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• Communities - The importance of exchange and discussion

  Communication with your environment is an essential part of everyone's life. And it doesn't matter whether you are actually living in a rural area in the middle of nowhere, within the pulsating heart of a big city, or in my case on a wonderful island in the Indian Ocean. The ability to exchange your thoughts, your experience and your worries with another person helps you to get different points of view and new ideas on how to resolve an issue you might be confronted with. Benefits of community work What happens to be common sense in your daily life, also applies to your work environment. Working in IT, or ICT as it is called in Mauritius, requires a lot of reading and learning. Not only during your lectures at the university but with your colleagues in a project assignment and hopefully with 'unknown' pals in the universe of online communities. At least I can say that I learned quite a lot from other developers code, their responses in various forums, their numerous blog articles, and while attending local user group meetings. When I started to work as a professional software developer (or engineer some may say) years ago I immediately checked the existence of communities on the programming language, the database technology and other vital information on software development in general. Luckily, it wasn't too difficult to find. My employer had a subscription of the monthly magazines and newsletters of a national organisation which also run the biggest forum in that area. Getting in touch with other developers and reading their common problems but also solutions was a huge benefit to my growth. Image courtesy of Michael Kappel (CC BY-NC 2.0) Active participation and regular contribution to this community gave me some nice advantages, too. Within three years I was listed as a conference speaker at the annual developer's conference and provided several sessions on different topics during consecutive years. Back in 2004, I took over the responsibility and management of the monthly meetings of a regional user group, and organised it for more than two years. Furthermore, I was invited to the newly-founded community program of Microsoft Germany (Community Leader/Insider Program - CLIP). My website on Active FoxPro Pages was nominated in the second batch of online communities. Due to my community work and providing advice to others, I had the honour to be awarded as Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) - Visual Developer for Visual FoxPro in the years 2006 and 2007. It was a great experience to meet with other like-minded people and I'm really grateful for that. Just in case, more details are listed in my Curriculum Vitae. But this all changed when I moved to Mauritius... Cyber island Mauritius? During the first months in Mauritius I was way too busy to think about community activities at all. First of all, there was the new company that had to be set up, the new staff had to be trained and of course the communication work-flows and so on with the project managers back in Germany had to be sorted out, too. Second, I had to get a grip of my private matters like getting the basics for my new household or exploring the neighbourhood, and last but not least I needed a break from the hectic and intensive work prior to my departure. As soon as the sea literally calmed down, I started to have conversations with my colleagues about communities and user groups. Sadly, it turned out that there were none, or at least no one was aware of any at that time. Oh oh, what did I do? Anyway, having this kind of background and very positive experience with off-line and on-line activities I decided for myself that some day I'm going to found a community in Mauritius for all kind of IT/ICT-related fields. The main focus might be on software development but not on a certain technology or methodology. It was clear to me that it should be an open infrastructure and anyone is welcome to join, to experience, to share and to contribute if they would like to. That was the idea at that time... Ok, fast-forward to recent events. At the end of October 2012 I was invited to an event called Open Days organised by Microsoft Indian Ocean Islands together with other local partners and resellers. There I got in touch with local Technical Evangelist Arnaud Meslier and we had a good conversation on communities during the breaks. Eventually, I left a good impression on him, as we are having chats on Facebook or Skype irregularly. Well, seeing that my personal and professional surroundings have been settled and running smooth, having that great exchange and contact with Microsoft IOI (again), and being really eager to re-animate my intentions from 2007, I recently founded a new community: Mauritius Software Craftsmanship Community - #MSCC It took me a while to settle down with the name but it was obvious that the community should not be attached to one single technology, like ie. .NET user group, Oracle developers, or Joomla friends (these are fictitious names). There are several other reasons why I came up with 'Craftsmanship' as the core topic of this community. The expression of 'engineering' didn't feel right with the fields covered. Software development in all kind of facets is a craft, and therefore demands a lot of practice but also guidance from more experienced developers. It also includes the process of designing, modelling and drafting the ideas. Has to deal with various types of tests and test methodologies, and of course should be focused on flexible and agile ways of acting. In order to meet and to excel a customer's request for a solution. Next, I was looking for an easy way to handle the organisation of events and meeting appointments. Using all kind of social media platforms like Google+, LinkedIn, Facebook, Xing, etc. I was never really confident about their features of event handling. More by chance I stumbled upon Meetup.com and in combination with the other entities (G+ Communities, FB Pages or in Groups) I am looking forward to advertise and manage all future activities here: Mauritius Software Craftsmanship Community This is a community for those who care and are proud of what they do. For those developers, regardless how experienced they are, who want to improve and master their craft. This is a community for those who believe that being average is just not good enough. I know, there are not many 'craftsmen' yet but it's a start... Let's see how it looks like by the end of the year. There are free smartphone apps for Android and iOS from Meetup.com that allow you to keep track of meetings and to stay informed on latest updates. And last but not least, there will be a Trello workspace to collect and share ideas and provide downloads of slides, etc. Sharing is caring! As mentioned, the #MSCC is present in various social media networks in order to cover as many people as possible here in Mauritius. Following is an overview of the current networks: Twitter - Latest updates and quickies Google+ - Community channel Facebook - Community Page LinkedIn - Community Group Trello - Collaboration workspace to share and develop ideas Hopefully, this covers the majority of computer-related people in Mauritius. Please spread the word about the #MSCC between your colleagues, your friends and other interested 'geeks'. Your future looks bright Running and participating in a user group or any kind of community usually provides quite a number of advantages for anyone. On the one side it is very joyful for me to organise appointments and get in touch with people that might be interested to present a little demo of their projects or their recent problems they had to tackle down, and on the other side there are lots of companies that have various support programs or sponsorships especially tailored for user groups. At the moment, I already have a couple of gimmicks that I would like to hand out in small contests or raffles during one of the upcoming meetings, and as said, companies provide all kind of goodies, books free of charge, or sometimes even licenses for communities. Meeting other software developers or IT guys also opens up your point of view on the local market and there might be interesting projects or job offers available, too. A community like the Mauritius Software Craftsmanship Community is great for freelancers, self-employed, students and of course employees. Meetings will be organised on a regular basis, and I'm open to all kind of suggestions from you. Please leave a comment here in blog or join the conversations in the above mentioned social networks. Let's get this community up and running, my fellow Mauritians!

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• Why you need to learn async in .NET

