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System halts for a fraction of second after every 2-3 seconds

- by iSam

I'm using Windows 7 on my HP ProBook 4250s. The problem I face is that my system halts for a fraction of second after every 2-3 seconds. These jerks are not letting me concentrate or work properly. This happens even when I'm just typing in notepad while no other application is running. I tried to install every driver from HP's website and there's no item in device manager marked with yellow icon. Following are my system specs: Machine: HP ProBook 4250s OS: Windows 7 professional RAM: 2GB Processor: Intel Core i3 2.27GHz Following is my HijackThis Log: **Logfile of HijackThis v1.99.1** Scan saved at 9:34:03 PM, on 11/13/2012 Platform: Unknown Windows (WinNT 6.01.3504) MSIE: Internet Explorer v9.00 (9.00.8112.16450) **Running processes:** C:\Windows\system32\taskhost.exe C:\Windows\System32\rundll32.exe C:\Windows\system32\Dwm.exe C:\Windows\Explorer.EXE C:\Windows\System32\igfxtray.exe C:\Windows\System32\hkcmd.exe C:\Windows\System32\igfxpers.exe C:\Program Files\Synaptics\SynTP\SynTPEnh.exe C:\Program Files\PowerISO\PWRISOVM.EXE C:\Program Files\AVAST Software\Avast\AvastUI.exe C:\Program Files\Free Download Manager\fdm.exe C:\Windows\system32\wuauclt.exe C:\Program Files\Windows Media Player\wmplayer.exe C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office12\WINWORD.EXE C:\HijackThis\HijackThis.exe R1 - HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main,Search Page = http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=54896 R0 - HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main,Start Page = http://bing.com/ R1 - HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main,Default_Page_URL = http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=69157 R1 - HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main,Default_Search_URL = http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=54896 R1 - HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main,Search Page = http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=54896 R0 - HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main,Start Page = http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=69157 R0 - HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Search,SearchAssistant = R0 - HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Search,CustomizeSearch = R0 - HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Toolbar,LinksFolderName = R3 - URLSearchHook: (no name) - {7473b6bd-4691-4744-a82b-7854eb3d70b6} - (no file) O2 - BHO: Adobe PDF Reader Link Helper - {06849E9F-C8D7-4D59-B87D-784B7D6BE0B3} - C:\Program Files\Common Files\Adobe\Acrobat\ActiveX\AcroIEHelper.dll O2 - BHO: Babylon toolbar helper - {2EECD738-5844-4a99-B4B6-146BF802613B} - (no file) O2 - BHO: MrFroggy - {856E12B5-22D7-4E22-9ACA-EA9A008DD65B} - C:\Program Files\Minibar\Froggy.dll O2 - BHO: avast! WebRep - {8E5E2654-AD2D-48bf-AC2D-D17F00898D06} - C:\Program Files\AVAST Software\Avast\aswWebRepIE.dll O2 - BHO: Windows Live ID Sign-in Helper - {9030D464-4C02-4ABF-8ECC-5164760863C6} - C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Windows Live\WindowsLiveLogin.dll O2 - BHO: Minibar BHO - {AA74D58F-ACD0-450D-A85E-6C04B171C044} - C:\Program Files\Minibar\Kango.dll O2 - BHO: Free Download Manager - {CC59E0F9-7E43-44FA-9FAA-8377850BF205} - C:\Program Files\Free Download Manager\iefdm2.dll O2 - BHO: HP Network Check Helper - {E76FD755-C1BA-4DCB-9F13-99BD91223ADE} - C:\Program Files\Hewlett-Packard\HP Support Framework\Resources\HPNetworkCheck\HPNetworkCheckPlugin.dll O3 - Toolbar: (no name) - {98889811-442D-49dd-99D7-DC866BE87DBC} - (no file) O3 - Toolbar: avast! WebRep - {8E5E2654-AD2D-48bf-AC2D-D17F00898D06} - C:\Program Files\AVAST Software\Avast\aswWebRepIE.dll O4 - HKLM\..\Run: [IgfxTray] C:\Windows\system32\igfxtray.exe O4 - HKLM\..\Run: [HotKeysCmds] C:\Windows\system32\hkcmd.exe O4 - HKLM\..\Run: [Persistence] C:\Windows\system32\igfxpers.exe O4 - HKLM\..\Run: [SynTPEnh] %ProgramFiles%\Synaptics\SynTP\SynTPEnh.exe O4 - HKLM\..\Run: [PWRISOVM.EXE] C:\Program Files\PowerISO\PWRISOVM.EXE -startup O4 - HKLM\..\Run: [AdobeAAMUpdater-1.0] "C:\Program Files\Common Files\Adobe\OOBE\PDApp\UWA\UpdaterStartupUtility.exe" O4 - HKLM\..\Run: [AdobeCS6ServiceManager] "C:\Program Files\Common Files\Adobe\CS6ServiceManager\CS6ServiceManager.exe" -launchedbylogin O4 - HKLM\..\Run: [SwitchBoard] C:\Program Files\Common Files\Adobe\SwitchBoard\SwitchBoard.exe O4 - HKLM\..\Run: [ROC_roc_ssl_v12] "C:\Program Files\AVG Secure Search\ROC_roc_ssl_v12.exe" / /PROMPT /CMPID=roc_ssl_v12 O4 - HKLM\..\Run: [avast] "C:\Program Files\AVAST Software\Avast\avastUI.exe" /nogui O4 - HKLM\..\Run: [Wordinn English to Urdu Dictionary] "C:\Program Files\Wordinn\Urdu Dictionary\bin\Lugat.exe" -h O4 - HKLM\..\Run: [Adobe Reader Speed Launcher] "C:\Program Files\Adobe\Reader 8.0\Reader\Reader_sl.exe" O4 - HKCU\..\Run: [Comparator Fast] "C:\Program Files\Interdesigner Software\Comparator Fast\ComparatorFast.exe" /STARTUP O4 - HKCU\..\Run: [Free Download Manager] "C:\Program Files\Free Download Manager\fdm.exe" -autorun O8 - Extra context menu item: Download all with Free Download Manager - file://C:\Program Files\Free Download Manager\dlall.htm O8 - Extra context menu item: Download selected with Free Download Manager - file://C:\Program Files\Free Download Manager\dlselected.htm O8 - Extra context menu item: Download video with Free Download Manager - file://C:\Program Files\Free Download Manager\dlfvideo.htm O8 - Extra context menu item: Download with Free Download Manager - file://C:\Program Files\Free Download Manager\dllink.htm O8 - Extra context menu item: E&xport to Microsoft Excel - res://C:\PROGRA~1\MICROS~2\Office12\EXCEL.EXE/3000 O9 - Extra button: @C:\Program Files\Hewlett-Packard\HP Support Framework\Resources\HPNetworkCheck\HPNetworkCheckPlugin.dll,-103 - {25510184-5A38-4A99-B273-DCA8EEF6CD08} - C:\Program Files\Hewlett-Packard\HP Support Framework\Resources\HPNetworkCheck\NCLauncherFromIE.exe O9 - Extra 'Tools' menuitem: @C:\Program Files\Hewlett-Packard\HP Support Framework\Resources\HPNetworkCheck\HPNetworkCheckPlugin.dll,-102 - {25510184-5A38-4A99-B273-DCA8EEF6CD08} - C:\Program Files\Hewlett-Packard\HP Support Framework\Resources\HPNetworkCheck\NCLauncherFromIE.exe O9 - Extra button: Research - {92780B25-18CC-41C8-B9BE-3C9C571A8263} - C:\PROGRA~1\MICROS~2\Office12\REFIEBAR.DLL O9 - Extra button: Change your facebook look - {AAA38851-3CFF-475F-B5E0-720D3645E4A5} - C:\Program Files\Minibar\MinibarButton.dll O10 - Unknown file in Winsock LSP: c:\windows\system32\nlaapi.dll O10 - Unknown file in Winsock LSP: c:\windows\system32\napinsp.dll O10 - Unknown file in Winsock LSP: c:\program files\common files\microsoft shared\windows live\wlidnsp.dll O10 - Unknown file in Winsock LSP: c:\program files\common files\microsoft shared\windows live\wlidnsp.dll O11 - Options group: [ACCELERATED_GRAPHICS] Accelerated graphics O11 - Options group: [INTERNATIONAL] International O13 - Gopher Prefix: O17 - HKLM\System\CCS\Services\Tcpip\..\{920289D7-5F75-4181-9A37-5627EAA163E3}: NameServer = 8.8.8.8,8.8.4.4 O17 - HKLM\System\CCS\Services\Tcpip\..\{AE83ED2F-EF14-4066-ACE2-C4ED07A68EAA}: NameServer = 9.9.9.9,8.8.8.8 O18 - Protocol: ms-help - {314111C7-A502-11D2-BBCA-00C04F8EC294} - C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Help\hxds.dll O18 - Protocol: skype4com - {FFC8B962-9B40-4DFF-9458-1830C7DD7F5D} - C:\PROGRA~1\COMMON~1\Skype\SKYPE4~1.DLL O18 - Protocol: wlpg - {E43EF6CD-A37A-4A9B-9E6F-83F89B8E6324} - C:\Program Files\Windows Live\Photo Gallery\AlbumDownloadProtocolHandler.dll O18 - Filter hijack: text/xml - {807563E5-5146-11D5-A672-00B0D022E945} - C:\PROGRA~1\COMMON~1\MICROS~1\OFFICE12\MSOXMLMF.DLL O20 - AppInit_DLLs: c:\progra~2\browse~1\23787~1.43\{16cdf~1\browse~1.dll c:\progra~2\browse~1\22630~1.40\{16cdf~1\browse~1.dll O20 - Winlogon Notify: igfxcui - C:\Windows\SYSTEM32\igfxdev.dll O23 - Service: avast! Antivirus - AVAST Software - C:\Program Files\AVAST Software\Avast\AvastSvc.exe O23 - Service: Google Software Updater (gusvc) - Google - C:\Program Files\Google\Common\Google Updater\GoogleUpdaterService.exe O23 - Service: HP Support Assistant Service - Hewlett-Packard Company - C:\Program Files\Hewlett-Packard\HP Support Framework\hpsa_service.exe O23 - Service: HP Quick Synchronization Service (HPDrvMntSvc.exe) - Hewlett-Packard Company - C:\Program Files\Hewlett-Packard\Shared\HPDrvMntSvc.exe O23 - Service: HP Software Framework Service (hpqwmiex) - Hewlett-Packard Company - C:\Program Files\Hewlett-Packard\Shared\hpqWmiEx.exe O23 - Service: HP Service (hpsrv) - Hewlett-Packard Company - C:\Windows\system32\Hpservice.exe O23 - Service: Intel(R) Management and Security Application Local Management Service (LMS) - Intel Corporation - C:\Program Files\Intel\Intel(R) Management Engine Components\LMS\LMS.exe O23 - Service: Mozilla Maintenance Service (MozillaMaintenance) - Mozilla Foundation - C:\Program Files\Mozilla Maintenance Service\maintenanceservice.exe O23 - Service: @%SystemRoot%\system32\qwave.dll,-1 (QWAVE) - Unknown owner - %windir%\system32\svchost.exe (file missing) O23 - Service: @%SystemRoot%\system32\seclogon.dll,-7001 (seclogon) - Unknown owner - %windir%\system32\svchost.exe (file missing) O23 - Service: Skype Updater (SkypeUpdate) - Skype Technologies - C:\Program Files\Skype\Updater\Updater.exe O23 - Service: Adobe SwitchBoard (SwitchBoard) - Adobe Systems Incorporated - C:\Program Files\Common Files\Adobe\SwitchBoard\SwitchBoard.exe O23 - Service: Intel(R) Management & Security Application User Notification Service (UNS) - Intel Corporation - C:\Program Files\Intel\Intel(R) Management Engine Components\UNS\UNS.exe O23 - Service: @%PROGRAMFILES%\Windows Media Player\wmpnetwk.exe,-101 (WMPNetworkSvc) - Unknown owner - %PROGRAMFILES%\Windows Media Player\wmpnetwk.exe (file missing)

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Need help configurating my Tomcat server without any WAR files

- by gablin

I just reinstalled my entire server, and now I can't seem to get my JSP-based website to work on Tomcat anymore. I use the same server.xml file, which worked perfectly before the reinstallation, but no longer. Here's the content of the server.xml file which worked before:  <Listener className="org.apache.catalina.core.AprLifecycleListener" SSLEngine="on" />  <Listener className="org.apache.catalina.core.JasperListener" />  <Listener className="org.apache.catalina.mbeans.ServerLifecycleListener" /> <Listener className="org.apache.catalina.mbeans.GlobalResourcesLifecycleListener" />  <GlobalNamingResources>  <Resource name="UserDatabase" auth="Container" type="org.apache.catalina.UserDatabase" description="User database that can be updated and saved" factory="org.apache.catalina.users.MemoryUserDatabaseFactory" pathname="conf/tomcat-users.xml" /> </GlobalNamingResources>  <Service name="Catalina">    <Connector port="8080" protocol="HTTP/1.1" connectionTimeout="20000" redirectPort="8443" />      <Connector port="8009" protocol="AJP/1.3" redirectPort="8443" />   <Engine name="Catalina" defaultHost="localhost">      <Realm className="org.apache.catalina.realm.UserDatabaseRealm" resourceName="UserDatabase"/>        <Host name="www.rebootradio.nu"> <Alias>rebootradio.nu</Alias> <Context path="" docBase="D:/services/http/rebootradio.nu" debug="1" reloadable="true"/> </Host> </Engine> </Service> </Server> The JSP site doesn't use any WAR files or anything like that; there's just a default.jsp in the specified folder D:/services/http/rebootradio.nu which loads the site. As I said, this configuration worked before, but now with the latest verion of XAMPP and Tomcat it doesn't work anymore. All I get is a 404 message saying The requested resource () is not available.

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apache tomcat loadbalancing clustering on ubuntu

- by user740010

i am facing a problem in clustering the tomcat with apache as a loadbalancer using mod_jk on ubuntu. i have install apache2 on my ubuntu 11.04 and i have downloaded tomcat7 created two copies and kept them at two different location. 1st one is at /home/net4u/vishal/test/tomcatA 2nd one is at /home/net4u/vishal/test1/tomcatB i have made following changes to server.xml file in /conf folder 1. <Server port="8205" shutdown="SHUTDOWN"> 2. <Connector port="8280" protocol="HTTP/1.1" connectionTimeout="20000" redirectPort="8443" /> 3.<Connector port="8209" protocol="AJP/1.3" redirectPort="8443" /> <Engine name="Catalina" defaultHost="localhost" jvmRoute="tomcatB"> 4. <Cluster className="org.apache.catalina.ha.tcp.SimpleTcpCluster"/> similarly i have modified other tomcat i.e tomcatA server.xml content of the server.xml is as follow: --    <Connector port="8280" protocol="HTTP/1.1" connectionTimeout="20000" redirectPort="8443" />      <Connector port="8109" protocol="AJP/1.3" redirectPort="8443" />   <Engine name="Catalina" defaultHost="localhost" jvmRoute="tomcatB">   <Cluster className="org.apache.catalina.ha.tcp.SimpleTcpCluster"/>  <Realm className="org.apache.catalina.realm.LockOutRealm">  <Realm className="org.apache.catalina.realm.UserDatabaseRealm" resourceName="UserDatabase"/> </Realm> <Host name="localhost" appBase="webapps" unpackWARs="true" autoDeploy="true">    <Valve className="org.apache.catalina.valves.AccessLogValve" directory="logs" prefix="localhost_access_log." suffix=".txt" pattern="%h %l %u %t "%r" %s %b" resolveHosts="false"/> </Host> </Engine> i have install libapache2-mod-jk step 1. i have Created jk.load file in /etc/apache2/mods-enabled/jk.load content is as follows: LoadModule jk_module /usr/lib/apache2/modules/mod_jk.so Create /etc/apache2/mods-enabled/jk.conf: JkWorkersFile /etc/apache2/workers.properties JkLogFile /var/log/apache2/jk.log JkMount /ecommerce/* worker1 JkMount /images/* worker1 JkMount /content/* worker1 step 2. Created workers.properties file in /etc/apache2/workers.properties content is as follows: workers.tomcat_home=/home/vishal/Desktop/test/tomcatA workers.java_home=/usr/lib/jvm/default-java ps=/ worker.list=tomcatA,tomcatB,loadbalancer worker.tomcatA.port=8109 worker.tomcatA.host=localhost worker.tomcatA.type=ajp13 worker.tomcatA.lbfactor=1 worker.tomcatB.port=8209 worker.tomcatB.host=localhost worker.tomcatB.type=ajp13 worker.tomcatB.lbfactor=1 worker.loadbalancer.type=lb worker.loadbalancer.balanced_workers=tomcatA,tomcatB worker.loadbalancer.sticky_session=1 i tried the same thing on the windows machine it is working.

