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• Cisco Pix how to add an additional block of static ip addresses for nat?

  - by Scott Szretter

  I have a pix 501 with 5 static ip addresses. My isp just gave me 5 more. I am trying to figure out how to add the new block and then how to nat/open at least one of them to an inside machine. So far, I named a new interface "intf2", ip range is 71.11.11.58 - 62 (gateway should 71.11.11.57) imgsvr is the machine I want to nat to one of the (71.11.11.59) new ip addresses. mail (.123) is an example of a machine that is mapped to the current existing 5 ip block (96.11.11.121 gate / 96.11.11.122-127) and working fine. Building configuration... : Saved : PIX Version 6.3(4) interface ethernet0 auto interface ethernet0 vlan1 logical interface ethernet1 auto nameif ethernet0 outside security0 nameif ethernet1 inside security100 nameif vlan1 intf2 security1 enable password xxxxxxxxx encrypted passwd xxxxxxxxx encrypted hostname xxxxxxxPIX domain-name xxxxxxxxxxx no fixup protocol dns fixup protocol ftp 21 fixup protocol h323 h225 1720 fixup protocol h323 ras 1718-1719 fixup protocol http 80 fixup protocol rsh 514 fixup protocol rtsp 554 fixup protocol sip 5060 fixup protocol sip udp 5060 fixup protocol skinny 2000 no fixup protocol smtp 25 fixup protocol sqlnet 1521 fixup protocol tftp 69 names ...snip... name 192.168.10.13 mail name 192.168.10.29 imgsvr object-group network vpn1 network-object mail 255.255.255.255 access-list outside_access_in permit tcp any host 96.11.11.124 eq www access-list outside_access_in permit tcp any host 96.11.11.124 eq https access-list outside_access_in permit tcp any host 96.11.11.124 eq 3389 access-list outside_access_in permit tcp any host 96.11.11.123 eq https access-list outside_access_in permit tcp any host 96.11.11.123 eq www access-list outside_access_in permit tcp any host 96.11.11.125 eq smtp access-list outside_access_in permit tcp any host 96.11.11.125 eq https access-list outside_access_in permit tcp any host 96.11.11.125 eq 10443 access-list outside_access_in permit tcp any host 96.11.11.126 eq smtp access-list outside_access_in permit tcp any host 96.11.11.126 eq https access-list outside_access_in permit tcp any host 96.11.11.126 eq 10443 access-list outside_access_in deny ip any any access-list inside_nat0_outbound permit ip 192.168.0.0 255.255.0.0 IPPool2 255.255.255.0 access-list inside_nat0_outbound permit ip 172.17.0.0 255.255.0.0 IPPool2 255.255.255.0 access-list inside_nat0_outbound permit ip 172.16.0.0 255.255.0.0 IPPool2 255.255.255.0 ...snip... access-list inside_access_in deny tcp any any eq smtp access-list inside_access_in permit ip any any pager lines 24 logging on logging buffered notifications mtu outside 1500 mtu inside 1500 ip address outside 96.11.11.122 255.255.255.248 ip address inside 192.168.10.15 255.255.255.0 ip address intf2 71.11.11.58 255.255.255.248 ip audit info action alarm ip audit attack action alarm pdm location exchange 255.255.255.255 inside pdm location mail 255.255.255.255 inside pdm location IPPool2 255.255.255.0 outside pdm location 96.11.11.122 255.255.255.255 inside pdm location 192.168.10.1 255.255.255.255 inside pdm location 192.168.10.6 255.255.255.255 inside pdm location mail-gate1 255.255.255.255 inside pdm location mail-gate2 255.255.255.255 inside pdm location imgsvr 255.255.255.255 inside pdm location 71.11.11.59 255.255.255.255 intf2 pdm logging informational 100 pdm history enable arp timeout 14400 global (outside) 1 interface global (outside) 2 96.11.11.123 global (intf2) 3 interface global (intf2) 4 71.11.11.59 nat (inside) 0 access-list inside_nat0_outbound nat (inside) 2 mail 255.255.255.255 0 0 nat (inside) 1 0.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 0 0 static (inside,outside) tcp 96.11.11.123 smtp mail smtp netmask 255.255.255.255 0 0 static (inside,outside) tcp 96.11.11.123 https mail https netmask 255.255.255.255 0 0 static (inside,outside) tcp 96.11.11.123 www mail www netmask 255.255.255.255 0 0 static (inside,outside) 96.11.11.124 ts netmask 255.255.255.255 0 0 static (inside,outside) 96.11.11.126 mail-gate2 netmask 255.255.255.255 0 0 static (inside,outside) 96.11.11.125 mail-gate1 netmask 255.255.255.255 0 0 access-group outside_access_in in interface outside access-group inside_access_in in interface inside route outside 0.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 96.11.11.121 1 route intf2 0.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 71.11.11.57 2 timeout xlate 0:05:00 timeout conn 1:00:00 half-closed 0:10:00 udp 0:02:00 rpc 0:10:00 h225 1:00:00 timeout h323 0:05:00 mgcp 0:05:00 sip 0:30:00 sip_media 0:02:00 timeout uauth 0:05:00 absolute floodguard enable ...snip... : end [OK] Thanks!

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• ASA 5505 stops local internet when connected to VPN

  - by g18c

  Hi I have a Cisco ASA router running firmware 8.2(5) which hosts an internal LAN on 192.168.30.0/24. I have used the VPN Wizard to setup L2TP access and I can connect in fine from a Windows box and can ping hosts behind the VPN router. However, when connected to the VPN I can no longer ping out to my internet or browse web pages. I would like to be able to access the VPN, and also browse the internet at the same time - I understand this is called split tunneling (have ticked the setting in the wizard but to no effect) and if so how do I do this? Alternatively, if split tunneling is a pain to setup, then making the connected VPN client have internet access from the ASA WAN IP would be OK. Thanks, Chris names ! interface Ethernet0/0 switchport access vlan 2 ! interface Ethernet0/1 ! interface Vlan1 nameif inside security-level 100 ip address 192.168.30.1 255.255.255.0 ! interface Vlan2 nameif outside security-level 0 ip address 208.74.158.58 255.255.255.252 ! ftp mode passive access-list inside_nat0_outbound extended permit ip any 10.10.10.0 255.255.255.128 access-list inside_nat0_outbound extended permit ip 192.168.30.0 255.255.255.0 192.168.30.192 255.255.255.192 access-list DefaultRAGroup_splitTunnelAcl standard permit 192.168.30.0 255.255.255.0 access-list DefaultRAGroup_splitTunnelAcl_1 standard permit 192.168.30.0 255.255.255.0 pager lines 24 logging asdm informational mtu inside 1500 mtu outside 1500 ip local pool LANVPNPOOL 192.168.30.220-192.168.30.249 mask 255.255.255.0 icmp unreachable rate-limit 1 burst-size 1 no asdm history enable arp timeout 14400 global (outside) 1 interface nat (inside) 0 access-list inside_nat0_outbound nat (inside) 1 192.168.30.0 255.255.255.0 route outside 0.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 208.74.158.57 1 timeout xlate 3:00:00 timeout conn 1:00:00 half-closed 0:10:00 udp 0:02:00 icmp 0:00:02 timeout sunrpc 0:10:00 h323 0:05:00 h225 1:00:00 mgcp 0:05:00 mgcp-pat 0:05:00 timeout sip 0:30:00 sip_media 0:02:00 sip-invite 0:03:00 sip-disconnect 0:02:00 timeout sip-provisional-media 0:02:00 uauth 0:05:00 absolute timeout tcp-proxy-reassembly 0:01:00 timeout floating-conn 0:00:00 dynamic-access-policy-record DfltAccessPolicy http server enable http 192.168.30.0 255.255.255.0 inside snmp-server enable traps snmp authentication linkup linkdown coldstart crypto ipsec transform-set ESP-AES-256-MD5 esp-aes-256 esp-md5-hmac crypto ipsec transform-set ESP-DES-SHA esp-des esp-sha-hmac crypto ipsec transform-set ESP-3DES-SHA esp-3des esp-sha-hmac crypto ipsec transform-set ESP-DES-MD5 esp-des esp-md5-hmac crypto ipsec transform-set ESP-AES-192-MD5 esp-aes-192 esp-md5-hmac crypto ipsec transform-set ESP-3DES-MD5 esp-3des esp-md5-hmac crypto ipsec transform-set ESP-AES-256-SHA esp-aes-256 esp-sha-hmac crypto ipsec transform-set ESP-AES-128-SHA esp-aes esp-sha-hmac crypto ipsec transform-set ESP-AES-192-SHA esp-aes-192 esp-sha-hmac crypto ipsec transform-set ESP-AES-128-MD5 esp-aes esp-md5-hmac crypto ipsec transform-set TRANS_ESP_3DES_SHA esp-3des esp-sha-hmac crypto ipsec transform-set TRANS_ESP_3DES_SHA mode transport crypto ipsec security-association lifetime seconds 28800 crypto ipsec security-association lifetime kilobytes 4608000 crypto dynamic-map SYSTEM_DEFAULT_CRYPTO_MAP 65535 set transform-set ESP-AES-128-SHA ESP-AES-128-MD5 ESP-AES-192-SHA ESP-AES-192-MD5 ESP-AES-256-SHA ESP-AES-256-MD5 ESP-3DES-SHA ESP-3DES-MD5 ESP-DES-SHA ESP-DES-MD5 TRANS_ESP_3DES_SHA crypto map outside_map 65535 ipsec-isakmp dynamic SYSTEM_DEFAULT_CRYPTO_MAP crypto map outside_map interface outside crypto isakmp enable outside crypto isakmp policy 10 authentication pre-share encryption 3des hash sha group 2 lifetime 86400 telnet timeout 5 ssh timeout 5 console timeout 0 dhcpd auto_config outside ! threat-detection basic-threat threat-detection statistics access-list no threat-detection statistics tcp-intercept webvpn group-policy DefaultRAGroup internal group-policy DefaultRAGroup attributes dns-server value 192.168.30.3 vpn-tunnel-protocol l2tp-ipsec split-tunnel-policy tunnelspecified split-tunnel-network-list value DefaultRAGroup_splitTunnelAcl_1 username user password Cj7W5X7wERleAewO8ENYtg== nt-encrypted privilege 0 tunnel-group DefaultRAGroup general-attributes address-pool LANVPNPOOL default-group-policy DefaultRAGroup tunnel-group DefaultRAGroup ipsec-attributes pre-shared-key ***** tunnel-group DefaultRAGroup ppp-attributes no authentication chap authentication ms-chap-v2 ! class-map inspection_default match default-inspection-traffic ! ! policy-map type inspect dns preset_dns_map parameters message-length maximum client auto message-length maximum 512 policy-map global_policy class inspection_default inspect dns preset_dns_map inspect ftp inspect h323 h225 inspect h323 ras inspect rsh inspect rtsp inspect esmtp inspect sqlnet inspect skinny inspect sunrpc inspect xdmcp inspect sip inspect netbios inspect tftp inspect ip-options ! service-policy global_policy global prompt hostname context : end

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• Open-source and client-side IRC-Client

  - by user125197

  I'm administrating a homepage with an IRC-Webclient. At the moment, it uses a Java-client, modified to be SSL-compatible and compatible with whatever design I want to use. The usual PJIRC thing, with users wishes and concerns implemented (I'll give you SSL-PJIRC if you want - no problem. The login-script will be improved for IE6-support this weekend, means write the object tag if an old IE is found, that's it. Rest runs perfectly well). But still, the better user experience would be a client that only requires the user to enable JavaScript. So, before I go into rewriting and customizing a complete Java-IRC-solution, I'd like to ask some other people - after researching for half a year of time. The requirements are: a) Free hosting, no cgi-bin is acceptable. A lot of hosters also have CGI supported, but it doesn't allow IRC-access. So, seems you are limited to x10-hosting for CGI:IRC. b) Solution must be open source (not free as in free beer, but free as in free speech - I want to be able to read every line of the code). c) Hosting cannot be limited to Windows-hosting. Free operation systems (anything with Linux, BSD, whatever - I think you get what I mean) must be possible. d) No server-side technology. I'm limited to everything that runs client-side only. (Well, a Java-Applet does...). d) Solution must support SSL. e) The side must be able to move. Means, you register to a new free hoster, load your things up via FileZilla and the thing simply runs. No server-concerning implementations needed. f) Old browsers must be supported. From all my research, there are two ways a) Java-Applet b) Use HTML5-Websockets (it is impossible to use the JavaScript-library I found, as it depends on ActiveX - means, Windows hosting). b) means "you are going to enter very unstable content". I worked with HTML5 for month, and, well ... Though, HTML5 also is not suitable for older browsers (old browser support is an absolutely necessary requirement). PHP by the way is a server side solution ... so no line of PHP. My idea now was a Java Applet, and a fallback which again is embedded and proprietary, but only requieres JavaScript (wsirc or Mibbit are great here, whilst I prefer wsirc ... and zooming fonts that are plainly to small, but worse, cannot read the code). So my question is - with free hosting, not installation on server, plain upload - do you see and open source, complelety client-side, ssl-compatible way to use or write a client? This wouldn't be my first programming project, I'm not afraid of the code. If there was a way and I had to write it, even from scratch, I'd do. From all I know, there sadly is none. But maybe some experienced admin has an idea? Best Wishes, yetanotheruser Sry my English isn't perfect. It's enough for programming at least.

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• Can I make my drives visible and change their partition type without losing my data?

