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• What to Do When Windows Won’t Boot

  - by Chris Hoffman

  You turn on your computer one day and Windows refuses to boot — what do you do? “Windows won’t boot” is a common symptom with a variety of causes, so you’ll need to perform some troubleshooting. Modern versions of Windows are better at recovering from this sort of thing. Where Windows XP might have stopped in its tracks when faced with this problem, modern versions of Windows will try to automatically run Startup Repair. First Things First Be sure to think about changes you’ve made recently — did you recently install a new hardware driver, connect a new hardware component to your computer, or open your computer’s case and do something? It’s possible the hardware driver is buggy, the new hardware is incompatible, or that you accidentally unplugged something while working inside your computer. The Computer Won’t Power On At All If your computer won’t power on at all, ensure it’s plugged into a power outlet and that the power connector isn’t loose. If it’s a desktop PC, ensure the power switch on the back of its case — on the power supply — is set to the On position. If it still won’t power on at all, it’s possible you disconnected a power cable inside its case. If you haven’t been messing around inside the case, it’s possible the power supply is dead. In this case, you’ll have to get your computer’s hardware fixed or get a new computer. Be sure to check your computer monitor — if your computer seems to power on but your screen stays black, ensure your monitor is powered on and that the cable connecting it to your computer’s case is plugged in securely at both ends. The Computer Powers On And Says No Bootable Device If your computer is powering on but you get a black screen that says something like “no bootable device” or another sort of “disk error” message, your computer can’t seem to boot from the hard drive that Windows was installed on. Enter your computer’s BIOS or UEFI firmware setup screen and check its boot order setting, ensuring that it’s set to boot from its hard drive. If the hard drive doesn’t appear in the list at all, it’s possible your hard drive has failed and can no longer be booted from. In this case, you may want to insert Windows installation or recovery media and run the Startup Repair operation. This will attempt to make Windows bootable again. For example, if something overwrote your Windows drive’s boot sector, this will repair the boot sector. If the recovery environment won’t load or doesn’t see your hard drive, you likely have a hardware problem. Be sure to check your BIOS or UEFI’s boot order first if the recovery environment won’t load. You can also attempt to manually fix Windows boot loader problems using the fixmbr and fixboot commands. Modern versions of Windows should be able to fix this problem for you with the Startup Repair wizard, so you shouldn’t actually have to run these commands yourself. Windows Freezes or Crashes During Boot If Windows seems to start booting but fails partway through, you may be facing either a software or hardware problem. If it’s a software problem, you may be able to fix it by performing a Startup Repair operation. If you can’t do this from the boot menu, insert a Windows installation disc or recovery disk and use the startup repair tool from there. If this doesn’t help at all, you may want to reinstall Windows or perform a Refresh or Reset on Windows 8. If the computer encounters errors while attempting to perform startup repair or reinstall Windows, or the reinstall process works properly and you encounter the same errors afterwards, you likely have a hardware problem. Windows Starts and Blue Screens or Freezes If Windows crashes or blue-screens on you every time it boots, you may be facing a hardware or software problem. For example, malware or a buggy driver may be loading at boot and causing the crash, or your computer’s hardware may be malfunctioning. To test this, boot your Windows computer in safe mode. In safe mode, Windows won’t load typical hardware drivers or any software that starts automatically at startup. If the computer is stable in safe mode, try uninstalling any recently installed hardware drivers, performing a system restore, and scanning for malware. If you’re lucky, one of these steps may fix your software problem and allow you to boot Windows normally. If your problem isn’t fixed, try reinstalling Windows or performing a Refresh or Reset on Windows 8. This will reset your computer back to its clean, factory-default state. If you’re still experiencing crashes, your computer likely has a hardware problem. Recover Files When Windows Won’t Boot If you have important files that will be lost and want to back them up before reinstalling Windows, you can use a Windows installer disc or Linux live media to recover the files. These run entirely from a CD, DVD, or USB drive and allow you to copy your files to another external media, such as another USB stick or an external hard drive. If you’re incapable of booting a Windows installer disc or Linux live CD, you may need to go into your BIOS or UEFI and change the boot order setting. If even this doesn’t work — or if you can boot from the devices and your computer freezes or you can’t access your hard drive — you likely have a hardware problem. You can try pulling the computer’s hard drive, inserting it into another computer, and recovering your files that way. Following these steps should fix the vast majority of Windows boot issues — at least the ones that are actually fixable. The dark cloud that always hangs over such issues is the possibility that the hard drive or another component in the computer may be failing. Image Credit: Karl-Ludwig G. Poggemann on Flickr, Tzuhsun Hsu on Flickr     

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• Process.Start() and ShellExecute() fails with URLs on Windows 8

  - by Rick Strahl

  Since I installed Windows 8 I've noticed that a number of my applications appear to have problems opening URLs. That is when I click on a link inside of a Windows application, either nothing happens or there's an error that occurs. It's happening both to my own applications and a host of Windows applications I'm running. At first I thought this was an issue with my default browser (Chrome) but after switching the default browser to a few others and experimenting a bit I noticed that the errors occur - oddly enough - only when I run an application as an Administrator. I also tried switching to FireFox and Opera as my default browser and saw exactly the same behavior. The scenario for this is a bit bizarre: Running on Windows 8 Call Process.Start() (or ShellExecute() in Win32 API) with a URL or an HTML file Run 'As Administrator' (works fine under non-elevated user account!) or with UAC off A browser other than Internet Explorer is set as your Default Web Browser Talk about a weird scenario: Something that doesn't work when you run as an Administrator which is supposed to have rights to everything on the system! Instead running under an Admin account - either elevated with a User Account Control prompt or even when running as a full Administrator fails. It appears that this problem does not occur for everyone, but when I looked for a solution to this, I saw quite a few posts in relation to this with no clear resolutions. I have three Windows 8 machines running here in the office and all three of them showed this behavior. Lest you think this is just a programmer's problem - this can affect any software running on your system that needs to run under administrative rights. Try it out Now, in order for this next example to fail, any browser but Internet Explorer has to be your default browser and even then it may not fail depending on how you installed your browser. To see if this is a problem create a small Console application and call Process.Start() with a URL in it:namespace Win8ShellBugConsole { class Program { static void Main(string[] args) { Console.WriteLine("Launching Url..."); Process.Start("http://microsoft.com"); Console.Write("Press any key to continue..."); Console.ReadKey(); Console.WriteLine("\r\n\r\nLaunching image..."); Process.Start(Path.GetFullPath(@"..\..\sailbig.jpg")); Console.Write("Press any key to continue..."); Console.ReadKey(); } } } Compile this code. Then execute the code from Explorer (not from Visual Studio because that may change the permissions). If you simply run the EXE and you're not running as an administrator, you'll see the Web page pop up in the browser as well as the image loading. Now run the same thing with Run As Administrator: Now when you run it you get a nice error when Process.Start() is fired: The same happens if you are running with User Account Control off altogether - ie. you are running as a full admin account. Now if you comment out the URL in the code above and just fire the image display - that works just fine in any user mode. As does opening any other local file type or even starting a new EXE locally (ie. Process.Start("c:\windows\notepad.exe"). All that works, EXCEPT for URLs. The code above uses Process.Start() in .NET but the same happens in Win32 Applications that use the ShellExecute API. In some of my older Fox apps ShellExecute returns an error code of 31 - which is No Shell Association found. What's the Deal? It turns out the problem has to do with the way browsers are registering themselves on Windows. Internet Explorer - being a built-in application in Windows 8 - apparently does this correctly, but other browsers possibly don't or at least didn't at the time I installed them. So even Chrome, which continually updates itself, has a recent version that apparently has this registration issue fixed, I was unable to simply set IE as my default browser then use Chrome to 'Set as Default Browser'. It still didn't work. Neither did using the Set Program Associations dialog which lets you assign what extensions are mapped to by a given application. Each application provides a set of extension/moniker mappings that it supports and this dialog lets you associate them on a system wide basis. This also did not work for Chrome or any of the other browsers at first. However, after repeated retries here eventually I did manage to get FireFox to work, but not any of the others. What Works? Reinstall the Browser In the end I decided on the hard core pull the plug solution: Totally uninstall and re-install Chrome in this case. And lo and behold, after reinstall everything was working fine. Now even removing the association for Chrome, switching to IE as the default browser and then back to Chrome works. But, even though the version of Chrome I was running before uninstalling and reinstalling is the same as I'm running now after the reinstall now it works. Of course I had to find out the hard way, before Richard commented with a note regarding what the issue is with Chrome at least: http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=156400 As expected the issue is a registration issue - with keys not being registered at the machine level. Reading this I'm still not sure why this should be a problem - an elevated account still runs under the same user account (ie. I'm still rickstrahl even if I Run As Administrator), so why shouldn't an app be able to read my Current User registry hive? And also that doesn't quite explain why if I register the extensions using Run As Administrator in Chrome when using Set as Default Browser). But in the end it works… Not so fast It's now a couple of days later and still there are some oddball problems although this time they appear to be purely Chrome issues. After the reinstall Chrome seems to pop up properly with ShellExecute() calls both in regular user and Admin mode. However, it now looks like Chrome is actually running two completely separate user profiles for each. For example, when I run Visual Studio in Admin mode and go to View in browser, Chrome complains that it was installed in Admin mode and can't launch (WTF?). Then you retry a few times later and it ends up working. When launched that way some of the plug-ins installed don't show up with the effect that sometimes they're visible sometimes they're not. Also Chrome seems to loose my configuration and Google sign in between sessions now, presumably when switching user modes. Add-ins installed in admin mode don't show up in user mode and vice versa. Ah, this is lovely. Did I mention that I freaking hate UAC precisely because of this kind of bullshit. You can never tell exactly what account your app is running under, and apparently apps also have a hard time trying to put data into the right place that works for both scenarios. And as my recent post on using Windows Live accounts shows it's yet another level of abstraction ontop of the underlying system identity that can cause all sort of small side effect headaches like this. Hopefully, most of you are skirting this issue altogether - having installed more recent versions of your favorite browsers. If not, hopefully this post will take you straight to reinstallation to fix this annoying issue.© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2012Posted in Windows  .NET   Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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• Why Is Faulty Behaviour In The .NET Framework Not Fixed?

