the full request and response data: This particularly useful for errors so you can quickly see and copy what request data was used and in the case of a GET request you can also just click the link to quickly jump to the page. For non-GET requests you can find the URL in the Session list, and use the context menu to Test the URL as configured including any HTTP content data to send. You get to see the full HTTP request and response as well as a link in the Request header to go visit the actual page. Not so useful for a POST as above, but definitely useful for GET requests. Finally you can also get a few charts. The most useful one is probably the Request per Second chart which can be accessed from the Charts menu or shortcut. Here’s what it looks like:   Results can also be exported to JSON, XML and HTML. Keep in mind that these files can get very large rather quickly though, so exports can end up taking a while to complete. Command Line Interface WebSurge runs with a small core load engine and this engine is plugged into the front end application I’ve shown so far. There’s also a command line interface available to run WebSurge from the Windows command prompt. Using the command line you can run tests for either an individual URL (similar to AB.exe for example) or a full Session file. By default when it runs WebSurgeCli shows progress every second showing total request count, failures and the requests per second for the entire test. A silent option can turn off this progress display and display only the results. The command line interface can be useful for build integration which allows checking for failures perhaps or hitting a specific requests per second count etc. It’s also nice to use this as quick and dirty URL test facility similar to the way you’d use Apache Bench (ab.exe). Unlike ab.exe though, WebSurgeCli supports SSL and makes it much easier to create multi-URL tests using either manual editing or the WebSurge UI. Current Status Currently West Wind WebSurge is still in Beta status. I’m still adding small new features and tweaking the UI in an attempt to make it as easy and self-explanatory as possible to run. Documentation for the UI and specialty features is also still a work in progress. I plan on open-sourcing this product, but it won’t be free. There’s a free version available that provides a limited number of threads and request URLs to run. A relatively low cost license  removes the thread and request limitations. Pricing info can be found on the Web site – there’s an introductory price which is $99 at the moment which I think is reasonable compared to most other for pay solutions out there that are exorbitant by comparison… The reason code is not available yet is – well, the UI portion of the app is a bit embarrassing in its current monolithic state. The UI started as a very simple interface originally that later got a lot more complex – yeah, that never happens, right? Unless there’s a lot of interest I don’t foresee re-writing the UI entirely (which would be ideal), but in the meantime at least some cleanup is required before I dare to publish it :-). The code will likely be released with version 1.0. I’m very interested in feedback. Do you think this could be useful to you and provide value over other tools you may or may not have used before? I hope so – it already has provided a ton of value for me and the work I do that made the development worthwhile at this point. You can leave a comment below, or for more extensive discussions you can post a message on the West Wind Message Board in the WebSurge section Microsoft MVPs and Insiders get a free License If you’re a Microsoft MVP or a Microsoft Insider you can get a full license for free. Send me a link to your current, official Microsoft profile and I’ll send you a not-for resale license. Send any messages to [email protected]. Resources For more info on WebSurge and to download it to try it out, use the following links. West Wind WebSurge Home Download West Wind WebSurge Getting Started with West Wind WebSurge Video© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2014Posted in ASP.NET   Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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• Rendering ASP.NET Script References into the Html Header