  - by user165408

  I have made a lot of mistakes and now I cannot see my hard disk nor I can start my operating system on my laptop. All my passwords and important files on my hdd without any backup. I followed this course of action Changed my hard disk partitions to dynamic just for getting 5th partition. (1st mistake) Decreased partitions to 4 again. Backed up operating system from 4th to 3rd partition with Norton Ghost. Booted from a live CD for Windows XP. Formatted 4th partition and moved my all important data from 1st and 2nd partitions to the 4th partition. Deleted 1st and 2nd partitions and got 1 partition from half of empty space. So I have just 3 partitions and empty space between 1st and 2nd partitions. Tried to install Windows 8 to the first partition but it did not allow because it is dynamic. Also it did not allow to install to other partitions. Tried to install Windows XP to the 1st partition but it said if I continue I cannot use other drivers. Therefore I escaped from installing it. Booted from the Windows XP live CD then increased 1st partiton to less than 400mb of empty space. Therefore I thought it will be adjacent but it was shown as 2 partitions. In my computer I see just 3 drivers. Using Norton Ghost I recovered my OS to the 1st partition. (2nd mistake it was on 4th partition originally) Booted from a Windows XP live CD I tried to install bcdedit to the Windows XP live CD but it did not work. Then I tried to install EaseUS Partition Master Home Edition. It was installed with errors then I start it and it showed me an error like there is no hard disk. I looked to my PC and my drivers were not there. Booted from the Norton Ghost CD and it did not show me my drivers either, but before I was able to see them. I checked numbers of partition shown by the Norton Ghost utility and they are still have same numbers so I have to see my drivers but I cannot see them now. My hard disk is shown as extarnal dynamic now so I cannot see any drive in my PC in the live Windows XP. There are two options; first one is import extarnal disk and second one is convert disk to basic. Will they delete my data? I fear booting from CDs like Windows XP live CD, Norton Ghost CD, and the operating system CD/DVD, because they may overwrite a few MB their data to my data. These recover tools are already exist in Windows XP live CD by The Ultimate Boot CD for Windows. Can any of them help me? CompuAppa SwissKnife V3 DBXtract Disk Investigator Fab's AutoBackup 2.0 FileRecovery Floppy Repair Free Undelete Handy Recovery Recovery Manager Restorastion Restorastion Help File by UBCD4Win UnChk Unstoppable Copier Finally How can I make it so that my drives are visible again without losing my data? How can I convert my dynamic partitions to basic without losing my data?

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• Postfix not sending/allowing receiving of messages after server (hardware) changed

  - by 537mfb

  We had na old notebook runing Ubuntu 12.04 working as a web/ftp/mail server and it worked but since the notebook was a notebook and pretty old and unreliable, a desktop was bought to replace it before it stopped working all together. Due to issues with the new desktop's vídeo card, we couldn't use Ubuntu 12.04 so we installed Ubuntu 13.10 and wen't about configuring it. Since we removed the notebook from the network, we kept the same Computer Name and local IP address to make things as close to the old server as possible configuration-wise. However, something has gone wrong since Postfix is throwing error 451 4.3.0 lookup faillure on every attempt to send a mail, and no email can be received either. Our main.cf file is a copy of the one we were using (and working) on the old server (notice we use EHCP) # See /usr/share/postfix/main.cf.dist for a commented, more complete version # Debian specific: Specifying a file name will cause the first # line of that file to be used as the name. The Debian default # is /etc/mailname. #myorigin = /etc/mailname smtpd_banner = $myhostname ESMTP $mail_name powered by Easy Hosting Control Panel (ehcp) on Ubuntu, www.ehcp.net biff = no # appending .domain is the MUA's job. append_dot_mydomain = no # Uncomment the next line to generate "delayed mail" warnings #delay_warning_time = 4h readme_directory = no myhostname = m21-traducoes.com.pt relayhost = mydestination = localhost, 89.152.248.139 mynetworks = 127.0.0.0/8, 192.168.0.0/16, 172.16.0.0/16, 10.0.0.0/8, 89.152.248.0/24 virtual_alias_domains = virtual_alias_maps = proxy:mysql:/etc/postfix/mysql-virtual_forwardings.cf, proxy:mysql:/etc/postfix/mysql-virtual_email2email.cf transport_maps = proxy:mysql:/etc/postfix/mysql-virtual_transports.cf virtual_mailbox_domains = proxy:mysql:/etc/postfix/mysql-virtual_domains.cf virtual_mailbox_maps = proxy:mysql:/etc/postfix/mysql-virtual_mailboxes.cf virtual_mailbox_base = /home/vmail virtual_uid_maps = static:5000 virtual_gid_maps = static:5000 smtpd_sasl_auth_enable = yes smtpd_sasl_security_options = noanonymous broken_sasl_auth_clients = yes smtpd_recipient_restrictions = permit_mynetworks,permit_sasl_authenticated,check_client_access hash:/var/lib/pop-before-smtp/hosts,reject_unauth_destination smtp_use_tls = yes smtpd_use_tls = yes smtpd_tls_auth_only = no smtpd_tls_CAfile = /etc/postfix/cacert.pem smtpd_tls_cert_file = /etc/postfix/smtpd.cert smtpd_tls_key_file = /etc/postfix/smtpd.key smtpd_tls_loglevel = 1 smtpd_tls_received_header = yes smtpd_tls_session_cache_timeout = 3600s tls_random_source = dev:/dev/urandom virtual_create_maildirsize = yes virtual_mailbox_extended = yes virtual_mailbox_limit_maps = proxy:mysql:/etc/postfix/mysql-virtual_mailbox_limit_maps.cf virtual_mailbox_limit_override = yes virtual_maildir_limit_message = "The user you are trying to reach is over quota." virtual_overquota_bounce = yes debug_peer_list = sender_canonical_maps = debug_peer_level = 1 proxy_read_maps = $local_recipient_maps $mydestination $virtual_alias_maps $virtual_alias_domains $virtual_mailbox_maps $virtual_mailbox_domains $relay_recipient_maps $canonical_maps $sender_canonical_maps $recipient_canonical_maps $relocated_maps $mynetworks $virtual_mailbox_limit_maps $transport_maps alias_maps = hash:/etc/aliases smtpd_relay_restrictions = permit_mynetworks, permit_sasl_authenticated,check_client_access hash:/var/lib/pop-before-smtp/hosts,reject_unauth_destination smtpd_destination_concurrency_limit = 2 smtpd_destination_rate_delay = 1s smtpd_extra_recipient_limit = 10 disable_vrfy_command = yes smtpd_delay_reject = yes smtpd_helo_required = yes smtpd_error_sleep_time = 1s smtpd_soft_error_limit = 10 smtpd_hard_error_limit = 20 This configuration was working before but now everytime i try to send a mail in squirrelmail it reports: Message not sent. Server replied: Requested action aborted: error in processing 451 4.3.0 <[email protected]>: Temporary lookup failure And i can't send mail to it from outsider either. Any ideas? EDIT: Here are some issues MXToolBox reports to my domain, answering hopefully to @Teun Vink: BlackList Mail Server Web Server DNS Error 4 0 2 0 Warnings 0 0 0 3 Passed 0 6 3 12 So the domain is on some blacklist, but that doesn't explain the error at all No mail server issues found (except it's not working) Those two web server errors it's because i don't have HTTPS workin (No SSL Certificate) so the test fails Those 3 DNS warnings we're already there when it was working with the other machine and are related to stuff i can't control: SOA Refresh Value is outside of the recommended range SOA Expire Value out of recommended range SOA NXDOMAIN Value too high I've searched and as far as i can tell only the guys who sold the retail can change those values and they won't. Edit2: I half solved the issue.on the new machine postfix was installed but postfix-mysql waasn't so he couldn't connect to the database (rookie mistake). After fixing that, i can now send mails to the outsider without any issues, however i am still not able to receive mails from utside. The sender doesn't get any message warning about the non-delivery but the message doesn't fall in the inbox and the log shows: Nov 13 15:11:57 m21-traducoes postfix/smtpd[5872]: NOQUEUE: reject: RCPT from re lay4.ptmail.sapo.pt[212.55.154.24]: 451 4.3.5 <relay4.ptmail.sapo.pt[212.55.154. 24]>: Client host rejected: Server configuration error; from=<[email protected]> to=<[email protected]> proto=SMTP helo=<sapo.pt> Nov 13 15:11:57 m21-traducoes postfix/smtpd[5872]: disconnect from relay4.ptmail .sapo.pt[212.55.154.24]

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• Hour-long shutdown duration "shutting down hyper-v virtual machine management service"

  - by icelava

  I have a Windows 2008 R2 server that is a Hyper-V host (Dell PowerEdge T300). Today for the first time I encountered an odd situation; i lost connection with one of the guest machines but logging on physically it seems the guest OS is still running but no longer contactable via the network. I tried to shut down the guest machine (Windows XP) but it would not shut down, getting stuck in a "Not responding" dialog box that cannot be dismissed. I used the Hyper-V management console to reset the machine and it could not get out of resetting state. I tried to save another Windows 2003 guest machine, and it would be progress with its Saving state (0%). The other running Windows 2003 guest was stuck in the logon dialog. My first suspicion is perhaps one of the Windows update patches this week (10 Nov 2011) may something to do with it, which was still pending a system restart. Well, since I could not do anything with Hyper-V i proceeded with the Windows Update restart, and now it is stuck half an hour at "Shutting down hyper-v virtual machine management service" Prior to restarting I did not observe any hard disk errors reported in the system event log; doubt it is a disk-related condition. Shall I force a hard reboot? UPDATE Ok so i left it hanging over an hour while attending to other matters, and thankfully the host cleanly restarted. I can operate the guest machines fine now. Phew. Hyper-V must have been crawling for some reason. The VMs have been observed to become slow in the past when the host has been up for a long duration (two weeks to a month), but never this slow. Would love to know what types of performance monitoring items i can observe to give a hint why this can happen. UPDATE 2012-02-13 In the months ever since, Hyper-V has stalled into this state another two times. It appears so randomly and without any error event logs to hint what is causing it enter this "drunkard" state. Just an Hyper-V management service timeout. Log Name: System Source: Service Control Manager Date: 13/2/2012 9:16:48 AM Event ID: 7043 Task Category: None Level: Error Keywords: Classic User: N/A Computer: elune Description: The Hyper-V Virtual Machine Management service did not shut down properly after receiving a preshutdown control. Event Xml: <Event xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/win/2004/08/events/event"> <System> <Provider Name="Service Control Manager" Guid="{555908d1-a6d7-4695-8e1e-26931d2012f4}" EventSourceName="Service Control Manager" /> <EventID Qualifiers="49152">7043</EventID> <Version>0</Version> <Level>2</Level> <Task>0</Task> <Opcode>0</Opcode> <Keywords>0x8080000000000000</Keywords> <TimeCreated SystemTime="2012-02-13T01:16:48.882901900Z" /> <EventRecordID>567844</EventRecordID> <Correlation /> <Execution ProcessID="764" ThreadID="8484" /> <Channel>System</Channel> <Computer>elune</Computer> <Security /> </System> <EventData> <Data Name="param1">Hyper-V Virtual Machine Management</Data> </EventData> </Event> The only means out of it is to restart the system.

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• What would cause Memcached to Hang for 2+ seconds?

  - by Brad Dwyer

  I'm going nuts trying to scale memcached. From their site: Memcached operations are almost all O(1). Connecting to it and issuing a get or stat command should never lag. If connecting lags, you may be hitting the max connections limit. See ServerMaint for details on stats to monitor. If issuing commands lags, you can have a number of tuning problems. Most common are hardware problems, not enough RAM (swapping), network problems (bandwidth, dropped packets, half-duplex connections). On rare occasion OS bugs or memcached bugs can contribute. Well.. it is most certainly not performing like an O(1) operation for me. Under low to normal load on our site memcached response times for get and set ops are about 0.001 seconds. Not bad. But if we triple the load we get outliers that take 100x (or in rare cases 1000x!) that long. I even had one instance where it took 2.2442 seconds for memcached to store a value. Obviously this is killing our site. Here's the output of Memcached-getStats during one of the slow periods: [pid] => 18079 [uptime] => 8903 [threads] => 4 [time] => 1332795759 [pointer_size] => 32 [rusage_user_seconds] => 26 [rusage_user_microseconds] => 503872 [rusage_system_seconds] => 125 [rusage_system_microseconds] => 477008 [curr_items] => 42099 [total_items] => 422500 [limit_maxbytes] => 943718400 [curr_connections] => 84 [total_connections] => 4946 [connection_structures] => 178 [bytes] => 7259957 [cmd_get] => 1679091 [cmd_set] => 351809 [get_hits] => 1662048 [get_misses] => 17043 [evictions] => 0 [bytes_read] => 109388476 [bytes_written] => 3187646458 [version] => 1.4.13 So things that I have ruled out so far are: Hitting the max connections limit (curr_connections of 84 is well below the default of max of 1024) Swapping - the machine has 900M out of 1024M of memory dedicated to memcached on a dedicated machine. It only appears to be using about 7MB of data as per the bytes stat. How would I diagnose the other hardware problems? prstat doesn't really show a whole lot going on in terms of CPU or memory usage. Not sure how to figure out the network problems but as this is a dedicated server on the same private network as the web box I don't think it's a connectivity issue (ping is less than a millisecond between the boxes). Is there something else I'm missing here? It's driving me nuts. Edit: Also forgot to mention that I've tried both persistent and non-persistent connections with minimal-to-no impact.

