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• Conducting Effective Web Meetings

  - by BuckWoody

  There are several forms of corporate communication. From immediate, rich communications like phones and IM messaging to historical transactions like e-mail, there are a lot of ways to get information to one or more people. From time to time, it's even useful to have a meeting. (This is where a witty picture of a guy sleeping in a meeting goes. I won't bother actually putting one here; you're already envisioning it in your mind) Most meetings are pointless, and a complete waste of time. This is the fault, completely and solely, of the organizer. It's because he or she hasn't thought things through enough to think about alternate forms of information passing. Here's the criteria for a good meeting - whether in-person or over the web: 100% of the content of a meeting should require the participation of 100% of the attendees for 100% of the time It doesn't get any simpler than that. If it doesn't meet that criteria, then don't invite that person to that meeting. If you're just conveying information and no one has the need for immediate interaction with that information (like telling you something that modifies the message), then send an e-mail. If you're a manager, and you need to get status from lots of people, pick up the phone.If you need a quick answer, use IM. I once had a high-level manager that called frequent meetings. His real need was status updates on various processes, so 50 of us would sit in a room while he asked each one of us questions. He believed this larger meeting helped us "cross pollinate ideas". In fact, it was a complete waste of time for most everyone, except in the one or two moments that they interacted with him. So I wrote some code for a Palm Pilot (which was a kind of SmartPhone but with no phone and no real graphics, but this was in the days when we had just discovered fire and the wheel, although the order of those things is still in debate) that took an average of the salaries of the people in the room (I guessed at it) and ran a timer which multiplied the number of people against the salaries. I left that running in plain sight for him, and when he asked about it, I explained how much the meetings were really costing the company. We had far fewer meetings after. Meetings are now web-enabled. I believe that's largely a good thing, since it saves on travel time and allows more people to participate, but I think the rule above still holds. And in fact, there are some other rules that you should follow to have a great meeting - and fewer of them. Be Clear About the Goal This is important in any meeting, but all of us have probably gotten an invite with a web link and an ambiguous title. Then you get to the meeting, and it's a 500-level deep-dive on something everyone expects you to know. This is unfair to the "expert" and to the participants. I always tell people that invite me to a meeting that I will be as detailed as I can - but the more detail they can tell me about the questions, the more detailed I can be in my responses. Granted, there are times when you don't know what you don't know, but the more you can say about the topic the better. There's another point here - and it's that you should have a clearly defined "win" for the meeting. When the meeting is over, and everyone goes back to work, what were you expecting them to do with the information? Have that clearly defined in your head, and in the meeting invite. Understand the Technology There are several web-meeting clients out there. I use them all, since I meet with clients all over the world. They all work differently - so I take a few moments and read up on the different clients and find out how I can use the tools properly. I do this with the technology I use for everything else, and it's important to understand it if the meeting is to be a success. If you're running the meeting, know the tools. I don't care if you like the tools or not, learn them anyway. Don't waste everyone else's time just because you're too bitter/snarky/lazy to spend a few minutes reading. Check your phone or mic. Check your video size. Install (and learn to use)  ZoomIT (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897434.aspx). Format your slides or screen or output correctly. Learn to use the voting features of the meeting software, and especially it's whiteboard features. Figure out how multiple monitors work. Try a quick meeting with someone to test all this. Do this *before* you invite lots of other people to your meeting.   Use a WebCam I'm not a pretty man. I have a face fit for radio. But after attending a meeting with clients where one Microsoft person used a webcam and another did not, I'm convinced that people pay more attention when a face is involved. There are tons of studies around this, or you can take my word for it, but toss a shirt on over those pajamas and turn the webcam on. Set Up Early Whether you're attending or leading the meeting, don't wait to sign on to the meeting at the time when it starts. I can almost plan that a 10:00 meeting will actually start at 10:10 because the participants/leader is just now installing the web client for the meeting at 10:00. Sign on early, go on mute, and then wait for everyone to arrive. Mute When Not Talking No one wants to hear your screaming offspring / yappy dog / other cubicle conversations / car wind noise (are you driving in a desert storm or something?) while the person leading the meeting is trying to talk. I use the Lync software from Microsoft for my meetings, and I mute everyone by default, and then tell them to un-mute to talk to the group. Share Collateral If you have a PowerPoint deck, mail it out in case you have a tech failure. If you have a document, share it as an attachment to the meeting. Don't make people ask you for the information - that's why you're there to begin with. Even better, send it out early. "But", you say, "then no one will come to the meeting if they have the deck first!" Uhm, then don't have a meeting. Send out the deck and a quick e-mail and let everyone get on with their productive day. Set Actions At the Meeting A meeting should have some sort of outcome (see point one). That means there are actions to take, a follow up, or some deliverable. Otherwise, it's an e-mail. At the meeting, decide who will do what, when things are needed, and so on. And avoid, if at all possible, setting up another meeting, unless absolutely necessary. So there you have it. Whether it's on-premises or on the web, meetings are a necessary evil, and should be treated that way. Like politicians, you should have as few of them as are necessary to keep the roads paved and public libraries open.

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• Agilist, Heal Thyself!

  - by Dylan Smith

  I’ve been meaning to blog about a great experience I had earlier in the year at Prairie Dev Con Calgary.  Myself and Steve Rogalsky did a session that we called “Agilist, Heal Thyself!”.  We used a format that was new to me, but that Steve had seen used at another conference.  What we did was start by asking the audience to give us a list of challenges they had had when adopting agile.  We wrote them all down, then had everybody vote on the most interesting ones.  Then we split into two groups, and each group was assigned one of the agile challenges.  We had 20 minutes to discuss the challenge, and suggest solutions or approaches to improve things.  At the end of the 20 minutes, each of the groups gave a brief summary of their discussion and learning's, then we mixed up the groups and repeated with another 2 challenges. The 2 groups I was part of had some really interesting discussions, and suggestions: Unfinished Stories at the end of Sprints The first agile challenge we tackled, was something that every single Scrum team I have worked with has struggled with.  What happens when you get to the end of a Sprint, and there are some stories that are only partially completed.  The team in question was getting very de-moralized as they felt that every Sprint was a failure as they never had a set of fully completed stories. How do you avoid this? and/or what do you do when it happens? There were 2 pieces of advice that were well received: 1. Try to bring stories to completion before starting new ones.  This is advice I give all my Scrum teams.  If you have a 3-week sprint, what happens all too often is you get to the end of week 2, and a lot of stories are almost done; but almost none are completely done.  This is a Bad Thing.  I encourage the teams I work with to only start a new story as a very last resort.  If you finish your task look at the stories in progress and see if there’s anything you can do to help before moving onto a new story.  In the daily standup, put a focus on seeing what stories got completed yesterday, if a few days go by with none getting completed, be sure this fact is visible to the team and do something about it.  Something I’ve been doing recently is introducing WIP (Work In Progress) limits while using Scrum.  My current team has 2-week sprints, and we usually have about a dozen or stories in a sprint.  We instituted a WIP limit of 4 stories.  If 4 stories have been started but not finished then nobody is allowed to start new stories.  This made it obvious very quickly that our QA tasks were our bottleneck (we have 4 devs, but only 1.5 testers).  The WIP limit forced the developers to start to pickup QA tasks before moving onto the next dev tasks, and we ended our sprints with many more stories completely finished than we did before introducing WIP limits. 2. Rather than using time-boxed sprints, why not just do away with them altogether and go to a continuous flow type approach like KanBan.  Limit WIP to keep things under control, but don’t have a fixed time box at the end of which all tasks are supposed to be done.  This eliminates the problem almost entirely.  At some points in the project (releases) you need to be able to burn down all the half finished stories to get a stable release build, but this probably occurs less often than every sprint, and there are alternative approaches to achieve it using branching strategies rather than forcing your team to try to get to Zero WIP every 2-weeks (e.g. when you are ready for a release, create a new branch for any new stories, but finish all existing stories in the current branch and release it). Trying to Introduce Agile into a team with previous Bad Agile Experiences One of the agile adoption challenges somebody described, was he was in a leadership role on a team he had recently joined – lets call him Dave.  This team was currently very waterfall in their ALM process, but they were about to start on a new green-field project.  Dave wanted to use this new project as an opportunity to do things the “right way”, using an Agile methodology like Scrum, adopting TDD, automated builds, proper branching strategies, etc.  The problem he was facing is everybody else on the team had previously gone through an “Agile Adoption” that was a horrible failure.  Dave blamed this failure on the consultant brought in previously to lead this agile transition, but regardless of the reason, the team had very negative feelings towards agile, and was very resistant to trying it out again.  Dave possibly had the authority to try to force the team to adopt Agile practices, but we all know that doesn’t work very well.  What was Dave to do? Ultimately, the best advice was to question *why* did Dave want to adopt all these various practices. Rather than trying to convince his team that these were the “right way” to run a dev project, and trying to do a Big Bang approach to introducing change.  He would be better served by identifying problems the team currently faces, have a discussion with the team to get everybody to agree that specific problems existed, then have an open discussion about ways to address those problems.  This way Dave could incrementally introduce agile practices, and he doesn’t even need to identify them as “agile” practices if he doesn’t want to.  For example, when we discussed with Dave, he said probably the teams biggest problem was long periods without feedback from users, then finding out too late that the software is not going to meet their needs.  Rather than Dave jumping right to introducing Scrum and all it entails, it would be easier to get buy-in from team if he framed it as a discussion of existing problems, and brainstorming possible solutions.  And possibly most importantly, don’t try to do massive changes all at once with a team that has not bought-into those changes.  Taking an incremental approach has a greater chance of success. I see something similar in my day job all the time too.  Clients who for one reason or another claim to not be fans of agile (or not ready for agile yet).  But then they go on to ask me to help them get shorter feedback cycles, quicker delivery cycles, iterative development processes, etc.  It’s kind of funny at times, sometimes you just need to phrase the suggestions in terms they are using and avoid the word “agile”. PS – I haven’t blogged all that much over the past couple of years, but in an attempt to motivate myself, a few of us have accepted a blogger challenge.  There’s 6 of us who have all put some money into a pool, and the agreement is that we each need to blog at least once every 2-weeks.  The first 2-week period that we miss we’re eliminated.  Last person standing gets the money.  So expect at least one blog post every couple of weeks for the near future (I hope!).  And check out the blogs of the other 5 people in this blogger challenge: Steve Rogalsky: http://winnipegagilist.blogspot.ca Aaron Kowall: http://www.geekswithblogs.net/caffeinatedgeek Tyler Doerkson: http://blog.tylerdoerksen.com David Alpert: http://www.spinthemoose.com Dave White: http://www.agileramblings.com (note: site not available yet.  should be shortly or he owes me some money!)

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• Simplifying Human Capital Management with Mobile Applications

  - by HCM-Oracle

  By Aaron Green If you're starting to think 'mobility' is a recurring theme in your reading, you'd be right. For those who haven't started to build organisational capabilities to leverage it, it's fair to say you're late to the party. The good news: better late than never. Research firm eMarketer says the worldwide smartphone audience will total 1.75 billion this year, while communications technology and services provider Ericsson suggests smartphones will triple to 5.6 billion globally by 2019. It should be no surprise, smart phone adoption is reaching the farthest corners of the globe; the subsequent impact of enterprise applications enabled by these devices is driving business performance improvement and will continue to do so. Companies using advanced workforce analytics can add significantly to the bottom line, while impacting customer satisfaction, quality and productivity. It's a statement that makes most business leaders sit forward in their chairs. Achieving these three standards is like sipping The Golden Elixir for the business world. No-one would argue their importance. So what are 'advanced workforce analytics?' Simply, they're unprecedented access to workforce trends and performance markers. Many are made possible by a mobile world and the enterprise applications that come with it on smart devices. Some refer to it as 'the consumerisation of IT'. As this phenomenon has matured and become more widely appreciated it has impacted the spectrum of functional units within an enterprise differently, but powerfully. Whether it's sales, HR, marketing, IT, or operations, all have benefited from a more mobile approach. It has been the catalyst for improvement in, and management of, the employee experience. The net result of which is happier customers. The obvious benefits but the lesser realised impact Most people understand that mobility allows for greater efficiency and productivity, collaboration and flexibility, but how that translates into business outcomes within the various functional groups is lesser known. In actuality mobility has helped galvanise partnerships between cross-functional groups within the enterprise. Where in some quarters it was once feared mobility could fragment a workforce, its rallying cry of support is coming from what you might describe as an unlikely source - HR. As the bedrock of an enterprise, it is conceivable HR might contemplate the possible negative impact of a mobile workforce that no-longer sits in an office, at the same desks every day. After all, who would know what they were doing or saying? How would they collaborate? It's reasonable to see why HR might have a legitimate claim to try and retain as much 'perceived control' as possible. The reality however is mobility has emancipated human capital and its management. Mobility and enterprise applications are expediting decision making. Google calls it Zero Moment of Truth, or ZMOT. It enables smoother operation and can contribute to faster growth. From a collaborative perspective, with the growing use of enterprise social media, which in many cases is being driven by HR, workforce planning and the tangible impact of change is much easier to map. This in turn provides a platform from which individuals and teams can thrive. With more agility and ability to anticipate, staff satisfaction and retention is higher, and real time feedback constant. The management team can save time, energy and costs with more accurate data, which is then intelligently applied across the workforce to truly engage with staff, customers and partners. From a human capital management (HCM) perspective, mobility can help you close the loop on true talent management. It can enhance what managers can offer and what employees can provide in return. It can create nested relationships and powerful partnerships. IT and HR - partners and stewards of mobility One effect of enterprise mobility is an evolution in the nature of the relationship between HR and IT from one of service provision to partnership. The reason for the dynamic shift is largely due to the 'bring your own device' (BYOD) movement, which is transitioning to a 'bring your own application' (BYOA) scenario. As enterprise technology has in some ways reverse-engineered its solutions to help manage this situation, the partnership between IT (the functional owner) and HR (the strategic enabler) is deeply entrenched. And it has to be. The CIO and the HR leader are faced with compliance and regulatory issues and concerns around information security and personal privacy on a daily basis, complicated by global reach and varied domestic legislation. There are tens of thousands of new mobile apps entering the market each month and, unlike many consumer applications which get downloaded but are often never opened again after initial perusal, enterprise applications are being relied upon by functional groups, not least by HR to enhance people management. It requires a systematic approach across all applications in use within the enterprise in order to ensure they're used to best effect. No turning back, and no desire to With real time analytics on performance and the ability for immediate feedback, there is no turning back for managers. In my experience with Oracle, our customers' operational efficiency is at record levels. It's clear as a result of the combination of individual KPIs and organisational goals, CIOs have been able to give HR leaders the ability to build predictive models that feed into an enterprise organisations' evolving strategy. It also helps them ensure regulatory compliance much more easily. Once an arduous task, with mobile enabled automation and quality data, compliance is simpler. Their world has changed for the better. For the CIO, mobility also assists them to optimise performance. While it doesn't come without challenges, mobile-enabled applications and the native experience users have with them means employees don't need high-level technical expertise to train users. It reduces the training and engagement required from the IT team so they can focus on other things that deliver value to the bottom line; all the while lowering the cost of assets and related maintenance work by simplifying processes. Rewards of a mobile enterprise outweigh risks With mobile tools allowing us to increasingly integrate our personal and professional lives, terms like "office hours" are becoming irrelevant, so work/life balance is a cultural must. Enterprises are expected to offer tools that enable workers to access information from anywhere, at any time, from any device. Employees want simplicity and convenience but it doesn't stop at private enterprise. This is a societal shift. Governments, which traditionally have been known to be slower to adopt newer technology, are also offering support for local businesses to go mobile. Several state government websites have advice on how to create mobile apps and more. And as recently as last week the Victorian Minister for Technology Gordon Rich-Phillips unveiled his State government's ICT roadmap for the next two years, which details an increased use of the public cloud, as well as mobile communications, and improved access to online data-sets. Tech giants are investing significantly in solutions designed to simplify mobile deployment and enablement. The mobility trend is creating a wave of change in the industry and driving transformation in the enterprise. If you're not on that wave, the business risk continues to rise as your competitiveness drops. Aaron is the Vice President of HCM Strategy at Oracle Corporation where he is responsible for researching and identifying emerging trends in the practice of Human Resources and works to deliver industry-leading technology solutions. Other responsibilities include, ownership of Oracle's innovative HCM solutions across JAPAC and enabling organisations to transform and modernise their workforce tools. Follow him on Twitter @aaronjgreen

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• Let your Signature Experience drive IT-decision making

