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  • Storing Windows Updates for reuse

    - by Saiyine
    At work we update lots of computers using Windows Update. Windows XP and 7 all day long, rarely some Vista. We do it through a corporate proxy, as connecting them to a domain to build a Wsus server is out of the question, so we download about two gigabytes a day of the very same updates everyday. I've tried WSUS Offline. It's pretty complete but when it finishes it's common to be still missing hundreds of megabytes of updates, because its intention is not to fully update a system but to install the critical updates, as the developers explain in the forums. Now I'm trying with Autoupdater. It's far worse, with poor capabilities for non-English Windows XP, but at least it gives the option to install non critical updates in Windows 7. It still misses hundres of megabytes of updates after fully updating the system. And finally, both doesn't install the driver related updates of Windows 7, so they at most save us a couple of hundreds of megabytes and a reboot (with the associated login to the computer and to the proxy) out of three or four. So, is it possible to somewhat extract the installed updates in a Windows 7 system and not having to download the same updates again and again at least with machines with the same hardware? Or even better, a generic package with all the updates?

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  • Cannot write to directory after taking ownership

    - by jeff charles
    I had a directory on an internal hard-drive that was created in an old Windows 7 install. After re-installing my operating system, when I try to create a new directory inside that directory, I get an Access Denied message. This isn't a protected directory, just a random directory I created at the drive root (that drive was not the C drive in either install). I tried to take ownership by opening folder properties, going to the Security tab, clicking on Advanced, going to Owner tab, clicking on Edit, selecting my user account, checking Replace owner on subcontainers and objects, and clicking Apply. There were no error messages and I closed the dialogs. I rebooted, checked the owner on that folder and a couple subfolders and it appears to be set correctly. I am still getting an Access Denied message however when trying to create a directory in it. I've also tried using attrib -R . to remove any possible readonly attribute inside the directory in an admin command prompt but am still unable to create a directory using a non-admin prompt (it does work in an admin prompt). Is there anything I can do to get write access to that folder and it's subcontents in a non-elevated context without disabling UAC?

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  • Ubuntu on VPS becomes unresponsive: BUG: soft lockup - CPU#0 stuck for 22s

    - by Bhante Nandiya
    We have a VPS running Ubuntu, on Xen. The problem is this, about once a day, for about 20-50 minutes, at a random time, the server becomes completely unresponsive to the outside world. After this period, it becomes responsive again, as if nothing had happened, it doesn't lose uptime, it doesn't restart. It just starts responding again as if it had been in suspended animation. These outages occur under conditions of non-exceptional memory and cpu, for example 70% mem, 5% cpu. I have stopped all non-essential services so the usage is very even. These outages don't particularly occur during times of increased memory/cpu (during daily tasks), they sometimes occur at times of very low cpu use (<2%), but in the past also occured during swapping. These blackouts have been occurring both under Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, and Ubuntu 14.04 LTS - no change at all (I upgraded Ubuntu specifically to see if it helped this problem). It is possible to log into our webhosts site, and use their administration console to see error messages from during this time. Presumably, these messages are from the Xen virtualization, the main message goes like this: BUG: soft lockp - CPU#0 stuck for 22s! [ksoftireqd/0:3] (repeats many times) SysRq : Emergency Sync (Sometimes this is the only message in the console) Others seen previously under different load situations include: BUG: soft lockup - CPU#0 stuck for 22s! [swapper/0:0] (repeated many times) or: INFO: rcu_sched detected stall on CPU 0 (t=15000 jiffies) (repeated many times with t getting bigger) From googling around I've tried various kernel parameters such as nohz=off and acpi=off to no avail. All tech support has said is that other Ubuntu installations are not suffering the same problem. Anyone got any ideas or experience with this problem?

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  • Change A Password

    - by Thomas
    I have a non-domain machine that I use with our company's domain resources over vpn regularly. I switched to Windows 8 (fresh install), and the "Change a password" option went away from the Ctrl-Alt-Del window. Can't seem to google anything about this subject, or find a way to access that password change dialog. I tried running the .reg file from http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/63014-ctrl-alt-del-screen-add-remove-change-password.html with no luck. I also tried to Disable "Remove Change Password" via gpedit.msc. I could do it from my domain laptop, but I like to do it on this machine because it updates all my saved copies of those credentials. My local account is tied to my hotmail account if that matters. Updates: Administrator account. I apologize for stating this was an upgrade, it was a fresh install to a diff't drive. 64-bit Pro install. Bounty's almost up If someone can just confirm that the Change A Password... should or should not be present on a non-domain, Live tied, Win8 install, I'll be satisfied that I can or cannot expect to fix it.

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  • /etc/hosts: What is loghost? (fresh install of Solaris 10 update 9)

    - by cjavapro
    # # Internet host table # ::1 localhost 127.0.0.1 localhost XX.XX.XX.XX myserver loghost What is the purpose of loghost? If it was not for having loghost in there, all the /etc/hosts files on all the servers in this particular network could be identical. Edit: I looked at /etc/syslog.conf #ident "@(#)syslog.conf 1.5 98/12/14 SMI" /* SunOS 5.0 */ # # Copyright (c) 1991-1998 by Sun Microsystems, Inc. # All rights reserved. # # syslog configuration file. # # This file is processed by m4 so be careful to quote (`') names # that match m4 reserved words. Also, within ifdef's, arguments # containing commas must be quoted. # *.err;kern.notice;auth.notice /dev/sysmsg *.err;kern.debug;daemon.notice;mail.crit /var/adm/messages *.alert;kern.err;daemon.err operator *.alert root *.emerg * # if a non-loghost machine chooses to have authentication messages # sent to the loghost machine, un-comment out the following line: #auth.notice ifdef(`LOGHOST', /var/log/authlog, @loghost) mail.debug ifdef(`LOGHOST', /var/log/syslog, @loghost) # # non-loghost machines will use the following lines to cause "user" # log messages to be logged locally. # ifdef(`LOGHOST', , user.err /dev/sysmsg user.err /var/adm/messages user.alert `root, operator' user.emerg * ) Very interesting. when shutting down,, alerts go to all users probably through *.emerg * Looking at ifdef, it seems that the first parameter checks to see if current machine is a loghost, second parameter is what to do if it is and third parameter is what to do if it is not. Edit: If you want to test a logging rule you can use svcadm restart system-log to restart the logging service and then logger -p notice "test" to send a test log message where notice can be replaced with any type such as user.err, auth.notice, etc.

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  • What may be wrong with String::ToIdentifier::EN tests?

    - by wk01
    I try to install Perl module String::ToIdentifier::EN (as depndency of DBIx::Class::Schema::Loader) but it fails on tests. I googled those errors but get no picture, where is problem: Building and testing String-ToIdentifier-EN-0.07 cp lib/String/ToIdentifier/EN.pm blib/lib/String/ToIdentifier/EN.pm cp lib/String/ToIdentifier/EN/Unicode.pm blib/lib/String/ToIdentifier/EN/Unicode.pm Manifying blib/man3/String::ToIdentifier::EN.3pm Manifying blib/man3/String::ToIdentifier::EN::Unicode.3pm PERL_DL_NONLAZY=1 /usr/bin/perl "-MExtUtils::Command::MM" "-e" "test_harness(0, 'inc', 'blib/lib', 'blib/arch')" t/00_basic.t t/10_ascii.t t/20_capitalization.t Byte order is not compatible at ../../lib/Storable.pm (autosplit into ../../lib/auto/Storable/_retrieve.al) line 380, at /home/wanradt/perl5/lib/perl5/Lingua/EN/Tagger.pm line 167 # Looks like you planned 25 tests but ran 4. # Looks like your test exited with 25 just after 4. t/00_basic.t ........... Dubious, test returned 25 (wstat 6400, 0x1900) Failed 21/25 subtests Byte order is not compatible at ../../lib/Storable.pm (autosplit into ../../lib/auto/Storable/_retrieve.al) line 380, at /home/wanradt/perl5/lib/perl5/Lingua/EN/Tagger.pm line 167 # Looks like you planned 768 tests but ran 512. # Looks like your test exited with 25 just after 512. t/10_ascii.t ........... Dubious, test returned 25 (wstat 6400, 0x1900) Failed 256/768 subtests t/20_capitalization.t .. ok Test Summary Report ------------------- t/00_basic.t (Wstat: 6400 Tests: 4 Failed: 0) Non-zero exit status: 25 Parse errors: Bad plan. You planned 25 tests but ran 4. t/10_ascii.t (Wstat: 6400 Tests: 512 Failed: 0) Non-zero exit status: 25 Parse errors: Bad plan. You planned 768 tests but ran 512. Files=3, Tests=528, 1 wallclock secs ( 0.07 usr 0.02 sys + 0.42 cusr 0.04 csys = 0.55 CPU) Result: FAIL Failed 2/3 test programs. 0/528 subtests failed. make: *** [test_dynamic] Error 255 -> FAIL Installing String::ToIdentifier::EN failed. See /home/wanradt/.cpanm/build.log for details. Byte order is not compatible at... seems a key, but to where?

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  • RAID5 issue after replacing motherboard and upgrading firmware

    - by 8steve8
    ok so ive had a 4x2TB(samsung HD204UI w/firmware patch) raid5 array working normally for about a month. It was in a h57 gigabyte motherboard using the intel raid with Windows 7 x64. Today I got an intel h67 motherboard, so I upgraded the intel raid drivers to 10.1.0.1008 from 9.6.0.1014, and I'm not sure if i checked after a reboot, but it caused no problems. I swapped in the new dh67 motherboard, and my array status was "failed". 2 of the 4 drives listed themselves as members, while the other two drives listed themselves as non-members. I tried going back to the old h57 mobo, and downgrading the raid drivers, but the issue remains. It's not port dependent, 2 of the drives always come up as non-members regardless of what port or motherboard they are plugged into. This screenshot should show that the SNs match, which raises the question why the software doesn't realize the drive is a member of the array. I'd like to know if anyone has experienced anything similar, and what should I do, can I force the drive to be recognized as a member (without wiping data)?

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  • How do people type different languages into computer?