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• Using different SSDs types (not only SATA based) as system drive

  - by Hubert Kario

  Currently I have a Thinkpad X61s and want to make it both a bit faster and a bit more power efficient. For that reason I thought that adding SSD drive would make most sense. Unfortunately, because of financial reasons, buying SSD of over 200GB capacity is out of reach for me (not only it would be worth more than the rest of the laptop, but also I currently have a 500GB drive in it, so even such a drive would be kind of a downgrade for me). During preliminary testing with a cheap Transcend 4GB Class 6 (14MiB/s streaming, 9MiB/s random read) card I experienced boot times to be reduced by half so putting the OS only on it would already would be an improvement. Unfortunately, my system now is about 11GiB in size so anything less than 16GB would be constraining. In this laptop I can connect additional drives on at least 5 different ways: using SATA-ATA converter caddy in the X6 Ultrabase using internal mini PCIe slot using integrated SDHC slot using CardBus (a.k.a PCMCIA or PC Card) slot using USB Thankfully, because I use only Linux on this PC the bootability of them is irrelevant as I can put the /boot partition on internal HDD and / on any of the above mentioned Flash memories (as I already did for the SDHC test). From what I was able to research and from my own experience those options come with rather big downsides or other problems: SATA-ATA caddy It has three downsides: I have to carry the Ultrabse with me at all times (it's not really inconvenient, but those grams do add) and couldn't disconnect it when I want to disconnect the battery It makes the bay unusable for the optical drive and occasional quick access to other hard drives the only caddies I could buy have rather flaky controllers in them so putting my OS on it would hamper its stability Internal mini PCIe slot This would be an ideal solution, if only I could find real PCIe SSDs, not only devices that could talk only SATA or ATA over PCIe mechanical connection (the ones used in Dell Mini or Asus EEE). Theoretically Samsung did release such devices but I couldn't find them in retail anywhere. Integrated SDHC slot It's a nice solution with a single drawback: the fastest 16GB SDHC card on the market can only do around 35MiB/s read and 15MiB/s write while still costing like a normal 40GB SATA SSD that's 10 times faster. Not really cost-effective. CardBus (a.k.a PCMCIA or PC Card) slot Those cards are much faster than the SDHC option (there are ones that can do well over 50MiB/s read in benchmarks) and from what I could find the PCMCIA controller in my laptop does support UDMA so it should be able to deliver comparable speeds. They still cost similarly to SD cards but at least they provide streaming performance comparable to my current HDD. USB That's the worst option. Not only is it limited to 20-30MiB/s by the interface itself the drive would stick out of the laptop so it's a big no no. The question As such I think that going the "CF in a CardBus adapter" route will be the best option. My question is: did anyone try using CF cards in CardBus adapters as system drives with Linux on Thinkpad laptops? Laptops in general? What was the real-world performance? I don't have any CF cards so I can't check how well does it work with suspend/resume, or whatever it's easy to make it work in initramfs (I'm using ArchLinux and SD card was trivial — add 3 modules in single config line and rebuilding initramfs) so any tips/gotchas on this are welcome as well.

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• Why does my computer run slowly and freeze sometimes?

  - by Brae

  EDIT I disabled sound in the BIOS, rebooted and it hung. I removed the (previously) faulty HDD, rebooted and it hung. I have managed to get my Realtek audio manager open again after its mysterious disappearance. Subsequently my microphone is now working again, to fix it I had to uninstall audio drivers, disable audio in BIOS, install audio drivers, enable audio in BIOS. Access via network (with faulty HDD in) seems to not be triggering hangs at the moment. I think with the sound problem fixed it might play a little nicer, but I think its still going to hang. If it does, then I'm fairly sure its been narrowed down to the mobo. EDIT Pretty convinced my motherboard is the culprit, because nothing else seems to have any obvious problems (bar the hard drive, which the PC still hangs without it being plugged in) So thank you all for helping, once I get more rep ill up a few of the answers. My PC is doing some weird things... Sometimes when I open up a program, lets say Adobe Photoshop, it will load everything normally, nice and quick no problems and I can use it fine. Other times its a little odd, and it loads the program as if it's only using half of the CPU. It's pretty obvious when it does it, normally the loading screen skims past, but when it does this weird load you see it slowly tick though each thing, and the program itself becomes incredibly slow. Even Google Chrome does it sometimes. Yet when I exit and reopen the program without doing anything else, it typically opens fine without lagging. I think this problem is probably a symptom of something bigger, because of other problems I'm having. Random hangs; no matter what I have open or what I'm doing. My PC will sort of freeze up for a few seconds. If music is playing it will either loop the last second or two, or it will buzz. This only lasts for a few seconds then it returns to normal without having to restart. During this time all programs lock up and freeze, and the mouse and keyboard are useless. I am also having a weird issue with my audio jacks, without touching my PC at all, sometimes I will see a popup saying that I have unplugged something or plugged something in, neither of which has actually happened. Pretty sure this is cause by the motherboard. I recently had a 'Pink Screen of Death' (yes pink) which pointed to my audio drivers. The lockups seem to happen with some consistency when someone is accessing my shared files via my home LAN. Which leads me to believe either one of my hard drives is acting up or more likely the controller. One of my drives had a bit of a crash before, I used Spinrite and managed to recover my stuff and now the drive appears to be working okay. This is possibly adding to the problems. My best guess is something has gone wrong with my motherboard, possibly a power issue or a chip has died, I really don't know. So what I would like to know is: Have I have missed some obvious diagnostic to help figure out what it is, or should I just bite the bullet and assume its my motherboard acting up and buy a new system? dxdiag[64-bit] - http://pastebin.com/G30kb2TL PSOD (minidump) - http://pastebin.com/aZsv0H56 HWiNFO64 (system info / specs) - http://pastebin.com/X6h3K8g6

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• volume group disappeared after xfs_check run

  - by John P

  EDIT** I have a volume group consisting of 5 RAID1 devices grouped together into a lvm and formatted with xfs. The 5th RAID device lost its RAID config (cat /proc/mdstat does not show anything). The two drives are still present (sdj and sdk), but they have no partitions. The LVM appeared to be happily using sdj up until recently. (doing a pvscan showed the first 4 RAID1 devices + /dev/sdj) I removed the LVM from the fstab, rebooted, then ran xfs_check on the LV. It ran for about half an hour, then stopped with an error. I tried rebooting again, and this time when it came up, the logical volume was no longer there. It is now looking for /dev/md5, which is gone (though it had been using /dev/sdj earlier). /dev/sdj was having read errors, but after replacing the SATA cable, those went away, so the drive appears to be fine for now. Can I modify the /etc/lvm/backup/dedvol, change the device to /dev/sdj and do a vgcfgrestore? I could try doing a pvcreate --uuid KZron2-pPTr-ZYeQ-PKXX-4Woq-6aNc-AG4rRJ /dev/sdj to make it recognize it, but I'm afraid that would erase the data on the drive UPDATE: just changing the pv to point to /dev/sdj did not work vgcfgrestore --file /etc/lvm/backup/dedvol dedvol Couldn't find device with uuid 'KZron2-pPTr-ZYeQ-PKXX-4Woq-6aNc-AG4rRJ'. Cannot restore Volume Group dedvol with 1 PVs marked as missing. Restore failed. pvscan /dev/sdj: read failed after 0 of 4096 at 0: Input/output error Couldn't find device with uuid 'KZron2-pPTr-ZYeQ-PKXX-4Woq-6aNc-AG4rRJ'. Couldn't find device with uuid 'KZron2-pPTr-ZYeQ-PKXX-4Woq-6aNc-AG4rRJ'. Couldn't find device with uuid 'KZron2-pPTr-ZYeQ-PKXX-4Woq-6aNc-AG4rRJ'. Couldn't find device with uuid 'KZron2-pPTr-ZYeQ-PKXX-4Woq-6aNc-AG4rRJ'. PV /dev/sdd2 VG VolGroup00 lvm2 [74.41 GB / 0 free] PV /dev/md2 VG dedvol lvm2 [931.51 GB / 0 free] PV /dev/md3 VG dedvol lvm2 [931.51 GB / 0 free] PV /dev/md0 VG dedvol lvm2 [931.51 GB / 0 free] PV /dev/md4 VG dedvol lvm2 [931.51 GB / 0 free] PV unknown device VG dedvol lvm2 [1.82 TB / 63.05 GB free] Total: 6 [5.53 TB] / in use: 6 [5.53 TB] / in no VG: 0 [0 ] vgscan Reading all physical volumes. This may take a while... /dev/sdj: read failed after 0 of 4096 at 0: Input/output error /dev/sdj: read failed after 0 of 4096 at 2000398843904: Input/output error Found volume group "VolGroup00" using metadata type lvm2 Found volume group "dedvol" using metadata type lvm2 vgdisplay dedvol --- Volume group --- VG Name dedvol System ID Format lvm2 Metadata Areas 5 Metadata Sequence No 10 VG Access read/write VG Status resizable MAX LV 0 Cur LV 1 Open LV 0 Max PV 0 Cur PV 5 Act PV 5 VG Size 5.46 TB PE Size 4.00 MB Total PE 1430796 Alloc PE / Size 1414656 / 5.40 TB Free PE / Size 16140 / 63.05 GB VG UUID o1U6Ll-5WH8-Pv7Z-Rtc4-1qYp-oiWA-cPD246 dedvol { id = "o1U6Ll-5WH8-Pv7Z-Rtc4-1qYp-oiWA-cPD246" seqno = 10 status = ["RESIZEABLE", "READ", "WRITE"] flags = [] extent_size = 8192 # 4 Megabytes max_lv = 0 max_pv = 0 physical_volumes { pv0 { id = "Msiee7-Zovu-VSJ3-Y2hR-uBVd-6PaT-Ho9v95" device = "/dev/md2" # Hint only status = ["ALLOCATABLE"] flags = [] dev_size = 1953519872 # 931.511 Gigabytes pe_start = 384 pe_count = 238466 # 931.508 Gigabytes } pv1 { id = "ZittCN-0x6L-cOsW-v1v4-atVN-fEWF-e3lqUe" device = "/dev/md3" # Hint only status = ["ALLOCATABLE"] flags = [] dev_size = 1953519872 # 931.511 Gigabytes pe_start = 384 pe_count = 238466 # 931.508 Gigabytes } pv2 { id = "NRNo0w-kgGr-dUxA-mWnl-bU5v-Wld0-XeKVLD" device = "/dev/md0" # Hint only status = ["ALLOCATABLE"] flags = [] dev_size = 1953519872 # 931.511 Gigabytes pe_start = 384 pe_count = 238466 # 931.508 Gigabytes } pv3 { id = "2EfLFr-JcRe-MusW-mfAs-WCct-u4iV-W0pmG3" device = "/dev/md4" # Hint only status = ["ALLOCATABLE"] flags = [] dev_size = 1953519872 # 931.511 Gigabytes pe_start = 384 pe_count = 238466 # 931.508 Gigabytes } pv4 { id = "KZron2-pPTr-ZYeQ-PKXX-4Woq-6aNc-AG4rRJ" device = "/dev/md5" # Hint only status = ["ALLOCATABLE"] flags = [] dev_size = 3907028992 # 1.81935 Terabytes pe_start = 384 pe_count = 476932 # 1.81935 Terabytes } }

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• got VPN l2l connect between a site & HQ but not traffice using ASA5505 on both ends

  - by vinlata

  Hi, Could anyone see what did I do wrong here? this is one configuration of site1 to HQ on ASA5505, I can get connected but seems like no traffic going (allowed) between them, could it be a NAT issue? any helps would much be appreciated Thanks interface Vlan1 nameif inside security-level 100 ip address 172.30.205.1 255.255.255.0 ! interface Vlan2 nameif outside security-level 0 ip address pppoe setroute ! interface Ethernet0/0 switchport access vlan 2 ! interface Ethernet0/1 ! interface Ethernet0/2 shutdown ! interface Ethernet0/3 shutdown ! interface Ethernet0/4 shutdown ! interface Ethernet0/5 shutdown ! interface Ethernet0/6 shutdown ! interface Ethernet0/7 shutdown ! passwd .dIuXDIYzD6RSHz7 encrypted ftp mode passive dns server-group DefaultDNS domain-name errg.net object-group network HQ network-object 172.22.0.0 255.255.0.0 network-object 172.22.0.0 255.255.128.0 network-object 172.22.0.0 255.255.255.128 network-object 172.22.1.0 255.255.255.128 network-object 172.22.1.0 255.255.255.0 access-list inside_access_in extended permit ip any any access-list outside_access_in extended permit icmp any any echo-reply access-list outside_20_cryptomap extended permit ip 172.30.205.0 255.255.255.0 o bject-group HQ access-list inside_nat0_outbound extended permit ip 172.30.205.0 255.255.255.0 o bject-group HQ access-list policy-nat extended permit ip 172.30.205.0 255.255.255.0 172.22.0.0 255.255.0.0 pager lines 24 logging asdm informational mtu inside 1500 mtu outside 1500 icmp unreachable rate-limit 1 burst-size 1 no asdm history enable arp timeout 14400 nat-control global (outside) 1 interface nat (inside) 0 access-list inside_nat0_outbound nat (inside) 1 0.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 static (inside,outside) 172.30.205.0 access-list policy-nat access-group inside_access_in in interface inside access-group outside_access_in in interface outside timeout xlate 3:00:00 timeout conn 1:00:00 half-closed 0:10:00 udp 0:02:00 icmp 0:00:02 timeout sunrpc 0:10:00 h323 0:05:00 h225 1:00:00 mgcp 0:05:00 mgcp-pat 0:05:00 timeout sip 0:30:00 sip_media 0:02:00 sip-invite 0:03:00 sip-disconnect 0:02:00 timeout uauth 0:05:00 absolute username errgadmin password Os98gTdF8BZ0X2Px encrypted privilege 15 http server enable http 64.42.2.224 255.255.255.240 outside http 172.22.0.0 255.255.0.0 outside no snmp-server location no snmp-server contact snmp-server enable traps snmp authentication linkup linkdown coldstart crypto ipsec transform-set ESP-3DES-SHA esp-3des esp-sha-hmac crypto map outside_map 190 match address outside_20_cryptomap crypto map outside_map 190 set pfs crypto map outside_map 190 set peer 66.7.249.109 crypto map outside_map 190 set transform-set ESP-3DES-SHA crypto map outside_map 190 set phase1-mode aggressive crypto map outside_map interface outside crypto isakmp enable outside crypto isakmp policy 30 authentication pre-share encryption 3des hash sha group 2 lifetime 86400 crypto isakmp policy 65535 authentication pre-share encryption 3des hash sha group 2 lifetime 86400 crypto isakmp nat-traversal 190 crypto isakmp ipsec-over-tcp port 10000 tunnel-group 66.7.249.109 type ipsec-l2l tunnel-group 66.7.249.109 ipsec-attributes pre-shared-key * telnet timeout 5 ssh 172.30.205.0 255.255.255.0 inside ssh 172.22.0.0 255.255.0.0 outside ssh 64.42.2.224 255.255.255.240 outside ssh 172.25.0.0 255.255.128.0 outside ssh timeout 5 console timeout 0 management-access inside vpdn group PPPoEx request dialout pppoe vpdn group PPPoEx localname [email protected] vpdn group PPPoEx ppp authentication pap vpdn username [email protected] password ********* dhcpd address 172.30.205.100-172.30.205.131 inside dhcpd dns 172.22.0.133 68.94.156.1 interface inside dhcpd wins 172.22.0.133 interface inside dhcpd domain errg.net interface inside dhcpd enable inside ! ! class-map inspection_default match default-inspection-traffic ! ! policy-map type inspect dns preset_dns_map parameters message-length maximum 512 policy-map global_policy class inspection_default inspect dns preset_dns_map inspect ftp inspect h323 h225 inspect h323 ras inspect netbios inspect rsh inspect rtsp inspect skinny inspect esmtp inspect sqlnet inspect sunrpc inspect tftp inspect sip inspect xdmcp ! end

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• In Linux, what's the best way to delegate administration responsibilities, like for Apache, a database, or some other application?