  - by Tania Le Voi

  Today’s CIO job description:  ‘’Align IT infrastructure and solutions with business goals and objectives ; AND while doing so reduce costs; BUT ALSO, be innovative, ensure the architectures are adaptable and agile as we need to act today on the changes that we may request tomorrow.”   Sound like an unachievable request? The fact is, reality dictates that CIO’s are put under this type of pressure to deliver more with less. In a past career phase I spent a few years as an IT Relationship Manager for a large Insurance company. This is a role that we see all too infrequently in many of our customers, and it’s a shame.  The purpose of this role was to build a bridge, a relationship between IT and the business. Key to achieving that goal was to ensure the same language was being spoken and more importantly that objectives were commonly understood - hence service and projects were delivered to time, to budget and actually solved the business problems. In reality IT and the business are already married, but the relationship is most often defined as ‘supplier’ of IT rather than a ‘trusted partner’. To deliver business value they need to understand how to work together effectively to attain this next level of partnership. The Business cannot compete if they do not get a new product to market ahead of the competition, or for example act in a timely manner to address a new industry problem such as a legislative change. An even better example is when the Application or Service fails and the Business takes a hit by bad publicity, being trending topics on social media and losing direct revenue from online channels. For this reason alone Business and IT need the alignment of their priorities and deliverables now more than ever! Take a look at Forrester’s recent study that found ‘many IT respondents considering themselves to be trusted partners of the business but their efforts are impaired by the inadequacy of tools and organizations’.  IT Meet the Business; Business Meet IT So what is going on? We talk about aligning the business with IT but the reality is it’s difficult to do. Like any relationship each side has different goals and needs and language can be a barrier; business vs. technology jargon! What if we could translate the needs of both sides into actionable information, backed by data both sides understand, presented in a meaningful way?  Well now we can with the Business-Driven Application Management capabilities in Oracle Enterprise Manager 12cR2! Enterprise Manager’s Business-Driven Application Management capabilities provide the information that IT needs to understand the impact of its decisions on business criteria.  No longer does IT need to be focused solely on speeds and feeds, performance and throughput – now IT can understand IT’s impact on business KPIs like inventory turns, order-to-cash cycle, pipeline-to-forecast, and similar.  Similarly, now the line of business can understand which IT services are most critical for the KPIs they care about. There are a good deal of resources on Oracle Technology Network that describe the functionality of these products, so I won’t’ rehash them here.  What I want to talk about is what you do with these products. What’s next after we meet? Where do you start? Step 1:  Identify the Signature Experience. This is THE business process (or set of processes) that is core to the business, the one that drives the economic engine, the process that a customer recognises the company brand for, reputation, the customer experience, the process that a CEO would state as his number one priority. The crème de la crème of your business! Once you have nailed this it gets easy as Enterprise Manager 12c makes it easy. Step 2:  Map the Signature Experience to underlying IT.  Taking the signature experience, map out the touch points of the components that play a part in ensuring this business transaction is successful end to end, think of it like mapping out a critical path; the applications, middleware, databases and hardware. Use the wealth of Enterprise Manager features such as Systems, Services, Business Application Targets and Business Transaction Management (BTM) to assist you. Adding Real User Experience Insight (RUEI) into the mix will make the end to end customer satisfaction story transparent. Work with the business and define meaningful key performance indicators (KPI’s) and thresholds to enable you to report and action upon. Step 3:  Observe the data over time.  You now have meaningful insight into every step enabling your signature experience and you understand the implication of that experience on your underlying IT.  Watch if for a few months, see what happens and reconvene with your business stakeholders and set clear and measurable targets which can re-define service levels.  Step 4:  Change the information about which you and the business communicate.  It’s amazing what happens when you and the business speak the same language.  You’ll be able to make more informed business and IT decisions. From here IT can identify where/how budget is spent whether on the level of support, performance, capacity, HA, DR, certification etc. IT SLA’s no longer need be focused on metrics such as %availability but structured around business process requirements. The power of this way of thinking doesn’t end here. IT staff get to see and understand how their own role contributes to the business making them accountable for the business service. Take a step further and appraise your staff on the business competencies that are linked to the service availability. For the business, the language barrier is removed by producing targeted reports on the signature experience core to the business and therefore key to the CEO. Chargeback or show back becomes easier to justify as the ‘cost of day per outage’ can be more easily calculated; the business will be able to translate the cost to the business to the cost/value of the underlying IT that supports it. Used this way, Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c is a key enabler to a harmonious relationship between the end customer the business and IT to deliver ultimate service and satisfaction. Just engage with the business upfront, make the signature experience visible and let Enterprise Manager 12c do the rest. In the next blog entry we will cover some of the Enterprise Manager features mentioned to enable you to implement this new way of working.  

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• Delight and Excite

  - by Applications User Experience

  Mick McGee, CEO & President, EchoUser Editor’s Note: EchoUser is a User Experience design firm in San Francisco and a member of the Oracle Usability Advisory Board. Mick and his staff regularly consult on Oracle Applications UX projects. Being part of a user experience design firm, we have the luxury of working with a lot of great people across many great companies. We get to help people solve their problems.  At least we used to. The basic design challenge is still the same; however, the goal is not necessarily to solve “problems” anymore; it is, “I want our products to delight and excite!” The question for us as UX professionals is how to design to those goals, and then how to assess them from a usability perspective. I’m not sure where I first heard “delight and excite” (A book? blog post? Facebook  status? Steve Jobs quote?), but now I hear these listed as user experience goals all the time. In particular, somewhat paradoxically, I routinely hear them in enterprise software conversations. And when asking these same enterprise companies what will make the project successful, we very often hear, “Make it like Apple.” In past days, it was “make it like Yahoo (or Amazon or Google“) but now Apple is the common benchmark. Steve Jobs and Apple were not secrets, but with Jobs’ passing and Apple becoming the world’s most valuable company in the last year, the impact of great design and experience is suddenly very widespread. In particular, users’ expectations have gone way up. Being an enterprise company is no shield to the general expectations that users now have, for all products. Designing a “Minimum Viable Product” The user experience challenge has historically been, to echo the words of Eric Ries (author of Lean Startup) , to create a “minimum viable product”: the proverbial, “make it good enough”. But, in our profession, the “minimum viable” part of that phrase has oftentimes, unfortunately, referred to the design and user experience. Technology typically dominated the focus of the biggest, most successful companies. Few have had the laser focus of Apple to also create and sell design and user experience alongside great technology. But now that Apple is the most valuable company in the world, copying their success is a common undertaking. Great design is now a premium offering that everyone wants, from the one-person startup to the largest companies, consumer and enterprise. This emerging business paradigm will have significant impact across the user experience design process and profession. One area that particularly interests me is, how are we going to evaluate these new emerging “delight and excite” experiences, which are further customized to each particular domain? How to Measure “Delight and Excite” Traditional usability measures of task completion rate, assists, time, and errors are still extremely useful in many situations; however, they are too blunt to offer much insight into emerging experiences “Satisfaction” is usually assessed in user testing, in roughly equivalent importance to the above objective metrics. Various surveys and scales have provided ways to measure satisfying UX, with whatever questions they include. However, to meet the demands of new business goals and keep users at the center of design and development processes, we have to explore new methods to better capture custom-experience goals and emotion-driven user responses. We have had success assessing custom experiences, including “delight and excite”, by employing a variety of user testing methods that tend to combine formative and summative techniques (formative being focused more on identifying usability issues and ways to improve design, and summative focused more on metrics). Our most successful tool has been one we’ve been using for a long time, Magnitude Estimation Technique (MET). But it’s not necessarily about MET as a measure, rather how it is created. Caption: For one client, EchoUser did two rounds of testing.  Each test was a mix of performing representative tasks and gathering qualitative impressions. Each user participated in an in-person moderated 1-on-1 session for 1 hour, using a testing set-up where they held the phone. The primary goal was to identify usability issues and recommend design improvements. MET is based on a definition of the desired experience, which users will then use to rate items of interest (usually tasks in a usability test). In other words, a custom experience definition needs to be created. This can then be used to measure satisfaction in accomplishing tasks; “delight and excite”; or anything else from strategic goals, user demands, or elsewhere. For reference, our standard MET definition in usability testing is: “User experience is your perception of how easy to use, well designed and productive an interface is to complete tasks.” Articulating the User Experience We’ve helped construct experience definitions for several clients to better match their business goals. One example is a modification of the above that was needed for a company that makes medical-related products: “User experience is your perception of how easy to use, well-designed, productive and safe an interface is for conducting tasks. ‘Safe’ is how free an environment (including devices, software, facilities, people, etc.) is from danger, risk, and injury.” Another example is from a company that is pushing hard to incorporate “delight” into their enterprise business line: “User experience is your perception of a product’s ease of use and learning, satisfaction and delight in design, and ability to accomplish objectives.” I find the last one particularly compelling in that there is little that identifies the experience as being for a highly technical enterprise application. That definition could easily be applied to any number of consumer products. We have gone further than the above, including “sexy” and “cool” where decision-makers insisted they were part of the desired experience. We also applied it to completely different experiences where the “interface” was, for example, riding public transit, the “tasks” were train rides, and we followed the participants through the train-riding journey and rated various aspects accordingly: “A good public transportation experience is a cost-effective way of reliably, conveniently, and safely getting me to my intended destination on time.” To construct these definitions, we’ve employed both bottom-up and top-down approaches, depending on circumstances. For bottom-up, user inputs help dictate the terms that best fit the desired experience (usually by way of cluster and factor analysis). Top-down depends on strategic, visionary goals expressed by upper management that we then attempt to integrate into product development (e.g., “delight and excite”). We like a combination of both approaches to push the innovation envelope, but still be mindful of current user concerns. Hopefully the idea of crafting your own custom experience, and a way to measure it, can provide you with some ideas how you can adapt your user experience needs to whatever company you are in. Whether product-development or service-oriented, nearly every company is ultimately providing a user experience. The Bottom Line Creating great experiences may have been popularized by Steve Jobs and Apple, but I’ll be honest, it’s a good feeling to be moving from “good enough” to “delight and excite,” despite the challenge that entails. In fact, it’s because of that challenge that we will expand what we do as UX professionals to help deliver and assess those experiences. I’m excited to see how we, Oracle, and the rest of the industry will live up to that challenge.

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• Making Those PanelBoxes Behave

  - by Duncan Mills

  I have a little problem to solve earlier this week - misbehaving <af:panelBox> components... What do I mean by that? Well here's the scenario, I have a page fragment containing a set of panelBoxes arranged vertically. As it happens, they are stamped out in a loop but that does not really matter. What I want to be able to do is to provide the user with a simple UI to close and open all of the panelBoxes in concert. This could also apply to showDetailHeader and similar items with a disclosed attrubute, but in this case it's good old panelBoxes.  Ok, so the basic solution to this should be self evident. I can set up a suitable scoped managed bean that the panelBoxes all refer to for their disclosed attribute state. Then the open all / close commandButtons in the UI can simply set the state of that bean for all the panelBoxes to pick up via EL on their disclosed attribute. Sound OK? Well that works basically without a hitch, but turns out that there is a slight problem and this is where the framework is attempting to be a little too helpful. The issue is that is the user manually discloses or hides a panelBox then that will override the value that the EL is setting. So for example. I start the page with all panelBoxes collapsed, all set by the EL state I'm storing on the session I manually disclose panelBox no 1. I press the Expand All button - all works as you would hope and all the panelBoxes are now disclosed, including of course panelBox 1 which I just expanded manually. Finally I press the Collapse All button and everything collapses except that first panelBox that I manually disclosed.  The problem is that the component remembers this manual disclosure and that overrides the value provided by the expression. If I change the viewId (navigate away and back) then the panelBox will start to behave again, until of course I touch it again! Now, the more astute amoungst you would think (as I did) Ah, sound like the MDS personalizaton stuff is getting in the way and the solution should simply be to set the dontPersist attribute to disclosed | ALL. Alas this does not fix the issue.  After a little noodling on the best way to approach this I came up with a solution that works well, although if you think of an alternative way do let me know. The principle is simple. In the disclosureListener for the panelBox I take a note of the clientID of the panelBox component that has been touched by the user along with the state. This all gets stored in a Map of Booleans in ViewScope which is keyed by clientID and stores the current disclosed state in the Boolean value.  The listener looks like this (it's held in a request scope backing bean for the page): public void handlePBDisclosureEvent(DisclosureEvent disclosureEvent) { String clientId = disclosureEvent.getComponent().getClientId(FacesContext.getCurrentInstance()); boolean state = disclosureEvent.isExpanded(); pbState.addTouchedPanelBox(clientId, state); } The pbState variable referenced here is a reference to the bean which will hold the state of the panelBoxes that lives in viewScope (recall that everything is re-set when the viewid is changed so keeping this in viewScope is just fine and cleans things up automatically). The addTouchedPanelBox() method looks like this: public void addTouchedPanelBox(String clientId, boolean state) { //create the cache if needed this is just a Map<String,Boolean> if (_touchedPanelBoxState == null) { _touchedPanelBoxState = new HashMap<String, Boolean>(); } // Simply put / replace _touchedPanelBoxState.put(clientId, state); } So that's the first part, we now have a record of every panelBox that the user has touched. So what do we do when the Collapse All or Expand All buttons are pressed? Here we do some JavaScript magic. Basically for each clientID that we have stored away, we issue a client side disclosure event from JavaScript - just as if the user had gone back and changed it manually. So here's the Collapse All button action: public String CloseAllAction() { submitDiscloseOverride(pbState.getTouchedClientIds(true), false); _uiManager.closeAllBoxes(); return null; }  The _uiManager.closeAllBoxes() method is just manipulating the master-state that all of the panelBoxes are bound to using EL. The interesting bit though is the line:  submitDiscloseOverride(pbState.getTouchedClientIds(true), false); To break that down, the first part is a call to that viewScoped state holder to ask for a list of clientIDs that need to be "tweaked": public String getTouchedClientIds(boolean targetState) { StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder(); if (_touchedPanelBoxState != null && _touchedPanelBoxState.size() > 0) { for (Map.Entry<String, Boolean> entry : _touchedPanelBoxState.entrySet()) { if (entry.getValue() == targetState) { if (sb.length() > 0) { sb.append(','); } sb.append(entry.getKey()); } } } return sb.toString(); } You'll notice that this method only processes those panelBoxes that will be in the wrong state and returns those as a comma separated list. This is then processed by the submitDiscloseOverride() method: private void submitDiscloseOverride(String clientIdList, boolean targetDisclosureState) { if (clientIdList != null && clientIdList.length() > 0) { FacesContext fctx = FacesContext.getCurrentInstance(); StringBuilder script = new StringBuilder(); script.append("overrideDiscloseHandler('"); script.append(clientIdList); script.append("',"); script.append(targetDisclosureState); script.append(");"); Service.getRenderKitService(fctx, ExtendedRenderKitService.class).addScript(fctx, script.toString()); } } This method constructs a JavaScript command to call a routine called overrideDiscloseHandler() in a script attached to the page (using the standard <af:resource> tag). That method parses out the list of clientIDs and sends the correct message to each one: function overrideDiscloseHandler(clientIdList, newState) { AdfLogger.LOGGER.logMessage(AdfLogger.INFO, "Disclosure Hander newState " + newState + " Called with: " + clientIdList); //Parse out the list of clientIds var clientIdArray = clientIdList.split(','); for (var i = 0; i < clientIdArray.length; i++){ var panelBox = flipPanel = AdfPage.PAGE.findComponentByAbsoluteId(clientIdArray[i]); if (panelBox.getComponentType() == "oracle.adf.RichPanelBox"){ panelBox.broadcast(new AdfDisclosureEvent(panelBox, newState)); } }  }  So there you go. You can see how, with a few tweaks the same code could be used for other components with disclosure that might suffer from the same problem, although I'd point out that the behavior I'm working around here us usually desirable. You can download the running example (11.1.2.2) from here. 