    - by pecker
    Hello, We have English keyboards. I never saw any other keyboard in my life. I've been wondering for a long time. How do people in Korea, China, Russia, Muslim countries and some European countries where English is less known. Do they have keyboards in their native language? I mean are the keyboard directly manufactured in their native language. Or do they use some kind of keyboard mapping softwares to acheive the task. I've been searching in Google images to have a glance at their computers but didn't find any real key pads for computers/smartphones. If they have some non-English keyboard. Then how would they type web URLs? URLs possible in other languages also? If they have to type English URLs then it also means that they need to know English. I've seen in some movies that they have all their softwares, windows have text in their native language. How do they have some different language? I feel lost & confused. If you have any screenshots / pics of such non-english computer please post. I want to see one.

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  • Virtualhost one https site, the rest http

    - by RJP1
    I have a linode server with Apache2 running a handful of sites with virtualhosting. All sites work fine on port 80, but one site has a ssl certificate and also runs okay. My problem is as follows: The non-https sites, if visiting https://domain.com - show the contents of the only secure site... Is there a way of disabling the *:443 match for these non-secure sites? Thanks! EDIT (more information): Here's a typical config in sites-available for a normal insecure http site: <VirtualHost *:80> ServerName www.insecure.com ServerAlias insecure.com ... </VirtualHost> The secure https site is as follows: <VirtualHost *:80> ServerName www.secure.com Redirect permanent / https://secure.com/ </VirtualHost> <VirtualHost *:80> ServerName secure.com RedirectMatch permanent ^/(.*) https://secure.com/$1 </VirtualHost> <VirtualHost *:443> SSLEngine on SSLProtocol all SSLCertificateChainFile ... SSLCertificateFile ... SSLCertificateKeyFile ... SSLCACertificateFile ... ServerName secure.com ServerAlias secure.com ... </VirtualHost> So, visiting: http:/insecure.com - works http:/www.insecure.com - works http:/secure.com - redirects to https:/secure.com - works http:/www.secure.com - redirects to https:/secure.com - works https:/insecure.com - shows https:/secure.com - WRONG!

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  • How do I connect remotely to SQL Server from Windows client?

    - by humble_coder
    Hi All, Having a bit of an issue connecting to SQL SERVER remotely from Windows. I've verified that all of my settings are correct via SQL SERVER MANAGEMENT STUDIO EXPRESS and SQL SERVER CONFIGURATION MANAGER. I can connect remotely using ODBC drivers from other OSes (e.g. OS X, Linux, etc). However, when I connect with the same credentials from a remote Windows machine using "SQL SERVER" as the driver I am told that the system cannot connect. I've tried creating an ODBC Data Source and I get the same error: Connection failed: SQLState: '01000' SQL Server Error: 14 [Microsoft][ODBC SQL Server Driver][TCP/IP Sockets]ConnectionOpen(InvalidInstance()). Connection failed: SQLState: '08001' SQL Server Error: 14 [Microsoft][ODBC SQL Server Driver][TCP/IP Sockets]Invalid Connection From the non-windows machines I can use the IP address of the SQL Server just fine. However, on the remote Windows machine, neither IP address nor named instance works. FYI, I can create an ODBC Data Source using the named instance on the machine actually running the SQL Server (but this is, of course, nothing special -- just proof that it isn't completely hosed). One interesting note: If I use SQL STUDIO 2005 from a Windows client machine, I can use the IP address to connect remotely. Still, the whole reason I bring this up is because I need to use a software package I've written to connect to SQL Server remotely from Windows machines as well. Previously the solution was only needed to xfer data from SQL Server into a PostGRES or MySQL database on non-Windows machines (due to DBA preference). However, now they also want to move the data from the legacy software to MySQL even on Windows. Any assistance would be most appreciated. Feel free to provide a full example connection string. Best

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  • What Logs / Process Stats to monitor on a Ubuntu FTP server?

    - by Adam Salkin
    I am administering a server with Ubuntu Server which is running pureFTP. So far all is well, but I would like to know what I should be monitoring so that I can spot any potential stability and security issues. I'm not looking for sophisticated software, more an idea of what logs and process statistics are most useful for checking on the health of the system. I'm thinking that I can look at various parameters output from the "ps" command and compare to see if I have things like memory leaks. But I would like to know what experienced admins do. Also, how do I do a disk check so that when I reboot, I don't get a message saying something like "disk not checked for x days, forcing check" which delays the reboot? I assume there is command that I can run as a cron job late at night. How often should it be run? What things should I be looking at to spot intrusion attempts? The only shell access is SSH on a non-standard port through UFW firewall, and I regularly do a grep on auth.log for "Fail" or "Invalid". Is there anything else I should look at? I was logging the firewall (UFW) but I have very few open ports (FTP and SSH on a non standard port) so looking at lists of IP's that have been blocked did not seem useful. Many thanks

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  • Are email addresses mandatory for Windows 8 login names?

    - by Cedric Martin
    I've got a computer running Windows 8 and in the user accounts I can see four accounts (they're in french, here's a rough translation): [email protected] / administrator Veronique YYY / [email protected] ASP.NET Machine Account / local account guest account / the guest account is desactivated I've got several questions but they're all related to email addresses and login names / accounts. Are email addresses mandatory for Windows 8 login names? Can you mix live and non-live user accounts on a Windows 8 system? Is it possible to have a live Windows 8 user account which is not using a @live.xx email address? Is it possible to have a non-live Windows 8 user account which is using a @live.xx email address? If the gmail.com email address of the admin is not a live Windows 8 account, does this mean I can create a "fake" email and use that as the email of a new Windows 8 account? Basically I don't understand very well why there are email addresses displayed on the login screen and why there are both @live.xx and @gmail.com email addresses on the same system and answer to the questions I asked above may help me understand a bit better what is going on (I'm coming from a Linux / OS X background. I literally haven't used Windows in more than a decade).

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  • Windows Server 2008 R2 creating a multi-year client certificate using the IIS certsrv page while deploying SSTP VPN

    - by Warren P
    I am trying to follow instructions on Technet about deploying a Standard (non-enterprise) SSTP based VPN) that were originally written for Server 2008, but I am using Server 2008 R2, I have gotten as far as the part where it asks you to create a request a Server Authentication certificate. I have deployed IIS, and Active Directory Certificate Services, and chose "Standalone" and "Standard" (non-enterprise) Certificate Authority because I don't have an OID and don't think I should have to get one for a simple deployment of SSTP. The resulting certificates made by the Certification Authority "Issue" command, only have a 1 year period of validity, I want a multi-year certificate. At no point in this process is there any way to input this information unless it's through the Attributes text input area on the Advance Certificate Request page, which appears to be generated using an old ActiveX control, which means I can only do this using the workarounds in the article that I linked at the top, and only using Internet Explorer. Update:: It may be that this question is pointless since self-signed keys do not appear to work, when I try them, using Windows 8 as the VPN client. The problem is that the keys that are self-created by the technique shown here do not have any Certificate Revocation Server URLs and so you get an error "The revocation function was unable to check revocation", and the VPN connection fails.

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  • strange raid5 issue:

    - by 8steve8
    ok so ive had a 4x2TB(samsung HD204UI w/firmware patch) raid5 array working normally for about a month. It was in a h57 gigabyte motherboard using the intel raid with windows 7 x64. Today I got an intel h67 motherboard, so I upgraded the intel raid drivers to 10.1.0.1008 from 9.6.0.1014, and I'm not sure if i checked after a reboot, but it caused no problems. I swapped in the new dh67 motherboard, and my array status was "failed". 2 of the 4 drives listed themselves as members, while the other two drives listed themselves as non-members. I tried going back to the old h57 mobo, and downgrading the raid drivers, but the issue remains. It's not port dependent, 2 of the drives always come up as non-members regardless of what port or motherboard they are plugged into. the screenshot should show that the SNs match, which begs the question why the software doesn't realize the drive is a member of the array: http://img837.imageshack.us/img837/6145/both.png I'd like to know if anyone has experienced anything similar, and what should i do, can i force the drive to be recognized as a member (without wiping data)?

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  • XSL 2.0 unparsed text and formatting

    - by Maha
    I want the unparsed text to be formatted for bold characters or increase font-size based on the tag the example here is for replace the searched word with bold characters Example: test <b> how to <b> when bold <b> when there is more <b> than one place to bold Can you please advice what is wrong here? <xsl:variable name="tcline" select="unparsed-text('generic_tc.txt','UTF-8')"/> <xsl:analyze-string select="$tcline" regex="\'<b>'(.*?)\'<b>'"> <xsl:matching-substring> <xsl:value-of select="replace($tcline,'\"<b>"(.*?)\"<b>"','<em>$1\/em/g;')"/> </xsl:matching-substring> <xsl:non-matching-substring> <xsl:value-of select="."/> </xsl:non-matching-substring> </xsl:analyze-string>

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  • Remotely port forward/launch process or a client-less remote desktop app?

    - by DC177E
    I have an XP box running Logmein at a remote location behind a linksys router, which was running well for a whole of four days, until we had a power failure. Our ISP gave us a new IP, the machine restarted, and logmein did not autorun (or, at least, it did not automatically sign in), and our service (which may or may not be a Minecraft server with non-backed-up save files) also did not run upon startup. Logmein does not register the new IP (it still displays the old one). I have a DDNS updater service, so I do know the new dynamic address. I have tried using the built in XP remote desktop service, but, as with almost all non-cloud-based remote desktop services, it requires a port forward. Thus, I would appreciate it if anyone has any ideas as to: A: Any way of accessing our router remotely to forward the remote desktop port. I've seen the Remote Management option (forwarding the setup page to port 8080), but I do not have it enabled. I've tried UPnP, but again, the setup page for our router is not forwarded. B: Any way of remotely launching a process that does not require port forwarding (or uses ports 255XX, 18XXX, or 9000.), such as a remote console service built into XP. I realize this is a near impossibility. C: A Way to remotely start logmein, and sign in, which is likely a definite impossibility. Sorry if this is too specific for Stackexchange, or if I've put it into the wrong section (is SuperUser the correct place for this?). Ideas would, again be much appreciated, as shot-in-the-dark-like this may be.

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  • Two cisco gigabit switches refuse to link to each other. Any idea why?