  - by Andrew Banks

  In Linux, what's the best way to delegate administration responsibilities for Apache and other "applications"? File permissions? Sudo? A mix of both? Something else? At work we have two tiers of "administrators" Operating system administrators. These are your run-of-the-mill "server administrators." They are responsible for just the operating system. Application administrators. The people who build the web site. This includes not only writing the SQL, PHP, and HTML, but also setting up and running Apache and PostgreSQL or MySQL. The aforementioned OS admins will install this stuff, but it's mainly up to the app admins to edit all the config files, start and stop processes when needed, and so on. I am one of the app admins. This is different than what I am used to. I used to just write code. The sysadmin took care not only of the OS but also installing, setting up, and keeping up the server software. But he left. Now I'm in charge of setting up Apache and the database. The new sysadmins say they just handle the operating system. It's no problem. I welcome learning new stuff. But there is a learning curve, even for the OS admins. Apache, by default, seems to be set up for administration by root directly. All the config files and scripts are 644 and owned by root:root. I'm not given the root password, naturally, so the OS admins must somehow give my ordinary OS user account all the rights necessary to edit Apache's config files, start and stop it, read its log files, and so on. Right now they're using a mix of: (1) giving me certain sudo rights, (2) adding me to certain groups, and (3) changing the file permissions of various directories, to make them writable by one of the groups I'm in. This never goes smoothly. There's always a back-and-forth between me and the sysadmins. They say it's ready. Then I try certain things, and half of them I still can't do. So they make some more changes. Then finally I seem to be independent and can administer Apache and the database without pestering them anymore. It's the sheer complication and amount of changes that make me uncomfortable. Even though it finally works, more or less, it seems hackneyed. I feel like we're doing it wrong. It seems like the makers of the software would have anticipated this scenario (someone other than root administering it) and have a clean two- or three-step program to delegate responsibility to me. But it feels like we are really chewing up the filesystem and making it far and away from the default set-up. Any suggestions? Are we doing it the recommended way? P.S. For PostgreSQL it seems a little better. Its files are owned by a system user named postgres. So giving me the right to run sudo su - postgres gives me just about everything. I'm just now getting into MySQL, but it seems to be set up similarly. But it seems a little weird doing all my work as another user.

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• Mysqld not starting due to apparent db corruption

  - by pitosalas

  I am very new at admining mysql, and bad for me, something caused the db to get clobbered. There are many error messages in the log that I am not sure how to safely proceed. Can you give some tips? Here's the log: 110107 15:07:15 mysqld started 110107 15:07:15 InnoDB: Database was not shut down normally! InnoDB: Starting crash recovery. InnoDB: Reading tablespace information from the .ibd files... InnoDB: Restoring possible half-written data pages from the doublewrite InnoDB: buffer... 110107 15:07:15 InnoDB: Starting log scan based on checkpoint at InnoDB: log sequence number 35 515914826. InnoDB: Doing recovery: scanned up to log sequence number 35 515915839 InnoDB: 1 transaction(s) which must be rolled back or cleaned up InnoDB: in total 1 row operations to undo InnoDB: Trx id counter is 0 1697553664 110107 15:07:15 InnoDB: Starting an apply batch of log records to the database... InnoDB: Progress in percents: 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 InnoDB: Apply batch completed InnoDB: Starting rollback of uncommitted transactions InnoDB: Rolling back trx with id 0 1697553198, 1 rows to undoInnoDB: Error: trying to access page number 3522914176 in space 0, InnoDB: space name ./ibdata1, InnoDB: which is outside the tablespace bounds. InnoDB: Byte offset 0, len 16384, i/o type 10 110107 15:07:15InnoDB: Assertion failure in thread 3086403264 in file fil0fil.c line 3922 InnoDB: We intentionally generate a memory trap. InnoDB: Submit a detailed bug report to http://bugs.mysql.com. InnoDB: If you get repeated assertion failures or crashes, even InnoDB: immediately after the mysqld startup, there may be InnoDB: corruption in the InnoDB tablespace. Please refer to InnoDB: http://dev.mysql.com/doc/mysql/en/Forcing_recovery.html InnoDB: about forcing recovery. mysqld got signal 11; This could be because you hit a bug. It is also possible that this binary or one of the libraries it was linked against is corrupt, improperly built, or misconfigured. This error can also be caused by malfunctioning hardware. We will try our best to scrape up some info that will hopefully help diagnose the problem, but since we have already crashed, something is definitely wrong and this may fail. key_buffer_size=0 read_buffer_size=131072 max_used_connections=0 max_connections=100 threads_connected=0 It is possible that mysqld could use up to key_buffer_size + (read_buffer_size + sort_buffer_size)*max_connections = 217599 K bytes of memory Hope that's ok; if not, decrease some variables in the equation. thd=(nil) Attempting backtrace. You can use the following information to find out where mysqld died. If you see no messages after this, something went terribly wrong... Cannot determine thread, fp=0xbffc55ac, backtrace may not be correct. Stack range sanity check OK, backtrace follows: 0x8139eec 0x83721d5 0x833d897 0x833db71 0x832aa38 0x835f025 0x835f7a3 0x830a77e 0x8326b57 0x831c825 0x8317b8d 0x82a9e66 0x8315732 0x834fc9a 0x828d7c3 0x81c29dd 0x81b5620 0x813d9fe 0x40fdf3 0x80d5ff1 New value of fp=(nil) failed sanity check, terminating stack trace! Please read http://dev.mysql.com/doc/mysql/en/Using_stack_trace.html and follow instructions on how to resolve the stack trace. Resolved stack trace is much more helpful in diagnosing the problem, so please do resolve it The manual page at http://www.mysql.com/doc/en/Crashing.html contains information that should help you find out what is causing the crash. 110107 15:07:15 mysqld ended

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• Hosed Windows 7 permissons

  - by Anthony

  Here is the most interesting thing I've noticed since the problems started: If I go into a control panel/system module (in this case the Resource Monitor) that has a "Check Online" type option, Firefox (my default browser) opens right up without a problem. But if I just start Firefox from any shortcuts (start menu, desktop, etc), the Firefox process starts up (and the start menu icon starts glowing) only to end without notice a few seconds later. Possibly related: If I start up in Safe-Mode (w/o Networking, but haven't tried with yet), I can start up FF or Chrome just fine, but if I attempt to open Chrome normally, I get a permissions error. Opera and Safari seem to be okay (mostly). Safari crashes when I try to download any files. All of the above leads me to believe that some (but clearly not all) core files have messed up permissions. Or rather, that I no longer have permission. System still does, based on Firefox opening without fail when the system initiates it. I've run MS Forefront once in normal mode, Malwarebytes twice in normal mode and once in safe-mode. One trojan found and deleted, but the problem persists. Two other things worth mentioning: I accidentally duplicated my library... I thought I'd try to add the "Internet" folder to my start menu, next to music and downloads. The first advanced thing I tried was "create new library". I clearly misunderstood what this means. I thought it was a way to add virtual folders to the library (which I thought, in turn, would allow me to choose it as a link on the start menu), but instead it recreated my already existing user folder, AppData and all. I didn't notice this until today. Then I tried setting permissions for my User folder to full control, recursively... Confused but not giving up,I thought I could maybe create a shortcut to the NetHood folder manually, but instead got hit with an access denied error. So I tried to change the permission levels for all sub-folders to my user folder so that I had full control. I got several access denied errors along the way. At this point I gave up, went out, ended up caught in the rain and stuck on a friend's couch and showing up late for work the next day. Thanks for nothing, Microsoft. When I finally got home today (20 hours later), I noticed that Firefox was acting really strange. I tried opening Chrome to see if the problem was client side or server side, and instead got the above-mentioned "you don't have permission to open this program" alert. And I think that's the whole story. Oh, I also did a system restore, but not chose a point from this morning (an auto update), and it worked but the problem wasn't fixed. And then all the earlier restore points were gone. So the questions are: a) is there a way to set the admin and user privs back to "default"? b) would this, in anyone's expert opinion, fix the problems I'm having? c) how come being logged in as an admin isn't the same as being logged in with admin privs? It seems that half the time I have to do run as admin for fairy standard things because i'm being treated as me-theuser and not me-theadmin. Thanks for reading.

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• A failed disk (Pay for professional service or SpinRite?)(new edit)

  - by huggie

  EDIT: After much negotiating and begging and seeing through promotion smoke screen, thanks to the nice representative who took my case, I now know that the engineer has already fixed my NTFS partition (I guess it might be a bad block in the partition table?). She told me that the problem was considered minor, and I should be able to boot normally and just copy stuff out. Whew..I'm glad I didn't agree to the NTD $16,000 deal. New question (should this be in a new thread?): is it safer to use the linux "dd" command or is it better to boot normally into Windows XP and just copy stuff out? EDIT2: Thanks to all the help. I give the best answer to Console as it's most directed related to my question. But many suggestion are helpful and informational. ---- ORIGINAL POST BELOW --- Hi, in my previous post (You don't need to read but it's at http://superuser.com/questions/48838/windows-xp-a-disk-read-error-occurred), I said that my hard disk was not booting and is showing "a disk read error occurred". I took it to a recovery professional. A representative responded today told me that the NTFS partitions have a "NTFS partition system crash". I have no idea what that means. The engineer handling my drive will not be available for contact till tomorrow. Now the company charges me NTD (New Taiwan Dollar) $16,000 to recover lost data, that's kind of a lot considering that my graduate student monthly stipend is currently NTD $32,000 (max. allowed by regulation, may be lower, may change depend on funding). Now I'm weighting in between the options. Option A: let the professional recovers it with the half of my monthly stipend. If file/directories I designated are not recovered I don't pay a penny. (other than the initial examination fee of NTD $1000 which I've already paid.) Option B: let me try SpinRite, if failed, back to Option A. I spoke to the representative at the company they recommended me not to handle it on my own (yeah of course that's what they all want to say, right?), and at the price tag the disk error is probably relatively minor and data recoverable. But the representative really did not have detailed information of the disk failure so I didn't take her recommendation readily. Though one thing I heed was that she said that what they would do is to duplicate the disk before attempting discovery, so there would be no data loss (Is this true? can't duplicating invoke further data loss?). That sounds very good to me. Or maybe a third option: Option C: Negotiate with them to pay them to duplicate the disk hopefully for a much smaller price tag. Let me try SpinRite, if failed, back to Option A. This is a difficult decision. Ultimately I want my data back, but if a cheaper way is available to achieve the same thing... Can operating with SpinRite also corrupt data in someway? I've no idea what happened to my drive. I'll attempt to contact the engineer and hope to get it clarified and make an edit here.

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• MySQL crash. Unknown cause. Signal 11

  - by fortmac

  This is a database that I installed ~6 months ago and had been running fine. This is currently running in Ubuntu 12.04. Attempting to connect to MySQL causes this error: ERROR 2002 (HY000): Can't connect to local MySQL server through socket '/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock' (111) Then theres: $ sudo mysqld which returns: 130702 15:38:54 [Note] Plugin 'FEDERATED' is disabled. 130702 15:38:54 InnoDB: The InnoDB memory heap is disabled 130702 15:38:54 InnoDB: Mutexes and rw_locks use GCC atomic builtins 130702 15:38:54 InnoDB: Compressed tables use zlib 1.2.3.4 130702 15:38:54 InnoDB: Initializing buffer pool, size = 128.0M 130702 15:38:54 InnoDB: Completed initialization of buffer pool 130702 15:38:54 InnoDB: highest supported file format is Barracuda. InnoDB: The log sequence number in ibdata files does not match InnoDB: the log sequence number in the ib_logfiles! 130702 15:38:54 InnoDB: Database was not shut down normally! InnoDB: Starting crash recovery. InnoDB: Reading tablespace information from the .ibd files... InnoDB: Restoring possible half-written data pages from the doublewrite InnoDB: buffer... 130702 15:38:55 InnoDB: Waiting for the background threads to start 130702 15:38:56 InnoDB: 1.1.8 started; log sequence number 5201901917 130702 15:38:56 [Note] Server hostname (bind-address): '127.0.0.1'; port: 3306 130702 15:38:56 [Note] - '127.0.0.1' resolves to '127.0.0.1'; 130702 15:38:56 [Note] Server socket created on IP: '127.0.0.1'. 130702 15:38:56 [Note] Event Scheduler: Loaded 0 events 130702 15:38:56 [Note] mysqld: ready for connections. Version: '5.5.28-0ubuntu0.12.04.3' socket: '/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock' port: 3306 (Ubuntu) 19:39:02 UTC - mysqld got signal 11 ; This could be because you hit a bug. It is also possible that this binary or one of the libraries it was linked against is corrupt, improperly built, or misconfigured. This error can also be caused by malfunctioning hardware. We will try our best to scrape up some info that will hopefully help diagnose the problem, but since we have already crashed, something is definitely wrong and this may fail. key_buffer_size=16777216 read_buffer_size=131072 max_used_connections=1 max_threads=151 thread_count=1 connection_count=1 It is possible that mysqld could use up to key_buffer_size + (read_buffer_size + sort_buffer_size)*max_threads = 346681 K bytes of memory Hope that's ok; if not, decrease some variables in the equation. Thread pointer: 0x7f9509e51530 Attempting backtrace. You can use the following information to find out where mysqld died. If you see no messages after this, something went terribly wrong... stack_bottom = 7f94f1d3de60 thread_stack 0x30000 mysqld(my_print_stacktrace+0x29)[0x7f95083427b9] mysqld(handle_fatal_signal+0x483)[0x7f9508209b43] /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libpthread.so.0(+0xfcb0)[0x7f9506f5bcb0] mysqld(+0x320e1c)[0x7f9508113e1c] mysqld(_ZN4JOIN15alloc_func_listEv+0x9c)[0x7f950812391c] mysqld(_ZN4JOIN7prepareEPPP4ItemP10TABLE_LISTjS1_jP8st_orderS7_S1_S7_P13st_select_lexP18st_select_lex_unit+0x918)[0x7f9508124658] mysqld(_Z12mysql_selectP3THDPPP4ItemP10TABLE_LISTjR4ListIS1_ES2_jP8st_orderSB_S2_SB_yP13select_resultP18st_select_lex_unitP13st_select_lex+0x130)[0x7f950812d060] mysqld(_Z13handle_selectP3THDP3LEXP13select_resultm+0x17c)[0x7f9508132fbc] mysqld(+0x2f6714)[0x7f95080e9714] mysqld(_Z21mysql_execute_commandP3THD+0x16d8)[0x7f95080f1178] mysqld(_Z11mysql_parseP3THDPcjP12Parser_state+0x10f)[0x7f95080f5e0f] mysqld(_Z16dispatch_command19enum_server_commandP3THDPcj+0x1380)[0x7f95080f7260] mysqld(_Z24do_handle_one_connectionP3THD+0x1bd)[0x7f950819b80d] mysqld(handle_one_connection+0x50)[0x7f950819b870] /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libpthread.so.0(+0x7e9a)[0x7f9506f53e9a] /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc.so.6(clone+0x6d)[0x7f9506684cbd] Trying to get some variables. Some pointers may be invalid and cause the dump to abort. Query (7f94e0004b80): is an invalid pointer Connection ID (thread ID): 1 Status: NOT_KILLED The manual page at http://dev.mysql.com/doc/mysql/en/crashing.html contains information that should help you find out what is causing the crash. I'm at a loss. What other reports would be useful in diagnosing this? /var/log/mysql.err & /var/log/mysql.log are empty.