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Connecting a LAN to an OpenVPN server via a windows 7 client gateway

- by user705142

I've got OpenVPN set up between my windows 7 client and linux server. The goal is that I'll get secure access to a webapp running on the server from any computer on the client LAN. I'm using ccd to assign static ip addresses to each client connection, with key authentication. It's working on my client machine (10.83.41.9), and when you go to the gateway IP address (10.83.41.1), it loads up the webapp. Now I really need the other computers on the client LAN to be able to connect to the webapp as well, via the windows machine. The client has a static IP address of 192.168.2.100 on the LAN, and I've enabled IP forwarding in windows (confirmed by ipconfig /all). In my router I've forwarded 10.83.41.1 / 255.255.255.255 to 192.168.2.100. In server.conf I have.. route 192.168.2.0 255.255.255.0 And in the office ccd.. ifconfig-push 10.83.41.9 10.83.41.10 iroute 192.168.2.0 255.255.255.0 The client log is as follows: Thu Mar 15 20:19:56 2012 OpenVPN 2.2.2 Win32-MSVC++ [SSL] [LZO2] [PKCS11] built on Dec 15 2011 Thu Mar 15 20:19:56 2012 NOTE: OpenVPN 2.1 requires '--script-security 2' or higher to call user-defined scripts or executables Thu Mar 15 20:19:56 2012 Control Channel Authentication: using 'ta.key' as a OpenVPN static key file Thu Mar 15 20:19:56 2012 Outgoing Control Channel Authentication: Using 160 bit message hash 'SHA1' for HMAC authentication Thu Mar 15 20:19:56 2012 Incoming Control Channel Authentication: Using 160 bit message hash 'SHA1' for HMAC authentication Thu Mar 15 20:19:56 2012 LZO compression initialized Thu Mar 15 20:19:56 2012 Control Channel MTU parms [ L:1558 D:166 EF:66 EB:0 ET:0 EL:0 ] Thu Mar 15 20:19:56 2012 Socket Buffers: R=[8192->8192] S=[64512->64512] Thu Mar 15 20:19:56 2012 Data Channel MTU parms [ L:1558 D:1450 EF:58 EB:135 ET:0 EL:0 AF:3/1 ] Thu Mar 15 20:19:56 2012 Local Options hash (VER=V4): '9e7066d2' Thu Mar 15 20:19:56 2012 Expected Remote Options hash (VER=V4): '162b04de' Thu Mar 15 20:19:56 2012 UDPv4 link local: [undef] Thu Mar 15 20:19:56 2012 UDPv4 link remote: 111.65.224.202:1194 Thu Mar 15 20:19:56 2012 TLS: Initial packet from 111.65.224.202:1194, sid=ceb04c22 8cc6d151 Thu Mar 15 20:19:56 2012 VERIFY OK: depth=1, /C=NZ/O=XXX./CN=XXX Thu Mar 15 20:19:56 2012 VERIFY OK: nsCertType=SERVER Thu Mar 15 20:19:56 2012 VERIFY OK: depth=0, /C=NZ/O=XXX./CN=XXX Thu Mar 15 20:19:56 2012 Replay-window backtrack occurred [1] Thu Mar 15 20:19:56 2012 Data Channel Encrypt: Cipher 'AES-256-CBC' initialized with 256 bit key Thu Mar 15 20:19:56 2012 Data Channel Encrypt: Using 160 bit message hash 'SHA1' for HMAC authentication Thu Mar 15 20:19:56 2012 Data Channel Decrypt: Cipher 'AES-256-CBC' initialized with 256 bit key Thu Mar 15 20:19:56 2012 Data Channel Decrypt: Using 160 bit message hash 'SHA1' for HMAC authentication Thu Mar 15 20:19:56 2012 Control Channel: TLSv1, cipher TLSv1/SSLv3 DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA, 1024 bit RSA Thu Mar 15 20:19:56 2012 [server] Peer Connection Initiated with 111.65.224.202:1194 Thu Mar 15 20:19:58 2012 SENT CONTROL [server]: 'PUSH_REQUEST' (status=1) Thu Mar 15 20:19:59 2012 PUSH: Received control message: 'PUSH_REPLY,route 10.83.41.1,topology net30,ping 10,ping-restart 120,ifconfig 10.83.41.9 10.83.41.10' Thu Mar 15 20:19:59 2012 OPTIONS IMPORT: timers and/or timeouts modified Thu Mar 15 20:19:59 2012 OPTIONS IMPORT: --ifconfig/up options modified Thu Mar 15 20:19:59 2012 OPTIONS IMPORT: route options modified Thu Mar 15 20:19:59 2012 ROUTE default_gateway=192.168.2.1 Thu Mar 15 20:19:59 2012 TAP-WIN32 device [OpenVPN] opened: \\.\Global\{B32D85C9-1942-42E2-80BA-7E0B5BB5185F}.tap Thu Mar 15 20:19:59 2012 TAP-Win32 Driver Version 9.9 Thu Mar 15 20:19:59 2012 TAP-Win32 MTU=1500 Thu Mar 15 20:19:59 2012 Notified TAP-Win32 driver to set a DHCP IP/netmask of 10.83.41.9/255.255.255.252 on interface {B32D85C9-1942-42E2-80BA-7E0B5BB5185F} [DHCP-serv: 10.83.41.10, lease-time: 31536000] Thu Mar 15 20:19:59 2012 Successful ARP Flush on interface [45] {B32D85C9-1942-42E2-80BA-7E0B5BB5185F} Thu Mar 15 20:20:04 2012 TEST ROUTES: 1/1 succeeded len=1 ret=1 a=0 u/d=up Thu Mar 15 20:20:04 2012 C:\WINDOWS\system32\route.exe ADD 10.83.41.1 MASK 255.255.255.255 10.83.41.10 Thu Mar 15 20:20:04 2012 ROUTE: CreateIpForwardEntry succeeded with dwForwardMetric1=30 and dwForwardType=4 Thu Mar 15 20:20:04 2012 Route addition via IPAPI succeeded [adaptive] Thu Mar 15 20:20:04 2012 Initialization Sequence Completed From the other machines I can ping 192.169.2.100, but not 10.83.41.1. In the how-to, it mentions "Make sure your network interface is in promiscuous mode." as well. I can't find in the windows network config, so this may or may not be part of it. Ideally this would be achieved without any special configuration the other LAN computers. Not sure how far I'm going to get on my own at this point, any ideas? Is there something I'm missing, or anything I should need to know?

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CISCO 2911 Router configuration

- by bala

Device cisco 2911 router configuration support is required please. I have exchange server 2010 configured and working without any errors the problem is in cisco router configuration when exchange server sends emails out the receives WAN IP not the public ip. I have configured RDNS lookups with our MX record IP addesses that match the FQDN but all our emails are rejected because it does not match with the public ip. Receiving mails problem is not an problem all mails are coming through. i am sure i am missing something on the router configuration that does not sends the public ip, can any one help me to solve this issue. Note; I've got 1 WAN IP & 8 Public IP from ISP . Find below the running configuration. Building configuration... Current configuration : 2734 bytes ! ! Last configuration change at 06:32:13 UTC Tue Apr 3 2012 ! NVRAM config last updated at 06:32:14 UTC Tue Apr 3 2012 ! NVRAM config last updated at 06:32:14 UTC Tue Apr 3 2012 version 15.1 service timestamps debug datetime msec service timestamps log datetime msec service password-encryption ! hostname BSBG-LL ! boot-start-marker boot-end-marker ! ! enable secret 5 $x$xHrxxxxx5ox0 enable password 7 xx23xx5FxxE1xx044 ! no aaa new-model ! no ipv6 cef ip source-route ip cef ! ! ! ! ! ip flow-cache timeout active 1 ip domain name yourdomain.com ip name-server 213.42.20.20 ip name-server 195.229.241.222 multilink bundle-name authenticated ! ! crypto pki token default removal timeout 0 ! ! license udi pid CISCO2911/K9 ! ! username bsbg ! ! ! ! ! ! interface Embedded-Service-Engine0/0 no ip address shutdown ! interface GigabitEthernet0/0 ip address 192.168.0.9 255.255.255.0 ip flow ingress ip nat inside ip virtual-reassembly in duplex auto speed 100 no cdp enable ! interface GigabitEthernet0/1 ip address 213.42.xx.x2 255.255.255.252 ip nat outside ip virtual-reassembly in duplex auto speed auto no cdp enable ! interface GigabitEthernet0/2 no ip address shutdown duplex auto speed auto ! ip forward-protocol nd ! no ip http server no ip http secure-server ! ip nat inside source list 120 interface GigabitEthernet0/1 overload ip nat inside source static tcp 192.168.0.4 25 94.56.89.100 25 extendable ip nat inside source static tcp 192.168.0.4 53 94.56.89.100 53 extendable ip nat inside source static udp 192.168.0.4 53 94.56.89.100 53 extendable ip nat inside source static tcp 192.168.0.4 110 94.56.89.100 110 extendable ip nat inside source static tcp 192.168.0.4 443 94.56.89.100 443 extendable ip nat inside source static tcp 192.168.0.4 587 94.56.89.100 587 extendable ip nat inside source static tcp 192.168.0.4 995 94.56.89.100 995 extendable ip nat inside source static tcp 192.168.0.4 3389 94.56.89.100 3389 extendable ip nat inside source static tcp 192.168.0.4 443 94.56.89.101 443 extendable ip nat inside source static tcp 192.168.0.12 80 94.56.89.102 80 extendable ip nat inside source static tcp 192.168.0.12 443 94.56.89.102 443 extendable ip nat inside source static tcp 192.168.0.12 3389 94.56.89.102 3389 extendable ip route 0.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 213.42.69.41 ! access-list 120 permit ip 192.168.0.0 0.0.0.255 any ! ! ! control-plane ! ! ! line con 0 exec-timeout 5 0 line aux 0 line 2 no activation-character no exec transport preferred none transport input all transport output pad telnet rlogin lapb-ta mop udptn v120 ssh stopbits 1 line vty 0 4 password 7 xx64xxD530D26086Dxx login transport input all ! scheduler allocate 20000 1000 end

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FreeBSD high load loopback interface

- by user1740915

I have a problem with a FreeBSD server. There is a FreeBSD 9.0 amd64, two network cards em1 (internet), em0 (local network) configured firewall ipfw, natd, squid (not transparent), the server acts as a gateway for access to the Internet. Next problem: upload via squid is very low. At this moment I see next: natd, dhcpd load the cpu at that time when uploading through squid and there are a lot of traffic through the loopback interface. ipfw show output 0100 655389684 36707144666 allow ip from any to any via lo0 00200 0 0 deny ip from any to 127.0.0.0/8 00300 0 0 deny ip from 127.0.0.0/8 to any 00400 0 0 deny ip from any to ::1 00500 0 0 deny ip from ::1 to any 00600 4 292 allow ipv6-icmp from :: to ff02::/16 00700 0 0 allow ipv6-icmp from fe80::/10 to fe80::/10 00800 1 76 allow ipv6-icmp from fe80::/10 to ff02::/16 00900 0 0 allow ipv6-icmp from any to any ip6 icmp6types 1 01000 0 0 allow ipv6-icmp from any to any ip6 icmp6types 2,135,136 01100 1615 76160 deny ip from 192.168.1.1 to any in via em1 01200 0 0 deny ip from 199.69.99.11 to any in via em0 01300 46652 3705426 deny ip from any to 172.16.0.0/12 via em1 01400 3936404 345618870 deny ip from any to 192.168.0.0/16 via em1 01500 4 336 deny ip from any to 0.0.0.0/8 via em1 01600 4129 387621 deny ip from any to 169.254.0.0/16 via em1 01700 0 0 deny ip from any to 192.0.2.0/24 via em1 01800 917566 33777571 deny ip from any to 224.0.0.0/4 via em1 01900 147872 22029252 deny ip from any to 240.0.0.0/4 via em1 02000 1132194739 1190981955947 divert 8668 ip4 from any to any via em1 02100 3 248 deny ip from 172.16.0.0/12 to any via em1 02200 35925 2281289 deny ip from 192.168.0.0/16 to any via em1 02300 1808 122494 deny ip from 0.0.0.0/8 to any via em1 02400 3 174 deny ip from 169.254.0.0/16 to any via em1 02500 0 0 deny ip from 192.0.2.0/24 to any via em1 02600 0 0 deny ip from 224.0.0.0/4 to any via em1 02700 0 0 deny ip from 240.0.0.0/4 to any via em1 02800 960156249 1095316736582 allow tcp from any to any established 02900 64236062 8243196577 allow ip from any to any frag 03000 34 1756 allow tcp from any to me dst-port 25 setup 03100 193 11580 allow tcp from any to me dst-port 53 setup 03200 63 4222 allow udp from any to me dst-port 53 03300 64 8350 allow udp from me 53 to any 03400 417 24140 allow tcp from any to me dst-port 80 setup 03500 211 10472 allow ip from any to me dst-port 3389 setup 05300 77 4488 allow ip from any to me dst-port 1723 setup 05400 3 156 allow ip from any to me dst-port 8443 setup 05500 9882 590596 allow tcp from any to me dst-port 22 setup 05600 1 60 allow ip from any to me dst-port 2000 setup 05700 0 0 allow ip from any to me dst-port 2201 setup 07400 4241779 216690096 deny log logamount 1000 ip4 from any to any in via em1 setup proto tcp 07500 21135656 1048824936 allow tcp from any to any setup 07600 474447 35298081 allow udp from me to any dst-port 53 keep-state 07700 532 40612 allow udp from me to any dst-port 123 keep-state 65535 1990638432 1122305322718 allow ip from any to any systat -ifstat when uploading via squid Load Average ||| Interface Traffic Peak Total tun0 in 79.507 KB/s 232.479 KB/s 42.314 GB out 2.022 MB/s 2.424 MB/s 59.662 GB lo0 in 4.450 MB/s 4.450 MB/s 43.723 GB out 4.450 MB/s 4.450 MB/s 43.723 GB em1 in 2.629 MB/s 2.982 MB/s 464.533 GB out 2.493 MB/s 2.875 MB/s 484.673 GB em0 in 240.458 KB/s 296.941 KB/s 442.368 GB out 512.508 KB/s 850.857 KB/s 416.122 GB top output PID USERNAME THR PRI NICE SIZE RES STATE C TIME WCPU COMMAND 66885 root 1 92 0 26672K 2784K CPU3 3 528:43 65.48% natd 9160 dhcpd 1 45 0 31032K 9280K CPU1 1 7:40 32.96% dhcpd 66455 root 1 20 0 18344K 2856K select 1 119:27 1.37% openvpn 16043 squid 1 20 0 44404K 17884K kqread 2 0:22 0.29% squid squid.conf cat /usr/local/etc/squid/squid.conf # # Recommended minimum configuration: # acl manager proto cache_object acl localhost src 127.0.0.1/32 ::1 acl to_localhost dst 127.0.0.0/8 0.0.0.0/32 ::1 # Example rule allowing access from your local networks. # Adapt to list your (internal) IP networks from where browsing # should be allowed acl localnet src 10.0.0.0/8 # RFC1918 possible internal network acl localnet src 172.16.0.0/12 # RFC1918 possible internal network acl localnet src 192.168.0.0/16 # RFC1918 possible internal network acl localnet src fc00::/7 # RFC 4193 local private network range acl localnet src fe80::/10 # RFC 4291 link-local (directly plugged) machines acl SSL_ports port 443 acl Safe_ports port 80 # http acl Safe_ports port 21 # ftp acl Safe_ports port 443 # https acl Safe_ports port 70 # gopher acl Safe_ports port 210 # wais acl Safe_ports port 1025-65535 # unregistered ports acl Safe_ports port 280 # http-mgmt acl Safe_ports port 488 # gss-http acl Safe_ports port 591 # filemaker acl Safe_ports port 777 # multiling http acl CONNECT method CONNECT # # Recommended minimum Access Permission configuration: # # Only allow cachemgr access from localhost http_access allow manager localhost http_access deny manager # Deny requests to certain unsafe ports http_access deny !Safe_ports # Deny CONNECT to other than secure SSL ports http_access deny CONNECT !SSL_ports # We strongly recommend the following be uncommented to protect innocent # web applications running on the proxy server who think the only # one who can access services on "localhost" is a local user http_access deny to_localhost # # INSERT YOUR OWN RULE(S) HERE TO ALLOW ACCESS FROM YOUR CLIENTS # # Example rule allowing access from your local networks. # Adapt localnet in the ACL section to list your (internal) IP networks # from where browsing should be allowed http_access allow localnet http_access allow localhost # And finally deny all other access to this proxy http_access deny all # Squid normally listens to port 3128 http_port 192.168.1.1:3128 # Uncomment and adjust the following to add a disk cache directory. #cache_dir ufs /var/squid/cache 100 16 256 # Leave coredumps in the first cache dir coredump_dir /var/squid/cache I understand that the traffic passes through the SQUID several times. But can not find why.