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• Webcast Q&A: ING on How to Scale Role Management and Compliance

  - by Tanu Sood

  Thanks to all who attended the live webcast we hosted on ING: Scaling Role Management and Access Certifications to Thousands of Applications on Wed, April 11th. Those of you who couldn’t join us, the webcast replay is now available. Many thanks to our guest speaker, Mark Robison, Enterprise Architect at ING for walking us through ING’s drivers and rationale for the platform approach, the phased implementation strategy, results & metrics, roadmap and recommendations. We greatly appreciate the insight he shared with us all on the deployment synergies between Oracle Identity Manager (OIM) and Oracle Identity Analytics (OIA) to enforce streamlined user and role management and scalable compliance. Mark was also kind enough to walk us through specific solutions features that helped ING manage the problem of role explosion and implement closed loop remediation. Our host speaker, Neil Gandhi, Principal Product Manager, Oracle rounded off the presentation by discussing common use cases and deployment scenarios we see organizations implement to automate user/identity administration and enforce closed-loop scalable compliance. Neil also called out the specific features in Oracle Identity Analytics 11gR1 that cater to expediting and streamlining compliance processes such as access certifications. While we tackled a few questions during the webcast, we have captured the responses to those that we weren’t able to get to here; our sincere thanks to Mark Robison for taking the time to respond to questions specific to ING’s implementation and strategy. Q. Did you include business friendly entitlment descriptions, or is the business seeing application descriptors A. We include very business friendly descriptions.  The OIA tool has the facility to allow this. Q. When doing attestation on job change, who is in the workflow to review and confirm that the employee should continue to have access? Is that a best practice?   A. The new and old manager  are in the workflow.  The tool can check for any Separation of Duties (SOD) violations with both having similiar accesses.  It may not be a best practice, but it is a reality of doing your old and new job for a transition period on a transfer. Q. What versions of OIM and OIA are being used at ING?   A. OIM 11gR1 and OIA 11gR1; the very latest versions available. Q. Are you using an entitlements / role catalog?   A. Yes. We use both roles and entitlements. Q. What specific unexpected benefits did the Identity Warehouse provide ING?   A. The most unanticipated was to help Legal Hold identify user ID's in the various applications.   Other benefits included providing a one stop shop for all aggregated ID information. Q. How fine grained are your application and entitlements? Did OIA, OIM support that level of granularity?   A. We have some very fine grained entitlements, but we role this up into approved Roles to allow for easier management.   For managing very fine grained entitlements, Oracle offers the Oracle Entitlement Server.  We currently do not own this software but are considering it. Q. Do you allow any individual access or is everything truly role based?   A. We are a hybrid environment with roles and individual positive and negative entitlements Q. Did you use an Agile methodology like scrum to deliver functionality during your project? A. We started with waterfall, but used an agile approach to provide benefits after the initial implementation Q. How did you handle rolling out the standard ID format to existing users? A. We just used the standard IDs for new users.  We have not taken on a project to address the existing nonstandard IDs. Q. To avoid role explosion, how do you deal with apps that require more than a couple of entitlement TYPES? For example, an app may have different levels of access and it may need to know the user's country/state to associate them with particular customers.   A. We focus on the functional user and craft the role around their daily job requirements.  The role captures the required application entitlements.  To keep role explosion down, we use role mining in OIA and also meet and interview the business.  It is an iterative process to get role consensus. Q. Great presentation! How many rounds of Certifications has ING performed so far?  A. Around 7 quarters and constant certifications on transfer. Q. Did you have executive support from the top down   A. Yes  The executive support was key to our success. Q. For your cloud instance are you using OIA or OIM as SaaS?  A. No.  We are just provisioning and deprovisioning to various Cloud providers.  (Service Now is an example) Q. How do you ensure a role owner does not get more priviliges as are intended and thus violates another role, e,g, a DBA Roles should not get tor rigt to run somethings as root, as this would affect the root role? A. We have SOD  checks.  Also all Roles are initially approved by external audit and the role owners have to certify the roles and any changes Q. What is your ratio of employees to roles?   A. We are still in process going through our various lines of business, so I do not have a final ratio.  From what we have seen, the ratio varies greatly depending on the Line of Business and the diversity of Job Functions.  For standardized lines of business such as call centers, the ratio is very good where we can have a single role that covers many employees.  For specialized lines of business like treasury, it can be one or two people per role. Q. Is ING using Oracle On Demand service ?   A. No Q. Do you have to implement or migrate to OIM in order to get the Identity Warehouse, or can OIA provide the identity warehouse as well if you haven't reached OIM yet? A. No, OIM deployment is not required to implement OIA’s Identity Warehouse but as you heard during the webcast, there are tremendous deployment synergies in deploying both OIA and OIM together. Q. When is the Security Governor product coming out? A. Oracle Security Governor for Healthcare is available today. Hope you enjoyed the webcast and we look forward to having you join us for the next webcast in the Customers Talk: Identity as a Platform webcast series: Toyota: Putting Customers First – Identity Platform as a Business Enabler Wednesday, May 16th at 10 am PST/ 1 pm EST Register Today You can also register for a live event at a city near you where Aberdeen’s Derek Brink will discuss the survey results from the recently published report “Analyzing Platform vs. Point Solution Approach in Identity”. And, you can do a quick (& free)  online assessment of your identity programs by benchmarking it against the 160 organizations surveyed  in the Aberdeen report, compliments of Oracle. Here’s the slide deck from our ING webcast: ING webcast platform View more presentations from OracleIDM

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• Azure Task Scheduling Options

  - by charlie.mott

  Currently, the Azure PaaS does not offer a distributed\resilient task scheduling service.  If you do want to host a task scheduling product\solution off-premise (and ideally use Azure), what are your options? PaaS Option 1: Worker Roles Use a worker role to schedule and execute actions at specific time periods.  There are a few frameworks available to assist with this: http://azuretoolkit.codeplex.com https://github.com/Lokad/lokad-cloud/wiki/TaskScheduler http://blog.smarx.com/posts/building-a-task-scheduler-in-windows-azure - This addresses a slightly different set of requirements. It’s a more dynamic approach for queuing up tasks, but not repeatable tasks (e.g. daily). I found the Azure Toolkit option the most simple to implement.  Step 1 : Create a domain entity implementing IJob for each job to schedule.  In this sample, I asynchronously call a WCF service method. 1: namespace Acme.WorkerRole.Jobs 2: { 3: using AzureToolkit; 4: using ScheduledTasksService; 5: 6: public class UploadEmployeesJob : IJob 7: { 8: public void Run() 9: { 10: // Call Tasks Service 11: var client = new ScheduledTasksServiceClient("BasicHttpBinding_IScheduledTasksService"); 12: client.UploadEmployees(); 13: client.Close(); 14: } 15: } 16: } Step 2 : In the worker role run method, add the jobs to the toolkit engine. 1: namespace Acme.WorkerRole 2: { 3: using AzureToolkit.Engine; 4: using Jobs; 5:   6: public class WorkerRole : WorkerRoleEntryPoint 7: { 8: public override void Run() 9: { 10: var engine = new CloudEngine(); 11:   12: // Add Scheduled Jobs (using CronJob syntax - see http://www.adminschoice.com/crontab-quick-reference). 13:   14: // 1. Upload Employee job - 8.00 PM every weekday (Mon-Fri) 15: engine.WithJobScheduler().ScheduleJob<UploadEmployeesJob>(c => { c.CronSchedule = "0 20 * * 1-5"; }); 16: // 2. Purge Data job - 10 AM every Saturday 17: engine.WithJobScheduler().ScheduleJob<PurgeDataJob>(c => { c.CronSchedule = "0 10 * * 6"; }); 18: // 3. Process Exceptions job - Every 5 minutes 19: engine.WithJobScheduler().ScheduleJob<ProcessExceptionsJob>(c => { c.CronSchedule = "*/5 * * * *"; }); 20:   21: engine.Run(); 22: base.Run(); 23: } 24: } 25: } Pros Cons Azure Toolkit option is simple to implement. For the AzureToolkit option, you are limited to a single worker role.  Otherwise, the jobs will be executed multiple times, once for each worker role instance.   Paying for a continuously running worker role, even if it just processes a single job once a week.  If you only have a few scheduled tasks to run calling asynchronous services hosted in different web roles, an extra small worker role likely to be sufficient.  However, for an extra small worker role this still costs $14.40/month (03/09/2012). Option 2: Use Scheduled Task on Azure Web Role calling a console app Setup a Windows Scheduled Task on the Azure Web Role. This calls a console application that calls the WCF service methods that run the task actions. This design is described here: http://www.ronaldwidha.net/2011/02/23/cron-job-on-azure-using-scheduled-task-on-a-web-role-to-replace-azure-worker-role-for-background-job/ http://www.voiceoftech.com/swhitley/index.php/2011/07/windows-azure-task-scheduler/ http://devlicio.us/blogs/vinull/archive/2011/10/23/moving-to-azure-worker-roles-for-nothing-and-tasks-for-free.aspx Pros Cons Fairly easy to implement. Supportability - I RDC’ed onto the Azure server and stopped the scheduled task. I then rebooted the machine and the task was re-started. I also tried deleting the task and rebooting, the same thing occurred. The only way to permanently guarantee that a task is disabled is to do a fresh deployment. I think this is a major supportability concern.   Saleability - multiple instances would trigger multiple tasks. You can only have one instance for the scheduled task web role. The guidance implements setup of the scheduled task as part of a web role instance. But if you have more than one instance in a web role, the task will be triggered multiple times for each scheduled action (once per machine). Workaround: If we wanted to use scheduled tasks for another client with a saleable WCF service, then we could include the console & tasks scripts in a separate web role (e.g. a empty WCF service with no real purpose to it). SaaS Option 3: Azure Marketplace I thought that someone might be offering this type of service via the Azure marketplace. At the point of writing this blog post, I did not find anyone doing so. https://datamarket.azure.com/ Pros Cons   Nobody currently offers this on the Azure Marketplace. Option 4: Online Job Scheduling Service Provider There are plenty of online providers that offer this type of service on a pay-as-you-go approach.  Some of these are free for small usage.   Many of these providers are listed here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Webcron Pros Cons No bespoke development for scheduler. Reliance on third party. IaaS Option 5: Setup Scheduling Software on Azure IaaS VM’s One of job scheduling software offerings could be installed and configured on Azure VM’s.  A list of software options is listed here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_job_scheduler_software Pros Cons Enterprise distributed\resilient task scheduling service VM Setup and maintenance   Software Licence Costs Option 6: VM Gallery A the time of writing this blog post, I did not spot a VM in the gallery that included pre-installation of any of the above software options. Pros Cons   No current VM template. Summary For my current project that had a small handful of tasks to schedule with a limited project budget I chose option 1 (a worker role using the Azure Toolkit to schedule tasks).  If I was building an enterprise scale solution for the future, options 4 and 5 are currently worthy of consideration. Hopefully, Microsoft will include tasks scheduling in the future as part of their PaaS offerings.

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• Generating radial indicator images using C#

  - by DigiMortal

  In one of my projects I needed to draw radial indicators for processes measured in percent. Simple images like the one shown on right. I solved the problem by creating images in C# and saving them on server hard disc so if image is once generated then it is returned from disc next time. I am not master of graphics or geometrics but here is the code I wrote. Drawing radial indicator To get things done quick’n’easy way – later may some of younger developers be the one who may need to changes things – I divided my indicator drawing process to four steps shown below. 1. Fill pie 2. Draw circles 3. Fill inner circle 4. Draw text Drawing image Here is the code to draw indicators. private static void SaveRadialIndicator(int percent, string filePath) {     using (Bitmap bitmap = new Bitmap(100, 100))     using (Graphics objGraphics = Graphics.FromImage(bitmap))     {         // Initialize graphics         objGraphics.Clear(Color.White);         objGraphics.SmoothingMode = SmoothingMode.AntiAlias;         objGraphics.TextRenderingHint = TextRenderingHint.ClearTypeGridFit;           // Fill pie         // Degrees are taken clockwise, 0 is parallel with x         // For sweep angle we must convert percent to degrees (90/25 = 18/5)         float startAngle = -90.0F;                        float sweepAngle = (18.0F / 5) * percent;           Rectangle rectangle = new Rectangle(5, 5, 90, 90);         objGraphics.FillPie(Brushes.Orange, rectangle, startAngle, sweepAngle);           // Draw circles         rectangle = new Rectangle(5, 5, 90, 90);         objGraphics.DrawEllipse(Pens.LightGray, rectangle);         rectangle = new Rectangle(20, 20, 60, 60);         objGraphics.DrawEllipse(Pens.LightGray, rectangle);           // Fill inner circle with white         rectangle = new Rectangle(21, 21, 58, 58);         objGraphics.FillEllipse(Brushes.White, rectangle);           // Draw text on image         // Use rectangle for text and align text to center of rectangle         var font = new Font("Arial", 13, FontStyle.Bold);         StringFormat stringFormat = new StringFormat();         stringFormat.Alignment = StringAlignment.Center;         stringFormat.LineAlignment = StringAlignment.Center;           rectangle = new Rectangle(20, 40, 62, 20);         objGraphics.DrawString(percent + "%", font, Brushes.DarkGray, rectangle, stringFormat);           // Save indicator to file         objGraphics.Flush();         if (File.Exists(filePath))             File.Delete(filePath);           bitmap.Save(filePath, ImageFormat.Png);     }        } Using indicators on web page To show indicators on your web page you can use the following code on page that outputs indicator images: protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e) {     var percentString = Request.QueryString["percent"];     var percent = 0;     if(!int.TryParse(percentString, out percent))         return;     if(percent < 0 || percent > 100)         return;       var file = Server.MapPath("~/images/percent/" + percent + ".png");     if(!File.Exists(file))         SaveImage(percent, file);       Response.Clear();     Response.ContentType = "image/png";     Response.WriteFile(file);     Response.End(); } Om your pages where you need indicator you can set image source to Indicator.aspx (if you named your indicator handling file like this) and add percent as query string:     <img src="Indicator.aspx?percent=30" /> That’s it! If somebody knows simpler way how to generate indicators like this I am interested in your feedback.

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• Different Not Automatically Implies Better

  - by Alois Kraus

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/akraus1/archive/2013/11/05/154556.aspxRecently I was digging deeper why some WCF hosted workflow application did consume quite a lot of memory although it did basically only load a xaml workflow. The first tool of choice is Process Explorer or even better Process Hacker (has more options and the best feature copy&paste does work). The three most important numbers of a process with regards to memory are Working Set, Private Working Set and Private Bytes. Working set is the currently consumed physical memory (parts can be shared between processes e.g. loaded dlls which are read only) Private Working Set is the physical memory needed by this process which is not shareable Private Bytes is the number of non shareable which is only visible in the current process (e.g. all new, malloc, VirtualAlloc calls do create private bytes) When you have a bigger workflow it can consume under 64 bit easily 500MB for a 1-2 MB xaml file. This does not look very scalable. Under 64 bit the issue is excessive private bytes consumption and not the managed heap. The picture is quite different for 32 bit which looks a bit strange but it seems that the hosted VB compiler is a lot less memory hungry under 32 bit. I did try to repro the issue with a medium sized xaml file (400KB) which does contain 1000 variables and 1000 if which can be represented by C# code like this: string Var1; string Var2; ... string Var1000; if (!String.IsNullOrEmpty(Var1) ) { Console.WriteLine(“Var1”); } if (!String.IsNullOrEmpty(Var2) ) { Console.WriteLine(“Var2”); } ....   Since WF is based on VB.NET expressions you are bound to the hosted VB.NET compiler which does result in (x64) 140 MB of private bytes which is ca. 140 KB for each if clause which is quite a lot if you think about the actually present functionality. But there is hope. .NET 4.5 does allow now C# expressions for WF which is a major step forward for all C# lovers. I did create some simple patcher to “cross compile” my xaml to C# expressions. Lets look at the result: C# Expressions VB Expressions x86 x86 On my home machine I have only 32 bit which gives you quite exactly half of the memory consumption under 64 bit. C# expressions are 10 times more memory hungry than VB.NET expressions! I wanted to do more with less memory but instead it did consume a magnitude more memory. That is surprising to say the least. The workflow does initialize in about the same time under x64 and x86 where the VB code does it in 2s whereas the C# version needs 18s. Also nearly ten times slower. That is a too high price to pay for any bigger sized xaml workflow to convert from VB.NET to C# expressions. If I do reduce the number of expressions to 500 then it does need 400MB which is about half of the memory. It seems that the cost per if does rise linear with the number of total expressions in a xaml workflow.  Expression Language Cost per IF Startup Time C# 1000 Ifs x64 1,5 MB 18s C# 500 Ifs x64 750 KB 9s VB 1000 Ifs x64 140 KB 2s VB 500 Ifs x64 70 KB 1s Now we can directly compare two MS implementations. It is clear that the VB.NET compiler uses the same underlying structure but it has much higher offset compared to the highly inefficient C# expression compiler. I have filed a connect bug here with a harsher wording about recent advances in memory consumption. The funniest thing is that one MS employee did give an Azure AppFabric demo around early 2011 which was so slow that he needed to investigate with xperf. He was after startup time and the call stacks with regards to VB.NET expression compilation were remarkably similar. In fact I only found this post by googling for parts of my call stacks. … “C# expressions will be coming soon to WF, and that will have different performance characteristics than VB” … What did he know Jan 2011 what I did no know until today? ;-). He knew that C# expression will come but that they will not be automatically have better footprint. It is about time to fix that. In its current state C# expressions are not usable for bigger workflows. That also explains the headline for today. You can cheat startup time by prestarting workflows so that the demo looks nice and snappy but it does hurt scalability a lot since you do need much more memory than necessary. I did find the stacks by enabling virtual allocation tracking within XPerf which is still the best tool out there. But first you need to look at your process to check where the memory is hiding: For the C# Expression compiler you do not need xperf. You can directly dump the managed heap and check with a profiler of your choice. But if the allocations are happening on the Private Data ( VirtualAlloc ) you can find it with xperf. There is a nice video on channel 9 explaining VirtualAlloc tracking it in greater detail. If your data allocations are on the Heap it does mean that the C/C++ runtime did create a heap for you where all malloc, new calls do allocate from it. You can enable heap tracing with xperf and full call stack support as well which is doable via xperf like it is shown also on channel 9. Or you can use WPRUI directly: To make “Heap Usage” it work you need to set for your executable the tracing flags (before you start it). For example devenv.exe HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Image File Execution Options\devenv.exe DWORD TracingFlags 1 Do not forget to disable it after you did complete profiling the process or it will impact the startup time quite a lot. You can with xperf attach directly to a running process and collect heap allocation information from a gone wild process. Very handy if you need to find out what a process was doing which has arrived in a funny state. “VirtualAlloc usage” does work without explicitly enabling stuff for a specific process and is always on machine wide. I had issues on my Windows 7 machines with the call stack collection and the latest Windows 8.1 Performance Toolkit. I was told that WPA from Windows 8.0 should work fine but I do not want to downgrade.