  - by Rick Strahl

  One thing that I’ve come to appreciate in control development in ASP.NET that use JavaScript is the ability to have more control over script and script include placement than ASP.NET provides natively. Specifically in ASP.NET you can use either the ClientScriptManager or ScriptManager to embed scripts and script references into pages via code. This works reasonably well, but the script references that get generated are generated into the HTML body and there’s very little operational control for placement of scripts. If you have multiple controls or several of the same control that need to place the same scripts onto the page it’s not difficult to end up with scripts that render in the wrong order and stop working correctly. This is especially critical if you load script libraries with dependencies either via resources or even if you are rendering referenced to CDN resources. Natively ASP.NET provides a host of methods that help embedding scripts into the page via either Page.ClientScript or the ASP.NET ScriptManager control (both with slightly different syntax): RegisterClientScriptBlock Renders a script block at the top of the HTML body and should be used for embedding callable functions/classes. RegisterStartupScript Renders a script block just prior to the </form> tag and should be used to for embedding code that should execute when the page is first loaded. Not recommended – use jQuery.ready() or equivalent load time routines. RegisterClientScriptInclude Embeds a reference to a script from a url into the page. RegisterClientScriptResource Embeds a reference to a Script from a resource file generating a long resource file string All 4 of these methods render their <script> tags into the HTML body. The script blocks give you a little bit of control by having a ‘top’ and ‘bottom’ of the document location which gives you some flexibility over script placement and precedence. Script includes and resource url unfortunately do not even get that much control – references are simply rendered into the page in the order of declaration. The ASP.NET ScriptManager control facilitates this task a little bit with the abililty to specify scripts in code and the ability to programmatically check what scripts have already been registered, but it doesn’t provide any more control over the script rendering process itself. Further the ScriptManager is a bear to deal with generically because generic code has to always check and see if it is actually present. Some time ago I posted a ClientScriptProxy class that helps with managing the latter process of sending script references either to ClientScript or ScriptManager if it’s available. Since I last posted about this there have been a number of improvements in this API, one of which is the ability to control placement of scripts and script includes in the page which I think is rather important and a missing feature in the ASP.NET native functionality. Handling ScriptRenderModes One of the big enhancements that I’ve come to rely on is the ability of the various script rendering functions described above to support rendering in multiple locations: /// <summary> /// Determines how scripts are included into the page /// </summary> public enum ScriptRenderModes { /// <summary> /// Inherits the setting from the control or from the ClientScript.DefaultScriptRenderMode /// </summary> Inherit, /// Renders the script include at the location of the control /// </summary> Inline, /// <summary> /// Renders the script include into the bottom of the header of the page /// </summary> Header, /// <summary> /// Renders the script include into the top of the header of the page /// </summary> HeaderTop, /// <summary> /// Uses ClientScript or ScriptManager to embed the script include to /// provide standard ASP.NET style rendering in the HTML body. /// </summary> Script, /// <summary> /// Renders script at the bottom of the page before the last Page.Controls /// literal control. Note this may result in unexpected behavior /// if /body and /html are not the last thing in the markup page. /// </summary> BottomOfPage } This enum is then applied to the various Register functions to allow more control over where scripts actually show up. Why is this useful? For me I often render scripts out of control resources and these scripts often include things like a JavaScript Library (jquery) and a few plug-ins. The order in which these can be loaded is critical so that jQuery.js always loads before any plug-in for example. Typically I end up with a general script layout like this: Core Libraries- HeaderTop Plug-ins: Header ScriptBlocks: Header or Script depending on other dependencies There’s also an option to render scripts and CSS at the very bottom of the page before the last Page control on the page which can be useful for speeding up page load when lots of scripts are loaded. The API syntax of the ClientScriptProxy methods is closely compatible with ScriptManager’s using static methods and control references to gain access to the page and embedding scripts. For example, to render some script into the current page in the header: // Create script block in header ClientScriptProxy.Current.RegisterClientScriptBlock(this, typeof(ControlResources), "hello_function", "function helloWorld() { alert('hello'); }", true, ScriptRenderModes.Header); // Same again - shouldn't be rendered because it's the same id ClientScriptProxy.Current.RegisterClientScriptBlock(this, typeof(ControlResources), "hello_function", "function helloWorld() { alert('hello'); }", true, ScriptRenderModes.Header); // Create a second script block in header ClientScriptProxy.Current.RegisterClientScriptBlock(this, typeof(ControlResources), "hello_function2", "function helloWorld2() { alert('hello2'); }", true, ScriptRenderModes.Header); // This just calls ClientScript and renders into bottom of document ClientScriptProxy.Current.RegisterStartupScript(this,typeof(ControlResources), "call_hello", "helloWorld();helloWorld2();", true); which generates: <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" > <head><title> </title> <script type="text/javascript"> function helloWorld() { alert('hello'); } </script> <script type="text/javascript"> function helloWorld2() { alert('hello2'); } </script> </head> <body> … <script type="text/javascript"> //<![CDATA[ helloWorld();helloWorld2();//]]> </script> </form> </body> </html> Note that the scripts are generated into the header rather than the body except for the last script block which is the call to RegisterStartupScript. In general I wouldn’t recommend using RegisterStartupScript – ever. It’s a much better practice to use a script base load event to handle ‘startup’ code that should fire when the page first loads. So instead of the code above I’d actually recommend doing: ClientScriptProxy.Current.RegisterClientScriptBlock(this, typeof(ControlResources), "call_hello", "$().ready( function() { alert('hello2'); });", true, ScriptRenderModes.Header); assuming you’re using jQuery on the page. For script includes from a Url the following demonstrates how to embed scripts into the header. This example injects a jQuery and jQuery.UI script reference from the Google CDN then checks each with a script block to ensure that it has loaded and if not loads it from a server local location: // load jquery from CDN ClientScriptProxy.Current.RegisterClientScriptInclude(this, typeof(ControlResources), "http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.3.2/jquery.min.js", ScriptRenderModes.HeaderTop); // check if jquery loaded - if it didn't we're not online string scriptCheck = @"if (typeof jQuery != 'object') document.write(unescape(""%3Cscript src='{0}' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E""));"; string jQueryUrl = ClientScriptProxy.Current.GetWebResourceUrl(this, typeof(ControlResources), ControlResources.JQUERY_SCRIPT_RESOURCE); ClientScriptProxy.Current.RegisterClientScriptBlock(this, typeof(ControlResources), "jquery_register", string.Format(scriptCheck,jQueryUrl),true, ScriptRenderModes.HeaderTop); // Load jquery-ui from cdn ClientScriptProxy.Current.RegisterClientScriptInclude(this, typeof(ControlResources), "http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jqueryui/1.7.2/jquery-ui.min.js", ScriptRenderModes.Header); // check if we need to load from local string jQueryUiUrl = ResolveUrl("~/scripts/jquery-ui-custom.min.js"); ClientScriptProxy.Current.RegisterClientScriptBlock(this, typeof(ControlResources), "jqueryui_register", string.Format(scriptCheck, jQueryUiUrl), true, ScriptRenderModes.Header); // Create script block in header ClientScriptProxy.Current.RegisterClientScriptBlock(this, typeof(ControlResources), "hello_function", "$().ready( function() { alert('hello'); });", true, ScriptRenderModes.Header); which in turn generates this HTML: <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" > <head> <script src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.3.2/jquery.min.js" type="text/javascript"></script> <script type="text/javascript"> if (typeof jQuery != 'object') document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='/WestWindWebToolkitWeb/WebResource.axd?d=DIykvYhJ_oXCr-TA_dr35i4AayJoV1mgnQAQGPaZsoPM2LCdvoD3cIsRRitHKlKJfV5K_jQvylK7tsqO3lQIFw2&t=633979863959332352' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E")); </script> <title> </title> <script src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jqueryui/1.7.2/jquery-ui.min.js" type="text/javascript"></script> <script type="text/javascript"> if (typeof jQuery != 'object') document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='/WestWindWebToolkitWeb/scripts/jquery-ui-custom.min.