  - by Alois Kraus

  Here is the scenario: You have a Windows Form Application that calls a method via Invoke or BeginInvoke which throws exceptions. Now you want to find out where the error did occur and how the method has been called. Here is the output we do get when we call Begin/EndInvoke or simply Invoke The actual code that was executed was like this:         private void cInvoke_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)         {             InvokingFunction(CallMode.Invoke);         }            [MethodImpl(MethodImplOptions.NoInlining)]         void InvokingFunction(CallMode mode)         {             switch (mode)             {                 case CallMode.Invoke:                     this.Invoke(new MethodInvoker(GenerateError));   The faulting method is called GenerateError which does throw a NotImplementedException exception and wraps it in a NotSupportedException.           [MethodImpl(MethodImplOptions.NoInlining)]         void GenerateError()         {             F1();         }           private void F1()         {             try             {                 F2();             }             catch (Exception ex)             {                 throw new NotSupportedException("Outer Exception", ex);             }         }           private void F2()         {            throw new NotImplementedException("Inner Exception");         } It is clear that the method F2 and F1 did actually throw these exceptions but we do not see them in the call stack. If we directly call the InvokingFunction and catch and print the exception we can find out very easily how we did get into this situation. We see methods F1,F2,GenerateError and InvokingFunction directly in the stack trace and we see that actually two exceptions did occur. Here is for comparison what we get from Invoke/EndInvoke System.NotImplementedException: Inner Exception     StackTrace:    at System.Windows.Forms.Control.MarshaledInvoke(Control caller, Delegate method, Object[] args, Boolean synchronous)     at System.Windows.Forms.Control.Invoke(Delegate method, Object[] args)     at WindowsFormsApplication1.AppForm.InvokingFunction(CallMode mode)     at WindowsFormsApplication1.AppForm.cInvoke_Click(Object sender, EventArgs e)     at System.Windows.Forms.Control.OnClick(EventArgs e)     at System.Windows.Forms.Button.OnClick(EventArgs e) The exception message is kept but the stack starts running from our Invoke call and not from the faulting method F2. We have therefore no clue where this exception did occur! The stack starts running at the method MarshaledInvoke because the exception is rethrown with the throw catchedException which resets the stack trace. That is bad but things are even worse because if previously lets say 5 exceptions did occur .NET will return only the first (innermost) exception. That does mean that we do not only loose the original call stack but all other exceptions and all data contained therein as well. It is a pity that MS does know about this and simply closes this issue as not important. Programmers will play a lot more around with threads than before thanks to TPL, PLINQ that do come with .NET 4. Multithreading is hyped quit a lot in the press and everybody wants to use threads. But if the .NET Framework makes it nearly impossible to track down the easiest UI multithreading issue I have a problem with that. The problem has been reported but obviously not been solved. .NET 4 Beta 2 did not have changed that dreaded GetBaseException call in MarshaledInvoke to return only the innermost exception of the complete exception stack. It is really time to fix this. WPF on the other hand does the right thing and wraps the exceptions inside a TargetInvocationException which makes much more sense. But Not everybody uses WPF for its daily work and Windows forms applications will still be used for a long time. Below is the code to repro the issues shown and how the exceptions can be rendered in a meaningful way. The default Exception.ToString implementation generates a hard to interpret stack if several nested exceptions did occur. using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.ComponentModel; using System.Data; using System.Drawing; using System.Linq; using System.Text; using System.Windows.Forms; using System.Threading; using System.Globalization; using System.Runtime.CompilerServices;   namespace WindowsFormsApplication1 {     public partial class AppForm : Form     {         enum CallMode         {             Direct = 0,             BeginInvoke = 1,             Invoke = 2         };           public AppForm()         {             InitializeComponent();             Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentUICulture = CultureInfo.InvariantCulture;             Application.ThreadException += new System.Threading.ThreadExceptionEventHandler(Application_ThreadException);         }           void Application_ThreadException(object sender, System.Threading.ThreadExceptionEventArgs e)         {             cOutput.Text = PrintException(e.Exception, 0, null).ToString();         }           private void cDirectUnhandled_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)         {             InvokingFunction(CallMode.Direct);         }           private void cDirectCall_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)         {             try             {                 InvokingFunction(CallMode.Direct);             }             catch (Exception ex)             {                 cOutput.Text = PrintException(ex, 0, null).ToString();             }         }           private void cInvoke_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)         {             InvokingFunction(CallMode.Invoke);         }           private void cBeginInvokeCall_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)         {             InvokingFunction(CallMode.BeginInvoke);         }           [MethodImpl(MethodImplOptions.NoInlining)]         void InvokingFunction(CallMode mode)         {             switch (mode)             {                 case CallMode.Direct:                     GenerateError();                     break;                 case CallMode.Invoke:                     this.Invoke(new MethodInvoker(GenerateError));                     break;                 case CallMode.BeginInvoke:                     IAsyncResult res = this.BeginInvoke(new MethodInvoker(GenerateError));                     this.EndInvoke(res);                     break;             }         }           [MethodImpl(MethodImplOptions.NoInlining)]         void GenerateError()         {             F1();         }           private void F1()         {             try             {                 F2();             }             catch (Exception ex)             {                 throw new NotSupportedException("Outer Exception", ex);             }         }           private void F2()         {            throw new NotImplementedException("Inner Exception");         }           StringBuilder PrintException(Exception ex, int identLevel, StringBuilder sb)         {             StringBuilder builtStr = sb;             if( builtStr == null )                 builtStr = new StringBuilder();               if( ex == null )                 return builtStr;                 WriteLine(builtStr, String.Format("{0}: {1}", ex.GetType().FullName, ex.Message), identLevel);             WriteLine(builtStr, String.Format("StackTrace: {0}", ShortenStack(ex.StackTrace)), identLevel + 1);             builtStr.AppendLine();               return PrintException(ex.InnerException, ++identLevel, builtStr);         }               void WriteLine(StringBuilder sb, string msg, int identLevel)         {             foreach (string trimmedLine in SplitToLines(msg)                                            .Select( (line) => line.Trim()) )             {                 for (int i = 0; i < identLevel; i++)                     sb.Append('\t');                 sb.Append(trimmedLine);                 sb.AppendLine();             }         }           string ShortenStack(string stack)         {             int nonAppFrames = 0;             // Skip stack frames not part of our app but include two foreign frames and skip the rest             // If our stack frame is encountered reset counter to 0             return SplitToLines(stack)                               .Where((line) =>                               {                                   nonAppFrames = line.Contains("WindowsFormsApplication1") ? 0 : nonAppFrames + 1;                                   return nonAppFrames < 3;                               })                              .Select((line) => line)                              .Aggregate("", (current, line) => current + line + Environment.NewLine);         }           static char[] NewLines = Environment.NewLine.ToCharArray();         string[] SplitToLines(string str)         {             return str.Split(NewLines, StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries);         }     } }

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• Curing the Database-Application mismatch

  - by Phil Factor

  If an application requires access to a database, then you have to be able to deploy it so as to be version-compatible with the database, in phase. If you can deploy both together, then the application and database must normally be deployed at the same version in which they, together, passed integration and functional testing.  When a single database supports more than one application, then the problem gets more interesting. I’ll need to be more precise here. It is actually the application-interface definition of the database that needs to be in a compatible ‘version’.  Most databases that get into production have no separate application-interface; in other words they are ‘close-coupled’.  For this vast majority, the whole database is the application-interface, and applications are free to wander through the bowels of the database scot-free.  If you’ve spurned the perceived wisdom of application architects to have a defined application-interface within the database that is based on views and stored procedures, any version-mismatch will be as sensitive as a kitten.  A team that creates an application that makes direct access to base tables in a database will have to put a lot of energy into keeping Database and Application in sync, to say nothing of having to tackle issues such as security and audit. It is not the obvious route to development nirvana. I’ve been in countless tense meetings with application developers who initially bridle instinctively at the apparent restrictions of being ‘banned’ from the base tables or routines of a database.  There is no good technical reason for needing that sort of access that I’ve ever come across.  Everything that the application wants can be delivered via a set of views and procedures, and with far less pain for all concerned: This is the application-interface.  If more than zero developers are creating a database-driven application, then the project will benefit from the loose-coupling that an application interface brings. What is important here is that the database development role is separated from the application development role, even if it is the same developer performing both roles. The idea of an application-interface with a database is as old as I can remember. The big corporate or government databases generally supported several applications, and there was little option. When a new application wanted access to an existing corporate database, the developers, and myself as technical architect, would have to meet with hatchet-faced DBAs and production staff to work out an interface. Sure, they would talk up the effort involved for budgetary reasons, but it was routine work, because it decoupled the database from its supporting applications. We’d be given our own stored procedures. One of them, I still remember, had ninety-two parameters. All database access was encapsulated in one application-module. If you have a stable defined application-interface with the database (Yes, one for each application usually) you need to keep the external definitions of the components of this interface in version control, linked with the application source,  and carefully track and negotiate any changes between database developers and application developers.  Essentially, the application development team owns the interface definition, and the onus is on the Database developers to implement it and maintain it, in conformance.  Internally, the database can then make all sorts of changes and refactoring, as long as source control is maintained.  If the application interface passes all the comprehensive integration and functional tests for the particular version they were designed for, nothing is broken. Your performance-testing can ‘hang’ on the same interface, since databases are judged on the performance of the application, not an ‘internal’ database process. The database developers have responsibility for maintaining the application-interface, but not its definition,  as they refactor the database. This is easily tested on a daily basis since the tests are normally automated. In this setting, the deployment can proceed if the more stable application-interface, rather than the continuously-changing database, passes all tests for the version of the application. Normally, if all goes well, a database with a well-designed application interface can evolve gracefully without changing the external appearance of the interface, and this is confirmed by integration tests that check the interface, and which hopefully don’t need to be altered at all often.  If the application is rapidly changing its ‘domain model’  in the light of an increased understanding of the application domain, then it can change the interface definitions and the database developers need only implement the interface rather than refactor the underlying database.  The test team will also have to redo the functional and integration tests which are, of course ‘written to’ the definition.  The Database developers will find it easier if these tests are done before their re-wiring  job to implement the new interface. If, at the other extreme, an application receives no further development work but survives unchanged, the database can continue to change and develop to keep pace with the requirements of the other applications it supports, and needs only to take care that the application interface is never broken. Testing is easy since your automated scripts to test the interface do not need to change. The database developers will, of course, maintain their own source control for the database, and will be likely to maintain versions for all major releases. However, this will not need to be shared with the applications that the database servers. On the other hand, the definition of the application interfaces should be within the application source. Changes in it have to be subject to change-control procedures, as they will require a chain of tests. Once you allow, instead of an application-interface, an intimate relationship between application and database, we are in the realms of impedance mismatch, over and above the obvious security problems.  Part of this impedance problem is a difference in development practices. Whereas the application has to be regularly built and integrated, this isn’t necessarily the case with the database.  An RDBMS is inherently multi-user and self-integrating. If the developers work together on the database, then a subsequent integration of the database on a staging server doesn’t often bring nasty surprises. A separate database-integration process is only needed if the database is deliberately built in a way that mimics the application development process, but which hampers the normal database-development techniques.  This process is like demanding a official walking with a red flag in front of a motor car.  In order to closely coordinate databases with applications, entire databases have to be ‘versioned’, so that an application version can be matched with a database version to produce a working build without errors.  There is no natural process to ‘version’ databases.  Each development project will have to define a system for maintaining the version level. A curious paradox occurs in development when there is no formal application-interface. When the strains and cracks happen, the extra meetings, bureaucracy, and activity required to maintain accurate deployments looks to IT management like work. They see activity, and it looks good. Work means progress.  Management then smile on the design choices made. In IT, good design work doesn’t necessarily look good, and vice versa.