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• Restructuring a large Chrome Extension/WebApp

  - by A.M.K

  I have a very complex Chrome Extension that has gotten too large to maintain in its current format. I'd like to restructure it, but I'm 15 and this is the first webapp or extension of it's type I've built so I have no idea how to do it. TL;DR: I have a large/complex webapp I'd like to restructure and I don't know how to do it. Should I follow my current restructure plan (below)? Does that sound like a good starting point, or is there a different approach that I'm missing? Should I not do any of the things I listed? While it isn't relevant to the question, the actual code is on Github and the extension is on the webstore. The basic structure is as follows: index.html <html> <head> <link href="css/style.css" rel="stylesheet" /> <!-- This holds the main app styles --> <link href="css/widgets.css" rel="stylesheet" /> <!-- And this one holds widget styles --> </head> <body class="unloaded"> <!-- Low-level base elements are "hardcoded" here, the unloaded class is used for transitions and is removed on load. i.e: --> <div class="tab-container" tabindex="-1"> <!-- Tab nav --> </div> <!-- Templates for all parts of the application and widgets are stored as elements here. I plan on changing these to <script> elements during the restructure since <template>'s need valid HTML. --> <template id="template.toolbar"> <!-- Template content --> </template> <!-- Templates end --> <!-- Plugins --> <script type="text/javascript" src="js/plugins.js"></script> <!-- This contains the code for all widgets, I plan on moving this online and downloading as necessary soon. --> <script type="text/javascript" src="js/widgets.js"></script> <!-- This contains the main application JS. --> <script type="text/javascript" src="js/script.js"></script> </body> </html> widgets.js (initLog || (window.initLog = [])).push([new Date().getTime(), "A log is kept during page load so performance can be analyzed and errors pinpointed"]); // Widgets are stored in an object and extended (with jQuery, but I'll probably switch to underscore if using Backbone) as necessary var Widgets = { 1: { // Widget ID, this is set here so widgets can be retreived by ID id: 1, // Widget ID again, this is used after the widget object is duplicated and detached size: 3, // Default size, medium in this case order: 1, // Order shown in "store" name: "Weather", // Widget name interval: 300000, // Refresh interval nicename: "weather", // HTML and JS safe widget name sizes: ["tiny", "small", "medium"], // Available widget sizes desc: "Short widget description", settings: [ { // Widget setting specifications stored as an array of objects. These are used to dynamically generate widget setting popups. type: "list", nicename: "location", label: "Location(s)", placeholder: "Enter a location and press Enter" } ], config: { // Widget settings as stored in the tabs object (see script.js for storage information) size: "medium", location: ["San Francisco, CA"] }, data: {}, // Cached widget data stored locally, this lets it work offline customFunc: function(cb) {}, // Widgets can optionally define custom functions in any part of their object refresh: function() {}, // This fetches data from the web and caches it locally in data, then calls render. It gets called after the page is loaded for faster loads render: function() {} // This renders the widget only using information from data, it's called on page load. } }; script.js (initLog || (window.initLog = [])).push([new Date().getTime(), "These are also at the end of every file"]); // Plugins, extends and globals go here. i.e. Number.prototype.pad = .... var iChrome = function(refresh) { // The main iChrome init, called with refresh when refreshing to not re-run libs iChrome.Status.log("Starting page generation"); // From now on iChrome.Status.log is defined, it's used in place of the initLog iChrome.CSS(); // Dynamically generate CSS based on settings iChrome.Tabs(); // This takes the tabs stored in the storage (see fetching below) and renders all columns and widgets as necessary iChrome.Status.log("Tabs rendered"); // These will be omitted further along in this excerpt, but they're used everywhere // Checks for justInstalled => show getting started are run here /* The main init runs the bare minimum required to display the page, this sets all non-visible or instantly need things (such as widget dragging) on a timeout */ iChrome.deferredTimeout = setTimeout(function() { iChrome.deferred(refresh); // Pass refresh along, see above }, 200); }; iChrome.deferred = function(refresh) {}; // This calls modules one after the next in the appropriate order to finish rendering the page iChrome.Search = function() {}; // Modules have a base init function and are camel-cased and capitalized iChrome.Search.submit = function(val) {}; // Methods within modules are camel-cased and not capitalized /* Extension storage is async and fetched at the beginning of plugins.js, it's then stored in a variable that iChrome.Storage processes. The fetcher checks to see if processStorage is defined, if it is it gets called, otherwise settings are left in iChromeConfig */ var processStorage = function() { iChrome.Storage(function() { iChrome.Templates(); // Templates are read from their elements and held in a cache iChrome(); // Init is called }); }; if (typeof iChromeConfig == "object") { processStorage(); } Objectives of the restructure Memory usage: Chrome apparently has a memory leak in extensions, they're trying to fix it but memory still keeps on getting increased every time the page is loaded. The app also uses a lot on its own. Code readability: At this point I can't follow what's being called in the code. While rewriting the code I plan on properly commenting everything. Module interdependence: Right now modules call each other a lot, AFAIK that's not good at all since any change you make to one module could affect countless others. Fault tolerance: There's very little fault tolerance or error handling right now. If a widget is causing the rest of the page to stop rendering the user should at least be able to remove it. Speed is currently not an issue and I'd like to keep it that way. How I think I should do it The restructure should be done using Backbone.js and events that call modules (i.e. on storage.loaded = init). Modules should each go in their own file, I'm thinking there should be a set of core files that all modules can rely on and call directly and everything else should be event based. Widget structure should be kept largely the same, but maybe they should also be split into their own files. AFAIK you can't load all templates in a folder, therefore they need to stay inline. Grunt should be used to merge all modules, plugins and widgets into one file. Templates should also all be precompiled. Question: Should I follow my current restructure plan? Does that sound like a good starting point, or is there a different approach that I'm missing? Should I not do any of the things I listed? Do applications written with Backbone tend to be more intensive (memory and speed) than ones written in Vanilla JS? Also, can I expect to improve this with a proper restructure or is my current code about as good as can be expected?

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• Optimizing apache server load

  - by Jevgeni Smirnov

  We have an issue with a dedicated server load. We have 16 processors with 4 core @ 2.40GHz, if I understood correctly cat /proc/cpuinfo output. Unfortunately, I don't have access to free -m or vmstat. But from top I got that we have 24 GB. And snapshot from top about processes: As far as I see, memory is not used at all. But the cpu is used heavily. Apache consumes most of CPU. Another useful piece of information: Every 1.0s: ps u -C httpd,mysqld,php Tue Mar 27 10:48:19 2012 USER PID %CPU %MEM VSZ RSS TTY STAT START TIME COMMAND root 7476 0.0 0.1 446808 37880 ? SNs Mar06 0:43 /opt/zone/sbin/httpd -D SSL -D SLOT_ID0 -f /etc/opt/zone/apache/ssl_httpd.conf mysql 36061 41.6 2.1 1113672 529876 ? SNl Feb20 21503:48 /opt/zone/sbin/mysqld --basedir=/opt/zone --datadir=/srvdata/mysql --user=mysql --log-error=/srvdata/mysql/dn79.err --pid-file=/srvdata/mysql/mysqld.pid --socket=/tmp/mysql.sock --port=3306 root 37257 0.0 0.0 424056 16840 ? SNs Mar22 1:03 /opt/zone/sbin/httpd -f /etc/opt/zone/apache/httpd.conf -D SLOT_ID0 http 52743 0.0 0.1 447100 30360 ? SN 10:40 0:00 /opt/zone/sbin/httpd -D SSL -D SLOT_ID0 -f /etc/opt/zone/apache/ssl_httpd.conf http 52744 0.0 0.1 447100 30360 ? SN 10:40 0:00 /opt/zone/sbin/httpd -D SSL -D SLOT_ID0 -f /etc/opt/zone/apache/ssl_httpd.conf http 52745 0.0 0.1 447100 30360 ? SN 10:40 0:00 /opt/zone/sbin/httpd -D SSL -D SLOT_ID0 -f /etc/opt/zone/apache/ssl_httpd.conf http 52746 0.0 0.1 447100 30360 ? SN 10:40 0:00 /opt/zone/sbin/httpd -D SSL -D SLOT_ID0 -f /etc/opt/zone/apache/ssl_httpd.conf http 52747 0.0 0.1 446956 30324 ? SN 10:40 0:00 /opt/zone/sbin/httpd -D SSL -D SLOT_ID0 -f /etc/opt/zone/apache/ssl_httpd.conf http 52980 69.1 1.8 852468 458088 ? RN 10:41 5:02 /opt/zone/sbin/httpd -f /etc/opt/zone/apache/httpd.conf -D SLOT_ID0 http 53483 47.0 0.8 615088 221040 ? RN 10:43 2:05 /opt/zone/sbin/httpd -f /etc/opt/zone/apache/httpd.conf -D SLOT_ID0 http 53641 1.8 0.2 446580 54632 ? SN 10:45 0:03 /opt/zone/sbin/httpd -f /etc/opt/zone/apache/httpd.conf -D SLOT_ID0 http 54384 81.2 0.9 625828 229972 ? RN 10:45 2:14 /opt/zone/sbin/httpd -f /etc/opt/zone/apache/httpd.conf -D SLOT_ID0 http 54411 47.7 0.5 535992 142416 ? RN 10:45 1:09 /opt/zone/sbin/httpd -f /etc/opt/zone/apache/httpd.conf -D SLOT_ID0 http 54470 41.7 0.4 512528 120012 ? RN 10:46 0:54 /opt/zone/sbin/httpd -f /etc/opt/zone/apache/httpd.conf -D SLOT_ID0 http 54475 0.1 0.1 437016 41528 ? SN 10:46 0:00 /opt/zone/sbin/httpd -f /etc/opt/zone/apache/httpd.conf -D SLOT_ID0 http 54486 1.5 0.2 445636 53916 ? SN 10:46 0:02 /opt/zone/sbin/httpd -f /etc/opt/zone/apache/httpd.conf -D SLOT_ID0 http 54531 2.5 0.2 445424 53012 ? SN 10:46 0:02 /opt/zone/sbin/httpd -f /etc/opt/zone/apache/httpd.conf -D SLOT_ID0 http 54549 0.0 0.0 424188 9188 ? SN 10:46 0:00 /opt/zone/sbin/httpd -f /etc/opt/zone/apache/httpd.conf -D SLOT_ID0 http 54642 0.0 0.0 424188 9200 ? SN 10:47 0:00 /opt/zone/sbin/httpd -f /etc/opt/zone/apache/httpd.conf -D SLOT_ID0 http 54651 0.0 0.0 424188 9188 ? SN 10:47 0:00 /opt/zone/sbin/httpd -f /etc/opt/zone/apache/httpd.conf -D SLOT_ID0 http 54661 0.0 0.0 424188 9208 ? SN 10:47 0:00 /opt/zone/sbin/httpd -f /etc/opt/zone/apache/httpd.conf -D SLOT_ID0 http 54663 6.9 0.2 449936 58560 ? SN 10:47 0:03 /opt/zone/sbin/httpd -f /etc/opt/zone/apache/httpd.conf -D SLOT_ID0 http 54666 6.0 0.2 453356 61124 ? SN 10:47 0:02 /opt/zone/sbin/httpd -f /etc/opt/zone/apache/httpd.conf -D SLOT_ID0 http 54667 2.8 0.1 437608 42088 ? SN 10:47 0:01 /opt/zone/sbin/httpd -f /etc/opt/zone/apache/httpd.conf -D SLOT_ID0 http 54670 1.5 0.1 437540 42172 ? SN 10:47 0:00 /opt/zone/sbin/httpd -f /etc/opt/zone/apache/httpd.conf -D SLOT_ID0 http 54672 2.1 0.1 439076 43648 ? SN 10:47 0:01 /opt/zone/sbin/httpd -f /etc/opt/zone/apache/httpd.conf -D SLOT_ID0 http 54709 0.0 0.0 424188 9192 ? SN 10:47 0:00 /opt/zone/sbin/httpd -f /etc/opt/zone/apache/httpd.conf -D SLOT_ID0 http 54711 1.0 0.1 437284 41780 ? SN 10:47 0:00 /opt/zone/sbin/httpd -f /etc/opt/zone/apache/httpd.conf -D SLOT_ID0 http 54712 11.8 0.2 448172 54700 ? SN 10:47 0:02 /opt/zone/sbin/httpd -f /etc/opt/zone/apache/httpd.conf -D SLOT_ID0 http 54720 0.0 0.0 424188 9192 ? SN 10:48 0:00 /opt/zone/sbin/httpd -f /etc/opt/zone/apache/httpd.conf -D SLOT_ID0 http 54721 0.0 0.0 424188 9188 ? SN 10:48 0:00 /opt/zone/sbin/httpd -f /etc/opt/zone/apache/httpd.conf -D SLOT_ID0 http 54747 9.1 0.2 443568 51848 ? SN 10:48 0:01 /opt/zone/sbin/httpd -f /etc/opt/zone/apache/httpd.conf -D SLOT_ID0 http 54782 1.8 0.1 438708 37896 ? RN 10:48 0:00 /opt/zone/sbin/httpd -f /etc/opt/zone/apache/httpd.conf -D SLOT_ID0 http 54784 0.0 0.0 424188 9180 ? SN 10:48 0:00 /opt/zone/sbin/httpd -f /etc/opt/zone/apache/httpd.conf -D SLOT_ID0 http 54785 0.0 0.0 424188 9188 ? SN 10:48 0:00 /opt/zone/sbin/httpd -f /etc/opt/zone/apache/httpd.conf -D SLOT_ID0 http 54789 0.0 0.0 424188 9188 ? SN 10:48 0:00 /opt/zone/sbin/httpd -f /etc/opt/zone/apache/httpd.conf -D SLOT_ID0 http 54790 0.0 0.0 424188 9188 ? SN 10:48 0:00 /opt/zone/sbin/httpd -f /etc/opt/zone/apache/httpd.conf -D SLOT_ID0 http 54791 0.0 0.0 424188 9188 ? SN 10:48 0:00 /opt/zone/sbin/httpd -f /etc/opt/zone/apache/httpd.conf -D SLOT_ID0 http 54792 0.0 0.0 424056 8352 ? SN 10:48 0:00 /opt/zone/sbin/httpd -f /etc/opt/zone/apache/httpd.conf -D SLOT_ID0 Webalizer shows following: What can be done in the following situation? The application is Magento.