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E")); </script> <script type="text/javascript"> $().ready(function() { alert('hello'); }); </script> </head> <body> …</body> </html> As you can see there’s a bit more control in this process as you can inject both script includes and script blocks into the document at the top or bottom of the header, plus if necessary at the usual body locations. This is quite useful especially if you create custom server controls that interoperate with script and have certain dependencies. The above is a good example of a useful switchable routine where you can switch where scripts load from by default – the above pulls from Google CDN but a configuration switch may automatically switch to pull from the local development copies if your doing development for example. How does it work? As mentioned the ClientScriptProxy object mimicks many of the ScriptManager script related methods and so provides close API compatibility with it although it contains many additional overloads that enhance functionality. It does however work against ScriptManager if it’s available on the page, or Page.ClientScript if it’s not so it provides a single unified frontend to script access. There are however many overloads of the original SM methods like the above to provide additional functionality. The implementation of script header rendering is pretty straight forward – as long as a server header (ie. it has to have runat=”server” set) is available. Otherwise these routines fall back to using the default document level insertions of ScriptManager/ClientScript. Given that there is a server header it’s relatively easy to generate the script tags and code and append them to the header either at the top or bottom. I suspect Microsoft didn’t provide header rendering functionality precisely because a runat=”server” header is not required by ASP.NET so behavior would be slightly unpredictable. That’s not really a problem for a custom implementation however. Here’s the RegisterClientScriptBlock implementation that takes a ScriptRenderModes parameter to allow header rendering: /// <summary> /// Renders client script block with the option of rendering the script block in /// the Html header /// /// For this to work Header must be defined as runat="server" /// </summary> /// <param name="control">any control that instance typically page</param> /// <param name="type">Type that identifies this rendering</param> /// <param name="key">unique script block id</param> /// <param name="script">The script code to render</param> /// <param name="addScriptTags">Ignored for header rendering used for all other insertions</param> /// <param name="renderMode">Where the block is rendered</param> public void RegisterClientScriptBlock(Control control, Type type, string key, string script, bool addScriptTags, ScriptRenderModes renderMode) { if (renderMode == ScriptRenderModes.Inherit) renderMode = DefaultScriptRenderMode; if (control.Page.Header == null || renderMode != ScriptRenderModes.HeaderTop && renderMode != ScriptRenderModes.Header && renderMode != ScriptRenderModes.BottomOfPage) { RegisterClientScriptBlock(control, type, key, script, addScriptTags); return; } // No dupes - ref script include only once const string identifier = "scriptblock_"; if (HttpContext.Current.Items.Contains(identifier + key)) return; HttpContext.Current.Items.Add(identifier + key, string.Empty); StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder(); // Embed in header sb.AppendLine("\r\n<script type=\"text/javascript\">"); sb.AppendLine(script); sb.AppendLine("</script>"); int? index = HttpContext.Current.Items["__ScriptResourceIndex"] as int?; if (index == null) index = 0; if (renderMode == ScriptRenderModes.HeaderTop) { control.Page.Header.Controls.AddAt(index.Value, new LiteralControl(sb.ToString())); index++; } else if(renderMode == ScriptRenderModes.Header) control.Page.Header.Controls.Add(new LiteralControl(sb.ToString())); else if (renderMode == ScriptRenderModes.BottomOfPage) control.Page.Controls.AddAt(control.Page.Controls.Count-1,new LiteralControl(sb.ToString())); HttpContext.Current.Items["__ScriptResourceIndex"] = index; } Note that the routine has to keep track of items inserted by id so that if the same item is added again with the same key it won’t generate two script entries. Additionally the code has to keep track of how many insertions have been made at the top of the document so that entries are added in the proper order. The RegisterScriptInclude method is similar but there’s some additional logic in here to deal with script file references and ClientScriptProxy’s (optional) custom resource handler that provides script compression /// <summary> /// Registers a client script reference into the page with the option to specify /// the script location in the page /// </summary> /// <param name="control">Any control instance - typically page</param> /// <param name="type">Type that acts as qualifier (uniqueness)</param> /// <param name="url">the Url to the script resource</param> /// <param name="ScriptRenderModes">Determines where the script is rendered</param> public void RegisterClientScriptInclude(Control control, Type type, string url, ScriptRenderModes renderMode) { const string STR_ScriptResourceIndex = "__ScriptResourceIndex"; if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(url)) return; if (renderMode == ScriptRenderModes.Inherit) renderMode = DefaultScriptRenderMode; // Extract just the script filename string fileId = null; // Check resource IDs and try to match to mapped file resources // Used to allow scripts not to be loaded more than once whether // embedded manually (script tag) or via resources with ClientScriptProxy if (url.Contains(".axd?r=")) { string res = HttpUtility.UrlDecode( StringUtils.ExtractString(url, "?r=", "&", false, true) ); foreach (ScriptResourceAlias item in ScriptResourceAliases) { if (item.Resource == res) { fileId = item.Alias + ".js"; break; } } if (fileId == null) fileId = url.ToLower(); } else fileId = Path.GetFileName(url).ToLower(); // No dupes - ref script include only once const string identifier = "script_"; if (HttpContext.Current.Items.Contains( identifier + fileId ) ) return; HttpContext.Current.Items.Add(identifier + fileId, string.Empty); // just use script manager or ClientScriptManager if (control.Page.Header == null || renderMode == ScriptRenderModes.Script || renderMode == ScriptRenderModes.Inline) { RegisterClientScriptInclude(control, type,url, url); return; } // Retrieve script index in header int? index = HttpContext.Current.Items[STR_ScriptResourceIndex] as int?; if (index == null) index = 0; StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder(256); url = WebUtils.ResolveUrl(url); // Embed in header sb.AppendLine("\r\n<script src=\"" + url + "\" type=\"text/javascript\"></script>"); if (renderMode == ScriptRenderModes.HeaderTop) { control.Page.Header.Controls.AddAt(index.Value, new LiteralControl(sb.ToString())); index++; } else if (renderMode == ScriptRenderModes.Header) control.Page.Header.Controls.Add(new LiteralControl(sb.ToString())); else if (renderMode == ScriptRenderModes.BottomOfPage) control.Page.Controls.AddAt(control.Page.Controls.Count-1, new LiteralControl(sb.ToString())); HttpContext.Current.Items[STR_ScriptResourceIndex] = index; } There’s a little more code here that deals with cleaning up the passed in Url and also some custom handling of script resources that run through the ScriptCompressionModule – any script resources loaded in this fashion are automatically cached based on the resource id. Raw urls extract just the filename from the URL and cache based on that. All of this to avoid doubling up of scripts if called multiple times by multiple instances of the same control for example or several controls that all load the same resources/includes. Finally RegisterClientScriptResource utilizes the previous method to wrap the WebResourceUrl as well as some custom functionality for the resource compression module: /// <summary> /// Returns a WebResource or ScriptResource URL for script resources that are to be /// embedded as script includes. /// </summary> /// <param name="control">Any control</param> /// <param name="type">A type in assembly where resources are located</param> /// <param name="resourceName">Name of the resource to load</param> /// <param name="renderMode">Determines where in the document the link is rendered</param> public void RegisterClientScriptResource(Control control, Type type, string resourceName, ScriptRenderModes renderMode) { string resourceUrl = GetClientScriptResourceUrl(control, type, resourceName); RegisterClientScriptInclude(control, type, resourceUrl, renderMode); } /// <summary> /// Works like GetWebResourceUrl but can be used with javascript resources /// to allow using of resource compression (if the module is loaded). /// </summary> /// <param name="control"></param> /// <param name="type"></param> /// <param name="resourceName"></param> /// <returns></returns> public string GetClientScriptResourceUrl(Control control, Type type, string resourceName) { #if IncludeScriptCompressionModuleSupport // If wwScriptCompression Module through Web.config is loaded use it to compress // script resources by using wcSC.axd Url the module intercepts if (ScriptCompressionModule.ScriptCompressionModuleActive) { string url = "~/wwSC.axd?r=" + HttpUtility.UrlEncode(resourceName); if (type.Assembly != GetType().Assembly) url += "&t=" + HttpUtility.UrlEncode(type.FullName); return WebUtils.ResolveUrl(url); } #endif return control.Page.ClientScript.GetWebResourceUrl(type, resourceName); } This code merely retrieves the resource URL and then simply calls back to RegisterClientScriptInclude with the URL to be embedded which means there’s nothing specific to deal with other than the custom compression module logic which is nice and easy. What else is there in ClientScriptProxy? ClientscriptProxy also provides a few other useful services beyond what I’ve already covered here: Transparent ScriptManager and ClientScript calls ClientScriptProxy includes a host of routines that help figure out whether a script manager is available or not and all functions in this class call the appropriate object – ScriptManager or ClientScript – that is available in the current page to ensure that scripts get embedded into pages properly. This is especially useful for control development where controls have no control over the scripting environment in place on the page. RegisterCssLink and RegisterCssResource Much like the script embedding functions these two methods allow embedding of CSS links. CSS links are appended to the header or to a form declared with runat=”server”. LoadControlScript Is a high level resource loading routine that can be used to easily switch between different script linking modes. It supports loading from a WebResource, a url or not loading anything at all. This is very useful if you build controls that deal with specification of resource urls/ids in a standard way. Check out the full Code You can check out the full code to the ClientScriptProxyClass here: ClientScriptProxy.cs ClientScriptProxy Documentation (class reference) Note that the ClientScriptProxy has a few dependencies in the West Wind Web Toolkit of which it is part of. ControlResources holds a few standard constants and script resource links and the ScriptCompressionModule which is referenced in a few of the script inclusion methods. There’s also another useful ScriptContainer companion control  to the ClientScriptProxy that allows scripts to be placed onto the page’s markup including the ability to specify the script location and script minification options. You can find all the dependencies in the West Wind Web Toolkit repository: West Wind Web Toolkit Repository West Wind Web Toolkit Home Page© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2010Posted in ASP.NET  JavaScript  

