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  • DLL configuration file in asp.net site

    - by Tominator
    Hi, I've made a .net 2.0 librabry project, that results in a dll. I've made an app.config file in my project, with settings used in the dll, with the intention that they can be changed later. I'm attempting to use the dll in an asp.net web application now, so I made the reference to my other project's output, and I see that the dll is copied over to the site's bin folder, and everything works. However, the configuration file is not copied. When I manually copy the app.config and rename it to myDll.config, it has no influence. The contents of the config file is approximately this: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?> <configuration> <configSections> <sectionGroup name="applicationSettings" type="System.Configuration.ApplicationSettingsGroup, System, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089" > <section name="myDLL.My.MySettings" type="System.Configuration.ClientSettingsSection, System, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089" requirePermission="false" /> </sectionGroup> </configSections> <applicationSettings> <myDLL.My.MySettings> <setting name="myDLL_webservice_Service" serializeAs="String"> <value>https://myhost/Service.asmx</value> </setting> <setting name="ID" serializeAs="String"> <value>6</value> </setting> </myDLL.My.MySettings> </applicationSettings> </configuration> And I use its settings in the dll with this (vb.net code): Private _id As Long = My.Settings.ID How can I put my config information somewhere so it can be used? In the web.config of the site application? That has only the appSettings section, and it uses the syntax. It doesn't appear to work though. In a custom file format that I create and use? Not that pretty..

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  • Executing Multiple Lines in Python

    - by metashockwave
    When Python is first installed, the default setting executes users' code input line-by-line. But sometimes I need to write programs that executes multiple lines at once. Is there a setting in Python where I can change the code execution to one block at once? Thanks if (n/2) * 2 == n:; print 'Even'; else: print 'Odd' SyntaxError: invalid syntax When I tried to run the above code, I got an invalid syntax error on ELSE

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  • A way to correct background scaling in iPad's Safari?

    - by favo
    Hi, I have a website using a huge background image (2000x1500) in a div container (100% x 100%). When I open that site on Safari on an iPad it gets scaled down (~40%) in a different proportion than the content (~80%). I moved the background to an img-tag in a div with 100% width and 100% height and an overflow setting "hidden". Exactly the same happens. Is there a CSS Setting that can help Safari to scale down background images in the same proportion as the content?

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  • How to access CRM 4.0 settings programmatically?

    - by Shaamaan
    Some of the plugins I wrote (re)calculate various prices, and I used Math.Round to keep results accurate with the default 2 digit setting in CRM. But I figured... what if a user decides to set his CRM to use a different precision? So, I need to access the CRM settings programmatically, so that my functions can work with whatever setting the user chooses. How would I go about accessing the General (and, possibly, other) CRM settings from my code?

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  • Django @ Google App Engine - Site Map Framework

    - by dkp
    Hi Folks, has anybody managed to get Djangos site map framework to run on Google App Engine? I receive the following exception: ImproperlyConfigured at /sitemap.xml You haven't set the DATABASE_ENGINE setting yet. Request Method: GET Request URL: http://127.0.0.1:8080/sitemap.xml Exception Type: ImproperlyConfigured Exception Value: You haven't set the DATABASE_ENGINE setting yet. Exception Location: D:\Program Files\Google\google_appengine\lib\django\django\db\backends\dummy\base.py in complain, line 13

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  • design decision between array or object save in database

    - by justjoe
    i code some configuration setting. And need those values to be load, everytime my webapp start. yes, it's somekind autoload setting. But, right now, i have to choose between save it as object or array. is there any different between them when we save them in database ? which one is faster or maintainable or other pro and cons thanks

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  • FDT 3 Enterprise, can't add breakpoints.

    - by pixelbreaker
    I've been using FDT for a long long time, on my new machine, with the Enterprise edition, I cannot add breakpoints on the editors gutter, and the debugger doesn't show any variables when testing with the external player. Any ideas on how to fix, is it some obscure Eclipse setting, or and FDT setting?

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  • How can I get Eclipse to insert tabs instead of spaces for Java content assist?

    - by Simon Nickerson
    Is there any way to persuade Eclipse to use tabs instead of spaces for indenting its built-in Java content assist proposals (such as when creating an empty method which overrides a method in the parent class)? The only setting I could find that looked relevant is in Windows/Preferences/General/Editors/Text Editors/Insert spaces for tabs, and this setting is unchecked. At the moment I have to remember to select them and re-format with <Ctrl>+<Shift>+<F>.

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  • editText not centering

    - by Will Nasby
    I have a large editText that no matter what I try, won't center. I have tried putting it in a horizontal and vertical linear layout and then setting that gravity to center because setting the imageText's gravity to center, it still hugs the left of my activity. <EditText android:id="@+id/editText1" android:layout_width="250dp" android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:ems="10" android:gravity="center" android:lines="8" android:maxLines="8" android:minLines="8" > </EditText> And here is what it is doing:

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  • What exactly does Panel.IsItemsHost do?

    - by Armentage
    I cannot find any good documentation for the Panel.IstItemsHost attached property. I see plenty of examples of people setting it on the ItemsContainer template for an ItemsControl, but the un-documentation over at MSDN does not explain why or what advantages setting property confers. I have build plenty of containers that do NOT set this property, but have not yet noticed any ill effects.

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  • Rails cookies not working right

    - by Michael Waxman
    Rails is setting and returning a remember_token cookie like this: = cookies[:remember_token] = value6c69b17681d2bf316f8eexpiresThu Jun 10 14:55:00 -0400 2010 In other words, when I'm calling the cookie I don't just get the value. Why is this? I am setting the cookie as follows: cookies[:remember_token] = { :value => @user.remember_me, :expires => 1.year.from_now} What's going on here?

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  • Cisco Prime NCS not starting