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• DBCC CHECKDB on VVLDB and latches (Or: My Pain is Your Gain)

  - by Argenis

    Does your CHECKDB hurt, Argenis? There is a classic blog series by Paul Randal [blog|twitter] called “CHECKDB From Every Angle” which is pretty much mandatory reading for anybody who’s even remotely considering going for the MCM certification, or its replacement (the Microsoft Certified Solutions Master: Data Platform – makes my fingers hurt just from typing it). Of particular interest is the post “Consistency Options for a VLDB” – on it, Paul provides solid, timeless advice (I use the word “timeless” because it was written in 2007, and it all applies today!) on how to perform checks on very large databases. Well, here I was trying to figure out how to make CHECKDB run faster on a restored copy of one of our databases, which happens to exceed 7TB in size. The whole thing was taking several days on multiple systems, regardless of the storage used – SAS, SATA or even SSD…and I actually didn’t pay much attention to how long it was taking, or even bothered to look at the reasons why - as long as it was finishing okay and found no consistency errors. Yes – I know. That was a huge mistake, as corruption found in a database several days after taking place could only allow for further spread of the corruption – and potentially large data loss. In the last two weeks I increased my attention towards this problem, as we noticed that CHECKDB was taking EVEN LONGER on brand new all-flash storage in the SAN! I couldn’t really explain it, and were almost ready to blame the storage vendor. The vendor told us that they could initially see the server driving decent I/O – around 450Mb/sec, and then it would settle at a very slow rate of 10Mb/sec or so. “Hum”, I thought – “CHECKDB is just not pushing the I/O subsystem hard enough”. Perfmon confirmed the vendor’s observations. Dreaded @BlobEater What was CHECKDB doing all the time while doing so little I/O? Eating Blobs. It turns out that CHECKDB was taking an extremely long time on one of our frankentables, which happens to be have 35 billion rows (yup, with a b) and sucks up several terabytes of space in the database. We do have a project ongoing to purge/split/partition this table, so it’s just a matter of time before we deal with it. But the reality today is that CHECKDB is coming to a screeching halt in performance when dealing with this particular table. Checking sys.dm_os_waiting_tasks and sys.dm_os_latch_stats showed that LATCH_EX (DBCC_OBJECT_METADATA) was by far the top wait type. I remembered hearing recently about that wait from another post that Paul Randal made, but that was related to computed-column indexes, and in fact, Paul himself reminded me of his article via twitter. But alas, our pathologic table had no non-clustered indexes on computed columns. I knew that latches are used by the database engine to do internal synchronization – but how could I help speed this up? After all, this is stuff that doesn’t have a lot of knobs to tweak. (There’s a fantastic level 500 talk by Bob Ward from Microsoft CSS [blog|twitter] called “Inside SQL Server Latches” given at PASS 2010 – and you can check it out here. DISCLAIMER: I assume no responsibility for any brain melting that might ensue from watching Bob’s talk!) Failed Hypotheses Earlier on this week I flew down to Palo Alto, CA, to visit our Headquarters – and after having a great time with my Monkey peers, I was relaxing on the plane back to Seattle watching a great talk by SQL Server MVP and fellow MCM Maciej Pilecki [twitter] called “Masterclass: A Day in the Life of a Database Transaction” where he discusses many different topics related to transaction management inside SQL Server. Very good stuff, and when I got home it was a little late – that slow DBCC CHECKDB that I had been dealing with was way in the back of my head. As I was looking at the problem at hand earlier on this week, I thought “How about I set the database to read-only?” I remembered one of the things Maciej had (jokingly) said in his talk: “if you don’t want locking and blocking, set the database to read-only” (or something to that effect, pardon my loose memory). I immediately killed the CHECKDB which had been running painfully for days, and set the database to read-only mode. Then I ran DBCC CHECKDB against it. It started going really fast (even a bit faster than before), and then throttled down again to around 10Mb/sec. All sorts of expletives went through my head at the time. Sure enough, the same latching scenario was present. Oh well. I even spent some time trying to figure out if NUMA was hurting performance. Folks on Twitter made suggestions in this regard (thanks, Lonny! [twitter]) …Eureka? This past Friday I was still scratching my head about the whole thing; I was ready to start profiling with XPERF to see if I could figure out which part of the engine was to blame and then get Microsoft to look at the evidence. After getting a bunch of good news I’ll blog about separately, I sat down for a figurative smack down with CHECKDB before the weekend. And then the light bulb went on. A sparse column. I thought that I couldn’t possibly be experiencing the same scenario that Paul blogged about back in March showing extreme latching with non-clustered indexes on computed columns. Did I even have a non-clustered index on my sparse column? As it turns out, I did. I had one filtered non-clustered index – with the sparse column as the index key (and only column). To prove that this was the problem, I went and setup a test. Yup, that'll do it The repro is very simple for this issue: I tested it on the latest public builds of SQL Server 2008 R2 SP2 (CU6) and SQL Server 2012 SP1 (CU4). First, create a test database and a test table, which only needs to contain a sparse column: CREATE DATABASE SparseColTest; GO USE SparseColTest; GO CREATE TABLE testTable (testCol smalldatetime SPARSE NULL); GO INSERT INTO testTable (testCol) VALUES (NULL); GO 1000000 That’s 1 million rows, and even though you’re inserting NULLs, that’s going to take a while. In my laptop, it took 3 minutes and 31 seconds. Next, we run DBCC CHECKDB against the database: DBCC CHECKDB('SparseColTest') WITH NO_INFOMSGS, ALL_ERRORMSGS; This runs extremely fast, as least on my test rig – 198 milliseconds. Now let’s create a filtered non-clustered index on the sparse column: CREATE NONCLUSTERED INDEX [badBadIndex] ON testTable (testCol) WHERE testCol IS NOT NULL; With the index in place now, let’s run DBCC CHECKDB one more time: DBCC CHECKDB('SparseColTest') WITH NO_INFOMSGS, ALL_ERRORMSGS; In my test system this statement completed in 11433 milliseconds. 11.43 full seconds. Quite the jump from 198 milliseconds. I went ahead and dropped the filtered non-clustered indexes on the restored copy of our production database, and ran CHECKDB against that. We went down from 7+ days to 19 hours and 20 minutes. Cue the “Argenis is not impressed” meme, please, Mr. LaRock. My pain is your gain, folks. Go check to see if you have any of such indexes – they’re likely causing your consistency checks to run very, very slow. Happy CHECKDBing, -Argenis ps: I plan to file a Connect item for this issue – I consider it a pretty serious bug in the engine. After all, filtered indexes were invented BECAUSE of the sparse column feature – and it makes a lot of sense to use them together. Watch this space and my twitter timeline for a link.