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• Ask the Readers: Do You Use the Command Line?

  - by Asian Angel

  Most people have heard of it but not everyone is familiar or comfortable with how to use this bastion of geekdom. This week we would like to know if you use the command line or not. The command line…the bastion of ultimate geekery in many peoples’ eyes. You often hear people referring to doing things using the command line, so there must be something to it, right? For some people using the command line is the best, most efficient, and easiest way to do things on their systems. These are the people that many of us wish we were like. Next you have those who are proficient at using the command line but do not rely on it for everything they do on their systems. Then there are people who know how to perform some tasks or hacks using the command line but may not be as comfortable or knowledgeable as they wish to be using it. Moving on you find those who are interested in learning how to use the command line and just need a small push to get started.  Perhaps you feel too intimidated to learn it and just need the right opportunity to come along. And maybe you do not care one way or the other so long as you get done what you want to do on your system. Or you may prefer to simply use a graphical interface since that is quicker and easier for you (along with being familiar). You can find the whole range of people when it comes to using the command line… This week we would like to know if you use the command line or not. What command line category do you fit into? Power user? Casual usage? Totally lost? Let us know in the comments! How-To Geek Polls require Javascript. Please Click Here to View the Poll. Latest Features How-To Geek ETC The How-To Geek Holiday Gift Guide (Geeky Stuff We Like) LCD? LED? Plasma? The How-To Geek Guide to HDTV Technology The How-To Geek Guide to Learning Photoshop, Part 8: Filters Improve Digital Photography by Calibrating Your Monitor Our Favorite Tech: What We’re Thankful For at How-To Geek The How-To Geek Guide to Learning Photoshop, Part 7: Design and Typography Fun and Colorful Firefox Theme for Windows 7 Happy Snow Bears Theme for Chrome and Iron [Holiday] Download Full Command and Conquer: Tiberian Sun Game for Free Scorched Cometary Planet Wallpaper Quick Fix: Add the RSS Button Back to the Firefox Awesome Bar Dropbox Desktop Client 1.0.0 RC for Windows, Linux, and Mac Released