  - by PSteele

  I had an opportunity to teach a quick class yesterday about what’s new in .NET 4.0.  One of the topics was the TPL (Task Parallel Library) and how it can make async programming easier.  I also stressed that this is the direction Microsoft is going with for C# 5.0 and learning the TPL will greatly benefit their understanding of the new async stuff.  We had a little time left over and I was able to show some code that uses the Async CTP to accomplish some stuff, but it wasn’t a simple demo that you could jump in to and understand so I thought I’d thrown one together and put it in a blog post. The entire solution file with all of the sample projects is located here. A Simple Example Let’s start with a super-simple example (WindowsApplication01 in the solution). I’ve got a form that displays a label and a button.  When the user clicks the button, I want to start displaying the current time for 15 seconds and then stop. What I’d like to write is this: lblTime.ForeColor = Color.Red; for (var x = 0; x < 15; x++) { lblTime.Text = DateTime.Now.ToString("HH:mm:ss"); Thread.Sleep(1000); } lblTime.ForeColor = SystemColors.ControlText; (Note that I also changed the label’s color while counting – not quite an ILM-level effect, but it adds something to the demo!) As I’m sure most of my readers are aware, you can’t write WinForms code this way.  WinForms apps, by default, only have one thread running and it’s main job is to process messages from the windows message pump (for a more thorough explanation, see my Visual Studio Magazine article on multithreading in WinForms).  If you put a Thread.Sleep in the middle of that code, your UI will be locked up and unresponsive for those 15 seconds.  Not a good UX and something that needs to be fixed.  Sure, I could throw an “Application.DoEvents()” in there, but that’s hacky. The Windows Timer Then I think, “I can solve that.  I’ll use the Windows Timer to handle the timing in the background and simply notify me when the time has changed”.  Let’s see how I could accomplish this with a Windows timer (WindowsApplication02 in the solution): public partial class Form1 : Form { private readonly Timer clockTimer; private int counter;   public Form1() { InitializeComponent(); clockTimer = new Timer {Interval = 1000}; clockTimer.Tick += UpdateLabel; }   private void UpdateLabel(object sender, EventArgs e) { lblTime.Text = DateTime.Now.ToString("HH:mm:ss"); counter++; if (counter == 15) { clockTimer.Enabled = false; lblTime.ForeColor = SystemColors.ControlText; } }   private void cmdStart_Click(object sender, EventArgs e) { lblTime.ForeColor = Color.Red; counter = 0; clockTimer.Start(); } } Holy cow – things got pretty complicated here.  I use the timer to fire off a Tick event every second.  Inside there, I can update the label.  Granted, I can’t use a simple for/loop and have to maintain a global counter for the number of iterations.  And my “end” code (when the loop is finished) is now buried inside the bottom of the Tick event (inside an “if” statement).  I do, however, get a responsive application that doesn’t hang or stop repainting while the 15 seconds are ticking away. But doesn’t .NET have something that makes background processing easier? The BackgroundWorker Next I try .NET’s BackgroundWorker component – it’s specifically designed to do processing in a background thread (leaving the UI thread free to process the windows message pump) and allows updates to be performed on the main UI thread (WindowsApplication03 in the solution): public partial class Form1 : Form { private readonly BackgroundWorker worker;   public Form1() { InitializeComponent(); worker = new BackgroundWorker {WorkerReportsProgress = true}; worker.DoWork += StartUpdating; worker.ProgressChanged += UpdateLabel; worker.RunWorkerCompleted += ResetLabelColor; }   private void StartUpdating(object sender, DoWorkEventArgs e) { var workerObject = (BackgroundWorker) sender; for (int x = 0; x < 15; x++) { workerObject.ReportProgress(0); Thread.Sleep(1000); } }   private void UpdateLabel(object sender, ProgressChangedEventArgs e) { lblTime.Text = DateTime.Now.ToString("HH:mm:ss"); }   private void ResetLabelColor(object sender, RunWorkerCompletedEventArgs e) { lblTime.ForeColor = SystemColors.ControlText; }   private void cmdStart_Click(object sender, EventArgs e) { lblTime.ForeColor = Color.Red; worker.RunWorkerAsync(); } } Well, this got a little better (I think).  At least I now have my simple for/next loop back.  Unfortunately, I’m still dealing with event handlers spread throughout my code to co-ordinate all of this stuff in the right order. Time to look into the future. The async way Using the Async CTP, I can go back to much simpler code (WindowsApplication04 in the solution): private async void cmdStart_Click(object sender, EventArgs e) { lblTime.ForeColor = Color.Red; for (var x = 0; x < 15; x++) { lblTime.Text = DateTime.Now.ToString("HH:mm:ss"); await TaskEx.Delay(1000); } lblTime.ForeColor = SystemColors.ControlText; } This code will run just like the Timer or BackgroundWorker versions – fully responsive during the updates – yet is way easier to implement.  In fact, it’s almost a line-for-line copy of the original version of this code.  All of the async plumbing is handled by the compiler and the framework.  My code goes back to representing the “what” of what I want to do, not the “how”. I urge you to download the Async CTP.  All you need is .NET 4.0 and Visual Studio 2010 sp1 – no need to set up a virtual machine with the VS2011 beta (unless, of course, you want to dive right in to the C# 5.0 stuff!).  Starting playing around with this today and see how much easier it will be in the future to write async-enabled applications.

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• Not attending the LUGM mini-meetup - 05. Oct 2013

  Not attending a meeting of the LUGM can be fun, too. It's getting a bit of a habit that Ish is organising small gatherings, aka mini-meetups, of the Linux User Group Mauritius/Meta (LUGM) almost every Saturday. There they mainly discuss and talk about various elements of using Linux as ones main operating systems and the possibilities you are going to have. On top of course, some tips & tricks about mastering the command line and initial steps in scripting or even writing HTML. In general, sounds like a good portion of fun and great spirit of community. Unfortunately, I'm usually quite busy with private and family matters during the weekend and so I already signalised that I wouldn't be around. Well, at least not physically... But this Saturday a couple of things worked out faster than expected and so I was hanging out on my machine. I made virtual contact with one of Pawan's messages over on Facebook... And somehow that kicked off some kind of an online game fun on basic configuration of Apache HTTPd 2.2.x, PHP 5.x and how to improve the overall performance of a newly installed blog based on WordPress. Default configuration files Nitin's website finally came alive and despite the dark theme and the hidden Apple 'fanboy' advertisement I was more interested in the technical situation. As with any new installation there is usually quite some adjustment to be done. And Nitin's page was no exception. Unfortunately, out of the box installations of Apache httpd and PHP are too verbose and expose too much information under the hood. You might think that this isn't really a problem at all, well, think about it again after completely reading this article. First, I checked the HTTP response headers - using either Chrome Developer Tools or Firefox Web Developer extension - of Nitin's page and based on that I advised him to lower the noise levels a little bit. It's not really necessary that detailed information about web server software and scripting language has to be published in every response made. Quite a number of script kiddies and exploits actually check for version specifics prior to an attack. So, removing at least version details hardens the system a little bit. In particular, I'm talking about these response values: Server X-Powered-By How to achieve that? By tweaking the configuration files... Namely, we are going to look into the following ones: apache2.conf httpd.conf .htaccess php.ini The above list contains some additional files, I'm talking about in the next paragraphs. Anyway, those are the ones involved. Tweaking Apache Open your favourite text editor and start to modify the apache2.conf. Eventually, you might like to have a quick peak at the file to see whether it is necessary to adjust it or not. Following is a handy combination of commands to get an overview of your active directives: # sudo grep -v '#' /etc/apache2/apache2.conf | grep -v '^$' | less There you keep an eye on those two Apache directives: ServerSignature Off ServerTokens Prod If that's not the case, change them as highlighted above. In order to activate your modifications you have to restart Apache httpd server. On Debian and Ubuntu you might use apache2ctl for that, on other distributions you might have to use service or run the init-scripts again: # sudo apache2ctl configtestSyntax OK# sudo apache2ctl restart Refresh your website and check the HTTP response header. Tweaking PHP5 (a little bit) Next, check your php.ini file with the following statement: # sudo grep -v ';' /etc/php5/apache2/php.ini | grep -v '^$' | less And check the value of expose_php = Off Again, if it's not as highlighted, change it... Some more Apache love Okay, back to Apache it might also be interesting to improve the situation about browser caching and removing more obsolete information. When you run your website against the usual performance checks like Google Page Speed and Yahoo YSlow you might see those check points with bad grades on a standard, default configuration. Well, this can be done easily. Configure entity tags (ETags) ETags are only interesting when you run your websites on a farm of multiple web servers. Removing this data for your static resources is very simple in Apache. As we are going to deal with the HTTP response header information you have to ensure that Apache is capable to manipulate them. First, check your enabled modules: # sudo ls -al /etc/apache2/mods-enabled/ | grep headers And in case that the 'headers' module is not listed, you have to enable it from the available ones: # sudo a2enmod headers Second, check your httpd.conf file (in case it exists): # sudo grep -v '#' /etc/apache2/httpd.conf | grep -v '^$' | less In newer (better said fresh) installations you might have to create a new configuration file below your conf.d folder with your favourite text editor like so: # sudo nano /etc/apache2/conf.d/headers.conf Then, in order to tweak your HTTP responses either check for those lines or add them: Header unset ETagFileETag None In case that your file doesn't exist or those lines are missing, feel free to create/add them. Afterwards, check your Apache configuration syntax and restart your running instances as already shown above: # sudo apache2ctl configtestSyntax OK# sudo apache2ctl restart Add Expires headers To improve the loading performance of your website, you should take some care into the proper configuration of how to leverage the browser's ability to cache certain resources and files. This is done by adding an Expires: value to the HTTP response header. Generally speaking it is advised that you specify a near-future, read: 1 week or a little bit more, for your static content like JavaScript files or Cascading Style Sheets. One solution to adjust this is to put some instructions into the .htaccess file in the root folder of your web site. Of course, this could also be placed into a more generic location of your Apache installation but honestly, I'd like to keep this at the web site level. Following some adjustments I'm currently using on this blog site: # Turn on Expires and set default to 0ExpiresActive OnExpiresDefault A0 # Set up caching on media files for 1 year (forever?)<FilesMatch "\.(flv|ico|pdf|avi|mov|ppt|doc|mp3|wmv|wav)$">ExpiresDefault A29030400Header append Cache-Control "public"</FilesMatch> # Set up caching on media files for 1 week<FilesMatch "\.(js|css)$">ExpiresDefault A604800Header append Cache-Control "public"</FilesMatch> # Set up caching on media files for 31 days<FilesMatch "\.(gif|jpg|jpeg|png|swf)$">ExpiresDefault A2678400Header append Cache-Control "public"</FilesMatch> As we are editing the .htaccess files, it is not necessary to restart Apache. In case that your web site doesn't load anymore or you're experiencing an error while trying to restart your httpd, check that the 'expires' module is actually an enabled module: # ls -al /etc/apache2/mods-enabled/ | grep expires# sudo a2enmod expires Of course, the instructions above a re not feature complete but I hope that they might provide a better default configuration for your LAMP stack. Resume of the day Within a couple of hours, and while being occupied with an eLearning course on SQL Server 2012, I had some good fun in helping and assisting other LUGM members while they were some kilometers away at Bagatelle. According to other blog articles it seems that Nitin had quite some moments of desperation. Just for the records: At no time it was my intention to either kick his butt or pull a leg on him. Simply, providing some input based on the lessons I've learned over the last couple of years configuring Apache HTTPd and PHP. Check out the other blogs, too: LUGM mini-meetup... Epic! Superb Saturday Linux Meetup And last but not least, the man himself: The end of a new beginning Cheers, and happy community'ing! Updates Due to our weekly Code & Coffee sessions in the MSCC community, I had a chance to talk to Nitin directly and he showed me the problems directly on his machine. This led to update this article hence the paragraphs on enabling the modules 'headers' and 'expires'.

