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• [GEEK SCHOOL] Network Security 2: Preventing Disaster with User Account Control

  - by Ciprian Rusen

  In this second lesson in our How-To Geek School about securing the Windows devices in your network, we will talk about User Account Control (UAC). Users encounter this feature each time they need to install desktop applications in Windows, when some applications need administrator permissions in order to work and when they have to change different system settings and files. UAC was introduced in Windows Vista as part of Microsoft’s “Trustworthy Computing” initiative. Basically, UAC is meant to act as a wedge between you and installing applications or making system changes. When you attempt to do either of these actions, UAC will pop up and interrupt you. You may either have to confirm you know what you’re doing, or even enter an administrator password if you don’t have those rights. Some users find UAC annoying and choose to disable it but this very important security feature of Windows (and we strongly caution against doing that). That’s why in this lesson, we will carefully explain what UAC is and everything it does. As you will see, this feature has an important role in keeping Windows safe from all kinds of security problems. In this lesson you will learn which activities may trigger a UAC prompt asking for permissions and how UAC can be set so that it strikes the best balance between usability and security. You will also learn what kind of information you can find in each UAC prompt. Last but not least, you will learn why you should never turn off this feature of Windows. By the time we’re done today, we think you will have a newly found appreciation for UAC, and will be able to find a happy medium between turning it off completely and letting it annoy you to distraction. What is UAC and How Does it Work? UAC or User Account Control is a security feature that helps prevent unauthorized system changes to your Windows computer or device. These changes can be made by users, applications, and sadly, malware (which is the biggest reason why UAC exists in the first place). When an important system change is initiated, Windows displays a UAC prompt asking for your permission to make the change. If you don’t give your approval, the change is not made. In Windows, you will encounter UAC prompts mostly when working with desktop applications that require administrative permissions. For example, in order to install an application, the installer (generally a setup.exe file) asks Windows for administrative permissions. UAC initiates an elevation prompt like the one shown earlier asking you whether it is okay to elevate permissions or not. If you say “Yes”, the installer starts as administrator and it is able to make the necessary system changes in order to install the application correctly. When the installer is closed, its administrator privileges are gone. If you run it again, the UAC prompt is shown again because your previous approval is not remembered. If you say “No”, the installer is not allowed to run and no system changes are made. If a system change is initiated from a user account that is not an administrator, e.g. the Guest account, the UAC prompt will also ask for the administrator password in order to give the necessary permissions. Without this password, the change won’t be made. Which Activities Trigger a UAC Prompt? There are many types of activities that may trigger a UAC prompt: Running a desktop application as an administrator Making changes to settings and files in the Windows and Program Files folders Installing or removing drivers and desktop applications Installing ActiveX controls Changing settings to Windows features like the Windows Firewall, UAC, Windows Update, Windows Defender, and others Adding, modifying, or removing user accounts Configuring Parental Controls in Windows 7 or Family Safety in Windows 8.x Running the Task Scheduler Restoring backed-up system files Viewing or changing the folders and files of another user account Changing the system date and time You will encounter UAC prompts during some or all of these activities, depending on how UAC is set on your Windows device. If this security feature is turned off, any user account or desktop application can make any of these changes without a prompt asking for permissions. In this scenario, the different forms of malware existing on the Internet will also have a higher chance of infecting and taking control of your system. In Windows 8.x operating systems you will never see a UAC prompt when working with apps from the Windows Store. That’s because these apps, by design, are not allowed to modify any system settings or files. You will encounter UAC prompts only when working with desktop programs. What You Can Learn from a UAC Prompt? When you see a UAC prompt on the screen, take time to read the information displayed so that you get a better understanding of what is going on. Each prompt first tells you the name of the program that wants to make system changes to your device, then you can see the verified publisher of that program. Dodgy software tends not to display this information and instead of a real company name, you will see an entry that says “Unknown”. If you have downloaded that program from a less than trustworthy source, then it might be better to select “No” in the UAC prompt. The prompt also shares the origin of the file that’s trying to make these changes. In most cases the file origin is “Hard drive on this computer”. You can learn more by pressing “Show details”. You will see an additional entry named “Program location” where you can see the physical location on your hard drive, for the file that’s trying to perform system changes. Make your choice based on the trust you have in the program you are trying to run and its publisher. If a less-known file from a suspicious location is requesting a UAC prompt, then you should seriously consider pressing “No”. What’s Different About Each UAC Level? Windows 7 and Windows 8.x have four UAC levels: Always notify – when this level is used, you are notified before desktop applications make changes that require administrator permissions or before you or another user account changes Windows settings like the ones mentioned earlier. When the UAC prompt is shown, the desktop is dimmed and you must choose “Yes” or “No” before you can do anything else. This is the most secure and also the most annoying way to set UAC because it triggers the most UAC prompts. Notify me only when programs/apps try to make changes to my computer (default) – Windows uses this as the default for UAC. When this level is used, you are notified before desktop applications make changes that require administrator permissions. If you are making system changes, UAC doesn’t show any prompts and it automatically gives you the necessary permissions for making the changes you desire. When a UAC prompt is shown, the desktop is dimmed and you must choose “Yes” or “No” before you can do anything else. This level is slightly less secure than the previous one because malicious programs can be created for simulating the keystrokes or mouse moves of a user and change system settings for you. If you have a good security solution in place, this scenario should never occur. Notify me only when programs/apps try to make changes to my computer (do not dim my desktop) – this level is different from the previous in in the fact that, when the UAC prompt is shown, the desktop is not dimmed. This decreases the security of your system because different kinds of desktop applications (including malware) might be able to interfere with the UAC prompt and approve changes that you might not want to be performed. Never notify – this level is the equivalent of turning off UAC. When using it, you have no protection against unauthorized system changes. Any desktop application and any user account can make system changes without your permission. How to Configure UAC If you would like to change the UAC level used by Windows, open the Control Panel, then go to “System and Security” and select “Action Center”. On the column on the left you will see an entry that says “Change User Account Control settings”. The “User Account Control Settings” window is now opened. Change the position of the UAC slider to the level you want applied then press “OK”. Depending on how UAC was initially set, you may receive a UAC prompt requiring you to confirm this change. Why You Should Never Turn Off UAC If you want to keep the security of your system at decent levels, you should never turn off UAC. When you disable it, everything and everyone can make system changes without your consent. This makes it easier for all kinds of malware to infect and take control of your system. It doesn’t matter whether you have a security suite or antivirus installed or third-party antivirus, basic common-sense measures like having UAC turned on make a big difference in keeping your devices safe from harm. We have noticed that some users disable UAC prior to setting up their Windows devices and installing third-party software on them. They keep it disabled while installing all the software they will use and enable it when done installing everything, so that they don’t have to deal with so many UAC prompts. Unfortunately this causes problems with some desktop applications. They may fail to work after you enable UAC. This happens because, when UAC is disabled, the virtualization techniques UAC uses for your applications are inactive. This means that certain user settings and files are installed in a different place and when you turn on UAC, applications stop working because they should be placed elsewhere. Therefore, whatever you do, do not turn off UAC completely! Coming up next … In the next lesson you will learn about Windows Defender, what this tool can do in Windows 7 and Windows 8.x, what’s different about it in these operating systems and how it can be used to increase the security of your system.

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• Adopting Technologies for the Sake of Technologies

  - by shiju

  Unlike other engineering industries, the software engineering industry is really lacking maturity. The lack of maturity can see in different aspects of entire software development life cycle. I think other engineering industries are well organised and structured with common, proven engineering practices. The software engineering industry is greatly a diverse industry with different operating systems, and variety of development platforms, programming languages, frameworks and tools. Now these days, people are going behind the hypes and intellectual thoughts without understanding their core business problems and adopting technologies and practices for the sake of technologies and practices and simply becoming a “poster child” of technologies and practices. Understanding the core business problem and providing best, solid solution with a platform neutral approach, will give you more business values and ROI, instead of blindly adopting technologies and tailor-made your applications for the sake of technologies and practices. People have been simply migrating their solutions in favour of new technologies and different versions of frameworks without any business need. The “Pepsi Challenge” in the Software Development  Pepsi Challenge marketing campaign of the 1980s was a popular and very interesting marketing promotion in which people taste one cup of Pepsi and another cup with Coca Cola. In the taste test, more than 50% of people were preferred Pepsi  over Coca Cola. The success story behind the Pepsi was more sweetness contains in the Pepsi cola. They have simply added more sugar and more people preferred more sweet flavour. You can’t simply identify the better one after sipping one cup of cola based on the sweetness which contains. These things have been happening in the software industry for choosing development frameworks and technologies. People have been simply choosing frameworks based on the initial sugary feeling without understanding its core strengths and weakness. The sugary framework might be more harmful when you develop real-world systems. There is not any silver bullet for solving all kind of problems and frameworks and tools do have strengths and weakness. So it would be better to understand their strength and weakness. And please keep in mind that you have to develop real apps to understand the real capabilities and weakness of a framework. Evaluating a technology based on few blog posts will harm your projects and these bloggers might be lacking real-world experience with the framework. The Problem with Align a Development Practice with Tools Recently I have observed a discussion in a group where one guy asked suggestions for practicing Continuous Delivery (CD) as part of the agile based application engineering. Then the discussion quickly went to using and choosing a Continuous Integration (CI) tool and different people suggested different Continuous Integration (CI) tools for simply practicing Continuous Delivery. If you have worked with core agile engineering practices, you could clearly know that the real essence of agile is neither choosing a tool nor choosing a process. By simply choosing CI tool from a particular vendor will not ensure that you are delivering an evolving software based on customer feedback. You have to understand the real essence of a engineering practice and choose a right tool for practicing it instead of simply focus on a particular tool for a practicing an development practice. If you want to adopt a practice, you need a solid understanding on it with its real essence where tools are just helping us for better automation. Adopting New Technologies for the Sake of Technologies The another problem is that developers have been a tendency to adopt new technologies and simply migrating their existing apps to new technologies. It is okay if your existing system is having problem  with a technology stack or or maintainability challenge with existing solution, and moving to new technology for solving the current problems. We have been adopting new technologies for solving new challenges like solving the scalability challenges when the application or user bases is growing unpredictably. Please keep in mind that all new technologies will become old after working with it for few years. The below Facebook status update of Janakiraman, expresses the attitude of a typical customer. For an example, Node.js is becoming a hottest buzzword in the software industry and many developers are trying to adopt Node.js for their apps. The important thing is that Node.js is a minimalist framework that does some great things for some problems, but it’s not a silver bullet. I have been also working with Node.js which is good for some problems, but really bad for choosing it for all kind of problems. By adopting new technologies for new projects is good if we could get real business values from it because newer framework would solve some existing well known problems and provide better solutions where it can incorporate good solutions for the latest challenges . But adopting a new technology for the sake of new technology is really bad idea. Another example is JavaScript is getting lot of attention so that lot of developers are developing heavy JavaScript centric web apps. First, they will adopt a client-side JavaScript MV* framework from AngularJS, Ember, Backbone etc, and develop a Single Page App(SPA) where they are repeating the mistakes we did in the past with server-side. The mistakes we did in the server-side is transforming to client-side. The problem is that people are just adopting new technologies, but not improving their solutions. I predict that many Single Page App will suck in the future. We need a hybrid approach where we should be able to leverage both server-side and client-side for developing next-generation web apps. The another problem is that if you like a particular framework, use it for all kind of apps. In the past, I know some Silverlight passionate guys were tried to use that framework for all kind of apps including larger line of business apps. And these days developers are migrating their existing Silverlight apps in favour of HTML5 buzzword. So the real question is, what is the business values we are getting from these apps when we are developing it for the sake of a particular technology instead of business need. The another problem is that our solutions consultants are trying to provide unnecessary solutions for the sake of a particular technology or for a hype. For an example, Big Data solutions are great for solving the problem of three Vs : volume, velocity and variety. But trying to put this for every application will make problems. Let’s say, there is a small web site running with limited budget and saying that we need a recommendation engine for the web site with a Hadoop based solution with a 16 node cluster, would be really horrible. If we really need a Hadoop based solution, got for it, but trying to put this for all application would be a big disaster. It would be great if could understand the core business problems first, and later choose a right framework for providing solutions for the actual business problem, instead of trying to provide so many solutions. The Problem with Tied Up to a Platform Vendor Some organizations and teams are tied up with a particular platform vendor where they don’t want to use any product other than their preferred or existing platform vendor. They will accept any product provided by the vendor regardless of its capability. This will lets you some benefits regards with integration and collaboration of different products provided by the same vendor, but it will loose your opportunity to provide better solution for your business problems. For a real world sample scenario, lot of companies have been using SAP for their ERP solutions. When they are thinking about mobility or thinking about developing hybrid mobile apps, they can easily find out a framework from SAP. SAP provides a framework for HTML 5 based UI development named SAPUI5. If you are simply adopting that framework only based for the preference of existing platform vendor, you might be loose different opportunities for providing better solution. Initially you might enjoy the sugary feeling provided by the platform vendor, but you have to think about developing apps which should be capable for solving future challenges. I am not saying that any framework is not good and I believe that all frameworks are good over another one for solving at least one problem. My point is that we should not tied up with any specific platform vendor unless your organization is having resource availability problems. Being Polyglot for Providing Right Solutions The modern software engineering industry is greatly diverse with different tools and platforms. Lot of open source frameworks and new programming languages have been releasing to the developer community, where choosing the right platform without any biased opinion, is really a difficult task. But it would really great if we could develop an attitude with platform neutral mindset and being a polyglot developer for providing better solutions based on the actual business problems. IMHO, we should learn a new programming language and a new framework every year. This will improve the quality of our developer capabilities and also improve the quality of our primary programming language skills. Being polyglot for individual developers and organizational teams will give you greater opportunity to your developer experience and also for your applications. Organizations can analyse their business problem without tied with any technology and later they can provide solutions by choosing different platform and tools. Summary    In this blog post, what I was trying to say that we should not tied up or biased with any development platform, technology, vendor or programming language and we should not adopt technologies and practices for the sake of technologies. If we are adopting a technology or a practice for the sake of it, we are simply becoming a “poster child” of the technology and practice. We should not become a poster child of other people’s intellectual thoughts and theories, instead of it we should become solutions developers and solutions consultants where we should be able to provide better solutions for the business problems. Being a polyglot developer is a good idea for improving your developer skills which lets you provide better solutions for the business problems. The most important thing is that we should become platform neutral developers where our passion should be for providing brilliant solutions. It would be great if we could provide minimalist, pragmatic business solutions. You can follow me on Twitter @shijucv

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• What is New in ASP.NET 4.0 Code Access Security