    - by Kwazii
    I have received the Cisco Prime OVA file and which we placed onto an Oracle virtual environment. We turn the VM on and the CLI boots, When we try to start the NCS service we get errors. HOSTNAME/USER# ncs start Starting Network Control System... Exception in thread "main" java.lang.NullPointerException at com.cisco.wnbu.udi.impl.UDIManager.isPhysicalAppliance(UDIManager.java:184) at com.cisco.packaging.WCSAdmin.start(WCSAdmin.java:335) at com.cisco.packaging.WCSAdmin.runMain(WCSAdmin.java:281) at com.cisco.packaging.WCSAdmin.main(WCSAdmin.java:901) Logs HOSTNAME/USER# show logging 07/18/13 10:25:38.878 INFO [system] [main] Setting management interface address to 192.168.0.10 07/18/13 10:25:38.884 INFO [system] [main] Setting peer server interface address to 192.168.0.10 07/18/13 10:25:38.884 INFO [system] [main] Setting client interface address to 192.168.0.10 07/18/13 10:25:38.884 INFO [system] [main] Setting local host name to HOSTNAME 07/18/13 10:25:40.341 ERROR [system] [main] THROW java.sql.SQLRecoverableException: IO Error: The Network Adapter could not establish the connection at oracle.jdbc.driver.T4CConnection.logon(T4CConnection.java:419) at oracle.jdbc.driver.PhysicalConnection.<init>(PhysicalConnection.java:536) at oracle.jdbc.driver.T4CConnection.<init>(T4CConnection.java:228) at oracle.jdbc.driver.T4CDriverExtension.getConnection(T4CDriverExtension.java:32) at oracle.jdbc.driver.OracleDriver.connect(OracleDriver.java:521) at java.sql.DriverManager.getConnection(Unknown Source) at java.sql.DriverManager.getConnection(Unknown Source) at com.cisco.server.persistence.util.OracleSchemaUtil.openConnection(OracleSchemaUtil.java:277) at com.cisco.server.persistence.util.OracleSchemaUtil.dbServerUp(OracleSchemaUtil.java:836) at com.cisco.packaging.DBAdmin.dbServerUp(DBAdmin.java:1429) at com.cisco.packaging.WCSAdmin.status(WCSAdmin.java:833) at com.cisco.packaging.WCSAdmin.status(WCSAdmin.java:757) at com.cisco.packaging.WCSAdmin.wcsServerUp(WCSAdmin.java:637) at com.cisco.packaging.WCSAdmin.start(WCSAdmin.java:294) at com.cisco.packaging.WCSAdmin.runMain(WCSAdmin.java:281) at com.cisco.packaging.WCSAdmin.main(WCSAdmin.java:901) Caused by: oracle.net.ns.NetException: The Network Adapter could not establish the connection at oracle.net.nt.ConnStrategy.execute(ConnStrategy.java:375) at oracle.net.resolver.AddrResolution.resolveAndExecute(AddrResolution.java:422) at oracle.net.ns.NSProtocol.establishConnection(NSProtocol.java:678) at oracle.net.ns.NSProtocol.connect(NSProtocol.java:238) at oracle.jdbc.driver.T4CConnection.connect(T4CConnection.java:1054) at oracle.jdbc.driver.T4CConnection.logon(T4CConnection.java:308) ... 15 more Caused by: java.net.ConnectException: Connection refused at java.net.PlainSocketImpl.socketConnect(Native Method) at java.net.PlainSocketImpl.doConnect(Unknown Source) at java.net.PlainSocketImpl.connectToAddress(Unknown Source) at java.net.PlainSocketImpl.connect(Unknown Source) at java.net.SocksSocketImpl.connect(Unknown Source) at java.net.Socket.connect(Unknown Source) at oracle.net.nt.TcpNTAdapter.connect(TcpNTAdapter.java:209) at oracle.net.nt.ConnOption.connect(ConnOption.java:123) at oracle.net.nt.ConnStrategy.execute(ConnStrategy.java:353) ... 20 more 07/18/13 10:25:40.347 INFO [admin] [main] 07/18/13 10:25:40.347 INFO [admin] [main] Starting Network Control System... 07/18/13 10:25:40.347 INFO [admin] [main] 07/18/13 10:25:40.394 ERROR [admin] [main] Problem using CARS API: com.cisco.cars.fnd.CARSException: CARS_FAILURE : -999 : Failed to get UDI configuration. : Failure occurred during request at com.cisco.cars.fnd.CARSException.analyzeReturnCode(CARSException.java:118) at com.cisco.cars.serviceEngine.impl.EngineAdminServiceImpl.getUDI(EngineAdminServiceImpl.java:66) at com.cisco.wnbu.udi.impl.UDIManager.generateUDI(UDIManager.java:69) at com.cisco.wnbu.udi.impl.UDIManager.setPersistenceDirectory(UDIManager.java:139) at com.cisco.packaging.WCSAdmin.start(WCSAdmin.java:332) at com.cisco.packaging.WCSAdmin.runMain(WCSAdmin.java:281) at com.cisco.packaging.WCSAdmin.main(WCSAdmin.java:901) 07/18/13 10:25:40.396 ERROR [admin] [main] Problem using CARS API: com.cisco.cars.fnd.CARSException: CARS_FAILURE : -999 : Failed to get UDI configuration. : Failure occurred during request at com.cisco.cars.fnd.CARSException.analyzeReturnCode(CARSException.java:118) at com.cisco.cars.serviceEngine.impl.EngineAdminServiceImpl.getUDI(EngineAdminServiceImpl.java:66) at com.cisco.wnbu.udi.impl.UDIManager.generateUDI(UDIManager.java:69) at com.cisco.wnbu.udi.impl.UDIManager.setVirtualPID(UDIManager.java:169) at com.cisco.packaging.WCSAdmin.start(WCSAdmin.java:333) at com.cisco.packaging.WCSAdmin.runMain(WCSAdmin.java:281) at com.cisco.packaging.WCSAdmin.main(WCSAdmin.java:901) 07/18/13 10:25:40.397 ERROR [admin] [main] Problem using CARS API: com.cisco.cars.fnd.CARSException: CARS_FAILURE : -999 : Failed to get UDI configuration. : Failure occurred during request at com.cisco.cars.fnd.CARSException.analyzeReturnCode(CARSException.java:118) at com.cisco.cars.serviceEngine.impl.EngineAdminServiceImpl.getUDI(EngineAdminServiceImpl.java:66) at com.cisco.wnbu.udi.impl.UDIManager.generateUDI(UDIManager.java:69) at com.cisco.wnbu.udi.impl.UDIManager.setPhysicalPID(UDIManager.java:154) at com.cisco.packaging.WCSAdmin.start(WCSAdmin.java:334) at com.cisco.packaging.WCSAdmin.runMain(WCSAdmin.java:281) at com.cisco.packaging.WCSAdmin.main(WCSAdmin.java:901) 07/18/13 10:25:40.397 ERROR [admin] [main] Problem using CARS API: com.cisco.cars.fnd.CARSException: CARS_FAILURE : -999 : Failed to get UDI configuration. : Failure occurred during request at com.cisco.cars.fnd.CARSException.analyzeReturnCode(CARSException.java:118) at com.cisco.cars.serviceEngine.impl.EngineAdminServiceImpl.getUDI(EngineAdminServiceImpl.java:66) at com.cisco.wnbu.udi.impl.UDIManager.generateUDI(UDIManager.java:69) at com.cisco.wnbu.udi.impl.UDIManager.getUDI(UDIManager.java:112) at com.cisco.wnbu.udi.impl.UDIManager.isPhysicalAppliance(UDIManager.java:184) at com.cisco.packaging.WCSAdmin.start(WCSAdmin.java:335) at com.cisco.packaging.WCSAdmin.runMain(WCSAdmin.java:281) at com.cisco.packaging.WCSAdmin.main(WCSAdmin.java:901) Any help is appreciated, Thanks

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  • Install Control Center Agent on Oracle Application Server