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• Monitor randomly shutting down, computer accepting no input, need to restart to get working

  - by Sebastian Lamerichs

  First off, spec list: OS: Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit SP1 CPU: i7-4820k @ 3.7GHz (stock) GPU: Two 3GB Radeon HD 7970s @ 1.05GHz Mobo: AsRock X79 Extreme6 HDD: 2TB Seagate Barracuda 7200rpm RAM: 16GB quad-channel Kingston 1600MHz PSU: Antec HCG 900W Monitors: Acer S220HQL 1920x1080 + ViewSonic VA2251 1920x1080. Plugged into different GPUs. My problem is that, on a daily-ish basis, my monitors will turn off and not turn back on. My computer will still be running, GPU/CPU/case fans all still going, but the monitors will not turn back on. Additionally, it seems to cease all network activity. It doesn't seem to log any errors at all. I've verified that this is not a monitor issue, as when I press the num/caps/scroll lock buttons on my keyboard, the lights don't change, so the computer is clearly not accepting input. I have noticed a few other people on the internet with this problem, and some have claimed that it was solved by disabling PCI-Express Link State Power Management, but the issue still occurs for me after this. Whilst my CPU and GPUs both run at 100% 24/7, the temperatures are certainly not at dangerous levels, with the CPU averaging 65°C and the GPUs at 70°C and 78°C average. All components are brand new. I have tried forcing MSI Afterburner to start when Windows starts and to force a constant voltage, as this fixed the issue for a few days for another user, but he reported back saying that it had stopped working properly again, so I'm not putting too much faith in this working. Many people have said to adjust display sleep mode settings, but this will clearly not work, as the keyboard lights would still work if the monitors were the issue. The closest I can get to a log file for this issue is the following Folding@Home logs: 14:45:21:WU01:FS00:0x17:Completed 1120000 out of 2000000 steps (56%) 14:46:43:WU00:FS01:0x17:Completed 480000 out of 2000000 steps (24%) 14:46:49:WU01:FS00:0x17:Completed 1140000 out of 2000000 steps (57%) 14:48:30:WU01:FS00:0x17:Completed 1160000 out of 2000000 steps (58%) 14:49:55:WU01:FS00:0x17:Completed 1180000 out of 2000000 steps (59%) As you can see, the second GPU (FS01) stops computation approximately three and a half minutes before the issue occurs (it should be completing 1% every 80-120 seconds), and the first GPU (FS00) continues for a few minutes more before the logs just end. As far as I can tell, the computer has a network failure at the time the first GPU stops working, the latest IRC message I received from this time was at 14:47:58. That being said, there could have just not been any messages between then and 14:50:00, so I'm going to be connecting a laptop to the same bouncer to double-check if it happens again. The GPUs functioned perfectly well in another computer for a significant period of time, so I'm fairly confident that they aren't the issue, which means that this is being caused by either software or the motherboard, or possibly RAM. I really hope it's software. I heard from a forum board that there was a patch from Microsoft that fixed this problem, but "I've forgot which KB it was or the google search terms I used to find the patch, LOL.", so that's not much help. Haven't seen it mentioned by anyone else on about a dozen threads about this issue either. The computer is plugged in via a surge-protected power board, and I've run several other computers and pieces of hardware through it with no issues, so that is not the cause. I have just set the hard disk to never turn off, although I don't believe that that will solve the issue. Strangely, this has only happened when I'm not at the computer (which is actually a minority of the time). Until today it had only happened when I had not been actively using the computer for 6 hours, but today it happened within 10-30 minutes of me last using the computer actively. I have enabled file logging from MSI Afterburner, so hopefully this will shed some light on the issue, but I'm not too optimistic. I've heard that it could be a motherboard problem, but I figured I should ask around before RMAing it. Any help?

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• Installing Lubuntu 14.04.1 forcepae fails

  - by Rantanplan

  I tried to install Lubuntu 14.04.1 from a CD. First, I chose Try Lubuntu without installing which gave: ERROR: PAE is disabled on this Pentium M (PAE can potentially be enabled with kernel parameter "forcepae" ... Following the description on https://help.ubuntu.com/community/PAE, I used forcepae and tried Try Lubuntu without installing again. That worked fine. dmesg | grep -i pae showed: [ 0.000000] Kernel command line: file=/cdrom/preseed/lubuntu.seed boot=casper initrd=/casper/initrd.lz quiet splash -- forcepae [ 0.008118] PAE forced! On the live-CD session, I tried installing Lubuntu double clicking on the install button on the desktop. Here, the CD starts running but then stops running and nothing happens. Next, I rebooted and tried installing Lubuntu directly from the boot menu screen using forcepae again. After a while, I receive the following error message: The installer encountered an unrecoverable error. A desktop session will now be run so that you may investigate the problem or try installing again. Hitting Enter brings me to the desktop. For what errors should I search? And how? Finally, I rebooted once more and tried Check disc for defects with forcepae option; no errors have been found. Now, I am wondering how to find the error or whether it would be better to follow advice c in https://help.ubuntu.com/community/PAE: "Move the hard disk to a computer on which the processor has PAE capability and PAE flag (that is, almost everything else than a Banias). Install the system as usual but don't add restricted drivers. After the install move the disk back." Thanks for some hints! Perhaps some of the following can help: On Lubuntu 12.04: cat /proc/cpuinfo processor : 0 vendor_id : GenuineIntel cpu family : 6 model : 13 model name : Intel(R) Pentium(R) M processor 1.50GHz stepping : 6 microcode : 0x17 cpu MHz : 600.000 cache size : 2048 KB fdiv_bug : no hlt_bug : no f00f_bug : no coma_bug : no fpu : yes fpu_exception : yes cpuid level : 2 wp : yes flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr mce cx8 mtrr pge mca cmov clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss tm pbe up bts est tm2 bogomips : 1284.76 clflush size : 64 cache_alignment : 64 address sizes : 32 bits physical, 32 bits virtual power management: uname -a Linux humboldt 3.2.0-67-generic #101-Ubuntu SMP Tue Jul 15 17:45:51 UTC 2014 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux lsb_release -a No LSB modules are available. Distributor ID: Ubuntu Description: Ubuntu 12.04.5 LTS Release: 12.04 Codename: precise cpuid eax in eax ebx ecx edx 00000000 00000002 756e6547 6c65746e 49656e69 00000001 000006d6 00000816 00000180 afe9f9bf 00000002 02b3b001 000000f0 00000000 2c04307d 80000000 80000004 00000000 00000000 00000000 80000001 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 80000002 20202020 20202020 65746e49 2952286c 80000003 6e655020 6d756974 20295228 7270204d 80000004 7365636f 20726f73 30352e31 007a4847 Vendor ID: "GenuineIntel"; CPUID level 2 Intel-specific functions: Version 000006d6: Type 0 - Original OEM Family 6 - Pentium Pro Model 13 - Stepping 6 Reserved 0 Brand index: 22 [not in table] Extended brand string: " Intel(R) Pentium(R) M processor 1.50GHz" CLFLUSH instruction cache line size: 8 Feature flags afe9f9bf: FPU Floating Point Unit VME Virtual 8086 Mode Enhancements DE Debugging Extensions PSE Page Size Extensions TSC Time Stamp Counter MSR Model Specific Registers MCE Machine Check Exception CX8 COMPXCHG8B Instruction SEP Fast System Call MTRR Memory Type Range Registers PGE PTE Global Flag MCA Machine Check Architecture CMOV Conditional Move and Compare Instructions FGPAT Page Attribute Table CLFSH CFLUSH instruction DS Debug store ACPI Thermal Monitor and Clock Ctrl MMX MMX instruction set FXSR Fast FP/MMX Streaming SIMD Extensions save/restore SSE Streaming SIMD Extensions instruction set SSE2 SSE2 extensions SS Self Snoop TM Thermal monitor 31 reserved TLB and cache info: b0: unknown TLB/cache descriptor b3: unknown TLB/cache descriptor 02: Instruction TLB: 4MB pages, 4-way set assoc, 2 entries f0: unknown TLB/cache descriptor 7d: unknown TLB/cache descriptor 30: unknown TLB/cache descriptor 04: Data TLB: 4MB pages, 4-way set assoc, 8 entries 2c: unknown TLB/cache descriptor On Lubuntu 14.04.1 live-CD with forcepae: cat /proc/cpuinfo processor : 0 vendor_id : GenuineIntel cpu family : 6 model : 13 model name : Intel(R) Pentium(R) M processor 1.50GHz stepping : 6 microcode : 0x17 cpu MHz : 600.000 cache size : 2048 KB physical id : 0 siblings : 1 core id : 0 cpu cores : 1 apicid : 0 initial apicid : 0 fdiv_bug : no f00f_bug : no coma_bug : no fpu : yes fpu_exception : yes cpuid level : 2 wp : yes flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 sep mtrr pge mca cmov clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss tm pbe bts est tm2 bogomips : 1284.68 clflush size : 64 cache_alignment : 64 address sizes : 36 bits physical, 32 bits virtual power management: uname -a Linux lubuntu 3.13.0-32-generic #57-Ubuntu SMP Tue Jul 15 03:51:12 UTC 2014 i686 i686 i686 GNU/Linux lsb_release -a No LSB modules are available. Distributor ID: Ubuntu Description: Ubuntu 14.04.1 LTS Release: 14.04 Codename: trusty cpuid CPU 0: vendor_id = "GenuineIntel" version information (1/eax): processor type = primary processor (0) family = Intel Pentium Pro/II/III/Celeron/Core/Core 2/Atom, AMD Athlon/Duron, Cyrix M2, VIA C3 (6) model = 0xd (13) stepping id = 0x6 (6) extended family = 0x0 (0) extended model = 0x0 (0) (simple synth) = Intel Pentium M (Dothan B1) / Celeron M (Dothan B1), 90nm miscellaneous (1/ebx): process local APIC physical ID = 0x0 (0) cpu count = 0x0 (0) CLFLUSH line size = 0x8 (8) brand index = 0x16 (22) brand id = 0x16 (22): Intel Pentium M, .13um feature information (1/edx): x87 FPU on chip = true virtual-8086 mode enhancement = true debugging extensions = true page size extensions = true time stamp counter = true RDMSR and WRMSR support = true physical address extensions = false machine check exception = true CMPXCHG8B inst. = true APIC on chip = false SYSENTER and SYSEXIT = true memory type range registers = true PTE global bit = true machine check architecture = true conditional move/compare instruction = true page attribute table = true page size extension = false processor serial number = false CLFLUSH instruction = true debug store = true thermal monitor and clock ctrl = true MMX Technology = true FXSAVE/FXRSTOR = true SSE extensions = true SSE2 extensions = true self snoop = true hyper-threading / multi-core supported = false therm. monitor = true IA64 = false pending break event = true feature information (1/ecx): PNI/SSE3: Prescott New Instructions = false PCLMULDQ instruction = false 64-bit debug store = false MONITOR/MWAIT = false CPL-qualified debug store = false VMX: virtual machine extensions = false SMX: safer mode extensions = false Enhanced Intel SpeedStep Technology = true thermal monitor 2 = true SSSE3 extensions = false context ID: adaptive or shared L1 data = false FMA instruction = false CMPXCHG16B instruction = false xTPR disable = false perfmon and debug = false process context identifiers = false direct cache access = false SSE4.1 extensions = false SSE4.2 extensions = false extended xAPIC support = false MOVBE instruction = false POPCNT instruction = false time stamp counter deadline = false AES instruction = false XSAVE/XSTOR states = false OS-enabled XSAVE/XSTOR = false AVX: advanced vector extensions = false F16C half-precision convert instruction = false RDRAND instruction = false hypervisor guest status = false cache and TLB information (2): 0xb0: instruction TLB: 4K, 4-way, 128 entries 0xb3: data TLB: 4K, 4-way, 128 entries 0x02: instruction TLB: 4M pages, 4-way, 2 entries 0xf0: 64 byte prefetching 0x7d: L2 cache: 2M, 8-way, sectored, 64 byte lines 0x30: L1 cache: 32K, 8-way, 64 byte lines 0x04: data TLB: 4M pages, 4-way, 8 entries 0x2c: L1 data cache: 32K, 8-way, 64 byte lines extended feature flags (0x80000001/edx): SYSCALL and SYSRET instructions = false execution disable = false 1-GB large page support = false RDTSCP = false 64-bit extensions technology available = false Intel feature flags (0x80000001/ecx): LAHF/SAHF supported in 64-bit mode = false LZCNT advanced bit manipulation = false 3DNow! PREFETCH/PREFETCHW instructions = false brand = " Intel(R) Pentium(R) M processor 1.50GHz" (multi-processing synth): none (multi-processing method): Intel leaf 1 (synth) = Intel Pentium M (Dothan B1), 90nm