  - by Xiaohong

  ASP.NET Code Access Security (CAS) is a feature that helps protect server applications on hosting multiple Web sites, ASP.NET lets you assign a configurable trust level that corresponds to a predefined set of permissions. ASP.NET has predefined ASP.NET Trust Levels and Policy Files that you can assign to applications, you also can assign custom trust level and policy files. Most web hosting companies run ASP.NET applications in Medium Trust to prevent that one website affect or harm another site etc. As .NET Framework's Code Access Security model has evolved, ASP.NET 4.0 Code Access Security also has introduced several changes and improvements. The main change in ASP.NET 4.0 CAS In ASP.NET v4.0 partial trust applications, application domain can have a default partial trust permission set as opposed to being full-trust, the permission set name is defined in the <trust /> new attribute permissionSetName that is used to initialize the application domain . By default, the PermissionSetName attribute value is "ASP.Net" which is the name of the permission set you can find in all predefined partial trust configuration files. <trust level="Something" permissionSetName="ASP.Net" /> This is ASP.NET 4.0 new CAS model. For compatibility ASP.NET 4.0 also support legacy CAS model where application domain still has full trust permission set. You can specify new legacyCasModel attribute on the <trust /> element to indicate whether the legacy CAS model is enabled. By default legacyCasModel is false which means that new 4.0 CAS model is the default. <trust level="Something" legacyCasModel="true|false" /> In .Net FX 4.0 Config directory, there are two set of predefined partial trust config files for each new CAS model and legacy CAS model, trust config files with name legacy.XYZ.config are for legacy CAS model: New CAS model: Legacy CAS model: web_hightrust.config legacy.web_hightrust.config web_mediumtrust.config legacy.web_mediumtrust.config web_lowtrust.config legacy.web_lowtrust.config web_minimaltrust.config legacy.web_minimaltrust.config   The figure below shows in ASP.NET 4.0 new CAS model what permission set to grant to code for partial trust application using predefined partial trust levels and policy files:    There also some benefits that comes with the new CAS model: You can lock down a machine by making all managed code no-execute by default (e.g. setting the MyComputer zone to have no managed execution code permissions), it should still be possible to configure ASP.NET web applications to run as either full-trust or partial trust. UNC share doesn’t require full trust with CASPOL at machine-level CAS policy. Side effect that comes with the new CAS model: processRequestInApplicationTrust attribute is deprecated  in new CAS model since application domain always has partial trust permission set in new CAS model.   In ASP.NET 4.0 legacy CAS model or ASP.NET 2.0 CAS model, even though you assign partial trust level to a application but the application domain still has full trust permission set. The figure below shows in ASP.NET 4.0 legacy CAS model (or ASP.NET 2.0 CAS model) what permission set to grant to code for partial trust application using predefined partial trust levels and policy files:     What $AppDirUrl$, $CodeGen$, $Gac$ represents: $AppDirUrl$ The application's virtual root directory. This allows permissions to be applied to code that is located in the application's bin directory. For example, if a virtual directory is mapped to C:\YourWebApp, then $AppDirUrl$ would equate to C:\YourWebApp. $CodeGen$ The directory that contains dynamically generated assemblies (for example, the result of .aspx page compiles). This can be configured on a per application basis and defaults to %windir%\Microsoft.NET\Framework\{version}\Temporary ASP.NET Files. $CodeGen$ allows permissions to be applied to dynamically generated assemblies. $Gac$ Any assembly that is installed in the computer's global assembly cache (GAC). This allows permissions to be granted to strong named assemblies loaded from the GAC by the Web application.   The new customization of CAS Policy in ASP.NET 4.0 new CAS model 1. Define which named permission set in partial trust configuration files By default the permission set that will be assigned at application domain initialization time is the named "ASP.Net" permission set found in all predefined partial trust configuration files. However ASP.NET 4.0 allows you set PermissionSetName attribute to define which named permission set in a partial trust configuration file should be the one used to initialize an application domain. Example: add "ASP.Net_2" named permission set in partial trust configuration file: <PermissionSet class="NamedPermissionSet" version="1" Name="ASP.Net_2"> <IPermission class="FileIOPermission" version="1" Read="$AppDir$" PathDiscovery="$AppDir$" /> <IPermission class="ReflectionPermission" version="1" Flags ="RestrictedMemberAccess" /> <IPermission class="SecurityPermission " version="1" Flags ="Execution, ControlThread, ControlPrincipal, RemotingConfiguration" /></PermissionSet> Then you can use "ASP.Net_2" named permission set for the application domain permission set: <trust level="Something" legacyCasModel="false" permissionSetName="ASP.Net_2" /> 2. Define a custom set of Full Trust Assemblies for an application By using the new fullTrustAssemblies element to configure a set of Full Trust Assemblies for an application, you can modify set of partial trust assemblies to full trust at the machine, site or application level. The configuration definition is shown below: <fullTrustAssemblies> <add assemblyName="MyAssembly" version="1.1.2.3" publicKey="hex_char_representation_of_key_blob" /></fullTrustAssemblies> 3. Define <CodeGroup /> policy in partial trust configuration files ASP.NET 4.0 new CAS model will retain the ability for developers to optionally define <CodeGroup />with membership conditions and assigned permission sets. The specific restriction in ASP.NET 4.0 new CAS model though will be that the results of evaluating custom policies can only result in one of two outcomes: either an assembly is granted full trust, or an assembly is granted the partial trust permission set currently associated with the running application domain. It will not be possible to use custom policies to create additional custom partial trust permission sets. When parsing the partial trust configuration file: Any assemblies that match to code groups associated with "PermissionSet='FullTrust'" will run at full trust. Any assemblies that match to code groups associated with "PermissionSet='Nothing'" will result in a PolicyError being thrown from the CLR. This is acceptable since it provides administrators with a way to do a blanket-deny of managed code followed by selectively defining policy in a <CodeGroup /> that re-adds assemblies that would be allowed to run. Any assemblies that match to code groups associated with other permissions sets will be interpreted to mean the assembly should run at the permission set of the appdomain. This means that even though syntactically a developer could define additional "flavors" of partial trust in an ASP.NET partial trust configuration file, those "flavors" will always be ignored. Example: defines full trust in <CodeGroup /> for my strong named assemblies in partial trust config files: <CodeGroup class="FirstMatchCodeGroup" version="1" PermissionSetName="Nothing"> <IMembershipCondition    class="AllMembershipCondition"    version="1" /> <CodeGroup    class="UnionCodeGroup"    version="1"    PermissionSetName="FullTrust"    Name="My_Strong_Name"    Description="This code group grants code signed full trust. "> <IMembershipCondition      class="StrongNameMembershipCondition" version="1"       PublicKeyBlob="hex_char_representation_of_key_blob" /> </CodeGroup> <CodeGroup   class="UnionCodeGroup" version="1" PermissionSetName="ASP.Net">   <IMembershipCondition class="UrlMembershipCondition" version="1" Url="$AppDirUrl$/*" /> </CodeGroup> <CodeGroup class="UnionCodeGroup" version="1" PermissionSetName="ASP.Net">   <IMembershipCondition class="UrlMembershipCondition" version="1" Url="$CodeGen$/*"   /> </CodeGroup></CodeGroup>   4. Customize CAS policy at runtime in ASP.NET 4.0 new CAS model ASP.NET 4.0 new CAS model allows to customize CAS policy at runtime by using custom HostSecurityPolicyResolver that overrides the ASP.NET code access security policy. Example: use custom host security policy resolver to resolve partial trust web application bin folder MyTrustedAssembly.dll to full trust at runtime: You can create a custom host security policy resolver and compile it to assembly MyCustomResolver.dll with strong name enabled and deploy in GAC: public class MyCustomResolver : HostSecurityPolicyResolver{ public override HostSecurityPolicyResults ResolvePolicy(Evidence evidence) { IEnumerator hostEvidence = evidence.GetHostEnumerator(); while (hostEvidence.MoveNext()) { object hostEvidenceObject = hostEvidence.Current; if (hostEvidenceObject is System.Security.Policy.Url) { string assemblyName = hostEvidenceObject.ToString(); if (assemblyName.Contains(“MyTrustedAssembly.dll”) return HostSecurityPolicyResult.FullTrust; } } //default fall-through return HostSecurityPolicyResult.DefaultPolicy; }} Because ASP.NET accesses the custom HostSecurityPolicyResolver during application domain initialization, and a custom policy resolver requires full trust, you also can add a custom policy resolver in <fullTrustAssemblies /> , or deploy in the GAC. You also need configure a custom HostSecurityPolicyResolver instance by adding the HostSecurityPolicyResolverType attribute in the <trust /> element: <trust level="Something" legacyCasModel="false" hostSecurityPolicyResolverType="MyCustomResolver, MyCustomResolver" permissionSetName="ASP.Net" />   Note: If an assembly policy define in <CodeGroup/> and also in hostSecurityPolicyResolverType, hostSecurityPolicyResolverType will win. If an assembly added in <fullTrustAssemblies/> then the assembly has full trust no matter what policy in <CodeGroup/> or in hostSecurityPolicyResolverType.   Other changes in ASP.NET 4.0 CAS Use the new transparency model introduced in .Net Framework 4.0 Change in dynamically compiled code generated assemblies by ASP.NET: In new CAS model they will be marked as security transparent level2 to use Framework 4.0 security transparent rule that means partial trust code is treated as completely Transparent and it is more strict enforcement. In legacy CAS model they will be marked as security transparent level1 to use Framework 2.0 security transparent rule for compatibility. Most of ASP.NET products runtime assemblies are also changed to be marked as security transparent level2 to switch to SecurityTransparent code by default unless SecurityCritical or SecuritySafeCritical attribute specified. You also can look at Security Changes in the .NET Framework 4 for more information about these security attributes. Support conditional APTCA If an assembly is marked with the Conditional APTCA attribute to allow partially trusted callers, and if you want to make the assembly both visible and accessible to partial-trust code in your web application, you must add a reference to the assembly in the partialTrustVisibleAssemblies section: <partialTrustVisibleAssemblies> <add assemblyName="MyAssembly" publicKey="hex_char_representation_of_key_blob" />/partialTrustVisibleAssemblies>   Most of ASP.NET products runtime assemblies are also changed to be marked as conditional APTCA to prevent use of ASP.NET APIs in partial trust environments such as Winforms or WPF UI controls hosted in Internet Explorer.   Differences between ASP.NET new CAS model and legacy CAS model: Here list some differences between ASP.NET new CAS model and legacy CAS model ASP.NET 4.0 legacy CAS model  : Asp.net partial trust appdomains have full trust permission Multiple different permission sets in a single appdomain are allowed in ASP.NET partial trust configuration files Code groups Machine CAS policy is honored processRequestInApplicationTrust attribute is still honored    New configuration setting for legacy model: <trust level="Something" legacyCASModel="true" ></trust><partialTrustVisibleAssemblies> <add assemblyName="MyAssembly" publicKey="hex_char_representation_of_key_blob" /></partialTrustVisibleAssemblies>   ASP.NET 4.0 new CAS model: ASP.NET will now run in homogeneous application domains. Only full trust or the app-domain's partial trust grant set, are allowable permission sets. It is no longer possible to define arbitrary permission sets that get assigned to different assemblies. If an application currently depends on fine-tuning the partial trust permission set using the ASP.NET partial trust configuration file, this will no longer be possible. processRequestInApplicationTrust attribute is deprecated Dynamically compiled assemblies output by ASP.NET build providers will be updated to explicitly mark assemblies as transparent. ASP.NET partial trust grant sets will be independent from any enterprise, machine, or user CAS policy levels. A simplified model for locking down web servers that only allows trusted managed web applications to run. Machine policy used to always grant full-trust to managed code (based on membership conditions) can instead be configured using the new ASP.NET 4.0 full-trust assembly configuration section. The full-trust assembly configuration section requires explicitly listing each assembly as opposed to using membership conditions. Alternatively, the membership condition(s) used in machine policy can instead be re-defined in a <CodeGroup /> within ASP.NET's partial trust configuration file to grant full-trust.   New configuration setting for new model: <trust level="Something" legacyCASModel="false" permissionSetName="ASP.Net" hostSecurityPolicyResolverType=".NET type string" ></trust><fullTrustAssemblies> <add assemblyName=”MyAssembly” version=”1.0.0.0” publicKey="hex_char_representation_of_key_blob" /></fullTrustAssemblies><partialTrustVisibleAssemblies> <add assemblyName="MyAssembly" publicKey="hex_char_representation_of_key_blob" /></partialTrustVisibleAssemblies>     Hope this post is helpful to better understand the ASP.Net 4.0 CAS. Xiaohong Tang ASP.NET QA Team

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• Is your team is a high-performing team?

  As a child I can remember looking out of the car window as my father drove along the Interstate in Florida while seeing prisoners wearing bright orange jump suits and prison guards keeping a watchful eye on them. The prisoners were taking part in a prison road gang. These road gangs were formed to help the state maintain the state highway infrastructure. The prisoner’s primary responsibilities are to pick up trash and debris from the roadway. This is a prime example of a work group or working group used by most prison systems in the United States. Work groups or working groups can be defined as a collection of individuals or entities working together to achieve a specific goal or accomplish a specific set of tasks. Typically these groups are only established for a short period of time and are dissolved once the desired outcome has been achieved. More often than not group members usually feel as though they are expendable to the group and some even dread that they are even in the group. "A team is a small number of people with complementary skills who are committed to a common purpose, performance goals, and approach for which they are mutually accountable." (Katzenbach and Smith, 1993) So how do you determine that a team is a high-performing team?  This can be determined by three base line criteria that include: consistently high quality output, the promotion of personal growth and well being of all team members, and most importantly the ability to learn and grow as a unit. Initially, a team can successfully create high-performing output without meeting all three criteria, however this will erode over time because team members will feel detached from the group or that they are not growing then the quality of the output will decline. High performing teams are similar to work groups because they both utilize a collection of individuals or entities to accomplish tasks. What distinguish a high-performing team from a work group are its characteristics. High-performing teams contain five core characteristics. These characteristics are what separate a group from a team. The five characteristics of a high-performing team include: Purpose, Performance Measures, People with Tasks and Relationship Skills, Process, and Preparation and Practice. A high-performing team is much more than a work group, and typically has a life cycle that can vary from team to team. The standard team lifecycle consists of five states and is comparable to a human life cycle. The five states of a high-performing team lifecycle include: Formulating, Storming, Normalizing, Performing, and Adjourning. The Formulating State of a team is first realized when the team members are first defined and roles are assigned to all members. This initial stage is very important because it can set the tone for the team and can ultimately determine its success or failure. In addition, this stage requires the team to have a strong leader because team members are normally unclear about specific roles, specific obstacles and goals that my lay ahead of them.  Finally, this stage is where most team members initially meet one another prior to working as a team unless the team members already know each other. The Storming State normally arrives directly after the formulation of a new team because there are still a lot of unknowns amongst the newly formed assembly. As a general rule most of the parties involved in the team are still getting used to the workload, pace of work, deadlines and the validity of various tasks that need to be performed by the group.  In this state everything is questioned because there are so many unknowns. Items commonly questioned include the credentials of others on the team, the actual validity of a project, and the leadership abilities of the team leader.  This can be exemplified by looking at the interactions between animals when they first meet.  If we look at a scenario where two people are walking directly toward each other with their dogs. The dogs will automatically enter the Storming State because they do not know the other dog. Typically in this situation, they attempt to define which is more dominating via play or fighting depending on how the dogs interact with each other. Once dominance has been defined and accepted by both dogs then they will either want to play or leave depending on how the dogs interacted and other environmental variables. Once the Storming State has been realized then the Normalizing State takes over. This state is entered by a team once all the questions of the Storming State have been answered and the team has been tested by a few tasks or projects.  Typically, participants in the team are filled with energy, and comradery, and a strong alliance with team goals and objectives.  A high school football team is a perfect example of the Normalizing State when they start their season.  The player positions have been assigned, the depth chart has been filled and everyone is focused on winning each game. All of the players encourage and expect each other to perform at the best of their abilities and are united by competition from other teams. The Performing State is achieved by a team when its history, working habits, and culture solidify the team as one working unit. In this state team members can anticipate specific behaviors, attitudes, reactions, and challenges are seen as opportunities and not problems. Additionally, each team member knows their role in the team’s success, and the roles of others. This is the most productive state of a group and is where all the time invested working together really pays off. If you look at an Olympic figure skating team skate you can easily see how the time spent working together benefits their performance. They skate as one unit even though it is comprised of two skaters. Each skater has their routine completely memorized as well as their partners. This allows them to anticipate each other’s moves on the ice makes their skating look effortless. The final state of a team is the Adjourning State. This state is where accomplishments by the team and each individual team member are recognized. Additionally, this state also allows for reflection of the interactions between team members, work accomplished and challenges that were faced. Finally, the team celebrates the challenges they have faced and overcome as a unit. Currently in the workplace teams are divided into two different types: Co-located and Distributed Teams. Co-located teams defined as the traditional group of people working together in an office, according to Andy Singleton of Assembla. This traditional type of a team has dominated business in the past due to inadequate technology, which forced workers to primarily interact with one another via face to face meetings.  Team meetings are primarily lead by the person with the highest status in the company. Having personally, participated in meetings of this type, usually a select few of the team members dominate the flow of communication which reduces the input of others in group discussions. Since discussions are dominated by a select few individuals the discussions and group discussion are skewed in favor of the individuals who communicate the most in meetings. In addition, Team members might not give their full opinions on a topic of discussion in part not to offend or create controversy amongst the team and can alter decision made in meetings towards those of the opinions of the dominating team members. Distributed teams are by definition spread across an area or subdivided into separate sections. That is exactly what distributed teams when compared to a more traditional team. It is common place for distributed teams to have team members across town, in the next state, across the country and even with the advances in technology over the last 20 year across the world. These teams allow for more diversity compared to the other type of teams because they allow for more flexibility regarding location. A team could consist of a 30 year old male Italian project manager from New York, a 50 year old female Hispanic from California and a collection of programmers from India because technology allows them to communicate as if they were standing next to one another.  In addition, distributed team members consult with more team members prior to making decisions compared to traditional teams, and take longer to come to decisions due to the changes in time zones and cultural events. However, team members feel more empowered to speak out when they do not agree with the team and to notify others of potential issues regarding the work that the team is doing. Virtual teams which are a subset of the distributed team type is changing organizational strategies due to the fact that a team can now in essence be working 24 hrs a day because of utilizing employees in various time zones and locations.  A primary example of this is with customer services departments, a company can have multiple call centers spread across multiple time zones allowing them to appear to be open 24 hours a day while all a employees work from 9AM to 5 PM every day. Virtual teams also allow human resources departments to go after the best talent for the company regardless of where the potential employee works because they will be a part of a virtual team all that is need is the proper technology to be setup to allow everyone to communicate. In addition to allowing employees to work from home, the company can save space and resources by not having to provide a desk for every team member. In fact, those team members that randomly come into the office can actually share one desk amongst multiple people. This is definitely a cost cutting plus given the current state of the economy. One thing that can turn a team into a high-performing team is leadership. High-performing team leaders need to focus on investing in ongoing personal development, provide team members with direction, structure, and resources needed to accomplish their work, make the right interventions at the right time, and help the team manage boundaries between the team and various external parties involved in the teams work. A team leader needs to invest in ongoing personal development in order to effectively manage their team. People have said that attitude is everything; this is very true about leaders and leadership. A team takes on the attitudes and behaviors of its leaders. This can potentially harm the team and the team’s output. Leaders must concentrate on self-awareness, and understanding their team’s group dynamics to fully understand how to lead them. In addition, always learning new leadership techniques from other effective leaders is also very beneficial. Providing team members with direction, structure, and resources that they need to accomplish their work collectively sounds easy, but it is not.  Leaders need to be able to effectively communicate with their team on how their work helps the company reach for its organizational vision. Conversely, the leader needs to allow his team to work autonomously within specific guidelines to turn the company’s vision into a reality.  This being said the team must be appropriately staffed according to the size of the team’s tasks and their complexity. These tasks should be clear, and be meaningful to the company’s objectives and allow for feedback to be exchanged with the leader and the team member and the leader and upper management. Now if the team is properly staffed, and has a clear and full understanding of what is to be done; the company also must supply the workers with the proper tools to achieve the tasks that they are asked to do. No one should be asked to dig a hole without being given a shovel.  Finally, leaders must reward their team members for accomplishments that they achieve. Awards could range from just a simple congratulatory email, a party to close the completion of a large project, or other monetary rewards. Managing boundaries is very important for team leaders because it can alter attitudes of team members and can add undue stress to the team which will force them to loose focus on the tasks at hand for the group. Team leaders should promote communication between team members so that burdens are shared amongst the team and solutions can be derived from hearing the opinions of multiple sources. This also reinforces team camaraderie and working as a unit. Team leaders must manage the type and timing of interventions as to not create an even bigger mess within the team. Poorly timed interventions can really deflate team members and make them question themselves. This could really increase further and undue interventions by the team leader. Typically, the best time for interventions is when the team is just starting to form so that all unproductive behaviors are removed from the team and that it can retain focus on its agenda. If an intervention is effectively executed the team will feel energized about the work that they are doing, promote communication and interaction amongst the group and improve moral overall. High-performing teams are very import to organizations because they consistently produce high quality output and develop a collective purpose for their work. This drive to succeed allows team members to utilize specific talents allowing for growth in these areas.  In addition, these team members usually take on a sense of ownership with their projects and feel that the other team members are irreplaceable. References: http://blog.assembla.com/assemblablog/tabid/12618/bid/3127/Three-ways-to-organize-your-team-co-located-outsourced-or-global.aspx Katzenbach, J.R. & Smith, D.K. (1993). The Wisdom of Teams: Creating the High-performance Organization. Boston: Harvard Business School.