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• Google Analytics on Android

  - by pjv

  There is a specific and official analytics SDK for native Android apps (note that I'm not talking about webpages in apps on a phone). This library basically sends pages and events to Google Analytics and you can view your analytics in exactly the same dashboard as for websites. Since my background is apps rather than websites, and since a lot of the Google Analytics terminology seems particularly inapplicable to a native app, I need some pointers. Please discuss my remarks, provide some clarification where you think I'm off-track, and above all share good experiences! 1. Page Views Pages mostly can match different Activities (and Dialogs) being displayed. Activities can be visible behind non-full-screen Activities however, though only the top-level Activity can be interacted. This sort-off clashes with a "(page) view". You'd also want at least one page view for each visit and therefore put one page view tracker in the Application class. However this does not constitute a window or sorts. Usually an Activity will open at the same time, so the time spent on that page will have been 0. This will influence your "time spent" statistics. How are these counted anyway? Moreover, there is a loose coupling between the Activities, by means of Intents. A user can, much like on any website, step in at any Activity, although usually this then concerns resuming the application where he left off. This makes that the hierarchy of Activities usually is very flat. And since there are no url's involved. What meaning would using slashes in page titles have, such as "/Home"? All pages would appear on an equal level in the reports, so no content drilldown. Non-unique page views seem to be counted as some kind of indicator of successfulness: how often does the visitor revisit the page. When the user rotates the screen however usually an Activity resumes again, thus making it a new page view. This happens a lot. Maybe a well-thought-through placement of the call might solve this, or placing several, I'm not sure. How to deal with Page Views? 2. Events I'd say there are two sorts: A user event Something that happened, usually as an indirect consequence of the above. The latter particularly is giving me headaches. First of all, many events aren't written in code any more, but pieced logically together by means of Intents. This means that there is no place to put the analytics call. You'd either have to give up this advantage and start doing it the old-fashioned way in favor of good analytics, or, just be missing some events. Secondly, as a developer you're not so much interested in when a user clicks a button, but if the action that should have been performed really was performed and what the result was. There seems to be no clear way to get resulting data into Google Analytics (what's up with the integers? I want to put in Strings!). The same that applies to the flat pages hierarchy, also goes for the event categories. You could do "vertical" categories (topically, that is), but some code is shared "horizontally" and the tracking will be equally shared. Just as with the Intents mechanism, inheritance makes it hard for you to put the tracking in the right places at all times. And I can't really imagine "horizontal" categories. Unless you start making really small categories, such as all the items form the same menu in one category, I have a hard time grasping the concept. Finally, how do you deal with cancelling? Usually you both have an explicit cancel mechanism by ways of a button, as well as the implicit cancel when the "back"-button is pressed to leave the activity and there were no changes. The latter also applies to "saves", when the back button is pressed and there ARE changes. How are you consequently going to catch all these if not by doing all the "back"-button work yourself? How to deal with events? 3. Goals For goal types I have choice of: URL Destination, Time on Site, and Pages/Visit. Most apps don't have a funnel that leads the user to some "registration done" or "order placed" page. Apps have either already been bought (in which case you want to stimulate the user to love your app, so that he might bring on new buyers) or are paid for by in-app ads. So URL Destination is not a very important goal. Time on Site also seems troublesome. First, I have some doubt on how this would be measured. Second, I don't necessarily want my user to spend a lot of time in my already paid app, just be active and content. Equivalently, why not mention how frequent a user uses your app? Regarding Pages/Visit I already mentioned how screen orientation changes blow up the page view numbers. In an app I'd be most interested in events/visit to measure the user's involvement/activity. If he's intensively using the app then he must be loving it right? Furthermore, I also have some small funnels (that do not lead to conversion though) that I want to see streamlined. In my mind those funnels would end in events rather than page views but that seems not to be possible. I could also measure clickthroughs on in-app ads, but then I'd need to track those as Page Views rather than Events, in view of "URL Destination". What are smart goals for apps and how can you fit them on top of Analytics? 4. Optimisation Is there a smart way to manually do what "Website Optimiser" does for websites? Most importantly, how would I track different landing page designs? 5. Traffic Sources Referrals deal with installation time referrals, if you're smart enough to get them included. But perhaps I'd also want to get some data which third-party app sends users to my app to perform some actions (this app interoperability is possible via Intents). Many of the terminologies related to "Traffic Sources" seem totally meaningless and there is no possibility of connecting in AdSense. What are smart uses of this data? 6. Visitors Of the "Browser capabilities", "Network Properties" and "Mobile" tabs, many things are pointless as they have no influence on / relation with my mostly offline app that won't use flash anyway. Only if you drill down far enough, can you get to OS versions, which do matter a lot. I even forgot where you could check what exact Android devices visited. What are smart uses of this data? How can you make the relevant info more prominent? 7. Other No in-page analytics. I have to register my app as a web-url (What!?)?

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, September 29, 2013

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, September 29, 2013Popular ReleasesAudioWordsDownloader: AudioWordsDownloader 1.1 build 88: New features -------- list of words (mp3 files) is available upon typing when a download path is defined list of download paths is added paths history settings added Bug fixed ----- case mismatch in word search field fixed path not exist bug fixed when history has been used path, when filled from dialog, not stored refresh autocomplete list after path change word sought is deleted when path is changed at the end sought word list is deleted word list not refreshed download end...Activity Viewer 2012: Activity Viewer 2012 V 5.0.0.3: Planning to add new features: 1. Import/Export rules 2. Tabular mode multi servers connections.Tweetinvi a friendly Twitter C# API: Alpha 0.8.3.0: Version 0.8.3.0 emphasis on the FIlteredStream and ease how to manage Exceptions that can occur due to the network or any other issue you might encounter. Will be available through nuget the 29/09/2013. FilteredStream Features provided by the Twitter Stream API - Ability to track specific keywords - Ability to track specific users - Ability to track specific locations Additional features - Detect the reasons the tweet has been retrieved from the Filtered API. You have access to both the ma...AcDown?????: AcDown????? v4.5: ??●AcDown??????????、??、??、???????。????，????，?????????????????????????。???????????Acfun、????(Bilibili)、??、??、YouTube、??、???、??????、SF????、????????????。 ●??????AcPlay?????，??????、????????????????。 ● AcDown???????C#??，????.NET Framework 2.0??。?????"Acfun?????"。 ??v4.5 ???? AcPlay????????v3.5 ????????，???????????30% ?? ???????GoodManga.net???? ?? ?????????? ?? ??Acfun?????????? ??Bilibili??????????? ?????????flvcd???????? ??SfAcg????????????? ???????????? ???????????????? ????32...OfflineBrowser: Release v1.2: This release includes some multi-threading support, a better progress bar, more JavaScript fixes, and a help system. This release is also portable (can run with no issues from a flash drive).CtrlAltStudio Viewer: CtrlAltStudio Viewer 1.0.0.34288 Release: This release of the CtrlAltStudio Viewer includes the following significant features: Stereoscopic 3D display support. Based on Firestorm viewer 4.4.2 codebase. For more details, see the release notes linked to below. Release notes: http://ctrlaltstudio.com/viewer/release-notes/1-0-0-34288-release Support info: http://ctrlaltstudio.com/viewer/support Privacy policy: http://ctrlaltstudio.com/viewer/privacy Disclaimer: This software is not provided or supported by Linden Lab, the makers of ...CrmSvcUtil Generate Attribute Constants: Generate Attribute Constants (1.0.5018.28159): Built against version 5.0.15 of the CRM SDK Fixed issue where constant for primary key attribute was being duplicated in all entity classes Added ability to override base class for entity classesC# Intellisense for Notepad++: Release v1.0.6.0: Added support for classless scripts To avoid the DLLs getting locked by OS use MSI file for the installation.CS-Script for Notepad++: Release v1.0.6.0: Added support for classless scripts To avoid the DLLs getting locked by OS use MSI file for the installation.SimpleExcelReportMaker: Serm 0.02: SourceCode and SampleMagick.NET: Magick.NET 6.8.7.001: Magick.NET linked with ImageMagick 6.8.7.0. Breaking changes: - ToBitmap method of MagickImage returns a png instead of a bmp. - Changed the value for full transparency from 255(Q8)/65535(Q16) to 0. - MagickColor now uses floats instead of Byte/UInt16.Media Companion: Media Companion MC3.578b: With the feedback received over the renaming of Movie Folders, and files, there has been some refinement done. As well as I would like to introduce Blu-Ray movie folder support, for Pre-Frodo and Frodo onwards versions of XBMC. To start with, Context menu option for renaming movies, now has three sub options: Movie & Folder, Movie only & Folder only. The option Manual Movie Rename needs to be selected from Movie Preferences, but the autoscrape boxes do not need to be selected. Blu Ray Fo...WDTVHubGen - Adds Metadata, thumbnails and subtitles to WDTV Live Hubs: WDTVHubGen v2.1.3.api release: This is for the brave at heart, this is the maint release to update to the new movie api. please send feedback on fix requests.FFXIV Crafting Simulator: Crafting Simulator 2.3: - Major refactoring of the code behind. - Added a current durability and a current CP textbox.DNN CMS Platform: 07.01.02: Major HighlightsAdded the ability to manage the Vanity URL prefix Added the ability to filter members in the member directory by role Fixed issue where the user could inadvertently click the login button multiple times Fixed issues where core classes could not be used in out of process cache provider Fixed issue where profile visibility submenu was not displayed correctly Fixed issue where the member directory was broken when Convert URL to lowercase setting was enabled Fixed issu...Rawr: Rawr 5.4.1: This is the Downloadable WPF version of Rawr!For web-based version see http://elitistjerks.com/rawr.php You can find the version notes at: http://rawr.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=VersionNotes Rawr Addon (NOT UPDATED YET FOR MOP)We now have a Rawr Official Addon for in-game exporting and importing of character data hosted on Curse. The Addon does not perform calculations like Rawr, it simply shows your exported Rawr data in wow tooltips and lets you export your character to Rawr (including ba...Sample MVC4 EF Codefirst Architecture: RazMVCWebApp ver 1.1: Signal R sample is added.CODE Framework: 4.0.30923.0: See change notes in the documentation section for details on what's new. Note: If you download the class reference help file with, you have to right-click the file, pick "Properties", and then unblock the file, as many browsers flag the file as blocked during download (for security reasons) and thus hides all content.JayData -The unified data access library for JavaScript: JayData 1.3.2 - Indian Summer Edition: JayData is a unified data access library for JavaScript to CRUD + Query data from different sources like WebAPI, OData, MongoDB, WebSQL, SQLite, HTML5 localStorage, Facebook or YQL. The library can be integrated with KendoUI, Angular.js, Knockout.js or Sencha Touch 2 and can be used on Node.js as well. See it in action in this 6 minutes video KendoUI examples: JayData example site Examples for map integration JayData example site What's new in JayData 1.3.2 - Indian Summer Edition For detai...ZXing.Net: ZXing.Net 0.12.0.0: sync with rev. 2892 of the java version new PDF417 decoder improved Aztec decoder global speed improvements direct Kinect support for ColorImageFrame better Structured Append support many other small bug fixes and improvementsNew ProjectsCACHEDB: CLIENT-DATABASE || CLIENT_CACHEDB-DATABASEClassic WiX Burn Theme: A WiX Burn theme inspired by the classic WiX wizard user interface.CryptStr.Fody: A post-build weaver that encrypts literal strings in your .NET assemblies without breaking ClickOnce.Easy Code: A setting framework.EduSoft: This is a school eg.GameStuff: GameStuff is a library of Physics and Geometrics concepts for video game. Nekora Test Project: Nekora test projectPopCorn Console Game: Simple console gameRadioController: This project started from people installing Tablets in Mustangs. You would typically loose most control of the radio. This projects brings that back!Random searcher i pochodne: Wyszukiwarka plików multimedialnych i czego dusza zapragnie.SporkRandom: A .NET (C#, Visual Basic) interface for the true random number generator service of random.org