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• first install for windows eight.....da beta

  - by raysmithequip

  The W8 preview is now installed and I am enjoying it.  I remember the learning curve of my first unix machine back in the eighties, this ain't that.It is normal for me to do the first os install with a keyboard and low end monitor...you never know what you'll encounter out in the field.  The OS took like a fish to water.  I used a low end INTEL motherboard dp55w I gathered on the cheap, an 1157 i5 from the used bin a pair of 6 gig ddr3 sticks, a rosewell 550 watt power supply a cheap used twenty buck sub 200g wd sata drive, a half working dvd burner and an asus fanless nvidia vid card, not a great one but Sub 50.00 on newey eggey...I did have to hunt the ms forums for a key and of course to activate the thing, if dos would of needed this outmoded ritual, we would still be on cpm and osborne would be a household name, of course little do people know that this ritual was common as far back as the seventies on att unix installs....not, but it was possible, I used to joke about when I ran a bbs, what hell would of been wrought had dos 3.2 machines been required to dial into my bbs to send fido mail to ms and wait for an acknowledgement.  All in all the thing was pushing a seven on the ms richter scale, not including the vid card, sadly it came in at just a tad over three....I wanted to evaluate it for a possible replacement on critical machines that in the past went down due to a vid card fan failure....you have no idea what a customer thinks when you show them a failed vid card fan..."you mean that little plastic piece of junk caused all this!!??!!!"...yea man.  Some production machines don't need any sort of vid, I will at least keep it on the maybe list for those, MTBF is a very important factor, some big box stores should put percentage of failure rate within 24 month estimates on the outside of the carton for sure.  And a warning that the power supplies are already at their limit.  Let's face it, today even 550w can be iffy.A few neat eye candy improvements over the earlier windows is nice, the metro screen is nice, anyone who has used a newer phone recently will intuitively drag their fingers across the screen....lot of good that was with no mouse or touch screen though.  Lucky me, I have been using windows since day one, I still have a copy of win 2.0 (and every other version) for no good reason.  Still the old ix collection of disks is much larger, recompiling any kernal is another silly ritual, same machine, different day, same recompile...argh. Rh is my all time fav, mandrake was always missing something, like it rewrote the init file or something, novell is ok as long as you stay on the beaten path and of course ubuntu normally recompiles with the same errors consistantly....makes life easy that way....no errors on windows eight, just a screen that did not match the installed hardware, natuarally I alt tabbed right out of it, then hit the flag key to find the start menu....no start button. I miss the start button already. Keyboard cowboy funnin and I was browsing the harddrive, nothing stunning there, I like that, means I can find stuff. Only I can't find what I want, the start button....the start menu is that first screen for touch tablets. No biggie for useruser, that is where they will want to be, I can see that. Admins won't want to be there, it is easy enough to get the control panel a bazzilion other ways though, just not the start button. (see a pattern here?). Personally, from the keyboard I find it fun to hit the carets along the location bar at the top of the explorer screen with tabs and arrows and choose SHOW ALL CONTROL PANEL ITEMS, or thereabouts. Bottom line, I love seven and I'll love eight even more!...very happy I did not have to follow the normal rule of thumb (a customer watching me build a system and asking questions said "oh I get it, so every piece you put in there is basically a hundred bucks, right?)...ok, sure, pretty much, more or less, well, ya dude.  It will be WAY past october till I get a real touch screen but I did pick up a pair of cheap tatungs so I can try the NEW main start screen, I parse a lot of folders and have a vision of how a pair of touch screens will be easier than landing a rover on mars.  Ok.  fine, they are way smallish, and I don't expect multitouch to work but we are talking a few percent of a new 21 inch viewsonic touch screen.  Will this OS be a game changer?  I don't know.  Bottom line with all the pads and droids in the world, it is more of a catch up move at first glance.  Not something ms is used to.  An app store?  I can see ms's motivation, the others have it.  I gather there will not be gadgets there, go ahead and see what ms did  to the once populated gadget page...go ahead, google gadgets and take a gander, used to hundreds of gadgets, they are already gone.  They replaced gadgets?  sort of, I'll drop that, it's a bit of a sore point for me.  More of interest was what happened when I downloaded stuff off codeplex and some other normal programs that I like, like orbitron, top o' my list!!...cardware it is...anyways, click on the exe, get a screen, normal for windows, this one indicated that I was not running a normal windows program and had a button for  exit the install, naw, I hit details, a hidden run program anyways came into view....great, my path to the normal windows has detected a program tha.....yea ok, acl is on, fine, moving along I got orbitron installed in record time and was tracking the iss on the newest Microsoft OS, beta of course, felt like the first time I setup bsd all those year ago...FUN!!...I suppose I gotta start to think about budgeting for the real os when it comes out in october, by then I should have a rasberry pi and be done with fedora remixed.  Of course that sounds like fun too!!  I would use this OS on a tablet or phone.  I don't like the idea of being hearded to an app store, don't like that on anything, we are americans and want real choices not marketed hype, lest you are younger with opm (other peoples money).   This os would be neat on a zune, but I suspect the zune is a gonner, I am rooting for microsoft, after all their default password is not admin anymore, nor alpine,  it's blank. Others force a password, my first fawn password was so long I could not even log into it with the password in front of me, who the heck uses %$# anyways, and if I was writing a brute force attack what the heck kinda impasse is that anyways at .00001 microseconds of a code execution cycle (just a non qualified number, not a real clock speed)....AI is where it will be before too long, MS is on that path, perhaps soon someone will sit down and write an app for the kinect that watches your eyes while you scan the new main start screen, clicking on the big E icon when you blink.....boy is that going to be fun!!!! sure. Blink,dammit,blink,dammit...... OPM no doubt.I like windows eight, we are moving forwards, better keep a close eye on ubuntu.  The real clinch comes when open source becomes paid source......don't blink, I already see plenty of very expensive 'ix apps, some even in app stores already.  more to come.......