    - by qianqian.wu
    Control Center Agent (CCA) The Control Center Agent is the OWB component that runs the Template Mappings in the Oracle Containers for J2EE (OC4J) server; also referred to as the J2EE Runtime. The Control Center Agent provides a Java-based runtime environment that can be installed on Oracle and non-Oracle database hosts. The Control Center Agent provides fundamental infrastructure for the heterogeneous, Code Template-based mapping support and Web services-related features of OWB in this release. In Oracle Warehouse Builder 11gR2 the Control Center Agent, by default will run in the built-in OC4J that is bundled in the Oracle Home. Besides that, you also have ability to install the Control Center Agent in an Oracle Application Server install. In this article, you will find step-by-step instructions how to install the Control Center Agent on an Oracle Application Server instance. The instructions cover the following tasks: Task 1: Install and Configure the Application Server Task 2: Deploy the Control Center Agent to the Application Server Task 3: Optional Configuration Tasks   Task 1: Install and Configure the Application Server Before configuring the Application Server, you need to install it from Oracle Application Server CD-ROM, or by downloading the installation program from Oracle Technology Network (OTN). Once the installation is completed, you are ready to configure the Application Server. The purpose of the configuration task is to make sure the Control Center Agent ear file can be deployed and runs in the Application Server successfully. The essential configuration tasks are outlined below: · Modify the OC4J Startup Script · Set up Control Center Agent Server Side Logging · Set up Audit Table Data Source · Copy ct_permissions.properties File · Set up Security Roles for Control Center Agent · Create JMS Queues · Install JDBC Drivers to OC4J Modify the OC4J Startup Script The OC4J startup script “opmn.xml” is located in Application Server configuration directory, $AS_HOME/opmn/conf. $AS_HOME stands for the root home directory of the application server. Open the file opmn.xml in a text editor, and alter the contents of the file as displayed in the following sample. You need to make sure that: The MaxPerSize is set to 128M. This is to ensure that you allocate enough PermGen space to OC4J to run Control Center Agent. This will prevent java.lang.OutOfMemoryError when running the agent. The Python.path sets the path for the Python library files used by the Control Center Agent: jython_lib.zip and jython_owblib.jar. These two files are in the $OWB_HOME/owb/lib/int directory, where $OWB_HOME is the directory where owb is installed. · The km_security_needed determines whether restrictions will be applied to the kinds of operating system commands allowed to be executed by the OWB Code Template script executed by Control Center Agent. Setting km_security_needed to “true” enforces such restriction while setting it to “false” removes such restrictions. Set up Control Center Agent Server Side Logging Ensure that you are in the Application Server configuration directory, $AS_HOME/j2ee/home/config. Open the file j2ee-logging.xml in a text editor and add the following lines to the log handler section. The jrt-internal-log-handler is the handler used by Control Center Agent runtime logger to create log files. Then add the following entry into the loggers section to create the logger for Control Center Agent runtime auditing. Set up Audit Table Data Source To enable Audit Table logging, a managed data source and connection pool need to be set up before Control Center Agent deployment. Ensure that you are in the Application Server configuration directory, $AS_HOME/j2ee/home/config. Open the file data-sources.xml in a text editor. Define the audit data source shown below in the file, <managed-data-source name="AuditDS" connection-pool-name="OWBSYS Audit   Connection Pool" jndi-name="jdbc/AuditDS"/> <connection-pool name="OWBSYS Audit Connection Pool">   <connection-factory factory-class="oracle.jdbc.pool.OracleDataSource"     user="owbsys_audit" password="owbsys_audit"     url="jdbc:oracle:thin:@//localhost:1521/ORCL"/> </connection-pool> Copy ct_permissions.properties File The ct_permissions.properties can be obtained from $OWB_HOME /owb/jrt/config/ directory. You need to copy the file to $AS_HOME/j2ee/home/config directory.This properties file takes effect when the setting km-security is set to true in Control Center Agent. By default the ALLOWED_CMD is commented out in ct_permissions.properties file. This prevents all system command from being invoked from scripts executed in Control Center Agent (when km-security is set to true). To allow certain system commands to be invoked, ALLOWED_CMD needs to be uncommented out, and the system commands (allowed to be invoked) need to be added to the ALLOWED_CMD. Set up Security Roles for Control Center Agent You can set up the Control Center Agent security roles through Oracle Enterprise Manager. In a web browser, navigate to Enterprise Manager Homepage (e.g. http://hostname:8889/em). 1. Log in using the oc4jadmin credentials. After the Cluster Topology page is loaded, click home (the OC4J instance). This takes you to the home page of the OC4J instance. On the OC4J home screen, click the Administration tab. On the Administration Tasks screen, expand Security. Click the task icon next to Security Providers. 2. On Security Providers page click on the button “Instance Level Security”. On Instance Level Security page, go to “Realms” tab. You will see a row for the default realm “jazn.com” in the results table. It has a “Roles” column and a “Users” column. Click on the number in “Roles” column. In the “Roles” page it will display all the roles available for the realm. Click on “Create” button to create a new role “OWB_J2EE_ EXECUTOR”. 3. On the Add Role screen, enter Name OWB_J2EE_EXECUTOR, and click OK. 4. Follow the same steps as before, and create a new role “OWB_J2EE_OPERATOR”. 5. Assign role “oc4j-administrators” and “OWB_J2EE_EXECUTOR” to the role “OWB_J2EE_OPERATOR” by moving these roles from “Available Roles” and click “OK” to save. 6. Go back to Instance Level Security page and create a new role “OWB_J2EE_ADMINISTRATOR”. 7. Assign roles “OWB_J2EE_ OPERATOR” and “OWB_J2EE_EXECUTOR” to the role “OWB_J2EE_ ADMINISTRATOR” by moving these roles from “Available Roles” and click “OK” to save. 8.Go back to Instance Level Security page. This time, click on the number in “Users” column for the realm “jazn.com”. In the “Users” page, it shows all the users defined for this realm. Locate the user “oc4jadmin” in the results table and click on it. 9. Assign the roles “OWB_J2EE_ADMINISTRATOR” and “oc4j-app-administrators” to this user by moving the role from the “Available Roles” selection box to “Selected Roles” box and click “Apply” to save. 10. Go back to Instance Level Security page and create a new role “OWB_INTERNAL_USERS”, assign no user or role to this role. Simply click “OK” to create this role. Now you have finished creating the security roles required for Control Center Agent. Create JMS Queues You need to create two JMS queues for Control Center Agent: owbQueue and abort_owbQueue. 1. Now go to OC4J home Page. On the OC4J home screen, click the Administration tab. On the Administration Tasks screen, expand Services and then expand Enterprise Messaging Service. Click the task icon next to JMS Destinations. 2. On JMS Destinations page, click “Create New” button to create a new JMS queue. On Add Destination page, choose “Queue” as Destination Type. Put “owbQueue” as Destination Name. Select “In Memory Persistence Only” as the Persistence Type and put “jms/owbQueue” as JNDI Location and click on “OK” to finish. 3. Follow the same instruction as above to create the owb_abortQueue. Now you have finished creating the JMS queues required for Control Center Agent. Install JDBC Drivers to OC4J In order to execute Code Templates using commercial databases other than Oracle, e.g. DB2, SQL Server etc, the corresponding jdbc driver files need to be added to $AS_HOME/j2ee/home/applib directory. 1. To install other JDBC drivers to OC4J, first obtain the .jar file containing the JDBC driver. All the external JDBC drivers .jar files can be found in the directory: $OWB_HOME/owb/lib/ext/. For DB2, the files needed are db2jcc.jar and db2jcc_license_cu.jar. For SQL Server the file is sqljdbc.jar. For sunopsis JDBC drivers, the file needed is snpsxmlo.jar. 2. Copy the required JDBC driver file into the directory $AS_HOME/j2ee/home/applib. Now you have finished the Application Server configuration. To make the configuration to take an effect, you need to restart the Application Server.   Task 2: Deploy the Control Center Agent to the Application Server Now you can deploy the Control Center Agent to the Application Server. In a web browser, navigate to Enterprise Manager Homepage (e.g. http://hostname:8889/em). 1. Log in using the oc4jadmin credentials. After the Cluster Topology page is loaded, click home (the OC4J instance). This takes you to the home page of the OC4J instance. On the OC4J home screen, click the Applications tab. Click Deploy to begin deploying Control Center Agent. 2. On the Deploy: Select Archive screen, under Archive, select Archive is present on local host. Upload the archive to the server where Application Server Control is running. Click Browse and locate the jrt.ear file in the $OWB_HOME/owb/jrt/applications directory. Under Deployment Plan, select Automatically create a new deployment plan. Click Next. 3. Wait for the ear file to be uploaded to Application Server. On the Deploy: Application Attributes screen, enter Application Name jrt, and Context Root jrt. Leave the other attributes at their default values. Click Next. 4. On Deploy: Deployment Settings screen, leave all attributes at their default values, and click Deploy. This will take about 1 minute or so and when the application is deployed successfully, a confirmation message will be displayed. Now the Control Center Agent is started automatically. Go back to OC4J home page and click on Applications tab to make sure the deployed application jrt is showing in the applications list.   Task 3: Optional Configuration Tasks The optional configuration tasks contain: · Secure Control Center Agent Web Service · Setting the PATH Environment Variable Secure Control Center Agent Web Service If you want to use JRTWebService with a secure website, you need to do the following steps, 1. Create a file “secure-web-site.xml” in the $AS_HOME/j2ee/home/config directory. The file can be obtained from $OWB_HOME/owb/jrt/config directory. A sample secure-web-site.xml is shown as below. We need to modify the “protocol” to “https”, and “secure” to “true”, also choose an port as the secure http port. Also we need to add the entry “ssl-config” in the file. Remember to use the absolute path for the key store file. 2. Modify the file “server.xml” that is located at $AS_HOME/j2ee/home/config directory. Then add the <web-site> element in the file for the secure-web-site. 3. Create a key store file “serverkeystore.jks” in the $AS_HOME/j2ee/home/config directory. The file can be obtained from $OWB_HOME/owb/jrt/config directory. After the three files are altered, restart the application server. Now you can access the JRTWebService in SSL way through https://hostname:4443/jrt/webservice. Setting the PATH Environment Variable Sometimes, some system commands such as linux ls, sh etc, can not be executed successfully during the script execution due to they are not found in PATH. To ensure they work normally, you can setup the environment variable PATH. Let’s navigate to the Enterprise Manager Homepage. 1. Go to OC4J home screen and click the Administration tab. Expand Administration Tasks, then expand Properties. Click the task icon next to Server Properties. 2. On the Server Properties screen, scroll down to Environment Variables section. Under Environment Variables, click Add Another Row. Enter PATH in Name, and fill Value with directories that contain the system commands. Click Apply.   After you work through this article, I believe you have developed a deeper understanding of the Control Center Agent installation process, and you can apply this knowledge in other installation plan such as Control Center Agent installation on Standalone OC4J.

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  • Wifi not working after a few minutes