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• Query total page count via SNMP HP Laserjet

  - by Tim

  I was asked to get hold of the total pages counts for the 100+ printers we have at work. All of them are HP Laser or Business Jets of some description and the vast majority are connected via some form of HP JetDirect network card/switch. After many hours of typing in IP addresses and copying and pasting the relevant figure in to Excel I have now been asked to do this on a weekly basis. This led me to think there must be an easier way, as an IT professional I can surely work out some time saving method to solve this issue. Suffice it to say I do not feel very professional now after a day or so of trying to make SNMP work for me! From what I understand the first thing is to enable SNMP on the printer. Done. Next I would need something to query the SNMP bit. I decided to go open source and free and someone here recommended net-snmp as a decent tool (I would like to have just added the printers as nodes in SolarWinds but we are somewhat tight on licences apparently). Next I need the name of the MIB. For this I believe the HP-LASERJET-COMMON-MIB has the correct information in it. Downloaded this and added to net-snmp. Now I need the OID which I believe after much scouring is printed-media-simplex-count (we have no duplex printers, that we are interested in at least). Running the following command yields the following demoralising output: snmpget -v 2c -c public 10.168.5.1 HP-LASERJET-COMMON-MIB:.1.3.6.1.2.1.1.16.1.1.1 (the OID was derived from running: snmptranslate -IR -On printed-media-simplex-count Unlinked OID in HP-LASERJET-COMMON-MIB: hp ::= { enterprises 11 } Undefined identifier: enterprises near line 3 of C:/usr/share/snmp/mibs/HP-LASER JET-COMMON-MIB..txt .1.3.6.1.2.1.1.16.1.1.1 ) Unlinked OID in HP-LASERJET-COMMON-MIB: hp ::= { enterprises 11 } Undefined identifier: enterprises near line 3 of C:/usr/share/snmp/mibs/HP-LASER JET-COMMON-MIB..txt HP-LASERJET-COMMON-MIB:.1.3.6.1.2.1.1.16.1.1.1: Am I barking up the wrong tree completely with this? My aim was to script it all to output to a file for all the IP addresses of the printers and then plonk that in Excel for my lords and masters to digest at their leisure. I have a feeling I am using either the wrong MIB or the wrong OID from said MIB (or both). Does anyone have any pointers on this for me? Or should I give up and go back to navigationg each printers web page individually (hoping not).

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• Windows 7 extremely slow login, exchange performance, printer enumeration, etc...

  - by Jeff

  Background: I have a fresh copy of Windows 7 Professional x64 on a Dell Latitude E6500. The laptop has 8GB RAM, 250GB drive, and all Intel peripherals (net/wifi/graphics). All available Windows updates, as well as hardware drivers are installed. The IT folks where I work joined the computer to our Windows 2003-based Active Directory domain. There are no errors in any logs that we've looked at, and Group Policy templates appear to have applied properly. Problem: Every time I turn on or reboot the computer, it takes between 2 to 10 (all times are actual) minutes after successfully typing my username/password to get to my desktop. My login script does not always run. Sometimes I get a black screen, and a couple of minutes later the login script will pop up and take up to 10 minutes to complete. I can get around this by hitting cntrl-shift-esc and running explorer.exe from the Task Manager. The login script continues to hang, but I can minimize it and go on about my business. Either way, it generally throws errors prior to completing. I often get slow or failed connectivity to Exchange via Outlook. When I bring up printer dialogs, they take several minutes to populate, and block the calling app while doing so. Copies to SMB shares are very slow. On my home network, everything works fine. On both the work network and home network, I can use remote internet resources just fine. Web pages pull up, remote VPN's are fine, I can max out bandwidth on SpeakEasy Speed Test. I can get almost max bandwidth transferring FTP/HTTP over a LAN. Another symptom of the problem is that when I first log in, the work network shows as "Identifying" for a long time in the Network and Sharing Center, and will often then change to the name of the work domain, but say "Unauthenticated Network". Note that this computer previously ran Windows Vista with none of these problems. Attempts to Fix: Installed the Win7 admin pack Uninstalled/reinstalled all hardware drivers Verified Active Directory DNS settings (Vista works relatively well on the same network) Reset all TCP/IP settings on all adapters using the netsh commands to do so Disabled ipv6 on all adapters Disable wifi adapter while on work network Locked the network card to 100/Full, 1000/Full; also tried Auto Added various important addresses to hosts file (exchange, dns, ad) -- removed when didn't help My background is a jpeg (sounds unrelated but there is apparently a win7 login bug related to solid color background) More I have forgotten The IT staff at my company indicated they believe this is due to having Windows 2003 AD servers and not having any Windows 2008 R2 AD servers. Other than that, they have no advice or assistance to offer other than a rebuild (already tried that once with similar symptoms), or downgrade to Vista. Any thoughts out there?

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• Allow anonymous upload for Vsftpd?

  - by user15318

  I need a basic FTP server on Linux (CentOS 5.5) without any security measure, since the server and the clients are located on a test LAN, not connected to the rest of the network, which itself uses non-routable IP's behind a NAT firewall with no incoming access to FTP. Some people recommend Vsftpd over PureFTPd or ProFTPd. No matter what I try, I can't get it to allow an anonymous user (ie. logging as "ftp" or "anonymous" and typing any string as password) to upload a file: # yum install vsftpd # mkdir /var/ftp/pub/upload # cat vsftpd.conf listen=YES anonymous_enable=YES local_enable=YES write_enable=YES xferlog_file=YES #anonymous users are restricted (chrooted) to anon_root #directory was created by root, hence owned by root.root anon_root=/var/ftp/pub/incoming anon_upload_enable=YES anon_mkdir_write_enable=YES #chroot_local_user=NO #chroot_list_enable=YES #chroot_list_file=/etc/vsftpd.chroot_list chown_uploads=YES When I log on from a client, here's what I get: 500 OOPS: cannot change directory:/var/ftp/pub/incoming I also tried "# chmod 777 /var/ftp/incoming/", but get the same error. Does someone know how to configure Vsftpd with minimum security? Thank you. Edit: SELinux is disabled and here are the file permissions: # cat /etc/sysconfig/selinux SELINUX=disabled SELINUXTYPE=targeted SETLOCALDEFS=0 # sestatus SELinux status: disabled # getenforce Disabled # grep ftp /etc/passwd ftp:x:14:50:FTP User:/var/ftp:/sbin/nologin # ll /var/ drwxr-xr-x 4 root root 4096 Mar 14 10:53 ftp # ll /var/ftp/ drwxrwxrwx 2 ftp ftp 4096 Mar 14 10:53 incoming drwxr-xr-x 3 ftp ftp 4096 Mar 14 11:29 pub Edit: latest vsftpd.conf: listen=YES local_enable=YES write_enable=YES xferlog_file=YES #anonymous users are restricted (chrooted) to anon_root anonymous_enable=YES anon_root=/var/ftp/pub/incoming anon_upload_enable=YES anon_mkdir_write_enable=YES #500 OOPS: bad bool value in config file for: chown_uploads chown_uploads=YES chown_username=ftp Edit: with trailing space removed from "chown_uploads", err 500 is solved, but anonymous still doesn't work: client> ./ftp server Connected to server. 220 (vsFTPd 2.0.5) Name (server:root): ftp 331 Please specify the password. Password: 500 OOPS: cannot change directory:/var/ftp/pub/incoming Login failed. ftp> bye With user "ftp" listed in /etc/passwd with home directory set to "/var/ftp" and access rights to /var/ftp set to "drwxr-xr-x" and /var/ftp/incoming to "drwxrwxrwx"...could it be due to PAM maybe? I don't find any FTP log file in /var/log to investigate. Edit: Here's a working configuration to let ftp/anonymous connect and upload files to /var/ftp: listen=YES anonymous_enable=YES write_enable=YES anon_upload_enable=YES anon_mkdir_write_enable=YES

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• How to change mouse pointer icon in Xfce Debian 7 Wheezy?