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• Community Outreach - Where Should I Go

  - by Roger Brinkley

  A few days ago I was talking to person new to community development and they asked me what guidelines I used to determine the worthiness of a particular event. After our conversation was over I thought about it a little bit more and figured out there are three ways to determine if any event (be it conference, blog, podcast or other social medias) is worth doing: Transferability, Multiplication, and Impact. Transferability - Is what I have to say useful to the people that are going to hear it. For instance, consider a company that has product offering that can connect up using a number of languages like Scala, Grovey or Java. Sending a Scala expert to talk about Scala and the product is not transferable to a Java User Group, but a Java expert doing the same talk with a Java slant is. Similarly, talking about JavaFX to any Java User Group meeting in Brazil was pretty much a wasted effort until it was open sourced. Once it was open sourced it was well received. You can also look at transferability in relation to the subject matter that you're dealing with. How transferable is a presentation that I create. Can I, or a technical writer on the staff, turn it into some technical document. Could it be converted into some type of screen cast. If we have a regular podcast can we make a reference to the document, catch the high points or turn it into a interview. Is there a way of using this in the sales group. In other words is the document purely one dimensional or can it be re-purposed in other forms. Multiplication - On every trip I'm looking for 2 to 5 solid connections that I can make with developers. These are long term connections, because I know that once that relationship is established it will lead to another 2 - 5 from that connection and within a couple of years were talking about some 100 connections from just one developer. For instance, when I was working on JavaHelp in 2000 I hired a science teacher with a programming background. We've developed a very tight relationship over the year though we rarely see each other more than once a year. But at this JavaOne, one of his employees came up to me and said, "Richard (Rick Hard in Czech) told me to tell you that he couldn't make it to JavaOne this year but if I saw you to tell you hi". Another example is from my Mobile & Embedded days in Brasil. On our very first FISL trip about 5 years ago there were two university students that had created a project called "Marge". Marge was a Bluetooth framework that made connecting bluetooth devices easier. I invited them to a "Sun" dinner that evening. Originally they were planning on leaving that afternoon, but they changed their plans recognizing the opportunity. Their eyes were as big a saucers when they realized the level of engineers at the meeting. They went home started a JUG in Florianoplis that we've visited more than a couple of times. One of them went to work for Brazilian government lab like Berkley Labs, MIT Lab, John Hopkins Applied Physicas Labs or Lincoln Labs in the US. That presented us with an opportunity to show Embedded Java as a possibility for some of the work they were doing there. Impact - The final criteria is how life changing is what I'm going to say be to the individuals I'm reaching. A t-shirt is just a token, but when I reach down and tug at their developer hearts then I know I've succeeded. I'll never forget one time we flew all night to reach Joan Pasoa in Northern Brazil. We arrived at 2am went immediately to our hotel only to be woken up at 6 am to travel 2 hours by car to the presentation hall. When we arrived we were totally exhausted. Outside the facility there were 500 people lined up to hear 6 speakers for the day. That itself was uplifting.  I delivered one of my favorite talks on "I have passion". It was a talk on golf and embedded java development, "Find your passion". When we finished a couple of first year students came up to me and said how much my talk had inspired them. FISL is another great example. I had been about 4 years in a row. FISL is a very young group of developers so capturing their attention is important. Several of the students will come back 2 or 3 years later and ask me questions about research or jobs. And then there's Louis. Louis is one my favorite Brazilians. I can only describe him as a big Brazilian teddy bear. I see him every year at FISL. He works primarily in Java EE but he's attended every single one of my talks over the last 4 years. I can't tell you why, but he always greets me and gives me a hug. For some reason I've had a real impact. And of course when it comes to impact you don't just measure a presentation but every single interaction you have at an event. It's the hall way conversations, the booth conversations, but more importantly it's the conversations at dinner tables or in the cars when you're getting transported to an event. There's a good story that illustrates this. Last year in the spring I was traveling to Goiânia in Brazil. I've been there many times and leaders there no me well. One young man has picked me up at the airport on more than one occasion. We were going out to dinner one evening and he brought his girl friend along. One thing let to another and I eventually asked him, in front of her, "Why haven't you asked her to marry you?" There were all kinds of excuses and she just looked at him and smiled. When I came back in December for JavaOne he came and sought me. "I just want to tell you that I thought a lot about what you said, and I asked her to marry me. We're getting married next Spring." Sometimes just one presentation is all it takes to make an impact. Other times it takes years. Some impacts are directly related to the company and some are more personal in nature. It doesn't matter which it is because it's having the impact that matters.

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• Experiences with learning Chinese

  - by Greg Low

  I've had a few friends asking me about learning Chinese and what I've found works and doesn't work. I was answering a question on a mailing list today and I thought I should post this info where it might be useful to many. The question that was initially asked was whether Rosetta Stone was useful but I've provided much more info on learning the language here. I’ve used Rosetta Stone with Chinese but it’s really hard to know whether to recommend it or not. Rosetta Stone works the same way in all languages. They show you photos and then let you both see and hear the target language and get you to work out what they’re talking about. The thinking is that that’s how children learn. However, at first, I found it very frustrating. I’d be staring at photos trying to work out what they were really trying to get at. Sometimes it’s far from obvious. I could not have survived without Google Translate open at the same time. The other weird thing is that the photos are from a mixture of countries. While that’s good in a way, it also means that they are endlessly showing pictures of something that would never happen in the target language and culture. For any language, constant interaction with a speaker of the target language is needed. Rosetta Stone has a “Studio” option. That’s the best part of the program. In my case, it lets me connect around twice a week to a live online class from Beijing. Classes usually have the teacher plus two to four students. You get some Studio access with the initial packages but need to purchase it for ongoing use. I find it very inexpensive. It seems to work out to about $70 (AUD/USD) for six months. That’s a real bargain. The other downside to Rosetta Stone is that they tend to teach very formal language, but as with other languages, that’s not how the locals speak. It might have been correct at one point but no-one actually says that. As an example, Rosetta Stone teach Gonggòng qìche (pronounced roughly like “gong gong chee chure” for bus. Most of my friends from areas like Taiwan would just say Gongche. Google Translate says Zongxiàn (pronounced somewhat like “dzong sheean”) instead. Mind you, the Rosetta Stone option isn't really as bad as "omnibus"; it's more like saying "public bus". If you say the option they provide, people would understand you. I also listen to ChinesePod in the car. They also have SpanishPod. Each podcast is about five minutes of spoken conversation. It is very good for providing current language. Another resource I use is local Meetup groups. Most cities have these and for a variety of languages. It’s way less structured (just standard conversation) but good for getting interaction. The obvious challenge for Asian languages is reading/writing. The input editors for Chinese that are part of Windows are excellent. Many of my Chinese friends speak fluently but cannot read or write. I was determined to learn to do both. For writing, I’m talking about on a computer, not with a pen. (Mind you, I can barely write English with a pen nowadays). When using Rosetta Stone, you can choose to have the Chinese words displayed in pinyin (Wo xihuan xuéxí zhongguó) or in Chinese characters (???????) or both. This year, I’ve been forcing myself to just use the Chinese characters. I use a pinyin input editor in Windows though, as it’s very fast.  (The character recognition input in the iPad is also amazing). Notice from the example that I provided above that the pronunciation of the pinyin isn’t that obvious to us at first either.  Since changing to only using characters, I find I can now read many more Chinese characters fluently. It’s a major challenge though. I can read about 300 now and yet you need around 2,500 to be able to read a newspaper fairly well. Tones are a major issue for some Asian languages. Mandarin has four tones (plus a neutral tone) and there is a major difference in meaning between two words that are spelled the same in pinyin but with different tones. For example, Ma (3rd tone?) is a horse, Ma (1st tone?) is like “mom”, and ma (neutral tone?) is a question mark and so on. Clearly you don’t want to mix these up. As in English, they also have words that do sound the same but mean different things in different contexts. What’s interesting is that even though we see two words that differ only by tone as very similar, to a native speaker, if you say the right words with the wrong tone, you might as well have said a completely different word. My wife’s dialect of Chinese has eight tones. It’s much worse. The reason I’m so keen to learn to read/write Chinese is that even though the different dialects are pronounced so differently that speakers of one dialect often cannot understand another dialect, the writing is generally the same. The only difference is that many years ago, the Chinese government created a simplified set of characters for some of the most commonly used ones. Older Chinese and most Cantonese speakers often struggle with the simplified characters. This is the simplified form of “three apples”: ????   This is the traditional form of the same words: ????  Note that two of the characters are the same but the middle two are quite different. For most languages, the best thing is to watch current movies in the target language but to watch them with the target language as subtitles, not your native language. You want to know what they actually said, not what it roughly means (which is what the English subtitle would give you). The difficulty with Asian languages like Chinese is that you have the added challenge of understanding the subtitles when they are written in the target language. I wish there were Mandarin Chinese movies with pinyin subtitles. For learning to read characters, I also recommend HanCard on the iPad. It is targeted at the HSK language proficiency levels. (I’m intending to take the first HSK exam as soon as I’m ready). Hope that info helps someone get started.  