    - by Prody
    I have 3 Linksys SR2024 switches which are basically non-managed 24 port Gbit + 2 miniGBIC. I now had to add another switch to the network, and my provider didn't have the SR2024 switch anymore, so I got the Cisco SLM2024 which was a bit more expensive. It's pretty much the same thing but with management (that I don't need). So I've connected the SLM2024 to a SR2024 via Cat6 cable, and for some strange reason, I get no link. If I connect any machine with a Gbit NIC to both switches, it links with 1Gbit autonegotiated. If I connect the SLM2024 to a non-Gbit switch (I have a cheap 4port ASUS switch), it will link just fine on 100Mbit full duplex. Since the SLM2024 has management, I've tried to see if something is misconfigured on it's side, but it's not, it advertises 1Gbit and lower. (hence the machines connecting succesfully at 1Gbit). Since the SR2024 that I'm trying to connect it to also connects successfully with another SR2024 and other Gbit machines, it means that it advertises Gbit too. But for some reason when I link the SR2024 to the SLM2024 I get no link. Please note that I've properly tested the wire. Does anyone have any idea what's wrong?

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  • strange raid5 issue: [closed]

    - by 8steve8
    ok so ive had a 4x2TB(samsung HD204UI w/firmware patch) raid5 array working normally for about a month. It was in a h57 gigabyte motherboard using the intel raid with windows 7 x64. Today I got an intel h67 motherboard, so I upgraded the intel raid drivers to 10.1.0.1008 from 9.6.0.1014, and I'm not sure if i checked after a reboot, but it caused no problems. I swapped in the new dh67 motherboard, and my array status was "failed". 2 of the 4 drives listed themselves as members, while the other two drives listed themselves as non-members. I tried going back to the old h57 mobo, and downgrading the raid drivers, but the issue remains. It's not port dependent, 2 of the drives always come up as non-members regardless of what port or motherboard they are plugged into. the screenshot should show that the SNs match, which begs the question why the software doesn't realize the drive is a member of the array: http://img837.imageshack.us/img837/6145/both.png I'd like to know if anyone has experienced anything similar, and what should i do, can i force the drive to be recognized as a member (without wiping data)?

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  • Different font SIZES in a Text Editor, based on Script(Alphabet) type (ie. per Unicode Code-Block)

    - by fred.bear
    Some non-Latin-based scripts(alphabets) have more detail in their glyphs than do the Latin-based-script equivalents, and typically need a larger font to give the same degree of legibility (resolution-wise). Sometimes, both script types need to be present in the same file. Notepad++ allows different font SIZES (and colour, etc) courtesy of syntax-highlighting. This allows me to display larger-fonted non-Latin-based script in a // BIG-FONT comment. Although this has been quite handy for me in some situations, it is quite limited. A Word Processor can handle this scenario, but I'm not interested in that. I want a nice simple(?) plain(?) Text Editor to do it... on a per script-type basis... eg. mixing Latin-1 and Devanagari (and Mandarin, and ... Such a thing may not exits, but Notepad++ has shown that a simple(?) plain(?) Text Editor is capable of it. Does anyone know of such a Text Editor? ...Q. Why not a Word Processor? ...A. Because GCC and Python don't like that format! but UTF-8 is fine.

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  • Debugging methods for Windows XP hangups

    - by Cooper
    I experience occasional 'freezes' on my desktop machine (Windows XP SP3). I've tried the normal debugging methods I know (watching Process Explorer, running ProcMon (hard to get a good trace because the hangups are so intermittent). Are there any additional system debugging methods that might be useful in discovering what would cause these hang ups? While this question is more about debugging methods than the actual issue itself (which is probably more of a superuser question), the symptoms of the hangup are: All windows become non-responding. Can be brought the foreground, but do not repaint. Taskbar/explorer windows are non-responsive Ctrl+Alt+Del, Ctrl+Shift+Esc, Win+L, do not do anything (though the actions are queued up, and when the system unhangs, they are performed) Oddly enough, usually I can still scroll through the current page I have open in Google Chrome, but I cannot change tabs. Hangup can happen when I have tons of apps open, but also when I only have Outlook, Chrome, and MS Communicator (plus all the corporate spyware). Usually the hang lasts between 30sec and 3 minutes or so. After which I can continue working as usual.

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  • Combine multiple network interfaces to connect to a dedicated server

    - by Dženis Macanovic
    this is an underpaid employee writing, who's apparently responsible for all the IT stuff in a very small (non-IT) company. Today said company got a bunch of PCs/workstations, a switch, a computer that's supposed to be used as a router, two DSL connections (each 16 MBit/s downstream and 1 MBit/s upstream) and a dedicated server which is hosted and managed professionally by a larger local company with some decent connection speed (1 GBit/s both directions if I'm not mistaken). This is what I've set up (note I'm not making use of the second DSL connection at all)... ETH0 ETH1 [ SWITCH ]---[LINUX DEBIAN ROUTER]---[DSL MODEM 1]---[INTERNET] | | | PC1 | | PC2 | ... ... when my boss asked me, if it was somehow possible to get 32 MBit/s downstream and 2 MBit/s upstream. At that time I replied "no" without thinking too much about it. Now I've just had the following idea... ETH1 ETH0 ETH0 ,---[DSL MODEM 1 (NON-STATIC IP)]---, ,---, ETH0 [ SWITCH ]---[LINUX DEBIAN ROUTER] [INTERNET] [LINUX DEBIAN SERVER]---[INTERNET] | | | '---[ DSL MODEM 2 (STATIC IP) ]---' '---' PC1 | | ETH2 ETH0 PC2 | ... ... but I have absolutely no clue how to implement that. Would that even be possible? What would the masquerading rules look like on the router? What about the server? I didn't find anything on the internet, mainly because I couldn't come up with any good keywords to search for to begin with. English obviously isn't my first language. Thanks in advance for your time!

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  • What Logs / Process Stats to monitor on a Ubuntu FTP server?

    - by Adam Salkin
    I am administering a server with Ubuntu Server which is running pureFTP. So far all is well, but I would like to know what I should be monitoring so that I can spot any potential stability and security issues. I'm not looking for sophisticated software, more an idea of what logs and process statistics are most useful for checking on the health of the system. I'm thinking that I can look at various parameters output from the "ps" command and compare to see if I have things like memory leaks. But I would like to know what experienced admins do. Also, how do I do a disk check so that when I reboot, I don't get a message saying something like "disk not checked for x days, forcing check" which delays the reboot? I assume there is command that I can run as a cron job late at night. How often should it be run? What things should I be looking at to spot intrusion attempts? The only shell access is SSH on a non-standard port through UFW firewall, and I regularly do a grep on auth.log for "Fail" or "Invalid". Is there anything else I should look at? I was logging the firewall (UFW) but I have very few open ports (FTP and SSH on a non standard port) so looking at lists of IP's that have been blocked did not seem useful. Many thanks

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  • Custom ASP.NET Routing to an HttpHandler