    - by drtanz
    I'm using a few MacBooks and iPads connected to a router via WiFi. The problem is that a few minutes after they connect via WiFi the connection stops working. This happens on all devices. I went into the router settings by connecting via cable and everything seems in order. Connecting a laptop via cable to the router I can use internet as normal, the problem is only with WiFi. What can be the problem here? Here are the connected clients Connected Clients MAC Address Idle(s) RSSI(dBm) IP Addr Host Name Mode Speed (kbps) 14:10:9F:F3:48:D6 1 -36 192.168.0.5 Jeans-Air n 78000 14:99:E2:C6:41:10 1 -36 192.168.0.8 JeanGaleasiPad n 24000 Here's the router event log Mon Dec 30 04:12:30 2013 Notice (6) WiFi Interface [wl0] set to Channel 1 (Side-Band Channel:N/A)... Mon Dec 30 04:12:25 2013 Notice (6) WiFi Interface [wl0] set to Channel 1 (Side-Band Channel:5) -... Mon Dec 30 02:17:56 2013 Notice (6) WiFi Interface [wl0] set to Channel 40 (Side-Band Channel:36)... Mon Dec 30 02:16:04 2013 Notice (6) WiFi Interface [wl0] set to Channel 11 (Side-Band Channel:7) ... Mon Dec 30 01:59:26 2013 Notice (6) WiFi Interface [wl0] set to Channel 6 (Side-Band Channel:N/A)... Mon Dec 30 01:59:22 2013 Notice (6) WiFi Interface [wl0] set to Channel 6 (Side-Band Channel:2) -... Sun Dec 29 23:27:51 2013 Notice (6) WiFi Interface [wl0] set to Channel 1 (Side-Band Channel:N/A)... Sun Dec 29 23:27:49 2013 Notice (6) WiFi Interface [wl0] set to Channel 11 (Side-Band Channel:N/A... Sun Dec 29 14:32:55 2013 Critical (3) Started Unicast Maintenance Ranging - No Response received - ... Sat Dec 28 13:08:19 2013 Error (4) DHCP REBIND WARNING - Field invalid in response ;CM-MAC=1c:3e... Fri Dec 27 18:10:19 2013 Critical (3) Started Unicast Maintenance Ranging - No Response received - ... Fri Dec 27 16:08:55 2013 Error (4) Map Request Retry Timeout;CM-MAC=1c:3e:84:f1:6b:84;CMTS-MAC=0... Thu Dec 26 21:08:53 2013 Notice (6) WiFi Interface [wl0] set to Channel 11 (Side-Band Channel:7) ... Thu Dec 26 20:43:50 2013 Notice (6) WiFi Interface [wl0] set to Channel 11 (Side-Band Channel:N/A... Tue Dec 24 12:45:03 2013 Critical (3) Started Unicast Maintenance Ranging - No Response received - ... Tue Dec 24 04:55:52 2013 Error (4) Map Request Retry Timeout;CM-MAC=1c:3e:84:f1:6b:84;CMTS-MAC=0... Mon Dec 23 12:32:00 2013 Notice (6) TLV-11 - unrecognized OID;CM-MAC=1c:3e:84:f1:6b:84;CMTS-MAC=0... Mon Dec 23 12:32:00 2013 Error (4) Missing BP Configuration Setting TLV Type: 17.9;CM-MAC=1c:3e:... Mon Dec 23 12:32:00 2013 Error (4) Missing BP Configuration Setting TLV Type: 17.8;CM-MAC=1c:3e:... Mon Dec 23 12:32:00 2013 Warning (5) DHCP WARNING - Non-critical field invalid in response ;CM-MAC... Mon Dec 23 18:32:02 2013 Notice (6) Honoring MDD; IP provisioning mode = IPv4 Mon Dec 23 18:31:10 2013 Critical (3) No Ranging Response received - T3 time-out;CM-MAC=1c:3e:84:f1... Mon Dec 23 18:28:57 2013 Critical (3) Received Response to Broadcast Maintenance Request, But no Un... Mon Dec 23 18:28:25 2013 Critical (3) Started Unicast Maintenance Ranging - No Response received - ... Mon Dec 23 12:17:48 2013 Notice (6) TLV-11 - unrecognized OID;CM-MAC=1c:3e:84:f1:6b:84;CMTS-MAC=0... Mon Dec 23 12:17:48 2013 Error (4) Missing BP Configuration Setting TLV Type: 17.9;CM-MAC=1c:3e:... Mon Dec 23 12:17:48 2013 Error (4) Missing BP Configuration Setting TLV Type: 17.8;CM-MAC=1c:3e:... Mon Dec 23 12:17:48 2013 Warning (5) DHCP WARNING - Non-critical field invalid in response ;CM-MAC... Mon Dec 23 18:17:48 2013 Notice (6) Honoring MDD; IP provisioning mode = IPv4 Mon Dec 23 18:16:58 2013 Critical (3) No Ranging Response received - T3 time-out;CM-MAC=1c:3e:84:f1... Mon Dec 23 18:16:15 2013 Critical (3) Received Response to Broadcast Maintenance Request, But no Un... Mon Dec 23 18:15:43 2013 Critical (3) Started Unicast Maintenance Ranging - No Response received - ...

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  • Can someone help me install MYSQL server pelase? This is bugging me....

    - by Alex
    $ sudo aptitude install mysql-server Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done Reading extended state information Initializing package states... Done The following NEW packages will be installed: libhtml-template-perl{a} mysql-server mysql-server-5.0{a} mysql-server-core-5.0{a} 0 packages upgraded, 4 newly installed, 0 to remove and 12 not upgraded. Need to get 0B/27.7MB of archives. After unpacking 91.1MB will be used. Do you want to continue? [Y/n/?] y Writing extended state information... Done Preconfiguring packages ... Selecting previously deselected package mysql-server-core-5.0. (Reading database ... 17022 files and directories currently installed.) Unpacking mysql-server-core-5.0 (from .../mysql-server-core-5.0_5.1.30really5.0.75-0ubuntu10.3_amd64.deb) ... Selecting previously deselected package mysql-server-5.0. Unpacking mysql-server-5.0 (from .../mysql-server-5.0_5.1.30really5.0.75-0ubuntu10.3_amd64.deb) ... Selecting previously deselected package libhtml-template-perl. Unpacking libhtml-template-perl (from .../libhtml-template-perl_2.9-1_all.deb) ... Selecting previously deselected package mysql-server. Unpacking mysql-server (from .../mysql-server_5.1.30really5.0.75-0ubuntu10.3_all.deb) ... Setting up mysql-server-core-5.0 (5.1.30really5.0.75-0ubuntu10.3) ... Setting up mysql-server-5.0 (5.1.30really5.0.75-0ubuntu10.3) ... * Stopping MySQL database server mysqld [ OK ] /var/lib/dpkg/info/mysql-server-5.0.postinst: line 144: /etc/mysql/conf.d/old_passwords.cnf: No such file or directory dpkg: error processing mysql-server-5.0 (--configure): subprocess post-installation script returned error exit status 1 Setting up libhtml-template-perl (2.9-1) ... dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of mysql-server: mysql-server depends on mysql-server-5.0; however: Package mysql-server-5.0 is not configured yet. dpkg: error processing mysql-server (--configure): dependency problems - leaving unconfigured No apport report written because the error message indicates its a followup error from a previous failure. Errors were encountered while processing: mysql-server-5.0 mysql-server E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1) A package failed to install. Trying to recover: Setting up mysql-server-5.0 (5.1.30really5.0.75-0ubuntu10.3) ... * Stopping MySQL database server mysqld [ OK ] /var/lib/dpkg/info/mysql-server-5.0.postinst: line 144: /etc/mysql/conf.d/old_passwords.cnf: No such file or directory dpkg: error processing mysql-server-5.0 (--configure): subprocess post-installation script returned error exit status 1 dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of mysql-server: mysql-server depends on mysql-server-5.0; however: Package mysql-server-5.0 is not configured yet. dpkg: error processing mysql-server (--configure): dependency problems - leaving unconfigured Errors were encountered while processing: mysql-server-5.0 mysql-server Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done Reading extended state information Initializing package states... Done Writing extended state information... Done Before I installed it, I ran this: sudo aptitude purge mysql-server mysql-server-5.0 This has happened before. I remember before, I did something with dpkg with fixed it.

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  • How do I determine if my controller is in IDE or AHCI mode in Linux?