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Unable to use NSURLConnection to get contents of password/username protected webpage

- by bubster

I am trying to get the contents of a webpage that requires a password and user name to access. I am using a NSURLConnection object to get it however when I write the NSMutableData object that is returned to a file all I get is the login page. Normally when you try to load the password protected page when you are not logged in it redirects to the login page however I thought that if I provided valid credentials then this I would be able to view the password protected page. Also I do not know if it is relevant the website is using a microsoft mysql database on an IIS (internet information server). Note: [protectionSpace authenticationMethod] returns NSURLAuthenticationMethodServerTrust I am pretty unfamiliar with this so any ideas would be greatly appreciated. Below is all of the relevant code: - (void)connection:(NSURLConnection *)connection didReceiveResponse:(NSURLResponse *)response { // This method is called when the server has determined that it // has enough information to create the NSURLResponse. // It can be called multiple times, for example in the case of a // redirect, so each time we reset the data. // receivedData is an instance variable declared elsewhere. [receivedData setLength:0]; } - (void)connection:(NSURLConnection *)connection didReceiveData:(NSData *)data { // Append the new data to receivedData. // receivedData is an instance variable declared elsewhere. [receivedData appendData:data]; } - (void)connection:(NSURLConnection *)connection didFailWithError:(NSError *)error { // release the connection, and the data object //[connection release]; // receivedData is declared as a method instance elsewhere //[receivedData release]; // inform the user NSLog(@"Connection failed! Error - %@ %@", [error localizedDescription], [[error userInfo] objectForKey:NSURLErrorFailingURLStringErrorKey]); } - (void)connectionDidFinishLoading:(NSURLConnection *)connection { // do something with the data // receivedData is declared as a method instance elsewhere NSLog(@"Succeeded! Received %d bytes of data",[receivedData length]); // release the connection, and the data object //[connection release]; //[receivedData release]; //Write data to a file [receivedData writeToFile:@"/Users/matsallen/Desktop/receivedData.html" atomically:YES]; } - (BOOL)connection:(NSURLConnection *)connection canAuthenticateAgainstProtectionSpace: (NSURLProtectionSpace *)protectionSpace { NSLog(@"The connection encountered a protection space. The authentication method is %@", [protectionSpace authenticationMethod]); secureTrustReference = [protectionSpace serverTrust]; //SecTrustResultType *result; //OSStatus status = SecTrustEvaluate(secureTrustReference, result); //NSLog(@"Result of the trust evaluation is %@",status); return YES; } - (void)connection:(NSURLConnection *)connection didReceiveAuthenticationChallenge:(NSURLAuthenticationChallenge *)challenge { NSURLCredential *newCredential; newCredential = [NSURLCredential credentialWithUser:@"username" password:@"password" persistence:NSURLCredentialPersistenceForSession]; newCredential = [NSURLCredential credentialForTrust:secureTrustReference]; // [[challenge sender] useCredential:newCredential forAuthenticationChallenge:challenge]; // [[challenge sender] continueWithoutCredentialForAuthenticationChallenge:challenge]; } #pragma mark - View lifecycle - (void)viewDidLoad { receivedData = [[NSMutableData alloc] init]; [super viewDidLoad]; // Do any additional setup after loading the view, typically from a nib. // Create the request. NSURLRequest *theRequest=[NSURLRequest requestWithURL:[NSURL URLWithString:@"https://www.markallenonline.com/secure/maoCoaching.aspx"] cachePolicy:NSURLRequestUseProtocolCachePolicy timeoutInterval:60.0]; // create the connection with the request // and start loading the data NSURLConnection *theConnection=[[NSURLConnection alloc] initWithRequest:theRequest delegate:self]; if (theConnection) { // Create the NSMutableData to hold the received data. // receivedData is an instance variable declared elsewhere. receivedData = [NSMutableData data]; NSLog(@"Connection succeeded!"); } else { // Inform the user that the connection failed. NSLog(@"Connection failed!"); } }

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Need help configurating my Tomcat server

- by gablin

I just reinstalled my entire server, and now I can't seem to get my JSP-based website to work on Tomcat anymore. I use the same server.xml file, which worked perfectly before the reinstallation, but no longer. Here's the content of the server.xml file which worked before:  <Listener className="org.apache.catalina.core.AprLifecycleListener" SSLEngine="on" />  <Listener className="org.apache.catalina.core.JasperListener" />  <Listener className="org.apache.catalina.mbeans.ServerLifecycleListener" /> <Listener className="org.apache.catalina.mbeans.GlobalResourcesLifecycleListener" />  <GlobalNamingResources>  <Resource name="UserDatabase" auth="Container" type="org.apache.catalina.UserDatabase" description="User database that can be updated and saved" factory="org.apache.catalina.users.MemoryUserDatabaseFactory" pathname="conf/tomcat-users.xml" /> </GlobalNamingResources>  <Service name="Catalina">    <Connector port="8080" protocol="HTTP/1.1" connectionTimeout="20000" redirectPort="8443" />      <Connector port="8009" protocol="AJP/1.3" redirectPort="8443" />   <Engine name="Catalina" defaultHost="localhost">      <Realm className="org.apache.catalina.realm.UserDatabaseRealm" resourceName="UserDatabase"/>        <Host name="www.rebootradio.nu"> <Alias>rebootradio.nu</Alias> <Context path="" docBase="D:/services/http/rebootradio.nu" debug="1" reloadable="true"/> </Host> </Engine> </Service> </Server> The JSP site doesn't use any WAR files or anything like that; there's just a default.jsp in the specified folder D:/services/http/rebootradio.nu which loads the site. As I said, this configuration worked before, but now with the latest verion of XAMPP and Tomcat it doesn't work anymore. All I get is a 404 message saying The requested resource () is not available.

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(PHP) User is being forced to RE-LOGIN after trying to do something on an admin page

- by hatorade

I have created an admin panel for a client in PHP, which requires a login. Here is the code at the top of the admin page requiring the user to be logged in: admin.php <?php session_start(); require("_lib/session_functions.php"); require("_lib/db.php"); db_connect(); //if the user has not logged in if(!isLoggedIn()) { header('Location: login_form.php'); die(); } ?> Obviously, the if statement is what catches them and forces them to log in. Here is the code on the resulting login page: login_form.php <form name="login" action="login.php" method="post"> Username: <input type="text" name="username" /> Password: <input type="password" name="password" /> <input type="submit" value="Login" /> </form> Which posts info to this controller page: login.php <?php session_start(); //must call session_start before using any $_SESSION variables include '_lib/session_functions.php'; $username = $_POST['username']; $password = $_POST['password']; include '_lib/db.php'; db_connect(); // Connect to the DB $username = mysql_real_escape_string($username); $query = "SELECT password, salt FROM users WHERE username = '$username';"; $result = mysql_query($query); if(mysql_num_rows($result) < 1) //no such user exists { header('Location: login_form.php?login=fail'); die(); } $userData = mysql_fetch_array($result, MYSQL_ASSOC); db_disconnect(); $hash = hash('sha256', $password . $userData['salt']); if($hash != $userData['password']) //incorrect password { header('Location: login_form.php?login=fail'); die(); } else { validateUser(); //sets the session data for this user } header('Location: admin.php'); ?> and the session functions page that provides login functions contains this: session_functions.php <?php function validateUser() { session_regenerate_id (); //this is a security measure $_SESSION['valid'] = 1; $_SESSION['userid'] = $username; } function isLoggedIn() { if($_SESSION['valid']) return true; return false; } function logout() { $_SESSION = array(); //destroy all of the session variables if (ini_get("session.use_cookies")) { $params = session_get_cookie_params(); setcookie(session_name(), '', time() - 42000, $params["path"], $params["domain"], $params["secure"], $params["httponly"] ); } session_destroy(); } ?> I grabbed the sessions_functions.php code of an online tutorial, so it could be suspicious. Any ideas why the user logs in to the admin panel, tries to do something, is forced to re-login, and THEN is allowed to do stuff like normal in the admin panel?

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Input string was not in the correct format using int.Parse

- by JDWebs

I have recently been making a login 'representation' which is not secure. So before answering, please note I am aware of security risks etc., and this will not be on a live site. Also note I am a beginner :P. For my login representation, I am using LINQ to compare values of a DDL to select a username and a Textbox to enter a password, when a login button is clicked. However, an error is thrown 'Input string was not in the correct format', when using int.Parse. Front End: <%@ Page Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeFile="Login_Test.aspx.cs" Inherits="Login_Login_Test" %> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head runat="server"> <title>Login Test</title> </head> <body> <form id="LoginTest" runat="server"> <div> <asp:DropDownList ID="DDL_Username" runat="server" Height="20px" DataTextField="txt"> </asp:DropDownList> <br /> <asp:TextBox ID="TB_Password" runat="server" TextMode="Password"></asp:TextBox> <br /> <asp:Button ID="B_Login" runat="server" onclick="B_Login_Click" Text="Login" /> <br /> <asp:Literal ID="LI_Result" runat="server"></asp:Literal> </div> </form> </body> </html> Back End: using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Web; using System.Web.UI; using System.Web.UI.WebControls; public partial class Login_Login_Test : System.Web.UI.Page { protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e) { if (!Page.IsPostBack) { Binder(); } } private void Binder() { using (DataClassesDataContext db = new DataClassesDataContext()) { DDL_Username.DataSource = from x in db.DT_Honeys select new { id = x.UsernameID, txt = x.Username }; DDL_Username.DataValueField = "id"; DDL_Username.DataTextField = "txt"; DDL_Username.DataBind(); } } protected void B_Login_Click(object sender, EventArgs e) { if (TB_Password.Text != "") { using (DataClassesDataContext db = new DataClassesDataContext()) { DT_Honey blah = new DT_Honey(); blah = db.DT_Honeys.SingleOrDefault(x => x.UsernameID == int.Parse(DDL_Username.SelectedValue.ToString())); if (blah == null) { LI_Result.Text = "Something went wrong :/"; } if (blah.Password == TB_Password.Text) { LI_Result.Text = "Credentials recognised :-)"; } else { LI_Result.Text = "Error with credentials :-("; } } } } } I am aware this problem is very common, but none of the help I have found online is useful/relevant. Any help/suggestions appreciated; thank you for your time :-).

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Peer did not return a certificate

- by pfista

I am trying to get two way SSL authentication working between a Python server and an Android client application. I have access to both the server and client, and would like to implement client authentication using my own certificate. So far I have been able to verify the server certificate and connect without client authentication. What sort of certificate does the client need and how do I get it to automatically send it to the server during the handshake process? Here is the client and server side code that I have so far. Is my approach wrong? Server Code while True: # Keep listening for clients c, fromaddr = sock.accept() ssl_sock = ssl.wrap_socket(c, keyfile = "serverPrivateKey.pem", certfile = "servercert.pem", server_side = True, # Require the client to provide a certificate cert_reqs = ssl.CERT_REQUIRED, ssl_version = ssl.PROTOCOL_TLSv1, ca_certs = "clientcert.pem", #TODO must point to a file of CA certificates?? do_handshake_on_connect = True, ciphers="!NULL:!EXPORT:AES256-SHA") print ssl_sock.cipher() thrd = sock_thread(ssl_sock) thrd.daemon = True thrd.start() I suspect I may be using the wrong file for ca_certs...? Client Code private boolean connect() { try { KeyStore keystore = KeyStore.getInstance("BKS"); // Stores the client certificate, to be sent to server KeyStore truststore = KeyStore.getInstance("BKS"); // Stores the server certificate we want to trust // TODO: change hard coded password... THIS IS REAL BAD MKAY truststore.load(mSocketService.getResources().openRawResource(R.raw.truststore), "test".toCharArray()); keystore.load(mSocketService.getResources().openRawResource(R.raw.keystore), "test".toCharArray()); // Use the key manager for client authentication. Keys in the key manager will be sent to the host KeyManagerFactory keyFManager = KeyManagerFactory.getInstance(KeyManagerFactory.getDefaultAlgorithm()); keyFManager.init(keystore, "test".toCharArray()); // Use the trust manager to determine if the host I am connecting to is a trusted host TrustManagerFactory trustMFactory = TrustManagerFactory.getInstance(TrustManagerFactory .getDefaultAlgorithm()); trustMFactory.init(truststore); // Create the socket factory and add both the trust manager and key manager SSLCertificateSocketFactory socketFactory = (SSLCertificateSocketFactory) SSLCertificateSocketFactory .getDefault(5000, new SSLSessionCache(mSocketService)); socketFactory.setTrustManagers(trustMFactory.getTrustManagers()); socketFactory.setKeyManagers(keyFManager.getKeyManagers()); // Open SSL socket directly to host, host name verification is NOT performed here due to // SSLCertificateFactory implementation mSSLSocket = (SSLSocket) socketFactory.createSocket(mHostname, mPort); mSSLSocket.setSoTimeout(TIMEOUT); // Most SSLSocketFactory implementations do not verify the server's identity, allowing man-in-the-middle // attacks. This implementation (SSLCertificateSocketFactory) does check the server's certificate hostname, // but only for createSocket variants that specify a hostname. When using methods that use InetAddress or // which return an unconnected socket, you MUST verify the server's identity yourself to ensure a secure // connection. verifyHostname(); // Safe to proceed with socket now ... I have generated a client private key, a client certificate, a server private key, and a server certificate using openssl. I then added the client certificate to keystore.bks (which I store in /res/raw/keystore.bks) I then added the server certificate to the truststore.bks So now when the client tries to connect I am getting this error server side: ssl.SSLError: [Errno 1] _ssl.c:504: error:140890C7:SSL routines:SSL3_GET_CLIENT_CERTIFICATE:peer did not return a certificate And when I try to do this in the android client SSLSession s = mSSLSocket.getSession(); s.getPeerCertificates(); I get this error: javax.net.ssl.SSLPeerUnverifiedException: No peer certificate So obviously the keystore I am using doesn't appear to have a correct peer certificate in it and thus isn't sending one to the server. What should I put in the keystore to prevent this exception? Furthermore, is this method of two way SSL authentication safe and effective?

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How do I get through proxy server environments for non-standard services?

- by Ripred

I'm not real hip on exactly what role(s) today's proxy servers can play and I'm learning so go easy on me :-) I have a client/server system I have written using a homegrown protocol and need to enhance the client side to negotiate its way out of a proxy environment. I have an existing client and server system written in C and C++ for the speed and a small amount of MFC in the client to handle the user interface. I have written both the server and client side of the system on Windows (the people I work for are mainly web developers using Windows everything - not a choice) sticking to Berkeley Sockets as it were via wsock32 for efficiency. The clients connect to the server through a nonstandard port (even though using port 80 is an option to get out of some environments but the protocol that goes over it isn't HTTP). The TCP connection(s) stay open for the duration of the clients participation in real time conferences. Our customer base is expanding to all kinds of networked environments. I have been able to solve a lot of problems by adding the ability to connect securely over port 443 and using secure sockets which allows the protocol to pass through a lot environments since the internal packets can't be sniffed. But more and more of our customers are behind a proxy server environment and my direct connections don't make it through. My old school understanding of proxy servers is that they act as a proxy for external HTML content over HTTP, possibly locally caching popular material for faster local access, and also allowing their IT staff to blacklist certain destination sites. Customer are complaining that my software doesn't recognize and easily navigate its way through their proxy environments but I'm finding it difficult to decide what my "best fit" solution should be. My software doesn't tear down the connection after each client request, and on top of that packets can come from either side at any time, basically your typical custom client/server system for a specific niche. My first reaction is "why can't they just add my servers addresses to their white list" but if there is a programmatic way I can get through without requiring their IT staff to help it is politically better and arguably a better solution anyway. Plus maybe I'm still not understanding the role and purpose of what proxy servers and environments have grown to be these days. My first attempt at a solution was to use WinInet with its various proxy capabilities to establish a connection over port 80 to my non-standard protocol server (which knows enough to recognize and answer a simple HTTP-looking GET request and answer it with a simple HTTP response page to get around some environments that employ initial packet sniffing (DPI)). I retrieved the actual SOCKET handle behind WinInet's HINTERNET request object and had hoped to use that in place of my software's existing SOCKET connection and hopefully not need to change much more on the client side. It initially seemed to be my solution but on further inspection it seems that the OS gets first-chance at the received data on this socket since when I get notified of events via the standard select(...) statement on the socket and query the size of the data available via ioctlsocket the call succeeds but returns 0 bytes available, the reads don't work and it goes downhill from there. Can someone tell me of a client-side library (commercial is fine) will let me get past these proxy server environments with as little user and IT staff help as possible? From what I read it has grown past SOCKS and I figure someone has to have solved this problem before me. Thanks for reading my long-winded question, Ripred

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Cisco: unable to negotiate IP using IPCP with Windows server