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• Generating EF Code First model classes from an existing database

  - by Jon Galloway

  Entity Framework Code First is a lightweight way to "turn on" data access for a simple CLR class. As the name implies, the intended use is that you're writing the code first and thinking about the database later. However, I really like the Entity Framework Code First works, and I want to use it in existing projects and projects with pre-existing databases. For example, MVC Music Store comes with a SQL Express database that's pre-loaded with a catalog of music (including genres, artists, and songs), and while it may eventually make sense to load that seed data from a different source, for the MVC 3 release we wanted to keep using the existing database. While I'm not getting the full benefit of Code First - writing code which drives the database schema - I can still benefit from the simplicity of the lightweight code approach. Scott Guthrie blogged about how to use entity framework with an existing database, looking at how you can override the Entity Framework Code First conventions so that it can work with a database which was created following other conventions. That gives you the information you need to create the model classes manually. However, it turns out that with Entity Framework 4 CTP 5, there's a way to generate the model classes from the database schema. Once the grunt work is done, of course, you can go in and modify the model classes as you'd like, but you can save the time and frustration of figuring out things like mapping SQL database types to .NET types. Note that this template requires Entity Framework 4 CTP 5 or later. You can install EF 4 CTP 5 here. Step One: Generate an EF Model from your existing database The code generation system in Entity Framework works from a model. You can add a model to your existing project and delete it when you're done, but I think it's simpler to just spin up a separate project to generate the model classes. When you're done, you can delete the project without affecting your application, or you may choose to keep it around in case you have other database schema updates which require model changes. I chose to add the Model classes to the Models folder of a new MVC 3 application. Right-click the folder and select "Add / New Item..."   Next, select ADO.NET Entity Data Model from the Data Templates list, and name it whatever you want (the name is unimportant).   Next, select "Generate from database." This is important - it's what kicks off the next few steps, which read your database's schema.   Now it's time to point the Entity Data Model Wizard at your existing database. I'll assume you know how to find your database - if not, I covered that a bit in the MVC Music Store tutorial section on Models and Data. Select your database, uncheck the "Save entity connection settings in Web.config" (since we won't be using them within the application), and click Next.   Now you can select the database objects you'd like modeled. I just selected all tables and clicked Finish.   And there's your model. If you want, you can make additional changes here before going on to generate the code.   Step Two: Add the DbContext Generator Like most code generation systems in Visual Studio lately, Entity Framework uses T4 templates which allow for some control over how the code is generated. K Scott Allen wrote a detailed article on T4 Templates and the Entity Framework on MSDN recently, if you'd like to know more. Fortunately for us, there's already a template that does just what we need without any customization. Right-click a blank space in the Entity Framework model surface and select "Add Code Generation Item..." Select the Code groupt in the Installed Templates section and pick the ADO.NET DbContext Generator. If you don't see this listed, make sure you've got EF 4 CTP 5 installed and that you're looking at the Code templates group. Note that the DbContext Generator template is similar to the EF POCO template which came out last year, but with "fix up" code (unnecessary in EF Code First) removed.   As soon as you do this, you'll two terrifying Security Warnings - unless you click the "Do not show this message again" checkbox the first time. It will also be displayed (twice) every time you rebuild the project, so I checked the box and no immediate harm befell my computer (fingers crossed!).   Here's the payoff: two templates (filenames ending with .tt) have been added to the project, and they've generated the code I needed.   The "MusicStoreEntities.Context.tt" template built a DbContext class which holds the entity collections, and the "MusicStoreEntities.tt" template build a separate class for each table I selected earlier. We'll customize them in the next step. I recommend copying all the generated .cs files into your application at this point, since accidentally rebuilding the generation project will overwrite your changes if you leave them there. Step Three: Modify and use your POCO entity classes Note: I made a bunch of tweaks to my POCO classes after they were generated. You don't have to do any of this, but I think it's important that you can - they're your classes, and EF Code First respects that. Modify them as you need for your application, or don't. The Context class derives from DbContext, which is what turns on the EF Code First features. It holds a DbSet for each entity. Think of DbSet as a simple List, but with Entity Framework features turned on.   //------------------------------------------------------------------------------ // <auto-generated> // This code was generated from a template. // // Changes to this file may cause incorrect behavior and will be lost if // the code is regenerated. // </auto-generated> //------------------------------------------------------------------------------ namespace EF_CodeFirst_From_Existing_Database.Models { using System; using System.Data.Entity; public partial class Entities : DbContext { public Entities() : base("name=Entities") { } public DbSet<Album> Albums { get; set; } public DbSet<Artist> Artists { get; set; } public DbSet<Cart> Carts { get; set; } public DbSet<Genre> Genres { get; set; } public DbSet<OrderDetail> OrderDetails { get; set; } public DbSet<Order> Orders { get; set; } } } It's a pretty lightweight class as generated, so I just took out the comments, set the namespace, removed the constructor, and formatted it a bit. Done. If I wanted, though, I could have added or removed DbSets, overridden conventions, etc. using System.Data.Entity; namespace MvcMusicStore.Models { public class MusicStoreEntities : DbContext { public DbSet Albums { get; set; } public DbSet Genres { get; set; } public DbSet Artists { get; set; } public DbSet Carts { get; set; } public DbSet Orders { get; set; } public DbSet OrderDetails { get; set; } } } Next, it's time to look at the individual classes. Some of mine were pretty simple - for the Cart class, I just need to remove the header and clean up the namespace. //------------------------------------------------------------------------------ // // This code was generated from a template. // // Changes to this file may cause incorrect behavior and will be lost if // the code is regenerated. // //------------------------------------------------------------------------------ namespace EF_CodeFirst_From_Existing_Database.Models { using System; using System.Collections.Generic; public partial class Cart { // Primitive properties public int RecordId { get; set; } public string CartId { get; set; } public int AlbumId { get; set; } public int Count { get; set; } public System.DateTime DateCreated { get; set; } // Navigation properties public virtual Album Album { get; set; } } } I did a bit more customization on the Album class. Here's what was generated: //------------------------------------------------------------------------------ // // This code was generated from a template. // // Changes to this file may cause incorrect behavior and will be lost if // the code is regenerated. // //------------------------------------------------------------------------------ namespace EF_CodeFirst_From_Existing_Database.Models { using System; using System.Collections.Generic; public partial class Album { public Album() { this.Carts = new HashSet(); this.OrderDetails = new HashSet(); } // Primitive properties public int AlbumId { get; set; } public int GenreId { get; set; } public int ArtistId { get; set; } public string Title { get; set; } public decimal Price { get; set; } public string AlbumArtUrl { get; set; } // Navigation properties public virtual Artist Artist { get; set; } public virtual Genre Genre { get; set; } public virtual ICollection Carts { get; set; } public virtual ICollection OrderDetails { get; set; } } } I removed the header, changed the namespace, and removed some of the navigation properties. One nice thing about EF Code First is that you don't have to have a property for each database column or foreign key. In the Music Store sample, for instance, we build the app up using code first and start with just a few columns, adding in fields and navigation properties as the application needs them. EF Code First handles the columsn we've told it about and doesn't complain about the others. Here's the basic class: using System.ComponentModel; using System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations; using System.Web.Mvc; using System.Collections.Generic; namespace MvcMusicStore.Models { public class Album { public int AlbumId { get; set; } public int GenreId { get; set; } public int ArtistId { get; set; } public string Title { get; set; } public decimal Price { get; set; } public string AlbumArtUrl { get; set; } public virtual Genre Genre { get; set; } public virtual Artist Artist { get; set; } public virtual List OrderDetails { get; set; } } } It's my class, not Entity Framework's, so I'm free to do what I want with it. I added a bunch of MVC 3 annotations for scaffolding and validation support, as shown below: using System.ComponentModel; using System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations; using System.Web.Mvc; using System.Collections.Generic; namespace MvcMusicStore.Models { [Bind(Exclude = "AlbumId")] public class Album { [ScaffoldColumn(false)] public int AlbumId { get; set; } [DisplayName("Genre")] public int GenreId { get; set; } [DisplayName("Artist")] public int ArtistId { get; set; } [Required(ErrorMessage = "An Album Title is required")] [StringLength(160)] public string Title { get; set; } [Required(ErrorMessage = "Price is required")] [Range(0.01, 100.00, ErrorMessage = "Price must be between 0.01 and 100.00")] public decimal Price { get; set; } [DisplayName("Album Art URL")] [StringLength(1024)] public string AlbumArtUrl { get; set; } public virtual Genre Genre { get; set; } public virtual Artist Artist { get; set; } public virtual List<OrderDetail> OrderDetails { get; set; } } } The end result was that I had working EF Code First model code for the finished application. You can follow along through the tutorial to see how I built up to the finished model classes, starting with simple 2-3 property classes and building up to the full working schema. Thanks to Diego Vega (on the Entity Framework team) for pointing me to the DbContext template.

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• The Incremental Architect&acute;s Napkin - #2 - Balancing the forces

  - by Ralf Westphal

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/theArchitectsNapkin/archive/2014/06/02/the-incremental-architectacutes-napkin---2---balancing-the-forces.aspxCategorizing requirements is the prerequisite for ecconomic architectural decisions. Not all requirements are created equal. However, to truely understand and describe the requirement forces pulling on software development, I think further examination of the requirements aspects is varranted. Aspects of Functionality There are two sides to Functionality requirements. It´s about what a software should do. I call that the Operations it implements. Operations are defined by expressions and control structures or calls to frameworks of some sort, i.e. (business) logic statements. Operations calculate, transform, aggregate, validate, send, receive, load, store etc. Operations are about behavior; they take input and produce output by considering state. I´m not using the term “function” here, because functions - or methods or sub-programs - are not necessary to implement Operations. Functions belong to a different sub-aspect of requirements (see below). Operations alone are not enough, though, to make a customer happy with regard to his/her Functionality requirements. Only correctly implemented Operations provide full value. This should make clear, why testing is so important. And not just manual tests during development of some operational feature, but automated tests. Because only automated tests scale when over time the number of operations increases. Without automated tests there is no guarantee formerly correct operations are still correct after more got added. To retest all previous operations manually is infeasible. So whoever relies just on manual tests is not really balancing the two forces Operations and Correctness. With manual tests more weight is put on the side of the scale of Operations. That might be ok for a short period of time - but in the long run it will bite you. You need to plan for Correctness in the long run from the first day of your project on. Aspects of Quality As important as Functionality is, it´s not the driver for software development. No software has ever been written to just implement some operation in code. We don´t need computers just to do something. All computers can do with software we can do without them. Well, at least given enough time and resources. We could calculate the most complex formulas without computers. We could do auctions with millions of people without computers. The only reason we want computers to help us with this and a million other Operations is… We don´t want to wait for the results very long. Or we want less errors. Or we want easier accessability to complicated solutions. So the main reason for customers to buy/order software is some Quality. They want some Functionality with a higher Quality (e.g. performance, scalability, usability, security…) than without the software. But Qualities come in at least two flavors: Most important are Primary Qualities. That´s the Qualities software truely is written for. Take an online auction website for example. Its Primary Qualities are performance, scalability, and usability, I´d say. Auctions should come within reach of millions of people; setting up an auction should be very easy; finding a suitable auction and bidding on it should be as fast as possible. Only if those Qualities have been implemented does security become relevant. A secure auction website is important - but not as important as a fast auction website. Nobody would want to use the most secure auction website if it was unbearably slow. But there would be people willing to use the fastest auction website even it was lacking security. That´s why security - with regard to online auction software - is not a Primary Quality, but just a Secondary Quality. It´s a supporting quality, so to speak. It does not deliver value by itself. With a password manager software this might be different. There security might be a Primary Quality. Please get me right: I don´t want to denigrate any Quality. There´s a long list of non-functional requirements at Wikipedia. They are all created equal - but that does not mean they are equally important for all software projects. When confronted with Quality requirements check with the customer which are primary and which are secondary. That will help to make good economical decisions when in a crunch. Resources are always limited - but requirements are a bottomless ocean. Aspects of Security of Investment Functionality and Quality are traditionally the requirement aspects cared for most - by customers and developers alike. Even today, when pressure rises in a project, tunnel vision will focus on them. Any measures to create and hold up Security of Investment (SoI) will be out of the window pretty quickly. Resistance to customers and/or management is futile. As long as SoI is not placed on equal footing with Functionality and Quality it´s bound to suffer under pressure. To look closer at what SoI means will help to become more conscious about it and make customers and management aware of the risks of neglecting it. SoI to me has two facets: Production Efficiency (PE) is about speed of delivering value. Customers like short response times. Short response times mean less money spent. So whatever makes software development faster supports this requirement. This must not lead to duct tape programming and banging out features by the dozen, though. Because customers don´t just want Operations and Quality, but also Correctness. So if Correctness gets compromised by focussing too much on Production Efficiency it will fire back. Customers want PE not just today, but over the whole course of a software´s lifecycle. That means, it´s not just about coding speed, but equally about code quality. If code quality leads to rework the PE is on an unsatisfactory level. Also if code production leads to waste it´s unsatisfactory. Because the effort which went into waste could have been used to produce value. Rework and waste cost money. Rework and waste abound, however, as long as PE is not addressed explicitly with management and customers. Thanks to the Agile and Lean movements that´s increasingly the case. Nevertheless more could and should be done in many teams. Each and every developer should keep in mind that Production Efficiency is as important to the customer as Functionality and Quality - whether he/she states it or not. Making software development more efficient is important - but still sooner or later even agile projects are going to hit a glas ceiling. At least as long as they neglect the second SoI facet: Evolvability. Delivering correct high quality functionality in short cycles today is good. But not just any software structure will allow this to happen for an indefinite amount of time.[1] The less explicitly software was designed the sooner it´s going to get stuck. Big ball of mud, monolith, brownfield, legacy code, technical debt… there are many names for software structures that have lost the ability to evolve, to be easily changed to accomodate new requirements. An evolvable code base is the opposite of a brownfield. It´s code which can be easily understood (by developers with sufficient domain expertise) and then easily changed to accomodate new requirements. Ideally the costs of adding feature X to an evolvable code base is independent of when it is requested - or at least the costs should only increase linearly, not exponentially.[2] Clean Code, Agile Architecture, and even traditional Software Engineering are concerned with Evolvability. However, it seems no systematic way of achieving it has been layed out yet. TDD + SOLID help - but still… When I look at the design ability reality in teams I see much room for improvement. As stated previously, SoI - or to be more precise: Evolvability - can hardly be measured. Plus the customer rarely states an explicit expectation with regard to it. That´s why I think, special care must be taken to not neglect it. Postponing it to some large refactorings should not be an option. Rather Evolvability needs to be a core concern for every single developer day. This should not mean Evolvability is more important than any of the other requirement aspects. But neither is it less important. That´s why more effort needs to be invested into it, to bring it on par with the other aspects, which usually are much more in focus. In closing As you see, requirements are of quite different kinds. To not take that into account will make it harder to understand the customer, and to make economic decisions. Those sub-aspects of requirements are forces pulling in different directions. To improve performance might have an impact on Evolvability. To increase Production Efficiency might have an impact on security etc. No requirement aspect should go unchecked when deciding how to allocate resources. Balancing should be explicit. And it should be possible to trace back each decision to a requirement. Why is there a null-check on parameters at the start of the method? Why are there 5000 LOC in this method? Why are there interfaces on those classes? Why is this functionality running on the threadpool? Why is this function defined on that class? Why is this class depending on three other classes? These and a thousand more questions are not to mean anything should be different in a code base. But it´s important to know the reason behind all of these decisions. Because not knowing the reason possibly means waste and having decided suboptimally. And how do we ensure to balance all requirement aspects? That needs practices and transparency. Practices means doing things a certain way and not another, even though that might be possible. We´re dealing with dangerous tools here. Like a knife is a dangerous tool. Harm can be done if we use our tools in just any way at the whim of the moment. Over the centuries rules and practices have been established how to use knifes. You don´t put them in peoples´ legs just because you´re feeling like it. You hand over a knife with the handle towards the receiver. You might not even be allowed to cut round food like potatos or eggs with it. The same should be the case for dangerous tools like object-orientation, remote communication, threads etc. We need practices to use them in a way so requirements are balanced almost automatically. In addition, to be able to work on software as a team we need transparency. We need means to share our thoughts, to work jointly on mental models. So far our tools are focused on working with code. Testing frameworks, build servers, DI containers, intellisense, refactoring support… That´s all nice and well. I don´t want to miss any of that. But I think it´s not enough. We´re missing mental tools, tools for making thinking and talking about software (independently of code) easier. You might think, enough of such tools already exist like all those UML diagram types or Flow Charts. But then, isn´t it strange, hardly any team is using them to design software? Or is that just due to a lack of education? I don´t think so. It´s a matter value/weight ratio: the current mental tools are too heavy weight compared to the value they deliver. So my conclusion is, we need lightweight tools to really be able to balance requirements. Software development is complex. We need guidance not to forget important aspects. That´s like with flying an airplane. Pilots don´t just jump in and take off for their destination. Yes, there are times when they are “flying by the seats of their pants”, when they are just experts doing thing intuitively. But most of the time they are going through honed practices called checklist. See “The Checklist Manifesto” for very enlightening details on this. Maybe then I should say it like this: We need more checklists for the complex businss of software development.[3] But that´s what software development mostly is about: changing software over an unknown period of time. It needs to be corrected in order to finally provide promised operations. It needs to be enhanced to provide ever more operations and qualities. All this without knowing when it´s going to stop. Probably never - until “maintainability” hits a wall when the technical debt is too large, the brownfield too deep. Software development is not a sprint, is not a marathon, not even an ultra marathon. Because to all this there is a foreseeable end. Software development is like continuously and foreever running… ? And sometimes I dare to think that costs could even decrease over time. Think of it: With each feature a software becomes richer in functionality. So with each additional feature the chance of there being already functionality helping its implementation increases. That should lead to less costs of feature X if it´s requested later than sooner. X requested later could stand on the shoulders of previous features. Alas, reality seems to be far from this despite 20+ years of admonishing developers to think in terms of reusability.[1] ? Please don´t get me wrong: I don´t want to bog down the “art” of software development with heavyweight practices and heaps of rules to follow. The framework we need should be lightweight. It should not stand in the way of delivering value to the customer. It´s purpose is even to make that easier by helping us to focus and decreasing waste and rework. ?