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• "power limit notification" clobbering on 12G Dell servers with RHEL6

  - by Andrew B

  Server: Poweredge r620 OS: RHEL 6.4 Kernel: 2.6.32-358.18.1.el6.x86_64 I'm experiencing application alarms in my production environment. Critical CPU hungry processes are being starved of resources and causing a processing backlog. The problem is happening on all the 12th Generation Dell servers (r620s) in a recently deployed cluster. As near as I can tell, instances of this happening are matching up to peak CPU utilization, accompanied by massive amounts of "power limit notification" spam in dmesg. An excerpt of one of these events: Nov 7 10:15:15 someserver [.crit] CPU12: Core power limit notification (total events = 14) Nov 7 10:15:15 someserver [.crit] CPU0: Core power limit notification (total events = 14) Nov 7 10:15:15 someserver [.crit] CPU6: Core power limit notification (total events = 14) Nov 7 10:15:15 someserver [.crit] CPU14: Core power limit notification (total events = 14) Nov 7 10:15:15 someserver [.crit] CPU18: Core power limit notification (total events = 14) Nov 7 10:15:15 someserver [.crit] CPU2: Core power limit notification (total events = 14) Nov 7 10:15:15 someserver [.crit] CPU4: Core power limit notification (total events = 14) Nov 7 10:15:15 someserver [.crit] CPU16: Core power limit notification (total events = 14) Nov 7 10:15:15 someserver [.crit] CPU0: Package power limit notification (total events = 11) Nov 7 10:15:15 someserver [.crit] CPU6: Package power limit notification (total events = 13) Nov 7 10:15:15 someserver [.crit] CPU14: Package power limit notification (total events = 14) Nov 7 10:15:15 someserver [.crit] CPU18: Package power limit notification (total events = 14) Nov 7 10:15:15 someserver [.crit] CPU20: Core power limit notification (total events = 14) Nov 7 10:15:15 someserver [.crit] CPU8: Core power limit notification (total events = 14) Nov 7 10:15:15 someserver [.crit] CPU2: Package power limit notification (total events = 12) Nov 7 10:15:15 someserver [.crit] CPU10: Core power limit notification (total events = 14) Nov 7 10:15:15 someserver [.crit] CPU22: Core power limit notification (total events = 14) Nov 7 10:15:15 someserver [.crit] CPU4: Package power limit notification (total events = 14) Nov 7 10:15:15 someserver [.crit] CPU16: Package power limit notification (total events = 13) Nov 7 10:15:15 someserver [.crit] CPU20: Package power limit notification (total events = 14) Nov 7 10:15:15 someserver [.crit] CPU8: Package power limit notification (total events = 14) Nov 7 10:15:15 someserver [.crit] CPU10: Package power limit notification (total events = 14) Nov 7 10:15:15 someserver [.crit] CPU22: Package power limit notification (total events = 14) Nov 7 10:15:15 someserver [.crit] CPU15: Core power limit notification (total events = 369) Nov 7 10:15:15 someserver [.crit] CPU3: Core power limit notification (total events = 369) Nov 7 10:15:15 someserver [.crit] CPU1: Core power limit notification (total events = 369) Nov 7 10:15:15 someserver [.crit] CPU5: Core power limit notification (total events = 369) Nov 7 10:15:15 someserver [.crit] CPU17: Core power limit notification (total events = 369) Nov 7 10:15:15 someserver [.crit] CPU13: Core power limit notification (total events = 369) Nov 7 10:15:15 someserver [.crit] CPU15: Package power limit notification (total events = 375) Nov 7 10:15:15 someserver [.crit] CPU3: Package power limit notification (total events = 374) Nov 7 10:15:15 someserver [.crit] CPU1: Package power limit notification (total events = 376) Nov 7 10:15:15 someserver [.crit] CPU5: Package power limit notification (total events = 376) Nov 7 10:15:15 someserver [.crit] CPU7: Core power limit notification (total events = 369) Nov 7 10:15:15 someserver [.crit] CPU19: Core power limit notification (total events = 369) Nov 7 10:15:15 someserver [.crit] CPU17: Package power limit notification (total events = 377) Nov 7 10:15:15 someserver [.crit] CPU9: Core power limit notification (total events = 369) Nov 7 10:15:15 someserver [.crit] CPU21: Core power limit notification (total events = 369) Nov 7 10:15:15 someserver [.crit] CPU23: Core power limit notification (total events = 369) Nov 7 10:15:15 someserver [.crit] CPU11: Core power limit notification (total events = 369) Nov 7 10:15:15 someserver [.crit] CPU13: Package power limit notification (total events = 376) Nov 7 10:15:15 someserver [.crit] CPU7: Package power limit notification (total events = 375) Nov 7 10:15:15 someserver [.crit] CPU19: Package power limit notification (total events = 375) Nov 7 10:15:15 someserver [.crit] CPU9: Package power limit notification (total events = 374) Nov 7 10:15:15 someserver [.crit] CPU21: Package power limit notification (total events = 375) Nov 7 10:15:15 someserver [.crit] CPU23: Package power limit notification (total events = 374) A little Google Fu reveals that this is typically associated with the CPU running hot, or voltage regulation kicking in. I don't think that's what is happening though. Temperature sensors for all servers in the cluster are running fine, Power Cap Policy is disabled in the iDRAC, and my System Profile is set to "Performance" on all of these servers: # omreport chassis biossetup | grep -A10 'System Profile' System Profile Settings ------------------------------------------ System Profile : Performance CPU Power Management : Maximum Performance Memory Frequency : Maximum Performance Turbo Boost : Enabled C1E : Disabled C States : Disabled Monitor/Mwait : Enabled Memory Patrol Scrub : Standard Memory Refresh Rate : 1x Memory Operating Voltage : Auto Collaborative CPU Performance Control : Disabled A Dell mailing list post describes the symptoms almost perfectly. Dell suggested that the author try using the Performance profile, but that didn't help. He ended up applying some settings in Dell's guide for configuring a server for low latency environments and one of those settings (or a combination thereof) seems to have fixed the problem. Kernel.org bug #36182 notes that power-limit interrupt debugging was enabled by default, which is causing performance degradation in scenarios where CPU voltage regulation is kicking in. A RHN KB article (RHN login required) mentions a problem impacting PE r620 and r720 servers not running the Performance profile, and recommends an update to a kernel released two weeks ago. ...Except we are running the Performance profile... Everything I can find online is running me in circles here. What's the heck is going on?

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• facebook iframe stream.Publish cannot close dialog or skip

  - by fooyee

  am pulling my hair over this :( spent 10 hrs but nothing came out I read this thread http://forum.developers.facebook.com/viewtopic.php?pid=198128 but it didn't help much. I'm running a local dev App Engine server ( localhost:8080 ) iframe app so I have a couple of problems. 1) on safari 4.0.4, the publish story dialog comes up nicely with all images/data/action_links. upon posting a story (or skipping), the dialog goes blank and wouldn't close. 2) I tested the same code on firefox 3.5.8, the dialog comes up with all images/data/action_links, but then the whole thing freezes. Clicking anywhere on the dialog doesn't help at all. If i'm patient enough and click "publish", I have to wait for abt 10 seconds before the dialog says "story is published". then it freezes. (clicking on skip doesn't make a difference). btw, there is no "button clicking effect" : ie: the buttons don't look like they "sink down" upon clicking. I checked the firefox memory using the command "top" on the terminal, it all seems okay, no spike in CPU processes ( i could open other firefox tabs and work on them) My futile attempts at solving the problems... 1) so i thought, hmm could this be because of local dev (localhost) problem? I uploaded the code to the production server, the same thing happens. 2) I tried an older firefox (3.1) and the same problem persisted ( the freezing ) 3) I noticed that i kind of used 2 different FB features ( Connect and XFBML). The Connect Feature I used in the PostStory function. The XFBML feature I used before the tag. So I thought, hmm ... I tried replacing the FB_RequireFeatures["Connect"] feature with FB_RequireFeatures["XFBML"]. nothing changed. I still can't close the story dialog. 4) Is there a possibility that I didn't connect to xd_receiver.htm properly? my xd_receiver.htm is stored in my folder /media/fbconnect in my app.yaml handler: - url: /fbconnect static_dir: media/fbconnect so i thought a connection has to be established with xd_receiver.htm. any way I can test that? here're all the codes: <script type="text/javascript"> //post story function function PostStory() { //init facebook FB_RequireFeatures(["Connect"], function() { FB.Facebook.init('my_app_key', "/fbconnect/xd_receiver.htm"); FB.ensureInit(function() { var message = 'the message'; var attachment = { 'name': 'a simple app to send gifts', 'href': 'http://apps.facebook.com/my_app_name', 'caption': '{*actor*} sent u something', 'description': 'some description', "media": [{ "type": "image", "src": "http://bit.ly/105QYr", "href": "http://bit.ly/105QYr"}] }; //action links can only be seen AFTER the feed is published var action_links = [{ 'text': 'Send him/her a gift back!', 'href': 'http://somelink.com'}]; FB.Connect.streamPublish(message, attachment, action_links, null, "Share the gift with your friends", callback, false, null); }); }); function callback(post_id, exception) { //alert('Wall Post Complete'); } } </script> just before the end of the /body tag, i have this: <script type="text/javascript"> function callFBInit() { FB_RequireFeatures( ["XFBML"], function(){ FB.Facebook.init("my_app_key", "/fbconnect/xd_receiver.htm"); } ); } callFBInit(); btw, my xd_receiver.htm contains: <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> <html xmlns=? http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml? > <head> <title>cross-domain receiver page</title> </head> <body> <script src=?http://static.ak.facebook.com/js/api_lib/v0.4/xdcommreceiver.debug.js? type=? text/javascript? ></script> </body> </html> hope you guys can help out. thx

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• Refresh QTextEdit in PyQt

  - by Mark Underwood

  Hi all, Im writing a PyQt app that takes some input in one widget, and then processes some text files. What ive got at the moment is when the user clicks the "process" button a seperate window with a QTextEdit in it pops up, and ouputs some logging messages. On Mac OS X this window is refreshed automatically and you cna see the process. On Windows, the window reports (Not Responding) and then once all the proccessing is done, the log output is shown. Im assuming I need to refresh the window after each write into the log, and ive had a look around at using a timer. etc, but havnt had much luck in getting it working. Below is the source code. It has two files, GUI.py which does all the GUI stuff and MOVtoMXF that does all the processing. GUI.py import os import sys import MOVtoMXF from PyQt4.QtCore import * from PyQt4.QtGui import * class Form(QDialog): def process(self): path = str(self.pathBox.displayText()) if(path == ''): QMessageBox.warning(self, "Empty Path", "You didnt fill something out.") return xmlFile = str(self.xmlFileBox.displayText()) if(xmlFile == ''): QMessageBox.warning(self, "No XML file", "You didnt fill something.") return outFileName = str(self.outfileNameBox.displayText()) if(outFileName == ''): QMessageBox.warning(self, "No Output File", "You didnt do something") return print path + " " + xmlFile + " " + outFileName mov1 = MOVtoMXF.MOVtoMXF(path, xmlFile, outFileName, self.log) self.log.show() rc = mov1.ScanFile() if( rc < 0): print "something happened" #self.done(0) def __init__(self, parent=None): super(Form, self).__init__(parent) self.log = Log() self.pathLabel = QLabel("P2 Path:") self.pathBox = QLineEdit("") self.pathBrowseB = QPushButton("Browse") self.pathLayout = QHBoxLayout() self.pathLayout.addStretch() self.pathLayout.addWidget(self.pathLabel) self.pathLayout.addWidget(self.pathBox) self.pathLayout.addWidget(self.pathBrowseB) self.xmlLabel = QLabel("FCP XML File:") self.xmlFileBox = QLineEdit("") self.xmlFileBrowseB = QPushButton("Browse") self.xmlLayout = QHBoxLayout() self.xmlLayout.addStretch() self.xmlLayout.addWidget(self.xmlLabel) self.xmlLayout.addWidget(self.xmlFileBox) self.xmlLayout.addWidget(self.xmlFileBrowseB) self.outFileLabel = QLabel("Save to:") self.outfileNameBox = QLineEdit("") self.outputFileBrowseB = QPushButton("Browse") self.outputLayout = QHBoxLayout() self.outputLayout.addStretch() self.outputLayout.addWidget(self.outFileLabel) self.outputLayout.addWidget(self.outfileNameBox) self.outputLayout.addWidget(self.outputFileBrowseB) self.exitButton = QPushButton("Exit") self.processButton = QPushButton("Process") self.buttonLayout = QHBoxLayout() #self.buttonLayout.addStretch() self.buttonLayout.addWidget(self.exitButton) self.buttonLayout.addWidget(self.processButton) self.layout = QVBoxLayout() self.layout.addLayout(self.pathLayout) self.layout.addLayout(self.xmlLayout) self.layout.addLayout(self.outputLayout) self.layout.addLayout(self.buttonLayout) self.setLayout(self.layout) self.pathBox.setFocus() self.setWindowTitle("MOVtoMXF") self.connect(self.processButton, SIGNAL("clicked()"), self.process) self.connect(self.exitButton, SIGNAL("clicked()"), self, SLOT("reject()")) self.ConnectButtons() class Log(QTextEdit): def __init__(self, parent=None): super(Log, self).__init__(parent) self.timer = QTimer() self.connect(self.timer, SIGNAL("timeout()"), self.updateText()) self.timer.start(2000) def updateText(self): print "update Called" AND MOVtoMXF.py import os import sys import time import string import FileUtils import shutil import re class MOVtoMXF: #Class to do the MOVtoMXF stuff. def __init__(self, path, xmlFile, outputFile, edit): self.MXFdict = {} self.MOVDict = {} self.path = path self.xmlFile = xmlFile self.outputFile = outputFile self.outputDirectory = outputFile.rsplit('/',1) self.outputDirectory = self.outputDirectory[0] sys.stdout = OutLog( edit, sys.stdout) class OutLog(): def __init__(self, edit, out=None, color=None): """(edit, out=None, color=None) -> can write stdout, stderr to a QTextEdit. edit = QTextEdit out = alternate stream ( can be the original sys.stdout ) color = alternate color (i.e. color stderr a different color) """ self.edit = edit self.out = None self.color = color def write(self, m): if self.color: tc = self.edit.textColor() self.edit.setTextColor(self.color) #self.edit.moveCursor(QtGui.QTextCursor.End) self.edit.insertPlainText( m ) if self.color: self.edit.setTextColor(tc) if self.out: self.out.write(m) self.edit.show() If any other code is needed (i think this is all that is needed) then just let me know. Any Help would be great. Mark

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• PHP pages working slow from time to time

  - by user1038179

  I have VPS with limit of 2GB of ram and 8 CPU cores. I have 5 sites on that VPS (one of them is just for testing, no visitors exept me). All 5 sites are image galleries, like wallpaper sites. Last week I noticed problem on one site (main domain, used for name servers, and also with most traffic, visitors). That site has two image galleries, one is old static html gallery made few years ago and another, main, is powered by ZENPhoto CMS. Also I have that same gallery CMS on another two sites on that same VPS (on one running site and on one just for testing site). On other two sites I have diferent PHP driven gallery. Problem is that after some time (it vary from 10 minutes to few hours after apache restart), loading of pages on main site becomes very slow, or I get 503 Service Temporarily Unavailable error. So pages becomes unavailable. But just that part with new CMS gallery, old part of site with static html pages are working fast and just fine. Also other two sites with same CMS gallery and other two with different PHP driven gallery are working fine and fast at the same time. I thought it must be something with CMS on that main site, because other sites are working nice. Then I tryed to open contact and guest book pages on that main site which are outside of that CMS but also PHP pages, and they do not load too, but that same contact php scipts are working on other sites at the same time. So, when site starts to hangs, ONLY PHP generated content is not working, like I said other static pages are working. And, ONLY on that one main site I have problems. Then I need to restart Apache, after restart everything is vorking nice and fast, for some time, than again, just PHP pages on main site are becomming slower. If I do not restart apache that slowness take some time (several minutes, hours, depending ot traffic) and during that time PHP diven content is loading very slow or unavailable on that site. After sime time, on moments everything start to work and is fast again for some time, and again. In hours with more traffic PHP content is loading slowly or it is unavailable, in hours with less traffic it is sometimes fast and sometimes little bit slower than usually. And ones again, only on that main site, and only PHP driven pages, static pages are working fast even in most traffic hours also other sites with even same CMS are working fast. Currently I have about 7000 unique visitors on that site but site worked nice even with 11500 visitors per day. And about 17000 in total visitors on VPS, all sites ( about 3 pages per unique visitor). When site start to slow down sometimes in apache status I can see something like this: mod_fcgid status: Total FastCGI processes: 37 Process: php5 (/usr/local/cpanel/cgi-sys/php5)Pid Active Idle Accesses State 11300 39 28 7 Working 11274 47 28 7 Working 11296 40 29 3 Working 11283 45 30 3 Working 11304 36 31 1 Working 11282 46 32 3 Working 11292 42 33 1 Working 11289 44 34 1 Working 11305 35 35 0 Working 11273 48 36 2 Working 11280 47 39 1 Working 10125 133 40 12 Exiting(communication error) 11294 41 41 1 Exiting(communication error) 11277 47 42 2 Exiting(communication error) 11291 43 43 1 Exiting(communication error) 10187 108 43 10 Exiting(communication error) 10209 95 44 7 Exiting(communication error) 10171 113 44 5 Exiting(communication error) 11275 47 47 1 Exiting(communication error) 10144 125 48 8 Exiting(communication error) 10086 149 48 20 Exiting(communication error) 10212 94 49 5 Exiting(communication error) 10158 118 49 5 Exiting(communication error) 10169 114 50 4 Exiting(communication error) 10105 141 50 16 Exiting(communication error) 10094 146 50 15 Exiting(communication error) 10115 139 51 17 Exiting(communication error) 10213 93 51 9 Exiting(communication error) 10197 103 51 7 Exiting(communication error) Process: php5 (/usr/local/cpanel/cgi-sys/php5)Pid Active Idle Accesses State 7983 1079 2 149 Ready 7979 1079 11 151 Ready Process: php5 (/usr/local/cpanel/cgi-sys/php5)Pid Active Idle Accesses State 7990 1066 0 57 Ready 8001 1031 64 35 Ready 7999 1032 94 29 Ready 8000 1031 91 36 Ready 8002 1029 34 52 Ready Process: php5 (/usr/local/cpanel/cgi-sys/php5)Pid Active Idle Accesses State 7991 1064 29 115 Ready When it is working nicly there is no lines with "Exiting(communication error)" Active and Idle are time active and time since last request, in seconds. Here are system info. Sysem info: Total processors: 8 Processor #1 Vendor GenuineIntel Name Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5440 @ 2.83GHz Speed 88.320 MHz Cache 6144 KB All other seven are the same. System Information Linux vps.nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn.nnn 2.6.18-028stab099.3 #1 SMP Wed Mar 7 15:20:22 MSK 2012 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux Current Memory Usage total used free shared buffers cached Mem: 8388608 882164 7506444 0 0 0 -/+ buffers/cache: 882164 7506444 Swap: 0 0 0 Total: 8388608 882164 7506444 Current Disk Usage Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/vzfs 100G 34G 67G 34% / none System Details: Running on: Apache/2.2.22 System info: (Unix) mod_ssl/2.2.22 OpenSSL/0.9.8e-fips-rhel5 DAV/2 mod_auth_passthrough/2.1 mod_bwlimited/1.4 FrontPage/5.0.2.2635 mod_fcgid/2.3.6 Powered by: PHP/5.3.10 Current Configuration Default PHP Version (.php files) 5 PHP 5 Handler fcgi PHP 4 Handler suphp Apache suEXEC on Apache Ruid2 off PHP 4 Handler suphp Apache suEXEC on Apache Configuration The following settings have been saved: fileetag: All keepalive: On keepalivetimeout: 3 maxclients: 150 maxkeepaliverequests: 10 maxrequestsperchild: 10000 maxspareservers: 10 minspareservers: 5 root_options: ExecCGI, FollowSymLinks, Includes, IncludesNOEXEC, Indexes, MultiViews, SymLinksIfOwnerMatch serverlimit: 256 serversignature: Off servertokens: Full sslciphersuite: ALL:!ADH:RC4+RSA:+HIGH:+MEDIUM:-LOW:-SSLv2:-EXP:!kEDH startservers: 5 timeout: 30 I hope, I explained my problem nicely. Any help would be nice.