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• Turn Non-Resizeable Windows into Rezieable Windows

  - by Asian Angel

  Are you frustrated with Windows app windows that can not be resized at all? Now you can apply some “attitude adjustment” and resize those windows with ResizeEnable. Before Everyone is familiar with the many app windows in their Windows OS that simply can not be resized. What you need is cooperation, not attitude. For our example we chose the “Taskbar and Start Menu Properties Window”…notice the cursor in the lower right corner. No resizing satisfaction available at all… After The program comes in a zip file with three files as shown here. Once you have unzipped the program place it in an appropriate “Program Files Folder”, create a shortcut, and you are ready to go. There will be a “System Tray Icon” with only two “Context Menu” items…“About & Quit”. Here is a quick look at the “About Window” that tells you exactly what ResizeEnable does. Notice that it does state that you may occasionally have a window that may not respond correctly. Now back to our “Taskbar and Start Menu Properties Window”. Notice the resizing cursor in the lower right corner….time for some fun! During our test the “Taskbar and Start Menu Properties Window” was suddenly a dream to resize. Daring to stretch the window even further…now that is what you call “stretching” the window out in comparison to its’ original size! Think of all the windows that will be much easier to work with now… Conclusion If you have been frustrated with non-resizeable windows then ResizeEnable will certainly bring a smile to your face as you watch those windows suddenly become a lot more cooperative. This is definitely one app that is worth adding to your system. Links Download ResizeEnable (zip file) Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Quick Tip: Resize Any Textbox or Textarea in FirefoxTurn on Remote Desktop in Windows 7 or VistaSave 1-4% More Battery Life With Windows Vista Battery SaverQuick Tip: Disable Search History Display in Windows 7Turn Off Windows Explorer Click Sounds in Windows 7 or Vista TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 PCmover Professional New Stinger from McAfee Helps Remove ‘FakeAlert’ Threats Google Apps Marketplace: Tools & Services For Google Apps Users Get News Quick and Precise With Newser Scan for Viruses in Ubuntu using ClamAV Replace Your Windows Task Manager With System Explorer Create Talking Photos using Fotobabble

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• Using jQuery to POST Form Data to an ASP.NET ASMX AJAX Web Service