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• Twitter traffic might not be what it seems

  - by Piet

  Are you using bit.ly stats to measure interest in the links you post on twitter? I’ve been hearing for a while about people claiming to get the majority of their traffic originating from twitter these days. Now, I’ve been playing with the twitter ruby gem recently, doing various experiments which I’ll not go into detail here because they could be regarded as spamming… if I’d conduct them on a large scale, that is. It’s scary to see people actually engaging with @replies crafted with some regular expressions and eliza-like trickery on status updates found using the twitter api. I’m wondering how Twitter is going to contain the coming spam-flood. When posting links I used bit.ly as url shortener, since this one seems to be the de-facto standard on twitter. A nice thing about bit.ly is that it shows some basic stats about the redirects it performs for your shortened links. To my surprise, most links posted almost immediately resulted in several visitors. Now, seeing that I was posting the links together with some information concerning what the link is about, I concluded that the people who were actually clicking the links should be very targeted visitors. This felt a bit like free adwords, and I suddenly started to understand why everyone was raving about getting traffic from twitter. How wrong I was! (and I think several 1000 online marketers with me) On the destination site I used a traffic logging solution that works by including a little javascript snippet in your pages. It seemed that somehow all visitors disappeared after the bit.ly redirect and before getting to the site, because I was hardly seeing any visitors there. So I started investigating what was happening: by looking at the logfiles of the destination site, and by making my own ’shortened’ urls by doing redirects using a very short domain name I own. This way, I could check the apache access_log before the redirects. Most user agents turned out to be bots without a doubt. Here’s an excerpt of user-agents awk’ed from apache’s access_log for a time period of about one hour, right after posting some links: AideRSS 2.0 (postrank.com) Java/1.6.0_13 Java/1.6.0_14 libwww-perl/5.816 MLBot (www.metadatalabs.com/mlbot) Mozilla/4.0 (compatible;MSIE 5.01; Windows -NT 5.0 - real-url.org) Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Twitturls; +http://twitturls.com) Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Viralheat Bot/1.0; +http://www.viralheat.com/) Mozilla/5.0 (Danger hiptop 4.6; U; rv:1.7.12) Gecko/20050920 Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-us; rv:1.9.0.2) Gecko/2008092313 Ubuntu/9.04 (jaunty) Firefox/3.5 OpenCalaisSemanticProxy PycURL/7.18.2 PycURL/7.19.3 Python-urllib/1.17 Twingly Recon twitmatic Twitturly / v0.6 Wget/1.10.2 (Red Hat modified) Wget/1.11.1 (Red Hat modified) Of the few user-agents that seem ‘real’ at first, half are originating from an ip-address used by Amazon EC2. And I doubt people are setting op proxies on there. Oh yeah, Googlebot (the real deal, from a legit google owned address) is sucking up posted links like fresh oysters. I guess google is trying to make sure in advance to never be beaten by twitter in the ‘realtime search’ department. Actually, I think it’d be almost stupid NOT to post any new pages/posts/websites on Twitter, it must be one of the fastest ways to get a Googlebot visit. Same experiment with a real, established twitter account Now, because I was posting the url’s either as ’status’ messages or directed @people, on a test-account with hardly any (human) followers, I checked again using the twitter accounts from a commercial site I’m involved with. These accounts all have between 500 and 1000 targeted (I think) followers. I checked the destination access_logs and also added ‘my’ redirect after the bit.ly redirect: same results, although seemingly a bit higher real visitor/bot ratio. Btw: one of these account was ‘punished’ with a 1 week lock recently because the same (1 one!) status update was sent that was sent right before using another account. They got an email explaining the lock because the account didn’t act according to their TOS. I can’t find anything in their TOS about it, can you? I don’t think Twitter is on the right track punishing a legit account, knowing the trickery I had been doing with it’s api went totally unpunished. I might be wrong though, I often am. On the other hand: this commercial site reported targeted traffic and actual signups from visitors coming from Twitter. The ones that are really real visitors are also very targeted. I’m just not sure if the amount of work involved could hold up against an adwords campaign. Reposting the same link over and over again helps On thing I noticed: It helps to keep on reposting the same links with regular intervals. I guess most people only look at their first page when checking out recent posts of the ones they’re following, or don’t look too far back when performing a search. Now, this probably isn’t according to the twitter TOS. Actually, it might be spamming but no-one is obligated to follow anyone else of course. This way, I was getting more real visitors and less bots. To my surprise (when my programmer’s hat is on) there were still repeated visits from the same bots coming from the same ip-addresses. Did they expect to find something else when visiting for a 2nd or 3rd time? (actually,this gave me an idea: you can’t change a link once it’s posted, but you can change where it redirects to) Most bots were smart enough not to follow the same link again though. Are you successful in getting real visitors from Twitter? Are you only relying on bit.ly to provide traffic stats?

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• Upgrading Windows 8 boot to VHD to Windows 8.1&ndash;Step by step guide

  - by Liam Westley

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/twickers/archive/2013/10/19/upgrading-windows-8-boot-to-vhd-to-windows-8.1ndashstep-by.aspxBoot to VHD – dual booting Windows 7 and Windows 8 became easy When Windows 8 arrived, quite a few people decided that they would still dual boot their machines, and instead of mucking about with resizing disk partitions to free up space for Windows 8 they decided to use the boot from VHD feature to create a huge hard disc image into which Windows 8 could be installed.  Scott Hanselman wrote this installation guide, while I myself used the installation guide from Ed Bott of ZD net fame. Boot to VHD is a great solution, it achieves a dual boot, can be backed up easily and had virtually no effect on the original Windows 7 partition. As a developer who has dual booted Windows operating systems for years, hacking boot.ini files, the boot to VHD was a much easier solution. Upgrade to Windows 8.1 – ah, you can’t do that on a virtual disk installation (boot to VHD) Last week the final version of Windows 8.1 arrived, and I went into the Windows Store to upgrade.  Luckily I’m on a fast download service, and use an SSD, because once the upgrade was downloaded and prepared Windows informed that This PC can’t run Windows 8.1, and provided the reason, You can’t install Windows on a virtual drive.  You can see an image of the message and discussion that sparked my search for a solution in this Microsoft Technet forum post. I was determined not to have to resize partitions yet again and fiddle with VHD to disk utilities and back again, and in the end I did succeed in upgrading to a Windows 8.1 boot to VHD partition.  It takes quite a bit of effort though … tldr; Simple steps of how you upgrade Boot into Windows 7 – make a copy of your Windows 8 VHD, to become Windows 8.1 Enable Hyper-V in your Windows 8 (the original boot to VHD partition) Create a new virtual machine, attaching the copy of your Windows 8 VHD Start the virtual machine, upgrade it via the Windows Store to Windows 8.1 Shutdown the virtual machine Boot into Windows 7 – use the bcedit tool to create a new Windows 8.1 boot to VHD option (pointing at the copy) Boot into the new Windows 8.1 option Reactivate Windows 8.1 (it will have become deactivated by running under Hyper-V) Remove the original Windows 8 VHD, and in Windows 7 use bcedit to remove it from the boot menu Things you’ll need A system that can run Hyper-V under Windows 8 (Intel i5, i7 class CPU) Enough space to have your original Windows 8 boot to VHD and a copy at the same time An ISO or DVD for Windows 8 to create a bootable Windows 8 partition Step by step guide Boot to your base o/s, the real one, Windows 7. Make a copy of the Windows 8 VHD file that you use to boot Windows 8 (via boot from VHD) – I copied it from a folder on C: called VHD-Win8 to VHD-Win8.1 on my N: drive. Reboot your system into Windows 8, and enable Hyper-V if not already present (this may require reboot) Use the Hyper-V manager , create a new Hyper-V machine, using half your system memory, and use the option to attach an existing VHD on the main IDE controller – this will be the new copy you made in Step 2. Start the virtual machine, use Connect to view it, and you’ll probably discover it cannot boot as there is no boot record If this is the case, go to Hyper-V manager, edit the Settings for the virtual machine to attach an ISO of a Windows 8 DVD to the second IDE controller. Start the virtual machine, use Connect to view it, and it should now attempt a fresh installation of Windows 8.  You should select Advanced Options and choose Repair - this will make VHD bootable When the setup reboots your virtual machine, turn off the virtual machine, and remove the ISO of the Windows 8 DVD from the virtual machine settings. Start virtual machine, use Connect to view it.  You will see the devices to be re-discovered (including your quad CPU becoming single CPU).  Eventually you should see the Windows Login screen. You may notice that your desktop background (Win+D) will have turned black as your Windows installation has become deactivate due to the hardware changes between your real PC and Hyper-V. Fortunately becoming deactivated, does not stop you using the Windows Store, where you can select the update to Windows 8.1. You can now watch the progress joy of the Windows 8 update; downloading, preparing to update, checking compatibility, gathering info, preparing to restart, and finally, confirm restart - remember that you are restarting your virtual machine sitting on the copy of the VHD, not the Windows 8 boot to VHD you are currently using to run Hyper-V (confused yet?) After the reboot you get the real upgrade messages; setting up x%, xx%, (quite slow) After a while, Getting ready Applying PC Settings x%, xx% (really slow) Updating your system (fast) Setting up a few more things x%, (quite slow) Getting ready, again Accept license terms Express settings Confirmed previous password Next, I had to set up a Microsoft account – which is possibly now required, and not optional Using the Microsoft account required a 2 factor authorization, via text message, a 7 digit code for me Finalising settings Blank screen, HI .. We're setting up things for you (similar to original Windows 8 install) 'You can get new apps from the Store', below which is ’Installing your apps’ - I had Windows Media Center which is counts as an app from the Store ‘Taking care of a few things’, below which is ‘Installing your apps’ ‘Taking care of a few things’, below ‘Don't turn off your PC’ ‘Getting your apps ready’, below ‘Don't turn off your PC’ ‘Almost ready’, below ‘Don't turn off your PC’ … finally, we get the Windows 8.1 start menu, and a quick Win+D to check the desktop confirmed all the application icons I expected, pinned items on the taskbar, and one app moaning about a missing drive At this point the upgrade is complete – you can shutdown the virtual machine Reboot from the original Windows 8 and return to Windows 7 to configure booting to the Windows 8.1 copy of the VHD In an administrator command prompt do following use the bcdedit tool (from an MSDN blog about configuring VHD to boot in Windows 7) Type bcedit to list the current boot options, so you can copy the GUID (complete with brackets/braces) for the original Windows 8 boot to VHD Create a new menu option, copy of the Windows 8 option; bcdedit /copy {originalguid} /d "Windows 8.1" Point the new Windows 8.1 option to the copy of the VHD; bcdedit /set {newguid} device vhd=[D:]\Image.vhd Point the new Windows 8.1 option to the copy of the VHD; bcdedit /set {newguid} osdevice vhd=[D:]\Image.vhd Set autodetection of the HAL (may already be set); bcdedit /set {newguid} detecthal on Reboot from Windows 7 and select the new option 'Windows 8.1' on the boot menu, and you’ll have some messages to look at, as your hardware is redetected (as you are back from 1 CPU to 4 CPUs) ‘Getting devices ready, blank then %xx, with occasional blank screen, for the graphics driver, (fast-ish) Getting Ready message (fast) You will have to suffer one final reboots, choose 'Windows 8.1' and you can now login to a lovely Windows 8.1 start screen running on non virtualized hardware via boot to VHD After checking everything is running fine, you can now choose to Activate Windows, which for me was a toll free phone call to the automated system where you type in lots of numbers to be given a whole bunch of new activation codes. Once you’re happy with your new Windows 8.1 boot to VHD, and no longer need the Windows 8 boot to VHD, feel free to delete the old one.  I do believe once you upgrade, you are no longer licensed to use it anyway. There, that was simple wasn’t it? Looking at the huge list of steps it took to perform this upgrade, you may wonder whether I think this is worth it.  Well, I think it is worth booting to VHD.  It makes backups a snap (go to Windows 7, copy the VHD, you backed up the o/s) and helps with disk management – want to move the o/s, you can move the VHD and repoint the boot menu to the new location. The downside is that Microsoft has complete neglected to support boot to VHD as an upgradable option.  Quite a poor decision in my opinion, and if you read twitter and the forums quite a few people agree with that view.  It’s a shame this got missed in the work on creating the upgrade packages for Windows 8.1.

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• Wishful Thinking: Why can't HTML fix Script Attacks at the Source?