    - by philcolbourn
    I have an old MacBook Pro 4,1 (early 2008) - but I suspect an answer would apply to many MacBook Pros. It has an Intel IDE/SATA controller (ICH8M/ICH8M-E). I have installed a patched MBR that is supposed to put my controller into AHCI mode. It does this by setting some controller port value that I don't understand. This seems to work as I get this from lspci: 00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801HM/HEM (ICH8M/ICH8M-E) IDE Controller (rev 03) 00:1f.2 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801HM/HEM (ICH8M/ICH8M-E) SATA Controller [AHCI mode] (rev 03) Now most, perhaps all, sites that provide a solution (enabling AHCI) suggest that after a sleep/wake cycle that a controller will revert to IDE mode due to how Apple support Windows. They recommend disabling sleep. From author of patchedcode.bin I think Enabling AHCI for Windows on MacBooks NB: I do not have bootcamp installed and I do not have Windows installed. Is there a way to prove that my controller is in IDE or AHCI mode? Background Data Using patchedcode.bin MBR I get this in syslog: Jun 12 22:33:22 max kernel: [ 1.860955] ahci 0000:00:1f.2: version 3.0 Jun 12 22:33:22 max kernel: [ 1.861052] ahci 0000:00:1f.2: irq 45 for MSI/MSI-X Jun 12 22:33:22 max kernel: [ 1.861117] ahci 0000:00:1f.2: AHCI 0001.0100 32 slots 3 ports 1.5 Gbps 0x1 impl SATA mode Jun 12 22:33:22 max kernel: [ 1.861120] ahci 0000:00:1f.2: flags: 64bit ncq sntf pm led clo pio slum part ccc ems Jun 12 22:33:22 max kernel: [ 1.861130] ahci 0000:00:1f.2: setting latency timer to 64 Jun 12 22:33:22 max kernel: [ 1.880880] ACPI: Video Device [GFX0] (multi-head: yes rom: no post: no) Jun 12 22:33:22 max kernel: [ 1.880983] scsi2 : ahci Jun 12 22:33:22 max kernel: [ 1.884552] scsi3 : ahci Jun 12 22:33:22 max kernel: [ 1.886932] scsi4 : ahci Jun 12 22:33:22 max kernel: [ 1.886998] ata3: SATA max UDMA/133 abar m2048@0xdb504000 port 0xdb504100 irq 45 Jun 12 22:33:22 max kernel: [ 1.887000] ata4: DUMMY Jun 12 22:33:22 max kernel: [ 1.887002] ata5: DUMMY Jun 12 22:33:22 max kernel: [ 2.204103] ata3: SATA link up 1.5 Gbps (SStatus 113 SControl 300) Jun 12 22:33:22 max kernel: [ 2.204656] ata3.00: ATA-8: FUJITSU MHY2200BH, 0081000D, max UDMA/100 Jun 12 22:33:22 max kernel: [ 2.204662] ata3.00: 390721968 sectors, multi 16: LBA48 NCQ (depth 31/32), AA Jun 12 22:33:22 max kernel: [ 2.205324] ata3.00: configured for UDMA/100 Jun 12 22:33:22 max kernel: [ 2.205554] scsi 2:0:0:0: Direct-Access ATA FUJITSU MHY2200B 0081 PQ: 0 ANSI: 5 Using my original MBR I get this from syslog: Jun 13 18:07:13 max kernel: [ 0.622861] ata_piix 0000:00:1f.1: version 2.13 Jun 13 18:07:13 max kernel: [ 0.622869] ata_piix 0000:00:1f.1: power state changed by ACPI to D0 Jun 13 18:07:13 max kernel: [ 0.622924] ata_piix 0000:00:1f.1: setting latency timer to 64 Jun 13 18:07:13 max kernel: [ 0.623339] scsi0 : ata_piix Jun 13 18:07:13 max kernel: [ 0.623730] scsi1 : ata_piix Jun 13 18:07:13 max kernel: [ 0.623765] ata1: PATA max UDMA/100 cmd 0x8108 ctl 0x811c bmdma 0x80e0 irq 21 Jun 13 18:07:13 max kernel: [ 0.623767] ata2: PATA max UDMA/100 cmd 0x8100 ctl 0x8118 bmdma 0x80e8 irq 21 Jun 13 18:07:13 max kernel: [ 0.623810] ata_piix 0000:00:1f.2: MAP [ Jun 13 18:07:13 max kernel: [ 0.623811] P0 -- -- -- ] Jun 13 18:07:13 max kernel: [ 0.623866] ata_piix 0000:00:1f.2: setting latency timer to 64 Jun 13 18:07:13 max kernel: [ 0.624241] scsi2 : ata_piix Jun 13 18:07:13 max kernel: [ 0.624558] scsi3 : ata_piix Jun 13 18:07:13 max kernel: [ 0.624862] ata3: SATA max UDMA/133 cmd 0x80f8 ctl 0x8114 bmdma 0x8020 irq 18 Jun 13 18:07:13 max kernel: [ 0.624865] ata4: SATA max UDMA/133 cmd 0x80f0 ctl 0x8110 bmdma 0x8028 irq 18 Jun 13 18:07:13 max kernel: [ 1.208879] ata3.00: ATA-8: FUJITSU MHY2200BH, 0081000D, max UDMA/100 Jun 13 18:07:13 max kernel: [ 1.208882] ata3.00: 390721968 sectors, multi 16: LBA48 NCQ (depth 0/32) Jun 13 18:07:13 max kernel: [ 1.208961] ata1.01: ATAPI: MATSHITA DVD+/-RW UJ-867S, 1.00, max UDMA/33 Jun 13 18:07:13 max kernel: [ 1.216186] ata3.00: configured for UDMA/100 Jun 13 18:07:13 max kernel: [ 1.224396] ata1.01: configured for UDMA/33

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  • 256 Windows Azure Worker Roles, Windows Kinect and a 90's Text-Based Ray-Tracer