- by lnk

I am connecting to Windows server using PPP (for vpn), I establish connection but server does not respond me for my address requests: *Mar 23 00:40:06.055: Vi1 MS-CHAP-V2: I CHALLENGE id 0 len 25 from "MSDC" *Mar 23 00:40:06.063: Vi1 MS CHAP V2: Using hostname from interface CHAP *Mar 23 00:40:06.063: Vi1 MS CHAP V2: Using password from interface CHAP *Mar 23 00:40:06.067: Vi1 MS-CHAP-V2: O RESPONSE id 0 len 69 from "XXX" *Mar 23 00:40:06.087: Vi1 PPP: I pkt type 0xC223, datagramsize 50 link[ppp] *Mar 23 00:40:06.087: Vi1 MS-CHAP-V2: I SUCCESS id 0 len 46 msg is "S=XXX" *Mar 23 00:40:06.087: Vi1 MS CHAP V2 No Password found for : XXX *Mar 23 00:40:06.091: Vi1 MS CHAP V2 Check AuthenticatorResponse Success for : XXX *Mar 23 00:40:06.091: Vi1 IPCP: O CONFREQ [Closed] id 1 len 20 *Mar 23 00:40:06.091: Vi1 IPCP: VSO OUI 0x00000C kind 1 (0x000A00000C0100000000) *Mar 23 00:40:06.091: Vi1 IPCP: Address 0.0.0.0 (0x030600000000) *Mar 23 00:40:07.091: %LINEPROTO-5-UPDOWN: Line protocol on Interface Virtual-Access1, changed state to up *Mar 23 00:40:07.091: Vi1 LCP: O ECHOREQ [Open] id 1 len 12 magic 0x194CAFCF *Mar 23 00:40:07.103: Vi1 LCP-FS: I ECHOREP [Open] id 1 len 12 magic 0x361B62E5 *Mar 23 00:40:07.103: Vi1 LCP-FS: Received id 1, sent id 1, line up *Mar 23 00:40:08.083: Vi1 IPCP: TIMEout: State REQsent *Mar 23 00:40:08.083: Vi1 IPCP: O CONFREQ [REQsent] id 2 len 20 *Mar 23 00:40:08.083: Vi1 IPCP: VSO OUI 0x00000C kind 1 (0x000A00000C0100000000) *Mar 23 00:40:08.083: Vi1 IPCP: Address 0.0.0.0 (0x030600000000) *Mar 23 00:40:10.099: Vi1 IPCP: TIMEout: State REQsent *Mar 23 00:40:10.099: Vi1 IPCP: O CONFREQ [REQsent] id 3 len 20 *Mar 23 00:40:10.099: Vi1 IPCP: VSO OUI 0x00000C kind 1 (0x000A00000C0100000000) *Mar 23 00:40:10.099: Vi1 IPCP: Address 0.0.0.0 (0x030600000000) *Mar 23 00:40:12.115: Vi1 IPCP: TIMEout: State REQsent *Mar 23 00:40:12.115: Vi1 IPCP: O CONFREQ [REQsent] id 4 len 20 *Mar 23 00:40:12.115: Vi1 IPCP: VSO OUI 0x00000C kind 1 (0x000A00000C0100000000) *Mar 23 00:40:12.115: Vi1 IPCP: Address 0.0.0.0 (0x030600000000) *Mar 23 00:40:12.211: Vi1 LCP: O ECHOREQ [Open] id 2 len 12 magic 0x194CAFCF *Mar 23 00:40:12.219: Vi1 LCP-FS: I ECHOREP [Open] id 2 len 12 magic 0x361B62E5 *Mar 23 00:40:12.219: Vi1 LCP-FS: Received id 2, sent id 2, line up *Mar 23 00:40:14.131: Vi1 IPCP: TIMEout: State REQsent *Mar 23 00:40:14.131: Vi1 IPCP: O CONFREQ [REQsent] id 5 len 20 *Mar 23 00:40:14.131: Vi1 IPCP: VSO OUI 0x00000C kind 1 (0x000A00000C0100000000) *Mar 23 00:40:14.131: Vi1 IPCP: Address 0.0.0.0 (0x030600000000) *Mar 23 00:40:16.147: Vi1 IPCP: TIMEout: State REQsent *Mar 23 00:40:16.147: Vi1 IPCP: O CONFREQ [REQsent] id 6 len 20 *Mar 23 00:40:16.147: Vi1 IPCP: VSO OUI 0x00000C kind 1 (0x000A00000C0100000000) *Mar 23 00:40:16.147: Vi1 IPCP: Address 0.0.0.0 (0x030600000000) *Mar 23 00:40:17.331: Vi1 LCP: O ECHOREQ [Open] id 3 len 12 magic 0x194CAFCF *Mar 23 00:40:17.343: Vi1 LCP-FS: I ECHOREP [Open] id 3 len 12 magic 0x361B62E5 *Mar 23 00:40:17.343: Vi1 LCP-FS: Received id 3, sent id 3, line up You see: My router asks for address, but only keepalives are on line. But the same server works with windows client!! ! version 12.4 no service pad service timestamps debug datetime msec service timestamps log datetime msec no service password-encryption service internal ! hostname Router ! boot-start-marker boot-end-marker ! ! no aaa new-model ! resource policy ! ip subnet-zero ! ! ip cef vpdn enable ! vpdn-group pptp request-dialin protocol pptp pool-member 1 initiate-to ip XXXX ! ! ! ! ! ! ! bridge irb ! ! interface ATM0 no ip address shutdown no atm ilmi-keepalive dsl operating-mode auto ! interface FastEthernet0 ! interface FastEthernet1 ! interface FastEthernet2 ! interface FastEthernet3 ! interface Dot11Radio0 no ip address shutdown speed basic-1.0 basic-2.0 basic-5.5 6.0 9.0 basic-11.0 12.0 18.0 24.0 36.0 48.0 54.0 station-role root ! interface Vlan1 no ip address bridge-group 1 ! interface Dialer0 ip address negotiated encapsulation ppp dialer pool 1 dialer idle-timeout 0 dialer string XXX dialer persistent dialer vpdn dialer-group 1 keepalive 5 3 no cdp enable ppp authentication ms-chap-v2 optional ppp eap refuse ppp chap hostname XXX ppp chap password 0 XXX ppp ipcp mask request ppp ipcp ignore-map ppp ipcp address accept ! interface BVI1 mac-address XXX.XXX.XXX ip address dhcp ! ip classless ip route 172.0.0.0 255.0.0.0 Dialer0 ! no ip http server no ip http secure-server ! dialer-list 1 protocol ip permit ! control-plane ! bridge 1 protocol vlan-bridge bridge 1 route ip ! line con 0 no modem enable line aux 0 line vty 0 4 login ! scheduler max-task-time 5000 end

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How to design a high-level application protocol for metadata syncing between devices and server?

- by Jaanus

I am looking for guidance on how to best think about designing a high-level application protocol to sync metadata between end-user devices and a server. My goal: the user can interact with the application data on any device, or on the web. The purpose of this protocol is to communicate changes made on one endpoint to other endpoints through the server, and ensure all devices maintain a consistent picture of the application data. If user makes changes on one device or on the web, the protocol will push data to the central repository, from where other devices can pull it. Some other design thoughts: I call it "metadata syncing" because the payloads will be quite small, in the form of object IDs and small metadata about those ID-s. When client endpoints retrieve new metadata over this protocol, they will fetch actual object data from an external source based on this metadata. Fetching the "real" object data is out of scope, I'm only talking about metadata syncing here. Using HTTP for transport and JSON for payload container. The question is basically about how to best design the JSON payload schema. I want this to be easy to implement and maintain on the web and across desktop and mobile devices. The best approach feels to be simple timer- or event-based HTTP request/response without any persistent channels. Also, you should not have a PhD to read it, and I want my spec to fit on 2 pages, not 200. Authentication and security are out of scope for this question: assume that the requests are secure and authenticated. The goal is eventual consistency of data on devices, it is not entirely realtime. For example, user can make changes on one device while being offline. When going online again, user would perform "sync" operation to push local changes and retrieve remote changes. Having said that, the protocol should support both of these modes of operation: Starting from scratch on a device, should be able to pull the whole metadata picture "sync as you go". When looking at the data on two devices side by side and making changes, should be easy to push those changes as short individual messages which the other device can receive near-realtime (subject to when it decides to contact server for sync). As a concrete example, you can think of Dropbox (it is not what I'm working on, but it helps to understand the model): on a range of devices, the user can manage a files and folders—move them around, create new ones, remove old ones etc. And in my context the "metadata" would be the file and folder structure, but not the actual file contents. And metadata fields would be something like file/folder name and time of modification (all devices should see the same time of modification). Another example is IMAP. I have not read the protocol, but my goals (minus actual message bodies) are the same. Feels like there are two grand approaches how this is done: transactional messages. Each change in the system is expressed as delta and endpoints communicate with those deltas. Example: DVCS changesets. REST: communicating the object graph as a whole or in part, without worrying so much about the individual atomic changes. What I would like in the answers: Is there anything important I left out above? Constraints, goals? What is some good background reading on this? (I realize this is what many computer science courses talk about at great length and detail... I am hoping to short-circuit it by looking at some crash course or nuggets.) What are some good examples of such protocols that I could model after, or even use out of box? (I mention Dropbox and IMAP above... I should probably read the IMAP RFC.)

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Where should I create my DbCommand instances?

- by Domenic

I seemingly have two choices: Make my class implement IDisposable. Create my DbCommand instances as private readonly fields, and in the constructor, add the parameters that they use. Whenever I want to write to the database, bind to these parameters (reusing the same command instances), set the Connection and Transaction properties, then call ExecuteNonQuery. In the Dispose method, call Dispose on each of these fields. Each time I want to write to the database, write using(var cmd = new DbCommand("...", connection, transaction)) around the usage of the command, and add parameters and bind to them every time as well, before calling ExecuteNonQuery. I assume I don't need a new command for each query, just a new command for each time I open the database (right?). Both of these seem somewhat inelegant and possibly incorrect. For #1, it is annoying for my users that I this class is now IDisposable just because I have used a few DbCommands (which should be an implementation detail that they don't care about). I also am somewhat suspicious that keeping a DbCommand instance around might inadvertently lock the database or something? For #2, it feels like I'm doing a lot of work (in terms of .NET objects) each time I want to write to the database, especially with the parameter-adding. It seems like I create the same object every time, which just feels like bad practice. For reference, here is my current code, using #1: using System; using System.Net; using System.Data.SQLite; public class Class1 : IDisposable { private readonly SQLiteCommand updateCookie = new SQLiteCommand("UPDATE moz_cookies SET value = @value, expiry = @expiry, isSecure = @isSecure, isHttpOnly = @isHttpOnly WHERE name = @name AND host = @host AND path = @path"); public Class1() { this.updateCookie.Parameters.AddRange(new[] { new SQLiteParameter("@name"), new SQLiteParameter("@value"), new SQLiteParameter("@host"), new SQLiteParameter("@path"), new SQLiteParameter("@expiry"), new SQLiteParameter("@isSecure"), new SQLiteParameter("@isHttpOnly") }); } private static void BindDbCommandToMozillaCookie(DbCommand command, Cookie cookie) { long expiresSeconds = (long)cookie.Expires.TotalSeconds; command.Parameters["@name"].Value = cookie.Name; command.Parameters["@value"].Value = cookie.Value; command.Parameters["@host"].Value = cookie.Domain; command.Parameters["@path"].Value = cookie.Path; command.Parameters["@expiry"].Value = expiresSeconds; command.Parameters["@isSecure"].Value = cookie.Secure; command.Parameters["@isHttpOnly"].Value = cookie.HttpOnly; } public void WriteCurrentCookiesToMozillaBasedBrowserSqlite(string databaseFilename) { using (SQLiteConnection connection = new SQLiteConnection("Data Source=" + databaseFilename)) { connection.Open(); using (SQLiteTransaction transaction = connection.BeginTransaction()) { this.updateCookie.Connection = connection; this.updateCookie.Transaction = transaction; foreach (Cookie cookie in SomeOtherClass.GetCookieArray()) { Class1.BindDbCommandToMozillaCookie(this.updateCookie, cookie); this.updateCookie.ExecuteNonQuery(); } transaction.Commit(); } } } #region IDisposable implementation protected virtual void Dispose(bool disposing) { if (!this.disposed && disposing) { this.updateCookie.Dispose(); } this.disposed = true; } public void Dispose() { this.Dispose(true); GC.SuppressFinalize(this); } ~Class1() { this.Dispose(false); } private bool disposed; #endregion }

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How to open a server port outside of an OpenVPN tunnel with a pf firewall on OSX (BSD)

- by Timbo

I have a Mac mini that I use as a media server running XBMC and serves media from my NAS to my stereo and TV (which has been color calibrated with a Spyder3Express, happy). The Mac runs OSX 10.8.2 and the internet connection is tunneled for general privacy over OpenVPN through Tunnelblick. I believe my anonymous VPN provider pushes "redirect_gateway" to OpenVPN/Tunnelblick because when on it effectively tunnels all non-LAN traffic in- and outbound. As an unwanted side effect that also opens the boxes server ports unprotected to the outside world and bypasses my firewall-router (Netgear SRX5308). I have run nmap from outside the LAN on the VPN IP and the server ports on the mini are clearly visible and connectable. The mini has the following ports open: ssh/22, ARD/5900 and 8080+9090 for the XBMC iOS client Constellation. I also have Synology NAS which apart from LAN file serving over AFP and WebDAV only serves up an OpenVPN/1194 and a PPTP/1732 server. When outside of the LAN I connect to this from my laptop over OpenVPN and over PPTP from my iPhone. I only want to connect through AFP/548 from the mini to the NAS. The border firewall (SRX5308) just works excellently, stable and with a very high throughput when streaming from various VOD services. My connection is a 100/10 with a close to theoretical max throughput. The ruleset is as follows Inbound: PPTP/1723 Allow always to 10.0.0.40 (NAS/VPN server) from a restricted IP range >corresponding to possible cell provider range OpenVPN/1194 Allow always to 10.0.0.40 (NAS/VPN server) from any Outbound: Default outbound policy: Allow Always OpenVPN/1194 TCP Allow always from 10.0.0.40 (NAS) to a.b.8.1-a.b.8.254 (VPN provider) OpenVPN/1194 UDP Allow always to 10.0.0.40 (NAS) to a.b.8.1-a.b.8.254 (VPN provider) Block always from NAS to any On the Mini I have disabled the OSX Application Level Firewall because it throws popups which don't remember my choices from one time to another and that's annoying on a media server. Instead I run Little Snitch which controls outgoing connections nicely on an application level. I have configured the excellent OSX builtin firewall pf (from BSD) as follows pf.conf (Apple App firewall tie-ins removed) (# replaced with % to avoid formatting errors) ### macro name for external interface. eth_if = "en0" vpn_if = "tap0" ### wifi_if = "en1" ### %usb_if = "en3" ext_if = $eth_if LAN="{10.0.0.0/24}" ### General housekeeping rules ### ### Drop all blocked packets silently set block-policy drop ### all incoming traffic on external interface is normalized and fragmented ### packets are reassembled. scrub in on $ext_if all fragment reassemble scrub in on $vpn_if all fragment reassemble scrub out all ### exercise antispoofing on the external interface, but add the local ### loopback interface as an exception, to prevent services utilizing the ### local loop from being blocked accidentally. ### set skip on lo0 antispoof for $ext_if inet antispoof for $vpn_if inet ### spoofing protection for all interfaces block in quick from urpf-failed ############################# block all ### Access to the mini server over ssh/22 and remote desktop/5900 from LAN/en0 only pass in on $eth_if proto tcp from $LAN to any port {22, 5900, 8080, 9090} ### Allow all udp and icmp also, necessary for Constellation. Could be tightened. pass on $eth_if proto {udp, icmp} from $LAN to any ### Allow AFP to 10.0.0.40 (NAS) pass out on $eth_if proto tcp from any to 10.0.0.40 port 548 ### Allow OpenVPN tunnel setup over unprotected link (en0) only to VPN provider IPs ### and port ranges pass on $eth_if proto tcp from any to a.b.8.0/24 port 1194:1201 ### OpenVPN Tunnel rules. All traffic allowed out, only in to ports 4100-4110 ### Outgoing pings ok pass in on $vpn_if proto {tcp, udp} from any to any port 4100:4110 pass out on $vpn_if proto {tcp, udp, icmp} from any to any So what are my goals and what does the above setup achieve? (until you tell me otherwise :) 1) Full LAN access to the above ports on the mini/media server (including through my own VPN server) 2) All internet traffic from the mini/media server is anonymized and tunneled over VPN 3) If OpenVPN/Tunnelblick on the mini drops the connection, nothing is leaked both because of pf and the router outgoing ruleset. It can't even do a DNS lookup through the router. So what do I have to hide with all this? Nothing much really, I just got carried away trying to stop port scans through the VPN tunnel :) In any case this setup works perfectly and it is very stable. The Problem at last! I want to run a minecraft server and I installed that on a separate user account on the mini server (user=mc) to keep things partitioned. I don't want this server accessible through the anonymized VPN tunnel because there are lots more port scans and hacking attempts through that than over my regular IP and I don't trust java in general. So I added the following pf rule on the mini: ### Allow Minecraft public through user mc pass in on $eth_if proto {tcp,udp} from any to any port 24983 user mc pass out on $eth_if proto {tcp, udp} from any to any user mc And these additions on the border firewall: Inbound: Allow always TCP/UDP from any to 10.0.0.40 (NAS) Outbound: Allow always TCP port 80 from 10.0.0.40 to any (needed for online account checkups) This works fine but only when the OpenVPN/Tunnelblick tunnel is down. When up no connection is possbile to the minecraft server from outside of LAN. inside LAN is always OK. Everything else functions as intended. I believe the redirect_gateway push is close to the root of the problem, but I want to keep that specific VPN provider because of the fantastic throughput, price and service. The Solution? How can I open up the minecraft server port outside of the tunnel so it's only available over en0 not the VPN tunnel? Should I a static route? But I don't know which IPs will be connecting...stumbles How secure would to estimate this setup to be and do you have other improvements to share? I've searched extensively in the last few days to no avail...If you've read this far I bet you know the answer :)

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Infinite sharing system (PHP/MySQLi)

- by Toine Lille

I'm working on a discount system for whichever customer shares a product and brings in new customers. Each unique visit = $0.05 off, each new customer = $0.50 off (it's a cheap product so yeah, no big numbers). When a new customer shares the site, the customer initially responsible for the new customer (if any) will get half of the new customer's discount as well. The initial customer would get a fourth for the next level and the new customer half of that, etc, creating a tree or pyramid that way that could be infinite. Initial customer ($1.35 discount: 2 new+3 visits + half of 1 new+2 visits) Visitor ($0) Visitor ($0) New customer ($0.60) Visitor ($0) Visitor ($0) Newer customer ($0) New customer ($0) Visitor ($0) The customers are saved along with their IP addresses (bin2hex(inet_pton)) in a database table (customers) with info like a unique id, e-mail address and first date/time the purchased a product (= time of registration). The shares are saved in a separate table within the same database (sharing). Each unique IP addresses that visits the site creates a new row featuring the IP address (also saved as bin2hex(inet_pton)), the id of the customer who shared it and the date/time of the visit. Sharing goes via URL, featuring a GET element containing the customer's id. Visits and new customers overlap, as visits will always occur before the new customer does. That's fine. The date/times are used just to make it a little more secure (I also use the IP along with cookies to see if people cheat the system). If an IP is already in the sharing or customer tables, it does not count and will not create a new entry. Now the problem is, how to make the infinity happen and apply the different values to it? That's all I'd need to know. It needs to calculate the discount for each customer separately, but also allow for monitoring altogether (though that's just a matter of passing all ID's through it). I figured I'd start (after the database connection) with $stmt = $con->prepare('SELECT ip,datetime FROM sharing WHERE sender=?'); $stmt->bind_param('i',$customerid); $stmt->execute(); $stmt->store_result(); $discount = $discount + ($stmt->num_rows * 0.05); $stmt->bind_result($ip,$timeofsharing); to translate all the visits to $0.05 of discount each. To check for the new customers that came from these visits, I wrote the following: while ($sql->fetch()) { $stmt2 = $con->prepare("SELECT datetime FROM users WHERE ip=?"); $stmt2->bind_param('s',$ip); $stmt2->execute(); $stmt2->store_result(); $stmt2->bind_result($timeofpurchase); Followed by a little more security comparing the datetimes: while ($stmt2->fetch()) { if (strtotime($timeofpurchase) < strtotime($timeofsharing)) { $discount = $discount + $0.50; } But this is just for the initial customer's direct results. If I'd want to check for the next level, I'd basically have to put the exact same check and loop in itself, checking each new customer the initial customer they brought to the site, and then for the next level again to check all of the newer customers, etc, etc. What to do? / Where to go? / What would be the correct practice for this? Thanks!