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• MySQL is hogging my server resources

  - by Reacen

  Does anyone have any idea of what can cause this weird behaviour and how I go about fixing it? This is all coming from MySQL only (both RAM and CPU usage), for about 10 minutes after I reboot my Java game server (that has a pool of 256 connections). There are not that many queries and I think it may be more of a MySQL misconfiguration problem. My server: 3.20 GHz * 6 core / 24 GB RAM / 64 bit Windows Server 2003. My game server: Java server, with 256 MySQL connections pool (MyISAM engine), about 500,000 accounts, and 9 million rows of game items in database and about 3,000 players are connected. After about 15 minutes of the game server reboot, the server resumes its stability and CPU usage drop down to 1% ~ 5% and memory to 6 GB. Here is a copy of my MySQL configuration. Also, any advice about my MySQL configuration will be appreciated. I really set it up almost at random. # Example MySQL config file for very large systems. # # This is for a large system with memory of 1G-2G where the system runs mainly # MySQL. # # You can copy this file to # /etc/my.cnf to set global options, # mysql-data-dir/my.cnf to set server-specific options (in this # installation this directory is C:\mysql\data) or # ~/.my.cnf to set user-specific options. # # In this file, you can use all long options that a program supports. # If you want to know which options a program supports, run the program # with the "--help" option. # The following options will be passed to all MySQL clients [client] #password = your_password port = 3306 socket = /tmp/mysql.sock # Here follows entries for some specific programs # The MySQL server [mysqld] #log=c:\mysql.log port = 3306 socket = /tmp/mysql.sock skip-locking key_buffer_size = 2572M max_allowed_packet = 64M table_open_cache = 512 sort_buffer_size = 128M read_buffer_size = 128M read_rnd_buffer_size = 128M myisam_sort_buffer_size = 500M thread_cache_size = 32 query_cache_size = 1948M # Try number of CPU's*2 for thread_concurrency thread_concurrency = 12 max_connections = 5000 # Don't listen on a TCP/IP port at all. This can be a security enhancement, # if all processes that need to connect to mysqld run on the same host. # All interaction with mysqld must be made via Unix sockets or named pipes. # Note that using this option without enabling named pipes on Windows # (via the "enable-named-pipe" option) will render mysqld useless! # #skip-networking # Replication Master Server (default) # binary logging is required for replication log-bin=mysql-bin # required unique id between 1 and 2^32 - 1 # defaults to 1 if master-host is not set # but will not function as a master if omitted server-id = 1 # Replication Slave (comment out master section to use this) # # To configure this host as a replication slave, you can choose between # two methods : # # 1) Use the CHANGE MASTER TO command (fully described in our manual) - # the syntax is: # # CHANGE MASTER TO MASTER_HOST=<host>, MASTER_PORT=<port>, # MASTER_USER=<user>, MASTER_PASSWORD=<password> ; # # where you replace <host>, <user>, <password> by quoted strings and # <port> by the master's port number (3306 by default). # # Example: # # CHANGE MASTER TO MASTER_HOST='125.564.12.1', MASTER_PORT=3306, # MASTER_USER='joe', MASTER_PASSWORD='secret'; # # OR # # 2) Set the variables below. However, in case you choose this method, then # start replication for the first time (even unsuccessfully, for example # if you mistyped the password in master-password and the slave fails to # connect), the slave will create a master.info file, and any later # change in this file to the variables' values below will be ignored and # overridden by the content of the master.info file, unless you shutdown # the slave server, delete master.info and restart the slaver server. # For that reason, you may want to leave the lines below untouched # (commented) and instead use CHANGE MASTER TO (see above) # # required unique id between 2 and 2^32 - 1 # (and different from the master) # defaults to 2 if master-host is set # but will not function as a slave if omitted #server-id = 2 # # The replication master for this slave - required #master-host = <hostname> # # The username the slave will use for authentication when connecting # to the master - required #master-user = <username> # # The password the slave will authenticate with when connecting to # the master - required #master-password = <password> # # The port the master is listening on. # optional - defaults to 3306 #master-port = <port> # # binary logging - not required for slaves, but recommended #log-bin=mysql-bin # # binary logging format - mixed recommended #binlog_format=mixed # Point the following paths to different dedicated disks #tmpdir = /tmp/ #log-update = /path-to-dedicated-directory/hostname # Uncomment the following if you are using InnoDB tables #innodb_data_home_dir = C:\mysql\data/ #innodb_data_file_path = ibdata1:2000M;ibdata2:10M:autoextend #innodb_log_group_home_dir = C:\mysql\data/ # You can set .._buffer_pool_size up to 50 - 80 % # of RAM but beware of setting memory usage too high #innodb_buffer_pool_size = 384M #innodb_additional_mem_pool_size = 20M # Set .._log_file_size to 25 % of buffer pool size #innodb_log_file_size = 100M #innodb_log_buffer_size = 8M #innodb_flush_log_at_trx_commit = 1 #innodb_lock_wait_timeout = 50 [mysqldump] quick max_allowed_packet = 64M [mysql] no-auto-rehash # Remove the next comment character if you are not familiar with SQL #safe-updates [myisamchk] key_buffer_size = 256M sort_buffer_size = 256M read_buffer = 8M write_buffer = 8M [mysqlhotcopy] interactive-timeout

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• Segmentation Fault (11) with modwsgi on CentOS 5.7 when running pyramid app

  - by carbotex

  I'm getting Segmentation fault error when trying to access the "Hello World" pyramid app. This error only occurs when running against CentOS 5.7 setup, but no problem whatsoever when tested against OSX and Arch Linux. Could it be a CentOS specific issue? [error] [client 10.211.55.2] Premature end of script headers: pyramid.wsgi [notice] child pid 31212 exit signal Segmentation fault (11) I have tried to follow the troubleshooting guides posted here http://code.google.com/p/modwsgi/wiki/InstallationIssues which suggests that it might caused by missing Shared Library. A quick check reveals that shared library is not the issue. [centos57@localhost modules]$ ldd mod_wsgi.so linux-gate.so.1 => (0x00e6a000) libpython2.7.so.1.0 => /home/python/lib/libpython2.7.so.1.0 (0x0024c000) libpthread.so.0 => /lib/libpthread.so.0 (0x00da8000) libdl.so.2 => /lib/libdl.so.2 (0x00cd6000) libutil.so.1 => /lib/libutil.so.1 (0x00110000) libm.so.6 => /lib/libm.so.6 (0x0085c000) libc.so.6 => /lib/libc.so.6 (0x00682000) /lib/ld-linux.so.2 (0x0012b000) Then I found another clue that might be able to solve my problem. Unfortunately libexpat is not the source of the problem. http://code.google.com/p/modwsgi/wiki/IssuesWithExpatLibrary [centos57@localhost bin]$ ldd ~/httpd/bin/httpd | grep expat libexpat.so.1 => /usr/local/lib/libexpat.so.1 (0x00b00000) [centos57@localhost bin]$ strings /usr/local/lib/libexpat.so.1 | grep expat libexpat.so.1 expat_2.0.1 [centos57@localhost bin]$ python Python 2.7.2 (default, Nov 26 2011, 08:08:44) [GCC 4.1.2 20080704 (Red Hat 4.1.2-51)] on linux2 Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information. >>> import pyexpat >>> pyexpat.version_info (2, 0, 0) >>> I've been pulling my hair out trying to figure out what I'm missing in my setup. Why the problem only occurs with CentOS? Here is the detailed setup: Apache 2.2.19 Python 2.7.2 mod_wsgi-3.3 /home/httpd/conf/extra/pyramid.wsgi from pyramid.paster import get_app application = get_app('/home/homecamera/hcadmin/root/production.ini', 'main') /home/httpd/conf/extra/modwsgi.conf LoadModule wsgi_module modules/mod_wsgi.so WSGIScriptAlias /myapp /home/root/test.wsgi <Directory /home/root> WSGIProcessGroup pyramid Order allow,deny Allow from all </Directory> # Use only 1 Python sub-interpreter. Multiple sub-interpreters # play badly with C extensions. WSGIApplicationGroup %{GLOBAL} WSGIPassAuthorization On WSGIDaemonProcess pyramid user=daemon group=daemon processes=1 \ threads=4 \ python-path=/home/python/lib/python2.7/site-packages WSGIScriptAlias /hello /home/httpd/conf/extra/pyramid.wsgi <Directory /home/httpd/conf/extra> WSGIProcessGroup pyramid Order allow,deny Allow from all </Directory> Again this same setup works on OSX and Arch Linux but not on CentOS 5.7. Could someone out there point me to the right direction before I ran out of my hair. ==================================================================================== When apache started with gdb, I got a couple of warnings Reading symbols from /home/httpd/bin/httpd...done. Attaching to program: /home/httpd/bin/httpd, process 1821 warning: .dynamic section for "/lib/libcrypt.so.1" is not at the expected address warning: difference appears to be caused by prelink, adjusting expectations warning: .dynamic section for "/lib/libutil.so.1" is not at the expected address warning: difference appears to be caused by prelink, adjusting expectations gdb output. After hitting refresh button, to load pyramid. (gdb) cont Continuing. warning: .dynamic section for "/usr/lib/libgssapi_krb5.so.2" is not at the expected address warning: difference appears to be caused by prelink, adjusting expectations warning: .dynamic section for "/usr/lib/libkrb5.so.3" is not at the expected address warning: difference appears to be caused by prelink, adjusting expectations warning: .dynamic section for "/lib/libresolv.so.2" is not at the expected address warning: difference appears to be caused by prelink, adjusting expectations Program received signal SIGSEGV, Segmentation fault. [Switching to Thread 0x8edbb90 (LWP 1824)] 0x0814c120 in EVP_PKEY_CTX_dup () apache_error_log [info] mod_wsgi (pid=1821): Starting process 'pyramid' with threads=1. [info] mod_wsgi (pid=1821): Initializing Python. [info] mod_wsgi (pid=1821): Attach interpreter ''. [info] mod_wsgi (pid=1821): Create interpreter 'web.domain.com:20000|/hcadmin'. [info] [client 10.211.55.2] mod_wsgi (pid=1821, process='pyramid', application='web.domain.com:20000|/hcadmin'): Loading WSGI script '/home/httpd/conf/extra/pyramid.wsgi'. [error] hello 1

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• All downloads being interrupted

  - by Jake

  System: Windows 7 Professional 64bit. 8GB RAM, Intel i5-2400 CPU, +300GB free on the hard drive. AVG Internet Security 2012 (enabled & disabled, with firewall enabled and disabled - no effect for either). This computer is less than a year old. Network: This problem is occurring on a single computer on a network with multiple computers. The router is a Motorola Netopia 3347-02 (DSL Modem/Wireless Router combined). The computer is plugged in directly to the modem, other computers are using the wireless successfully. The router has been reset. The only thing odd about the connection between the router and computer is that it is configured to allow RDP through, so it is assigned a static IP by the router and port forwarding is enabled for port 3389. Also, though I doubt it matters, a second wireless router is active behind this router providing a second network that some computers in the area use without issues. Details: All downloads initiated on this specific computer eventually fail, this includes streaming from youtube, specialized downloads (itunes), downloads from websites, FTP downloads, etc. Failure occurs with all browsers, but in chrome this is the process it takes: 1) Download begins normally, 2) At some point between (observed) 7MBs and 229MBs the download stops progressing (at this point, if watching chrome's task manager, you can see the network activity for the downloading tab drop to 0kps), 3) for some time the download sits there still attempting to complete, but will eventually display "123,049,871/0 B, Interrupted" (where the number is whatever it actually got to). The file I am using to test this is a very large .zip file located on a server I control, but the problem seems to occur on any site. The amount downloaded is completely random, and seems to be more time-based than anything (if I start a download immediately after the last one fails, it tends to get further than the last one). Small files can get through for this reason, though they can fail as well. In a test where I simultaneously downloaded the same file via HTTP (chrome) and FTP (windows explorer), both downloads failed at the same instant, though explorer displayed "Connection timed out" several minutes before chrome finally showed the download as interrupted. Other things I have tried based on advice given to people with similar/identical problems: Setting my MTU to 1492 (as described here: http://blog.thecompwiz.com/2011/08/networking-issues.html) Disabling write caching to the hard drive storing the download on an external device successfully transmitted +1GB file from one computer on the same network to this computer disabling indexing in the folder the download was being stored in disabling all security software checked to make sure all drivers were up to date read about 50 accounts with nearly exact descriptions of what I'm experiencing, none of which had a solution given Running Processes: Image Name PID Session Name Session# Mem Usage ========================= ======== ================ =========== ============ System Idle Process 0 Services 0 24 K System 4 Services 0 104,836 K smss.exe 332 Services 0 1,276 K csrss.exe 764 Services 0 5,060 K wininit.exe 820 Services 0 4,748 K csrss.exe 844 Console 1 23,764 K services.exe 876 Services 0 11,856 K lsass.exe 892 Services 0 14,420 K lsm.exe 900 Services 0 7,820 K winlogon.exe 944 Console 1 7,716 K svchost.exe 428 Services 0 12,744 K svchost.exe 796 Services 0 12,240 K svchost.exe 1036 Services 0 22,372 K svchost.exe 1084 Services 0 174,132 K svchost.exe 1112 Services 0 56,144 K svchost.exe 1288 Services 0 18,640 K svchost.exe 1404 Services 0 29,616 K spoolsv.exe 1576 Services 0 25,924 K svchost.exe 1616 Services 0 12,788 K AppleMobileDeviceService. 1728 Services 0 9,796 K avgwdsvc.exe 1820 Services 0 8,268 K mDNSResponder.exe 1844 Services 0 5,832 K w3dbsmgr.exe 1108 Services 0 43,760 K QBCFMonitorService.exe 1336 Services 0 16,408 K svchost.exe 2404 Services 0 28,240 K taskhost.exe 3020 Console 1 12,372 K dwm.exe 2280 Console 1 5,968 K explorer.exe 2964 Console 1 152,476 K WUDFHost.exe 3316 Services 0 6,740 K svchost.exe 3408 Services 0 5,556 K RAVCpl64.exe 3684 Console 1 13,864 K igfxtray.exe 3700 Console 1 7,804 K hkcmd.exe 3772 Console 1 7,868 K igfxpers.exe 3788 Console 1 10,940 K sidebar.exe 3836 Console 1 84,400 K chrome.exe 3964 Console 1 19,640 K pptd40nt.exe 4068 Console 1 5,156 K acrotray.exe 3908 Console 1 14,676 K avgtray.exe 3872 Console 1 9,508 K jusched.exe 4076 Console 1 4,412 K iTunesHelper.exe 1532 Console 1 87,308 K SearchIndexer.exe 3492 Services 0 36,948 K iPodService.exe 4136 Services 0 7,944 K BrccMCtl.exe 4276 Console 1 18,132 K splwow64.exe 4380 Console 1 32,600 K qbupdate.exe 4836 Console 1 24,236 K svchost.exe 4288 Services 0 20,700 K wmpnetwk.exe 3112 Services 0 9,516 K FNPLicensingService.exe 5248 Services 0 5,852 K QBW32.EXE 5508 Console 1 127,068 K QBDBMgrN.exe 5600 Services 0 42,252 K EXCEL.EXE 2512 Console 1 99,100 K LMS.exe 3188 Services 0 5,616 K UNS.exe 1600 Services 0 7,308 K axlbridge.exe 5260 Console 1 5,132 K chrome.exe 5888 Console 1 200,336 K chrome.exe 3536 Console 1 26,076 K chrome.exe 1952 Console 1 20,168 K chrome.exe 4596 Console 1 24,696 K chrome.exe 4292 Console 1 48,096 K chrome.exe 2796 Console 1 23,520 K Acrobat.exe 1240 Console 1 87,252 K 123w.exe 4892 Console 1 22,728 K calc.exe 1700 Console 1 12,636 K chrome.exe 1328 Console 1 28,888 K chrome.exe 3696 Console 1 47,012 K rundll32.exe 6320 Console 1 7,104 K chrome.exe 4928 Console 1 44,248 K AVGIDSAgent.exe 260 Services 0 12,940 K avgfws.exe 6052 Services 0 26,912 K avgnsa.exe 5064 Services 0 2,496 K avgrsa.exe 3088 Services 0 2,200 K avgcsrva.exe 2596 Services 0 380 K avgcsrva.exe 6948 Services 0 408 K StikyNot.exe 452 Console 1 14,772 K chrome.exe 4580 Console 1 28,200 K chrome.exe 4016 Console 1 57,756 K svchost.exe 7140 Services 0 4,500 K chrome.exe 6264 Console 1 56,824 K chrome.exe 7008 Console 1 56,896 K chrome.exe 2224 Console 1 38,032 K taskhost.exe 612 Console 1 7,228 K chrome.exe 6000 Console 1 10,928 K chrome.exe 2568 Console 1 43,052 K chrome.exe 272 Console 1 75,988 K chrome.exe 7328 Console 1 53,240 K PaprPort.exe 7976 Console 1 137,152 K pplinks.exe 7500 Console 1 14,052 K ppscanmg.exe 5744 Console 1 18,996 K taskeng.exe 7388 Console 1 6,308 K SearchProtocolHost.exe 8024 Services 0 8,804 K SearchFilterHost.exe 7232 Services 0 7,848 K chrome.exe 8016 Console 1 37,440 K cmd.exe 7692 Console 1 3,096 K conhost.exe 7516 Console 1 5,872 K tasklist.exe 8160 Console 1 5,772 K WmiPrvSE.exe 7684 Services 0 6,400 K Any help with this would be greatly appreciated, I've been beating my head against a wall over this all day. This computer serves dual purpose as the main company document server and the Owner's work computer, it's fairly important it be fully functional and I cannot figure this out.