    - by Alan Smith
    For a couple of years I have been demoing a simple render farm hosted in Windows Azure using worker roles and the Azure Storage service. At the start of the presentation I deploy an Azure application that uses 16 worker roles to render a 1,500 frame 3D ray-traced animation. At the end of the presentation, when the animation was complete, I would play the animation delete the Azure deployment. The standing joke with the audience was that it was that it was a “$2 demo”, as the compute charges for running the 16 instances for an hour was $1.92, factor in the bandwidth charges and it’s a couple of dollars. The point of the demo is that it highlights one of the great benefits of cloud computing, you pay for what you use, and if you need massive compute power for a short period of time using Windows Azure can work out very cost effective. The “$2 demo” was great for presenting at user groups and conferences in that it could be deployed to Azure, used to render an animation, and then removed in a one hour session. I have always had the idea of doing something a bit more impressive with the demo, and scaling it from a “$2 demo” to a “$30 demo”. The challenge was to create a visually appealing animation in high definition format and keep the demo time down to one hour.  This article will take a run through how I achieved this. Ray Tracing Ray tracing, a technique for generating high quality photorealistic images, gained popularity in the 90’s with companies like Pixar creating feature length computer animations, and also the emergence of shareware text-based ray tracers that could run on a home PC. In order to render a ray traced image, the ray of light that would pass from the view point must be tracked until it intersects with an object. At the intersection, the color, reflectiveness, transparency, and refractive index of the object are used to calculate if the ray will be reflected or refracted. Each pixel may require thousands of calculations to determine what color it will be in the rendered image. Pin-Board Toys Having very little artistic talent and a basic understanding of maths I decided to focus on an animation that could be modeled fairly easily and would look visually impressive. I’ve always liked the pin-board desktop toys that become popular in the 80’s and when I was working as a 3D animator back in the 90’s I always had the idea of creating a 3D ray-traced animation of a pin-board, but never found the energy to do it. Even if I had a go at it, the render time to produce an animation that would look respectable on a 486 would have been measured in months. PolyRay Back in 1995 I landed my first real job, after spending three years being a beach-ski-climbing-paragliding-bum, and was employed to create 3D ray-traced animations for a CD-ROM that school kids would use to learn physics. I had got into the strange and wonderful world of text-based ray tracing, and was using a shareware ray-tracer called PolyRay. PolyRay takes a text file describing a scene as input and, after a few hours processing on a 486, produced a high quality ray-traced image. The following is an example of a basic PolyRay scene file. background Midnight_Blue   static define matte surface { ambient 0.1 diffuse 0.7 } define matte_white texture { matte { color white } } define matte_black texture { matte { color dark_slate_gray } } define position_cylindrical 3 define lookup_sawtooth 1 define light_wood <0.6, 0.24, 0.1> define median_wood <0.3, 0.12, 0.03> define dark_wood <0.05, 0.01, 0.005>     define wooden texture { noise surface { ambient 0.2  diffuse 0.7  specular white, 0.5 microfacet Reitz 10 position_fn position_cylindrical position_scale 1  lookup_fn lookup_sawtooth octaves 1 turbulence 1 color_map( [0.0, 0.2, light_wood, light_wood] [0.2, 0.3, light_wood, median_wood] [0.3, 0.4, median_wood, light_wood] [0.4, 0.7, light_wood, light_wood] [0.7, 0.8, light_wood, median_wood] [0.8, 0.9, median_wood, light_wood] [0.9, 1.0, light_wood, dark_wood]) } } define glass texture { surface { ambient 0 diffuse 0 specular 0.2 reflection white, 0.1 transmission white, 1, 1.5 }} define shiny surface { ambient 0.1 diffuse 0.6 specular white, 0.6 microfacet Phong 7  } define steely_blue texture { shiny { color black } } define chrome texture { surface { color white ambient 0.0 diffuse 0.2 specular 0.4 microfacet Phong 10 reflection 0.8 } }   viewpoint {     from <4.000, -1.000, 1.000> at <0.000, 0.000, 0.000> up <0, 1, 0> angle 60     resolution 640, 480 aspect 1.6 image_format 0 }       light <-10, 30, 20> light <-10, 30, -20>   object { disc <0, -2, 0>, <0, 1, 0>, 30 wooden }   object { sphere <0.000, 0.000, 0.000>, 1.00 chrome } object { cylinder <0.000, 0.000, 0.000>, <0.000, 0.000, -4.000>, 0.50 chrome }   After setting up the background and defining colors and textures, the viewpoint is specified. The “camera” is located at a point in 3D space, and it looks towards another point. The angle, image resolution, and aspect ratio are specified. Two lights are present in the image at defined coordinates. The three objects in the image are a wooden disc to represent a table top, and a sphere and cylinder that intersect to form a pin that will be used for the pin board toy in the final animation. When the image is rendered, the following image is produced. The pins are modeled with a chrome surface, so they reflect the environment around them. Note that the scale of the pin shaft is not correct, this will be fixed later. Modeling the Pin Board The frame of the pin-board is made up of three boxes, and six cylinders, the front box is modeled using a clear, slightly reflective solid, with the same refractive index of glass. The other shapes are modeled as metal. object { box <-5.5, -1.5, 1>, <5.5, 5.5, 1.2> glass } object { box <-5.5, -1.5, -0.04>, <5.5, 5.5, -0.09> steely_blue } object { box <-5.5, -1.5, -0.52>, <5.5, 5.5, -0.59> steely_blue } object { cylinder <-5.2, -1.2, 1.4>, <-5.2, -1.2, -0.74>, 0.2 steely_blue } object { cylinder <5.2, -1.2, 1.4>, <5.2, -1.2, -0.74>, 0.2 steely_blue } object { cylinder <-5.2, 5.2, 1.4>, <-5.2, 5.2, -0.74>, 0.2 steely_blue } object { cylinder <5.2, 5.2, 1.4>, <5.2, 5.2, -0.74>, 0.2 steely_blue } object { cylinder <0, -1.2, 1.4>, <0, -1.2, -0.74>, 0.2 steely_blue } object { cylinder <0, 5.2, 1.4>, <0, 5.2, -0.74>, 0.2 steely_blue }   In order to create the matrix of pins that make up the pin board I used a basic console application with a few nested loops to create two intersecting matrixes of pins, which models the layout used in the pin boards. The resulting image is shown below. The pin board contains 11,481 pins, with the scene file containing 23,709 lines of code. For the complete animation 2,000 scene files will be created, which is over 47 million lines of code. Each pin in the pin-board will slide out a specific distance when an object is pressed into the back of the board. This is easily modeled by setting the Z coordinate of the pin to a specific value. In order to set all of the pins in the pin-board to the correct position, a bitmap image can be used. The position of the pin can be set based on the color of the pixel at the appropriate position in the image. When the Windows Azure logo is used to set the Z coordinate of the pins, the following image is generated. The challenge now was to make a cool animation. The Azure Logo is fine, but it is static. Using a normal video to animate the pins would not work; the colors in the video would not be the same as the depth of the objects from the camera. In order to simulate the pin board accurately a series of frames from a depth camera could be used. Windows Kinect The Kenect controllers for the X-Box 360 and Windows feature a depth camera. The Kinect SDK for Windows provides a programming interface for Kenect, providing easy access for .NET developers to the Kinect sensors. The Kinect Explorer provided with the Kinect SDK is a great starting point for exploring Kinect from a developers perspective. Both the X-Box 360 Kinect and the Windows Kinect will work with the Kinect SDK, the Windows Kinect is required for commercial applications, but the X-Box Kinect can be used for hobby projects. The Windows Kinect has the advantage of providing a mode to allow depth capture with objects closer to the camera, which makes for a more accurate depth image for setting the pin positions. Creating a Depth Field Animation The depth field animation used to set the positions of the pin in the pin board was created using a modified version of the Kinect Explorer sample application. In order to simulate the pin board accurately, a small section of the depth range from the depth sensor will be used. Any part of the object in front of the depth range will result in a white pixel; anything behind the depth range will be black. Within the depth range the pixels in the image will be set to RGB values from 0,0,0 to 255,255,255. A screen shot of the modified Kinect Explorer application is shown below. The Kinect Explorer sample application was modified to include slider controls that are used to set the depth range that forms the image from the depth stream. This allows the fine tuning of the depth image that is required for simulating the position of the pins in the pin board. The Kinect Explorer was also modified to record a series of images from the depth camera and save them as a sequence JPEG files that will be used to animate the pins in the animation the Start and Stop buttons are used to start and stop the image recording. En example of one of the depth images is shown below. Once a series of 2,000 depth images has been captured, the task of creating the animation can begin. Rendering a Test Frame In order to test the creation of frames and get an approximation of the time required to render each frame a test frame was rendered on-premise using PolyRay. The output of the rendering process is shown below. The test frame contained 23,629 primitive shapes, most of which are the spheres and cylinders that are used for the 11,800 or so pins in the pin board. The 1280x720 image contains 921,600 pixels, but as anti-aliasing was used the number of rays that were calculated was 4,235,777, with 3,478,754,073 object boundaries checked. The test frame of the pin board with the depth field image applied is shown below. The tracing time for the test frame was 4 minutes 27 seconds, which means rendering the2,000 frames in the animation would take over 148 hours, or a little over 6 days. Although this is much faster that an old 486, waiting almost a week to see the results of an animation would make it challenging for animators to create, view, and refine their animations. It would be much better if the animation could be rendered in less than one hour. Windows Azure Worker Roles The cost of creating an on-premise render farm to render animations increases in proportion to the number of servers. The table below shows the cost of servers for creating a render farm, assuming a cost of $500 per server. Number of Servers Cost 1 $500 16 $8,000 256 $128,000   As well as the cost of the servers, there would be additional costs for networking, racks etc. Hosting an environment of 256 servers on-premise would require a server room with cooling, and some pretty hefty power cabling. The Windows Azure compute services provide worker roles, which are ideal for performing processor intensive compute tasks. With the scalability available in Windows Azure a job that takes 256 hours to complete could be perfumed using different numbers of worker roles. The time and cost of using 1, 16 or 256 worker roles is shown below. Number of Worker Roles Render Time Cost 1 256 hours $30.72 16 16 hours $30.72 256 1 hour $30.72   Using worker roles in Windows Azure provides the same cost for the 256 hour job, irrespective of the number of worker roles used. Provided the compute task can be broken down into many small units, and the worker role compute power can be used effectively, it makes sense to scale the application so that the task is completed quickly, making the results available in a timely fashion. The task of rendering 2,000 frames in an animation is one that can easily be broken down into 2,000 individual pieces, which can be performed by a number of worker roles. Creating a Render Farm in Windows Azure The architecture of the render farm is shown in the following diagram. The render farm is a hybrid application with the following components: ·         On-Premise o   Windows Kinect – Used combined with the Kinect Explorer to create a stream of depth images. o   Animation Creator – This application uses the depth images from the Kinect sensor to create scene description files for PolyRay. These files are then uploaded to the jobs blob container, and job messages added to the jobs queue. o   Process Monitor – This application queries the role instance lifecycle table and displays statistics about the render farm environment and render process. o   Image Downloader – This application polls the image queue and downloads the rendered animation files once they are complete. ·         Windows Azure o   Azure Storage – Queues and blobs are used for the scene description files and completed frames. A table is used to store the statistics about the rendering environment.   The architecture of each worker role is shown below.   The worker role is configured to use local storage, which provides file storage on the worker role instance that can be use by the applications to render the image and transform the format of the image. The service definition for the worker role with the local storage configuration highlighted is shown below. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <ServiceDefinition name="CloudRay" >   <WorkerRole name="CloudRayWorkerRole" vmsize="Small">     <Imports>     </Imports>     <ConfigurationSettings>       <Setting name="DataConnectionString" />     </ConfigurationSettings>     <LocalResources>       <LocalStorage name="RayFolder" cleanOnRoleRecycle="true" />     </LocalResources>   </WorkerRole> </ServiceDefinition>     The two executable programs, PolyRay.exe and DTA.exe are included in the Azure project, with Copy Always set as the property. PolyRay will take the scene description file and render it to a Truevision TGA file. As the TGA format has not seen much use since the mid 90’s it is converted to a JPG image using Dave's Targa Animator, another shareware application from the 90’s. Each worker roll will use the following process to render the animation frames. 