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• iPhone OpenGL ES freezes for no reason

  - by KJ

  Hi, I'm quite new to iPhone OpenGL ES, and I'm really stuck. I was trying to implement shadow mapping on iPhone, and I allocated two 512*1024*32bit textures for the shadow map and the diffuse map respectively. The problem is that my application started to freeze and reboot the device after I added the shadow map allocation part to the code (so I guess the shadow map allocation is causing all this mess). It happens randomly, but mostly within 10 minutes. (sometimes within a few secs) And it only happens on the real iPhone device, not on the virtual device. I backtracked the problem by removing irrelevant code lines by lines and now my code is really simple, but it's still crashing (I mean, freezing). Could anybody please download my xcode project linked below and see what on earth is wrong? The code is really simple: http://www.tempfiles.net/download/201004/95922/CrashTest.html I would really appreciate if someone can help me. My iPhone is a 3GS and running on the OS version 3.1. Again, run the code and it'll take about 5 mins in average for the device to freeze and reboot. (Don't worry, it does no harm) It'll just display cyan screen before it freezes, but you'll be able to notice when it happens because the device will reboot soon, so please be patient. Just in case you can't reproduce the problem, please let me know. (That could possibly mean it's specifically my device that something's wrong with) Observation: The problem goes away when I change the size of the shadow map to 512*512. (but with the diffuse map still 512*1024) I'm desperate for help, thanks in advance! Just for the people's information who can't download the link, here is the OpenGL code: #import "GLView.h" #import <OpenGLES/ES2/glext.h> #import <QuartzCore/QuartzCore.h> @implementation GLView + (Class)layerClass { return [CAEAGLLayer class]; } - (id)initWithCoder: (NSCoder*)coder { if ((self = [super initWithCoder:coder])) { CAEAGLLayer* layer = (CAEAGLLayer*)self.layer; layer.opaque = YES; layer.drawableProperties = [NSDictionary dictionaryWithObjectsAndKeys: [NSNumber numberWithBool: NO], kEAGLDrawablePropertyRetainedBacking, kEAGLColorFormatRGBA8, kEAGLDrawablePropertyColorFormat, nil]; displayLink_ = nil; context_ = [[EAGLContext alloc] initWithAPI: kEAGLRenderingAPIOpenGLES2]; if (!context_ || ![EAGLContext setCurrentContext: context_]) { [self release]; return nil; } glGenFramebuffers(1, &framebuffer_); glBindFramebuffer(GL_FRAMEBUFFER, framebuffer_); glViewport(0, 0, self.bounds.size.width, self.bounds.size.height); glGenRenderbuffers(1, &defaultColorBuffer_); glBindRenderbuffer(GL_RENDERBUFFER, defaultColorBuffer_); [context_ renderbufferStorage: GL_RENDERBUFFER fromDrawable: layer]; glFramebufferRenderbuffer(GL_FRAMEBUFFER, GL_COLOR_ATTACHMENT0, GL_RENDERBUFFER, defaultColorBuffer_); glGenTextures(1, &shadowColorBuffer_); glActiveTexture(GL_TEXTURE1); glBindTexture(GL_TEXTURE_2D, shadowColorBuffer_); glTexParameteri(GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL_TEXTURE_MIN_FILTER, GL_LINEAR); glTexParameteri(GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL_TEXTURE_MAG_FILTER, GL_LINEAR); glTexParameteri(GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL_TEXTURE_WRAP_S, GL_CLAMP_TO_EDGE); glTexParameteri(GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL_TEXTURE_WRAP_T, GL_CLAMP_TO_EDGE); glTexImage2D(GL_TEXTURE_2D, 0, GL_RGBA, 512, 1024, 0, GL_RGBA, GL_UNSIGNED_BYTE, NULL); glGenTextures(1, &texture_); glActiveTexture(GL_TEXTURE0); glBindTexture(GL_TEXTURE_2D, texture_); glTexParameteri(GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL_TEXTURE_MIN_FILTER, GL_LINEAR); glTexParameteri(GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL_TEXTURE_MAG_FILTER, GL_LINEAR); glTexParameteri(GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL_TEXTURE_WRAP_S, GL_CLAMP_TO_EDGE); glTexParameteri(GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL_TEXTURE_WRAP_T, GL_CLAMP_TO_EDGE); glTexImage2D(GL_TEXTURE_2D, 0, GL_RGBA, 512, 1024, 0, GL_RGBA, GL_UNSIGNED_BYTE, NULL); } return self; } - (void)startAnimation { displayLink_ = [CADisplayLink displayLinkWithTarget: self selector: @selector(drawView:)]; [displayLink_ setFrameInterval: 1]; [displayLink_ addToRunLoop: [NSRunLoop currentRunLoop] forMode:NSDefaultRunLoopMode]; } - (void)useDefaultBuffers { glFramebufferRenderbuffer(GL_FRAMEBUFFER, GL_COLOR_ATTACHMENT0, GL_RENDERBUFFER, defaultColorBuffer_); glClearColor(0.0, 0.8, 0.8, 1); glClear(GL_COLOR_BUFFER_BIT); } - (void)useShadowBuffers { glFramebufferTexture2D(GL_FRAMEBUFFER, GL_COLOR_ATTACHMENT0, GL_TEXTURE_2D, shadowColorBuffer_, 0); glClearColor(0, 0, 0, 0); glClear(GL_COLOR_BUFFER_BIT); } - (void)drawView: (id)sender { NSTimeInterval startTime = [NSDate timeIntervalSinceReferenceDate]; [EAGLContext setCurrentContext: context_]; [self useShadowBuffers]; [self useDefaultBuffers]; glBindRenderbuffer(GL_RENDERBUFFER, defaultColorBuffer_); [context_ presentRenderbuffer: GL_RENDERBUFFER]; NSTimeInterval endTime = [NSDate timeIntervalSinceReferenceDate]; NSLog(@"FPS : %.1f", 1 / (endTime - startTime)); } - (void)stopAnimation { [displayLink_ invalidate]; displayLink_ = nil; } - (void)dealloc { if (framebuffer_) glDeleteFramebuffers(1, &framebuffer_); if (defaultColorBuffer_) glDeleteRenderbuffers(1, &defaultColorBuffer_); if (shadowColorBuffer_) glDeleteTextures(1, &shadowColorBuffer_); glDeleteTextures(1, &texture_); if ([EAGLContext currentContext] == context_) [EAGLContext setCurrentContext: nil]; [context_ release]; context_ = nil; [super dealloc]; } @end

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• solved: puppet master REST API returns 403 when running under passenger works when master runs from command line

  - by Anadi Misra

  I am using the standard auth.conf provided in puppet install for the puppet master which is running through passenger under Nginx. However for most of the catalog, files and certitifcate request I get a 403 response. ### Authenticated paths - these apply only when the client ### has a valid certificate and is thus authenticated # allow nodes to retrieve their own catalog path ~ ^/catalog/([^/]+)$ method find allow $1 # allow nodes to retrieve their own node definition path ~ ^/node/([^/]+)$ method find allow $1 # allow all nodes to access the certificates services path ~ ^/certificate_revocation_list/ca method find allow * # allow all nodes to store their reports path /report method save allow * # unconditionally allow access to all file services # which means in practice that fileserver.conf will # still be used path /file allow * ### Unauthenticated ACL, for clients for which the current master doesn't ### have a valid certificate; we allow authenticated users, too, because ### there isn't a great harm in letting that request through. # allow access to the master CA path /certificate/ca auth any method find allow * path /certificate/ auth any method find allow * path /certificate_request auth any method find, save allow * path /facts auth any method find, search allow * # this one is not stricly necessary, but it has the merit # of showing the default policy, which is deny everything else path / auth any Puppet master however does not seems to be following this as I get this error on client [amisr1@blramisr195602 ~]$ sudo puppet agent --no-daemonize --verbose --server bangvmpllda02.XXXXX.com [sudo] password for amisr1: Starting Puppet client version 3.0.1 Warning: Unable to fetch my node definition, but the agent run will continue: Warning: Error 403 on SERVER: Forbidden request: XX.XXX.XX.XX(XX.XXX.XX.XX) access to /certificate_revocation_list/ca [find] at :110 Info: Retrieving plugin Error: /File[/var/lib/puppet/lib]: Failed to generate additional resources using 'eval_generate: Error 403 on SERVER: Forbidden request: XX.XXX.XX.XX(XX.XXX.XX.XX) access to /file_metadata/plugins [search] at :110 Error: /File[/var/lib/puppet/lib]: Could not evaluate: Error 403 on SERVER: Forbidden request: XX.XXX.XX.XX(XX.XXX.XX.XX) access to /file_metadata/plugins [find] at :110 Could not retrieve file metadata for puppet://devops.XXXXX.com/plugins: Error 403 on SERVER: Forbidden request: XX.XXX.XX.XX(XX.XXX.XX.XX) access to /file_metadata/plugins [find] at :110 Error: Could not retrieve catalog from remote server: Error 403 on SERVER: Forbidden request: XX.XXX.XX.XX(XX.XXX.XX.XX) access to /catalog/blramisr195602.XXXXX.com [find] at :110 Using cached catalog Error: Could not retrieve catalog; skipping run Error: Could not send report: Error 403 on SERVER: Forbidden request: XX.XXX.XX.XX(XX.XXX.XX.XX) access to /report/blramisr195602.XXXXX.com [save] at :110 and the server logs show XX.XXX.XX.XX - - [10/Dec/2012:14:46:52 +0530] "GET /production/certificate_revocation_list/ca? HTTP/1.1" 403 102 "-" "Ruby" XX.XXX.XX.XX - - [10/Dec/2012:14:46:52 +0530] "GET /production/file_metadatas/plugins?links=manage&recurse=true&&ignore=---+%0A++-+%22.svn%22%0A++-+CVS%0A++-+%22.git%22&checksum_type=md5 HTTP/1.1" 403 95 "-" "Ruby" XX.XXX.XX.XX - - [10/Dec/2012:14:46:52 +0530] "GET /production/file_metadata/plugins? HTTP/1.1" 403 93 "-" "Ruby" XX.XXX.XX.XX - - [10/Dec/2012:14:46:53 +0530] "POST /production/catalog/blramisr195602.XXXXX.com HTTP/1.1" 403 106 "-" "Ruby" XX.XXX.XX.XX - - [10/Dec/2012:14:46:53 +0530] "PUT /production/report/blramisr195602.XXXXX.com HTTP/1.1" 403 105 "-" "Ruby" thefile server conf file is as follows (and goin by what they say on puppet site, It is better to regulate access in auth.conf for reaching file server and then allow file server to server all) [files] path /apps/puppet/files allow * [private] path /apps/puppet/private/%H allow * [modules] allow * I am using server and client version 3 Nginx has been compiled using the following options nginx version: nginx/1.3.9 built by gcc 4.4.6 20120305 (Red Hat 4.4.6-4) (GCC) TLS SNI support enabled configure arguments: --prefix=/apps/nginx --conf-path=/apps/nginx/nginx.conf --pid-path=/apps/nginx/run/nginx.pid --error-log-path=/apps/nginx/logs/error.log --http-log-path=/apps/nginx/logs/access.log --with-http_ssl_module --with-http_gzip_static_module --add-module=/usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/passenger-3.0.18/ext/nginx --add-module=/apps/Downloads/nginx/nginx-auth-ldap-master/ and the standard nginx puppet master conf server { ssl on; listen 8140 ssl; server_name _; passenger_enabled on; passenger_set_cgi_param HTTP_X_CLIENT_DN $ssl_client_s_dn; passenger_set_cgi_param HTTP_X_CLIENT_VERIFY $ssl_client_verify; passenger_min_instances 5; access_log logs/puppet_access.log; error_log logs/puppet_error.log; root /apps/nginx/html/rack/public; ssl_certificate /var/lib/puppet/ssl/certs/bangvmpllda02.XXXXXX.com.pem; ssl_certificate_key /var/lib/puppet/ssl/private_keys/bangvmpllda02.XXXXXX.com.pem; ssl_crl /var/lib/puppet/ssl/ca/ca_crl.pem; ssl_client_certificate /var/lib/puppet/ssl/certs/ca.pem; ssl_ciphers SSLv2:-LOW:-EXPORT:RC4+RSA; ssl_prefer_server_ciphers on; ssl_verify_client optional; ssl_verify_depth 1; ssl_session_cache shared:SSL:128m; ssl_session_timeout 5m; } Puppet is picking up the correct settings from the files mentioned because config print command points to /etc/puppet [amisr1@bangvmpllDA02 puppet]$ sudo puppet config print | grep conf async_storeconfigs = false authconfig = /etc/puppet/namespaceauth.conf autosign = /etc/puppet/autosign.conf catalog_cache_terminus = store_configs confdir = /etc/puppet config = /etc/puppet/puppet.conf config_file_name = puppet.conf config_version = "" configprint = all configtimeout = 120 dblocation = /var/lib/puppet/state/clientconfigs.sqlite3 deviceconfig = /etc/puppet/device.conf fileserverconfig = /etc/puppet/fileserver.conf genconfig = false hiera_config = /etc/puppet/hiera.yaml localconfig = /var/lib/puppet/state/localconfig name = config rest_authconfig = /etc/puppet/auth.conf storeconfigs = true storeconfigs_backend = puppetdb tagmap = /etc/puppet/tagmail.conf thin_storeconfigs = false I checked the firewall rules on this VM; 80, 443, 8140, 3000 are allowed. Do I still have to tweak any specifics to auth.conf for getting this to work? Update I added verbose logging to the puppet master and restarted nginx; here's the additional info I see in logs Mon Dec 10 18:19:15 +0530 2012 Puppet (err): Could not resolve 10.209.47.31: no name for 10.209.47.31 Mon Dec 10 18:19:15 +0530 2012 access[/] (info): defaulting to no access for 10.209.47.31 Mon Dec 10 18:19:15 +0530 2012 Puppet (warning): Denying access: Forbidden request: 10.209.47.31(10.209.47.31) access to /file_metadata/plugins [find] at :111 Mon Dec 10 18:19:15 +0530 2012 Puppet (err): Forbidden request: 10.209.47.31(10.209.47.31) access to /file_metadata/plugins [find] at :111 10.209.47.31 - - [10/Dec/2012:18:19:15 +0530] "GET /production/file_metadata/plugins? HTTP/1.1" 403 93 "-" "Ruby" On the agent machine facter fqdn and hostname both return a fully qualified host name [amisr1@blramisr195602 ~]$ sudo facter fqdn blramisr195602.XXXXXXX.com I then updated the agent configuration to add dns_alt_names = 10.209.47.31 cleaned all certificates on master and agent and regenerated the certificates and signed them on master using the option --allow-dns-alt-names [amisr1@bangvmpllDA02 ~]$ sudo puppet cert sign blramisr195602.XXXXXX.com Error: CSR 'blramisr195602.XXXXXX.com' contains subject alternative names (DNS:10.209.47.31, DNS:blramisr195602.XXXXXX.com), which are disallowed. Use `puppet cert --allow-dns-alt-names sign blramisr195602.XXXXXX.com` to sign this request. [amisr1@bangvmpllDA02 ~]$ sudo puppet cert --allow-dns-alt-names sign blramisr195602.XXXXXX.com Signed certificate request for blramisr195602.XXXXXX.com Removing file Puppet::SSL::CertificateRequest blramisr195602.XXXXXX.com at '/var/lib/puppet/ssl/ca/requests/blramisr195602.XXXXXX.com.pem' however, that doesn't help either; I get same errors as before. Not sure why in the logs it shows comparing access rules by IP and not hostname. Is there any Nginx configuration to change this behavior?