    - by Rick Strahl
    As of version 4.0 ASP.NET natively supports routing via the now built-in System.Web.Routing namespace. Routing features are automatically integrated into the HtttpRuntime via a few custom interfaces. New Web Forms Routing Support In ASP.NET 4.0 there are a host of improvements including routing support baked into Web Forms via a RouteData property available on the Page class and RouteCollection.MapPageRoute() route handler that makes it easy to route to Web forms. To map ASP.NET Page routes is as simple as setting up the routes with MapPageRoute:protected void Application_Start(object sender, EventArgs e) { RegisterRoutes(RouteTable.Routes); } void RegisterRoutes(RouteCollection routes) { routes.MapPageRoute("StockQuote", "StockQuote/{symbol}", "StockQuote.aspx"); routes.MapPageRoute("StockQuotes", "StockQuotes/{symbolList}", "StockQuotes.aspx"); } and then accessing the route data in the page you can then use the new Page class RouteData property to retrieve the dynamic route data information:public partial class StockQuote1 : System.Web.UI.Page { protected StockQuote Quote = null; protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e) { string symbol = RouteData.Values["symbol"] as string; StockServer server = new StockServer(); Quote = server.GetStockQuote(symbol); // display stock data in Page View } } Simple, quick and doesn’t require much explanation. If you’re using WebForms most of your routing needs should be served just fine by this simple mechanism. Kudos to the ASP.NET team for putting this in the box and making it easy! How Routing Works To handle Routing in ASP.NET involves these steps: Registering Routes Creating a custom RouteHandler to retrieve an HttpHandler Attaching RouteData to your HttpHandler Picking up Route Information in your Request code Registering routes makes ASP.NET aware of the Routes you want to handle via the static RouteTable.Routes collection. You basically add routes to this collection to let ASP.NET know which URL patterns it should watch for. You typically hook up routes off a RegisterRoutes method that fires in Application_Start as I did in the example above to ensure routes are added only once when the application first starts up. When you create a route, you pass in a RouteHandler instance which ASP.NET caches and reuses as routes are matched. Once registered ASP.NET monitors the routes and if a match is found just prior to the HttpHandler instantiation, ASP.NET uses the RouteHandler registered for the route and calls GetHandler() on it to retrieve an HttpHandler instance. The RouteHandler.GetHandler() method is responsible for creating an instance of an HttpHandler that is to handle the request and – if necessary – to assign any additional custom data to the handler. At minimum you probably want to pass the RouteData to the handler so the handler can identify the request based on the route data available. To do this you typically add  a RouteData property to your handler and then assign the property from the RouteHandlers request context. This is essentially how Page.RouteData comes into being and this approach should work well for any custom handler implementation that requires RouteData. It’s a shame that ASP.NET doesn’t have a top level intrinsic object that’s accessible off the HttpContext object to provide route data more generically, but since RouteData is directly tied to HttpHandlers and not all handlers support it it might cause some confusion of when it’s actually available. Bottom line is that if you want to hold on to RouteData you have to assign it to a custom property of the handler or else pass it to the handler via Context.Items[] object that can be retrieved on an as needed basis. It’s important to understand that routing is hooked up via RouteHandlers that are responsible for loading HttpHandler instances. RouteHandlers are invoked for every request that matches a route and through this RouteHandler instance the Handler gains access to the current RouteData. Because of this logic it’s important to understand that Routing is really tied to HttpHandlers and not available prior to handler instantiation, which is pretty late in the HttpRuntime’s request pipeline. IOW, Routing works with Handlers but not with earlier in the pipeline within Modules. Specifically ASP.NET calls RouteHandler.GetHandler() from the PostResolveRequestCache HttpRuntime pipeline event. Here’s the call stack at the beginning of the GetHandler() call: which fires just before handler resolution. Non-Page Routing – You need to build custom RouteHandlers If you need to route to a custom Http Handler or other non-Page (and non-MVC) endpoint in the HttpRuntime, there is no generic mapping support available. You need to create a custom RouteHandler that can manage creating an instance of an HttpHandler that is fired in response to a routed request. Depending on what you are doing this process can be simple or fairly involved as your code is responsible based on the route data provided which handler to instantiate, and more importantly how to pass the route data on to the Handler. Luckily creating a RouteHandler is easy by implementing the IRouteHandler interface which has only a single GetHttpHandler(RequestContext context) method. In this method you can pick up the requestContext.RouteData, instantiate the HttpHandler of choice, and assign the RouteData to it. Then pass back the handler and you’re done.Here’s a simple example of GetHttpHandler() method that dynamically creates a handler based on a passed in Handler type./// <summary> /// Retrieves an Http Handler based on the type specified in the constructor /// </summary> /// <param name="requestContext"></param> /// <returns></returns> IHttpHandler IRouteHandler.GetHttpHandler(RequestContext requestContext) { IHttpHandler handler = Activator.CreateInstance(CallbackHandlerType) as IHttpHandler; // If we're dealing with a Callback Handler // pass the RouteData for this route to the Handler if (handler is CallbackHandler) ((CallbackHandler)handler).RouteData = requestContext.RouteData; return handler; } Note that this code checks for a specific type of handler and if it matches assigns the RouteData to this handler. This is optional but quite a common scenario if you want to work with RouteData. If the handler you need to instantiate isn’t under your control but you still need to pass RouteData to Handler code, an alternative is to pass the RouteData via the HttpContext.Items collection:IHttpHandler IRouteHandler.GetHttpHandler(RequestContext requestContext) { IHttpHandler handler = Activator.CreateInstance(CallbackHandlerType) as IHttpHandler; requestContext.HttpContext.Items["RouteData"] = requestContext.RouteData; return handler; } The code in the handler implementation can then pick up the RouteData from the context collection as needed:RouteData routeData = HttpContext.Current.Items["RouteData"] as RouteData This isn’t as clean as having an explicit RouteData property, but it does have the advantage that the route data is visible anywhere in the Handler’s code chain. It’s definitely preferable to create a custom property on your handler, but the Context work-around works in a pinch when you don’t’ own the handler code and have dynamic code executing as part of the handler execution. An Example of a Custom RouteHandler: Attribute Based Route Implementation In this post I’m going to discuss a custom routine implementation I built for my CallbackHandler class in the West Wind Web & Ajax Toolkit. CallbackHandler can be very easily used for creating AJAX, REST and POX requests following RPC style method mapping. You can pass parameters via URL query string, POST data or raw data structures, and you can retrieve results as JSON, XML or raw string/binary data. It’s a quick and easy way to build service interfaces with no fuss. As a quick review here’s how CallbackHandler works: You create an Http Handler that derives from CallbackHandler You implement methods that have a [CallbackMethod] Attribute and that’s it. Here’s an example of an CallbackHandler implementation in an ashx.cs based handler:// RestService.ashx.cs public class RestService : CallbackHandler { [CallbackMethod] public StockQuote GetStockQuote(string symbol) { StockServer server = new StockServer(); return server.GetStockQuote(symbol); } [CallbackMethod] public StockQuote[] GetStockQuotes(string symbolList) { StockServer server = new StockServer(); string[] symbols = symbolList.Split(new char[2] { ',',';' },StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries); return server.GetStockQuotes(symbols); } } CallbackHandler makes it super easy to create a method on the server, pass data to it via POST, QueryString or raw JSON/XML data, and then retrieve the results easily back in various formats. This works wonderful and I’ve used these tools in many projects for myself and with clients. But one thing missing has been the ability to create clean URLs. Typical URLs looked like this: http://www.west-wind.com/WestwindWebToolkit/samples/Rest/StockService.ashx?Method=GetStockQuote&symbol=msfthttp://www.west-wind.com/WestwindWebToolkit/samples/Rest/StockService.ashx?Method=GetStockQuotes&symbolList=msft,intc,gld,slw,mwe&format=xml which works and is clear enough, but also clearly very ugly. It would be much nicer if URLs could look like this: http://www.west-wind.com//WestwindWebtoolkit/Samples/StockQuote/msfthttp://www.west-wind.com/WestwindWebtoolkit/Samples/StockQuotes/msft,intc,gld,slw?format=xml (the Virtual Root in this sample is WestWindWebToolkit/Samples and StockQuote/{symbol} is the route)(If you use FireFox try using the JSONView plug-in make it easier to view JSON content) So, taking a clue from the WCF REST tools that use RouteUrls I set out to create a way to specify RouteUrls for each of the endpoints. The change made basically allows changing the above to: [CallbackMethod(RouteUrl="RestService/StockQuote/{symbol}")] public StockQuote GetStockQuote(string symbol) { StockServer server = new StockServer(); return server.GetStockQuote(symbol); } [CallbackMethod(RouteUrl = "RestService/StockQuotes/{symbolList}")] public StockQuote[] GetStockQuotes(string symbolList) { StockServer server = new StockServer(); string[] symbols = symbolList.Split(new char[2] { ',',';' },StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries); return server.GetStockQuotes(symbols); } where a RouteUrl is specified as part of the Callback attribute. And with the changes made with RouteUrls I can now get URLs like the second set shown earlier. So how does that work? Let’s find out… How to Create Custom Routes As mentioned earlier Routing is made up of several steps: Creating a custom RouteHandler to create HttpHandler instances Mapping the actual Routes to the RouteHandler Retrieving the RouteData and actually doing something useful with it in the HttpHandler In the CallbackHandler routing example above this works out to something like this: Create a custom RouteHandler that includes a property to track the method to call Set up the routes using Reflection against the class Looking for any RouteUrls in the CallbackMethod attribute Add a RouteData property to the CallbackHandler so we can access the RouteData in the code of the handler Creating a Custom Route Handler To make the above work I created a custom RouteHandler class that includes the actual IRouteHandler implementation as well as a generic and static method to automatically register all routes marked with the [CallbackMethod(RouteUrl="…")] attribute. Here’s the code:/// <summary> /// Route handler that can create instances of CallbackHandler derived /// callback classes. The route handler tracks the method name and /// creates an instance of the service in a predictable manner /// </summary> /// <typeparam name="TCallbackHandler">CallbackHandler type</typeparam> public class CallbackHandlerRouteHandler : IRouteHandler { /// <summary> /// Method name that is to be called on this route. /// Set by the automatically generated RegisterRoutes /// invokation. /// </summary> public string MethodName { get; set; } /// <summary> /// The type of the handler we're going to instantiate. /// Needed so we can semi-generically instantiate the /// handler and call the method on it. /// </summary> public Type CallbackHandlerType { get; set; } /// <summary> /// Constructor to pass in the two required components we /// need to create an instance of our handler. /// </summary> /// <param name="methodName"></param> /// <param name="callbackHandlerType"></param> public CallbackHandlerRouteHandler(string methodName, Type callbackHandlerType) { MethodName = methodName; CallbackHandlerType = callbackHandlerType; } /// <summary> /// Retrieves an Http Handler based on the type specified in the constructor /// </summary> /// <param name="requestContext"></param> /// <returns></returns> IHttpHandler IRouteHandler.GetHttpHandler(RequestContext requestContext) { IHttpHandler handler = Activator.CreateInstance(CallbackHandlerType) as IHttpHandler; // If we're dealing with a Callback Handler // pass the RouteData for this route to the Handler if (handler is CallbackHandler) ((CallbackHandler)handler).RouteData = requestContext.RouteData; return handler; } /// <summary> /// Generic method to register all routes from a CallbackHandler /// that have RouteUrls defined on the [CallbackMethod] attribute /// </summary> /// <typeparam name="TCallbackHandler">CallbackHandler Type</typeparam> /// <param name="routes"></param> public static void RegisterRoutes<TCallbackHandler>(RouteCollection routes) { // find all methods var methods = typeof(TCallbackHandler).GetMethods(BindingFlags.Instance | BindingFlags.Public); foreach (var method in methods) { var attrs = method.GetCustomAttributes(typeof(CallbackMethodAttribute), false); if (attrs.Length < 1) continue; CallbackMethodAttribute attr = attrs[0] as CallbackMethodAttribute; if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(attr.RouteUrl)) continue; // Add the route routes.Add(method.Name, new Route(attr.RouteUrl, new CallbackHandlerRouteHandler(method.Name, typeof(TCallbackHandler)))); } } } The RouteHandler implements IRouteHandler, and its responsibility via the GetHandler method is to create an HttpHandler based on the route data. When ASP.NET calls GetHandler it passes a requestContext parameter which includes a requestContext.RouteData property. This parameter holds the current request’s route data as well as an instance of the current RouteHandler. If you look at GetHttpHandler() you can see that the code creates an instance of the handler we are interested in and then sets the RouteData property on the handler. This is how you can pass the current request’s RouteData to the handler. The RouteData object also has a  RouteData.RouteHandler property that is also available to the Handler later, which is useful in order to get additional information about the current route. In our case here the RouteHandler includes a MethodName property that identifies the method to execute in the handler since that value no longer comes from the URL so we need to figure out the method name some other way. The method name is mapped explicitly when the RouteHandler is created and here the static method that auto-registers all CallbackMethods with RouteUrls sets the method name when it creates the routes while reflecting over the methods (more on this in a minute). The important point here is that you can attach additional properties to the RouteHandler and you can then later access the RouteHandler and its properties later in the Handler to pick up these custom values. This is a crucial feature in that the RouteHandler serves in passing additional context to the handler so it knows what actions to perform. The automatic route registration is handled by the static RegisterRoutes<TCallbackHandler> method. This method is generic and totally reusable for any CallbackHandler type handler. To register a CallbackHandler and any RouteUrls it has defined you simple use code like this in Application_Start (or other application startup code):protected void Application_Start(object sender, EventArgs e) { // Register Routes for RestService CallbackHandlerRouteHandler.RegisterRoutes<RestService>(RouteTable.Routes); } If you have multiple CallbackHandler style services you can make multiple calls to RegisterRoutes for each of the service types. RegisterRoutes internally uses reflection to run through all the methods of the Handler, looking for CallbackMethod attributes and whether a RouteUrl is specified. If it is a new instance of a CallbackHandlerRouteHandler is created and the name of the method and the type are set. routes.Add(method.Name,           new Route(attr.RouteUrl, new CallbackHandlerRouteHandler(method.Name, typeof(TCallbackHandler) )) ); While the routing with CallbackHandlerRouteHandler is set up automatically for all methods that use the RouteUrl attribute, you can also use code to hook up those routes manually and skip using the attribute. The code for this is straightforward and just requires that you manually map each individual route to each method you want a routed: protected void Application_Start(objectsender, EventArgs e){    RegisterRoutes(RouteTable.Routes);}void RegisterRoutes(RouteCollection routes) { routes.Add("StockQuote Route",new Route("StockQuote/{symbol}",                     new CallbackHandlerRouteHandler("GetStockQuote",typeof(RestService) ) ) );     routes.Add("StockQuotes Route",new Route("StockQuotes/{symbolList}",                     new CallbackHandlerRouteHandler("GetStockQuotes",typeof(RestService) ) ) );}I think it’s clearly easier to have CallbackHandlerRouteHandler.RegisterRoutes() do this automatically for you based on RouteUrl attributes, but some people have a real aversion to attaching logic via attributes. Just realize that the option to manually create your routes is available as well. Using the RouteData in the Handler A RouteHandler’s responsibility is to create an HttpHandler and as mentioned earlier, natively IHttpHandler doesn’t have any support for RouteData. In order to utilize RouteData in your handler code you have to pass the RouteData to the handler. In my CallbackHandlerRouteHandler when it creates the HttpHandler instance it creates the instance and then assigns the custom RouteData property on the handler:IHttpHandler handler = Activator.CreateInstance(CallbackHandlerType) as IHttpHandler; if (handler is CallbackHandler) ((CallbackHandler)handler).RouteData = requestContext.RouteData; return handler; Again this only works if you actually add a RouteData property to your handler explicitly as I did in my CallbackHandler implementation:/// <summary> /// Optionally store RouteData on this handler /// so we can access it internally /// </summary> public RouteData RouteData {get; set; } and the RouteHandler needs to set it when it creates the handler instance. Once you have the route data in your handler you can access Route Keys and Values and also the RouteHandler. Since my RouteHandler has a custom property for the MethodName to retrieve it from within the handler I can do something like this now to retrieve the MethodName (this example is actually not in the handler but target is an instance pass to the processor): // check for Route Data method name if (target is CallbackHandler) { var routeData = ((CallbackHandler)target).RouteData; if (routeData != null) methodToCall = ((CallbackHandlerRouteHandler)routeData.RouteHandler).MethodName; } When I need to access the dynamic values in the route ( symbol in StockQuote/{symbol}) I can retrieve it easily with the Values collection (RouteData.Values["symbol"]). In my CallbackHandler processing logic I’m basically looking for matching parameter names to Route parameters: // look for parameters in the routeif(routeData != null){    string parmString = routeData.Values[parameter.Name] as string;    adjustedParms[parmCounter] = ReflectionUtils.StringToTypedValue(parmString, parameter.ParameterType);} And with that we’ve come full circle. We’ve created a custom RouteHandler() that passes the RouteData to the handler it creates. We’ve registered our routes to use the RouteHandler, and we’ve utilized the route data in our handler. For completeness sake here’s the routine that executes a method call based on the parameters passed in and one of the options is to retrieve the inbound parameters off RouteData (as well as from POST data or QueryString parameters):internal object ExecuteMethod(string method, object target, string[] parameters, CallbackMethodParameterType paramType, ref CallbackMethodAttribute callbackMethodAttribute) { HttpRequest Request = HttpContext.Current.Request; object Result = null; // Stores parsed parameters (from string JSON or QUeryString Values) object[] adjustedParms = null; Type PageType = target.GetType(); MethodInfo MI = PageType.GetMethod(method, BindingFlags.Instance | BindingFlags.Public | BindingFlags.NonPublic); if (MI == null) throw new InvalidOperationException("Invalid Server Method."); object[] methods = MI.GetCustomAttributes(typeof(CallbackMethodAttribute), false); if (methods.Length < 1) throw new InvalidOperationException("Server method is not accessible due to missing CallbackMethod attribute"); if (callbackMethodAttribute != null) callbackMethodAttribute = methods[0] as CallbackMethodAttribute; ParameterInfo[] parms = MI.GetParameters(); JSONSerializer serializer = new JSONSerializer(); RouteData routeData = null; if (target is CallbackHandler) routeData = ((CallbackHandler)target).RouteData; int parmCounter = 0; adjustedParms = new object[parms.Length]; foreach (ParameterInfo parameter in parms) { // Retrieve parameters out of QueryString or POST buffer if (parameters == null) { // look for parameters in the route if (routeData != null) { string parmString = routeData.Values[parameter.Name] as string; adjustedParms[parmCounter] = ReflectionUtils.StringToTypedValue(parmString, parameter.ParameterType); } // GET parameter are parsed as plain string values - no JSON encoding else if (HttpContext.Current.Request.HttpMethod == "GET") { // Look up the parameter by name string parmString = Request.QueryString[parameter.Name]; adjustedParms[parmCounter] = ReflectionUtils.StringToTypedValue(parmString, parameter.ParameterType); } // POST parameters are treated as methodParameters that are JSON encoded else if (paramType == CallbackMethodParameterType.Json) //string newVariable = methodParameters.GetValue(parmCounter) as string; adjustedParms[parmCounter] = serializer.Deserialize(Request.Params["parm" + (parmCounter + 1).ToString()], parameter.ParameterType); else adjustedParms[parmCounter] = SerializationUtils.DeSerializeObject( Request.Params["parm" + (parmCounter + 1).ToString()], parameter.ParameterType); } else if (paramType == CallbackMethodParameterType.Json) adjustedParms[parmCounter] = serializer.Deserialize(parameters[parmCounter], parameter.ParameterType); else adjustedParms[parmCounter] = SerializationUtils.DeSerializeObject(parameters[parmCounter], parameter.ParameterType); parmCounter++; } Result = MI.Invoke(target, adjustedParms); return Result; } The code basically uses Reflection to loop through all the parameters available on the method and tries to assign the parameters from RouteData, QueryString or POST variables. The parameters are converted into their appropriate types and then used to eventually make a Reflection based method call. What’s sweet is that the RouteData retrieval is just another option for dealing with the inbound data in this scenario and it adds exactly two lines of code plus the code to retrieve the MethodName I showed previously – a seriously low impact addition that adds a lot of extra value to this endpoint callback processing implementation. Debugging your Routes If you create a lot of routes it’s easy to run into Route conflicts where multiple routes have the same path and overlap with each other. This can be difficult to debug especially if you are using automatically generated routes like the routes created by CallbackHandlerRouteHandler.RegisterRoutes. Luckily there’s a tool that can help you out with this nicely. Phill Haack created a RouteDebugging tool you can download and add to your project. The easiest way to do this is to grab and add this to your project is to use NuGet (Add Library Package from your Project’s Reference Nodes):   which adds a RouteDebug assembly to your project. Once installed you can easily debug your routes with this simple line of code which needs to be installed at application startup:protected void Application_Start(object sender, EventArgs e) { CallbackHandlerRouteHandler.RegisterRoutes<StockService>(RouteTable.Routes); // Debug your routes RouteDebug.RouteDebugger.RewriteRoutesForTesting(RouteTable.Routes); } Any routed URL then displays something like this: The screen shows you your current route data and all the routes that are mapped along with a flag that displays which route was actually matched. This is useful – if you have any overlap of routes you will be able to see which routes are triggered – the first one in the sequence wins. This tool has saved my ass on a few occasions – and with NuGet now it’s easy to add it to your project in a few seconds and then remove it when you’re done. Routing Around Custom routing seems slightly complicated on first blush due to its disconnected components of RouteHandler, route registration and mapping of custom handlers. But once you understand the relationship between a RouteHandler, the RouteData and how to pass it to a handler, utilizing of Routing becomes a lot easier as you can easily pass context from the registration to the RouteHandler and through to the HttpHandler. The most important thing to understand when building custom routing solutions is to figure out how to map URLs in such a way that the handler can figure out all the pieces it needs to process the request. This can be via URL routing parameters and as I did in my example by passing additional context information as part of the RouteHandler instance that provides the proper execution context. In my case this ‘context’ was the method name, but it could be an actual static value like an enum identifying an operation or category in an application. Basically user supplied data comes in through the url and static application internal data can be passed via RouteHandler property values. Routing can make your application URLs easier to read by non-techie types regardless of whether you’re building Service type or REST applications, or full on Web interfaces. Routing in ASP.NET 4.0 makes it possible to create just about any extensionless URLs you can dream up and custom RouteHanmdler References Sample ProjectIncludes the sample CallbackHandler service discussed here along with compiled versionsof the Westwind.Web and Westwind.Utilities assemblies.  (requires .NET 4.0/VS 2010) West Wind Web Toolkit includes full implementation of CallbackHandler and the Routing Handler West Wind Web Toolkit Source CodeContains the full source code to the Westwind.Web and Westwind.Utilities assemblies usedin these samples. Includes the source described in the post.(Latest build in the Subversion Repository) CallbackHandler Source(Relevant code to this article tree in Westwind.Web assembly) JSONView FireFoxPluginA simple FireFox Plugin to easily view JSON data natively in FireFox.For IE you can use a registry hack to display JSON as raw text.© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2011Posted in ASP.NET  AJAX  HTTP  