  - by Rick Strahl

  The other day I got a question about how to call an ASP.NET ASMX Web Service or PageMethods with the POST data from a Web Form (or any HTML form for that matter). The idea is that you should be able to call an endpoint URL, send it regular urlencoded POST data and then use Request.Form[] to retrieve the posted data as needed. My first reaction was that you can’t do it, because ASP.NET ASMX AJAX services (as well as Page Methods and WCF REST AJAX Services) require that the content POSTed to the server is posted as JSON and sent with an application/json or application/x-javascript content type. IOW, you can’t directly call an ASP.NET AJAX service with regular urlencoded data. Note that there are other ways to accomplish this. You can use ASP.NET MVC and a custom route, an HTTP Handler or separate ASPX page, or even a WCF REST service that’s configured to use non-JSON inputs. However if you want to use an ASP.NET AJAX service (or Page Methods) with a little bit of setup work it’s actually quite easy to capture all the form variables on the client and ship them up to the server. The basic steps needed to make this happen are: Capture form variables into an array on the client with jQuery’s .serializeArray() function Use $.ajax() or my ServiceProxy class to make an AJAX call to the server to send this array On the server create a custom type that matches the .serializeArray() name/value structure Create extension methods on NameValue[] to easily extract form variables Create a [WebMethod] that accepts this name/value type as an array (NameValue[]) This seems like a lot of work but realize that steps 3 and 4 are a one time setup step that can be reused in your entire site or multiple applications. Let’s look at a short example that looks like this as a base form of fields to ship to the server: The HTML for this form looks something like this: <div id="divMessage" class="errordisplay" style="display: none"> </div> <div> <div class="label">Name:</div> <div><asp:TextBox runat="server" ID="txtName" /></div> </div> <div> <div class="label">Company:</div> <div><asp:TextBox runat="server" ID="txtCompany"/></div> </div> <div> <div class="label" ></div> <div> <asp:DropDownList runat="server" ID="lstAttending"> <asp:ListItem Text="Attending" Value="Attending"/> <asp:ListItem Text="Not Attending" Value="NotAttending" /> <asp:ListItem Text="Maybe Attending" Value="MaybeAttending" /> <asp:ListItem Text="Not Sure Yet" Value="NotSureYet" /> </asp:DropDownList> </div> </div> <div> <div class="label">Special Needs:<br /> <small>(check all that apply)</small></div> <div> <asp:ListBox runat="server" ID="lstSpecialNeeds" SelectionMode="Multiple"> <asp:ListItem Text="Vegitarian" Value="Vegitarian" /> <asp:ListItem Text="Vegan" Value="Vegan" /> <asp:ListItem Text="Kosher" Value="Kosher" /> <asp:ListItem Text="Special Access" Value="SpecialAccess" /> <asp:ListItem Text="No Binder" Value="NoBinder" /> </asp:ListBox> </div> </div> <div> <div class="label"></div> <div> <asp:CheckBox ID="chkAdditionalGuests" Text="Additional Guests" runat="server" /> </div> </div> <hr /> <input type="button" id="btnSubmit" value="Send Registration" /> The form includes a few different kinds of form fields including a multi-selection listbox to demonstrate retrieving multiple values. Setting up the Server Side [WebMethod] The [WebMethod] on the server we’re going to call is going to be very simple and just capture the content of these values and echo then back as a formatted HTML string. Obviously this is overly simplistic but it serves to demonstrate the simple point of capturing the POST data on the server in an AJAX callback. public class PageMethodsService : System.Web.Services.WebService { [WebMethod] public string SendRegistration(NameValue[] formVars) { StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder(); sb.AppendFormat("Thank you {0}, <br/><br/>", HttpUtility.HtmlEncode(formVars.Form("txtName"))); sb.AppendLine("You've entered the following: <hr/>"); foreach (NameValue nv in formVars) { // strip out ASP.NET form vars like _ViewState/_EventValidation if (!nv.name.StartsWith("__")) { if (nv.name.StartsWith("txt") || nv.name.StartsWith("lst") || nv.name.StartsWith("chk")) sb.Append(nv.name.Substring(3)); else sb.Append(nv.name); sb.AppendLine(": " + HttpUtility.HtmlEncode(nv.value) + "<br/>"); } } sb.AppendLine("<hr/>"); string[] needs = formVars.FormMultiple("lstSpecialNeeds"); if (needs == null) sb.AppendLine("No Special Needs"); else { sb.AppendLine("Special Needs: <br/>"); foreach (string need in needs) { sb.AppendLine("&nbsp;&nbsp;" + need + "<br/>"); } } return sb.ToString(); } } The key feature of this method is that it receives a custom type called NameValue[] which is an array of NameValue objects that map the structure that the jQuery .serializeArray() function generates. There are two custom types involved in this: The actual NameValue type and a NameValueExtensions class that defines a couple of extension methods for the NameValue[] array type to allow for single (.Form()) and multiple (.FormMultiple()) value retrieval by name. The NameValue class is as simple as this and simply maps the structure of the array elements of .serializeArray(): public class NameValue { public string name { get; set; } public string value { get; set; } } The extension method class defines the .Form() and .FormMultiple() methods to allow easy retrieval of form variables from the returned array: /// <summary> /// Simple NameValue class that maps name and value /// properties that can be used with jQuery's /// $.serializeArray() function and JSON requests /// </summary> public static class NameValueExtensionMethods { /// <summary> /// Retrieves a single form variable from the list of /// form variables stored /// </summary> /// <param name="formVars"></param> /// <param name="name">formvar to retrieve</param> /// <returns>value or string.Empty if not found</returns> public static string Form(this NameValue[] formVars, string name) { var matches = formVars.Where(nv => nv.name.ToLower() == name.ToLower()).FirstOrDefault(); if (matches != null) return matches.value; return string.Empty; } /// <summary> /// Retrieves multiple selection form variables from the list of /// form variables stored. /// </summary> /// <param name="formVars"></param> /// <param name="name">The name of the form var to retrieve</param> /// <returns>values as string[] or null if no match is found</returns> public static string[] FormMultiple(this NameValue[] formVars, string name) { var matches = formVars.Where(nv => nv.name.ToLower() == name.ToLower()).Select(nv => nv.value).ToArray(); if (matches.Length == 0) return null; return matches; } } Using these extension methods it’s easy to retrieve individual values from the array: string name = formVars.Form("txtName"); or multiple values: string[] needs = formVars.FormMultiple("lstSpecialNeeds"); if (needs != null) { // do something with matches } Using these functions in the SendRegistration method it’s easy to retrieve a few form variables directly (txtName and the multiple selections of lstSpecialNeeds) or to iterate over the whole list of values. Of course this is an overly simple example – in typical app you’d probably want to validate the input data and save it to the database and then return some sort of confirmation or possibly an updated data list back to the client. Since this is a full AJAX service callback realize that you don’t have to return simple string values – you can return any of the supported result types (which are most serializable types) including complex hierarchical objects and arrays that make sense to your client code. POSTing Form Variables from the Client to the AJAX Service To call the AJAX service method on the client is straight forward and requires only use of little native jQuery plus JSON serialization functionality. To start add jQuery and the json2.js library to your page: <script src="Scripts/jquery.min.js" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="Scripts/json2.js" type="text/javascript"></script> json2.js can be found here (be sure to remove the first line from the file): http://www.json.org/json2.js It’s required to handle JSON serialization for those browsers that don’t support it natively. With those script references in the document let’s hookup the button click handler and call the service: $(document).ready(function () { $("#btnSubmit").click(sendRegistration); }); function sendRegistration() { var arForm = $("#form1").serializeArray(); $.ajax({ url: "PageMethodsService.asmx/SendRegistration", type: "POST", contentType: "application/json", data: JSON.stringify({ formVars: arForm }), dataType: "json", success: function (result) { var jEl = $("#divMessage"); jEl.html(result.d).fadeIn(1000); setTimeout(function () { jEl.fadeOut(1000) }, 5000); }, error: function (xhr, status) { alert("An error occurred: " + status); } }); } The key feature in this code is the $("#form1").serializeArray();  call which serializes all the form fields of form1 into an array. Each form var is represented as an object with a name/value property. This array is then serialized into JSON with: JSON.stringify({ formVars: arForm }) The format for the parameter list in AJAX service calls is an object with one property for each parameter of the method. In this case its a single parameter called formVars and we’re assigning the array of form variables to it. The URL to call on the server is the name of the Service (or ASPX Page for Page Methods) plus the name of the method to call. On return the success callback receives the result from the AJAX callback which in this case is the formatted string which is simply assigned to an element in the form and displayed. Remember the result type is whatever the method returns – it doesn’t have to be a string. Note that ASP.NET AJAX and WCF REST return JSON data as a wrapped object so the result has a ‘d’ property that holds the actual response: jEl.html(result.d).fadeIn(1000); Slightly simpler: Using ServiceProxy.js If you want things slightly cleaner you can use the ServiceProxy.js class I’ve mentioned here before. The ServiceProxy class handles a few things for calling ASP.NET and WCF services more cleanly: Automatic JSON encoding Automatic fix up of ‘d’ wrapper property Automatic Date conversion on the client Simplified error handling Reusable and abstracted To add the service proxy add: <script src="Scripts/ServiceProxy.js" type="text/javascript"></script> and then change the code to this slightly simpler version: <script type="text/javascript"> proxy = new ServiceProxy("PageMethodsService.asmx/"); $(document).ready(function () { $("#btnSubmit").click(sendRegistration); }); function sendRegistration() { var arForm = $("#form1").serializeArray(); proxy.invoke("SendRegistration", { formVars: arForm }, function (result) { var jEl = $("#divMessage"); jEl.html(result).fadeIn(1000); setTimeout(function () { jEl.fadeOut(1000) }, 5000); }, function (error) { alert(error.message); } ); } The code is not very different but it makes the call as simple as specifying the method to call, the parameters to pass and the actions to take on success and error. No more remembering which content type and data types to use and manually serializing to JSON. This code also removes the “d” property processing in the response and provides more consistent error handling in that the call always returns an error object regardless of a server error or a communication error unlike the native $.ajax() call. Either approach works and both are pretty easy. The ServiceProxy really pays off if you use lots of service calls and especially if you need to deal with date values returned from the server  on the client. Summary Making Web Service calls and getting POST data to the server is not always the best option – ASP.NET and WCF AJAX services are meant to work with data in objects. However, in some situations it’s simply easier to POST all the captured form data to the server instead of mapping all properties from the input fields to some sort of message object first. For this approach the above POST mechanism is useful as it puts the parsing of the data on the server and leaves the client code lean and mean. It’s even easy to build a custom model binder on the server that can map the array values to properties on an object generically with some relatively simple Reflection code and without having to manually map form vars to properties and do string conversions. Keep in mind though that other approaches also abound. ASP.NET MVC makes it pretty easy to create custom routes to data and the built in model binder makes it very easy to deal with inbound form POST data in its original urlencoded format. The West Wind West Wind Web Toolkit also includes functionality for AJAX callbacks using plain POST values. All that’s needed is a Method parameter to query/form value to specify the method to be called on the server. After that the content type is completely optional and up to the consumer. It’d be nice if the ASP.NET AJAX Service and WCF AJAX Services weren’t so tightly bound to the content type so that you could more easily create open access service endpoints that can take advantage of urlencoded data that is everywhere in existing pages. It would make it much easier to create basic REST endpoints without complicated service configuration. Ah one can dream! In the meantime I hope this article has given you some ideas on how you can transfer POST data from the client to the server using JSON – it might be useful in other scenarios beyond ASP.NET AJAX services as well. Additional Resources ServiceProxy.js A small JavaScript library that wraps $.ajax() to call ASP.NET AJAX and WCF AJAX Services. Includes date parsing extensions to the JSON object, a global dataFilter for processing dates on all jQuery JSON requests, provides cleanup for the .NET wrapped message format and handles errors in a consistent fashion. Making jQuery Calls to WCF/ASMX with a ServiceProxy Client More information on calling ASMX and WCF AJAX services with jQuery and some more background on ServiceProxy.js. Note the implementation has slightly changed since the article was written. ww.jquery.js The West Wind West Wind Web Toolkit also includes ServiceProxy.js in the West Wind jQuery extension library. This version is slightly different and includes embedded json encoding/decoding based on json2.js.© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2010Posted in jQuery  ASP.NET  AJAX  