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• JMS Step 4 - How to Create an 11g BPEL Process Which Writes a Message Based on an XML Schema to a JMS Queue

  - by John-Brown.Evans

  JMS Step 4 - How to Create an 11g BPEL Process Which Writes a Message Based on an XML Schema to a JMS Queue ol{margin:0;padding:0} .c11_4{vertical-align:top;width:129.8pt;border-style:solid;background-color:#f3f3f3;border-color:#000000;border-width:1pt;padding:5pt 5pt 5pt 5pt} .c9_4{vertical-align:top;width:207pt;border-style:solid;background-color:#f3f3f3;border-color:#000000;border-width:1pt;padding:5pt 5pt 5pt 5pt}.c14{vertical-align:top;width:207pt;border-style:solid;border-color:#000000;border-width:1pt;padding:5pt 5pt 5pt 5pt} .c17_4{vertical-align:top;width:129.8pt;border-style:solid;border-color:#000000;border-width:1pt;padding:5pt 5pt 5pt 5pt} .c7_4{vertical-align:top;width:130pt;border-style:solid;border-color:#000000;border-width:1pt;padding:0pt 5pt 0pt 5pt} .c19_4{vertical-align:top;width:468pt;border-style:solid;border-color:#000000;border-width:1pt;padding:5pt 5pt 5pt 5pt} .c22_4{background-color:#ffffff} .c20_4{list-style-type:disc;margin:0;padding:0} .c6_4{font-size:8pt;font-family:"Courier New"} .c24_4{color:inherit;text-decoration:inherit} .c23_4{color:#1155cc;text-decoration:underline} .c0_4{height:11pt;direction:ltr} .c10_4{font-size:10pt;font-family:"Courier New"} .c3_4{padding-left:0pt;margin-left:36pt} .c18_4{font-size:8pt} .c8_4{text-align:center} .c12_4{background-color:#ffff00} .c2_4{font-weight:bold} .c21_4{background-color:#00ff00} .c4_4{line-height:1.0} .c1_4{direction:ltr} .c15_4{background-color:#f3f3f3} .c13_4{font-family:"Courier New"} .c5_4{font-style:italic} .c16_4{border-collapse:collapse} .title{padding-top:24pt;line-height:1.15;text-align:left;color:#000000;font-size:36pt;font-family:"Arial";font-weight:bold;padding-bottom:6pt} .subtitle{padding-top:18pt;line-height:1.15;text-align:left;color:#666666;font-style:italic;font-size:24pt;font-family:"Georgia";padding-bottom:4pt} li{color:#000000;font-size:10pt;font-family:"Arial"} p{color:#000000;font-size:10pt;margin:0;font-family:"Arial"} h1{padding-top:0pt;line-height:1.15;text-align:left;color:#888;font-size:18pt;font-family:"Arial";font-weight:normal;padding-bottom:0pt} h2{padding-top:0pt;line-height:1.15;text-align:left;color:#888;font-size:18pt;font-family:"Arial";font-weight:bold;padding-bottom:0pt} h3{padding-top:0pt;line-height:1.15;text-align:left;color:#888;font-size:14pt;font-family:"Arial";font-weight:normal;padding-bottom:0pt} h4{padding-top:0pt;line-height:1.15;text-align:left;color:#888;font-style:italic;font-size:11pt;font-family:"Arial";padding-bottom:0pt} h5{padding-top:0pt;line-height:1.15;text-align:left;color:#888;font-size:10pt;font-family:"Arial";font-weight:normal;padding-bottom:0pt} h6{padding-top:0pt;line-height:1.15;text-align:left;color:#888;font-style:italic;font-size:10pt;font-family:"Arial";padding-bottom:0pt} This post continues the series of JMS articles which demonstrate how to use JMS queues in a SOA context. The previous posts were: JMS Step 1 - How to Create a Simple JMS Queue in Weblogic Server 11g JMS Step 2 - Using the QueueSend.java Sample Program to Send a Message to a JMS Queue JMS Step 3 - Using the QueueReceive.java Sample Program to Read a Message from a JMS Queue In this example we will create a BPEL process which will write (enqueue) a message to a JMS queue using a JMS adapter. The JMS adapter will enqueue the full XML payload to the queue. This sample will use the following WebLogic Server objects. The first two, the Connection Factory and JMS Queue, were created as part of the first blog post in this series, JMS Step 1 - How to Create a Simple JMS Queue in Weblogic Server 11g. If you haven't created those objects yet, please see that post for details on how to do so. The Connection Pool will be created as part of this example. Object Name Type JNDI Name TestConnectionFactory Connection Factory jms/TestConnectionFactory TestJMSQueue JMS Queue jms/TestJMSQueue eis/wls/TestQueue Connection Pool eis/wls/TestQueue 1. Verify Connection Factory and JMS Queue As mentioned above, this example uses a WLS Connection Factory called TestConnectionFactory and a JMS queue TestJMSQueue. As these are prerequisites for this example, let us verify they exist. Log in to the WebLogic Server Administration Console. Select Services > JMS Modules > TestJMSModule You should see the following objects: If not, or if the TestJMSModule is missing, please see the abovementioned article and create these objects before continuing. 2. Create a JMS Adapter Connection Pool in WebLogic Server The BPEL process we are about to create uses a JMS adapter to write to the JMS queue. The JMS adapter is deployed to the WebLogic server and needs to be configured to include a connection pool which references the connection factory associated with the JMS queue. In the WebLogic Server Console Go to Deployments > Next and select (click on) the JmsAdapter Select Configuration > Outbound Connection Pools and expand oracle.tip.adapter.jms.IJmsConnectionFactory. This will display the list of connections configured for this adapter. For example, eis/aqjms/Queue, eis/aqjms/Topic etc. These JNDI names are actually quite confusing. We are expecting to configure a connection pool here, but the names refer to queues and topics. One would expect these to be called *ConnectionPool or *_CF or similar, but to conform to this nomenclature, we will call our entry eis/wls/TestQueue . This JNDI name is also the name we will use later, when creating a BPEL process to access this JMS queue! Select New, check the oracle.tip.adapter.jms.IJmsConnectionFactory check box and Next. Enter JNDI Name: eis/wls/TestQueue for the connection instance, then press Finish. Expand oracle.tip.adapter.jms.IJmsConnectionFactory again and select (click on) eis/wls/TestQueue The ConnectionFactoryLocation must point to the JNDI name of the connection factory associated with the JMS queue you will be writing to. In our example, this is the connection factory called TestConnectionFactory, with the JNDI name jms/TestConnectionFactory.( As a reminder, this connection factory is contained in the JMS Module called TestJMSModule, under Services > Messaging > JMS Modules > TestJMSModule which we verified at the beginning of this document. )Enter jms/TestConnectionFactory  into the Property Value field for Connection Factory Location. After entering it, you must press Return/Enter then Save for the value to be accepted. If your WebLogic server is running in Development mode, you should see the message that the changes have been activated and the deployment plan successfully updated. If not, then you will manually need to activate the changes in the WebLogic server console. Although the changes have been activated, the JmsAdapter needs to be redeployed in order for the changes to become effective. This should be confirmed by the message Remember to update your deployment to reflect the new plan when you are finished with your changes as can be seen in the following screen shot: The next step is to redeploy the JmsAdapter.Navigate back to the Deployments screen, either by selecting it in the left-hand navigation tree or by selecting the “Summary of Deployments” link in the breadcrumbs list at the top of the screen. Then select the checkbox next to JmsAdapter and press the Update button On the Update Application Assistant page, select “Redeploy this application using the following deployment files” and press Finish. After a few seconds you should get the message that the selected deployments were updated. The JMS adapter configuration is complete and it can now be used to access the JMS queue. To summarize: we have created a JMS adapter connection pool connector with the JNDI name jms/TestConnectionFactory. This is the JNDI name to be accessed by a process such as a BPEL process, when using the JMS adapter to access the previously created JMS queue with the JNDI name jms/TestJMSQueue. In the following step, we will set up a BPEL process to use this JMS adapter to write to the JMS queue. 3. Create a BPEL Composite with a JMS Adapter Partner Link This step requires that you have a valid Application Server Connection defined in JDeveloper, pointing to the application server on which you created the JMS Queue and Connection Factory. You can create this connection in JDeveloper under the Application Server Navigator. Give it any name and be sure to test the connection before completing it. This sample will use the connection name jbevans-lx-PS5, as that is the name of the connection pointing to my SOA PS5 installation. When using a JMS adapter from within a BPEL process, there are various configuration options, such as the operation type (consume message, produce message etc.), delivery mode and message type. One of these options is the choice of the format of the JMS message payload. This can be structured around an existing XSD, in which case the full XML element and tags are passed, or it can be opaque, meaning that the payload is sent as-is to the JMS adapter. In the case of an XSD-based message, the payload can simply be copied to the input variable of the JMS adapter. In the case of an opaque message, the JMS adapter’s input variable is of type base64binary. So the payload needs to be converted to base64 binary first. I will go into this in more detail in a later blog entry. This sample will pass a simple message to the adapter, based on the following simple XSD file, which consists of a single string element: stringPayload.xsd <?xml version="1.0" encoding="windows-1252" ?> <xsd:schema xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns="http://www.example.org" targetNamespace="http://www.example.org" elementFormDefault="qualified" <xsd:element name="exampleElement" type="xsd:string"> </xsd:element> </xsd:schema> The following steps are all executed in JDeveloper. The SOA project will be created inside a JDeveloper Application. If you do not already have an application to contain the project, you can create a new one via File > New > General > Generic Application. Give the application any name, for example JMSTests and, when prompted for a project name and type, call the project JmsAdapterWriteWithXsd and select SOA as the project technology type. If you already have an application, continue below. Create a SOA Project Create a new project and choose SOA Tier > SOA Project as its type. Name it JmsAdapterWriteSchema. When prompted for the composite type, choose Composite With BPEL Process. When prompted for the BPEL Process, name it JmsAdapterWriteSchema too and choose Synchronous BPEL Process as the template. This will create a composite with a BPEL process and an exposed SOAP service. Double-click the BPEL process to open and begin editing it. You should see a simple BPEL process with a Receive and Reply activity. As we created a default process without an XML schema, the input and output variables are simple strings. Create an XSD File An XSD file is required later to define the message format to be passed to the JMS adapter. In this step, we create a simple XSD file, containing a string variable and add it to the project. First select the xsd item in the left-hand navigation tree to ensure that the XSD file is created under that item. Select File > New > General > XML and choose XML Schema. Call it stringPayload.xsd and when the editor opens, select the Source view. then replace the contents with the contents of the stringPayload.xsd example above and save the file. You should see it under the xsd item in the navigation tree. Create a JMS Adapter Partner Link We will create the JMS adapter as a service at the composite level. If it is not already open, double-click the composite.xml file in the navigator to open it. From the Component Palette, drag a JMS adapter over onto the right-hand swim lane, under External References. This will start the JMS Adapter Configuration Wizard. Use the following entries: Service Name: JmsAdapterWrite Oracle Enterprise Messaging Service (OEMS): Oracle Weblogic JMS AppServer Connection: Use an existing application server connection pointing to the WebLogic server on which the above JMS queue and connection factory were created. You can use the “+” button to create a connection directly from the wizard, if you do not already have one. This example uses a connection called jbevans-lx-PS5. Adapter Interface > Interface: Define from operation and schema (specified later) Operation Type: Produce Message Operation Name: Produce_message Destination Name: Press the Browse button, select Destination Type: Queues, then press Search. Wait for the list to populate, then select the entry for TestJMSQueue , which is the queue created earlier. JNDI Name: The JNDI name to use for the JMS connection. This is probably the most important step in this exercise and the most common source of error. This is the JNDI name of the JMS adapter’s connection pool created in the WebLogic Server and which points to the connection factory. JDeveloper does not verify the value entered here. If you enter a wrong value, the JMS adapter won’t find the queue and you will get an error message at runtime, which is very difficult to trace. In our example, this is the value eis/wls/TestQueue . (See the earlier step on how to create a JMS Adapter Connection Pool in WebLogic Server for details.) MessagesURL: We will use the XSD file we created earlier, stringPayload.xsd to define the message format for the JMS adapter. Press the magnifying glass icon to search for schema files. Expand Project Schema Files > stringPayload.xsd and select exampleElement: string. Press Next and Finish, which will complete the JMS Adapter configuration. Wire the BPEL Component to the JMS Adapter In this step, we link the BPEL process/component to the JMS adapter. From the composite.xml editor, drag the right-arrow icon from the BPEL process to the JMS adapter’s in-arrow. This completes the steps at the composite level. 4. Complete the BPEL Process Design Invoke the JMS Adapter Open the BPEL component by double-clicking it in the design view of the composite.xml, or open it from the project navigator by selecting the JmsAdapterWriteSchema.bpel file. This will display the BPEL process in the design view. You should see the JmsAdapterWrite partner link under one of the two swim lanes. We want it in the right-hand swim lane. If JDeveloper displays it in the left-hand lane, right-click it and choose Display > Move To Opposite Swim Lane. An Invoke activity is required in order to invoke the JMS adapter. Drag an Invoke activity between the Receive and Reply activities. Drag the right-hand arrow from the Invoke activity to the JMS adapter partner link. This will open the Invoke editor. The correct default values are entered automatically and are fine for our purposes. We only need to define the input variable to use for the JMS adapter. By pressing the green “+” symbol, a variable of the correct type can be auto-generated, for example with the name Invoke1_Produce_Message_InputVariable. Press OK after creating the variable. ( For some reason, while I was testing this, the JMS Adapter moved back to the left-hand swim lane again after this step. There is no harm in leaving it there, but I find it easier to follow if it is in the right-hand lane, because I kind-of think of the message coming in on the left and being routed through the right. But you can follow your personal preference here.) Assign Variables Drag an Assign activity between the Receive and Invoke activities. We will simply copy the input variable to the JMS adapter and, for completion, so the process has an output to print, again to the process’s output variable. Double-click the Assign activity and create two Copy rules: for the first, drag Variables > inputVariable > payload > client:process > client:input_string to Invoke1_Produce_Message_InputVariable > body > ns2:exampleElement for the second, drag the same input variable to outputVariable > payload > client:processResponse > client:result This will create two copy rules, similar to the following: Press OK. This completes the BPEL and Composite design. 5. Compile and Deploy the Composite We won’t go into too much detail on how to compile and deploy. In JDeveloper, compile the process by pressing the Make or Rebuild icons or by right-clicking the project name in the navigator and selecting Make... or Rebuild... If the compilation is successful, deploy it to the SOA server connection defined earlier. (Right-click the project name in the navigator, select Deploy to Application Server, choose the application server connection, choose the partition on the server (usually default) and press Finish. You should see the message ---- Deployment finished. ---- in the Deployment frame, if the deployment was successful. 6. Test the Composite This is the exciting part. Open two tabs in your browser and log in to the WebLogic Administration Console in one tab and the Enterprise Manager 11g Fusion Middleware Control (EM) for your SOA installation in the other. We will use the Console to monitor the messages being written to the queue and the EM to execute the composite. In the Console, go to Services > Messaging > JMS Modules > TestJMSModule > TestJMSQueue > Monitoring. Note the number of messages under Messages Current. In the EM, go to SOA > soa-infra (soa_server1) > default (or wherever you deployed your composite to) and click on JmsAdapterWriteSchema [1.0], then press the Test button. Under Input Arguments, enter any string into the text input field for the payload, for example Test Message then press Test Web Service. If the instance is successful you should see the same text in the Response message, “Test Message”. In the Console, refresh the Monitoring screen to confirm a new message has been written to the queue. Check the checkbox and press Show Messages. Click on the newest message and view its contents. They should include the full XML of the entered payload. 7. Troubleshooting If you get an exception similar to the following at runtime ... BINDING.JCA-12510 JCA Resource Adapter location error. Unable to locate the JCA Resource Adapter via .jca binding file element The JCA Binding Component is unable to startup the Resource Adapter specified in the element: location='eis/wls/QueueTest'. The reason for this is most likely that either 1) the Resource Adapters RAR file has not been deployed successfully to the WebLogic Application server or 2) the '' element in weblogic-ra.xml has not been set to eis/wls/QueueTest. In the last case you will have to add a new WebLogic JCA connection factory (deploy a RAR). Please correct this and then restart the Application Server at oracle.integration.platform.blocks.adapter.fw.AdapterBindingException. createJndiLookupException(AdapterBindingException.java:130) at oracle.integration.platform.blocks.adapter.fw.jca.cci. JCAConnectionManager$JCAConnectionPool.createJCAConnectionFactory (JCAConnectionManager.java:1387) at oracle.integration.platform.blocks.adapter.fw.jca.cci. JCAConnectionManager$JCAConnectionPool.newPoolObject (JCAConnectionManager.java:1285) ... then this is very likely due to an incorrect JNDI name entered for the JMS Connection in the JMS Adapter Wizard. Recheck those steps. The error message prints the name of the JNDI name used. In this example, it was incorrectly entered as eis/wls/QueueTest instead of eis/wls/TestQueue. This concludes this example. Best regards John-Brown Evans Oracle Technology Proactive Support Delivery