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  • What&rsquo;s New in ASP.NET 4.0 Part Two: WebForms and Visual Studio Enhancements

    - by Rick Strahl
    In the last installment I talked about the core changes in the ASP.NET runtime that I’ve been taking advantage of. In this column, I’ll cover the changes to the Web Forms engine and some of the cool improvements in Visual Studio that make Web and general development easier. WebForms The WebForms engine is the area that has received most significant changes in ASP.NET 4.0. Probably the most widely anticipated features are related to managing page client ids and of ViewState on WebForm pages. Take Control of Your ClientIDs Unique ClientID generation in ASP.NET has been one of the most complained about “features” in ASP.NET. Although there’s a very good technical reason for these unique generated ids - they guarantee unique ids for each and every server control on a page - these unique and generated ids often get in the way of client-side JavaScript development and CSS styling as it’s often inconvenient and fragile to work with the long, generated ClientIDs. In ASP.NET 4.0 you can now specify an explicit client id mode on each control or each naming container parent control to control how client ids are generated. By default, ASP.NET generates mangled client ids for any control contained in a naming container (like a Master Page, or a User Control for example). The key to ClientID management in ASP.NET 4.0 are the new ClientIDMode and ClientIDRowSuffix properties. ClientIDMode supports four different ClientID generation settings shown below. For the following examples, imagine that you have a Textbox control named txtName inside of a master page control container on a WebForms page. <%@Page Language="C#"      MasterPageFile="~/Site.Master"     CodeBehind="WebForm2.aspx.cs"     Inherits="WebApplication1.WebForm2"  %> <asp:Content ID="content"  ContentPlaceHolderID="content"               runat="server"               ClientIDMode="Static" >       <asp:TextBox runat="server" ID="txtName" /> </asp:Content> The four available ClientIDMode values are: AutoID This is the existing behavior in ASP.NET 1.x-3.x where full naming container munging takes place. <input name="ctl00$content$txtName" type="text"        id="ctl00_content_txtName" /> This should be familiar to any ASP.NET developer and results in fairly unpredictable client ids that can easily change if the containership hierarchy changes. For example, removing the master page changes the name in this case, so if you were to move a block of script code that works against the control to a non-Master page, the script code immediately breaks. Static This option is the most deterministic setting that forces the control’s ClientID to use its ID value directly. No naming container naming at all is applied and you end up with clean client ids: <input name="ctl00$content$txtName"         type="text" id="txtName" /> Note that the name property which is used for postback variables to the server still is munged, but the ClientID property is displayed simply as the ID value that you have assigned to the control. This option is what most of us want to use, but you have to be clear on that because it can potentially cause conflicts with other controls on the page. If there are several instances of the same naming container (several instances of the same user control for example) there can easily be a client id naming conflict. Note that if you assign Static to a data-bound control, like a list child control in templates, you do not get unique ids either, so for list controls where you rely on unique id for child controls, you’ll probably want to use Predictable rather than Static. I’ll write more on this a little later when I discuss ClientIDRowSuffix. Predictable The previous two values are pretty self-explanatory. Predictable however, requires some explanation. To me at least it’s not in the least bit predictable. MSDN defines this value as follows: This algorithm is used for controls that are in data-bound controls. The ClientID value is generated by concatenating the ClientID value of the parent naming container with the ID value of the control. If the control is a data-bound control that generates multiple rows, the value of the data field specified in the ClientIDRowSuffix property is added at the end. For the GridView control, multiple data fields can be specified. If the ClientIDRowSuffix property is blank, a sequential number is added at the end instead of a data-field value. Each segment is separated by an underscore character (_). The key that makes this value a bit confusing is that it relies on the parent NamingContainer’s ClientID to build its own ClientID value. This effectively means that the value is not predictable at all but rather very tightly coupled to the parent naming container’s ClientIDMode setting. For my simple textbox example, if the ClientIDMode property of the parent naming container (Page in this case) is set to “Predictable” you’ll get this: <input name="ctl00$content$txtName" type="text"         id="content_txtName" /> which gives an id that based on walking up to the currently active naming container (the MasterPage content container) and starting the id formatting from there downward. Think of this as a semi unique name that’s guaranteed unique only for the naming container. If, on the other hand, the Page is set to “AutoID” you get the following with Predictable on txtName: <input name="ctl00$content$txtName" type="text"         id="ctl00_content_txtName" /> The latter is effectively the same as if you specified AutoID because it inherits the AutoID naming from the Page and Content Master Page control of the page. But again - predictable behavior always depends on the parent naming container and how it generates its id, so the id may not always be exactly the same as the AutoID generated value because somewhere in the NamingContainer chain the ClientIDMode setting may be set to a different value. For example, if you had another naming container in the middle that was set to Static you’d end up effectively with an id that starts with the NamingContainers id rather than the whole ctl000_content munging. The most common use for Predictable is likely to be for data-bound controls, which results in each data bound item getting a unique ClientID. Unfortunately, even here the behavior can be very unpredictable depending on which data-bound control you use - I found significant differences in how template controls in a GridView behave from those that are used in a ListView control. For example, GridView creates clean child ClientIDs, while ListView still has a naming container in the ClientID, presumably because of the template container on which you can’t set ClientIDMode. Predictable is useful, but only if all naming containers down the chain use this setting. Otherwise you’re right back to the munged ids that are pretty unpredictable. Another property, ClientIDRowSuffix, can be used in combination with ClientIDMode of Predictable to force a suffix onto list client controls. For example: <asp:GridView runat="server" ID="gvItems"              AutoGenerateColumns="false"             ClientIDMode="Static"              ClientIDRowSuffix="Id">     <Columns>     <asp:TemplateField>         <ItemTemplate>             <asp:Label runat="server" id="txtName"                        Text='<%# Eval("Name") %>'                   ClientIDMode="Predictable"/>         </ItemTemplate>     </asp:TemplateField>     <asp:TemplateField>         <ItemTemplate>         <asp:Label runat="server" id="txtId"                     Text='<%# Eval("Id") %>'                     ClientIDMode="Predictable" />         </ItemTemplate>     </asp:TemplateField>     </Columns>  </asp:GridView> generates client Ids inside of a column in the master page described earlier: <td>     <span id="txtName_0">Rick</span> </td> where the value after the underscore is the ClientIDRowSuffix field - in this case “Id” of the item data bound to the control. Note that all of the child controls require ClientIDMode=”Predictable” in order for the ClientIDRowSuffix to be applied, and the parent GridView controls need to be set to Static either explicitly or via Naming Container inheritance to give these simple names. It’s a bummer that ClientIDRowSuffix doesn’t work with Static to produce this automatically. Another real problem is that other controls process the ClientIDMode differently. For example, a ListView control processes the Predictable ClientIDMode differently and produces the following with the Static ListView and Predictable child controls: <span id="ctrl0_txtName_0">Rick</span> I couldn’t even figure out a way using ClientIDMode to get a simple ID that also uses a suffix short of falling back to manually generated ids using <%= %> expressions instead. Given the inconsistencies inside of list controls using <%= %>, ids for the ListView might not be a bad idea anyway. Inherit The final setting is Inherit, which is the default for all controls except Page. This means that controls by default inherit the parent naming container’s ClientIDMode setting. For more detailed information on ClientID behavior and different scenarios you can check out a blog post of mine on this subject: http://www.west-wind.com/weblog/posts/54760.aspx. ClientID Enhancements Summary The ClientIDMode property is a welcome addition to ASP.NET 4.0. To me this is probably the most useful WebForms feature as it allows me to generate clean IDs simply by setting ClientIDMode="Static" on either the page or inside of Web.config (in the Pages section) which applies the setting down to the entire page which is my 95% scenario. For the few cases when it matters - for list controls and inside of multi-use user controls or custom server controls) - I can use Predictable or even AutoID to force controls to unique names. For application-level page development, this is easy to accomplish and provides maximum usability for working with client script code against page controls. ViewStateMode Another area of large criticism for WebForms is ViewState. ViewState is used internally by ASP.NET to persist page-level changes to non-postback properties on controls as pages post back to the server. It’s a useful mechanism that works great for the overall mechanics of WebForms, but it can also cause all sorts of overhead for page operation as ViewState can very quickly get out of control and consume huge amounts of bandwidth in your page content. ViewState can also wreak havoc with client-side scripting applications that modify control properties that are tracked by ViewState, which can produce very unpredictable results on a Postback after client-side updates. Over the years in my own development, I’ve often turned off ViewState on pages to reduce overhead. Yes, you lose some functionality, but you can easily implement most of the common functionality in non-ViewState workarounds. Relying less on heavy ViewState controls and sticking with simpler controls or raw HTML constructs avoids getting around ViewState problems. In ASP.NET 3.x and prior, it wasn’t easy to control ViewState - you could turn it on or off and if you turned it off at the page or web.config level, you couldn’t turn it back on for specific controls. In short, it was an all or nothing approach. With ASP.NET 4.0, the new ViewStateMode property gives you more control. It allows you to disable ViewState globally either on the page or web.config level and then turn it back on for specific controls that might need it. ViewStateMode only works when EnableViewState="true" on the page or web.config level (which is the default). You can then use ViewStateMode of Disabled, Enabled or Inherit to control the ViewState settings on the page. If you’re shooting for minimal ViewState usage, the ideal situation is to set ViewStateMode to disabled on the Page or web.config level and only turn it back on particular controls: <%@Page Language="C#"      CodeBehind="WebForm2.aspx.cs"     Inherits="Westwind.WebStore.WebForm2"        ClientIDMode="Static"                ViewStateMode="Disabled"     EnableViewState="true"  %> <!-- this control has viewstate  --> <asp:TextBox runat="server" ID="txtName"  ViewStateMode="Enabled" />       <!-- this control has no viewstate - it inherits  from parent container --> <asp:TextBox runat="server" ID="txtAddress" /> Note that the EnableViewState="true" at the Page level isn’t required since it’s the default, but it’s important that the value is true. ViewStateMode has no effect if EnableViewState="false" at the page level. The main benefit of ViewStateMode is that it allows you to more easily turn off ViewState for most of the page and enable only a few key controls that might need it. For me personally, this is a perfect combination as most of my WebForm apps can get away without any ViewState at all. But some controls - especially third party controls - often don’t work well without ViewState enabled, and now it’s much easier to selectively enable controls rather than the old way, which required you to pretty much turn off ViewState for all controls that you didn’t want ViewState on. Inline HTML Encoding HTML encoding is an important feature to prevent cross-site scripting attacks in data entered by users on your site. In order to make it easier to create HTML encoded content, ASP.NET 4.0 introduces a new Expression syntax using <%: %> to encode string values. The encoding expression syntax looks like this: <%: "<script type='text/javascript'>" +     "alert('Really?');</script>" %> which produces properly encoded HTML: &lt;script type=&#39;text/javascript&#39; &gt;alert(&#39;Really?