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PHP $_GET and $_POST are returning empty arrays--trying to paginate SQL data

- by George88

I have set up the following: Database class ($db) Pagination class ($paginator) I am attempting to write a basic system to let me administrate pages. I have a page "page_manager.php" in which I include both my database class (database.php) and my pagination class (paginate.php). In my pagination class I have a function which echoes my SQL data. I've come up with a way to echo an HTML < select element with the necessary IDs, which allows me to successfully echo the corresponding results (10 per page), based on the value of the < select element. So, "1" will echo the first 10 results in the database, "2" will echo from 11-20, "3" will echo from 21-30, etc., etc.. I have added an onChange event to the < select element which will copy its value (using "this.value") to a hidden form field. I then submit this form using document.getElementById().submit(); This will then add the $_GET variable to the URL, so the URL becomes ".../?pagenumber_form=X". However, when I try to grab this value back from the URL, the $_GET['pagenumber_form'] is empty. Some code: <span style='font-family: tahoma; font-size: 10pt;'>Page #</span> <select id="page_number_selection" onchange='javascript: document.getElementById("pagenumber_form").value = this.value; document.getElementById("pagenumber").submit();'> <?php for($i = 1; $i <= $this->num_pages; $i++) echo"<option id='" . $i . "'>" . $i . "</option>"; ?> </select> <form name="pagenumber" id="pagenumber" action="" method="get"> <input type="text" name="pagenumber_form" id="pagenumber_form" /> </form> So, I've tried using $_POST as well, but the same thing happens. I want to use $_GET, for a couple of reasons: it's easier to see what is happening with my values and the data I'm using doesn't need to be secure. To recap: the $_GET variable is being added to the URL when I change the < select element, and the corresponding value gets added to the URL as: ".../?pagenumber_form=X", but when I try to use the value in PHP, for example... $page_number = $_GET['pagenumber_form']; ... I get a NULL value. :-( Can anybody help me out please? Thank you. EDIT: I've just made a discovery. If I move my print_r($_GET) to my main index page, then the superglobals are returning as expected. My site structure is like this: index.php - JavaScript buttons use AJAX HTTP requests to include the "responseText" as the .innerHTML of my main < div . The "responseText" is the contents the page itself, in this case page_manager.php, which in turn includes pagination.php. So in other words, my site is built from PHP includes, which doesn't seem to be compatible with HTTP superglobals. Any idea how I can get around this problem? Thank you :-).

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Ajax Control Toolkit July 2011 Release and the New HTML Editor Extender

- by Stephen Walther

I’m happy to announce the July 2011 release of the Ajax Control Toolkit which includes important bug fixes and a completely new HTML Editor Extender control. You can download the July 2011 Release by visiting the Ajax Control Toolkit CodePlex site at: http://AjaxControlToolkit.CodePlex.com Using the New HTML Editor Extender Control You can use the new HTML Editor Extender to extend any standard ASP.NET TextBox control so that it supports rich formatting such as bold, italics, bulleted lists, numbered lists, typefaces and different foreground and background colors. The following code illustrates how you can extend a standard ASP.NET TextBox control with the HtmlEditorExtender: <%@ Page Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeBehind="Simple.aspx.cs" Inherits="WebApplication1.Simple" %> <%@ Register TagPrefix="asp" Namespace="AjaxControlToolkit" Assembly="AjaxControlToolkit" %> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head runat="server"> <title>Simple</title> </head> <body> <form id="form1" runat="server"> <asp:ToolkitScriptManager runat="Server" /> <asp:TextBox ID="txtComments" TextMode="MultiLine" Columns="60" Rows="8" runat="server" /> <asp:HtmlEditorExtender TargetControlID="txtComments" runat="server" /> </form> </body> </html> This page has the following three controls: ToolkitScriptManager – The ToolkitScriptManager renders all of the scripts required by the Ajax Control Toolkit. TextBox – The TextBox control is a standard ASP.NET TextBox which is set to display multiple lines (a TextArea instead of an Input element). HtmlEditorExtender – The HtmlEditorExtender is set to extend the TextBox control. You can use the standard TextBox Text property to read the rich text entered into the TextBox control on the server. Lightweight and HTML5 The HTML Editor Extender works on all modern browsers including the most recent versions of Mozilla Firefox (Firefox 5), Google Chrome (Chrome 12), and Apple Safari (Safari 5). Furthermore, the HTML Editor Extender is compatible with Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 and newer. The HTML Editor Extender is very lightweight. It takes advantage of the HTML5 ContentEditable attribute so it does not require an iframe or complex browser workarounds. If you select View Source in your browser while using the HTML Editor Extender, we hope that you will be pleasantly surprised by how little markup and script is generated by the HTML Editor Extender. Customizable Toolbar Buttons Depending on the web application that you are building, you will want to display different toolbar buttons with the HTML Editor Extender. One of the design goals of the HTML Editor Extender was to make it very easy for you to customize the toolbar buttons. Imagine, for example, that you want to use the HTML Editor Extender when accepting comments on blog posts. In that case, you might want to restrict the type of formatting that a user can display. You might want to enable a user to format text as bold or italic but you do not want the user to make any other formatting changes. The following page illustrates how you can customize the HTML Editor Extender toolbar: <%@ Page Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeBehind="CustomToolbar.aspx.cs" Inherits="WebApplication1.CustomToolbar" %> <%@ Register TagPrefix="asp" Namespace="AjaxControlToolkit" Assembly="AjaxControlToolkit" %> <html> <head runat="server"> <title>Custom Toolbar</title> </head> <body> <form id="form1" runat="server"> <asp:ToolkitScriptManager Runat="server" /> <asp:TextBox ID="txtComments" TextMode="MultiLine" Columns="50" Rows="10" Text="Hello <b>world!</b>" Runat="server" /> <asp:HtmlEditorExtender TargetControlID="txtComments" runat="server"> <Toolbar> <asp:Bold /> <asp:Italic /> </Toolbar> </asp:HtmlEditorExtender> </form> </body> </html> Notice that the HTML Editor Extender in the page above has a Toolbar subtag. You can list the toolbar buttons which you want to appear within the subtag. In the case above, only Bold and Italic buttons are displayed. Here is a complete list of the Toolbar buttons currently supported by the HTML Editor Extender: Undo Redo Bold Italic Underline StrikeThrough Subscript Superscript JustifyLeft JustifyCenter JustifyRight JustifyFull InsertOrderedList InsertUnorderedList CreateLink UnLink RemoveFormat SelectAll UnSelect Delete Cut Copy Paste BackgroundColorSelector ForeColorSelector FontNameSelector FontSizeSelector Indent Outdent InsertHorizontalRule HorizontalSeparator Of course the HTML Editor Extender was designed to be extensible. You can create your own buttons and add them to the control. Compatible with the AntiXSS Library When using the HTML Editor Extender on a public facing website, we strongly recommend that you use the HTML Editor Extender with the AntiXSS Library. If you allow users to submit arbitrary HTML, and you don’t take any action to strip out malicious markup, then you are opening your website to Cross-Site Scripting Attacks (XSS attacks). The HTML Editor Extender uses the Provider Model to support different Sanitizer Providers. The July 2011 release of the Ajax Control Toolkit ships with a single Sanitizer Provider which uses the AntiXSS library (see http://AntiXss.CodePlex.com ). A Sanitizer Provider is responsible for sanitizing HTML markup by removing any malicious elements, attributes, and attribute values. For example, the AntiXss Sanitizer Provider will take the following block of HTML: <b><a href=""javascript:doEvil()"">Visit Grandma</a></b> <script>doEvil()</script> And return the following sanitized block of HTML: <b><a href="">Visit Grandma</a></b> Notice that the JavaScript href and <SCRIPT> tag are both stripped out. Be aware that there are a depressingly large number of ways to sneak evil markup into your HTML. You definitely want a Sanitizer as a safety net. Before you can use the AntiXSS Sanitizer Provider, you must add three assemblies to your web application: AntiXSSLibrary.dll, HtmlSanitizationLibrary.dll, and SanitizerProviders.dll. All three assemblies are included with the CodePlex download of the Ajax Control Toolkit in the SanitizerProviders folder. Here’s how you modify your web.config file to use the AntiXSS Sanitizer Provider: <configuration> <configSections> <sectionGroup name="system.web"> <section name="sanitizer" requirePermission="false" type="AjaxControlToolkit.Sanitizer.ProviderSanitizerSection, AjaxControlToolkit"/> </sectionGroup> </configSections> <system.web> <compilation targetFramework="4.0" debug="true"/> <sanitizer defaultProvider="AntiXssSanitizerProvider"> <providers> <add name="AntiXssSanitizerProvider" type="AjaxControlToolkit.Sanitizer.AntiXssSanitizerProvider"></add> </providers> </sanitizer> </system.web> </configuration> You can detect whether the HTML Editor Extender is using the AntiXSS Sanitizer Provider by checking the HtmlEditorExtender SanitizerProvider property like this: if (MyHtmlEditorExtender.SanitizerProvider == null) { throw new Exception("Please enable the AntiXss Sanitizer!"); } When the SanitizerProvider property has the value null, you know that a Sanitizer Provider has not been configured in the web.config file. Because the AntiXSS library requires Full Trust, you cannot use the AntiXSS Sanitizer Provider with most shared website hosting providers. Because most shared hosting providers only support Medium Trust and not Full Trust, we do not recommend using the HTML Editor Extender with a public website hosted with a shared hosting provider. Why a New HTML Editor Control? The Ajax Control Toolkit now includes two HTML Editor controls. Why did we introduce a new HTML Editor control when there was already an existing HTML Editor? We think you will like the new HTML Editor much more than the previous one. We had several goals with the new HTML Editor Extender: Lightweight – We wanted to leverage HTML5 to create a lightweight HTML Editor. The new HTML Editor generates much less markup and script than the previous HTML Editor. Secure – We wanted to make it easy to integrate the AntiXSS library with the HTML Editor. If you are creating a public facing website, we strongly recommend that you use the AntiXSS Provider. Customizable – We wanted to make it easy for users to customize the toolbar buttons displayed by the HTML Editor. Compatibility – We wanted to ensure that the HTML Editor will work with the latest versions of the most popular browsers (including Internet Explorer 6 and higher). The old HTML Editor control is still included in the Ajax Control Toolkit and continues to live in the AjaxControlToolkit.HTMLEditor namespace. We have not modified the control and you can continue to use the control in the same way as you have used it in the past. However, we hope that you will consider migrating to the new HTML Editor Extender for the reasons listed above. Summary We’ve introduced a new Ajax Control Toolkit control with this release. I want to thank the developers and testers on the Superexpert team for the huge amount of work which they put into this control. It was a non-trivial task to build an entirely new control which has the complexity of the HTML Editor in less than 6 weeks. Please let us know what you think! We want to hear your feedback. If you discover issues with the new HTML Editor Extender control, or you have questions about the control, or you have ideas for how it can be improved, then please post them to this blog. Tomorrow starts a new sprint

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Making Sense of ASP.NET Paths

- by Rick Strahl

ASP.Net includes quite a plethora of properties to retrieve path information about the current request, control and application. There's a ton of information available about paths on the Request object, some of it appearing to overlap and some of it buried several levels down, and it can be confusing to find just the right path that you are looking for. To keep things straight I thought it a good idea to summarize the path options along with descriptions and example paths. I wrote a post about this a long time ago in 2004 and I find myself frequently going back to that page to quickly figure out which path I’m looking for in processing the current URL. Apparently a lot of people must be doing the same, because the original post is the second most visited even to this date on this blog to the tune of nearly 500 hits per day. So, I decided to update and expand a bit on the original post with a little more information and clarification based on the original comments. Request Object Paths Available Here's a list of the Path related properties on the Request object (and the Page object). Assume a path like http://www.west-wind.com/webstore/admin/paths.aspx for the paths below where webstore is the name of the virtual. .blackborder td { border-bottom: solid 1px silver; border-left: solid 1px silver; } Request Property Description and Value ApplicationPath Returns the web root-relative logical path to the virtual root of this app. /webstore/ PhysicalApplicationPath Returns local file system path of the virtual root for this app. c:\inetpub\wwwroot\webstore PhysicalPath Returns the local file system path to the current script or path. c:\inetpub\wwwroot\webstore\admin\paths.aspx Path FilePath CurrentExecutionFilePath All of these return the full root relative logical path to the script page including path and scriptname. CurrentExcecutionFilePath will return the ‘current’ request path after a Transfer/Execute call while FilePath will always return the original request’s path. /webstore/admin/paths.aspx AppRelativeCurrentExecutionFilePath Returns an ASP.NET root relative virtual path to the script or path for the current request. If in a Transfer/Execute call the transferred Path is returned. ~/admin/paths.aspx PathInfo Returns any extra path following the script name. If no extra path is provided returns the root-relative path (returns text in red below). string.Empty if no PathInfo is available. /webstore/admin/paths.aspx/ExtraPathInfo RawUrl Returns the full root relative URL including querystring and extra path as a string. /webstore/admin/paths.aspx?sku=wwhelp40 Url Returns a fully qualified URL including querystring and extra path. Note this is a Uri instance rather than string. http://www.west-wind.com/webstore/admin/paths.aspx?sku=wwhelp40 UrlReferrer The fully qualified URL of the page that sent the request. This is also a Uri instance and this value is null if the page was directly accessed by typing into the address bar or using an HttpClient based Referrer client Http header. http://www.west-wind.com/webstore/default.aspx?Info Control.TemplateSourceDirectory Returns the logical path to the folder of the page, master or user control on which it is called. This is useful if you need to know the path only to a Page or control from within the control. For non-file controls this returns the Page path. /webstore/admin/ As you can see there’s a ton of information available there for each of the three common path formats: Physical Path is an OS type path that points to a path or file on disk. Logical Path is a Web path that is relative to the Web server’s root. It includes the virtual plus the application relative path. ~/ (Root-relative) Path is an ASP.NET specific path that includes ~/ to indicate the virtual root Web path. ASP.NET can convert virtual paths into either logical paths using Control.ResolveUrl(), or physical paths using Server.MapPath(). Root relative paths are useful for specifying portable URLs that don’t rely on relative directory structures and very useful from within control or component code. You should be able to get any necessary format from ASP.NET from just about any path or script using these mechanisms. ~/ Root Relative Paths and ResolveUrl() and ResolveClientUrl() ASP.NET supports root-relative virtual path syntax in most of its URL properties in Web Forms. So you can easily specify a root relative path in a control rather than a location relative path: <asp:Image runat="server" ID="imgHelp" ImageUrl="~/images/help.gif" /> ASP.NET internally resolves this URL by using ResolveUrl("~/images/help.gif") to arrive at the root-relative URL of /webstore/images/help.gif which uses the Request.ApplicationPath as the basepath to replace the ~. By convention any custom Web controls also should use ResolveUrl() on URL properties to provide the same functionality. In your own code you can use Page.ResolveUrl() or Control.ResolveUrl() to accomplish the same thing: string imgPath = this.ResolveUrl("~/images/help.gif"); imgHelp.ImageUrl = imgPath; Unfortunately ResolveUrl() is limited to WebForm pages, so if you’re in an HttpHandler or Module it’s not available. ASP.NET Mvc also has it’s own more generic version of ResolveUrl in Url.Decode: <script src="<%= Url.Content("~/scripts/new.js") %>" type="text/javascript"></script> which is part of the UrlHelper class. In ASP.NET MVC the above sort of syntax is actually even more crucial than in WebForms due to the fact that views are not referencing specific pages but rather are often path based which can lead to various variations on how a particular view is referenced. In a Module or Handler code Control.ResolveUrl() unfortunately is not available which in retrospect seems like an odd design choice – URL resolution really should happen on a Request basis not as part of the Page framework. Luckily you can also rely on the static VirtualPathUtility class: string path = VirtualPathUtility.ToAbsolute("~/admin/paths.aspx"); VirtualPathUtility also many other quite useful methods for dealing with paths and converting between the various kinds of paths supported. One thing to watch out for is that ToAbsolute() will throw an exception if a query string is provided and doesn’t work on fully qualified URLs. I wrote about this topic with a custom solution that works fully qualified URLs and query strings here (check comments for some interesting discussions too). Similar to ResolveUrl() is ResolveClientUrl() which creates a fully qualified HTTP path that includes the protocol and domain name. It’s rare that this full resolution is needed but can be useful in some scenarios. Mapping Virtual Paths to Physical Paths with Server.MapPath() If you need to map root relative or current folder relative URLs to physical URLs or you can use HttpContext.Current.Server.MapPath(). Inside of a Page you can do the following: string physicalPath = Server.MapPath("~/scripts/ww.jquery.js")); MapPath is pretty flexible and it understands both ASP.NET style virtual paths as well as plain relative paths, so the following also works. string physicalPath = Server.MapPath("scripts/silverlight.js"); as well as dot relative syntax: string physicalPath = Server.MapPath("../scripts/jquery.js"); Once you have the physical path you can perform standard System.IO Path and File operations on the file. Remember with physical paths and IO or copy operations you need to make sure you have permissions to access files and folders based on the Web server user account that is active (NETWORK SERVICE, ASPNET typically). Note the Server.MapPath will not map up beyond the virtual root of the application for security reasons. Server and Host Information Between these settings you can get all the information you may need to figure out where you are at and to build new Url if necessary. If you need to build a URL completely from scratch you can get access to information about the server you are accessing: Server Variable Function and Example SERVER_NAME The of the domain or IP Address wwww.west-wind.com or 127.0.0.1 SERVER_PORT The port that the request runs under. 80 SERVER_PORT_SECURE Determines whether https: was used. 0 or 1 APPL_MD_PATH ADSI DirectoryServices path to the virtual root directory. Note that LM typically doesn’t work for ADSI access so you should replace that with LOCALHOST or the machine’s NetBios name. /LM/W3SVC/1/ROOT/webstore Request.Url and Uri Parsing If you still need more control over the current request URL or you need to create new URLs from an existing one, the current Request.Url Uri property offers a lot of control. Using the Uri class and UriBuilder makes it easy to retrieve parts of a URL and create new URLs based on existing URL. The UriBuilder class is the preferred way to create URLs – much preferable over creating URIs via string concatenation. Uri Property Function Scheme The URL scheme or protocol prefix. http or https Port The port if specifically specified. DnsSafeHost The domain name or local host NetBios machine name www.west-wind.com or rasnote LocalPath The full path of the URL including script name and extra PathInfo. /webstore/admin/paths.aspx Query The query string if any ?id=1 The Uri class itself is great for retrieving Uri parts, but most of the properties are read only if you need to modify a URL in order to change it you can use the UriBuilder class to load up an existing URL and modify it to create a new one. Here are a few common operations I’ve needed to do to get specific URLs: Convert the Request URL to an SSL/HTTPS link For example to take the current request URL and converted it to a secure URL can be done like this: UriBuilder build = new UriBuilder(Request.Url); build.Scheme = "https"; build.Port = -1; // don't inject port Uri newUri = build.Uri; string newUrl = build.ToString(); Retrieve the fully qualified URL without a QueryString AFAIK, there’s no native routine to retrieve the current request URL without the query string. It’s easy to do with UriBuilder however: UriBuilder builder = newUriBuilder(Request.Url); builder.Query = ""; stringlogicalPathWithoutQuery = builder.ToString(); What else? I took a look through the old post’s comments and addressed as many of the questions and comments that came up in there. With a few small and silly exceptions this update post handles most of these. But I’m sure there are a more things that go in here. What else would be useful to put onto this post so it serves as a nice all in one place to go for path references? If you think of something leave a comment and I’ll try to update the post with it in the future.© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2010Posted in ASP.NET