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• Chrome and Firefox not able to find some sites after Ubuntu's recent update?

  - by gkr

  Loading of revision3.com in Chrome stops and status saying "waiting for static.inplay.tubemogul.com" grooveshark.com in Chrome never loads But wikipedia.org, google.com works just normal same behavior in Firefox too. I use wired DSL connection in Ubuntu 12.04. I guess this started happening after I upgraded the Chrome browser or Flash plugin few days ago from Ubuntu updates through update-manager. Thanks EDIT: Everything works normal in my WinXP. Problem is only in Ubuntu 12.04. This is what I get when I use wget gkr@gkr-desktop:~$ wget revision3.com --2012-06-12 08:58:01-- http://revision3.com/ Resolving revision3.com (revision3.com)... 173.192.117.198 Connecting to revision3.com (revision3.com)|173.192.117.198|:80... connected. HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK Length: unspecified [text/html] Saving to: `index.html' [ ] 81,046 32.0K/s in 2.5s 2012-06-12 08:58:04 (32.0 KB/s) - `index.html' saved [81046] gkr@gkr-desktop:~$ wget static.inplay.tubemogul.com --2012-06-12 08:51:25-- http://static.inplay.tubemogul.com/ Resolving static.inplay.tubemogul.com (static.inplay.tubemogul.com)... 72.21.81.253 Connecting to static.inplay.tubemogul.com (static.inplay.tubemogul.com)|72.21.81.253|:80... connected. HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 404 Not Found 2012-06-12 08:51:25 ERROR 404: Not Found. grooveshark.com nevers responses so I have to Ctrl+C to terminate wget. gkr@gkr-desktop:~$ wget grooveshark.com --2012-06-12 08:51:33-- http://grooveshark.com/ Resolving grooveshark.com (grooveshark.com)... 8.20.213.76 Connecting to grooveshark.com (grooveshark.com)|8.20.213.76|:80... connected. HTTP request sent, awaiting response... ^C gkr@gkr-desktop:~$ This is the apt term.log of updates I mentioned Log started: 2012-06-09 04:51:45 (Reading database ... (Reading database ... 5% (Reading database ... 10% (Reading database ... 15% (Reading database ... 20% (Reading database ... 25% (Reading database ... 30% (Reading database ... 35% (Reading database ... 40% (Reading database ... 45% (Reading database ... 50% (Reading database ... 55% (Reading database ... 60% (Reading database ... 65% (Reading database ... 70% (Reading database ... 75% (Reading database ... 80% (Reading database ... 85% (Reading database ... 90% (Reading database ... 95% (Reading database ... 100% (Reading database ... 161392 files and directories currently installed.) Preparing to replace google-chrome-stable 19.0.1084.52-r138391 (using .../google-chrome-stable_19.0.1084.56-r140965_i386.deb) ... Unpacking replacement google-chrome-stable ... Preparing to replace libpulse0 1:1.1-0ubuntu15 (using .../libpulse0_1%3a1.1-0ubuntu15.1_i386.deb) ... Unpacking replacement libpulse0 ... Preparing to replace libpulse-mainloop-glib0 1:1.1-0ubuntu15 (using .../libpulse-mainloop-glib0_1%3a1.1-0ubuntu15.1_i386.deb) ... Unpacking replacement libpulse-mainloop-glib0 ... Preparing to replace libpulsedsp 1:1.1-0ubuntu15 (using .../libpulsedsp_1%3a1.1-0ubuntu15.1_i386.deb) ... Unpacking replacement libpulsedsp ... Preparing to replace sudo 1.8.3p1-1ubuntu3.2 (using .../sudo_1.8.3p1-1ubuntu3.3_i386.deb) ... Unpacking replacement sudo ... Preparing to replace flashplugin-installer 11.2.202.235ubuntu0.12.04.1 (using .../flashplugin-installer_11.2.202.236ubuntu0.12.04.1_i386.deb) ... Unpacking replacement flashplugin-installer ... Preparing to replace pulseaudio-utils 1:1.1-0ubuntu15 (using .../pulseaudio-utils_1%3a1.1-0ubuntu15.1_i386.deb) ... Unpacking replacement pulseaudio-utils ... Preparing to replace pulseaudio 1:1.1-0ubuntu15 (using .../pulseaudio_1%3a1.1-0ubuntu15.1_i386.deb) ... Unpacking replacement pulseaudio ... Preparing to replace pulseaudio-module-gconf 1:1.1-0ubuntu15 (using .../pulseaudio-module-gconf_1%3a1.1-0ubuntu15.1_i386.deb) ... Unpacking replacement pulseaudio-module-gconf ... Preparing to replace pulseaudio-module-x11 1:1.1-0ubuntu15 (using .../pulseaudio-module-x11_1%3a1.1-0ubuntu15.1_i386.deb) ... Unpacking replacement pulseaudio-module-x11 ... Preparing to replace shared-mime-info 1.0-0ubuntu4 (using .../shared-mime-info_1.0-0ubuntu4.1_i386.deb) ... Unpacking replacement shared-mime-info ... Preparing to replace pulseaudio-module-bluetooth 1:1.1-0ubuntu15 (using .../pulseaudio-module-bluetooth_1%3a1.1-0ubuntu15.1_i386.deb) ... Unpacking replacement pulseaudio-module-bluetooth ... Processing triggers for menu ... /usr/share/menu/downverter.menu: 1: /usr/share/menu/downverter.menu: Syntax error: word unexpected (expecting ")") Processing triggers for man-db ... locale: Cannot set LC_CTYPE to default locale: No such file or directory locale: Cannot set LC_MESSAGES to default locale: No such file or directory locale: Cannot set LC_ALL to default locale: No such file or directory Processing triggers for bamfdaemon ... Rebuilding /usr/share/applications/bamf.index... Processing triggers for desktop-file-utils ... Processing triggers for gnome-menus ... Processing triggers for ureadahead ... ureadahead will be reprofiled on next reboot Processing triggers for update-notifier-common ... flashplugin-installer: downloading http://archive.canonical.com/pool/partner/a/adobe-flashplugin/adobe-flashplugin_11.2.202.236.orig.tar.gz Installing from local file /tmp/tmpNrBt4g.gz Flash Plugin installed. Processing triggers for doc-base ... Processing 1 changed doc-base file... Registering documents with scrollkeeper... Setting up google-chrome-stable (19.0.1084.56-r140965) ... Setting up libpulse0 (1:1.1-0ubuntu15.1) ... Setting up libpulse-mainloop-glib0 (1:1.1-0ubuntu15.1) ... Setting up libpulsedsp (1:1.1-0ubuntu15.1) ... Setting up sudo (1.8.3p1-1ubuntu3.3) ... Installing new version of config file /etc/pam.d/sudo ... Setting up flashplugin-installer (11.2.202.236ubuntu0.12.04.1) ... locale: Cannot set LC_CTYPE to default locale: No such file or directory locale: Cannot set LC_MESSAGES to default locale: No such file or directory locale: Cannot set LC_ALL to default locale: No such file or directory Setting up pulseaudio-utils (1:1.1-0ubuntu15.1) ... Setting up pulseaudio (1:1.1-0ubuntu15.1) ... Setting up pulseaudio-module-gconf (1:1.1-0ubuntu15.1) ... Setting up pulseaudio-module-x11 (1:1.1-0ubuntu15.1) ... Setting up shared-mime-info (1.0-0ubuntu4.1) ... Setting up pulseaudio-module-bluetooth (1:1.1-0ubuntu15.1) ... Processing triggers for menu ... /usr/share/menu/downverter.menu: 1: /usr/share/menu/downverter.menu: Syntax error: word unexpected (expecting ")") Processing triggers for libc-bin ... ldconfig deferred processing now taking place Log ended: 2012-06-09 04:53:32 This is from history.log Start-Date: 2012-06-09 04:51:45 Commandline: aptdaemon role='role-commit-packages' sender=':1.56' Upgrade: shared-mime-info:i386 (1.0-0ubuntu4, 1.0-0ubuntu4.1), pulseaudio:i386 (1.1-0ubuntu15, 1.1-0ubuntu15.1), libpulse-mainloop-glib0:i386 (1.1-0ubuntu15, 1.1-0ubuntu15.1), sudo:i386 (1.8.3p1-1ubuntu3.2, 1.8.3p1-1ubuntu3.3), pulseaudio-module-bluetooth:i386 (1.1-0ubuntu15, 1.1-0ubuntu15.1), pulseaudio-module-x11:i386 (1.1-0ubuntu15, 1.1-0ubuntu15.1), flashplugin-installer:i386 (11.2.202.235ubuntu0.12.04.1, 11.2.202.236ubuntu0.12.04.1), pulseaudio-utils:i386 (1.1-0ubuntu15, 1.1-0ubuntu15.1), pulseaudio-module-gconf:i386 (1.1-0ubuntu15, 1.1-0ubuntu15.1), libpulse0:i386 (1.1-0ubuntu15, 1.1-0ubuntu15.1), libpulsedsp:i386 (1.1-0ubuntu15, 1.1-0ubuntu15.1), google-chrome-stable:i386 (19.0.1084.52-r138391, 19.0.1084.56-r140965) End-Date: 2012-06-09 04:53:32