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• Nagging As A Strategy For Better Linking: -z guidance

  - by user9154181

  The link-editor (ld) in Solaris 11 has a new feature that we call guidance that is intended to help you build better objects. The basic idea behind guidance is that if (and only if) you request it, the link-editor will issue messages suggesting better options and other changes you might make to your ld command to get better results. You can choose to take the advice, or you can disable specific types of guidance while acting on others. In some ways, this works like an experienced friend leaning over your shoulder and giving you advice — you're free to take it or leave it as you see fit, but you get nudged to do a better job than you might have otherwise. We use guidance to build the core Solaris OS, and it has proven to be useful, both in improving our objects, and in making sure that regressions don't creep back in later. In this article, I'm going to describe the evolution in thinking and design that led to the implementation of the -z guidance option, as well as give a brief description of how it works. The guidance feature issues non-fatal warnings. However, experience shows that once developers get used to ignoring warnings, it is inevitable that real problems will be lost in the noise and ignored or missed. This is why we have a zero tolerance policy against build noise in the core Solaris OS. In order to get maximum benefit from -z guidance while maintaining this policy, I added the -z fatal-warnings option at the same time. Much of the material presented here is adapted from the arc case: PSARC 2010/312 Link-editor guidance The History Of Unfortunate Link-Editor Defaults The Solaris link-editor is one of the oldest Unix commands. It stands to reason that this would be true — in order to write an operating system, you need the ability to compile and link code. The original link-editor (ld) had defaults that made sense at the time. As new features were needed, command line option switches were added to let the user use them, while maintaining backward compatibility for those who didn't. Backward compatibility is always a concern in system design, but is particularly important in the case of the tool chain (compilers, linker, and related tools), since it is a basic building block for the entire system. Over the years, applications have grown in size and complexity. Important concepts like dynamic linking that didn't exist in the original Unix system were invented. Object file formats changed. In the case of System V Release 4 Unix derivatives like Solaris, the ELF (Extensible Linking Format) was adopted. Since then, the ELF system has evolved to provide tools needed to manage today's larger and more complex environments. Features such as lazy loading, and direct bindings have been added. In an ideal world, many of these options would be defaults, with rarely used options that allow the user to turn them off. However, the reality is exactly the reverse: For backward compatibility, these features are all options that must be explicitly turned on by the user. This has led to a situation in which most applications do not take advantage of the many improvements that have been made in linking over the last 20 years. If their code seems to link and run without issue, what motivation does a developer have to read a complex manpage, absorb the information provided, choose the features that matter for their application, and apply them? Experience shows that only the most motivated and diligent programmers will make that effort. We know that most programs would be improved if we could just get you to use the various whizzy features that we provide, but the defaults conspire against us. We have long wanted to do something to make it easier for our users to use the linkers more effectively. There have been many conversations over the years regarding this issue, and how to address it. They always break down along the following lines: Change ld Defaults Since the world would be a better place the newer ld features were the defaults, why not change things to make it so? This idea is simple, elegant, and impossible. Doing so would break a large number of existing applications, including those of ISVs, big customers, and a plethora of existing open source packages. In each case, the owner of that code may choose to follow our lead and fix their code, or they may view it as an invitation to reconsider their commitment to our platform. Backward compatibility, and our installed base of working software, is one of our greatest assets, and not something to be lightly put at risk. Breaking backward compatibility at this level of the system is likely to do more harm than good. But, it sure is tempting. New Link-Editor One might create a new linker command, not called 'ld', leaving the old command as it is. The new one could use the same code as ld, but would offer only modern options, with the proper defaults for features such as direct binding. The resulting link-editor would be a pleasure to use. However, the approach is doomed to niche status. There is a vast pile of exiting code in the world built around the existing ld command, that reaches back to the 1970's. ld use is embedded in large and unknown numbers of makefiles, and is used by name by compilers that execute it. A Unix link-editor that is not named ld will not find a majority audience no matter how good it might be. Finally, a new linker command will eventually cease to be new, and will accumulate its own burden of backward compatibility issues. An Option To Make ld Do The Right Things Automatically This line of reasoning is best summarized by a CR filed in 2005, entitled 6239804 make it easier for ld(1) to do what's best The idea is to have a '-z best' option that unchains ld from its backward compatibility commitment, and allows it to turn on the "best" set of features, as determined by the authors of ld. The specific set of features enabled by -z best would be subject to change over time, as requirements change. This idea is more realistic than the other two, but was never implemented because it has some important issues that we could never answer to our satisfaction: The -z best proposal assumes that the user can turn it on, and trust it to select good options without the user needing to be aware of the options being applied. This is a fallacy. Features such as direct bindings require the user to do some analysis to ensure that the resulting program will still operate properly. A user who is willing to do the work to verify that what -z best does will be OK for their application is capable of turning on those features directly, and therefore gains little added benefit from -z best. The intent is that when a user opts into -z best, that they understand that z best is subject to sometimes incompatible evolution. Experience teaches us that this won't work. People will use this feature, the meaning of -z best will change, code that used to build will fail, and then there will be complaints and demands to retract the change. When (not if) this occurs, we will of course defend our actions, and point at the disclaimer. We'll win some of those debates, and lose others. Ultimately, we'll end up with -z best2 (-z better), or other compromises, and our goal of simplifying the world will have failed. The -z best idea rolls up a set of features that may or may not be related to each other into a unit that must be taken wholesale, or not at all. It could be that only a subset of what it does is compatible with a given application, in which case the user is expected to abandon -z best and instead set the options that apply to their application directly. In doing so, they lose one of the benefits of -z best, that if you use it, future versions of ld may choose a different set of options, and automatically improve the object through the act of rebuilding it. I drew two conclusions from the above history: For a link-editor, backward compatibility is vital. If a given command line linked your application 10 years ago, you have every reason to expect that it will link today, assuming that the libraries you're linking against are still available and compatible with their previous interfaces. For an application of any size or complexity, there is no substitute for the work involved in examining the code and determining which linker options apply and which do not. These options are largely orthogonal to each other, and it can be reasonable not to use any or all of them, depending on the situation, even in modern applications. It is a mistake to tie them together. The idea for -z guidance came from consideration of these points. By decoupling the advice from the act of taking the advice, we can retain the good aspects of -z best while avoiding its pitfalls: -z guidance gives advice, but the decision to take that advice remains with the user who must evaluate its merit and make a decision to take it or not. As such, we are free to change the specific guidance given in future releases of ld, without breaking existing applications. The only fallout from this will be some new warnings in the build output, which can be ignored or dealt with at the user's convenience. It does not couple the various features given into a single "take it or leave it" option, meaning that there will never be a need to offer "-zguidance2", or other such variants as things change over time. Guidance has the potential to be our final word on this subject. The user is given the flexibility to disable specific categories of guidance without losing the benefit of others, including those that might be added to future versions of the system. Although -z fatal-warnings stands on its own as a useful feature, it is of particular interest in combination with -z guidance. Used together, the guidance turns from advice to hard requirement: The user must either make the suggested change, or explicitly reject the advice by specifying a guidance exception token, in order to get a build. This is valuable in environments with high coding standards. ld Command Line Options The guidance effort resulted in new link-editor options for guidance and for turning warnings into fatal errors. Before I reproduce that text here, I'd like to highlight the strategic decisions embedded in the guidance feature: In order to get guidance, you have to opt in. We hope you will opt in, and believe you'll get better objects if you do, but our default mode of operation will continue as it always has, with full backward compatibility, and without judgement. Guidance suggestions always offers specific advice, and not vague generalizations. You can disable some guidance without turning off the entire feature. When you get guidance warnings, you can choose to take the advice, or you can specify a keyword to disable guidance for just that category. This allows you to get guidance for things that are useful to you, without being bothered about things that you've already considered and dismissed. As the world changes, we will add new guidance to steer you in the right direction. All such new guidance will come with a keyword that let's you turn it off. In order to facilitate building your code on different versions of Solaris, we quietly ignore any guidance keywords we don't recognize, assuming that they are intended for newer versions of the link-editor. If you want to see what guidance tokens ld does and does not recognize on your system, you can use the ld debugging feature as follows: % ld -Dargs -z guidance=foo,nodefs debug: debug: Solaris Linkers: 5.11-1.2275 debug: debug: arg[1] option=-D: option-argument: args debug: arg[2] option=-z: option-argument: guidance=foo,nodefs debug: warning: unrecognized -z guidance item: foo The -z fatal-warning option is straightforward, and generally useful in environments with strict coding standards. Note that the GNU ld already had this feature, and we accept their option names as synonyms: -z fatal-warnings | nofatal-warnings --fatal-warnings | --no-fatal-warnings The -z fatal-warnings and the --fatal-warnings option cause the link-editor to treat warnings as fatal errors. The -z nofatal-warnings and the --no-fatal-warnings option cause the link-editor to treat warnings as non-fatal. This is the default behavior. The -z guidance option is defined as follows: -z guidance[=item1,item2,...] Provide guidance messages to suggest ld options that can improve the quality of the resulting object, or which are otherwise considered to be beneficial. The specific guidance offered is subject to change over time as the system evolves. Obsolete guidance offered by older versions of ld may be dropped in new versions. Similarly, new guidance may be added to new versions of ld. Guidance therefore always represents current best practices. It is possible to enable guidance, while preventing specific guidance messages, by providing a list of item tokens, representing the class of guidance to be suppressed. In this way, unwanted advice can be suppressed without losing the benefit of other guidance. Unrecognized item tokens are quietly ignored by ld, allowing a given ld command line to be executed on a variety of older or newer versions of Solaris. The guidance offered by the current version of ld, and the item tokens used to disable these messages, are as follows. Specify Required Dependencies Dynamic executables and shared objects should explicitly define all of the dependencies they require. Guidance recommends the use of the -z defs option, should any symbol references remain unsatisfied when building dynamic objects. This guidance can be disabled with -z guidance=nodefs. Do Not Specify Non-Required Dependencies Dynamic executables and shared objects should not define any dependencies that do not satisfy the symbol references made by the dynamic object. Guidance recommends that unused dependencies be removed. This guidance can be disabled with -z guidance=nounused. Lazy Loading Dependencies should be identified for lazy loading. Guidance recommends the use of the -z lazyload option should any dependency be processed before either a -z lazyload or -z nolazyload option is encountered. This guidance can be disabled with -z guidance=nolazyload. Direct Bindings Dependencies should be referenced with direct bindings. Guidance recommends the use of the -B direct, or -z direct options should any dependency be processed before either of these options, or the -z nodirect option is encountered. This guidance can be disabled with -z guidance=nodirect. Pure Text Segment Dynamic objects should not contain relocations to non-writable, allocable sections. Guidance recommends compiling objects with Position Independent Code (PIC) should any relocations against the text segment remain, and neither the -z textwarn or -z textoff options are encountered. This guidance can be disabled with -z guidance=notext. Mapfile Syntax All mapfiles should use the version 2 mapfile syntax. Guidance recommends the use of the version 2 syntax should any mapfiles be encountered that use the version 1 syntax. This guidance can be disabled with -z guidance=nomapfile. Library Search Path Inappropriate dependencies that are encountered by ld are quietly ignored. For example, a 32-bit dependency that is encountered when generating a 64-bit object is ignored. These dependencies can result from incorrect search path settings, such as supplying an incorrect -L option. Although benign, this dependency processing is wasteful, and might hide a build problem that should be solved. Guidance recommends the removal of any inappropriate dependencies. This guidance can be disabled with -z guidance=nolibpath. In addition, -z guidance=noall can be used to entirely disable the guidance feature. See Chapter 7, Link-Editor Quick Reference, in the Linker and Libraries Guide for more information on guidance and advice for building better objects. Example The following example demonstrates how the guidance feature is intended to work. We will build a shared object that has a variety of shortcomings: Does not specify all it's dependencies Specifies dependencies it does not use Does not use direct bindings Uses a version 1 mapfile Contains relocations to the readonly allocable text (not PIC) This scenario is sadly very common — many shared objects have one or more of these issues. % cat hello.c #include <stdio.h> #include <unistd.h> void hello(void) { printf("hello user %d\n", getpid()); } % cat mapfile.v1 # This version 1 mapfile will trigger a guidance message % cc hello.c -o hello.so -G -M mapfile.v1 -lelf As you can see, the operation completes without error, resulting in a usable object. However, turning on guidance reveals a number of things that could be better: % cc hello.c -o hello.so -G -M mapfile.v1 -lelf -zguidance ld: guidance: version 2 mapfile syntax recommended: mapfile.v1 ld: guidance: -z lazyload option recommended before first dependency ld: guidance: -B direct or -z direct option recommended before first dependency Undefined first referenced symbol in file getpid hello.o (symbol belongs to implicit dependency /lib/libc.so.1) printf hello.o (symbol belongs to implicit dependency /lib/libc.so.1) ld: warning: symbol referencing errors ld: guidance: -z defs option recommended for shared objects ld: guidance: removal of unused dependency recommended: libelf.so.1 warning: Text relocation remains referenced against symbol offset in file .rodata1 (section) 0xa hello.o getpid 0x4 hello.o printf 0xf hello.o ld: guidance: position independent (PIC) code recommended for shared objects ld: guidance: see ld(1) -z guidance for more information Given the explicit advice in the above guidance messages, it is relatively easy to modify the example to do the right things: % cat mapfile.v2 # This version 2 mapfile will not trigger a guidance message $mapfile_version 2 % cc hello.c -o hello.so -Kpic -G -Bdirect -M mapfile.v2 -lc -zguidance There are situations in which the guidance does not fit the object being built. For instance, you want to build an object without direct bindings: % cc -Kpic hello.c -o hello.so -G -M mapfile.v2 -lc -zguidance ld: guidance: -B direct or -z direct option recommended before first dependency ld: guidance: see ld(1) -z guidance for more information It is easy to disable that specific guidance warning without losing the overall benefit from allowing the remainder of the guidance feature to operate: % cc -Kpic hello.c -o hello.so -G -M mapfile.v2 -lc -zguidance=nodirect Conclusions The linking guidelines enforced by the ld guidance feature correspond rather directly to our standards for building the core Solaris OS. I'm sure that comes as no surprise. It only makes sense that we would want to build our own product as well as we know how. Solaris is usually the first significant test for any new linker feature. We now enable guidance by default for all builds, and the effect has been very positive. Guidance helps us find suboptimal objects more quickly. Programmers get concrete advice for what to change instead of vague generalities. Even in the cases where we override the guidance, the makefile rules to do so serve as documentation of the fact. Deciding to use guidance is likely to cause some up front work for most code, as it forces you to consider using new features such as direct bindings. Such investigation is worthwhile, but does not come for free. However, the guidance suggestions offer a structured and straightforward way to tackle modernizing your objects, and once that work is done, for keeping them that way. The investment is often worth it, and will replay you in terms of better performance and fewer problems. I hope that you find guidance to be as useful as we have.