  - by kadaj

  I copied the cursor theme (oxy-neon or Oxygen Neon) to /usr/share/icons and from Applications Menu - Settings - Mouse, I am able to see the new theme. I clicked on it and the pointer doesn't change. However the text typing icon ('I'), busy icon, hand icon, and resize window icons got changed. The pointer icon remains the same, the black Adwaita. I removed the Adwaita folder from the icons folder, and still the mouse pointer doesn't change. Is the pointer theme specified elsewhere? I have no setting under home directory. I tried logging out, restart, restarting xfwm4, but nothing works. I just found that the icon pointer changes when the pointer is inside Firefox, but it's not consistent. It keeps changing when I click menu items. Very weird. Any idea how to fix this? This is the output of running: gsettings list-recursively org.gnome.desktop.interface : ~$ gsettings list-recursively org.gnome.desktop.interface org.gnome.desktop.interface automatic-mnemonics true org.gnome.desktop.interface buttons-have-icons false org.gnome.desktop.interface can-change-accels false org.gnome.desktop.interface clock-format '24h' org.gnome.desktop.interface clock-show-date false org.gnome.desktop.interface clock-show-seconds false org.gnome.desktop.interface cursor-blink true org.gnome.desktop.interface cursor-blink-time 1200 org.gnome.desktop.interface cursor-blink-timeout 10 org.gnome.desktop.interface cursor-size 24 org.gnome.desktop.interface cursor-theme 'Adwaita' org.gnome.desktop.interface document-font-name 'Sans 11' org.gnome.desktop.interface enable-animations true org.gnome.desktop.interface font-name 'Cantarell 11' org.gnome.desktop.interface gtk-color-palette 'black:white:gray50:red:purple:blue:light blue:green:yellow:orange:lavender:brown:goldenrod4:dodger blue:pink:light green:gray10:gray30:gray75:gray90' org.gnome.desktop.interface gtk-color-scheme '' org.gnome.desktop.interface gtk-im-module '' org.gnome.desktop.interface gtk-im-preedit-style 'callback' org.gnome.desktop.interface gtk-im-status-style 'callback' org.gnome.desktop.interface gtk-key-theme 'Default' org.gnome.desktop.interface gtk-theme 'Adwaita' org.gnome.desktop.interface gtk-timeout-initial 200 org.gnome.desktop.interface gtk-timeout-repeat 20 org.gnome.desktop.interface icon-theme 'gnome' org.gnome.desktop.interface menubar-accel 'F10' org.gnome.desktop.interface menubar-detachable false org.gnome.desktop.interface menus-have-icons false org.gnome.desktop.interface menus-have-tearoff false org.gnome.desktop.interface monospace-font-name 'Monospace 11' org.gnome.desktop.interface show-input-method-menu true org.gnome.desktop.interface show-unicode-menu true org.gnome.desktop.interface text-scaling-factor 1.0 org.gnome.desktop.interface toolbar-detachable false org.gnome.desktop.interface toolbar-icons-size 'large' org.gnome.desktop.interface toolbar-style 'both-horiz' org.gnome.desktop.interface toolkit-accessibility false ~$

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• Port forwarding problem

  - by Steve

  I have a modem connecting to ADSL2 network and a router connecting to the modem. The rest of the machines all connect to the router. The modem has IP as 192.168.1.1 and the router's IP is 192.168.0.1. From the modem configuration, I can see that the modem thinks the router's IP is 192.168.1.2. I can visit the router by either using 192.168.0.1 or 192.168.1.2. Now I forward a port from the router to a private machine. It works. I can test it by typing 192.168.1.2 and it is redirected to the private machine. But if I use 192.168.0.1, it is still the router's configuration page. I also do a port forwarding on my modem. Since the modem sees only the router, I can only forward the port to the router's specific port. And I am thinking that by doing this, I can reach the private machine after two times port forwarding, once on the modem and once on the router. I also have a static public IP. I want to achieve the goal that when someone types the public IP, he will be redirected to the private machine. But when I use some online port forwarding tester, the result always says that the port is closed on the public IP. I have the questions: Why my router has two IPs? Why using one IP I can see the port forwarding result while using the other I cannot? I think the port forwarding only works when visiting from outside, rather than from both outside and inside. Otherwise, if I set port forwarding on my router/modem on port 80, I will never be able to see its original configuration page again. Everything is forwarded. Am I right? How can I achieve my goal described above? By achieve this, I will have a dedicated server of my own and the users can visit from the public IP. Anyone can correct me on any mistakes I made? I am using Netconn modem and D-Link DIR-300 router. Thank you very much for any help. Edit: Consider I have correctly setup the whole thing. Now I want to test my website by using public IP to visit it, but the port forwarding doesn't work. Does it consider that I am inside the local network and not using the port forwarding? If so, how can I do it? I ask my friends (outside my local network) to have a try and they can see the website. What should I do so that from the inside, I can do the testing? Thank you very much.

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• SQL Server 2008 R2 upgrade fails on upgrade rule check

  - by Tim

  I'm trying to upgrade an evaluation instance of SQL Server 2008 to a fully licensed instance of SQL Server 2008 R2. I made it most of the way through the installer, but I'm getting stopped at the Upgrade Rules page - the SQL Server Analysis Services Upgrade Service Functional Check is failing. The specific error I get: Rule "SQL Server Analysis Services Upgrade Service Functional Check" failed. The current instance of the SQL Server Analysis Services service cannot be upgraded because the Analysis Services service is disabled or not online. Please start the service and then run the upgrade rules check again. Simple enough - just need to start the service. Here's where it gets troublesome. When I open Services and go to start the SQL Server Analysis Services (MSSQLSERVER) service, it provides me the following message: The SQL Server Analysis Services (MSSQLSERVER) service on Local Computer started and then stopped. Some services stop automatically if they are not in use by other services or programs. Trying from the command line as Administrator yields: PS C:\Windows\System32 net start MSSQLServerOLAPService The SQL Server Analysis Services (MSSQLSERVER) service is starting... The SQL Server Analysis Services (MSSQLSERVER) service could not be started. The service did not report an error. More help is available by typing NET HELPMSG 3534. I've tried changing the logon setting of this service to Administrator, a user with admin privileges, and both the Local System and Network Service accounts - nothing works. In addition, when I look at the service through the SQL Server Configuration Manager (also run as Administrator), attempting to change the logon setting for the service results in the message: The server threw an exception. [0x80010105] I have no need for analysis services themselves - all I need is for this one service to be running long enough to do the R2 upgrade, then it can shut down again. Any thoughts on how to get the Analysis Services service running? Update: Checking the event log, I found an error logged to the Application log from the MSSQLServerOLAPService. It has event ID 0, task category (289), and says: The service cannot be started: XML parsing failed at line 1, column 4: Unrecognized input signature.

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• KeePass justification

  - by Jeff Walker

  I work at a place that tries to take security seriously, but sadly, they often fail. Currently, one of the major ways they fail is password management. I personally have about 20 accounts (my personal user id on lots of machines). For shared "system" accounts, there are about 45 per environment; development, test, and production. I have access to 2 of those, so my personal total is somewhere around 115 accounts. Passwords have to be at least 15 characters with some extensive but standard complexity constraints, and have to be changed every 60 days or so (system accounts every year). They also should not be the same for different accounts, but that isn't enforced. Think DoD-type standards. There is no way to remember and keep up with this. It just isn't humanly possible, as far as I'm concerned. This might be a good justification of a centralized account management system, a la LDAP or ActiveDirectory, but that is a totally different battle. Currently the solution is an Excel spreadsheet. They use Excel to put a password on it, and then most people make a copy and remove the password. This makes my stomach turn. I use KeePass for this problem and it manages all of my account very well. I like the features like auto-typing, grouping, plugins, password generation, etc. It uses AES-256 encryption via the .Net framework, and while not FIPS compliant, it has a very good reputation. The only problem is that they are also very careful about using randomly downloaded software. So we have to justify every piece of software on our workstations. I have been told that they really don't want me to use this, be cause of the "sensitive nature" of storing passwords. sigh My justification has to be "VERY VERY strong". I have been tasked with writing a justification for KeePass, but as I am lazy, I would like any input that I can get from the community. What do you recommend? Is there something out there that is better or more respected than KeePass? Is there any security experts saying interesting things on this topic? Anything will help at this point. Thanks.

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• PDF has garbled text when copy pasting

  - by ngm

  I'm trying to copy and paste text from a PDF file. However, whenever I paste the original text it is a huge mess of garbled characters. The text looks like the following (this is just one small extract): 4$/)5=$13! ,4&1*%-! )5'$! 1$2$)&,$40! 65))! .*5)1! -#$! )/'8*/8$03! (4/+$6&4;0!/'1!-&&)0!*0$1!.9!/,,)5%/-5&'!1$2$)&,$403!5'!+*%#!-#$! 0/+$!6/9! -#/-! &,$4/-5'8! 090-$+! 1$2$)&,$40! .*5)1!1$25%$! 1452$40! /'1! &-#$4! 090-$+! 0&(-6/4$! %&+,&'$'-0! *0$1! .9! /,,)5%/-5&'! 1$2$)&,$40!-&1/97!"#$!+5M!&(!,4&1*%-!)5'$!/'1!,4&1*%-!1$2$)&,$40! 65))! .$!+*%#!+&4$! $2$')9! ./)/'%$13! #&6$2$43! -#/'! -#$!+5M! &(! &,$4/-5'8!090-$+!/'1!/,,)5%/-5&'!1$2$)&,$40!-&1/97! )*+*+, C<88,?>8513AG<5A14, I've tried it in both Adobe and Foxit PDF readers. I did a 'Save as text' in Adobe Reader and the resultant text file is the same garbled text. Any ideas how I can get this text out non-garbled? (Other than manual typing... there's a lot of text to extract.)

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• Troubleshooting major performance issue: Is culprit Intel RST, Hard drive, or something else?

  - by Sean Killeen

  The Setup I have the following components that come into play in this situation: ASUS P8Z68 V/PRO motherboard a RAID1 configuration (1x 1TB drive, 1 x 2TB drive -- I explain below), accelerated with an SSD using Intel's RST software, and 1 TB drive standing by as a spare. Core i7 2600k 32 GB RAM Windows 8.1 This box was designed to be beast, and until just recently, was very good at being just that. What's Happening The system has slowed to a crawl whenever it touches the disk. Things appear to work at normal speed when dealing with memory. For example, typing this is fine, but saving it to disk from notepad gave me a 5-7 second pause when clicking save. The disks appear to be at 100% all the time (e.g. the light on the disk access on the PC is solidly on -- not even any flashing) In ProcExp it appears that the disk is barely being utilized at all: Intel RST reports that everything is fine: Other Details Prior to this happening, RST had reported that my drives were failing (one went bad, one was throwing SMART events). This made sense; they were at the tail end of their warranty and the PC is on almost all the time. I RMA'd the drives via Seagate. In the meantime, I'd purchased a 2TB drive because I didn't realize that the 1TB drives were under warranty. I figured I'd replace the other 1 TB drive with another 2 TB when it died but then discovered the warranty. AFAIK, I haven't done any major updates since 8.1 and it worked fine after those. Question(s) How can I troubleshoot this? What is the best way to try to figure out why disks are being maxed out despite the OS reporting barely any disk usage and that everything is OK? Given the failures, etc. that I describe above, is it possible that the problem could be the I/O on the motherboard itself? If so, how would I even be able to diagnose it? I'm betting the drives that Seagate gave me are refurbished (didn't think to look; that's dumb). Is it possible that the same model drive, refurbished, could somehow cause this? In terms of how RAID1 works, is it possible that one drive is "falling behind" somehow, and that the RAID1 is constantly trying to fix the mirroring? If so, this seems like Intel RST would report on it, but I wanted to consider it as an option.