1.       The worker process polls the job queue, if a job is available the scene description file is downloaded from blob storage to local storage. 2.       PolyRay.exe is started in a process with the appropriate command line arguments to render the image as a TGA file. 3.       DTA.exe is started in a process with the appropriate command line arguments convert the TGA file to a JPG file. 4.       The JPG file is uploaded from local storage to the images blob container. 5.       A message is placed on the images queue to indicate a new image is available for download. 6.       The job message is deleted from the job queue. 7.       The role instance lifecycle table is updated with statistics on the number of frames rendered by the worker role instance, and the CPU time used. The code for this is shown below. public override void Run() {     // Set environment variables     string polyRayPath = Path.Combine(Environment.GetEnvironmentVariable("RoleRoot"), PolyRayLocation);     string dtaPath = Path.Combine(Environment.GetEnvironmentVariable("RoleRoot"), DTALocation);       LocalResource rayStorage = RoleEnvironment.GetLocalResource("RayFolder");     string localStorageRootPath = rayStorage.RootPath;       JobQueue jobQueue = new JobQueue("renderjobs");     JobQueue downloadQueue = new JobQueue("renderimagedownloadjobs");     CloudRayBlob sceneBlob = new CloudRayBlob("scenes");     CloudRayBlob imageBlob = new CloudRayBlob("images");     RoleLifecycleDataSource roleLifecycleDataSource = new RoleLifecycleDataSource();       Frames = 0;       while (true)     {         // Get the render job from the queue         CloudQueueMessage jobMsg = jobQueue.Get();           if (jobMsg != null)         {             // Get the file details             string sceneFile = jobMsg.AsString;             string tgaFile = sceneFile.Replace(".pi", ".tga");             string jpgFile = sceneFile.Replace(".pi", ".jpg");               string sceneFilePath = Path.Combine(localStorageRootPath, sceneFile);             string tgaFilePath = Path.Combine(localStorageRootPath, tgaFile);             string jpgFilePath = Path.Combine(localStorageRootPath, jpgFile);               // Copy the scene file to local storage             sceneBlob.DownloadFile(sceneFilePath);               // Run the ray tracer.             string polyrayArguments =                 string.Format("\"{0}\" -o \"{1}\" -a 2", sceneFilePath, tgaFilePath);             Process polyRayProcess = new Process();             polyRayProcess.StartInfo.FileName =                 Path.Combine(Environment.GetEnvironmentVariable("RoleRoot"), polyRayPath);             polyRayProcess.StartInfo.Arguments = polyrayArguments;             polyRayProcess.Start();             polyRayProcess.WaitForExit();               // Convert the image             string dtaArguments =                 string.Format(" {0} /FJ /P{1}", tgaFilePath, Path.GetDirectoryName (jpgFilePath));             Process dtaProcess = new Process();             dtaProcess.StartInfo.FileName =                 Path.Combine(Environment.GetEnvironmentVariable("RoleRoot"), dtaPath);             dtaProcess.StartInfo.Arguments = dtaArguments;             dtaProcess.Start();             dtaProcess.WaitForExit();               // Upload the image to blob storage             imageBlob.UploadFile(jpgFilePath);               // Add a download job.             downloadQueue.Add(jpgFile);               // Delete the render job message             jobQueue.Delete(jobMsg);               Frames++;         }         else         {             Thread.Sleep(1000);         }           // Log the worker role activity.         roleLifecycleDataSource.Alive             ("CloudRayWorker", RoleLifecycleDataSource.RoleLifecycleId, Frames);     } }     Monitoring Worker Role Instance Lifecycle In order to get more accurate statistics about the lifecycle of the worker role instances used to render the animation data was tracked in an Azure storage table. The following class was used to track the worker role lifecycles in Azure storage.   public class RoleLifecycle : TableServiceEntity {     public string ServerName { get; set; }     public string Status { get; set; }     public DateTime StartTime { get; set; }     public DateTime EndTime { get; set; }     public long SecondsRunning { get; set; }     public DateTime LastActiveTime { get; set; }     public int Frames { get; set; }     public string Comment { get; set; }       public RoleLifecycle()     {     }       public RoleLifecycle(string roleName)     {         PartitionKey = roleName;         RowKey = Utils.GetAscendingRowKey();         Status = "Started";         StartTime = DateTime.UtcNow;         LastActiveTime = StartTime;         EndTime = StartTime;         SecondsRunning = 0;         Frames = 0;     } }     A new instance of this class is created and added to the storage table when the role starts. It is then updated each time the worker renders a frame to record the total number of frames rendered and the total processing time. These statistics are used be the monitoring application to determine the effectiveness of use of resources in the render farm. Rendering the Animation The Azure solution was deployed to Windows Azure with the service configuration set to 16 worker role instances. This allows for the application to be tested in the cloud environment, and the performance of the application determined. When I demo the application at conferences and user groups I often start with 16 instances, and then scale up the application to the full 256 instances. The configuration to run 16 instances is shown below. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <ServiceConfiguration serviceName="CloudRay" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/ServiceHosting/2008/10/ServiceConfiguration" osFamily="1" osVersion="*">   <Role name="CloudRayWorkerRole">     <Instances count="16" />     <ConfigurationSettings>       <Setting name="DataConnectionString"         value="DefaultEndpointsProtocol=https;AccountName=cloudraydata;AccountKey=..." />     </ConfigurationSettings>   </Role> </ServiceConfiguration>     About six minutes after deploying the application the first worker roles become active and start to render the first frames of the animation. The CloudRay Monitor application displays an icon for each worker role instance, with a number indicating the number of frames that the worker role has rendered. The statistics on the left show the number of active worker roles and statistics about the render process. The render time is the time since the first worker role became active; the CPU time is the total amount of processing time used by all worker role instances to render the frames.   Five minutes after the first worker role became active the last of the 16 worker roles activated. By this time the first seven worker roles had each rendered one frame of the animation.   With 16 worker roles u and running it can be seen that one hour and 45 minutes CPU time has been used to render 32 frames with a render time of just under 10 minutes.     At this rate it would take over 10 hours to render the 2,000 frames of the full animation. In order to complete the animation in under an hour more processing power will be required. Scaling the render farm from 16 instances to 256 instances is easy using the new management portal. The slider is set to 256 instances, and the configuration saved. We do not need to re-deploy the application, and the 16 instances that are up and running will not be affected. Alternatively, the configuration file for the Azure service could be modified to specify 256 instances.   <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <ServiceConfiguration serviceName="CloudRay" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/ServiceHosting/2008/10/ServiceConfiguration" osFamily="1" osVersion="*">   <Role name="CloudRayWorkerRole">     <Instances count="256" />     <ConfigurationSettings>       <Setting name="DataConnectionString"         value="DefaultEndpointsProtocol=https;AccountName=cloudraydata;AccountKey=..." />     </ConfigurationSettings>   </Role> </ServiceConfiguration>     Six minutes after the new configuration has been applied 75 new worker roles have activated and are processing their first frames.   Five minutes later the full configuration of 256 worker roles is up and running. We can see that the average rate of frame rendering has increased from 3 to 12 frames per minute, and that over 17 hours of CPU time has been utilized in 23 minutes. In this test the time to provision 140 worker roles was about 11 minutes, which works out at about one every five seconds.   We are now half way through the rendering, with 1,000 frames complete. This has utilized just under three days of CPU time in a little over 35 minutes.   The animation is now complete, with 2,000 frames rendered in a little over 52 minutes. The CPU time used by the 256 worker roles is 6 days, 7 hours and 22 minutes with an average frame rate of 38 frames per minute. The rendering of the last 1,000 frames took 16 minutes 27 seconds, which works out at a rendering rate of 60 frames per minute. The frame counts in the server instances indicate that the use of a queue to distribute the workload has been very effective in distributing the load across the 256 worker role instances. The first 16 instances that were deployed first have rendered between 11 and 13 frames each, whilst the 240 instances that were added when the application was scaled have rendered between 6 and 9 frames each.   Completed Animation I’ve uploaded the completed animation to YouTube, a low resolution preview is shown below. Pin Board Animation Created using Windows Kinect and 256 Windows Azure Worker Roles   The animation can be viewed in 1280x720 resolution at the following link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5jy6bvSxWc Effective Use of Resources According to the CloudRay monitor statistics the animation took 6 days, 7 hours and 22 minutes CPU to render, this works out at 152 hours of compute time, rounded up to the nearest hour. As the usage for the worker role instances are billed for the full hour, it may have been possible to render the animation using fewer than 256 worker roles. When deciding the optimal usage of resources, the time required to provision and start the worker roles must also be considered. In the demo I started with 16 worker roles, and then scaled the application to 256 worker roles. It would have been more optimal to start the application with maybe 200 worker roles, and utilized the full hour that I was being billed for. This would, however, have prevented showing the ease of scalability of the application. The new management portal displays the CPU usage across the worker roles in the deployment. The average CPU usage across all instances is 93.27%, with over 99% used when all the instances are up and running. This shows that the worker role resources are being used very effectively. Grid Computing Scenarios Although I am using this scenario for a hobby project, there are many scenarios where a large amount of compute power is required for a short period of time. Windows Azure provides a great platform for developing these types of grid computing applications, and can work out very cost effective. ·         Windows Azure can provide massive compute power, on demand, in a matter of minutes. ·         The use of queues to manage the load balancing of jobs between role instances is a simple and effective solution. ·         Using a cloud-computing platform like Windows Azure allows proof-of-concept scenarios to be tested and evaluated on a very low budget. ·         No charges for inbound data transfer makes the uploading of large data sets to Windows Azure Storage services cost effective. (Transaction charges still apply.) Tips for using Windows Azure for Grid Computing Scenarios I found the implementation of a render farm using Windows Azure a fairly simple scenario to implement. I was impressed by ease of scalability that Azure provides, and by the short time that the application took to scale from 16 to 256 worker role instances. In this case it was around 13 minutes, in other tests it took between 10 and 20 minutes. The following tips may be useful when implementing a grid computing project in Windows Azure. ·         Using an Azure Storage queue to load-balance the units of work across multiple worker roles is simple and very effective. The design I have used in this scenario could easily scale to many thousands of worker role instances. ·         Windows Azure accounts are typically limited to 20 cores. If you need to use more than this, a call to support and a credit card check will be required. ·         Be aware of how the billing model works. You will be charged for worker role instances for the full clock our in which the instance is deployed. Schedule the workload to start just after the clock hour has started. ·         Monitor the utilization of the resources you are provisioning, ensure that you are not paying for worker roles that are idle. ·         If you are deploying third party applications to worker roles, you may well run into licensing issues. Purchasing software licenses on a per-processor basis when using hundreds of processors for a short time period would not be cost effective. ·         Third party software may also require installation onto the worker roles, which can be accomplished using start-up tasks. Bear in mind that adding a startup task and possible re-boot will add to the time required for the worker role instance to start and activate. An alternative may be to use a prepared VM and use VM roles. ·         Consider using the Windows Azure Autoscaling Application Block (WASABi) to autoscale the worker roles in your application. When using a large number of worker roles, the utilization must be carefully monitored, if the scaling algorithms are not optimal it could get very expensive!