&#39;);&lt;/script&gt; Effectively this is a shortcut to: <%= HttpUtility.HtmlEncode( "<script type='text/javascript'>" + "alert('Really?');</script>") %> Of course the <%: %> syntax can also evaluate expressions just like <%= %> so the more common scenario applies this expression syntax against data your application is displaying. Here’s an example displaying some data model values: <%: Model.Address.Street %> This snippet shows displaying data from your application’s data store or more importantly, from data entered by users. Anything that makes it easier and less verbose to HtmlEncode text is a welcome addition to avoid potential cross-site scripting attacks. Although I listed Inline HTML Encoding here under WebForms, anything that uses the WebForms rendering engine including ASP.NET MVC, benefits from this feature. ScriptManager Enhancements The ASP.NET ScriptManager control in the past has introduced some nice ways to take programmatic and markup control over script loading, but there were a number of shortcomings in this control. The ASP.NET 4.0 ScriptManager has a number of improvements that make it easier to control script loading and addresses a few of the shortcomings that have often kept me from using the control in favor of manual script loading. The first is the AjaxFrameworkMode property which finally lets you suppress loading the ASP.NET AJAX runtime. Disabled doesn’t load any ASP.NET AJAX libraries, but there’s also an Explicit mode that lets you pick and choose the library pieces individually and reduce the footprint of ASP.NET AJAX script included if you are using the library. There’s also a new EnableCdn property that forces any script that has a new WebResource attribute CdnPath property set to a CDN supplied URL. If the script has this Attribute property set to a non-null/empty value and EnableCdn is enabled on the ScriptManager, that script will be served from the specified CdnPath. [assembly: WebResource(    "Westwind.Web.Resources.ww.jquery.js",    "application/x-javascript",    CdnPath =  "http://mysite.com/scripts/ww.jquery.min.js")] Cool, but a little too static for my taste since this value can’t be changed at runtime to point at a debug script as needed, for example. Assembly names for loading scripts from resources can now be simple names rather than fully qualified assembly names, which make it less verbose to reference scripts from assemblies loaded from your bin folder or the assembly reference area in web.config: <asp:ScriptManager runat="server" id="Id"          EnableCdn="true"         AjaxFrameworkMode="disabled">     <Scripts>         <asp:ScriptReference          Name="Westwind.Web.Resources.ww.jquery.js"         Assembly="Westwind.Web" />     </Scripts>        </asp:ScriptManager> The ScriptManager in 4.0 also supports script combining via the CompositeScript tag, which allows you to very easily combine scripts into a single script resource served via ASP.NET. Even nicer: You can specify the URL that the combined script is served with. Check out the following script manager markup that combines several static file scripts and a script resource into a single ASP.NET served resource from a static URL (allscripts.js): <asp:ScriptManager runat="server" id="Id"          EnableCdn="true"         AjaxFrameworkMode="disabled">     <CompositeScript          Path="~/scripts/allscripts.js">         <Scripts>             <asp:ScriptReference                    Path="~/scripts/jquery.js" />             <asp:ScriptReference                    Path="~/scripts/ww.jquery.js" />             <asp:ScriptReference            Name="Westwind.Web.Resources.editors.js"                 Assembly="Westwind.Web" />         </Scripts>     </CompositeScript> </asp:ScriptManager> When you render this into HTML, you’ll see a single script reference in the page: <script src="scripts/allscripts.debug.js"          type="text/javascript"></script> All you need to do to make this work is ensure that allscripts.js and allscripts.debug.js exist in the scripts folder of your application - they can be empty but the file has to be there. This is pretty cool, but you want to be real careful that you use unique URLs for each combination of scripts you combine or else browser and server caching will easily screw you up royally. The script manager also allows you to override native ASP.NET AJAX scripts now as any script references defined in the Scripts section of the ScriptManager trump internal references. So if you want custom behavior or you want to fix a possible bug in the core libraries that normally are loaded from resources, you can now do this simply by referencing the script resource name in the Name property and pointing at System.Web for the assembly. Not a common scenario, but when you need it, it can come in real handy. Still, there are a number of shortcomings in this control. For one, the ScriptManager and ClientScript APIs still have no common entry point so control developers are still faced with having to check and support both APIs to load scripts so that controls can work on pages that do or don’t have a ScriptManager on the page. The CdnUrl is static and compiled in, which is very restrictive. And finally, there’s still no control over where scripts get loaded on the page - ScriptManager still injects scripts into the middle of the HTML markup rather than in the header or optionally the footer. This, in turn, means there is little control over script loading order, which can be problematic for control developers. MetaDescription, MetaKeywords Page Properties There are also a number of additional Page properties that correspond to some of the other features discussed in this column: ClientIDMode, ClientTarget and ViewStateMode. Another minor but useful feature is that you can now directly access the MetaDescription and MetaKeywords properties on the Page object to set the corresponding meta tags programmatically. Updating these values programmatically previously required either <%= %> expressions in the page markup or dynamic insertion of literal controls into the page. You can now just set these properties programmatically on the Page object in any Control derived class on the page or the Page itself: Page.MetaKeywords = "ASP.NET,4.0,New Features"; Page.MetaDescription = "This article discusses the new features in ASP.NET 4.0"; Note, that there’s no corresponding ASP.NET tag for the HTML Meta element, so the only way to specify these values in markup and access them is via the @Page tag: <%@Page Language="C#"      CodeBehind="WebForm2.aspx.cs"     Inherits="Westwind.WebStore.WebForm2"      ClientIDMode="Static"                MetaDescription="Article that discusses what's                      new in ASP.NET 4.0"     MetaKeywords="ASP.NET,4.0,New Features" %> Nothing earth shattering but quite convenient. Visual Studio 2010 Enhancements for Web Development For Web development there are also a host of editor enhancements in Visual Studio 2010. Some of these are not Web specific but they are useful for Web developers in general. Text Editors Throughout Visual Studio 2010, the text editors have all been updated to a new core engine based on WPF which provides some interesting new features for various code editors including the nice ability to zoom in and out with Ctrl-MouseWheel to quickly change the size of text. There are many more API options to control the editor and although Visual Studio 2010 doesn’t yet use many of these features, we can look forward to enhancements in add-ins and future editor updates from the various language teams that take advantage of the visual richness that WPF provides to editing. On the negative side, I’ve noticed that occasionally the code editor and especially the HTML and JavaScript editors will lose the ability to use various navigation keys like arrows, back and delete keys, which requires closing and reopening the documents at times. This issue seems to be well documented so I suspect this will be addressed soon with a hotfix or within the first service pack. Overall though, the code editors work very well, especially given that they were re-written completely using WPF, which was one of my big worries when I first heard about the complete redesign of the editors. Multi-Targeting Visual Studio now targets all versions of the .NET framework from 2.0 forward. You can use Visual Studio 2010 to work on your ASP.NET 2, 3.0 and 3.5 applications which is a nice way to get your feet wet with the new development environment without having to make changes to existing applications. It’s nice to have one tool to work in for all the different versions. Multi-Monitor Support One cool feature of Visual Studio 2010 is the ability to drag windows out of the Visual Studio environment and out onto the desktop including onto another monitor easily. Since Web development often involves working with a host of designers at the same time - visual designer, HTML markup window, code behind and JavaScript editor - it’s really nice to be able to have a little more screen real estate to work on each of these editors. Microsoft made a welcome change in the environment. IntelliSense Snippets for HTML and JavaScript Editors The HTML and JavaScript editors now finally support IntelliSense scripts to create macro-based template expansions that have been in the core C# and Visual Basic code editors since Visual Studio 2005. Snippets allow you to create short XML-based template definitions that can act as static macros or real templates that can have replaceable values that can be embedded into the expanded text. The XML syntax for these snippets is straight forward and it’s pretty easy to create custom snippets manually. You can easily create snippets using XML and store them in your custom snippets folder (C:\Users\rstrahl\Documents\Visual Studio 2010\Code Snippets\Visual Web Developer\My HTML Snippets and My JScript Snippets), but it helps to use one of the third-party tools that exist to simplify the process for you. I use SnippetEditor, by Bill McCarthy, which makes short work of creating snippets interactively (http://snippeteditor.codeplex.com/). Note: You may have to manually add the Visual Studio 2010 User specific Snippet folders to this tool to see existing ones you’ve created. Code snippets are some of the biggest time savers and HTML editing more than anything deals with lots of repetitive tasks that lend themselves to text expansion. Visual Studio 2010 includes a slew of built-in snippets (that you can also customize!) and you can create your own very easily. If you haven’t done so already, I encourage you to spend a little time examining your coding patterns and find the repetitive code that you write and convert it into snippets. I’ve been using CodeRush for this for years, but now you can do much of the basic expansion natively for HTML and JavaScript snippets. jQuery Integration Is Now Native jQuery is a popular JavaScript library and recently Microsoft has recently stated that it will become the primary client-side scripting technology to drive higher level script functionality in various ASP.NET Web projects that Microsoft provides. In Visual Studio 2010, the default full project template includes jQuery as part of a new project including the support files that provide IntelliSense (-vsdoc files). IntelliSense support for jQuery is now also baked into Visual Studio 2010, so unlike Visual Studio 2008 which required a separate download, no further installs are required for a rich IntelliSense experience with jQuery. Summary ASP.NET 4.0 brings many useful improvements to the platform, but thankfully most of the changes are incremental changes that don’t compromise backwards compatibility and they allow developers to ease into the new features one feature at a time. None of the changes in ASP.NET 4.0 or Visual Studio 2010 are monumental or game changers. The bigger features are language and .NET Framework changes that are also optional. This ASP.NET and tools release feels more like fine tuning and getting some long-standing kinks worked out of the platform. It shows that the ASP.NET team is dedicated to paying attention to community feedback and responding with changes to the platform and development environment based on this feedback. If you haven’t gotten your feet wet with ASP.NET 4.0 and Visual Studio 2010, there’s no reason not to give it a shot now - the ASP.NET 4.0 platform is solid and Visual Studio 2010 works very well for a brand new release. Check it out. © Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2010Posted in ASP.NET  