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• web services access not being reached thru the web browser

  - by Tony

  I am trying to reference my .asmx webservices in .NET but my server is not exposed to the internet. When I put on the following address I get the message mentioned below. What's the reason for not being able to see the directory? Am I missing something in my IIS configuraction? Am I missing anything in my permissions? Just as reference I have other folders with webservices and I have the same issue. When I login to the server I am doing it with my windows user and password (I am using windows authentication). It's necessary to mention that when I put the URL I am getting a popup screen to put in my userid and password but it seems that's not able to validate since keeps asking me a couple of times. Let me know if you need more information to address this issue . http://appsvr02/Inetpub/wwwroot/DevWebApi/ Internet Explorer cannot display the webpage What you can try: It appears you are connected to the Internet, but you might want to try to reconnect to the Internet. Retype the address. Go back to the previous page. Most likely causes: •You are not connected to the Internet. •The website is encountering problems. •There might be a typing error in the address. More information This problem can be caused by a variety of issues, including: •Internet connectivity has been lost. •The website is temporarily unavailable. •The Domain Name Server (DNS) is not reachable. •The Domain Name Server (DNS) does not have a listing for the website's domain. •If this is an HTTPS (secure) address, click tools, click Internet Options, click Advanced, and check to be sure the SSL and TLS protocols are enabled under the security section. For offline users You can still view subscribed feeds and some recently viewed webpages. To view subscribed feeds 1.Click the Favorites Center button , click Feeds, and then click the feed you want to view. To view recently visited webpages (might not work on all pages) 1.Click Tools , and then click Work Offline. 2.Click the Favorites Center button , click History, and then click the page you want to view.

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• File/printer sharing issues on network with multiple OSes

  - by DanZ

  My workplace consists of computers running a variety of different operating systems, and I have been running into problems getting some of them to connect to a shared drive and printer over the network. Here is a brief description of the computers involved and the issues I have encountered: 1: Dell desktop, Windows Vista Business-- This is the computer I want the others to connect to. It has a USB printer and eSATA hard drive enclosure that I have set up for sharing, with different accounts for the various users. 2: Fujitsu laptop, Windows XP Tablet edition-- No problems. Can connect to both the shared printer and hard drive. 3: Lenovo laptop, Windows Vista Business 64 bit-- No problems. Can connect to both the shared printer and drive. 4: Apple MacBook, OS 10.4-- Can connect to the shared drive, but not to the shared printer. I am aware that the printer issue is due to a known incompatibility between Vista and OS 10.4 and earlier with regards to Samba. It is not a big problem, however, as this computer can access a network printer. 5: Sony laptop, Windows Vista Home Premium-- Can connect to the shared printer, but not the shared drive. It can see computer 1 and its shared drive on the network, and appears to successfully log in to user accounts. However, if you try to access the shared drive, it says you do not have permission. I have tried both standard and administrator accounts, and none can access the drive from this computer. 6: MacBook Pro, OS 10.5 (there are two of these)-- Can connect to the shared printer, but not the shared drive. They can't see computer 1 on the network. For that matter, they also can't see each other or the older Mac, but can see and access shared folders on the XP machine (computer 2) and can see other PCs in the building. I was able to add the shared printer manually by typing in its network location, but was unable to manually add the shared drive in the same way. So, what I am looking for is suggestions on how to get computers 5 and 6 to connect to the shared drive. Since they can already connect to the shared printer (which is on the same computer as the shared drive), it seems reasonable that they should be able to access the drive as well.

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• mysql: job failded to start. mysqld.sock is missing

  - by Freefri

  How can I fix this and start mysql-server? After /etc/init.d/mysql start or service mysql start I get the message start: "Job failed to start" And after # mysqld I get this: mysqld 121123 11:33:33 [ERROR] Can't find messagefile '/usr/share/mysql/errmsg.sys' 121123 11:33:33 [Note] Plugin 'FEDERATED' is disabled. mysqld: Unknown error 1146 121123 11:33:33 [ERROR] Can't open the mysql.plugin table. Please run mysql_upgrade to create it. 121123 11:33:33 InnoDB: The InnoDB memory heap is disabled 121123 11:33:33 InnoDB: Mutexes and rw_locks use GCC atomic builtins 121123 11:33:33 InnoDB: Compressed tables use zlib 1.2.3.4 121123 11:33:33 InnoDB: Initializing buffer pool, size = 128.0M 121123 11:33:33 InnoDB: Completed initialization of buffer pool 121123 11:33:33 InnoDB: highest supported file format is Barracuda. 121123 11:33:33 InnoDB: Waiting for the background threads to start 121123 11:33:34 InnoDB: 1.1.8 started; log sequence number 1595675 121123 11:33:34 [ERROR] Aborting 121123 11:33:34 InnoDB: Starting shutdown... 121123 11:33:35 InnoDB: Shutdown completed; log sequence number 1595675 121123 11:33:35 [Note] I try to do what mysql say me to do: mysql_upgrade Looking for 'mysql' as: mysql Looking for 'mysqlcheck' as: mysqlcheck Running 'mysqlcheck' with connection arguments: '--port=3306' '--socket=/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock' mysqlcheck: Got error: 2002: Can't connect to local MySQL server through socket '/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock' (2) when trying to connect FATAL ERROR: Upgrade failed And yes, /var/run/mysql is empty: mysql_upgrade Looking for 'mysql' as: mysql Looking for 'mysqlcheck' as: mysqlcheck Running 'mysqlcheck' with connection arguments: '--port=3306' '--socket=/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock' mysqlcheck: Got error: 2002: Can't connect to local MySQL server through socket '/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock' (2) when trying to connect FATAL ERROR: Upgrade failed And this is my file /etc/mysql/my.cnf # cat /etc/mysql/my.cnf |grep sock # Remember to edit /etc/mysql/debian.cnf when changing the socket location. socket = /var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock socket = /var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock socket = /var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock Then I try to reinstall mysql from cero: apt-get purge mysql-client mysql-common mysql-server rm -R /var/lib/mysql rm -R /etc/mysql rm -R /var/run/mysqld userdel mysql apt-get install mysql-server mysql-client Then, after typing my root password for mysql I get this error: | Unable to set password for the MySQL "root" user ¦ ¦ ¦ ¦ An error occurred while setting the password for the MySQL administrative ¦ ¦ user. This may have happened because the account already has a password, or ¦ ¦ because of a communication problem with the MySQL server. ¦ ¦ ¦ ¦ You should check the account's password after the package installation. ¦ ¦ ¦ ¦ Please read the /usr/share/doc/mysql-server-5.5/README.Debian file for more ¦ ¦ information. And again I can't start mysql getting the same messages.

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• Cannot exit X server, restart, shutdown or drop to tty when VGA monitor active

  - by terdon

  I have a strange problem. If I connect an external VGA monitor to my laptop, exiting the X environment in any way crashes the computer. For example, say I am working with my two monitors (the laptop's and one connected to my VGA port) active. Hitting Ctrl+Alt+F Key should take me down to a tty. What actually happens is that the VGA screen goes blank, as you would expect, but the laptop screen, although still on, shows nothing. I know the screen is on because it is slightly more illuminated than when it is off. When in this state, I can do nothing to regain access to the machine. I have tried: Ctrl+F Key (and even Ctrl+Alt+F Key, just in case) combinations and none seem to have any effect. Ctrl+Alt+Del : Nothing Magic SysRq key: Nothing Blindly typing my username and password and trying to reboot/shutdown or restart GDM or MDM: Nothing The only thing that works is a hard reset. The exact same behavior occurs when kiling the X server through Ctrl+Alt+Backspace, rebooting or shutdown. There is no difference if I reboot/shutdown/log out using the WM's graphical menu or if I use the shutdown or rebootcommands. It is also not WM-dependent. I have the same problem using Cinnamon, Gnome 3, MATE and xfce4. It is, however, VGA dependent. I have tried connecting another VGA monitor and have the same problem. I do not, however, have this problem if a screen is connected to the DisplayPort. It is, therefore, a VGA specific issue. To make things even stranger, this only occurs when both screens are active. If either the laptop screen or the VGA monitor is inactive the problem goes away. Finally, this problem arose when I installed the latest Linux Mint Debian (LMDE). It did not occur with the previous release of LMDE. I am not sure what has changed since I used the same kernel version in both releases (I had upgraded the kernel while on the previous release) and, I think, the same nvidia drivers. Oh, and yes, I have updated the nvidia driver. Hardware: Dell M4500 laptop CPU: Intel Core i7 RAM: 8GB Graphics: nVidia GT216 [Quadro FX 880M] Software: LMDE, kernel 3.2.0-2-amd64 Xorg: 1.11.4 nVidia kernel: 295.20-1+3.2.9-1 Possibly relevant files: /var/log/Xorg.0.log ~/.xsession-errors Does anyone have any ideas how to fix this? Thanks in advance for any help.