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• Goodbye my beloved Nexus One, hello Windows Phone 7

  - by George Clingerman

  Last night my wife’s Nexus One finally bit the dust. You may not know but I’ve been nursing her Nexus One one along for quite a while after her screen shattered. I was able to replace it on my own (go me!) but little quirks have been popping up and the phone was quickly deteriorating. Lately it’s been the power button. Wifey would often have to press the power button several times to get her phone to turn on and last night it just wouldn’t wake up again. I took it apart and tried my best to see if I could somehow make it live once again but no luck this time. It was finally ready to retire. We looked at first for a replacement phone for her but she wasn’t really seeing anything she liked. So I decided to make the ultimate sacrifice and offer up my much loved Nexus One and I would then get a new Windows Phone 7 device. I love T-Mobile for my service so my choices were immediately limited to basically just a single phone. The HTC HD7. I read reviews and they were all over the board from people loving to people hating the phone but I decided, hey, why not, let’s take this plunge. And I did. I’ve only had the phone for about two days now so below is my list of first reaction pros/cons. These are basically things I’ve missed or things I’ve noticed that I really like about my new Windows Phone. Cons: * No Google Talk – I used this a LOT on my Nexus. I’ve found an application called “Flory” but it’s just an ok substitute, not the same as the full featured GTalk I had on my Nexus. * Seesmic is limited– I loved the way Seesmic worked on my Nexus. It was my mobile twitter client of choice. Everything about it worked really well. On Windows Phone 7 it’s just ok. I don’t get notification of new tweets, it’s several clicks to even see a new tweet. It’s definitely got some more development before it has the same features as it did on my Nexus. * Buttons don’t give great feedback – I’d read this on the reviews about the HTC HD7 and I’m finding it true myself. Pressing the buttons on the side of the phone and the power button on the top is finicky and I have to be looking at my phone to make sure I actually got them to press. * Web browsing is slow – I’m not sure what’s up with this, I’m connected to my wireless network at my house but it’s noticeably slower on my WP7 device than my Nexus. I even switched back to verify and it’s definitely true. Retrieving tweets, hitting up the XNA forums and just general web activities are all much slower on my WP7. I can’t think of any reason this would be true but it almost seems like it’s not using my wireless for everything.   Pros: * It’s pretty – the phone is really gorgeous. I loved the form of my Nexus One by the HTC HD7 is just as pretty, maybe even prettier! It’s got a nice large, bright screen. It feels good in my hand. And it even has a little kickstand to set the phone up for movie watching. Definitely a gorgeous phone. * LIVE integration – I lost a lot of nice integration with Google services but I gained a lot of integration with LIVE services that I also use. Now I can see when I get new GMail messages AND Hotmail messages. And having the Xbox LIVE integration is admittedly cool as well. * Tile notification rock – The Windows Phone 7 commercials are TRYING to get this message out but they’re doing a really poor job of this. Tile notifications really do save you from your phone. I have a whole little mini-informational dashboard at a glance. I unlock my phone and at a glace I can see new IMs, new mail messages, software updates etc. All just letting me know in the tiles I have arranged. That’s pretty cool. * The interface works really well – I feel super hip and cool swiping and sliding things around on my Windows Phone 7. Everything works that way and it’s great and fast and really good looking. I’m all about me feeling cool. * I’m gaming more – I had gotten a few games on my Nexus One but there really weren’t a lot of good developers flocking to the service. Just browsing through the Windows Phone 7 marketplace I’m already seeing a ton of games I want to try and buy. And I sat down and bet Pixel Man 0 just yesterday on my phone. I’m already gaming more than I did on my Nexus One. * Netflix integration is fantastic - It works just like it does on my Xbox 360 and I love having this feature on my phone. * It’s basically a Zune – I’ve been taking my Zune to work and listening to music off of that while I code. I no longer need to take it with me, now I just sync songs onto my phone and it’s my new Zune. I freaking love that. One less device to carry around.   All in all my cons have really little to do with the phone (just the buttons and the web browsing) and more to do with the applications needing to catch up a bit to what I’m used to. And the Pros are things that ARE phone specific so I’m seeing that as a good sign that I’m going to be very happy with my Windows Phone 7. So Wifey is happy having her Nexus One again, I’m happy with my new Windows Phone 7. Life is good. Now I just need to make a game to pay for it….

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• Orchestrating the Virtual Enterprise