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Installing SharePoint 2010 and PowerPivot for SharePoint on Windows 7

- by smisner

Many people like me want (or need) to do their business intelligence development work on a laptop. As someone who frequently speaks at various events or teaches classes on all subjects related to the Microsoft business intelligence stack, I need a way to run multiple server products on my laptop with reasonable performance. Once upon a time, that requirement meant only that I had to load the current version of SQL Server and the client tools of choice. In today's post, I'll review my latest experience with trying to make the newly released Microsoft BI products work with a Windows 7 operating system.The entrance of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 into the BI stack complicated matters and I started using Virtual Server to establish a "suitable" environment. As part of the team that delivered a lot of education as part of the Yukon pre-launch activities (that would be SQL Server 2005 for the uninitiated), I was working with four - yes, four - virtual servers. That was a pretty brutal workload for a 2GB laptop, which worked if I was very, very careful. It could also be a finicky and unreliable configuration as I learned to my dismay at one TechEd session several years ago when I had to reboot a very carefully cached set of servers just minutes before my session started. Although it worked, it came back to life very, very slowly much to the displeasure of the audience. They couldn't possibly have been less pleased than me.At that moment, I resolved to get the beefiest environment I could afford and consolidate to a single virtual server. Enter the 4GB 64-bit laptop to preserve my sanity and my livelihood. Likewise, for SQL Server 2008, I managed to keep everything within a single virtual server and I could function reasonably well with this approach.Now we have SQL Server 2008 R2 plus Office SharePoint Server 2010. That means a 64-bit operating system. Period. That means no more Virtual Server. That means I must use Hyper-V or another alternative. I've heard alternatives exist, but my few dabbles in this area did not yield positive results. It might have been just me having issues rather than any failure of those technologies to adequately support the requirements.My first run at working with the new BI stack configuration was to set up a 64-bit 4GB laptop with a dual-boot to run Windows Server 2008 R2 with Hyper-V. However, I was generally not happy with running Windows Server 2008 R2 on my laptop. For one, I couldn't put it into sleep mode, which is helpful if I want to prepare for a presentation beforehand and then walk to the podium without the need to hold my laptop in its open state along the way (my strategy at the TechEd session long, long ago). Secondly, it was finicky with projectors. I had issues from time to time and while I always eventually got it to work, I didn't appreciate those nerve-wracking moments wondering whether this would be the time that it wouldn't work.Somewhere along the way, I learned that it was possible to load SharePoint 2010 in a Windows 7 which piqued my interest. I had just acquired a new laptop running Windows 7 64-bit, and thought surely running the BI stack natively on my laptop must be better than running Hyper-V. (I have not tried booting to Hyper-V VHD yet, but that's on my list of things to try so the jury of one is still out on this approach.) Recently, I had to build up a server with the RTM versions of SQL Server 2008 R2 and Sharepoint Server 2010 and decided to follow suit on my Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit laptop. The process is slightly different, but I'm happy to report that it IS possible, although I had some fits and starts along the way.DISCLAIMER: These products are NOT intended to be run in production mode on the Windows 7 operating system. The configuration described in this post is strictly for development or learning purposes and not supported by Microsoft. If you have trouble, you will NOT get help from them. I might be able to help, but I provide no guarantees of my ability or availablity to help. I won't provide the step-by-step instructions in this post as there are other resources that provide these details, but I will provide an overview of my approach, point you to the relevant resources, describe some of the problems I encountered, and explain how I addressed those problems to achieve my desired goal.Because my goal was not simply to set up SharePoint Server 2010 on my laptop, but specifically PowerPivot for SharePoint, I started out by referring to the installation instructions at the PowerPiovt-Info site, but mainly to confirm that I was performing steps in the proper sequence. I didn't perform the steps in Part 1 because those steps are applicable only to a server operating system which I am not running on my laptop. Then, the instructions in Part 2, won't work exactly as written for the same reason. Instead, I followed the instructions on MSDN, Setting Up the Development Environment for SharePoint 2010 on Windows Vista, Windows 7, and Windows Server 2008. In general, I found the following differences in installation steps from the steps at PowerPivot-Info:You must copy the SharePoint installation media to the local drive so that you can edit the config.xml to allow installation on a Windows client.You also have to manually install the prerequisites. The instructions provides links to each item that you must manually install and provides a command-line instruction to execute which enables required Windows features.I will digress for a moment to save you some grief in the sequence of steps to perform. I discovered later that a missing step in the MSDN instructions is to install the November CTP Reporting Services add-in for SharePoint. When I went to test my SharePoint site (I believe I tested after I had a successful PowerPivot installation), I ran into the following error: Could not load file or assembly 'RSSharePointSoapProxy, Version=10.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=89845dcd8080cc91' or one of its dependencies. The system cannot find the file specified. I was rather surprised that Reporting Services was required. Then I found an article by Alan le Marquand, Working Together: SQL Server 2008 R2 Reporting Services Integration in SharePoint 2010,that instructed readers to install the November add-in. My first reaction was, "Really?!?" But I confirmed it in another TechNet article on hardware and software requirements for SharePoint Server 2010. It doesn't refer explicitly to the November CTP but following the link took me there. (Interestingly, I retested today and there's no longer any reference to the November CTP. Here's the link to download the latest and greatest Reporting Services Add-in for SharePoint Technologies 2010.) You don't need to download the add-in anymore if you're doing a regular server-based installation of SharePoint because it installs as part of the prerequisites automatically.When it was time to start the installation of SharePoint, I deviated from the MSDN instructions and from the PowerPivot-Info instructions:On the Choose the installation you want page of the installation wizard, I chose Server Farm.On the Server Type page, I chose Complete.At the end of the installation, I did not run the configuration wizard.Returning to the PowerPivot-Info instructions, I tried to follow the instructions in Part 3 which describe installing SQL Server 2008 R2 with the PowerPivot option. These instructions tell you to choose the New Server option on the Setup Role page where you add PowerPivot for SharePoint. However, I ran into problems with this approach and got installation errors at the end.It wasn't until much later as I was investigating an error that I encountered Dave Wickert's post that installing PowerPivot for SharePoint on Windows 7 is unsupported. Uh oh. But he did want to hear about it if anyone succeeded, so I decided to take the plunge. Perseverance paid off, and I can happily inform Dave that it does work so far. I haven't tested absolutely everything with PowerPivot for SharePoint but have successfully deployed a workbook and viewed the PowerPivot Management Dashboard. I have not yet tested the data refresh feature, but I have installed. Continue reading to see how I accomplished my objective.I unintalled SQL Server 2008 R2 and started again. I had different problems which I don't recollect now. However, I uninstalled again and approached installation from a different angle and my next attempt succeeded. The downside of this approach is that you must do all of the things yourself that are done automatically when you install PowerPivot as a new server. Here are the steps that I followed:Install SQL Server 2008 R2 to get a database engine instance installed.Run the SharePoint configuration wizard to set up the SharePoint databases.In Central Administration, create a Web application using classic mode authentication as per a TechNet article on PowerPivot Authentication and Authorization.Then I followed the steps I found at How to: Install PowerPivot for SharePoint on an Existing SharePoint Server. Especially important to note - you must launch setup by using Run as administrator. I did not have to manually deploy the PowerPivot solution as the instructions specify, but it's good to know about this step because it tells you where to look in Central Administration to confirm a successful deployment.I did spot some incorrect steps in the instructions (at the time of this writing) in How To: Configure Stored Credentials for PowerPivot Data Refresh. Specifically, in the section entitled Step 1: Create a target application and set the credentials, both steps 10 and 12 are incorrect. They tell you to provide an actual Windows user name and password on the page where you are simply defining the prompts for your application in the Secure Store Service. To add the Windows user name and password that you want to associate with the application - after you have successfully created the target application - you select the target application and then click Set credentials in the ribbon.Lastly, I followed the instructions at How to: Install Office Data Connectivity Components on a PowerPivot server. However, I have yet to test this in my current environment.I did have several stops and starts throughout this process and edited those out to spare you from reading non-essential information. I believe the explanation I have provided here accurately reflect the steps I followed to produce a working configuration. If you follow these steps and get a different result, please let me know so that together we can work through the issue and correct these instructions. I'm sure there are many other folks in the Microsoft BI community that will appreciate the ability to set up the BI stack in a Windows 7 environment for development or learning purposes. Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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E-Business Suite Technology Sessions at OAUG Collaborate 12

- by Max Arderius

Members of our E-Business Suite Applications Technology Group will be at the OAUG Collaborate 12 conference at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center in Las Vegas, Nevada on April 22 to 26, 2012. Please drop by any of our sessions to hear the latest news and meet up with us. Speaker Sessions Session 9675Planning Your Oracle E-Business Suite Upgrade from Release 11i to 12.1 and BeyondAnne Carlson, Senior Director, Applications Technology Group, OracleSunday, April 22, 2:00 pm - 3:00 pmLocation: Jasmine B Attend this session to hear the latest Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.1 upgrade planning tips gleaned from customers who have already performed the upgrade. Youll get specific, cross-product advice on how to decide your project's scope, understand the factors that affect your project's duration, develop a robust testing strategy, leverage Oracle Support resources, and more. In a nutshell, this session tells you things you need to know before embarking upon your Release 12.1 upgrade project. Session 9401Minimizing Oracle E-Business Suite Maintenance DowntimesElke Phelps, Principal Product Manager, Applications Technology Group, OracleKevin Hudson, Sr. Director, Applications Technology Group, OracleSunday, April 22, 2:10 pm - 3:10 pmLocation: South Seas EThis session starts with an architecture review of Oracle E-Business Suite fundamentals and then moves to a practical view of the different tools and approaches for downtimes. Topics include patching shortcuts, merging patches, distributing worker processes across multiple servers, running ADPatch in no-interactive mode, staged APPL_TOPs, shared file systems, deferring system-wide database tasks, avoiding resource bottlenecks etc... This session also describes the online patching capabilities coming in Release 12.2. Session 9368Oracle E-Business Suite Technology: Latest Features and RoadmapLisa Parekh, Vice President, Applications Technology Group, Oracle Sunday, April 22, 4:30 pm - 5:30 pmLocation: South Seas EThis session provides an overview of Oracle E-Business Suite technology strategy, the capabilities and associated business benefits of recent releases, as well as a review of the product roadmap. As a cornerstone session for Oracle E-Business Suite technology, come hear about the latest usability enhancements, systems administration and configuration management tools, security-related updates, and tools and options for extending, customizing, and integrating the Oracle E-Business Suite with other applications. Session 10709Oracle E-Business Suite Applications Strategy and General Manager UpdateCliff Godwin, Sr. VP, Application Development, OracleMonday, April 23, 2:30 pm - 3:30 pmLocation: Mandalay Bay DIn this session, hear from Oracle E-Business Suite General Manager Cliff Godwin as he delivers an update on the Oracle E-Business Suite product line. The session covers the value delivered by the current release of Oracle E-Business Suite applications, the momentum, and how Oracle E-Business Suite applications integrate into Oracle’s overall applications strategy. You will come away with an understanding of the value Oracle E-Business Suite applications deliver now and in the future. Session 9398How to Reduce TCO Using Oracle Application Management Suite for Oracle E-Business SuiteAngelo Rosado, Principal Product Manager, Applications Technology Group, OracleKenneth Baxter, Principal Product Strategy Manager, Management Pack Fusion Middleware Management, OracleTuesday, April 24, 8:00 am - 9:00 amLocation: Breakers GThis session covers the methods and tools you can use to gain insights into your end users, troubleshoot performance problems, define service-level objectives, and proactively monitor your end-to-end Oracle E-Business Suite environment to meet your availability and performance targets. Come hear how you can manage, diagnose, and monitor the Oracle E-Business Suite environment from a single console by using Oracle Enterprise Manager together with the Oracle Application Management Suite for Oracle E-Business Suite. Session 9370 Coexistence of Oracle E-Business Suite and Oracle Fusion Applications: Platform Perspective Nadia Bendjedou, Senior Director, Product Strategy, Oracle Tuesday, April 24, 2:00 pm - 3:00 pm Location: South Seas E Join us at this session if you are wondering which tools to integrate your data, your processes and your User Interface. Or what tools to customize and extend your screens and reports (OAF, Forms, ADF, Oracle Reports, BI etc....), what tools to secure, protect and manage your Oracle E-Business Suite etc... Or simply if you are looking for a technical roadmap for your Oracle E-Business Suite infrastructure to CO-EXIST with the rest of your enterprise applications including Oracle Fusion Applications. Session 9375 Oracle E-Business Suite Directions: Deployment and System AdministrationMax Arderius, Manager, Applications Development Group, OracleTuesday, April 24, 4:30 pm - 5:30 pmLocation: Breakers GWhat's coming in the next major version of Oracle E-Business Suite 12? This session covers the latest technology stack, including the use of Oracle WebLogic Server and Oracle Database 11g Release 2. Topics include an architectural overview, installation and upgrade options, new configuration options, and new tools for hot-cloning and automated "lights out" cloning. Learn about how online patching will reduce your database patching downtimes to the time it takes to bounce your database server.Session 9369Oracle E-Business Suite Technology Certification Primer and RoadmapSteven Chan, Sr. Director, Applications Technology Group, Oracle Wednesday, April 25, 8:15 am - 9:15 amLocation: South Seas FThis Oracle Development session summarizes the latest certifications and roadmap for the Oracle E-Business Suite technology stack, including database releases/options, Java, Oracle Forms, Oracle Containers for J2EE, desktop OS, browsers, JRE releases, Office/OpenOffice, development and Web authoring tools, user authentication and management, BI, security options, clouds, Oracle VM etc.... It also covers the most-commonly-asked questions about technology stack component support dates and upgrade implications. Session 9407The Latest Oracle E-Business Suite Release User Interface and Usability EnhancementsGustavo Jimenez, Sr. Manager, Applications Technology Group, Oracle Wednesday, April 25, 1:00 pm - 2:00 pmLocation: South Seas GIn this session, developers will get a detailed look at new features designed to enhance usability, offer more capabilities for personalization and extensions, and support the development and use of dashboards and Web services. Topics include rich new UI capabilities such as new home page features, Navigator and Favorites pull-down menus, Oracle ADF task flows etc.... In addition, we will cover the personalization/extensibility enhancements, business layer extensions, Oracle ADF integration and much more. Session 9374Best Practices for Oracle E-Business Suite Performance Tuning and Upgrade OptimizationIsam Alyousfi, Senior Director, Applications Performance, OracleUdayan Parvate, Director, Release Engineering, Quality and Release Management, Oracle Thursday, April 26, 8:30 am - 9:30 amLocation: South Seas FThis presentation will offer tips and techniques on tuning all the layers of the Oracle E-Business Suite stack including the various tiers of the Oracle E-Business Suite environment. You will learn about tuning Oracle Forms, Concurrent Manager, Apache, and Oracle Discoverer. Track down memory leaks and other issues on the Java and Java Virtual Machine layers. The session also covers Oracle E-Business Suite product-level tuning, including Oracle Workflow, Oracle Order Management, Oracle Payroll, and other modules.Session 9412 Oracle E-Business Suite 12.1 Desktop Integration: Beyond Oracle Applications Desktop IntegratorGustavo Jimenez, Sr. Manager, Applications Technology Group, OracleThursday, April 26, 8:30 am - 9:30 amLocation: Breakers GThis session describes the new expanded functionality in Oracle Web Applications Desktop Integrator, Oracle Report Manager, and dedicated integrators. You have more options for desktop integration now, not fewer. Topics include an overview of prepackaged solutions for integrating Oracle E-Business Suite with desktop applications such as Microsoft Excel, Word, and Projects. The session also discusses how you can use the Desktop Integration Framework feature to create your own integrators quickly and easily.Session 9533 Upgrading your Customizations to Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.1Sara Woodhull, Principal Product Manager, Applications Technology Group, Oracle Thursday, April 26, 11:00 am - 12:00 pmLocation: South Seas FHave you personalized Forms or OA Framework screens? Have you used mod_plsql or Applications Express to tailor your Release 11i functionality? Have you extended or customized your Release 11i environment using other tools? This session will help you understand customization scenarios, use cases, tools, and technologies for ensuring that your Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.1 environment fits your users' needs closely and that any future customizations will be easy to upgrade. Special Interest Groups (SIG) Session 10535OAUG Database SIG- Part IMichael Brown, Colibri Limited Company Sunday, April 22, 3:20 pm - 4:20 pmLocation: South Seas FThis is the annual meeting of the Database SIG at Collaborate. The call for candidates for the chair will be closed at the meeting. Plans include a speaker from Oracle and a presentation on applications performance. The details of the meeting will be posted on http://www.dbsig.com. Guest Presentation: Oracle E-Business Suite Database PerformanceIsam Alyousfi, Senior Director, Applications Performance, Oracle Session 10720OAUG EBS Applications Technology SIG- Part ISrini Chaval, Cummins Monday, April 23, 2:30 pm - 3:30 pmLocation: South Seas F Guest Presentation:Oracle E-Business Suite Technology Certification RoadmapSteven Chan, Sr. Director, Applications Technology Group, Oracle Session 10510OAUG EBS Applications Technology SIG- Part IISrini Chaval, CumminsMonday, April 23, 3:45 pm - 4:45 pmLocation: South Seas F Guest Presentation:Oracle E-Business Suite 12.2 Online Patching Kevin Hudson, Sr. Director, Applications Technology Group, Oracle Session 10522 OAUG Upgrade SIG- Part IISandra Vucinic, VLAD Group, Inc. Wednesday, April 25, 3:00 pm - 4:00 pmLocation: South Seas FUpgrade SIG will host a business meeting followed by panel (Q&A) related to EBS Upgrade topics and Oracle presentation. Guest Presentation:Upgrading E-Business Suite Amrita Mehrok, Director, Financials Product Strategy, Oracle Nadia Bendjedou, Senior Director, Product Strategy, Oracle Session 10722OAUG Upgrade SIG- Part IISandra Vucinic, VLAD Group, Inc. Wednesday, April 25, 4:15 pm - 5:15 pmLocation: South Seas FUpgrade SIG will host a business meeting followed by panel (Q&A) related to EBS Upgrade topics and Oracle presentation. Guest Presentation:Tuning the Oracle E-Business Suite Upgrade Isam Alyousfi, Senior Director, Applications Performance, Oracle Panels Session 9360Oracle E-Business Suite Cloning PanelSandra Vucinic, VLAD Group, Inc. Guest Speaker: Max Arderius, Manager, Applications Technology Group, OracleWednesday, April 25, 9:30 am - 10:30 amLocation: South Seas FThis panel will discuss differences between available release 11i, R12 and R12.1 cloning methods. Advantages and disadvantages of each cloning method will be discussed in depth. This panel of experienced database administrators will lead a discussion focusing on the questions such as “which cloning method is best to use in your particular environment”. Attendees will gain practical knowledge, tips and tricks to assist with cloning of Oracle E-Business Suite release 11i, R12 and R12.1 environments. Session 10022Oracle Applications Tuning PanelMark Farnham, Rightsizing, Inc.Guest Speaker: Isam Alyousfi, Senior Director, Applications Performance, OracleThursday, April 26, 09:45 am - 10:45 amLocation: South Seas FThis applications performance panel session, sponsored by the OAUG Database SIG, provides a Q&A forum focused on helping you address your Oracle Applications (Oracle E-Business Suite and Oracle's PeopleSoft Enterprise and Siebel applications) performance- and scalability-related issues. The panel comprises several well-known Oracle Applications performance experts. Topic areas include Oracle Database; the network; and the applications tier, including patching and upgrade performance. For complete listing of all speaker sessions and other activities, please visit the OAUG Collaborate Web Site.