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• Need help making site available externally

  - by White Island

  I'm trying to open a hole in the firewall (ASA 5505, v8.2) to allow external access to a Web application. Via ASDM (6.3?), I've added the server as a Public Server, which creates a static NAT entry [I'm using the public IP that is assigned to 'dynamic NAT--outgoing' for the LAN, after confirming on the Cisco forums that it wouldn't bring everyone's access crashing down] and an incoming rule "any... public_ip... https... allow" but traffic is still not getting through. When I look at the log viewer, it says it's denied by access-group outside_access_in, implicit rule, which is "any any ip deny" I haven't had much experience with Cisco management. I can't see what I'm missing to allow this connection through, and I'm wondering if there's anything else special I have to add. I tried adding a rule (several variations) within that access-group to allow https to the server, but it never made a difference. Maybe I haven't found the right combination? :P I also made sure the Windows firewall is open on port 443, although I'm pretty sure the current problem is Cisco, because of the logs. :) Any ideas? If you need more information, please let me know. Thanks Edit: First of all, I had this backward. (Sorry) Traffic is being blocked by access-group "inside_access_out" which is what confused me in the first place. I guess I confused myself again in the midst of typing the question. Here, I believe, is the pertinent information. Please let me know what you see wrong. access-list acl_in extended permit tcp any host PUBLIC_IP eq https access-list acl_in extended permit icmp CS_WAN_IPs 255.255.255.240 any access-list acl_in remark Allow Vendor connections to LAN access-list acl_in extended permit tcp host Vendor any object-group RemoteDesktop access-list acl_in remark NetworkScanner scan-to-email incoming (from smtp.mail.microsoftonline.com to PCs) access-list acl_in extended permit object-group TCPUDP any object-group Scan-to-email host NetworkScanner object-group Scan-to-email access-list acl_out extended permit icmp any any access-list acl_out extended permit tcp any any access-list acl_out extended permit udp any any access-list SSLVPNSplitTunnel standard permit LAN_Subnet 255.255.255.0 access-list nonat extended permit ip VPN_Subnet 255.255.255.0 LAN_Subnet 255.255.255.0 access-list nonat extended permit ip LAN_Subnet 255.255.255.0 VPN_Subnet 255.255.255.0 access-list inside_access_out remark NetworkScanner Scan-to-email outgoing (from scanner to Internet) access-list inside_access_out extended permit object-group TCPUDP host NetworkScanner object-group Scan-to-email any object-group Scan-to-email access-list inside_access_out extended permit tcp any interface outside eq https static (inside,outside) PUBLIC_IP LOCAL_IP[server object] netmask 255.255.255.255 I wasn't sure if I needed to reverse that "static" entry, since I got my question mixed up... and also with that last access-list entry, I tried interface inside and outside - neither proved successful... and I wasn't sure about whether it should be www, since the site is running on https. I assumed it should only be https.

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• AWS EC2 instance not pingable or available in browser

  - by Slimmons

  I've seen this questions asked other places, but now I've run through every fix proposed in other questions so I'm re asking it here, in hopes that someone will have a different solution. Problem: I have a EC2 instance, and I can ssh into it and work on it, and I have a Elastic ip set to it. I am unable to ping this machine, or log in to it using my browser. Solutions mentioned and tried: service httpd start i. response I get is "unrecognized service" ii. when I run apache2ctl -k start, it shows "httpd already running", so I'm assuming httpd is not the problem, it's just possibly named something else because of apache2, or for whatever reason. I went into EC2-Security Group- Default (which is the one I used.)-inbound, and everything there is set up correctly (I'm assuming). There it shows 80(HTTP) 0.0.0.0/0. 443(HTTPS) 0.0.0.0/0, and various other servies with their ports and 0.0.0.0/0 next to them. I also enabled a rule for enabling ICMP Request All on 0.0.0.0/0 temporarily for testing purposes I've tried disabling the iptables with "service ufw stop" Just in case I'm doing something really stupid, because I'm not all that used to connecting to web servers that I've spun up, I'm typing in the address to the machine into the url like this (assuming my ip address was ip.address). i. http:/(slash)ip.address/ ii. ip.address iii. https:/(slash)ip.address/ iv. ip.address/webFolderName/ v. http:/(slash)ip.address/webFolderName/ None of the attempts worked, and the only thing I haven't tried that i've seen is to start wireshark on the machine, and see if the requests are reaching it, and it's just ignoring them. I'm not sure I want to do that yet, since A). I'm not 100% positive how to use wireshark without the gui, since it's the only way I've ever used it (I really should get used to it in terminal, but I didn't even know you could). B). It really seems like I'm missing something simple in getting this to work. Thanks in advance for any help.

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• T60 Screen/LCD gets black after some minutes with a highpitched sound rising and fading

  - by Edward De Leau

  Just now my T60 screen got "black" (so no display). On my second monitor: no problems so the vga output works. symptom: Screen blanks / no display but works on second monitor steps to reproduce: - boot - wait (it does not matter what you do you do not have to login or anything) - (now the monitor of the laptop slowly begins to make a ssssssssHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHWOEOEssssssss noice of about 10 seconds) - right after the sounds ends the monitor gets black times seem to be the same each time. software: installed no new software before/after, running zone alarm and antivirus. other: it does not feel hot in any place, there dont seem to be running processes with strange behaviour. warranty: out of warranty what was i doing: typing text on a website and doing some php coding in a text editor. Anyone any idea what I can do here other than buy a new laptop? / does it sound familiar to known cases? update: * exactly the same problem: http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/T61-and-prior-T-series-ThinkPad/T60-Screen-Blackout/m-p/288772 and the second poster (garyj) here: http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/T61-and-prior-T-series-ThinkPad/Black-Screen-on-T60/m-p/235053#M48627 and here: "i have that same problem. i replaced the CCRL on mine and it works fine when the screen is not screwed in. once the frame of the LCD screen (metal portion) touches the metal on the laptop which holds the screen the screen goes black. If the metal is touching the screen when you boot up it boots up with it being very dimmly lit. " from http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/T61-and-prior-T-series-ThinkPad/T60-screen-problems/m-p/205047#M44995 (it seems replacing the lcd is no use, he tried it 3 times). same problem: http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/T61-and-prior-T-series-ThinkPad/T60-black-screen/m-p/80604#M25914 Hmmm... not handy 3 or 4 months ago I ordered and installed a new fan. Now the LCD. Which does not seem the core isse but some electric issue so it seems replacing the LCD is not the thing todo here. I have the following question: If it is not the LCD that needs to be replaced (see other threads) which parts can I order to fix this? Has anyone got any information which could lead me to identify the issue? I have read replacing the "inverter" AND the "backlightning" would that make sense?

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• No login prompt displayed after updating Ubuntu 10.04, broken gdm

  - by cliff

  So here's what happens: I updated my system the other day, was prompted for a reboot for the update to complete but was in the middle of working so I delayed it until after I was done. I reboot and it's broken :(. It appears to boot normally, with the following exceptions: The purple Ubuntu load screen no longer displays (though it did for the first couple of times I tried to get in). I hear the login prompt sound, but no login prompt appears. Nor is it simply "invisible" - pressing enter, typing my password, and pressing enter again do nothing. Normally my Bluetooth mouse is functional at this point, but it is not. GRUB displays recovery options for my current kernel, and for an older one (2.6.32-24). Trying to boot into .32-24 gives me an error saying "udevadm can't do something while udev is not configured". So I try solutions listed here: http://superuser.com/questions/195786/ubuntu-update-went-wrong-pc-doesnt-boot-how-can-i-repair-it Nothing I tried seemed to work, and after further Googling my hunch is that it's a problem with gdm. Please correct me if I'm wrong, I don't know all that much about how Linux/Ubuntu systems work just yet. Things I'm able to do: Boot to a live CD Ctrl-Alt-F2 after that login sound plays brings me to a console login, which I can successfully do (it's how I tried the solutions above). This works only under the current kernel. A hack I'd be willing to explore is removing the login prompt from the console, but I'd prefer to "simply" fix what's wrong. Like that guy, I need to repair the system rather than reinstall. System: Dell Inspiron 1525 Core 2 Duo Proprietary Driver for Broadcom 43xx wireless Dual-boot with Windows 7 (which is how I'm posting this, unfortunately I only have this machine and any experimenting requires constant reboots into Windows/brokenbuntu) Last package installed was Moonlight, but it appeared to install properly. Kernel: 2.6.32-25 Edit: After working with Karl's suggestions, it seems that the problem is with gdm. Error exit status 245 when attempting to sudo apt-get install --reinstall gdm, also an error processing gdm when running sudo apt-get -f install. How do I reinstall or repair gdm so that I can get back into my machine?

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• Computer experiencing slowdowns and lockups despite low cpu useage

  - by user157145

  my setup i5-2300 nvidia gtx 550 ti 6 gigs ram 600 w ocz modular psu recently reformatted and already experiencing drastic slowdown as soon as windows comes up, including repeated lockups with multiple various programs reporting that they are not responsive, then recovering after 10-30 seconds. ive checked memory and hard drive both of which come out fine. despite my plethura of worthless antiviral software im forced to assume that my illicit downloading practices have lead me into some comp trouble that i cant seem to determine. i have used ccleaner, search and destroy and malware bytes, all of which have found nothing to indicate what is causing this massive slowdown. in addition according to my resource manager my computer is operating at a load of only 30-50 percent CPU useage and 60 ram useage but taking 5-10 seconds to load files and open folders, and repeated lockups of multiple programs, especially firefox which seems to go unresponsive every 2-3 minutes. any help would be appreciated, i used a program called OTL by old timer, but cant make any sense of the results i was given. any help or suggestions would be appreciated, thank you for taking the time to read this i have avast but it didnt even find anything when i had it do a full system scan, so im thinking its clueless(also nortons, avg, and ad-aware). i also have mse but it has yet to complete a full scan it takes so long (i left it on last night but when i woke up my computer had a problem and had to restart). my hard drive has 300 gigs out of 1tb open and i already used hd tune pro, which said my harddrive was fine and its not a ssd. also im a noob at comps and only have the hd that is currently inside the computer in addition im not sure if studdering is the issue im suffering. my problem is that during my typing of these responses firefox has gone "not responsive" at least 5 times, each for times of about 5-10 seconds. when i try to control alt delete to bring up windows task manager it took 20 seconds. essentially its that my computer goes super slow at bringing up anything, or taking any action whatsoever that opens a program or file and has repeated incidents where i cant even click on whatever im trying to do because it locks up. the confusing thing about these incidents is that its right after restarting where there are minimal programs running and the computer and memory load is light.

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