  - by John Murphy

  During the American Industrial Revolution, the Ford Motor Company did it all. It turned raw materials into a showroom full of Model Ts. It owned a steel mill, a glass factory, and an automobile assembly line. The company was both self-sufficient and innovative and went on to become one of the largest and most profitable companies in the world. Nowadays, it's unusual for any business to follow this vertical integration model because its much harder to be best in class across such a wide a range of capabilities and services. Instead, businesses focus on their core competencies and outsource other business functions to specialized suppliers. They exchange vertical integration for collaboration. When done well, all parties benefit from this arrangement and the collaboration leads to the creation of an agile, lean and successful "virtual enterprise." Case in point: For Sun hardware, Oracle outsources most of its manufacturing and all of its logistics to third parties. These are vital activities, but ones where Oracle doesn't have a core competency, so we shift them to business partners who do. Within our enterprise, we always retain the core functions of product development, support, and most of the sales function, because that's what constitutes our core value to our customers. This is a perfect example of a virtual enterprise.  What are the implications of this? It means that we must exchange direct internal control for indirect external collaboration. This fundamentally changes the relative importance of different business processes, the boundaries of security and information sharing, and the relationship of the supply chain systems to the ERP. The challenge is that the systems required to support this virtual paradigm are still mired in "island enterprise" thinking. But help is at hand. Developments such as the Web, social networks, collaboration, and rules-based orchestration offer great potential to fundamentally re-architect supply chain systems to better support the virtual enterprise.  Supply Chain Management Systems in a Virtual Enterprise Historically enterprise software was constructed to automate the ERP - and then the supply chain systems extended the ERP. They were joined at the hip. In virtual enterprises, the supply chain system needs to be ERP agnostic, sitting above each of the ERPs that are distributed across the virtual enterprise - most of which are operating in other businesses. This is vital so that the supply chain system can manage the flow of material and the related information through the multiple enterprises. It has to have strong collaboration tools. It needs to be highly flexible. Users need to be able to see information that's coming from multiple sources and be able to react and respond to events across those sources.  Oracle Fusion Distributed Order Orchestration (DOO) is a perfect example of a supply chain system designed to operate in this virtual way. DOO embraces the idea that a company's fulfillment challenge is a distributed, multi-enterprise problem. It enables users to manage the process and the trading partners in a uniform way and deliver a consistent user experience while operating over a heterogeneous, virtual enterprise. This is a fundamental shift at the core of managing supply chains. It forces virtual enterprises to think architecturally about how best to construct their supply chain systems.  Case in point, almost everyone has ordered from Amazon.com at one time or another. Our orders are as likely to be fulfilled by third parties as they are by Amazon itself. To deliver the order promptly and efficiently, Amazon has to send it to the right fulfillment location and know the availability in that location. It needs to be able to track status of the fulfillment and deal with exceptions. As a virtual enterprise, Amazon's operations, using thousands of trading partners, requires a very different approach to fulfillment than the traditional 'take an order and ship it from your own warehouse' model. Amazon had no choice but to develop a complex, expensive and custom solution to tackle this problem as there used to be no product solution available. Now, other companies who want to follow similar models have a better off-the-shelf choice -- Oracle Distributed Order Orchestration (DOO).  Consider how another of our customers is using our distributed orchestration solution. This major airplane manufacturer has a highly complex business and interacts regularly with the U.S. Government and major airlines. It sits in the middle of an intricate supply chain and needed to improve visibility across its many different entities. Oracle Fusion DOO gives the company an orchestration mechanism so it could improve quality, speed, flexibility, and consistency without requiring an organ transplant of these highly complex legacy systems. Many retailers face the challenge of dealing with brick and mortar, Web, and reseller channels. They all need to be knitted together into a virtual enterprise experience that is consistent for their customers. When a large U.K. grocer with a strong brick and mortar retail operation added an online business, they turned to Oracle Fusion DOO to bring these entities together. Disturbing the Peace with Acquisitions Quite often a company's ERP system is disrupted when it acquires a new company. An acquisition can inject a new set of processes and systems -- or even introduce an entirely new business like Sun's hardware did at Oracle. This challenge has been a driver for some of our DOO customers. A large power management company is using Oracle Fusion DOO to provide the flexibility to rapidly integrate additional products and services into its central fulfillment operation. The Flip Side of Fulfillment Meanwhile, we haven't ignored similar challenges on the supply side of the equation. Specifically, how to manage complex supply in a flexible way when there are multiple trading parties involved? How to manage the supply to suppliers? How to manage critical components that need to merge in a tier two or tier three supply chain? By investing in supply orchestration solutions for the virtual enterprise, we plan to give users better visibility into their network of suppliers to help them drive down costs. We also think this technology and full orchestration process can be applied to the financial side of organizations. An example is transactions that flow through complex internal structures to minimize tax exposure. We can help companies manage those transactions effectively by thinking about the internal organization as a virtual enterprise and bringing the same solution set to this internal challenge.  The Clear Front Runner No other company is investing in solving the virtual enterprise supply chain issues like Oracle is. Oracle is in a unique position to become the gold standard in this market space. We have the infrastructure of Oracle technology. We already have an Oracle Fusion DOO application which embraces the best of what's required in this area. And we're absolutely committed to extending our Fusion solution to other use cases and delivering even more business value.

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• Following my passion

  - by Maria Sandu

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0cm; mso-para-margin-right:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0cm; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii- mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi- mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi; mso-ansi-language:RO;} Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0cm; mso-para-margin-right:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0cm; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii- mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi- mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi; mso-ansi-language:RO;} Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0cm; mso-para-margin-right:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0cm; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii- mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi- mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi; mso-ansi-language:RO;} What makes you go the extra mile? What makes you move forward and be ambitious? My name is Alin Gheorghe and I am currently working as a Contracts Administrator in the Shared Service Centre in Bucharest, Romania. I have graduated from the Political Science Faculty of the National School of Political and Administrative Studies here in Bucharest and I am currently undergoing a Master Program on Security and Diplomacy at the same university. Although I have been working a full time job here at Oracle since January 2011 and also going to school after work, I am going to tell you how I spend my spare time and about my passion. I always thought that if one doesn’t have something that he would consider a passion it’s always just a matter of time until he would discover one. Looking back, I can tell you that I discovered mine when I was 14 years old and I remember watching a football game when suddenly I became fascinated by the “man in black” that all football players obeyed during the match. That year I attended and promoted a referee course within my local referee committee and about 6 months later I was delegated to my first official game at youth tournament. Almost 10 years have passed since then and I can tell you that I very much love and appreciate this activity that I have spent doing, each and every weekend, 9 months every year, acquiring more than 600 official games until now. And even if not having a real free weekend or holiday might be sound very consuming, I can say that having something I am passionate about helps me to keep myself balanced and happy while giving me an option to channel any stress or anxiety I may feel. I think it’s important to have something of your own besides work that you spend time and effort on. Whether it’s painting, writing or a sport, having a passion can only have a positive effect on your life. And as every extra thing, it’s not always easy to follow your passion, but is it worth it? Speaking from my own experience I am sure it is, and here are some tips and tricks I constantly use not to give up on my passion: Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE -"/ /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0cm; mso-para-margin-right:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0cm; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii- mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi- mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi; mso-ansi-language:RO;} No matter how much time you spend at work and how much credit you get for that, it will always be the passion related achievements that will comfort you more and boost your self esteem and nothing compares to that feeling you get. I always try to keep this in mind so that each time I think about giving up I get even more ambitious to move forward. Everybody can just do what they are paid to do or what they are requested to do at work but not everybody can go that extra mile when it comes to following their passion and putting in extra work for that. By exercising this constantly you get used to also applying this attitude on the work related tasks. It takes accurate planning, anticipation and forecasting in order to combine your work with your passion. Therefore having a full schedule and keeping up with it will only help develop and exercise such skills and also will prove to you that you are up to such a challenge. I always keep in mind as a final goal that if you get very good at your passion you can actually start earning from it. And I think that is the ultimate level when you can say that you make a living by doing exactly what you are passionate about. In conclusion, by taking the easy way not only do you miss out on something nice, but life’s priceless rewards are usually given by those things that you actually believe in and know how to stand up for over time.

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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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• Real tortoises keep it slow and steady. How about the backups?