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Anti-Forgery Request Recipes For ASP.NET MVC And AJAX

- by Dixin

Background To secure websites from cross-site request forgery (CSRF, or XSRF) attack, ASP.NET MVC provides an excellent mechanism: The server prints tokens to cookie and inside the form; When the form is submitted to server, token in cookie and token inside the form are sent in the HTTP request; Server validates the tokens. To print tokens to browser, just invoke HtmlHelper.AntiForgeryToken():<% using (Html.BeginForm()) { %> <%: this.Html.AntiForgeryToken(Constants.AntiForgeryTokenSalt)%> <%-- Other fields. --%> <input type="submit" value="Submit" /> <% } %> This invocation generates a token then writes inside the form:<form action="..." method="post"> <input name="__RequestVerificationToken" type="hidden" value="J56khgCvbE3bVcsCSZkNVuH9Cclm9SSIT/ywruFsXEgmV8CL2eW5C/gGsQUf/YuP" />  <input type="submit" value="Submit" /> </form> and also writes into the cookie: __RequestVerificationToken_Lw__= J56khgCvbE3bVcsCSZkNVuH9Cclm9SSIT/ywruFsXEgmV8CL2eW5C/gGsQUf/YuP When the above form is submitted, they are both sent to server. In the server side, [ValidateAntiForgeryToken] attribute is used to specify the controllers or actions to validate them:[HttpPost] [ValidateAntiForgeryToken(Salt = Constants.AntiForgeryTokenSalt)] public ActionResult Action(/* ... */) { // ... } This is very productive for form scenarios. But recently, when resolving security vulnerabilities for Web products, some problems are encountered. Specify validation on controller (not on each action) The server side problem is, It is expected to declare [ValidateAntiForgeryToken] on controller, but actually it has be to declared on each POST actions. Because POST actions are usually much more then controllers, the work would be a little crazy. Problem Usually a controller contains actions for HTTP GET and actions for HTTP POST requests, and usually validations are expected for HTTP POST requests. So, if the [ValidateAntiForgeryToken] is declared on the controller, the HTTP GET requests become invalid:[ValidateAntiForgeryToken(Salt = Constants.AntiForgeryTokenSalt)] public class SomeController : Controller // One [ValidateAntiForgeryToken] attribute. { [HttpGet] public ActionResult Index() // Index() cannot work. { // ... } [HttpPost] public ActionResult PostAction1(/* ... */) { // ... } [HttpPost] public ActionResult PostAction2(/* ... */) { // ... } // ... } If browser sends an HTTP GET request by clicking a link: http://Site/Some/Index, validation definitely fails, because no token is provided. So the result is, [ValidateAntiForgeryToken] attribute must be distributed to each POST action:public class SomeController : Controller // Many [ValidateAntiForgeryToken] attributes. { [HttpGet] public ActionResult Index() // Works. { // ... } [HttpPost] [ValidateAntiForgeryToken(Salt = Constants.AntiForgeryTokenSalt)] public ActionResult PostAction1(/* ... */) { // ... } [HttpPost] [ValidateAntiForgeryToken(Salt = Constants.AntiForgeryTokenSalt)] public ActionResult PostAction2(/* ... */) { // ... } // ... } This is a little bit crazy, because one application can have a lot of POST actions. Solution To avoid a large number of [ValidateAntiForgeryToken] attributes (one for each POST action), the following ValidateAntiForgeryTokenWrapperAttribute wrapper class can be helpful, where HTTP verbs can be specified:[AttributeUsage(AttributeTargets.Class | AttributeTargets.Method, AllowMultiple = false, Inherited = true)] public class ValidateAntiForgeryTokenWrapperAttribute : FilterAttribute, IAuthorizationFilter { private readonly ValidateAntiForgeryTokenAttribute _validator; private readonly AcceptVerbsAttribute _verbs; public ValidateAntiForgeryTokenWrapperAttribute(HttpVerbs verbs) : this(verbs, null) { } public ValidateAntiForgeryTokenWrapperAttribute(HttpVerbs verbs, string salt) { this._verbs = new AcceptVerbsAttribute(verbs); this._validator = new ValidateAntiForgeryTokenAttribute() { Salt = salt }; } public void OnAuthorization(AuthorizationContext filterContext) { string httpMethodOverride = filterContext.HttpContext.Request.GetHttpMethodOverride(); if (this._verbs.Verbs.Contains(httpMethodOverride, StringComparer.OrdinalIgnoreCase)) { this._validator.OnAuthorization(filterContext); } } } When this attribute is declared on controller, only HTTP requests with the specified verbs are validated:[ValidateAntiForgeryTokenWrapper(HttpVerbs.Post, Constants.AntiForgeryTokenSalt)] public class SomeController : Controller { // GET actions are not affected. // Only HTTP POST requests are validated. } Now one single attribute on controller turns on validation for all POST actions. Maybe it would be nice if HTTP verbs can be specified on the built-in [ValidateAntiForgeryToken] attribute, which is easy to implemented. Specify Non-constant salt in runtime By default, the salt should be a compile time constant, so it can be used for the [ValidateAntiForgeryToken] or [ValidateAntiForgeryTokenWrapper] attribute. Problem One Web product might be sold to many clients. If a constant salt is evaluated in compile time, after the product is built and deployed to many clients, they all have the same salt. Of course, clients do not like this. Even some clients might want to specify a custom salt in configuration. In these scenarios, salt is required to be a runtime value. Solution In the above [ValidateAntiForgeryToken] and [ValidateAntiForgeryTokenWrapper] attribute, the salt is passed through constructor. So one solution is to remove this parameter:public class ValidateAntiForgeryTokenWrapperAttribute : FilterAttribute, IAuthorizationFilter { public ValidateAntiForgeryTokenWrapperAttribute(HttpVerbs verbs) { this._verbs = new AcceptVerbsAttribute(verbs); this._validator = new ValidateAntiForgeryTokenAttribute() { Salt = AntiForgeryToken.Value }; } // Other members. } But here the injected dependency becomes a hard dependency. So the other solution is moving validation code into controller to work around the limitation of attributes:public abstract class AntiForgeryControllerBase : Controller { private readonly ValidateAntiForgeryTokenAttribute _validator; private readonly AcceptVerbsAttribute _verbs; protected AntiForgeryControllerBase(HttpVerbs verbs, string salt) { this._verbs = new AcceptVerbsAttribute(verbs); this._validator = new ValidateAntiForgeryTokenAttribute() { Salt = salt }; } protected override void OnAuthorization(AuthorizationContext filterContext) { base.OnAuthorization(filterContext); string httpMethodOverride = filterContext.HttpContext.Request.GetHttpMethodOverride(); if (this._verbs.Verbs.Contains(httpMethodOverride, StringComparer.OrdinalIgnoreCase)) { this._validator.OnAuthorization(filterContext); } } } Then make controller classes inheriting from this AntiForgeryControllerBase class. Now the salt is no long required to be a compile time constant. Submit token via AJAX For browser side, once server side turns on anti-forgery validation for HTTP POST, all AJAX POST requests will fail by default. Problem In AJAX scenarios, the HTTP POST request is not sent by form. Take jQuery as an example:$.post(url, { productName: "Tofu", categoryId: 1 // Token is not posted. }, callback); This kind of AJAX POST requests will always be invalid, because server side code cannot see the token in the posted data. Solution Basically, the tokens must be printed to browser then sent back to server. So first of all, HtmlHelper.AntiForgeryToken() need to be called somewhere. Now the browser has token in both HTML and cookie. Then jQuery must find the printed token in the HTML, and append token to the data before sending:$.post(url, { productName: "Tofu", categoryId: 1, __RequestVerificationToken: getToken() // Token is posted. }, callback); To be reusable, this can be encapsulated into a tiny jQuery plugin:/// <reference path="jquery-1.4.2.js" /> (function ($) { $.getAntiForgeryToken = function (tokenWindow, appPath) { // HtmlHelper.AntiForgeryToken() must be invoked to print the token. tokenWindow = tokenWindow && typeof tokenWindow === typeof window ? tokenWindow : window; appPath = appPath && typeof appPath === "string" ? "_" + appPath.toString() : ""; // The name attribute is either __RequestVerificationToken, // or __RequestVerificationToken_{appPath}. tokenName = "__RequestVerificationToken" + appPath; // Finds the <input type="hidden" name={tokenName} value="..." /> from the specified. // var inputElements = $("input[type='hidden'][name='__RequestVerificationToken" + appPath + "']"); var inputElements = tokenWindow.document.getElementsByTagName("input"); for (var i = 0; i < inputElements.length; i++) { var inputElement = inputElements[i]; if (inputElement.type === "hidden" && inputElement.name === tokenName) { return { name: tokenName, value: inputElement.value }; } } return null; }; $.appendAntiForgeryToken = function (data, token) { // Converts data if not already a string. if (data && typeof data !== "string") { data = $.param(data); } // Gets token from current window by default. token = token ? token : $.getAntiForgeryToken(); // $.getAntiForgeryToken(window). data = data ? data + "&" : ""; // If token exists, appends {token.name}={token.value} to data. return token ? data + encodeURIComponent(token.name) + "=" + encodeURIComponent(token.value) : data; }; // Wraps $.post(url, data, callback, type). $.postAntiForgery = function (url, data, callback, type) { return $.post(url, $.appendAntiForgeryToken(data), callback, type); }; // Wraps $.ajax(settings). $.ajaxAntiForgery = function (settings) { settings.data = $.appendAntiForgeryToken(settings.data); return $.ajax(settings); }; })(jQuery); In most of the scenarios, it is Ok to just replace $.post() invocation with $.postAntiForgery(), and replace $.ajax() with $.ajaxAntiForgery():$.postAntiForgery(url, { productName: "Tofu", categoryId: 1 }, callback); // Token is posted. There might be some scenarios of custom token, where $.appendAntiForgeryToken() is useful:data = $.appendAntiForgeryToken(data, token); // Token is already in data. No need to invoke $.postAntiForgery(). $.post(url, data, callback); And there are scenarios that the token is not in the current window. For example, an HTTP POST request can be sent by an iframe, while the token is in the parent window. Here, token's container window can be specified for $.getAntiForgeryToken():data = $.appendAntiForgeryToken(data, $.getAntiForgeryToken(window.parent)); // Token is already in data. No need to invoke $.postAntiForgery(). $.post(url, data, callback); If you have better solution, please do tell me.