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• Improving SAS multipath to JBOD performance on Linux

  - by user36825

  Hello all I'm trying to optimize a storage setup on some Sun hardware with Linux. Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated. We have the following hardware: Sun Blade X6270 2* LSISAS1068E SAS controllers 2* Sun J4400 JBODs with 1 TB disks (24 disks per JBOD) Fedora Core 12 2.6.33 release kernel from FC13 (also tried with latest 2.6.31 kernel from FC12, same results) Here's the datasheet for the SAS hardware: http://www.sun.com/storage/storage_networking/hba/sas/PCIe.pdf It's using PCI Express 1.0a, 8x lanes. With a bandwidth of 250 MB/sec per lane, we should be able to do 2000 MB/sec per SAS controller. Each controller can do 3 Gb/sec per port and has two 4 port PHYs. We connect both PHYs from a controller to a JBOD. So between the JBOD and the controller we have 2 PHYs * 4 SAS ports * 3 Gb/sec = 24 Gb/sec of bandwidth, which is more than the PCI Express bandwidth. With write caching enabled and when doing big writes, each disk can sustain about 80 MB/sec (near the start of the disk). With 24 disks, that means we should be able to do 1920 MB/sec per JBOD. multipath { rr_min_io 100 uid 0 path_grouping_policy multibus failback manual path_selector "round-robin 0" rr_weight priorities alias somealias no_path_retry queue mode 0644 gid 0 wwid somewwid } I tried values of 50, 100, 1000 for rr_min_io, but it doesn't seem to make much difference. Along with varying rr_min_io I tried adding some delay between starting the dd's to prevent all of them writing over the same PHY at the same time, but this didn't make any difference, so I think the I/O's are getting properly spread out. According to /proc/interrupts, the SAS controllers are using a "IR-IO-APIC-fasteoi" interrupt scheme. For some reason only core #0 in the machine is handling these interrupts. I can improve performance slightly by assigning a separate core to handle the interrupts for each SAS controller: echo 2 /proc/irq/24/smp_affinity echo 4 /proc/irq/26/smp_affinity Using dd to write to the disk generates "Function call interrupts" (no idea what these are), which are handled by core #4, so I keep other processes off this core too. I run 48 dd's (one for each disk), assigning them to cores not dealing with interrupts like so: taskset -c somecore dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/mapper/mpathx oflag=direct bs=128M oflag=direct prevents any kind of buffer cache from getting involved. None of my cores seem maxed out. The cores dealing with interrupts are mostly idle and all the other cores are waiting on I/O as one would expect. Cpu0 : 0.0%us, 1.0%sy, 0.0%ni, 91.2%id, 7.5%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.2%si, 0.0%st Cpu1 : 0.0%us, 0.8%sy, 0.0%ni, 93.0%id, 0.2%wa, 0.0%hi, 6.0%si, 0.0%st Cpu2 : 0.0%us, 0.6%sy, 0.0%ni, 94.4%id, 0.1%wa, 0.0%hi, 4.8%si, 0.0%st Cpu3 : 0.0%us, 7.5%sy, 0.0%ni, 36.3%id, 56.1%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st Cpu4 : 0.0%us, 1.3%sy, 0.0%ni, 85.7%id, 4.9%wa, 0.0%hi, 8.1%si, 0.0%st Cpu5 : 0.1%us, 5.5%sy, 0.0%ni, 36.2%id, 58.3%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st Cpu6 : 0.0%us, 5.0%sy, 0.0%ni, 36.3%id, 58.7%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st Cpu7 : 0.0%us, 5.1%sy, 0.0%ni, 36.3%id, 58.5%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st Cpu8 : 0.1%us, 8.3%sy, 0.0%ni, 27.2%id, 64.4%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st Cpu9 : 0.1%us, 7.9%sy, 0.0%ni, 36.2%id, 55.8%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st Cpu10 : 0.0%us, 7.8%sy, 0.0%ni, 36.2%id, 56.0%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st Cpu11 : 0.0%us, 7.3%sy, 0.0%ni, 36.3%id, 56.4%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st Cpu12 : 0.0%us, 5.6%sy, 0.0%ni, 33.1%id, 61.2%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st Cpu13 : 0.1%us, 5.3%sy, 0.0%ni, 36.1%id, 58.5%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st Cpu14 : 0.0%us, 4.9%sy, 0.0%ni, 36.4%id, 58.7%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st Cpu15 : 0.1%us, 5.4%sy, 0.0%ni, 36.5%id, 58.1%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st Given all this, the throughput reported by running "dstat 10" is in the range of 2200-2300 MB/sec. Given the math above I would expect something in the range of 2*1920 ~= 3600+ MB/sec. Does anybody have any idea where my missing bandwidth went? Thanks!

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• What is causing the unusual high load average and IOwait?

  - by James

  I noticed on Tuesday night of last week, the load average went up sharply and it seemed abnormal since the traffic is small. Usually, the numbers usually average around .40 or lower and my server stuff (mysql, php and apache) are optimized. I noticed that the IOWait is unusually high even though the processes is barely using any CPU. top - 01:44:39 up 1 day, 21:13, 1 user, load average: 1.41, 1.09, 0.86 Tasks: 60 total, 1 running, 59 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie Cpu0 : 0.0%us, 0.0%sy, 0.0%ni,100.0%id, 0.0%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st Cpu1 : 0.0%us, 0.0%sy, 0.0%ni,100.0%id, 0.0%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st Cpu2 : 0.0%us, 0.3%sy, 0.0%ni, 99.7%id, 0.0%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st Cpu3 : 0.0%us, 0.0%sy, 0.0%ni,100.0%id, 0.0%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st Cpu4 : 0.0%us, 0.0%sy, 0.0%ni,100.0%id, 0.0%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st Cpu5 : 0.0%us, 0.0%sy, 0.0%ni,100.0%id, 0.0%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st Cpu6 : 0.0%us, 0.0%sy, 0.0%ni,100.0%id, 0.0%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st Cpu7 : 0.0%us, 0.0%sy, 0.0%ni, 91.5%id, 8.5%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st Mem: 1048576k total, 331944k used, 716632k free, 0k buffers Swap: 0k total, 0k used, 0k free, 0k cached PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND 1 root 15 0 2468 1376 1140 S 0 0.1 0:00.92 init 1656 root 15 0 13652 5212 664 S 0 0.5 0:00.00 apache2 9323 root 18 0 13652 5212 664 S 0 0.5 0:00.00 apache2 10079 root 18 0 3972 1248 972 S 0 0.1 0:00.00 su 10080 root 15 0 4612 1956 1448 S 0 0.2 0:00.01 bash 11298 root 15 0 13652 5212 664 S 0 0.5 0:00.00 apache2 11778 chikorit 15 0 2344 1092 884 S 0 0.1 0:00.05 top 15384 root 18 0 17544 13m 1568 S 0 1.3 0:02.28 miniserv.pl 15585 root 15 0 8280 2736 2168 S 0 0.3 0:00.02 sshd 15608 chikorit 15 0 8280 1436 860 S 0 0.1 0:00.02 sshd Here is the VMStat procs -----------memory---------- ---swap-- -----io---- -system-- ----cpu---- r b swpd free buff cache si so bi bo in cs us sy id wa 1 0 0 768644 0 0 0 0 14 23 0 10 1 0 99 0 IOStat - Nothing unusal Total DISK READ: 67.13 K/s | Total DISK WRITE: 0.00 B/s TID PRIO USER DISK READ DISK WRITE SWAPIN IO COMMAND 19496 be/4 chikorit 11.85 K/s 0.00 B/s 0.00 % 0.00 % apache2 -k start 19501 be/4 mysql 3.95 K/s 0.00 B/s 0.00 % 0.00 % mysqld 19568 be/4 chikorit 11.85 K/s 0.00 B/s 0.00 % 0.00 % apache2 -k start 19569 be/4 chikorit 11.85 K/s 0.00 B/s 0.00 % 0.00 % apache2 -k start 19570 be/4 chikorit 11.85 K/s 0.00 B/s 0.00 % 0.00 % apache2 -k start 19571 be/4 chikorit 7.90 K/s 0.00 B/s 0.00 % 0.00 % apache2 -k start 19573 be/4 chikorit 7.90 K/s 0.00 B/s 0.00 % 0.00 % apache2 -k start 1 be/4 root 0.00 B/s 0.00 B/s 0.00 % 0.00 % init 11778 be/4 chikorit 0.00 B/s 0.00 B/s 0.00 % 0.00 % top 19470 be/4 mysql 0.00 B/s 0.00 B/s 0.00 % 0.00 % mysqld Load Average Chart - http://i.stack.imgur.com/kYsD0.png I want to be sure if this is not a MySQL problem before making sure. Also, this is a Ubuntu 10.04 LTS Server on OpenVZ. Edit: This will probably give a good picture on the IO Wait top - 22:12:22 up 17:41, 1 user, load average: 1.10, 1.09, 0.93 Tasks: 33 total, 1 running, 32 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie Cpu(s): 0.6%us, 0.2%sy, 0.0%ni, 89.0%id, 10.1%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st Mem: 1048576k total, 260708k used, 787868k free, 0k buffers Swap: 0k total, 0k used, 0k free, 0k cached PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND 1 root 15 0 2468 1376 1140 S 0 0.1 0:00.88 init 5849 root 15 0 12336 4028 668 S 0 0.4 0:00.00 apache2 8063 root 15 0 12336 4028 668 S 0 0.4 0:00.00 apache2 9732 root 16 0 8280 2728 2168 S 0 0.3 0:00.02 sshd 9746 chikorit 18 0 8412 1444 864 S 0 0.1 0:01.10 sshd 9747 chikorit 18 0 4576 1960 1488 S 0 0.2 0:00.24 bash 13706 chikorit 15 0 2344 1088 884 R 0 0.1 0:00.03 top 15745 chikorit 15 0 12968 5108 1280 S 0 0.5 0:00.00 apache2 15751 chikorit 15 0 72184 25m 18m S 0 2.5 0:00.37 php5-fpm 15790 chikorit 18 0 12472 4640 1192 S 0 0.4 0:00.00 apache2 15797 chikorit 15 0 72888 23m 16m S 0 2.3 0:00.06 php5-fpm 16038 root 15 0 67772 2848 592 D 0 0.3 0:00.00 php5-fpm 16309 syslog 18 0 24084 1316 992 S 0 0.1 0:00.07 rsyslogd 16316 root 15 0 5472 908 500 S 0 0.1 0:00.00 sshd 16326 root 15 0 2304 908 712 S 0 0.1 0:00.02 cron 17464 root 15 0 10252 7560 856 D 0 0.7 0:01.88 psad 17466 root 18 0 1684 276 208 S 0 0.0 0:00.31 psadwatchd 17559 root 18 0 11444 2020 732 S 0 0.2 0:00.47 sendmail-mta 17688 root 15 0 10252 5388 1136 S 0 0.5 0:03.81 python 17752 teamspea 19 0 44648 7308 4676 S 0 0.7 1:09.70 ts3server_linux 18098 root 15 0 12336 6380 3032 S 0 0.6 0:00.47 apache2 18099 chikorit 18 0 10368 2536 464 S 0 0.2 0:00.00 apache2 18120 ntp 15 0 4336 1316 984 S 0 0.1 0:00.87 ntpd 18379 root 15 0 12336 4028 668 S 0 0.4 0:00.00 apache2 18387 mysql 15 0 62796 36m 5864 S 0 3.6 1:43.26 mysqld 19584 root 15 0 12336 4028 668 S 0 0.4 0:00.02 apache2 22498 root 16 0 12336 4028 668 S 0 0.4 0:00.00 apache2 24260 root 15 0 67772 3612 1356 S 0 0.3 0:00.22 php5-fpm 27712 root 15 0 12336 4028 668 S 0 0.4 0:00.00 apache2 27730 root 15 0 12336 4028 668 S 0 0.4 0:00.00 apache2 30343 root 15 0 12336 4028 668 S 0 0.4 0:00.00 apache2 30366 root 15 0 12336 4028 668 S 0 0.4 0:00.00 apache2

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• How do I send traffic from my Mac's wifi to my VPN client?

  - by Heath Borders

  I need to connect my Android to a Juniper VPN. Unfortunately, Juniper doesn't support Android on our VPN version. We've already put in a feature request for it, but we have no idea how long it will take to be complete. Right now, I connect to the Juniper VPN with a Juniper Mac OSX VPN client that uses Java to install kernel extensions to start and stop the VPN. Thus, I can't use the Network panel in System Preferences to create a VPN device, which means it won't show up in the 'Sharing' panel's Internet Sharing Share your connection from: menu, as suggested here. I used newproc.d to see what /usr/libexec/InternetSharing did when it ran, and it runs the following processes: 2013 Nov 1 00:26:54 5565 <1> 64b /usr/libexec/launchdadd 2013 Nov 1 00:26:55 5566 <1> 64b /usr/libexec/InternetSharing 2013 Nov 1 00:26:56 5568 <5566> 64b natpmpd -d -y bridge100 en0 2013 Nov 1 00:26:56 5569 <1> 64b /usr/libexec/pfd -d 2013 Nov 1 00:26:56 5567 <5566> 64b bootpd -d -P My Juniper VPN client creates the following devices (output of ifconfig): jnc0: flags=841<UP,RUNNING,SIMPLEX> mtu 1400 inet 10.61.9.61 netmask 0xffffffff open (pid 920) jnc1: flags=841<UP,RUNNING,SIMPLEX> mtu 1450 closed So, it seems like I should just be able to do this and have everything work: sudo killall -9 natpmpd sudo /usr/libexec/natpmpd -y bridge100 jnc0 My android connected fine and could hit public internet sites, but it couldn't hit private VPN sites. I assume this is because I need to change the routes that /usr/libexec/InternetSharing sets up. This is the output from sudo pfctl -s all before starting Internet Sharing: No ALTQ support in kernel ALTQ related functions disabled TRANSLATION RULES: nat-anchor "com.apple/*" all rdr-anchor "com.apple/*" all FILTER RULES: scrub-anchor "com.apple/*" all fragment reassemble anchor "com.apple/*" all DUMMYNET RULES: dummynet-anchor "com.apple/*" all INFO: Status: Disabled for 0 days 00:11:02 Debug: Urgent State Table Total Rate current entries 0 searches 22875 34.6/s inserts 1558 2.4/s removals 1558 2.4/s Counters match 2005 3.0/s bad-offset 0 0.0/s fragment 0 0.0/s short 0 0.0/s normalize 0 0.0/s memory 0 0.0/s bad-timestamp 0 0.0/s congestion 0 0.0/s ip-option 12 0.0/s proto-cksum 0 0.0/s state-mismatch 1 0.0/s state-insert 0 0.0/s state-limit 0 0.0/s src-limit 0 0.0/s synproxy 0 0.0/s dummynet 0 0.0/s TIMEOUTS: tcp.first 120s tcp.opening 30s tcp.established 86400s tcp.closing 900s tcp.finwait 45s tcp.closed 90s tcp.tsdiff 60s udp.first 60s udp.single 30s udp.multiple 120s icmp.first 20s icmp.error 10s grev1.first 120s grev1.initiating 30s grev1.estblished 1800s esp.first 120s esp.estblished 900s other.first 60s other.single 30s other.multiple 120s frag 30s interval 10s adaptive.start 6000 states adaptive.end 12000 states src.track 0s LIMITS: states hard limit 10000 app-states hard limit 10000 src-nodes hard limit 10000 frags hard limit 5000 tables hard limit 1000 table-entries hard limit 200000 OS FINGERPRINTS: 696 fingerprints loaded This is the output from sudo pfctl -s all after starting Internet Sharing: No ALTQ support in kernel ALTQ related functions disabled TRANSLATION RULES: nat-anchor "com.apple/*" all nat-anchor "com.apple.internet-sharing" all rdr-anchor "com.apple/*" all rdr-anchor "com.apple.internet-sharing" all FILTER RULES: scrub-anchor "com.apple/*" all fragment reassemble scrub-anchor "com.apple.internet-sharing" all fragment reassemble anchor "com.apple/*" all anchor "com.apple.internet-sharing" all DUMMYNET RULES: dummynet-anchor "com.apple/*" all STATES: ALL tcp 10.0.1.32:50593 -> 74.125.225.113:443 SYN_SENT:CLOSED ALL udp 10.0.1.32:61534 -> 10.0.1.1:53 SINGLE:NO_TRAFFIC ALL udp 10.0.1.32:55433 -> 10.0.1.1:53 SINGLE:NO_TRAFFIC ALL udp 10.0.1.32:64041 -> 10.0.1.1:53 SINGLE:NO_TRAFFIC ALL tcp 10.0.1.32:50619 -> 74.125.225.131:443 SYN_SENT:CLOSED INFO: Status: Enabled for 0 days 00:00:01 Debug: Urgent State Table Total Rate current entries 5 searches 22886 22886.0/s inserts 1563 1563.0/s removals 1558 1558.0/s Counters match 2010 2010.0/s bad-offset 0 0.0/s fragment 0 0.0/s short 0 0.0/s normalize 0 0.0/s memory 0 0.0/s bad-timestamp 0 0.0/s congestion 0 0.0/s ip-option 12 12.0/s proto-cksum 0 0.0/s state-mismatch 1 1.0/s state-insert 0 0.0/s state-limit 0 0.0/s src-limit 0 0.0/s synproxy 0 0.0/s dummynet 0 0.0/s TIMEOUTS: tcp.first 120s tcp.opening 30s tcp.established 86400s tcp.closing 900s tcp.finwait 45s tcp.closed 90s tcp.tsdiff 60s udp.first 60s udp.single 30s udp.multiple 120s icmp.first 20s icmp.error 10s grev1.first 120s grev1.initiating 30s grev1.estblished 1800s esp.first 120s esp.estblished 900s other.first 60s other.single 30s other.multiple 120s frag 30s interval 10s adaptive.start 6000 states adaptive.end 12000 states src.track 0s LIMITS: states hard limit 10000 app-states hard limit 10000 src-nodes hard limit 10000 frags hard limit 5000 tables hard limit 1000 table-entries hard limit 200000 TABLES: OS FINGERPRINTS: 696 fingerprints loaded It looks like I need to change the pf settings that /usr/libexec/InternetSharing set up, but I have no idea how to do that.