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• PC powers off at random times

  - by Timo Huovinen

  Short Version After experiencing some problems with Mobo batteries my PC started to power off at random times, the power off is instant and sudden and does not restart afterwards, need help figuring out the cause. Facts: Powers off when PC is playing games Powers off when PC is idle Powers off when PC is in safe mode Powers off when PC is in BIOS Powers off when PC is booted through a Windows installation USB Replaced the motherboard battery several times Replaced the 650W PSU with a 750W PSU Replaced the RAM Swapped the RAM between slots Re-applied thermal paste to the CPU Checked if the motherboard touches the case Nothing is overclocked PC Specs PC specs: OS: Windows 7 Ultimate SP1 RAM: klingston 1333MHz 4GB stick CPU: AMD Phenom II x4 955 Mobo: Gigabyte 88GMA-UD2H rev 2.2 Motherboard battery: CR2032 3v HDD: 500GB Seagate ST3500418AS ATA Device Graphics: ATI/AMD Radeon HD 6870 Very Long version Around 10 months ago I built a brand new gaming PC. Around 6 months ago it's time setting in windows started resetting to the year 2010. I swapped the Motherboard battery for a new one of the exact same size and shape and voltage, and the problems disappeared...for around 2 weeks. Then the same problem happened again, time gets reset, I swapped the battery again, and the problem was gone for good and everything was great for about 3 months.. then another problem started happening, the PC started to power off suddenly and without warning at completely random times, sometimes the PC works for and hour, sometimes 5 minutes. So I read on the forums that it might be either the PSU or the motherboard Battery or RAM or HDD or the Graphics card or the CPU or the motherboard or the drivers or a Virus or Grounding issues, or something short circuiting, basically it can be anything... I spent some days researching, and decided to remove the possibility of a virus. I reset the CMOS, cleared all BIOS settings and reinstalled windows 7 after a full format of the HDD, but the random power off kept happening. I then disabled the restart on error option in windows and looked at the event log for error events, but they did not help me figure out the problem. Network list service depends on network location awareness the dependency group failed to start Source Kernel Power Event 41 Task Category 63 Source Disk Event ID 11 Task Category None The driver detected a controller error on device disk I took apart the PC, every little piece, re-applied some expensive thermal paste to the CPU, and double checked that none of the pieces are touching the PC case. The problem was gone, the PC no longer powered off randomly I re-attached the graphics card and all was good for 4 months... then the power off problem appeared again, but was happening at high intervals, the PC would shutdown once in 2 days on average, at random points in time, sometimes when it's idle all day long, sometimes when it's running CRYSIS 2. I checked the CPU temperature, because I know that AMD CPU's have a built in protection mechanism that switches off the PC if the CPU gets too hot, and the Temp was 50C system temp, and 45C CPU after running the PC all day long (I did not do tests to see if there are any temperature spikes, don't know how to do them) Originally the PSU that powered the PC was 650Watts and had one 4 pin cable to power the CPU, I replaced it with a new 750Watts PSU which has two 4 pin cables for the CPU, but the problem remained. I removed the graphics card and let the motherboard use the built in one, but the PC kept suddenly powering off at random times. I took apart the PC completely again, and re-applied thermal paste to the CPU, added lots of insulation, and checked for any type of short-circuit possibility again and again, but the problem remained. The problem was like that for some months. I replaced the Battery a couple of times over the time, changed lots of options in windows, and tried everything I could, but it kept powering off, so I stopped using the PC as much as I used to, just living with the random power offs from time to time, until a couple of days ago, when the power off happens almost immediately after powering on the PC. I replaced the RAM with a brand new one, but that did not help. Took apart the PC again, checked for anything anywhere that might cause it, found some small scratches on the very edge of the motherboard to the left of the PCI express x16 slot. This might cause the problem, I thought, but the scratch looks very superficial, not deep at all, and if the scratch did harm the motherboard, wouldn't it cause it to not start at all? And why did it start to power off a while ago, and then suddenly stop powering off? The scratches could not have vanished??? did chkdsk \d but it powered off when it was at 75% I removed the hard disks, the graphics card, while I fiddled with the BIOS settings, and suddenly the PC shut down while I was looking at the BIOS version. This makes me realize, it is not caused by: HDD, Windows, Drivers or the Graphics card I cleared the CMOS again, updated the BIOS from F5 to F6f beta, but that did not help, it might even seem that the PC powers off even sooner. The shutdown even happened to me while I booted through a windows 7 installation USB and was in the repair console. I removed one of the cables powering the CPU, now only one 4pin cable powers it, and it worked for 30mins after doing that, which makes me think that it's the CPU overheating, and because it gets less power, it overheats slower? The things that I am still considering: CPU overheating (does not seem to overheat, maybe false readings?) Motherboard short circuiting (faulty motherboard?) I desperately need some advice in what is faulty, is it a faulty Motherboard or an overheating CPU? or maybe something else? I have been breaking my head over this problem over a span of 6 months. I'm not sure if this is a good place to ask this question, if it is not, then tell me where I can get some experienced help. More info I have also discovered a mysterious piece that seems to have fallen out of the motherboard i119.photobucket.com/albums/o126/yurikolovsky/strangepiece.jpg What is it? Looks like each time that it powers off the datetime gets reset I also found another forum post tomshardware.co.uk/forum/… except I don't have Integrated PeripheralsUSB Keyboard Function option in BIOS :S Comments summary (asked by Random moderator) Q. tell me, if the computer restarts, is it immediately? Does it take a second and then restarts? Do you see (BSOD) or hear (PSU, short circuit) any suspicious when it happens? After reading trough it, it remains the mainboard that is faulty. – JohannesM A. Immediate power off, all the fans stop instantly, all the light turn off instantly, no sound or anything, and it remains off until I turn it back on. Thanks for the feedback, faulty motherboard is what I fear. Q. Try stress-testing the system with Prime95 and see if errors or shutdowns occur when the CPU is under full load. – speakr A. Prime95 heat stress test peaked CPU heat at 60C after 5mins, it powered off after 30mins of testing in the middle of the test with no errors, Prime95 Heat test or the stress-testing with low RAM usage (small or in-place FFTs) do not report errors while testing for 10-60 mins. The power off does not seem like it is affected by Prime95 at all Makes me wonder if it's a CPU or Motherboard issue at all. Q. I had similar random/intermittent problems with my old board. It gave one of a few different symptoms: keyboard and/or mouse would die and/or the RAM wouldn't work and/or it would shut down. It was in bad shape. One problems was that my old PSU had literally burned the connector on it (browned around the pins), another was that a broken lead inside the layers of the PCB would work sometimes if it happened to be hot or if I bent the board—by jamming a hunk of wood behind it. I managed to keep the board alive for several years, but eventually nothing I did would make it work correctly anymore. – Synetech A. I will try that as the last resort, ok? ;) Q. Have you tried a different power cord, surge protector, outlet (on a different circuit). It's worth a shot just to ensure it's not subpar wiring or a week circuit (dips in power may cause shutdown if the PSU can't pull enough juice from the wall). – Kyle A. yes, I attached the PC to an entirely different outlet on a different circuit and the problem persists. After connecting it to a different outlet after starting the PC it gave me 3 long beeps and 1 short one, then the PC immediately proceeded to boot up normally. Q. Re-check your mainboard manual and all PSU connections to your mainboard to be sure that nothing is missing (e.g. 12V ATX 4-pin/6-pin connector). If you can provoke shutdowns with Prime95, then consider buying new hardware -- a stable system should run Prime95 for 24h without any errors. Prime95 mentions errors in the log when they occur and gives a summary after the stress test was stopped manually (e.g. "0 errors, 0 warnings", if all is fine) – speakr A. Re-checked, there are no more PSU connectors that I can physically connect, except the one ATX 4-pin (there are 2 that power the CPU) that I disconnected on purpose, I have reconnected it but the problem persists. Q. With one PC I had a short curcuit. The power button on the front plate had its cables soldered, but not isolated, and the contacts were very close to the metal case. A heavier touch was enough to cause a shutdown. The PC's vibration could be enough – ott-- A. yes, it seems to switch off with even the lightest touch, I switched on the PC, then pulled out the front panel power cable that connects to the motherboard so the power button does not work anymore, after 5 mins of working like that, with the power button completely disconnected, just sitting idle, the PC powered off again, I don't think it's the power button. Q. I wonder if you dare to operate components without the case, that is remove motherboard, power, disk ( just put the motherboard on a wooden desk). Don't bend the adapters when running like that. – ott-- A. yes, I do dare to do that, but only tomorrow, too tired/late right now.

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• External USB drive is failing

  - by dma_k

  I have an external USB 2.0 drive WD My Book Mirror Edition, running in RAID 1 (mirroring) mode. A while ago the hard drive started to fail: it stops responding (directories are not listed returning an error after a big timeout). Sometimes it works for weeks before a failure, sometimes – few hours. Small write operations (like removing few files or editing a small file) do not harm, but when copying large files to the drive over the network, or creating the archive locally, the kernel dumps. Also interesting to note that once kernel has failed, Linux does not want to reboot normally (reboot hangs); when Linux box is shutdown with power button, WD drive does not go to sleep mode (as it usually does): leds continue to run, pressing and holding the "shutdown" button on drive's back panel does not do anything; only unplugging the power cord helps. Here goes the boot log: Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 1.514106] ehci_hcd: USB 2.0 'Enhanced' Host Controller (EHCI) Driver Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 1.657738] ehci_hcd 0000:00:1d.7: PCI INT A -> GSI 23 (level, low) -> IRQ 23 Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 1.673747] ehci_hcd 0000:00:1d.7: setting latency timer to 64 Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 1.673751] ehci_hcd 0000:00:1d.7: EHCI Host Controller Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 1.725224] ehci_hcd 0000:00:1d.7: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 1 Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 1.741647] ehci_hcd 0000:00:1d.7: using broken periodic workaround Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 1.761790] ehci_hcd 0000:00:1d.7: cache line size of 32 is not supported Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 1.761873] ehci_hcd 0000:00:1d.7: irq 23, io mem 0xfdfff000 Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 1.796043] ehci_hcd 0000:00:1d.7: USB 2.0 started, EHCI 1.00 Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 1.879069] usb usb1: New USB device found, idVendor=1d6b, idProduct=0002 Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 1.895446] usb usb1: New USB device strings: Mfr=3, Product=2, SerialNumber=1 Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 1.911796] usb usb1: Product: EHCI Host Controller Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 1.928015] usb usb1: Manufacturer: Linux 2.6.32-5-686 ehci_hcd Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 1.944331] usb usb1: SerialNumber: 0000:00:1d.7 Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 1.961285] usb usb1: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 1.994412] hub 1-0:1.0: USB hub found Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 2.010864] hub 1-0:1.0: 8 ports detected Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 2.085939] uhci_hcd: USB Universal Host Controller Interface driver Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 2.191945] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.0: PCI INT A -> GSI 23 (level, low) -> IRQ 23 Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 2.226029] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.0: setting latency timer to 64 Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 2.226034] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.0: UHCI Host Controller Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 2.243237] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.0: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 2 Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 2.260390] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.0: irq 23, io base 0x0000fe00 Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 2.277517] usb usb2: New USB device found, idVendor=1d6b, idProduct=0001 Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 2.294815] usb usb2: New USB device strings: Mfr=3, Product=2, SerialNumber=1 Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 2.312173] usb usb2: Product: UHCI Host Controller Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 2.329534] usb usb2: Manufacturer: Linux 2.6.32-5-686 uhci_hcd Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 2.346828] usb usb2: SerialNumber: 0000:00:1d.0 Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 2.412989] usb usb2: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 2.430651] usb 1-2: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 2 Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 2.449046] hub 2-0:1.0: USB hub found Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 2.466514] hub 2-0:1.0: 2 ports detected Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 2.484639] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.1: PCI INT B -> GSI 19 (level, low) -> IRQ 19 Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 2.537750] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.1: setting latency timer to 64 Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 2.537756] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.1: UHCI Host Controller Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 2.555085] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.1: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 3 Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 2.572231] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.1: irq 19, io base 0x0000fd00 Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 2.589593] usb usb3: New USB device found, idVendor=1d6b, idProduct=0001 Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 2.606869] usb usb3: New USB device strings: Mfr=3, Product=2, SerialNumber=1 Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 2.624134] usb usb3: Product: UHCI Host Controller Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 2.641329] usb usb3: Manufacturer: Linux 2.6.32-5-686 uhci_hcd Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 2.658505] usb usb3: SerialNumber: 0000:00:1d.1 Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 2.675843] usb usb3: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 2.692864] hub 3-0:1.0: USB hub found Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 2.709651] hub 3-0:1.0: 2 ports detected Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 2.727378] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.2: PCI INT C -> GSI 18 (level, low) -> IRQ 18 Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 2.768252] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.2: setting latency timer to 64 Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 2.768258] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.2: UHCI Host Controller Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 2.806679] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.2: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 4 Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 2.824117] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.2: irq 18, io base 0x0000fc00 Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 2.841405] usb 1-2: New USB device found, idVendor=1058, idProduct=1104 Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 2.858448] usb 1-2: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3 Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 2.875347] usb 1-2: Product: My Book Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 2.892113] usb 1-2: Manufacturer: Western Digital Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 2.908915] usb 1-2: SerialNumber: 575532553130303530353538 Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 2.943242] usb usb4: New USB device found, idVendor=1d6b, idProduct=0001 Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 2.960405] usb usb4: New USB device strings: Mfr=3, Product=2, SerialNumber=1 Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 2.977615] usb usb4: Product: UHCI Host Controller Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 2.994687] usb usb4: Manufacturer: Linux 2.6.32-5-686 uhci_hcd Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 3.011711] usb usb4: SerialNumber: 0000:00:1d.2 Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 3.029589] usb usb4: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 3.082027] sd 2:0:0:0: [sda] Attached SCSI disk Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 3.103953] usb 1-2: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 3.122625] hub 4-0:1.0: USB hub found Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 3.140484] hub 4-0:1.0: 2 ports detected Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 3.161680] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.3: PCI INT D -> GSI 16 (level, low) -> IRQ 16 Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 3.181257] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.3: setting latency timer to 64 Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 3.181263] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.3: UHCI Host Controller Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 3.198614] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.3: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 5 Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 3.216012] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.3: irq 16, io base 0x0000fb00 Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 3.249877] Uniform CD-ROM driver Revision: 3.20 Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 3.267765] usb usb5: New USB device found, idVendor=1d6b, idProduct=0001 Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 3.284947] usb usb5: New USB device strings: Mfr=3, Product=2, SerialNumber=1 Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 3.302023] usb usb5: Product: UHCI Host Controller Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 3.319215] usb usb5: Manufacturer: Linux 2.6.32-5-686 uhci_hcd Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 3.336298] usb usb5: SerialNumber: 0000:00:1d.3 Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 3.368377] Initializing USB Mass Storage driver... Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 3.390652] usbcore: registered new interface driver hiddev Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 3.408109] scsi4 : SCSI emulation for USB Mass Storage devices Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 3.425281] sr 0:0:1:0: Attached scsi CD-ROM sr0 Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 3.438978] sr 0:0:1:0: Attached scsi generic sg0 type 5 Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 3.456328] usbcore: registered new interface driver usb-storage Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 3.474564] usb-storage: device found at 2 Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 3.474567] usb-storage: waiting for device to settle before scanning Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 3.475320] sd 2:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg1 type 0 Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 3.492587] USB Mass Storage support registered. Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 3.510930] usb usb5: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 3.531076] hub 5-0:1.0: USB hub found Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 3.548399] hub 5-0:1.0: 2 ports detected Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 3.591743] input: Western Digital My Book as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1d.7/usb1/1-2/1-2:1.1/input/input2 Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 3.609515] generic-usb 0003:1058:1104.0001: input,hidraw0: USB HID v1.11 Device [Western Digital My Book] on usb-0000:00:1d.7-2/input1 Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 3.627466] usbcore: registered new interface driver usbhid Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 8.581664] usb-storage: device scan complete Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 8.624270] scsi 4:0:0:0: Direct-Access WD My Book 1008 PQ: 0 ANSI: 4 Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 8.655135] scsi 4:0:0:1: Enclosure WD My Book Device 1008 PQ: 0 ANSI: 4 Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 8.675393] sd 4:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg2 type 0 Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 8.698669] scsi 4:0:0:1: Attached scsi generic sg3 type 13 Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 8.723370] sd 4:0:0:0: [sdb] 1953513472 512-byte logical blocks: (1.00 TB/931 GiB) Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 8.750477] sd 4:0:0:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 8.769411] sd 4:0:0:0: [sdb] Mode Sense: 10 00 00 00 Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 8.769414] sd 4:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 8.822971] sd 4:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 8.841978] sdb: sdb1 Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 8.905580] sd 4:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 8.924173] sd 4:0:0:0: [sdb] Attached SCSI disk Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 11.600492] XFS mounting filesystem sdb1 Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 12.222948] Ending clean XFS mount for filesystem: sdb1 After a while the following appears in a log: Aug 16 09:30:56 kernel: [32359.112029] usb 1-2: reset high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 2 Aug 16 09:31:59 kernel: [32422.112035] usb 1-2: reset high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 2 Aug 16 09:33:00 kernel: [32483.112029] usb 1-2: reset high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 2 And then it is followed by few kernel dumps, which I think, are not good: Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32520.428027] INFO: task xfssyncd:1002 blocked for more than 120 seconds. Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32520.462689] "echo 0 > /proc/sys/kernel/hung_task_timeout_secs" disables this message. Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32520.497422] xfssyncd D c3d84a60 0 1002 2 0x00000000 Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32520.532117] f6c9aa80 00000046 c1132742 c3d84a60 00000286 c1418100 c1418100 00000000 Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32520.566867] f6c9ac3c c2808100 00000000 f653b18b 00001d76 00000001 f6c9aa80 c3c3f0e0 Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32520.601343] 08e59242 f6c9ac3c 2e41392b 00000000 08e59242 00000000 c3f7fb48 0067385a Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32520.635533] Call Trace: Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32520.668991] [<c1132742>] ? cfq_set_request+0x0/0x290 Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32520.702804] [<c126b532>] ? io_schedule+0x5f/0x98 Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32520.736555] [<c1128be0>] ? get_request_wait+0xcb/0x146 Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32520.770360] [<c10437ba>] ? autoremove_wake_function+0x0/0x2d Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32520.804110] [<c112907c>] ? __make_request+0x2cc/0x3d9 Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32520.837713] [<c1128230>] ? blk_peek_request+0x135/0x143 Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32520.871265] [<f8582987>] ? scsi_dispatch_cmd+0x185/0x1e5 [scsi_mod] Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32520.904407] [<c1127cf1>] ? generic_make_request+0x266/0x2b4 Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32520.937007] [<c10cf821>] ? bvec_alloc_bs+0x95/0xaf Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32520.969033] [<c1127dfb>] ? submit_bio+0xbc/0xd6 Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32521.000485] [<c10cffd1>] ? bio_add_page+0x28/0x2e Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32521.031403] [<f8918d38>] ? _xfs_buf_ioapply+0x206/0x22b [xfs] Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32521.061888] [<f89197bd>] ? xfs_buf_iorequest+0x38/0x60 [xfs] Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32521.091845] [<f8907230>] ? xlog_bdstrat_cb+0x16/0x3d [xfs] Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32521.121222] [<f8905781>] ? XFS_bwrite+0x32/0x64 [xfs] Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32521.150007] [<f89059be>] ? xlog_sync+0x20b/0x311 [xfs] Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32521.178214] [<f89112fc>] ? xfs_trans_ail_tail+0x12/0x27 [xfs] Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32521.205914] [<f8906261>] ? xlog_state_sync_all+0xa2/0x141 [xfs] Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32521.233074] [<f8906611>] ? _xfs_log_force+0x51/0x68 [xfs] Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32521.259664] [<c103abaf>] ? process_timeout+0x0/0x5 Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32521.285662] [<f8906636>] ? xfs_log_force+0xe/0x27 [xfs] Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32521.311171] [<f89202df>] ? xfs_sync_worker+0x17/0x5c [xfs] Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32521.336117] [<f891fbb7>] ? xfssyncd+0x134/0x17d [xfs] Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32521.360498] [<f891fa83>] ? xfssyncd+0x0/0x17d [xfs] Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32521.384211] [<c1043588>] ? kthread+0x61/0x66 Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32521.407890] [<c1043527>] ? kthread+0x0/0x66 Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32521.430876] [<c1003d47>] ? kernel_thread_helper+0x7/0x10 Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32521.453394] INFO: task flush-8:16:12945 blocked for more than 120 seconds. Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32521.476116] "echo 0 > /proc/sys/kernel/hung_task_timeout_secs" disables this message. Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32521.498579] flush-8:16 D 00000000 0 12945 2 0x00000000 Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32521.520649] f4e4d540 00000046 e412e940 00000000 00000002 c1418100 c1418100 c14136ac Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32521.542426] f4e4d6fc c2808100 00000000 00000000 000008b4 00000001 f4e4d540 c3c3f0e0 Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32521.563745] 02e905a8 f4e4d6fc 007a5399 00000000 02e905a8 00000000 f4e2db48 00670b98 Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32521.585077] Call Trace: Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32521.605790] [<c126b532>] ? io_schedule+0x5f/0x98 Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32521.626184] [<c1128be0>] ? get_request_wait+0xcb/0x146 Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32521.646133] [<c10437ba>] ? autoremove_wake_function+0x0/0x2d Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32521.665659] [<c112907c>] ? __make_request+0x2cc/0x3d9 Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32521.684716] [<f891796e>] ? xfs_convert_page+0x30a/0x331 [xfs] Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32521.703366] [<c1127cf1>] ? generic_make_request+0x266/0x2b4 Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32521.721644] [<c10cf821>] ? bvec_alloc_bs+0x95/0xaf Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32521.739465] [<c1127dfb>] ? submit_bio+0xbc/0xd6 Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32521.756896] [<c10cfa45>] ? bio_alloc_bioset+0x7b/0xba Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32521.774046] [<f8917af0>] ? xfs_submit_ioend_bio+0x3b/0x44 [xfs] Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32521.790694] [<f8917ba3>] ? xfs_submit_ioend+0xaa/0xc4 [xfs] Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32521.806736] [<f891817d>] ? xfs_page_state_convert+0x5c0/0x61c [xfs] Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32521.822859] [<c113705b>] ? __lookup_tag+0x8e/0xee Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32521.838958] [<f891840d>] ? xfs_vm_writepage+0x91/0xc4 [xfs] Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32521.855039] [<c108bbcc>] ? __writepage+0x8/0x22 Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32521.871067] [<c108c17b>] ? write_cache_pages+0x1af/0x29f Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32521.886616] [<c108bbc4>] ? __writepage+0x0/0x22 Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32521.901593] [<c108c285>] ? generic_writepages+0x1a/0x21 Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32521.916455] [<f8918338>] ? xfs_vm_writepages+0x0/0x38 [xfs] Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32521.931484] [<c108c2a5>] ? do_writepages+0x19/0x25 Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32521.946648] [<c10c80d9>] ? writeback_single_inode+0xc7/0x273 Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32521.961675] [<c10c8c44>] ? writeback_inodes_wb+0x3dd/0x49c Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32521.976831] [<c10c8e18>] ? wb_writeback+0x115/0x178 Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32521.991778] [<c10c901f>] ? wb_do_writeback+0x121/0x131 Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32522.006538] [<c103abaf>] ? process_timeout+0x0/0x5 Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32522.021091] [<c10c9050>] ? bdi_writeback_task+0x21/0x89 Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32522.035493] [<c10979e5>] ? bdi_start_fn+0x59/0xa4 Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32522.049765] [<c109798c>] ? bdi_start_fn+0x0/0xa4 Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32522.063792] [<c1043588>] ? kthread+0x61/0x66 Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32522.077612] [<c1043527>] ? kthread+0x0/0x66 Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32522.091260] [<c1003d47>] ? kernel_thread_helper+0x7/0x10 Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32522.104966] INFO: task smartctl:13098 blocked for more than 120 seconds. Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32522.118883] "echo 0 > /proc/sys/kernel/hung_task_timeout_secs" disables this message. Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32522.133012] smartctl D 00000020 0 13098 13097 0x00000000 Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32522.147221] e50b9540 00000086 c11d28a8 00000020 00000770 c1418100 c1418100 c14136ac Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32522.161720] e50b96fc c2808100 00000000 e53e8800 00000000 00000020 c3cec000 c13886c0 Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32522.176217] f99dab68 e50b96fc 007a4f1e 00000001 c4082f24 c4082ed8 00000001 c3c3f0e0 Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32522.190737] Call Trace: Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32522.205038] [<c11d28a8>] ? __netdev_alloc_skb+0x14/0x2d Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32522.219605] [<c126b799>] ? schedule_timeout+0x20/0xb0 Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32522.234144] [<c112820d>] ? blk_peek_request+0x112/0x143 Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32522.248649] [<f85873b6>] ? scsi_request_fn+0x3c1/0x47a [scsi_mod] Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32522.263233] [<c103aba8>] ? del_timer+0x55/0x5c Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32522.277773] [<c126b6a2>] ? wait_for_common+0xa4/0x100 Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32522.292342] [<c102cd8d>] ? default_wake_function+0x0/0x8 Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32522.306958] [<c112b3d1>] ? blk_execute_rq+0x8b/0xb2 Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32522.321569] [<c112b2ac>] ? blk_end_sync_rq+0x0/0x23 Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32522.336070] [<c112b58b>] ? blk_recount_segments+0x13/0x20 Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32522.350583] [<c1127307>] ? blk_rq_bio_prep+0x44/0x74 Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32522.365059] [<c112b0b2>] ? blk_rq_map_kern+0xc5/0xee Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32522.379439] [<c112e2a5>] ? sg_scsi_ioctl+0x221/0x2aa Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32522.393801] [<c112e672>] ? scsi_cmd_ioctl+0x344/0x39a Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32522.408140] [<c1024c87>] ? update_curr+0x106/0x1b3 Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32522.422566] [<c1024c87>] ? update_curr+0x106/0x1b3 Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32522.436832] [<f87676aa>] ? sd_ioctl+0x90/0xb5 [sd_mod] Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32522.451228] [<c112c35f>] ? __blkdev_driver_ioctl+0x53/0x63 Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32522.465689] [<c112cbbf>] ? blkdev_ioctl+0x850/0x891 Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32522.479982] [<c1020474>] ? __wake_up_common+0x34/0x59 Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32522.494138] [<c10244cd>] ? complete+0x28/0x36 Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32522.507986] [<c1086c64>] ? find_get_page+0x1f/0x81 Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32522.521671] [<c10abed5>] ? add_partial+0xe/0x40 Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32522.535285] [<c1086e68>] ? lock_page+0x8/0x1d Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32522.548797] [<c1087432>] ? filemap_fault+0xb5/0x2e6 Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32522.562141] [<c109941c>] ? __do_fault+0x381/0x3b1 Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32522.575441] [<c10d0c30>] ? block_ioctl+0x27/0x2c Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32522.588708] [<c10d0c09>] ? block_ioctl+0x0/0x2c Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32522.601858] [<c10bcd78>] ? vfs_ioctl+0x1c/0x5f Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32522.614917] [<c10bd30c>] ? do_vfs_ioctl+0x4aa/0x4e5 Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32522.627961] [<c10350db>] ? __do_softirq+0x115/0x151 Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32522.640901] [<c126e270>] ? do_page_fault+0x2f1/0x307 Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32522.653803] [<c10bd388>] ? sys_ioctl+0x41/0x58 Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32522.666674] [<c10030fb>] ? sysenter_do_call+0x12/0x28 Then again few messages reset high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 2. I have browsed and read similar error reports here and there and I tried: I have upgraded the kernel from v2.6.26-2 to 2.6.32-5, which has not solved the problem. They say, this might a cable problem. I have tried to replace the USB-to-miniUSB cable (that connects external drive with computer) with another one. No changes. Somebody suggests to try another USB port. I have only 4 external USB ports, tried another one with no success. They say to try uhci_hcd. I have unmounted the device, unloaded ehci_hcd and mounted again. The difference was that now in log I get reset full speed USB device using uhci_hcd and address 2 and similar kernel dumps after a while. They say to echo 128 > /sys/block/sdb/device/max_sectors. I tried it with ehci_hcd with no success (note: I have issued this command after the drive was mounted but before using it actively). I have lauched smartmond and checking periodically the output of smartctl: drive temperature is OK, number of bad sectors and uncorrectable errors is 0. Nothing suspicious is reported by S.M.A.R.T. except maybe the following: Aug 16 12:40:12 kernel: [43715.314566] program smartctl is using a deprecated SCSI ioctl, please convert it to SG_IO Aug 16 12:40:13 kernel: [43715.705622] program smartctl is using a deprecated SCSI ioctl, please convert it to SG_IO Of course, I have not tried all combinations of above. But unfortunately, I am run out of cardinal ideas. If anybody can advice something specific about the problem, you are very welcome.