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• Using linked servers, OPENROWSET and OPENQUERY

  - by BuckWoody

  SQL Server has a few mechanisms to reach out to another server (even another server type) and query data from within a Transact-SQL statement. Among them are a set of stored credentials and information (called a Linked Server), a statement that uses a linked server called called OPENQUERY, another called OPENROWSET, and one called OPENDATASOURCE. This post isn’t about those particular functions or statements – hit the links for more if you’re new to those topics. I’m actually more concerned about where I see these used than the particular method. In many cases, a Linked server isn’t another Relational Database Management System (RDMBS) like Oracle or DB2 (which is possible with a linked server), but another SQL Server. My concern is that linked servers are the new Data Transformation Services (DTS) from SQL Server 2000 – something that was designed for one purpose but which is being morphed into something much more. In the case of DTS, most of us turned that feature into a full-fledged job system. What was designed as a simple data import and export system has been pressed into service doing logic, routing and timing. And of course we all know how painful it was to move off of a complex DTS system onto SQL Server Integration Services. In the case of linked servers, what should be used as a method of running a simple query or two on another server where you have occasional connection or need a quick import of a small data set is morphing into a full federation strategy. In some cases I’ve seen a complex web of linked servers, and when credentials, names or anything else changes there are huge problems. Now don’t get me wrong – linked servers and other forms of distributing queries is a fantastic set of tools that we have to move data around. I’m just saying that when you start having lots of workarounds and when things get really complicated, you might want to step back a little and ask if there’s a better way. Are you able to tolerate some latency? Perhaps you’re able to use Service Broker. Would you like to be platform-independent on the data source? Perhaps a middle-tier might make more sense, abstracting the queries there and sending them to the proper server. Designed properly, I’ve seen these systems scale further and be more resilient than loading up on linked servers. Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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• Naming PowerPoint Components With A VSTO Add-In

  - by Tim Murphy

  Note: Cross posted from Coding The Document. Permalink Sometimes in order to work with Open XML we need a little help from other tools.  In this post I am going to describe  a fairly simple solution for marking up PowerPoint presentations so that they can be used as templates and processed using the Open XML SDK. Add-ins are tools which it can be hard to find information on.  I am going to up the obscurity by adding a Ribbon button.  For my example I am using Visual Studio 2008 and creating a PowerPoint 2007 Add-in project.  To that add a Ribbon Visual Designer.  The new ribbon by default will show up on the Add-in tab. Add a button to the ribbon.  Also add a WinForm to collect a new name for the object selected.  Make sure to set the OK button’s DialogResult to OK. In the ribbon button click event add the following code. ObjectNameForm dialog = new ObjectNameForm(); Selection selection = Globals.ThisAddIn.Application.ActiveWindow.Selection;   dialog.objectName = selection.ShapeRange.Name;   if (dialog.ShowDialog() == DialogResult.OK) { selection.ShapeRange.Name = dialog.objectName; } This code will first read the current Name attribute of the Shape object.  If the user clicks OK on the dialog it save the string value back to the same place. Once it is done you can retrieve identify the control through Open XML via the NonVisualDisplayProperties objects.  The only problem is that this object is a child of several different classes.  This means that there isn’t just one way to retrieve the value.  Below are a couple of pieces of code to identify the container that you have named. The first example is if you are naming placeholders in a layout slide. foreach(var slideMasterPart in slideMasterParts) { var layoutParts = slideMasterPart.SlideLayoutParts; foreach(SlideLayoutPart slideLayoutPart in layoutParts) { foreach (assmPresentation.Shape shape in slideLayoutPart.SlideLayout.CommonSlideData.ShapeTree.Descendants<assmPresentation.Shape>()) { var slideMasterProperties = from p in shape.Descendants<assmPresentation.NonVisualDrawingProperties>() where p.Name == TokenText.Text select p;   if (slideMasterProperties.Count() > 0) tokenFound = true; } } } The second example allows you to find charts that you have named with the add-in. foreach(var slidePart in slideParts) { foreach(assmPresentation.Shape slideShape in slidePart.Slide.CommonSlideData.ShapeTree.Descendants<assmPresentation.Shape>()) { var slideProperties = from g in slidePart.Slide.Descendants<GraphicFrame>() where g.NonVisualGraphicFrameProperties.NonVisualDrawingProperties.Name == TokenText.Text select g;   if(slideProperties.Count() > 0) { tokenFound = true; } } } Together the combination of Open XML and VSTO add-ins make a powerful combination in creating a process for maintaining a template and generating documents from the template.

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• How do I get an Enter USB TV Box TV tuner aka Gadmei UTV302 to work?

  - by Subhash

  Has anyone had any success in using the Enter USB TV Box from Enter Multimedia? It comes bundled with software that works in Windows. I have had no luck using it in Ubuntu 10.10. Update 1 Here is the output from lsusb Bus 007 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 006 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 005 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 004 Device 003: ID 093a:2510 Pixart Imaging, Inc. Optical Mouse Bus 004 Device 002: ID 046d:c312 Logitech, Inc. DeLuxe 250 Keyboard Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub Bus 001 Device 006: ID 1f71:3301 Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub I can't find the Enter USB TV Box listed in this. In the dmesg tail command, I found something that seems to be related to the card: usb 1-5: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 6 usb 1-5: config 1 interface 0 altsetting 1 bulk endpoint 0x83 has invalid maxpacket 256 Update 2 From Windows I learned that this USB TV tuner uses some chipset from Gadmei corporation. All computer stores in India sell Enter USB TV Box if you ask for an USB TV tuner. No other brand seems to be interested in this market. Update 3 I learned that this TV tuner is rebranded version of Gadmei UTV302 (USB TV Tuner Box). Update 4 I tried adding em28xx as the chipset (as suggested by user BOBBO below) for the tuner but that did not work. I went back to my Pinnacle PCTV internal card. I don't think the tuner referred by UbuntuForums (Gadmei UTV 330) and the tuner that I have (Gadmei UTV 302) are the same. My USB tuner is several times bigger. My tuner seems to be a newer device with a newer tuner chip. I will submit details of this device to the LinuxTV developers this weekend. Update 5 I opened the tuner box and found that it uses a tuner from a Chinese company - Tenas. Model is TNF 8022-DFA. Update 6 Tuner chip specs (retrived from supplier directory) for Tenas TNF 8022-DFA. Supply voltage: true 5V device(low power dissipation) Control system: I2C bus control of tuning, address selection Tuning system: PLL controlled tuning Receiving system: system PAL D/K,IF(Intermediate Frequency): 38MHz Receiving channels: full frequency range from channel DS1 (49.75MHz) to channel DS57 (863.25MHz); Use Texas Instruments SN761678 IC solution, with mini install size Update 7 Reverse side of the circuit board. Picture of the TV tuner

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• Using Durandal to Create Single Page Apps