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• Why might login failures cause SQL 2005 to dump and ditch?

  - by Byron Sommardahl

  Our SQL 2005 server began timing out and finally stopped responding on Oct 26th. The application logs showed a ton of 17883 events leading up to a reboot. After the reboot everything was fine but we were still scratching our heads. Fast forward 6 days... it happened again. Then again 2 days later. The last night. Today it has happened three times to far. The timeline is fairly predictable when it happens: Trans log backups. Login failure for "user2". Minidump Another minidump for the scheduler Repeated 17883 events. Server fails little by little until it won't accept any requests. Reboot is all that gets us going again (a band-aid) Interesting, though, is that the server box itself doesn't seem to have any problems. CPU usage is normal. Network connectivity is fine. We can remote in and look at logs. Management studio does eventually bog down, though. Today, for the first time, we tried stopping services instead of a reboot. All services stopped on their own except for the SQL Server service. We finally did an "end task" on that one and were able to bring everything back up. It worked fine for about 30 minutes until we started seeing timeouts and 17883's again. This time, probably because we didn't reboot all the way, we saw a bunch of 844 events mixed in with the 17883's. Our entire tech team here is scratching heads... some ideas we're kicking around: MS Cumulative Update hit around the same time as when we first had a problem. Since then, we've rolled it back. Maybe it didn't rollback all the way. The situation looks and feels like an unhandled "stack overflow" (no relation) in that it starts small and compounds over time. Problem with this is that there isn't significant CPU usage. At any rate, we're not ruling SQL 2005 bug out at all. Maybe we added one too many import processes and have reached our limit on this box. (hard to believe). Looking at SQLDUMP0151.log at the time of one of the crashes. There are some "login failures" and then there are two stack dumps. 1st a normal stack dump, 2nd for a scheduler dump. Here's a snippet: (sorry for the lack of line breaks) 2009-11-10 11:59:14.95 spid63 Using 'xpsqlbot.dll' version '2005.90.3042' to execute extended stored procedure 'xp_qv'. This is an informational message only; no user action is required. 2009-11-10 11:59:15.09 spid63 Using 'xplog70.dll' version '2005.90.3042' to execute extended stored procedure 'xp_msver'. This is an informational message only; no user action is required. 2009-11-10 12:02:33.24 Logon Error: 18456, Severity: 14, State: 16. 2009-11-10 12:02:33.24 Logon Login failed for user 'standard_user2'. [CLIENT: 50.36.172.101] 2009-11-10 12:08:21.12 Logon Error: 18456, Severity: 14, State: 16. 2009-11-10 12:08:21.12 Logon Login failed for user 'standard_user2'. [CLIENT: 50.36.172.101] 2009-11-10 12:13:49.38 Logon Error: 18456, Severity: 14, State: 16. 2009-11-10 12:13:49.38 Logon Login failed for user 'standard_user2'. [CLIENT: 50.36.172.101] 2009-11-10 12:15:16.88 Logon Error: 18456, Severity: 14, State: 16. 2009-11-10 12:15:16.88 Logon Login failed for user 'standard_user2'. [CLIENT: 50.36.172.101] 2009-11-10 12:18:24.41 Logon Error: 18456, Severity: 14, State: 16. 2009-11-10 12:18:24.41 Logon Login failed for user 'standard_user2'. [CLIENT: 50.36.172.101] 2009-11-10 12:18:38.88 spid111 Using 'dbghelp.dll' version '4.0.5' 2009-11-10 12:18:39.02 spid111 *Stack Dump being sent to C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL.1\MSSQL\LOG\SQLDump0149.txt 2009-11-10 12:18:39.02 spid111 SqlDumpExceptionHandler: Process 111 generated fatal exception c0000005 EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION. SQL Server is terminating this process. 2009-11-10 12:18:39.02 spid111 * ***************************************************************************** 2009-11-10 12:18:39.02 spid111 * 2009-11-10 12:18:39.02 spid111 * BEGIN STACK DUMP: 2009-11-10 12:18:39.02 spid111 * 11/10/09 12:18:39 spid 111 2009-11-10 12:18:39.02 spid111 * 2009-11-10 12:18:39.02 spid111 * 2009-11-10 12:18:39.02 spid111 * Exception Address = 0159D56F Module(sqlservr+0059D56F) 2009-11-10 12:18:39.02 spid111 * Exception Code = c0000005 EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION 2009-11-10 12:18:39.02 spid111 * Access Violation occurred writing address 00000000 2009-11-10 12:18:39.02 spid111 * Input Buffer 138 bytes - 2009-11-10 12:18:39.02 spid111 * " N R S C _ P T A 22 00 4e 00 52 00 53 00 43 00 5f 00 50 00 54 00 41 00 2009-11-10 12:18:39.02 spid111 * C _ Q A . d b o . 43 00 5f 00 51 00 41 00 2e 00 64 00 62 00 6f 00 2e 00 2009-11-10 12:18:39.02 spid111 * U s p S e l N e x 55 00 73 00 70 00 53 00 65 00 6c 00 4e 00 65 00 78 00 2009-11-10 12:18:39.02 spid111 * t A c c o u n t 74 00 41 00 63 00 63 00 6f 00 75 00 6e 00 74 00 00 00 2009-11-10 12:18:39.02 spid111 * @ i n t F o r m I 0a 40 00 69 00 6e 00 74 00 46 00 6f 00 72 00 6d 00 49 2009-11-10 12:18:39.02 spid111 * D & 8 @ t x 00 44 00 00 26 04 04 38 00 00 00 09 40 00 74 00 78 00 2009-11-10 12:18:39.02 spid111 * t A l i a s § 74 00 41 00 6c 00 69 00 61 00 73 00 00 a7 0f 00 09 04 2009-11-10 12:18:39.02 spid111 * Ð GQE9732 d0 00 00 07 00 47 51 45 39 37 33 32 2009-11-10 12:18:39.02 spid111 * 2009-11-10 12:18:39.02 spid111 * 2009-11-10 12:18:39.02 spid111 * MODULE BASE END SIZE 2009-11-10 12:18:39.02 spid111 * sqlservr 01000000 02C09FFF 01c0a000 2009-11-10 12:18:39.02 spid111 * ntdll 7C800000 7C8C1FFF 000c2000 2009-11-10 12:18:39.02 spid111 * kernel32 77E40000 77F41FFF 00102000

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• Stored proc running 30% slower through Java versus running directly on database

  - by James B

  Hi All, I'm using Java 1.6, JTDS 1.2.2 (also just tried 1.2.4 to no avail) and SQL Server 2005 to create a CallableStatement to run a stored procedure (with no parameters). I am seeing the Java wrapper running the same stored procedure 30% slower than using SQL Server Management Studio. I've run the MS SQL profiler and there is little difference in I/O between the two processes, so I don't think it's related to query plan caching. The stored proc takes no arguments and returns no data. It uses a server-side cursor to calculate the values that are needed to populate a table. I can't see how the calling a stored proc from Java should add a 30% overhead, surely it's just a pipe to the database that SQL is sent down and then the database executes it....Could the database be giving the Java app a different query plan?? I've posted to both the MSDN forums, and the sourceforge JTDS forums (topic: "stored proc slower in JTDS than direct in DB") I was wondering if anyone has any suggestions as to why this might be happening? Thanks in advance, -James (N.B. Fear not, I will collate any answers I get in other forums together here once I find the solution) Java code snippet: sLogger.info("Preparing call..."); stmt = mCon.prepareCall("SP_WB200_POPULATE_TABLE_limited_rows"); sLogger.info("Call prepared. Executing procedure..."); stmt.executeQuery(); sLogger.info("Procedure complete."); I have run sql profiler, and found the following: Java app : CPU: 466,514 Reads: 142,478,387 Writes: 284,078 Duration: 983,796 SSMS : CPU: 466,973 Reads: 142,440,401 Writes: 280,244 Duration: 769,851 (Both with DBCC DROPCLEANBUFFERS run prior to profiling, and both produce the correct number of rows) So my conclusion is that they both execute the same reads and writes, it's just that the way they are doing it is different, what do you guys think? It turns out that the query plans are significantly different for the different clients (the Java client is updating an index during an insert that isn't in the faster SQL client, also, the way it is executing joins is different (nested loops Vs. gather streams, nested loops Vs index scans, argh!)). Quite why this is, I don't know yet (I'll re-post when I do get to the bottom of it) Epilogue I couldn't get this to work properly. I tried homogenising the connection properties (arithabort, ansi_nulls etc) between the Java and Mgmt studio clients. It ended up the two different clients had very similar query/execution plans (but still with different actual plan_ids). I posted a summary of what I found to the MSDN SQL Server forums as I found differing performance not just between a JDBC client and management studio, but also between Microsoft's own command line client, SQLCMD, I also checked some more radical things like network traffic too, or wrapping the stored proc inside another stored proc, just for grins. I have a feeling the problem lies somewhere in the way the cursor was being executed, and it was somehow giving rise to the Java process being suspended, but why a different client should give rise to this different locking/waiting behaviour when nothing else is running and the same execution plan is in operation is a little beyond my skills (I'm no DBA!). As a result, I have decided that 4 days is enough of anyone's time to waste on something like this, so I will grudgingly code around it (if I'm honest, the stored procedure needed re-coding to be more incremental instead of re-calculating all data each week anyway), and chalk this one down to experience. I'll leave the question open, big thanks to everyone who put their hat in the ring, it was all useful, and if anyone comes up with anything further, I'd love to hear some more options...and if anyone finds this post as a result of seeing this behaviour in their own environments, then hopefully there's some pointers here that you can try yourself, and hope fully see further than we did. I'm ready for my weekend now! -James

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• Nginx + PHP-FPM executes script, but returns 404

  - by MorfiusX

  I am using Nginx + PHP-FPM to run a Wordpress based site. I have a URL that should return dynamically generated JSON data for use with the DataTables jQuery plugin. The data is returned properly, but with a return code of 404. I think this is a Nginx config issue, but I haven't been able to figure out why. The script 'getTable.php' works properly on the production version of the site which is currently using Apache. Anyone know how I can get this to work on Nginx? URL: http://dev.iloveskydiving.org/wp-content/plugins/ils-workflow/lib/getTable.php SERVER: CentOS 6 + Varnish (caching disabled for development) + Nginx + PHP-FPM + Wordpress + W3 Total Cache Nginx Config: server { # Server Parameters listen 127.0.0.1:8082; server_name dev.iloveskydiving.org; root /var/www/dev.iloveskydiving.org/html; access_log /var/www/dev.iloveskydiving.org/logs/access.log main; error_log /var/www/dev.iloveskydiving.org/logs/error.log error; index index.php; # Rewrite minified CSS and JS files location ~* \.(css|js) { if (!-f $request_filename) { rewrite ^/wp-content/w3tc/min/(.+\.(css|js))$ /wp-content/w3tc/min/index.php?file=$1 last; expires max; } } # Set a variable to work around the lack of nested conditionals set $cache_uri $request_uri; # Don't cache uris containing the following segments if ($request_uri ~* "(\/wp-admin\/|\/xmlrpc.php|\/wp-(app|cron|login|register|mail)\.php|wp-.*\.php|index\.php|wp\-comments\-popup\.php|wp\-links\-opml\.php|wp\-locations\.php)") { set $cache_uri "no cache"; } # Don't use the cache for logged in users or recent commenters if ($http_cookie ~* "comment_author|wordpress_[a-f0-9]+|wp\-postpass|wordpress_logged_in") { set $cache_uri 'no cache'; } # Use cached or actual file if they exists, otherwise pass request to WordPress location / { try_files /wp-content/w3tc/pgcache/$cache_uri/_index.html $uri $uri/ /index.php?q=$uri&$args; } # Cache static files for as long as possible location ~* \.(xml|ogg|ogv|svg|svgz|eot|otf|woff|mp4|ttf|css|rss|atom|js|jpg|jpeg|gif|png|ico|zip|tgz|gz|rar|bz2|doc|xls|exe|ppt|tar|mid|midi|wav|bmp|rtf)$ { try_files $uri =404; expires max; access_log off; } # Deny access to hidden files location ~* /\.ht { deny all; access_log off; log_not_found off; } location ~ \.php$ { try_files $uri =404; fastcgi_split_path_info ^(.+\.php)(/.+)$; include /etc/nginx/fastcgi_params; fastcgi_index index.php; fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name; fastcgi_param PATH_INFO $fastcgi_script_name; fastcgi_intercept_errors on; fastcgi_pass unix:/var/lib/php-fpm/php-fpm.sock; # port where FastCGI processes were spawned } } Fast CGI Params: fastcgi_param QUERY_STRING $query_string; fastcgi_param REQUEST_METHOD $request_method; fastcgi_param CONTENT_TYPE $content_type; fastcgi_param CONTENT_LENGTH $content_length; fastcgi_param SCRIPT_NAME $fastcgi_script_name; fastcgi_param REQUEST_URI $request_uri; fastcgi_param DOCUMENT_URI $document_uri; fastcgi_param DOCUMENT_ROOT $document_root; fastcgi_param SERVER_PROTOCOL $server_protocol; fastcgi_param HTTPS $https if_not_empty; fastcgi_param GATEWAY_INTERFACE CGI/1.1; fastcgi_param SERVER_SOFTWARE nginx/$nginx_version; fastcgi_param REMOTE_ADDR $remote_addr; fastcgi_param REMOTE_PORT $remote_port; fastcgi_param SERVER_ADDR $server_addr; fastcgi_param SERVER_PORT $server_port; fastcgi_param SERVER_NAME $server_name; # PHP only, required if PHP was built with --enable-force-cgi-redirect fastcgi_param REDIRECT_STATUS 200; UPDATE: Upon further digging, it looks like Nginx is generating the 404 and PHP-FPM is executing the script properly and returning a 200. UPDATE: Here are the contents of the script: <?php /** * Connect to Wordpres */ require(dirname(__FILE__) . '/../../../../wp-blog-header.php'); /** * Define temporary array */ $aaData = array(); $aaData['aaData'] = array(); /** * Execute Query */ $query = new WP_Query( array( 'post_type' => 'post', 'posts_per_page' => '-1' ) ); foreach ($query->posts as $post) { array_push( $aaData['aaData'], array( $post->post_title ) ); } /** * Echo JSON encoded array */ echo json_encode($aaData);

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