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• Why are pieces of my HTML showing up on the page and breaking it? Is it PHP related?

  - by Jason Rhodes

  I've been building a site in PHP, HTML, CSS, and using a healthy dose of jQuery javascript. The site looks absolutely fine on my Mac browsers, but for some reason, when my client uses PC Safari, she's seeing strange bits of my HTML show up on the page. Here are some (small) screenshot examples: Figure 1: This one is just a closing </li> tag that should've been on the Media li element. Not much harm done, but strange. Figure 2: Here this was part of <div class='submenu'> and since the div tag didn't render properly, the entire contents of that div don't get styled correctly by CSS. Figure 3: This last example shows what should have been <a class='top current' href=... but for some reason half of the HTML tag stops being rendered and just gets printed out. So the rest of that list menu is completely broken. Here's the code from the header.php file itself. The main navigation section (seen in the screenshots) is further down, marked by a line of asterisks if you want to skip there. <?php // Setting up location variables if(isset($_GET['page'])) { $page = Page::find_by_slug($_GET['page']); } elseif(isset($_GET['post'])) { $page = Page::find_by_id(4); } else { $page = Page::find_by_id(1); } $post = isset($_GET['post']) ? Blogpost::find_by_slug($_GET['post']) : false; $front = $page->id == 1 ? true : false; $buildblog = $page->id == 4 ? true : false; $eventpage = $page->id == 42 ? true : false; // Setting up content edit variables $edit = isset($_GET['edit']) ? true : false; $preview = isset($_GET['preview']) ? true : false; // Finding page slug value $pageslug = $page->get_slug($loggedIn); ?> <!DOCTYPE html> <head> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" /> <title> <?php if(!$post) { if($page->id != 1) { echo $page->title." | "; } echo $database->site_name(); } elseif($post) { echo "BuildBlog | ".$post->title; } ?> </title> <link href="<?php echo SITE_URL; ?>/styles/style.css" media="all" rel="stylesheet" /> <?php include(SITE_ROOT."/scripts/myJS.php"); ?> </head> <body class=" <?php if($loggedIn) { echo "logged"; } else { echo "public"; } if($front) { echo " front"; } ?>"> <?php $previewslug = str_replace("&edit", "", $pageslug); ?> <?php if($edit) { echo "<form id='editPageForm' action='?page={$previewslug}&preview' method='post'>"; } ?> <?php if($edit && !$preview) : // Edit original ?> <div id="admin_meta_nav" class="admin_meta_nav"> <ul class="center nolist"> <li class="title">Edit</li> <li class="cancel"><a class="cancel" href="?page=<?php echo $pageslug; ?>&cancel">Cancel</a></li> <li class="save"><input style='position: relative; z-index: 500' class='save' type="submit" name="newpreview" value="Preview" /></li> <li class="publish"><input style='position: relative; z-index: 500' class='publish button' type="submit" name="publishPreview" value="Publish" /></li> </ul> </div> <?php elseif($preview && !$edit) : // Preview your edits ?> <div id="admin_meta_nav" class="admin_meta_nav"> <ul class="center nolist"> <li class="title">Preview</li> <li class="cancel"><a class="cancel" href="?page=<?php echo $pageslug; ?>&cancel">Cancel</a></li> <li class="save"><a class="newpreview" href="?page=<?php echo $pageslug; ?>&preview&edit">Continue Editing</a></li> <li class="publish"><a class="publish" href="?page=<?php echo $pageslug; ?>&publishLastPreview">Publish</a></li> </ul> </div> <?php elseif($preview && $edit) : // Return to preview and continue editing ?> <div id="admin_meta_nav" class="admin_meta_nav"> <ul class="center nolist"> <li class="title">Edit Again</li> <li class="cancel"><a class="cancel" href="?page=<?php echo $pageslug; ?>&cancel">Cancel</a></li> <li class="save"><input style='position: relative; z-index: 500' class='save button' type="submit" name="newpreview" value="Preview" /></li> <li class="publish"><input style='position: relative; z-index: 500' class='publish button' type="submit" name="publishPreview" value="Publish" /></li> </ul> </div> <?php else : ?> <div id="meta_nav" class="meta_nav"> <ul class="center nolist"> <li><a href="login.php?logout">Logout</a></li> <li><a href="<?php echo SITE_URL; ?>/admin">Admin</a></li> <li><a href="<?php if($front) { echo "admin/?admin=frontpage"; } elseif($event || $eventpage) { echo "admin/?admin=events"; } elseif($buildblog) { if($post) { echo "admin/editpost.php?post={$post->id}"; } else { echo "admin/?admin=blog"; } } else { echo "?page=".$pageslug."&edit"; } ?>">Edit Mode</a></li> <li><a href="<?php echo SITE_URL; ?>/?page=donate">Donate</a></li> <li><a href="<?php echo SITE_URL; ?>/?page=calendar">Calendar</a></li> </ul> <div class="clear"></div> </div> <?php endif; ?> <div id="public_meta_nav" class="public_meta_nav"> <div class="center"> <ul class="nolist"> <li><a href="<?php echo SITE_URL; ?>/?page=donate">Donate</a></li> <li><a href="<?php echo SITE_URL; ?>/?page=calendar">Calendar</a></li> </ul> <div class="clear"></div> </div> </div> * Main Navigation Section, as seen in screenshots above, starts here ** <div class="header"> <div class="center"> <a class="front_logo" href="<?php echo SITE_URL; ?>"><?php echo $database->site_name(); ?></a> <ul class="nolist main_nav"> <?php $tops = Page::get_top_pages(); $topcount = 1; foreach($tops as $top) { $current = $top->id == $topID ? true : false; $title = $top->title == "Front Page" ? "Home" : ucwords($top->title); $url = ($top->title == "Front Page" || !$top->get_slug($loggedIn)) ? SITE_URL : SITE_URL . "/?page=".$top->get_slug($loggedIn); if(isset($_GET['post']) && $top->id == 1) { $current = false; } if(isset($_GET['post']) && $top->id == 4) { $current = true; } echo "<li"; if($topcount > 3) { echo " class='right'"; } echo "><a class='top"; if($current) { echo " current"; } echo "' href='{$url}'>{$title}</a>"; if($children = Page::get_children($top->id)) { echo "<div class='submenu'>"; echo "<div class='corner-helper'></div>"; foreach($children as $child) { echo "<ul class='nolist level1"; if(!$subchildren = Page::get_children($child->id)) { echo " nochildren"; } echo "'>"; $title = ucwords($child->title); $url = !$child->get_slug($loggedIn) ? SITE_URL : SITE_URL . "/?page=".$child->get_slug($loggedIn); if($child->has_published() || $loggedIn) { echo "<li><a class='title' href='{$url}'>{$title}</a>"; if($subchildren = Page::get_children($child->id)) { echo "<ul class='nolist level2'>"; foreach($subchildren as $subchild) { if($subchild->has_published() || $loggedIn) { $title = ucwords($subchild->title); $url = !$subchild->get_slug($loggedIn) ? SITE_URL : SITE_URL . "/?page=".$subchild->get_slug($loggedIn); echo "<li><a href='{$url}'>{$title}</a>"; } } echo "</ul>"; } echo "</li>"; } echo "</ul>"; } echo "</div>"; } echo "</li>"; $topcount++; } ?> </ul> <div class="clear"></div> </div> </div> <div id="mediaLibraryPopup" class="mediaLibraryPopup"> <h3>Media Library</h3> <ul class="box nolist"></ul> <div class="clear"></div> <a href="#" class="cancel">Cancel</a> </div> <div class="main_content"> Does anyone have any idea why the PC Safari browser would be breaking things up like this? I'm assuming it's PHP related but I cannot figure out why it would do that.

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