  - by Stephen.Walther

  A few days ago, I gave a talk on building Single Page Apps on the Microsoft Stack. In that talk, I recommended that people use Knockout, Sammy, and RequireJS to build their presentation layer and use the ASP.NET Web API to expose data from their server. After I gave the talk, several people contacted me and suggested that I investigate a new open-source JavaScript library named Durandal. Durandal stitches together Knockout, Sammy, and RequireJS to make it easier to use these technologies together. In this blog entry, I want to provide a brief walkthrough of using Durandal to create a simple Single Page App. I am going to demonstrate how you can create a simple Movies App which contains (virtual) pages for viewing a list of movies, adding new movies, and viewing movie details. The goal of this blog entry is to give you a sense of what it is like to build apps with Durandal. Installing Durandal First things first. How do you get Durandal? The GitHub project for Durandal is located here: https://github.com/BlueSpire/Durandal The Wiki — located at the GitHub project — contains all of the current documentation for Durandal. Currently, the documentation is a little sparse, but it is enough to get you started. Instead of downloading the Durandal source from GitHub, a better option for getting started with Durandal is to install one of the Durandal NuGet packages. I built the Movies App described in this blog entry by first creating a new ASP.NET MVC 4 Web Application with the Basic Template. Next, I executed the following command from the Package Manager Console: Install-Package Durandal.StarterKit As you can see from the screenshot of the Package Manager Console above, the Durandal Starter Kit package has several dependencies including: · jQuery · Knockout · Sammy · Twitter Bootstrap The Durandal Starter Kit package includes a sample Durandal application. You can get to the Starter Kit app by navigating to the Durandal controller. Unfortunately, when I first tried to run the Starter Kit app, I got an error because the Starter Kit is hard-coded to use a particular version of jQuery which is already out of date. You can fix this issue by modifying the App_Start\DurandalBundleConfig.cs file so it is jQuery version agnostic like this: bundles.Add( new ScriptBundle("~/scripts/vendor") .Include("~/Scripts/jquery-{version}.js") .Include("~/Scripts/knockout-{version}.js") .Include("~/Scripts/sammy-{version}.js") // .Include("~/Scripts/jquery-1.9.0.min.js") // .Include("~/Scripts/knockout-2.2.1.js") // .Include("~/Scripts/sammy-0.7.4.min.js") .Include("~/Scripts/bootstrap.min.js") ); The recommendation is that you create a Durandal app in a folder off your project root named App. The App folder in the Starter Kit contains the following subfolders and files: · durandal – This folder contains the actual durandal JavaScript library. · viewmodels – This folder contains all of your application’s view models. · views – This folder contains all of your application’s views. · main.js — This file contains all of the JavaScript startup code for your app including the client-side routing configuration. · main-built.js – This file contains an optimized version of your application. You need to build this file by using the RequireJS optimizer (unfortunately, before you can run the optimizer, you must first install NodeJS). For the purpose of this blog entry, I wanted to start from scratch when building the Movies app, so I deleted all of these files and folders except for the durandal folder which contains the durandal library. Creating the ASP.NET MVC Controller and View A Durandal app is built using a single server-side ASP.NET MVC controller and ASP.NET MVC view. A Durandal app is a Single Page App. When you navigate between pages, you are not navigating to new pages on the server. Instead, you are loading new virtual pages into the one-and-only-one server-side view. For the Movies app, I created the following ASP.NET MVC Home controller: public class HomeController : Controller { public ActionResult Index() { return View(); } } There is nothing special about the Home controller – it is as basic as it gets. Next, I created the following server-side ASP.NET view. This is the one-and-only server-side view used by the Movies app: @{ Layout = null; } <!DOCTYPE html> <html> <head> <title>Index</title> </head> <body> <div id="applicationHost"> Loading app.... </div> @Scripts.Render("~/scripts/vendor") <script type="text/javascript" src="~/App/durandal/amd/require.js" data-main="/App/main"></script> </body> </html> Notice that I set the Layout property for the view to the value null. If you neglect to do this, then the default ASP.NET MVC layout will be applied to the view and you will get the <!DOCTYPE> and opening and closing <html> tags twice. Next, notice that the view contains a DIV element with the Id applicationHost. This marks the area where virtual pages are loaded. When you navigate from page to page in a Durandal app, HTML page fragments are retrieved from the server and stuck in the applicationHost DIV element. Inside the applicationHost element, you can place any content which you want to display when a Durandal app is starting up. For example, you can create a fancy splash screen. I opted for simply displaying the text “Loading app…”: Next, notice the view above includes a call to the Scripts.Render() helper. This helper renders out all of the JavaScript files required by the Durandal library such as jQuery and Knockout. Remember to fix the App_Start\DurandalBundleConfig.cs as described above or Durandal will attempt to load an old version of jQuery and throw a JavaScript exception and stop working. Your application JavaScript code is not included in the scripts rendered by the Scripts.Render helper. Your application code is loaded dynamically by RequireJS with the help of the following SCRIPT element located at the bottom of the view: <script type="text/javascript" src="~/App/durandal/amd/require.js" data-main="/App/main"></script> The data-main attribute on the SCRIPT element causes RequireJS to load your /app/main.js JavaScript file to kick-off your Durandal app. Creating the Durandal Main.js File The Durandal Main.js JavaScript file, located in your App folder, contains all of the code required to configure the behavior of Durandal. Here’s what the Main.js file looks like in the case of the Movies app: require.config({ paths: { 'text': 'durandal/amd/text' } }); define(function (require) { var app = require('durandal/app'), viewLocator = require('durandal/viewLocator'), system = require('durandal/system'), router = require('durandal/plugins/router'); //>>excludeStart("build", true); system.debug(true); //>>excludeEnd("build"); app.start().then(function () { //Replace 'viewmodels' in the moduleId with 'views' to locate the view. //Look for partial views in a 'views' folder in the root. viewLocator.useConvention(); //configure routing router.useConvention(); router.mapNav("movies/show"); router.mapNav("movies/add"); router.mapNav("movies/details/:id"); app.adaptToDevice(); //Show the app by setting the root view model for our application with a transition. app.setRoot('viewmodels/shell', 'entrance'); }); }); There are three important things to notice about the main.js file above. First, notice that it contains a section which enables debugging which looks like this: //>>excludeStart(“build”, true); system.debug(true); //>>excludeEnd(“build”); This code enables debugging for your Durandal app which is very useful when things go wrong. When you call system.debug(true), Durandal writes out debugging information to your browser JavaScript console. For example, you can use the debugging information to diagnose issues with your client-side routes: (The funny looking //> symbols around the system.debug() call are RequireJS optimizer pragmas). The main.js file is also the place where you configure your client-side routes. In the case of the Movies app, the main.js file is used to configure routes for three page: the movies show, add, and details pages. //configure routing router.useConvention(); router.mapNav("movies/show"); router.mapNav("movies/add"); router.mapNav("movies/details/:id");   The route for movie details includes a route parameter named id. Later, we will use the id parameter to lookup and display the details for the right movie. Finally, the main.js file above contains the following line of code: //Show the app by setting the root view model for our application with a transition. app.setRoot('viewmodels/shell', 'entrance'); This line of code causes Durandal to load up a JavaScript file named shell.js and an HTML fragment named shell.html. I’ll discuss the shell in the next section. Creating the Durandal Shell You can think of the Durandal shell as the layout or master page for a Durandal app. The shell is where you put all of the content which you want to remain constant as a user navigates from virtual page to virtual page. For example, the shell is a great place to put your website logo and navigation links. The Durandal shell is composed from two parts: a JavaScript file and an HTML file. Here’s what the HTML file looks like for the Movies app: <h1>Movies App</h1> <div class="container-fluid page-host"> <!--ko compose: { model: router.activeItem, //wiring the router afterCompose: router.afterCompose, //wiring the router transition:'entrance', //use the 'entrance' transition when switching views cacheViews:true //telling composition to keep views in the dom, and reuse them (only a good idea with singleton view models) }--><!--/ko--> </div> And here is what the JavaScript file looks like: define(function (require) { var router = require('durandal/plugins/router'); return { router: router, activate: function () { return router.activate('movies/show'); } }; }); The JavaScript file contains the view model for the shell. This view model returns the Durandal router so you can access the list of configured routes from your shell. Notice that the JavaScript file includes a function named activate(). This function loads the movies/show page as the first page in the Movies app. If you want to create a different default Durandal page, then pass the name of a different age to the router.activate() method. Creating the Movies Show Page Durandal pages are created out of a view model and a view. The view model contains all of the data and view logic required for the view. The view contains all of the HTML markup for rendering the view model. Let’s start with the movies show page. The movies show page displays a list of movies. The view model for the show page looks like this: define(function (require) { var moviesRepository = require("repositories/moviesRepository"); return { movies: ko.observable(), activate: function() { this.movies(moviesRepository.listMovies()); } }; }); You create a view model by defining a new RequireJS module (see http://requirejs.org). You create a RequireJS module by placing all of your JavaScript code into an anonymous function passed to the RequireJS define() method. A RequireJS module has two parts. You retrieve all of the modules which your module requires at the top of your module. The code above depends on another RequireJS module named repositories/moviesRepository. Next, you return the implementation of your module. The code above returns a JavaScript object which contains a property named movies and a method named activate. The activate() method is a magic method which Durandal calls whenever it activates your view model. Your view model is activated whenever you navigate to a page which uses it. In the code above, the activate() method is used to get the list of movies from the movies repository and assign the list to the view model movies property. The HTML for the movies show page looks like this: <table> <thead> <tr> <th>Title</th><th>Director</th> </tr> </thead> <tbody data-bind="foreach:movies"> <tr> <td data-bind="text:title"></td> <td data-bind="text:director"></td> <td><a data-bind="attr:{href:'#/movies/details/'+id}">Details</a></td> </tr> </tbody> </table> <a href="#/movies/add">Add Movie</a> Notice that this is an HTML fragment. This fragment will be stuffed into the page-host DIV element in the shell.html file which is stuffed, in turn, into the applicationHost DIV element in the server-side MVC view. The HTML markup above contains data-bind attributes used by Knockout to display the list of movies (To learn more about Knockout, visit http://knockoutjs.com). The list of movies from the view model is displayed in an HTML table. Notice that the page includes a link to a page for adding a new movie. The link uses the following URL which starts with a hash: #/movies/add. Because the link starts with a hash, clicking the link does not cause a request back to the server. Instead, you navigate to the movies/add page virtually. Creating the Movies Add Page The movies add page also consists of a view model and view. The add page enables you to add a new movie to the movie database. Here’s the view model for the add page: define(function (require) { var app = require('durandal/app'); var router = require('durandal/plugins/router'); var moviesRepository = require("repositories/moviesRepository"); return { movieToAdd: { title: ko.observable(), director: ko.observable() }, activate: function () { this.movieToAdd.title(""); this.movieToAdd.director(""); this._movieAdded = false; }, canDeactivate: function () { if (this._movieAdded == false) { return app.showMessage('Are you sure you want to leave this page?', 'Navigate', ['Yes', 'No']); } else { return true; } }, addMovie: function () { // Add movie to db moviesRepository.addMovie(ko.toJS(this.movieToAdd)); // flag new movie this._movieAdded = true; // return to list of movies router.navigateTo("#/movies/show"); } }; }); The view model contains one property named movieToAdd which is bound to the add movie form. The view model also has the following three methods: 1. activate() – This method is called by Durandal when you navigate to the add movie page. The activate() method resets the add movie form by clearing out the movie title and director properties. 2. canDeactivate() – This method is called by Durandal when you attempt to navigate away from the add movie page. If you return false then navigation is cancelled. 3. addMovie() – This method executes when the add movie form is submitted. This code adds the new movie to the movie repository. I really like the Durandal canDeactivate() method. In the code above, I use the canDeactivate() method to show a warning to a user if they navigate away from the add movie page – either by clicking the Cancel button or by hitting the browser back button – before submitting the add movie form: The view for the add movie page looks like this: <form data-bind="submit:addMovie"> <fieldset> <legend>Add Movie</legend> <div> <label> Title: <input data-bind="value:movieToAdd.title" required /> </label> </div> <div> <label> Director: <input data-bind="value:movieToAdd.director" required /> </label> </div> <div> <input type="submit" value="Add" /> <a href="#/movies/show">Cancel</a> </div> </fieldset> </form> I am using Knockout to bind the movieToAdd property from the view model to the INPUT elements of the HTML form. Notice that the FORM element includes a data-bind attribute which invokes the addMovie() method from the view model when the HTML form is submitted. Creating the Movies Details Page You navigate to the movies details Page by clicking the Details link which appears next to each movie in the movies show page: The Details links pass the movie ids to the details page: #/movies/details/0 #/movies/details/1 #/movies/details/2 Here’s what the view model for the movies details page looks like: define(function (require) { var router = require('durandal/plugins/router'); var moviesRepository = require("repositories/moviesRepository"); return { movieToShow: { title: ko.observable(), director: ko.observable() }, activate: function (context) { // Grab movie from repository var movie = moviesRepository.getMovie(context.id); // Add to view model this.movieToShow.title(movie.title); this.movieToShow.director(movie.director); } }; }); Notice that the view model activate() method accepts a parameter named context. You can take advantage of the context parameter to retrieve route parameters such as the movie Id. In the code above, the context.id property is used to retrieve the correct movie from the movie repository and the movie is assigned to a property named movieToShow exposed by the view model. The movie details view displays the movieToShow property by taking advantage of Knockout bindings: <div> <h2 data-bind="text:movieToShow.title"></h2> directed by <span data-bind="text:movieToShow.director"></span> </div> Summary The goal of this blog entry was to walkthrough building a simple Single Page App using Durandal and to get a feel for what it is like to use this library. I really like how Durandal stitches together Knockout, Sammy, and RequireJS and establishes patterns for using these libraries to build Single Page Apps. Having a standard pattern which developers on a team can use to build new pages is super valuable. Once you get the hang of it, using Durandal to create new virtual pages is dead simple. Just define a new route, view model, and view and you are done. I also appreciate the fact that Durandal did not attempt to re-invent the wheel and that Durandal leverages existing JavaScript libraries such as Knockout, RequireJS, and Sammy. These existing libraries are powerful libraries and I have already invested a considerable amount of time in learning how to use them. Durandal makes it easier to use these libraries together without losing any of their power. Durandal has some additional interesting features which I have not had a chance to play with yet. For example, you can use the RequireJS optimizer to combine and minify all of a Durandal app’s code. Also, Durandal supports a way to create custom widgets (client-side controls) by composing widgets from a controller and view. You can download the code for the Movies app by clicking the following link (this is a Visual Studio 2012 project): Durandal Movie App

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