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  • PASS: Bylaw Changes

    - by Bill Graziano
    While you’re reading this, a post should be going up on the PASS blog on the plans to change our bylaws.  You should be able to find our old bylaws, our proposed bylaws and a red-lined version of the changes.  We plan to listen to feedback until March 31st.  At that point we’ll decide whether to vote on these changes or take other action. The executive summary is that we’re adding a restriction to prevent more than two people from the same company on the Board and eliminating the Board’s Officer Appointment Committee to have Officers directly elected by the Board.  This second change better matches how officer elections have been conducted in the past. The Gritty Details Our scope was to change bylaws to match how PASS actually works and tackle a limited set of issues.  Changing the bylaws is hard.  We’ve been working on these changes since the March board meeting last year.  At that meeting we met and talked through the issues we wanted to address.  In years past the Board has tried to come up with language and then we’ve discussed and negotiated to get to the result.  In March, we gave HQ guidance on what we wanted and asked them to come up with a starting point.  Hannes worked on building us an initial set of changes that we could work our way through.  Discussing changes like this over email is difficult wasn’t very productive.  We do a much better job on this at the in-person Board meetings.  Unfortunately there are only 2 or 3 of those a year. In August we met in Nashville and spent time discussing the changes.  That was also the day after we released the slate for the 2010 election. The discussion around that colored what we talked about in terms of these changes.  We talked very briefly at the Summit and again reviewed and revised the changes at the Board meeting in January.  This is the result of those changes and discussions. We made numerous small changes to clean up language and make wording more clear.  We also made two big changes. Director Employment Restrictions The first is that only two people from the same company can serve on the Board at the same time.  The actual language in section VI.3 reads: A maximum of two (2) Directors who are employed by, or who are joint owners or partners in, the same for-profit venture, company, organization, or other legal entity, may concurrently serve on the PASS Board of Directors at any time. The definition of “employed” is at the sole discretion of the Board. And what a mess this turns out to be in practice.  Our membership is a hodgepodge of interlocking relationships.  Let’s say three Board members get together and start a blog service for SQL Server bloggers.  It’s technically for-profit.  Let’s assume it makes $8 in the first year.  Does that trigger this clause?  (Technically yes.)  We had a horrible time trying to write language that covered everything.  All the sample bylaws that we found were just as vague as this. That led to the third clause in this section.  The first sentence reads: The Board of Directors reserves the right, strictly on a case-by-case basis, to overrule the requirements of Section VI.3 by majority decision for any single Director’s conflict of employment. We needed some way to handle the trivial issues and exercise some judgment.  It seems like a public vote is the best way.  This discloses the relationship and gets each Board member on record on the issue.   In practice I think this clause will rarely be used.  I think this entire section will only be invoked for actual employment issues and not for small side projects.  In either case we have the mechanisms in place to handle it in a public, transparent way. That’s the first and third clauses.  The second clause says that if your situation changes and you fall afoul of this restriction you need to notify the Board.  The clause further states that if this new job means a Board members violates the “two-per-company” rule the Board may request their resignation.  The Board can also  allow the person to continue serving with a majority vote.  I think this will also take some judgment.  Consider a person switching jobs that leads to three people from the same company.  I’m very likely to ask for someone to resign if all three are two weeks into a two year term.  I’m unlikely to ask anyone to resign if one is two weeks away from ending their term.  In either case, the decision will be a public vote that we can be held accountable for. One concern that was raised was whether this would affect someone choosing to accept a job.  I think that’s a choice for them to make.  PASS is clearly stating its intent that only two directors from any one organization should serve at any time.  Once these bylaws are approved, this policy should not come as a surprise to any potential or current Board members considering a job change.  This clause isn’t perfect.  The biggest hole is business relationships that aren’t defined above.  Let’s say that two employees from company “X” serve on the Board.  What happens if I accept a full-time consulting contract with that company?  Let’s assume I’m working directly for one of the two existing Board members.  That doesn’t violate section VI.3.  But I think it’s clearly the kind of relationship we’d like to prevent.  Unfortunately that was even harder to write than what we have now.  I fully expect that in the next revision of the bylaws we’ll address this.  It just didn’t make it into this one. Officer Elections The officer election process received a slightly different rewrite.  Our goal was to codify in the bylaws the actual process we used to elect the officers.  The officers are the President, Executive Vice-President (EVP) and Vice-President of Marketing.  The Immediate Past President (IPP) is also an officer but isn’t elected.  The IPP serves in that role for two years after completing their term as President.  We do that for continuity’s sake.  Some organizations have a President-elect that serves for one or two years.  The group that founded PASS chose to have an IPP. When I started on the Board, the Nominating Committee (NomCom) selected the slate for the at-large directors and the slate for the officers.  There was always one candidate for each officer position.  It wasn’t really an election so much as the NomCom decided who the next person would be for each officer position.  Behind the scenes the Board worked to select the best people for the role. In June 2009 that process was changed to bring it line with what actually happens.  An Officer Appointment Committee was created that was a subset of the Board.  That committee would take time to interview the candidates and present a slate to the Board for approval.  The majority vote of the Board would determine the officers for the next two years.  In practice the Board itself interviewed the candidates and conducted the elections.  That means it was time to change the bylaws again. Section VII.2 and VII.3 spell out the process used to select the officers.  We use the phrase “Officer Appointment” to separate it from the Director election but the end result is that the Board elects the officers.  Section VII.3 starts: Officers shall be appointed bi-annually by a majority of all the voting members of the Board of Directors. Everything else revolves around that sentence.  We use the word appoint but they truly are elected.  There are details in the bylaws for term limits, minimum requirements for President (1 prior term as an officer), tie breakers and filling vacancies. In practice we will have an election for President, then an election for EVP and then an election for VP Marketing.  That means that losing candidates will be able to fall down the ladder and run for the next open position.  Another point to note is that officers aren’t at-large directors.  That means if a current sitting officer loses all three elections they are off the Board.  Having Board member votes public will help with the transparency of this approach. This process has a number of positive and negatives.  The biggest concern I expect to hear is that our members don’t directly choose the officers.  I’m going to try and list all the positives and negatives of this approach. Many non-profits value continuity and are slower to change than a business.  On the plus side this promotes that.  On the negative side this promotes that.  If we change too slowly the members complain that we aren’t responsive.  If we change too quickly we make mistakes and fail at various things.  We’ve been criticized for both of those lately so I’m not entirely sure where to draw the line.  My rough assumption to this point is that we’re going too slow on governance and too quickly on becoming “more than a Summit.”  This approach creates competition in the officer elections.  If you are an at-large director there is no consequence to losing an election.  If you are an officer the only way to stay on the Board is to win an officer election or an at-large election.  If you are an officer and lose an election you can always run for the next office down.  This makes it very easy for multiple people to contest an election. There is value in a person moving through the officer positions up to the Presidency.  Having the Board select the officers promotes this.  The down side is that it takes a LOT of time to get to the Presidency.  We’ve had good people struggle with burnout.  We’ve had lots of discussion around this.  The process as we’ve described it here makes it possible for someone to move quickly through the ranks but doesn’t prevent people from working their way up through each role. We talked long and hard about having the officers elected by the members.  We had a self-imposed deadline to complete these changes prior to elections this summer. The other challenge was that our original goal was to make the bylaws reflect our actual process rather than create a new one.  I believe we accomplished this goal. We ran out of time to consider this option in the detail it needs.  Having member elections for officers needs a number of problems solved.  We would need a way for candidates to fall through the election.  This is what promotes competition.  Without this few people would risk an election and we’ll be back to one candidate per slot.  We need to do this without having multiple elections.  We may be able to copy what other organizations are doing but I was surprised at how little I could find on other organizations.  We also need a way for people that lose an officer election to win an at-large election.  Otherwise we’ll have very little competition for officers. This brings me to an area that I think we as a Board haven’t done a good job.  We haven’t built a strong process to tell you who is doing a good job and who isn’t.  This is a double-edged sword.  I don’t want to highlight Board members that are failing.  That’s not a good way to get people to volunteer and run for the Board.  But I also need a way let the members make an informed choice about who is doing a good job and would make a good officer.  Encouraging Board members to blog, publishing minutes and making votes public helps in that regard but isn’t the final answer.  I don’t know what the final answer is yet.  I do know that the Board members themselves are uniquely positioned to know which other Board members are doing good work.  They know who speaks up in meetings, who works to build consensus, who has good ideas and who works with the members.  What I Could Do Better I’ve learned a lot writing this about how we communicated with our members.  The next time we revise the bylaws I’d do a few things differently.  The biggest change would be to provide better documentation.  The March 2009 minutes provide a very detailed look into what changes we wanted to make to the bylaws.  Looking back, I’m a little surprised at how closely they matched our final changes and covered the various arguments.  If you just read those you’d get 90% of what we eventually changed.  Nearly everything else was just details around implementation.  I’d also consider publishing a scope document defining exactly what we were doing any why.  I think it really helped that we had a limited, defined goal in mind.  I don’t think we did a good job communicating that goal outside the meeting minutes though. That said, I wish I’d blogged more after the August and January meeting.  I think it would have helped more people to know that this change was coming and to be ready for it. Conclusion These changes address two big concerns that the Board had.  First, it prevents a single organization from dominating the Board.  Second, it codifies and clearly spells out how officers are elected.  This is the process that was previously followed but it was somewhat murky.  These changes bring clarity to this and clearly explain the process the Board will follow. We’re going to listen to feedback until March 31st.  At that time we’ll decide whether to approve these changes.  I’m also assuming that we’ll start another round of changes in the next year or two.  Are there other issues in the bylaws that we should tackle in the future?

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