  - by Rick Strahl

  The Web can be an evil place, especially if you're a Web Developer blissfully unaware of Cross Site Script Attacks (XSS). Even if you are aware of XSS in all of its insidious forms, it's extremely complex to deal with all the issues if you're taking user input and you're actually allowing users to post raw HTML into an application. I'm dealing with this again today in a Web application where legacy data contains raw HTML that has to be displayed and users ask for the ability to use raw HTML as input for listings. The first line of defense of course is: Just say no to HTML input from users. If you don't allow HTML input directly and use HTML Encoding (HttyUtility.HtmlEncode() in .NET or using standard ASP.NET MVC output @Model.Content) you're fairly safe at least from the HTML input provided. Both WebForms and Razor support HtmlEncoded content, although Razor makes it the default. In Razor the default @ expression syntax:@Model.UserContent automatically produces HTML encoded content - you actually have to go out of your way to create raw HTML content (safe by default) using @Html.Raw() or the HtmlString class. In Web Forms (V4) you can use:<%: Model.UserContent %> or if you're using a version prior to 4.0:<%= HttpUtility.HtmlEncode(Model.UserContent) %> This works great as a hedge against embedded <script> tags and HTML markup as any HTML is turned into text that displays as HTML but doesn't render the HTML. But it turns any embedded HTML markup tags into plain text. If you need to display HTML in raw form with the markup tags rendering based on user input this approach is worthless. If you do accept HTML input and need to echo the rendered HTML input back, the task of cleaning up that HTML is a complex task. In the projects I work on, customers are frequently asking for the ability to post raw HTML quite frequently.  Almost every app that I've built where there's document content from users we start out with text only input - possibly using something like MarkDown - but inevitably users want to just post plain old HTML they created in some other rich editing application. See this a lot with realtors especially who often want to reuse their postings easily in multiple places. In my work this is a common problem I need to deal with and I've tried dozens of different methods from sanitizing, simple rejection of input to custom markup schemes none of which have ever felt comfortable to me. They work in a half assed, hacked together sort of way but I always live in fear of missing something vital which is *really easy to do*. My Wishlist Item: A <restricted> tag in HTML Let me dream here for a second on how to address this problem. It seems to me the easiest place where this can be fixed is: In the browser. Browsers are actually executing script code so they have a lot of control over the script code that resides in a page. What if there was a way to specify that you want to turn off script code for a block of HTML? The main issue when dealing with HTML raw input isn't that we as developers are unaware of the implications of user input, but the fact that we sometimes have to display raw HTML input the user provides. So the problem markup is usually isolated in only a very specific part of the document. So, what if we had a way to specify that in any given HTML block, no script code could execute by wrapping it into a tag that disables all script functionality in the browser? This would include <script> tags and any document script attributes like onclick, onfocus etc. and potentially also disallow things like iFrames that can potentially be scripted from the within the iFrame's target. I'd like to see something along these lines:<article> <restricted allowscripts="no" allowiframes="no"> <div>Some content</div> <script>alert('go ahead make my day, punk!");</script> <div onfocus="$.getJson('http://evilsite.com/')">more content</div> </restricted> </article> A tag like this would basically disallow all script code from firing from any HTML that's rendered within it. You'd use this only on code that you actually render from your data only and only if you are dealing with custom data. So something like this:<article> <restricted> @Html.Raw(Model.UserContent) </restricted> </article> For browsers this would actually be easy to intercept. They render the DOM and control loading and execution of scripts that are loaded through it. All the browser would have to do is suspend execution of <script> tags and not hookup any event handlers defined via markup in this block. Given all the crazy XSS attacks that exist and the prevalence of this problem this would go a long way towards preventing at least coded script attacks in the DOM. And it seems like a totally doable solution that wouldn't be very difficult to implement by vendors. There would also need to be some logic in the parser to not allow an </restricted> or <restricted> tag into the content as to short-circuit the rstricted section (per James Hart's comment). I'm sure there are other issues to consider as well that I didn't think of in my off-the-back-of-a-napkin concept here but the idea overall seems worth consideration I think. Without code running in a user supplied HTML block it'd be pretty hard to compromise a local HTML document and pass information like Cookies to a server. Or even send data to a server period. Short of an iFrame that can access the parent frame (which is another restriction that should be available on this <restricted> tag) that could potentially communicate back, there's not a lot a malicious site could do. The HTML could still 'phone home' via image links and href links potentially and basically say this site was accessed, but without the ability to run script code it would be pretty tough to pass along critical information to the server beyond that. Ahhhh… one can dream… Not holding my breath of course. The design by committee that is the W3C can't agree on anything in timeframes measured less than decades, but maybe this is one place where browser vendors can actually step up the pressure. This is something in their best interest to reduce the attack surface for vulnerabilities on their browser platforms significantly. Several people commented on Twitter today that there isn't enough discussion on issues like this that address serious needs in the web browser space. Realistically security has to be a number one concern with Web applications in general - there isn't a Web app out there that is not vulnerable. And yet nothing has been done to address these security issues even though there might be relatively easy solutions to make this happen. It'll take time, and it's probably not going to happen in our lifetime, but maybe this rambling thought sparks some ideas on how this sort of restriction can get into browsers in some way in the future.© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2012Posted in ASP.NET  HTML5  HTML  Security   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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• How Mary Meeker’s Latest Findings May Make You Re-Imagine Commerce

  - by Brenna Johnson-Oracle

  0 0 1 954 5439 Endeca Technologies 45 12 6381 14.0 Normal 0 false false false EN-US JA X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} Today, Mary Meeker released her highly anticipated annual “Internet Trends” presentation for 2014. All 164 slides are jam-packed with pretty much everything you need to know about the state of the Internet. And as luck would have it, Oracle is staying ahead of these trends (but we’ll talk about that later). There were a few surprises, some stats to solidify what you likely already know, and Meeker’s novel observations about where we are all going. What interested me the most is not only how people are engaging in their personal lives, but how they engage with brands. As you could probably predict, Internet usage growth is slowing while tablet user and mobile data traffic growth continue their meteoric rise around the globe, with tremendous growth in underpenetrated markets like China, India, Brazil and Indonesia. Now hold those the “Internet is dead” comments. Keep in mind there’s still plenty of room to grow, and a multiscreen model is Meeker’s vision for our future. Despite 1.5x YOY growth for mobile traffic, mobile still only makes up about 23% of all traffic today. With tablet shipments easily outpacing figures for PCs even at their height (in 2007), mobile will only continue on it’s path, but won’t be everything to everyone. Mobile won’t replace every touchpoint, it’s just created our shorter attention spans and demand for simpler, more personal experiences. As Meeker points out TVs, tablets, PCs, and smartphones are used for different activities at present, but lines will blur (for example, 84% of smartphones owners use their device while watching TV). Day-to-day activities are being re-imagining through simple, beautiful user experiences. It seems like every day I discover a new way a brand/site/app made the most mundane or mounting task enjoyable and frictionless – and I’m not alone. Meeker points out the evolution of how we do everything from how we communicate, get information, use money, meet someone, get places, order a meal, and consume media is all done through new user interfaces that make day-to-day tasks simpler. This movement has caused just about everyone’s patience for a poor UX to take a nosedive. And it’s not just the digital user experience, technology is making a lot of people’s offline lives easier, and less expensive. Today 47% of online shopping utilizes free shipping— nearly half. And Meeker predicts same day local delivery will be the “next big thing” (and you can take a guess on who will own that). Content, Community and Commerce creates the “Internet Trifecta.” Meeker pointed out that when content, communities and commerce occur in a single experience it’s embraced by consumers, which translates to big dollars for brands. The magic happens when consumers can get inspired, research, and buy in a single experience. As the buying cycle has changed and touchpoints (Web, mobile, social, store) are no longer tied to “roles” or steps in the customer journey, brands must make all experiences (content and commerce) available in a single, adaptable experience. (We at Oracle Commerce have a lot to say on this topic – stay tuned!) And in what Meeker calls the “biggest re-imagination of all:” consumers enabled with smartphones and sensors are creating troves of findable and sharable data, which she says is in the early stages, by growing rapidly. She notes that transparency and patterns of consumers with this hardware (FYI - there are up to 10 sensors embedded in smartphones now) has created a Big Data treasure chest to be mined to improve business and the life of the consumer. The opportunities are endless. So what does it all mean for a company doing business online? Start thinking about how you can: Re-imagine your experience. Not your online experience and your mobile experience and your social experience – your overall experience. When consumers can research, buy, and advocate from anywhere (and their attention spans are at an all-time low) channels don’t exist. Enable simple and beautiful interactions informed by all of the online and offline data you leverage across your enterprise. Ethically leverage the endless supply of data (user generated content, clicks, purchases, in-store behavior, social activity) to make experiences more beautiful, more accurate, and more personalized (not to mention, more lucrative for you). Re-imagine content and commerce. Content and commerce must co-exist in a single destination where shoppers can get inspired, explore, research, share, and purchase in a collective experience. Think of how you can deliver an experience where all types of experiences (brand stories and commerce) adapt to every customer need. (Look for more on this topic coming soon). Re-imagine your reach. Look to Meeker’s findings to see how the global appetite for digital experiences is growing, but under-served in many places (i.e.: India, Mexico, Indonesia, Brazil, Philippines, etc.). Growing your online business to a new geography doesn’t have to mean starting from scratch or having an entirely new team manage the new endeavor. Expand using what you’ve already built in a multisite framework, with global language support. And of course, make sure it’s optimized for mobile! Re-imagine the possible. After every Meeker report, I’m always left with the thought “we are just at the beginning.” Everyday there is more data, more possibilities, more online consumers, and more opportunities to use new latest technology to get closer to your customers and be more successful. There’s a lot going on in our Product Development and Product Innovations groups to automate innovation for our customers, so that they can continue to stay ahead of these trends, without disrupting their business. Check out a recent interview with our Innovations Team on some of these new possibilities. Staying on track despite the seemingly endless possibilities out there is the hard part. Prioritizing where you will focus based on your unique brand promise, customer and goals is what you do best. To learn how Oracle Commerce can help your business achieve your goals check out oracle.com/commerce. Check out Meeker’s entire report here.

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• Maintaining shared service in ASP.NET MVC Application

  - by kazimanzurrashid

  Depending on the application sometimes we have to maintain some shared service throughout our application. Let’s say you are developing a multi-blog supported blog engine where both the controller and view must know the currently visiting blog, it’s setting , user information and url generation service. In this post, I will show you how you can handle this kind of case in most convenient way. First, let see the most basic way, we can create our PostController in the following way: public class PostController : Controller { public PostController(dependencies...) { } public ActionResult Index(string blogName, int? page) { BlogInfo blog = blogSerivce.FindByName(blogName); if (blog == null) { return new NotFoundResult(); } IEnumerable<PostInfo> posts = postService.FindPublished(blog.Id, PagingCalculator.StartIndex(page, blog.PostPerPage), blog.PostPerPage); int count = postService.GetPublishedCount(blog.Id); UserInfo user = null; if (HttpContext.User.Identity.IsAuthenticated) { user = userService.FindByName(HttpContext.User.Identity.Name); } return View(new IndexViewModel(urlResolver, user, blog, posts, count, page)); } public ActionResult Archive(string blogName, int? page, ArchiveDate archiveDate) { BlogInfo blog = blogSerivce.FindByName(blogName); if (blog == null) { return new NotFoundResult(); } IEnumerable<PostInfo> posts = postService.FindArchived(blog.Id, archiveDate, PagingCalculator.StartIndex(page, blog.PostPerPage), blog.PostPerPage); int count = postService.GetArchivedCount(blog.Id, archiveDate); UserInfo user = null; if (HttpContext.User.Identity.IsAuthenticated) { user = userService.FindByName(HttpContext.User.Identity.Name); } return View(new ArchiveViewModel(urlResolver, user, blog, posts, count, page, achiveDate)); } public ActionResult Tag(string blogName, string tagSlug, int? page) { BlogInfo blog = blogSerivce.FindByName(blogName); if (blog == null) { return new NotFoundResult(); } TagInfo tag = tagService.FindBySlug(blog.Id, tagSlug); if (tag == null) { return new NotFoundResult(); } IEnumerable<PostInfo> posts = postService.FindPublishedByTag(blog.Id, tag.Id, PagingCalculator.StartIndex(page, blog.PostPerPage), blog.PostPerPage); int count = postService.GetPublishedCountByTag(tag.Id); UserInfo user = null; if (HttpContext.User.Identity.IsAuthenticated) { user = userService.FindByName(HttpContext.User.Identity.Name); } return View(new TagViewModel(urlResolver, user, blog, posts, count, page, tag)); } } As you can see the above code heavily depends upon the current blog and the blog retrieval code is duplicated in all of the action methods, once the blog is retrieved the same blog is passed in the view model. Other than the blog the view also needs the current user and url resolver to render it properly. One way to remove the duplicate blog retrieval code is to create a custom model binder which converts the blog from a blog name and use the blog a parameter in the action methods instead of the string blog name, but it only helps the first half in the above scenario, the action methods still have to pass the blog, user and url resolver etc in the view model. Now lets try to improve the the above code, first lets create a new class which would contain the shared services, lets name it as BlogContext: public class BlogContext { public BlogInfo Blog { get; set; } public UserInfo User { get; set; } public IUrlResolver UrlResolver { get; set; } } Next, we will create an interface, IContextAwareService: public interface IContextAwareService { BlogContext Context { get; set; } } The idea is, whoever needs these shared services needs to implement this interface, in our case both the controller and the view model, now we will create an action filter which will be responsible for populating the context: public class PopulateBlogContextAttribute : FilterAttribute, IActionFilter { private static string blogNameRouteParameter = "blogName"; private readonly IBlogService blogService; private readonly IUserService userService; private readonly BlogContext context; public PopulateBlogContextAttribute(IBlogService blogService, IUserService userService, IUrlResolver urlResolver) { Invariant.IsNotNull(blogService, "blogService"); Invariant.IsNotNull(userService, "userService"); Invariant.IsNotNull(urlResolver, "urlResolver"); this.blogService = blogService; this.userService = userService; context = new BlogContext { UrlResolver = urlResolver }; } public static string BlogNameRouteParameter { [DebuggerStepThrough] get { return blogNameRouteParameter; } [DebuggerStepThrough] set { blogNameRouteParameter = value; } } public void OnActionExecuting(ActionExecutingContext filterContext) { string blogName = (string) filterContext.Controller.ValueProvider.GetValue(BlogNameRouteParameter).ConvertTo(typeof(string), Culture.Current); if (!string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(blogName)) { context.Blog = blogService.FindByName(blogName); } if (context.Blog == null) { filterContext.Result = new NotFoundResult(); return; } if (filterContext.HttpContext.User.Identity.IsAuthenticated) { context.User = userService.FindByName(filterContext.HttpContext.User.Identity.Name); } IContextAwareService controller = filterContext.Controller as IContextAwareService; if (controller != null) { controller.Context = context; } } public void OnActionExecuted(ActionExecutedContext filterContext) { Invariant.IsNotNull(filterContext, "filterContext"); if ((filterContext.Exception == null) || filterContext.ExceptionHandled) { IContextAwareService model = filterContext.Controller.ViewData.Model as IContextAwareService; if (model != null) { model.Context = context; } } } } As you can see we are populating the context in the OnActionExecuting, which executes just before the controllers action methods executes, so by the time our action methods executes the context is already populated, next we are are assigning the same context in the view model in OnActionExecuted method which executes just after we set the  model and return the view in our action methods. Now, lets change the view models so that it implements this interface: public class IndexViewModel : IContextAwareService { // More Codes } public class ArchiveViewModel : IContextAwareService { // More Codes } public class TagViewModel : IContextAwareService { // More Codes } and the controller: public class PostController : Controller, IContextAwareService { public PostController(dependencies...) { } public BlogContext Context { get; set; } public ActionResult Index(int? page) { IEnumerable<PostInfo> posts = postService.FindPublished(Context.Blog.Id, PagingCalculator.StartIndex(page, Context.Blog.PostPerPage), Context.Blog.PostPerPage); int count = postService.GetPublishedCount(Context.Blog.Id); return View(new IndexViewModel(posts, count, page)); } public ActionResult Archive(int? page, ArchiveDate archiveDate) { IEnumerable<PostInfo> posts = postService.FindArchived(Context.Blog.Id, archiveDate, PagingCalculator.StartIndex(page, Context.Blog.PostPerPage), Context.Blog.PostPerPage); int count = postService.GetArchivedCount(Context.Blog.Id, archiveDate); return View(new ArchiveViewModel(posts, count, page, achiveDate)); } public ActionResult Tag(string blogName, string tagSlug, int? page) { TagInfo tag = tagService.FindBySlug(Context.Blog.Id, tagSlug); if (tag == null) { return new NotFoundResult(); } IEnumerable<PostInfo> posts = postService.FindPublishedByTag(Context.Blog.Id, tag.Id, PagingCalculator.StartIndex(page, Context.Blog.PostPerPage), Context.Blog.PostPerPage); int count = postService.GetPublishedCountByTag(tag.Id); return View(new TagViewModel(posts, count, page, tag)); } } Now, the last thing where we have to glue everything, I will be using the AspNetMvcExtensibility to register the action filter (as there is no better way to inject the dependencies in action filters). public class RegisterFilters : RegisterFiltersBase { private static readonly Type controllerType = typeof(Controller); private static readonly Type contextAwareType = typeof(IContextAwareService); protected override void Register(IFilterRegistry registry) { TypeCatalog controllers = new TypeCatalogBuilder() .Add(GetType().Assembly) .Include(type => controllerType.IsAssignableFrom(type) && contextAwareType.IsAssignableFrom(type)); registry.Register<PopulateBlogContextAttribute>(controllers); } } Thoughts and Comments?