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Connecting Linux to WatchGuard Firebox SSL (OpenVPN client)

Recently, I got a new project assignment that requires to connect permanently to the customer's network through VPN. They are using a so-called SSL VPN. As I am using OpenVPN since more than 5 years within my company's network I was quite curious about their solution and how it would actually be different from OpenVPN. Well, short version: It is a disguised version of OpenVPN. Unfortunately, the company only offers a client for Windows and Mac OS which shouldn't bother any Linux user after all. OpenVPN is part of every recent distribution and can be activated in a couple of minutes - both client as well as server (if necessary). WatchGuard Firebox SSL - About dialog Borrowing some files from a Windows client installation Initially, I didn't know about the product, so therefore I went through the installation on Windows 8. No obstacles (and no restart despite installation of TAP device drivers!) here and the secured VPN channel was up and running in less than 2 minutes or so. Much appreciated from both parties - customer and me. Of course, this whole client package and my long year approved and stable installation ignited my interest to have a closer look at the WatchGuard client. Compared to the original OpenVPN client (okay, I have to admit this is years ago) this commercial product is smarter in terms of file locations during installation. You'll be able to access the configuration and key files below your roaming application data folder. To get there, simply enter '%AppData%\WatchGuard\Mobile VPN' in your Windows/File Explorer and confirm with Enter/Return. This will display the following files: Application folder below user profile with configuration and certificate files From there we are going to borrow four files, namely: ca.crt client.crt client.ovpn client.pem and transfer them to the Linux system. You might also be able to isolate those four files from a Mac OS client. Frankly, I'm just too lazy to run the WatchGuard client installation on a Mac mini only to find the folder location, and I'm going to describe why a little bit further down this article. I know that you can do that! Feedback in the comment section is appreciated. Configuration of OpenVPN (console) Depending on your distribution the following steps might be a little different but in general you should be able to get the important information from it. I'm going to describe the steps in Ubuntu 13.04 (Raring Ringtail). As usual, there are two possibilities to achieve your goal: console and UI. Let's what it is necessary to be done. First of all, you should ensure that you have OpenVPN installed on your system. Open your favourite terminal application and run the following statement: $ sudo apt-get install openvpn network-manager-openvpn network-manager-openvpn-gnome Just to be on the safe side. The four above mentioned files from your Windows machine could be copied anywhere but either you place them below your own user directory or you put them (as root) below the default directory: /etc/openvpn At this stage you would be able to do a test run already. Just in case, run the following command and check the output (it's the similar information you would get from the 'View Logs...' context menu entry in Windows: $ sudo openvpn --config client.ovpn Pay attention to the correct path to your configuration and certificate files. OpenVPN will ask you to enter your Auth Username and Auth Password in order to establish the VPN connection, same as the Windows client. Remote server and user authentication to establish the VPN Please complete the test run and see whether all went well. You can disconnect pressing Ctrl+C. Simplifying your life - authentication file In my case, I actually set up the OpenVPN client on my gateway/router. This establishes a VPN channel between my network and my client's network and allows me to switch machines easily without having the necessity to install the WatchGuard client on each and every machine. That's also very handy for my various virtualised Windows machines. Anyway, as the client configuration, key and certificate files are located on a headless system somewhere under the roof, it is mandatory to have an automatic connection to the remote site. For that you should first change the file extension '.ovpn' to '.conf' which is the default extension on Linux systems for OpenVPN, and then open the client configuration file in order to extend an existing line. $ sudo mv client.ovpn client.conf $ sudo nano client.conf You should have a similar content to this one here: dev tunclientproto tcp-clientca ca.crtcert client.crtkey client.pemtls-remote "/O=WatchGuard_Technologies/OU=Fireware/CN=Fireware_SSLVPN_Server"remote-cert-eku "TLS Web Server Authentication"remote 1.2.3.4 443persist-keypersist-tunverb 3mute 20keepalive 10 60cipher AES-256-CBCauth SHA1float 1reneg-sec 3660nobindmute-replay-warningsauth-user-pass auth.txt Note: I changed the IP address of the remote directive above (which should be obvious, right?). Anyway, the required change is marked in red and we have to create a new authentication file 'auth.txt'. You can give the directive 'auth-user-pass' any file name you'd like to. Due to my existing OpenVPN infrastructure my setup differs completely from the above written content but for sake of simplicity I just keep it 'as-is'. Okay, let's create this file 'auth.txt' $ sudo nano auth.txt and just put two lines of information in it - username on the first, and password on the second line, like so: myvpnusernameverysecretpassword Store the file, change permissions, and call openvpn with your configuration file again: $ sudo chmod 0600 auth.txt $ sudo openvpn --config client.conf This should now work without being prompted to enter username and password. In case that you placed your files below the system-wide location /etc/openvpn you can operate your VPNs also via service command like so: $ sudo service openvpn start client $ sudo service openvpn stop client Using Network Manager For newer Linux users or the ones with 'console-phobia' I'm going to describe now how to use Network Manager to setup the OpenVPN client. For this move your mouse to the systray area and click on Network Connections => VPN Connections => Configure VPNs... which opens your Network Connections dialog. Alternatively, use the HUD and enter 'Network Connections'. Network connections overview in Ubuntu Click on 'Add' button. On the next dialog select 'Import a saved VPN configuration...' from the dropdown list and click on 'Create...' Choose connection type to import VPN configuration Now you navigate to your folder where you put the client files from the Windows system and you open the 'client.ovpn' file. Next, on the tab 'VPN' proceed with the following steps (directives from the configuration file are referred): General Check the IP address of Gateway ('remote' - we used 1.2.3.4 in this setup) Authentication Change Type to 'Password with Certificates (TLS)' ('auth-pass-user') Enter User name to access your client keys (Auth Name: myvpnusername) Enter Password (Auth Password: verysecretpassword) and choose your password handling Browse for your User Certificate ('cert' - should be pre-selected with client.crt) Browse for your CA Certificate ('ca' - should be filled as ca.crt) Specify your Private Key ('key' - here: client.pem) Then click on the 'Advanced...' button and check the following values: Use custom gateway port: 443 (second value of 'remote' directive) Check the selected value of Cipher ('cipher') Check HMAC Authentication ('auth') Enter the Subject Match: /O=WatchGuard_Technologies/OU=Fireware/CN=Fireware_SSLVPN_Server ('tls-remote') Finally, you have to confirm and close all dialogs. You should be able to establish your OpenVPN-WatchGuard connection via Network Manager. For that, click on the 'VPN Connections => client' entry on your Network Manager in the systray. It is advised that you keep an eye on the syslog to see whether there are any problematic issues that would require some additional attention. Advanced topic: routing As stated above, I'm running the 'WatchGuard client for Linux' on my head-less server, and since then I'm actually establishing a secure communication channel between two networks. In order to enable your network clients to get access to machines on the remote side there are two possibilities to enable that: Proper routing on both sides of the connection which enables both-direction access, or Network masquerading on the 'client side' of the connection Following, I'm going to describe the second option a little bit more in detail. The Linux system that I'm using is already configured as a gateway to the internet. I won't explain the necessary steps to do that, and will only focus on the additional tweaks I had to do. You can find tons of very good instructions and tutorials on 'How to setup a Linux gateway/router' - just use Google. OK, back to the actual modifications. First, we need to have some information about the network topology and IP address range used on the 'other' side. We can get this very easily from /var/log/syslog after we established the OpenVPN channel, like so: $ sudo tail -n20 /var/log/syslog Or if your system is quite busy with logging, like so: $ sudo less /var/log/syslog | grep ovpn The output should contain PUSH received message similar to the following one: Jul 23 23:13:28 ios1 ovpn-client[789]: PUSH: Received control message: 'PUSH_REPLY,topology subnet,route 192.168.1.0 255.255.255.0,dhcp-option DOMAIN ,route-gateway 192.168.6.1,topology subnet,ping 10,ping-restart 60,ifconfig 192.168.6.2 255.255.255.0' The interesting part for us is the route command which I highlighted already in the sample PUSH_REPLY. Depending on your remote server there might be multiple networks defined (172.16.x.x and/or 10.x.x.x). Important: The IP address range on both sides of the connection has to be different, otherwise you will have to shuffle IPs or increase your the netmask. {loadposition content_adsense} After the VPN connection is established, we have to extend the rules for iptables in order to route and masquerade IP packets properly. I created a shell script to take care of those steps: #!/bin/sh -eIPTABLES=/sbin/iptablesDEV_LAN=eth0DEV_VPNS=tun+VPN=192.168.1.0/24 $IPTABLES -A FORWARD -i $DEV_LAN -o $DEV_VPNS -d $VPN -j ACCEPT$IPTABLES -A FORWARD -i $DEV_VPNS -o $DEV_LAN -s $VPN -j ACCEPT$IPTABLES -t nat -A POSTROUTING -o $DEV_VPNS -d $VPN -j MASQUERADE I'm using the wildcard interface 'tun+' because I have multiple client configurations for OpenVPN on my server. In your case, it might be sufficient to specify device 'tun0' only. Simplifying your life - automatic connect on boot Now, that the client connection works flawless, configuration of routing and iptables is okay, we might consider to add another 'laziness' factor into our setup. Due to kernel updates or other circumstances it might be necessary to reboot your system. Wouldn't it be nice that the VPN connections are established during the boot procedure? Yes, of course it would be. To achieve this, we have to configure OpenVPN to automatically start our VPNs via init script. Let's have a look at the responsible 'default' file and adjust the settings accordingly. $ sudo nano /etc/default/openvpn Which should have a similar content to this: # This is the configuration file for /etc/init.d/openvpn## Start only these VPNs automatically via init script.# Allowed values are "all", "none" or space separated list of# names of the VPNs. If empty, "all" is assumed.# The VPN name refers to the VPN configutation file name.# i.e. "home" would be /etc/openvpn/home.conf#AUTOSTART="all"#AUTOSTART="none"#AUTOSTART="home office"## ... more information which remains unmodified ... With the OpenVPN client configuration as described above you would either set AUTOSTART to "all" or to "client" to enable automatic start of your VPN(s) during boot. You should also take care that your iptables commands are executed after the link has been established, too. You can easily test this configuration without reboot, like so: $ sudo service openvpn restart Enjoy stable VPN connections between your Linux system(s) and a WatchGuard Firebox SSL remote server. Cheers, JoKi

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How to Reuse Your Old Wi-Fi Router as a Network Switch

- by Jason Fitzpatrick

Just because your old Wi-Fi router has been replaced by a newer model doesn’t mean it needs to gather dust in the closet. Read on as we show you how to take an old and underpowered Wi-Fi router and turn it into a respectable network switch (saving your $20 in the process). Image by mmgallan. Why Do I Want To Do This? Wi-Fi technology has changed significantly in the last ten years but Ethernet-based networking has changed very little. As such, a Wi-Fi router with 2006-era guts is lagging significantly behind current Wi-Fi router technology, but the Ethernet networking component of the device is just as useful as ever; aside from potentially being only 100Mbs instead of 1000Mbs capable (which for 99% of home applications is irrelevant) Ethernet is Ethernet. What does this matter to you, the consumer? It means that even though your old router doesn’t hack it for your Wi-Fi needs any longer the device is still a perfectly serviceable (and high quality) network switch. When do you need a network switch? Any time you want to share an Ethernet cable among multiple devices, you need a switch. For example, let’s say you have a single Ethernet wall jack behind your entertainment center. Unfortunately you have four devices that you want to link to your local network via hardline including your smart HDTV, DVR, Xbox, and a little Raspberry Pi running XBMC. Instead of spending $20-30 to purchase a brand new switch of comparable build quality to your old Wi-Fi router it makes financial sense (and is environmentally friendly) to invest five minutes of your time tweaking the settings on the old router to turn it from a Wi-Fi access point and routing tool into a network switch–perfect for dropping behind your entertainment center so that your DVR, Xbox, and media center computer can all share an Ethernet connection. What Do I Need? For this tutorial you’ll need a few things, all of which you likely have readily on hand or are free for download. To follow the basic portion of the tutorial, you’ll need the following: 1 Wi-Fi router with Ethernet ports 1 Computer with Ethernet jack 1 Ethernet cable For the advanced tutorial you’ll need all of those things, plus: 1 copy of DD-WRT firmware for your Wi-Fi router We’re conducting the experiment with a Linksys WRT54GL Wi-Fi router. The WRT54 series is one of the best selling Wi-Fi router series of all time and there’s a good chance a significant number of readers have one (or more) of them stuffed in an office closet. Even if you don’t have one of the WRT54 series routers, however, the principles we’re outlining here apply to all Wi-Fi routers; as long as your router administration panel allows the necessary changes you can follow right along with us. A quick note on the difference between the basic and advanced versions of this tutorial before we proceed. Your typical Wi-Fi router has 5 Ethernet ports on the back: 1 labeled “Internet”, “WAN”, or a variation thereof and intended to be connected to your DSL/Cable modem, and 4 labeled 1-4 intended to connect Ethernet devices like computers, printers, and game consoles directly to the Wi-Fi router. When you convert a Wi-Fi router to a switch, in most situations, you’ll lose two port as the “Internet” port cannot be used as a normal switch port and one of the switch ports becomes the input port for the Ethernet cable linking the switch to the main network. This means, referencing the diagram above, you’d lose the WAN port and LAN port 1, but retain LAN ports 2, 3, and 4 for use. If you only need to switch for 2-3 devices this may be satisfactory. However, for those of you that would prefer a more traditional switch setup where there is a dedicated WAN port and the rest of the ports are accessible, you’ll need to flash a third-party router firmware like the powerful DD-WRT onto your device. Doing so opens up the router to a greater degree of modification and allows you to assign the previously reserved WAN port to the switch, thus opening up LAN ports 1-4. Even if you don’t intend to use that extra port, DD-WRT offers you so many more options that it’s worth the extra few steps. Preparing Your Router for Life as a Switch Before we jump right in to shutting down the Wi-Fi functionality and repurposing your device as a network switch, there are a few important prep steps to attend to. First, you want to reset the router (if you just flashed a new firmware to your router, skip this step). Following the reset procedures for your particular router or go with what is known as the “Peacock Method” wherein you hold down the reset button for thirty seconds, unplug the router and wait (while still holding the reset button) for thirty seconds, and then plug it in while, again, continuing to hold down the rest button. Over the life of a router there are a variety of changes made, big and small, so it’s best to wipe them all back to the factory default before repurposing the router as a switch. Second, after resetting, we need to change the IP address of the device on the local network to an address which does not directly conflict with the new router. The typical default IP address for a home router is 192.168.1.1; if you ever need to get back into the administration panel of the router-turned-switch to check on things or make changes it will be a real hassle if the IP address of the device conflicts with the new home router. The simplest way to deal with this is to assign an address close to the actual router address but outside the range of addresses that your router will assign via the DHCP client; a good pick then is 192.168.1.2. Once the router is reset (or re-flashed) and has been assigned a new IP address, it’s time to configure it as a switch. Basic Router to Switch Configuration If you don’t want to (or need to) flash new firmware onto your device to open up that extra port, this is the section of the tutorial for you: we’ll cover how to take a stock router, our previously mentioned WRT54 series Linksys, and convert it to a switch. Hook the Wi-Fi router up to the network via one of the LAN ports (consider the WAN port as good as dead from this point forward, unless you start using the router in its traditional function again or later flash a more advanced firmware to the device, the port is officially retired at this point). Open the administration control panel via web browser on a connected computer. Before we get started two things: first, anything we don’t explicitly instruct you to change should be left in the default factory-reset setting as you find it, and two, change the settings in the order we list them as some settings can’t be changed after certain features are disabled. To start, let’s navigate to Setup ->Basic Setup. Here you need to change the following things: Local IP Address: [different than the primary router, e.g. 192.168.1.2] Subnet Mask: [same as the primary router, e.g. 255.255.255.0] DHCP Server: Disable Save with the “Save Settings” button and then navigate to Setup -> Advanced Routing: Operating Mode: Router This particular setting is very counterintuitive. The “Operating Mode” toggle tells the device whether or not it should enable the Network Address Translation (NAT) feature. Because we’re turning a smart piece of networking hardware into a relatively dumb one, we don’t need this feature so we switch from Gateway mode (NAT on) to Router mode (NAT off). Our next stop is Wireless -> Basic Wireless Settings: Wireless SSID Broadcast: Disable Wireless Network Mode: Disabled After disabling the wireless we’re going to, again, do something counterintuitive. Navigate to Wireless -> Wireless Security and set the following parameters: Security Mode: WPA2 Personal WPA Algorithms: TKIP+AES WPA Shared Key: [select some random string of letters, numbers, and symbols like JF#d$di!Hdgio890] Now you may be asking yourself, why on Earth are we setting a rather secure Wi-Fi configuration on a Wi-Fi router we’re not going to use as a Wi-Fi node? On the off chance that something strange happens after, say, a power outage when your router-turned-switch cycles on and off a bunch of times and the Wi-Fi functionality is activated we don’t want to be running the Wi-Fi node wide open and granting unfettered access to your network. While the chances of this are next-to-nonexistent, it takes only a few seconds to apply the security measure so there’s little reason not to. Save your changes and navigate to Security ->Firewall. Uncheck everything but Filter Multicast Firewall Protect: Disable At this point you can save your changes again, review the changes you’ve made to ensure they all stuck, and then deploy your “new” switch wherever it is needed. Advanced Router to Switch Configuration For the advanced configuration, you’ll need a copy of DD-WRT installed on your router. Although doing so is an extra few steps, it gives you a lot more control over the process and liberates an extra port on the device. Hook the Wi-Fi router up to the network via one of the LAN ports (later you can switch the cable to the WAN port). Open the administration control panel via web browser on the connected computer. Navigate to the Setup -> Basic Setup tab to get started. In the Basic Setup tab, ensure the following settings are adjusted. The setting changes are not optional and are required to turn the Wi-Fi router into a switch. WAN Connection Type: Disabled Local IP Address: [different than the primary router, e.g. 192.168.1.2] Subnet Mask: [same as the primary router, e.g. 255.255.255.0] DHCP Server: Disable In addition to disabling the DHCP server, also uncheck all the DNSMasq boxes as the bottom of the DHCP sub-menu. If you want to activate the extra port (and why wouldn’t you), in the WAN port section: Assign WAN Port to Switch [X] At this point the router has become a switch and you have access to the WAN port so the LAN ports are all free. Since we’re already in the control panel, however, we might as well flip a few optional toggles that further lock down the switch and prevent something odd from happening. The optional settings are arranged via the menu you find them in. Remember to save your settings with the save button before moving onto a new tab. While still in the Setup -> Basic Setup menu, change the following: Gateway/Local DNS : [IP address of primary router, e.g. 192.168.1.1] NTP Client : Disable The next step is to turn off the radio completely (which not only kills the Wi-Fi but actually powers the physical radio chip off). Navigate to Wireless -> Advanced Settings -> Radio Time Restrictions: Radio Scheduling: Enable Select “Always Off” There’s no need to create a potential security problem by leaving the Wi-Fi radio on, the above toggle turns it completely off. Under Services -> Services: DNSMasq : Disable ttraff Daemon : Disable Under the Security -> Firewall tab, uncheck every box except “Filter Multicast”, as seen in the screenshot above, and then disable SPI Firewall. Once you’re done here save and move on to the Administration tab. Under Administration -> Management: Info Site Password Protection : Enable Info Site MAC Masking : Disable CRON : Disable 802.1x : Disable Routing : Disable After this final round of tweaks, save and then apply your settings. Your router has now been, strategically, dumbed down enough to plod along as a very dependable little switch. Time to stuff it behind your desk or entertainment center and streamline your cabling.

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