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  • Using Deployment Manager

    - by Jess Nickson
    One of the teams at Red Gate has been working very hard on a new product: Deployment Manager. Deployment Manager is a free tool that lets you deploy updates to .NET apps, services and databases through a central dashboard. Deployment Manager has been out for a while, but I must admit that even though I work in the same building, until now I hadn’t even looked at it. My job at Red Gate is to develop and maintain some of our community sites, which involves carrying out regular deployments. One of the projects I have to deploy on a fairly regular basis requires me to send my changes to our build server, TeamCity. The output is a Zip file of the build. I then have to go and find this file, copy it across to the staging machine, extract it, and copy some of the sub-folders to other places. In order to keep track of what builds are running, I need to rename the folders accordingly. However, even after all that, I still need to go and update the site and its applications in IIS to point at these new builds. Oh, and then, I have to repeat the process when I deploy on production. Did I mention the multiple configuration files that then need updating as well? Manually? The whole process can take well over half an hour. I’m ready to try out a new process. Deployment Manager is designed to massively simplify the deployment processes from what could be lots of manual copying of files, managing of configuration files, and database upgrades down to a few clicks. It’s a big promise, but I decided to try out this new tool on one of the smaller ASP.NET sites at Red Gate, Format SQL (the result of a Red Gate Down Tools week). I wanted to add some new functionality, but given it was a new site with no set way of doing things, I was reluctant to have to manually copy files around servers. I decided to use this opportunity as a chance to set the site up on Deployment Manager and check out its functionality. What follows is a guide on how to get set up with Deployment Manager, a brief overview of its features, and what I thought of the experience. To follow along with the instructions that follow, you’ll first need to download Deployment Manager from Red Gate. It has a free ‘Starter Edition’ which allows you to create up to 5 projects and agents (machines you deploy to), so it’s really easy to get up and running with a fully-featured version. The Initial Set Up After installing the product and setting it up using the administration tool it provides, I launched Deployment Manager by going to the URL and port I had set it to run on. This loads up the main dashboard. The dashboard does a good job of guiding me through the process of getting started, beginning with a prompt to create some environments. 1. Setting up Environments The dashboard informed me that I needed to add new ‘Environments’, which are essentially ways of grouping the machines you want to deploy to. The environments that get added will show up on the main dashboard. I set up two such environments for this project: ‘staging’ and ‘live’.   2. Add Target Machines Once I had created the environments, I was ready to add ‘target machine’s to them, which are the actual machines that the deployment will occur on.   To enable me to deploy to a new machine, I needed to download and install an Agent on it. The ‘Add target machine’ form on the ‘Environments’ page helpfully provides a link for downloading an Agent.   Once the agent has been installed, it is just a case of copying the server key to the agent, and the agent key to the server, to link them up.   3. Run Health Check If, after adding your new target machine, the ‘Status’ flags an error, it is possible that the Agent and Server keys have not been entered correctly on both Deployment Manager and the Agent service.     You can ‘Check Health’, which will give you more information on any issues. It is probably worth running this regardless of what status the ‘Environments’ dashboard is claiming, just to be on the safe side.     4. Add Projects Going back to the main Dashboard tab at this point, I found that it was telling me that I needed to set up a new project.   I clicked the ‘project’ link to get started, gave my new project a name and clicked ‘Create’. I was then redirected to the ‘Steps’ page for the project under the Projects tab.   5. Package Steps The ‘Steps’ page was fairly empty when it first loaded.   Adding a ‘step’ allowed me to specify what packages I wanted to grab for the deployment. This part requires a NuGet package feed to be set up, which is where Deployment Manager will look for the packages. At Red Gate, we already have one set up, so I just needed to tell Deployment Manager about it. Don’t worry; there is a nice guide included on how to go about doing all of this on the ‘Package Feeds’ page in ‘Settings’, if you need any help with setting these bits up.    At Red Gate we use a build server, TeamCity, which is capable of publishing built projects to the NuGet feed we use. This makes the workflow for Format SQL relatively simple: when I commit a change to the project, the build server is configured to grab those changes, build the project, and spit out a new NuGet package to the Red Gate NuGet package feed. My ‘package step’, therefore, is set up to look for this package on our feed. The final part of package step was simply specifying which machines from what environments I wanted to be able to deploy the project to.     Format SQL Now the main Dashboard showed my new project and environment in a rather empty looking grid. Clicking on my project presented me with a nice little message telling me that I am now ready to create my first release!   Create a release Next I clicked on the ‘Create release’ button in the Projects tab. If your feeds and package step(s) were set up correctly, then Deployment Manager will automatically grab the latest version of the NuGet package that you want to deploy. As you can see here, it was able to pick up the latest build for Format SQL and all I needed to do was enter a version number and description of the release.   As you can see underneath ‘Version number’, it keeps track of what version the previous release was given. Clicking ‘Create’ created the release and redirected me to a summary of it where I could check the details before deploying.   I clicked ‘Deploy this release’ and chose the environment I wanted to deploy to and…that’s it. Deployment Manager went off and deployed it for me.   Once I clicked ‘Deploy release’, Deployment Manager started to automatically update and provide continuing feedback about the process. If any errors do arise, then I can expand the results to see where it went wrong. That’s it, I’m done! Keep in mind, if you hit errors with the deployment itself then it is possible to view the log output to try and determine where these occurred. You can keep expanding the logs to narrow down the problem. The screenshot below is not from my Format SQL deployment, but I thought I’d post one to demonstrate the logging output available. Features One of the best bits of Deployment Manager for me is the ability to very, very easily deploy the same release to multiple machines. Deploying this same release to production was just a case of selecting the deployment and choosing the ‘live’ environment as the place to deploy to. Following on from this is the fact that, as Deployment Manager keeps track of all of your releases, it is extremely easy to roll back to a previous release if anything goes pear-shaped! You can view all your previous releases and select one to re-deploy. I needed this feature more than once when differences in my production and staging machines lead to some odd behavior.     Another option is to use the TeamCity integration available. This enables you to set Deployment Manager up so that it will automatically create releases and deploy these to an environment directly from TeamCity, meaning that you can always see the latest version up and running without having to do anything. Machine Specific Deployments ‘What about custom configuration files?’ I hear you shout. Certainly, it was one of my concerns. Our setup on the staging machine is not in line with that on production. What this means is that, should we deploy the same configuration to both, one of them is going to break. Thankfully, it turns out that Deployment Manager can deal with this. Given I had environments ‘staging’ and ‘live’, and that staging used the project’s web.config file, while production (‘live’) required the config file to undergo some transformations, I simply added a web.live.config file in the project, so that it would be included as part of the NuGet package. In this file, I wrote the XML document transformations I needed and Deployment Manager took care of the rest. Another option is to set up ‘variables’ for your project, which allow you to specify key-value pairs for your configuration file, and which environment to apply them to. You’ll find Variables as a full left-hand submenu within the ‘Projects’ tab. These features will definitely be of interest if you have a large number of environments! There are still many other features that I didn’t get a chance to play around with like running PowerShell scripts for more personalised deployments. Maybe next time! Also, let’s not forget that my use case in this article is a very simple one – deploying a single package. I don’t believe that all projects will be equally as simple, but I already appreciate how much easier Deployment Manager could make my life. I look forward to the possibility of moving our other sites over to Deployment Manager in the near future.   Conclusion In this article I have described the steps involved in setting up and configuring an instance of Deployment Manager, creating a new automated deployment process, and using this to actually carry out a deployment. I’ve tried to mention some of the features I found particularly useful, such as error logging, easy release management allowing you to deploy the same release multiple times, and configuration file transformations. If I had to point out one issue, then it would be that the releases are immutable, which from a development point of view makes sense. However, this causes confusion where I have to create a new release to deploy to a newly set up environment – I cannot simply deploy an old release onto a new environment, the whole release needs to be recreated. I really liked how easy it was to get going with the product. Setting up Format SQL and making a first deployment took very little time. Especially when you compare it to how long it takes me to manually deploy the other site, as I described earlier. I liked how it let me know what I needed to do next, with little messages flagging up that I needed to ‘create environments’ or ‘add some deployment steps’ before I could continue. I found the dashboard incredibly convenient. As the number of projects and environments increase, it might become awkward to try and search them and find out what state they are in. Instead, the dashboard handily keeps track of the latest deployments of each project and lets you know what version is running on each of the environments, and when that deployment occurred. Finally, do you remember my complaint about having to rename folders so that I could keep track of what build they came from? This is yet another thing that Deployment Manager takes care of for you. Each release is put into its own directory, which takes the name of whatever version number that release has, though these can be customised if necessary. If you’d like to take a look at Deployment Manager for yourself, then you can download it here.

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