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• South Florida Code Camp 2010 &ndash; VI &ndash; 2010-02-27

  - by Dave Noderer

  Catching up after our sixth code camp here in the Ft Lauderdale, FL area. Website at: http://www.fladotnet.com/codecamp. For the 5th time, DeVry University hosted the event which makes everything else really easy! Statistics from 2010 South Florida Code Camp: 848 registered (we use Microsoft Group Events) ~ 600 attended (516 took name badges) 64 speakers (including speaker idol) 72 sessions 12 parallel tracks Food 400 waters 600 sodas 900 cups of coffee (it was cold!) 200 pounds of ice 200 pizza's 10 large salad trays 900 mouse pads Photos on facebook Dave Noderer: http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/album.php?aid=190812&id=693530361 Joe Healy: http://www.facebook.com/devfish?ref=mf#!/album.php?aid=202787&id=720054950 Will Strohl:http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/album.php?aid=2045553&id=1046966128&ref=mf Veronica Gonzalez: http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/album.php?aid=150954&id=672439484 Florida Speaker Idol One of the sessions at code camp was the South Florida Regional speaker idol competition. After user group level competitions there are five competitors. I acted as MC and score keeper while Ed Hill, Bob O’Connell, John Dunagan and Shervin Shakibi were judges. This statewide competition is being run by Roy Lawsen in Lakeland and the winner, Jeff Truman from Naples will move on to the state finals to be held at the Orlando Code Camp on 3/27/2010: http://www.orlandocodecamp.com/. Each speaker has 10 minutes. The participants were: Alex Koval Jeff Truman Jared Nielsen Chris Catto Venkat Narayanasamy They all did a great job and I’m working with each to make sure they don’t stop there and start speaking at meetings. Thanks to everyone involved! Volunteers As always events like this don’t happen without a lot of help! The key people were: Ed Hill, Bob O’Connell – DeVry For the months leading up to the event, Ed collects all of the swag, books, etc and stores them. He holds meeting with various DeVry departments to coordinate the day, he works with the students in the days  before code camp to stuff bags, print signs, arrange tables and visit BJ’s for our supplies (I go and pay but have a small car!). And of course the day of the event he is there at 5:30 am!! We took two SUV’s to BJ’s, i was really worried that the 36 cases of water were going to break his rear axle! He also helps with the students and works very hard before and after the event. Rainer Haberman – Speakers and Volunteer of the Year Rainer has helped over the past couple of years but this time he took full control of arranging the tracks. I did some preliminary work solicitation speakers but he took over all communications after that. We have tried various organizations around speakers, chair per track, central team but having someone paying attention to the details is definitely the way to go! This was the first year I did not have to jump in at the last minute and re-arrange everything. There were lots of kudo’s from the speakers too saying they felt it was more organized than they have experienced in the past from any code camp. Thanks Rainer! Ray Alamonte – Book Swap We saw the idea of a book swap from the Alabama Code Camp and thought we would give it a try. Ray jumped in and took control. The idea was to get people to bring their old technical books to swap or for others to buy. You got a ticket for each book you brought that you could then turn in to buy another book. If you did not have a ticket you could buy a book for $1. Net proceeds were $153 which I rounded up and donated to the Red Cross. There is plenty going on in Haiti and Chile! I don’t think we really got a count of how many books came in. I many cases the books barely hit the table before being picked up again. At the end we were left with a dozen books which we donated to the DeVry library. A great success we will definitely do again! Jace Weiss / Ratchelen Hut – Coffee and Snacks Wow, this was an eye opener. In past years a few of us would struggle to give some attention to coffee, snacks, etc. But it was always tenuous and always ended up running out of coffee. In the past we have tried buying Dunkin Donuts coffee, renting urns, borrowing urns, etc. This year I actually purchased 2 – 100 cup Westbend commercial brewers plus a couple of small urns (30 and 60 cup we used for decaf). We got them both started early (although i forgot to push the on button on one!) and primed it with 10 boxes of Joe from Dunkin. then Jace and Rachelen took over.. once a batch was brewed they would refill the boxes, keep the area clean and at one point were filling cups. We never ran out of coffee and served a few hundred more than last  year. We did look but next year I’ll get a large insulated (like gatorade) dispensing container. It all went very smoothly and having help focused on that one area was a big win. Thanks Jace and Rachelen! Ken & Shirley Golding / Roberta Barbosa – Registration Ken & Shirley showed up and took over registration. This year we printed small name tags for everyone registered which was great because it is much easier to remember someone’s name when they are labeled! In any case it went the smoothest it has ever gone. All three were actively pulling people through the registration, answering questions, directing them to bags and information very quickly. I did not see that there was too big a line at any time. Thanks!! Scott Katarincic / Vishal Shukla – Website For the 3rd?? year in a row, Scott was in charge of the website starting in August or September when I start on code camp. He handles all the requests, makes changes to the site and admin. I think two years ago he wrote all the backend administration and tunes it and the website a bit but things are pretty stable. The only thing I do is put up the sponsors. It is a big pressure off of me!! Thanks Scott! Vishal jumped into the web end this year and created a new Silverlight agenda page to replace the old ajax page. We will continue to enhance this but it is definitely a good step forward! Thanks! Alex Funkhouser – T-shirts/Mouse pads/tables/sponsors Alex helps in many areas. He helps me bring in sponsors and handles all the logistics for t-shirts, sponsor tables and this year the mouse pads. He is also a key person to help promote the event as well not to mention the after after party which I did not attend and don’t want to know much about! Students There were a number of student volunteers but don’t have all of their names. But thanks to them, they stuffed bags, patrolled pizza and helped with moving things around. Sponsors We had a bunch of great sponsors which allowed us to feed people and give a way a lot of great swag. Our major sponsors of DeVry, Microsoft (both DPE and UGSS), Infragistics, Telerik, SQL Share (End to End, SQL Saturdays), and Interclick are very much appreciated. The other sponsors Applied Innovations (also supply code camp hosting), Ultimate Software (a great local SW company), Linxter (reliable cloud messaging we are lucky to have here!), Mediascend (a media startup), SoftwareFX (another local SW company we are happy to have back participating in CC), CozyRoc (if you do SSIS, check them out), Arrow Design (local DNN and Silverlight experts),Boxes and Arrows (a local SW consulting company) and Robert Half. One thing we did this year besides a t-shirt was a mouse pad. I like it because it will be around for a long time on many desks. After much investigation and years of using mouse pad’s I’ve determined that the 1/8” fabric top is the best and that is what we got!   So now I get a break for a few months before starting again!

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• The hidden cost of interrupting knowledge workers

  - by Piet

  The November issue of pragpub has an interesting article on interruptions. The article is written by Brian Tarbox, who also mentions the article on his blog. I like the subtitle: ‘Simple Strategies for Avoiding Dumping Your Mental Stack’. Brian talks about the effective cost of interrupting a ‘knowledge worker’, often with trivial questions or distractions. In the eyes of the interruptor, the interruption only costs the time the interrupted had to listen to the question and give an answer. However, depending on what the interrupted was doing at the time, getting fully immersed in their task again might take up to 15-20 minutes. Enough interruptions might even cause a knowledge worker to mentally call it a day. According to this article interruptions can consume about 28% of a knowledge worker’s time, translating in a $588 billion loss for US companies each year. Looking for a new developer to join your team? Ever thought about optimizing your team’s environment and the way they work instead? Making non knowledge workers aware You can’t. Well, I haven’t succeeded yet. And believe me: I’ve tried. When you’ve got a simple way to really increase your productivity (’give me 2 hours of uninterrupted time a day’) it wouldn’t be right not to tell your boss or team-leader about it. The problem is: only productive knowledge workers seem to understand this. People who don’t fall into this category just seem to think you’re joking, being arrogant or anti-social when you tell them the interruptions can really have an impact on your productivity. Also, knowledge workers often work in a very concentrated mental state which is described here as: It is the same mindfulness as ecstatic lovemaking, the merging of two into a fluidly harmonious one. The hallmark of flow is a feeling of spontaneous joy, even rapture, while performing a task. Yes, coding can be addictive and if you’re interrupting a programmer at the wrong moment, you’re effectively bringing down a junkie from his high in just a few seconds. This can result in seemingly arrogant, almost aggressive reactions. How to make people aware of the production-cost they’re inflicting: I’ve been often pondering that question myself. The article suggests that solutions based on that question never seem to work. To be honest: I’ve never even been able to find a half decent solution for this question. People who are not in this situations just don’t understand the issue, no matter how you try to explain it. Fun (?) thing I’ve noticed: Programmers or IT people in general who don’t get this are often the kind of people who just don’t get anything done. Interrupt handling (interruption management?) IRL Have non-urgent questions handled in a non-interruptive way It helps a bit to educate people into using non-interruptive ways to ask questions: “duh, I have no idea, but I’m a bit busy here now could you put it in an email so I don’t forget?”. Eventually, a considerable amount of people will skip interrupting you and just send an email right away. Some stubborn-headed people however will continue to just interrupt you, saying “you’re 10 meters from my desk, why can’t we just talk?”. Just remember to disable your email notifications, it can be hard to resist opening your email client when you know a new email just arrived. Use Do Not Disturb signals When working in a group of programmers, often the unofficial sign you can only be interrupted for something important is to put on headphones. And when the environment is quiet enough, often people aren’t even listening to music. Otherwise music can help to block the indirect distractions (someone else talking on the phone or tapping their feet). You might get a “they’re all just surfing and listening to music”-reaction from outsiders though. Peopleware talks about a team where the no-interruption sign was placing a shawl on the desk. If I remember correctly, I am unable to locate my copy of this really excellent must-read book. If you have all standardized on the same IM tool, maybe that tool has a ‘do not disturb’ setting. Also some phone-systems have a ‘DND’ (do not disturb) setting. Hide Brian offers a number of good suggestions, some obvious like: hide away somewhere they can’t find you. Not sure how long it’ll be till someone thinks you’re just taking a nap somewhere though. Also, this often isn’t possible or your boss might not understand this. And if you really get caught taking a nap, make sure to explain that your were powernapping. Counter-act interruptions Another suggestion he offers is when you’re being interrupted to just hold up your hand, blocking the interruption, and at least giving you time to finish your sentence or your block/line of code. The last suggestion works more as a way to make it obvious to the interruptor that they really are interrupting your work and to offload some of the cost on the interruptor. In practice, this can also helps you cool down a bit so you don’t start saying nasty things to the interruptor. Unfortunately I’ve sometimes been confronted with people who just ignore this signal and keep talking, as if they’re sure that whatever they’ve got to say is really worth listening to and without a doubt more important than anything you might be doing. This behaviour usually leaves me speechless (not good when someone just asked a question). I’ve noticed that these people are usually also the first to complain when being interrupted themselves. They’re generally not very liked as colleagues, so try not to imitate their behaviour. TDD as a way to minimize recovery time I don’t like Test Driven Development. Mainly for only one reason: It interrupts flow. At least, that’s what it does for me, but maybe I’m just not grown used to TDD yet. BUT a positive effect TDD has on me when I have to work in an interruptive environment and can’t really get into the ‘flow’ (also supposedly called ‘the zone’ by software developers, although I’ve never heard it 1st hand), TDD helps me to concentrate on the tasks at hand and helps me to get back at work after an interruption. I feel when using TDD, I can get by without the need for being totally ‘in’ the project and I can be reasonably productive without obtaining ‘flow’. Do you have a suggestion on how to make people aware of the concept of ‘flow’ and the cost of interruptions? (without looking like an arrogant ass or a weirdo)

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