  - by Maria Zakourdaev

    … Four tortoises were playing in the backyard when they decided they needed hibiscus flower snacks. They pooled their money and sent the smallest tortoise out to fetch the snacks. Two days passed and there was no sign of the tortoise. "You know, she is taking a lot of time", said one of the tortoises. A little voice from just out side the fence said, "If you are going to talk that way about me I won't go." Is it too much to request from the quite expensive 3rd party backup tool to be a way faster than the SQL server native backup? Or at least save a respectable amount of storage by producing a really smaller backup files?  By saying “really smaller”, I mean at least getting a file in half size. After Googling the internet in an attempt to understand what other “sql people” are using for database backups, I see that most people are using one of three tools which are the main players in SQL backup area:  LiteSpeed by Quest SQL Backup by Red Gate SQL Safe by Idera The feedbacks about those tools are truly emotional and happy. However, while reading the forums and blogs I have wondered, is it possible that many are accustomed to using the above tools since SQL 2000 and 2005.  This can easily be understood due to the fact that a 300GB database backup for instance, using regular a SQL 2005 backup statement would have run for about 3 hours and have produced ~150GB file (depending on the content, of course).  Then you take a 3rd party tool which performs the same backup in 30 minutes resulting in a 30GB file leaving you speechless, you run to management persuading them to buy it due to the fact that it is definitely worth the price. In addition to the increased speed and disk space savings you would also get backup file encryption and virtual restore -  features that are still missing from the SQL server. But in case you, as well as me, don’t need these additional features and only want a tool that performs a full backup MUCH faster AND produces a far smaller backup file (like the gain you observed back in SQL 2005 days) you will be quite disappointed. SQL Server backup compression feature has totally changed the market picture. Medium size database. Take a look at the table below, check out how my SQL server 2008 R2 compares to other tools when backing up a 300GB database. It appears that when talking about the backup speed, SQL 2008 R2 compresses and performs backup in similar overall times as all three other tools. 3rd party tools maximum compression level takes twice longer. Backup file gain is not that impressive, except the highest compression levels but the price that you pay is very high cpu load and much longer time. Only SQL Safe by Idera was quite fast with it’s maximum compression level but most of the run time have used 95% cpu on the server. Note that I have used two types of destination storage, SATA 11 disks and FC 53 disks and, obviously, on faster storage have got my backup ready in half time. Looking at the above results, should we spend money, bother with another layer of complexity and software middle-man for the medium sized databases? I’m definitely not going to do so.  Very large database As a next phase of this benchmark, I have moved to a 6 terabyte database which was actually my main backup target. Note, how multiple files usage enables the SQL Server backup operation to use parallel I/O and remarkably increases it’s speed, especially when the backup device is heavily striped. SQL Server supports a maximum of 64 backup devices for a single backup operation but the most speed is gained when using one file per CPU, in the case above 8 files for a 2 Quad CPU server. The impact of additional files is minimal.  However, SQLsafe doesn’t show any speed improvement between 4 files and 8 files. Of course, with such huge databases every half percent of the compression transforms into the noticeable numbers. Saving almost 470GB of space may turn the backup tool into quite valuable purchase. Still, the backup speed and high CPU are the variables that should be taken into the consideration. As for us, the backup speed is more critical than the storage and we cannot allow a production server to sustain 95% cpu for such a long time. Bottomline, 3rd party backup tool developers, we are waiting for some breakthrough release. There are a few unanswered questions, like the restore speed comparison between different tools and the impact of multiple backup files on restore operation. Stay tuned for the next benchmarks.    Benchmark server: SQL Server 2008 R2 sp1 2 Quad CPU Database location: NetApp FC 15K Aggregate 53 discs Backup statements: No matter how good that UI is, we need to run the backup tasks from inside of SQL Server Agent to make sure they are covered by our monitoring systems. I have used extended stored procedures (command line execution also is an option, I haven’t noticed any impact on the backup performance). SQL backup LiteSpeed SQL Backup SQL safe backup database <DBNAME> to disk= '\\<networkpath>\par1.bak' , disk= '\\<networkpath>\par2.bak', disk= '\\<networkpath>\par3.bak' with format, compression EXECUTE master.dbo.xp_backup_database @database = N'<DBName>', @backupname= N'<DBName> full backup', @desc = N'Test', @compressionlevel=8, @filename= N'\\<networkpath>\par1.bak', @filename= N'\\<networkpath>\par2.bak', @filename= N'\\<networkpath>\par3.bak', @init = 1 EXECUTE master.dbo.sqlbackup '-SQL "BACKUP DATABASE <DBNAME> TO DISK= ''\\<networkpath>\par1.sqb'', DISK= ''\\<networkpath>\par2.sqb'', DISK= ''\\<networkpath>\par3.sqb'' WITH DISKRETRYINTERVAL = 30, DISKRETRYCOUNT = 10, COMPRESSION = 4, INIT"' EXECUTE master.dbo.xp_ss_backup @database = 'UCMSDB', @filename = '\\<networkpath>\par1.bak', @backuptype = 'Full', @compressionlevel = 4, @backupfile = '\\<networkpath>\par2.bak', @backupfile = '\\<networkpath>\par3.bak' If you still insist on using 3rd party tools for the backups in your production environment with maximum compression level, you will definitely need to consider limiting cpu usage which will increase the backup operation time even more: RedGate : use THREADPRIORITY option ( values 0 – 6 ) LiteSpeed : use  @throttle ( percentage, like 70%) SQL safe :  the only thing I have found was @Threads option.   Yours, Maria

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• Scheduling thread tiles with C++ AMP

  - by Daniel Moth

  This post assumes you are totally comfortable with, what some of us call, the simple model of C++ AMP, i.e. you could write your own matrix multiplication. We are now ready to explore the tiled model, which builds on top of the non-tiled one. Tiling the extent We know that when we pass a grid (which is just an extent under the covers) to the parallel_for_each call, it determines the number of threads to schedule and their index values (including dimensionality). For the single-, two-, and three- dimensional cases you can go a step further and subdivide the threads into what we call tiles of threads (others may call them thread groups). So here is a single-dimensional example: extent<1> e(20); // 20 units in a single dimension with indices from 0-19 grid<1> g(e);      // same as extent tiled_grid<4> tg = g.tile<4>(); …on the 3rd line we subdivided the single-dimensional space into 5 single-dimensional tiles each having 4 elements, and we captured that result in a concurrency::tiled_grid (a new class in amp.h). Let's move on swiftly to another example, in pictures, this time 2-dimensional: So we start on the left with a grid of a 2-dimensional extent which has 8*6=48 threads. We then have two different examples of tiling. In the first case, in the middle, we subdivide the 48 threads into tiles where each has 4*3=12 threads, hence we have 2*2=4 tiles. In the second example, on the right, we subdivide the original input into tiles where each has 2*2=4 threads, hence we have 4*3=12 tiles. Notice how you can play with the tile size and achieve different number of tiles. The numbers you pick must be such that the original total number of threads (in our example 48), remains the same, and every tile must have the same size. Of course, you still have no clue why you would do that, but stick with me. First, we should see how we can use this tiled_grid, since the parallel_for_each function that we know expects a grid. Tiled parallel_for_each and tiled_index It turns out that we have additional overloads of parallel_for_each that accept a tiled_grid instead of a grid. However, those overloads, also expect that the lambda you pass in accepts a concurrency::tiled_index (new in amp.h), not an index<N>. So how is a tiled_index different to an index? A tiled_index object, can have only 1 or 2 or 3 dimensions (matching exactly the tiled_grid), and consists of 4 index objects that are accessible via properties: global, local, tile_origin, and tile. The global index is the same as the index we know and love: the global thread ID. The local index is the local thread ID within the tile. The tile_origin index returns the global index of the thread that is at position 0,0 of this tile, and the tile index is the position of the tile in relation to the overall grid. Confused? Here is an example accompanied by a picture that hopefully clarifies things: array_view<int, 2> data(8, 6, p_my_data); parallel_for_each(data.grid.tile<2,2>(), [=] (tiled_index<2,2> t_idx) restrict(direct3d) { /* todo */ }); Given the code above and the picture on the right, what are the values of each of the 4 index objects that the t_idx variables exposes, when the lambda is executed by T (highlighted in the picture on the right)? If you can't work it out yourselves, the solution follows: t_idx.global       = index<2> (6,3) t_idx.local          = index<2> (0,1) t_idx.tile_origin = index<2> (6,2) t_idx.tile             = index<2> (3,1) Don't move on until you are comfortable with this… the picture really helps, so use it. Tiled Matrix Multiplication Example – part 1 Let's paste here the C++ AMP matrix multiplication example, bolding the lines we are going to change (can you guess what the changes will be?) 01: void MatrixMultiplyTiled_Part1(vector<float>& vC, const vector<float>& vA, const vector<float>& vB, int M, int N, int W) 02: { 03: 04: array_view<const float,2> a(M, W, vA); 05: array_view<const float,2> b(W, N, vB); 06: array_view<writeonly<float>,2> c(M, N, vC); 07: parallel_for_each(c.grid, 08: [=](index<2> idx) restrict(direct3d) { 09: 10: int row = idx[0]; int col = idx[1]; 11: float sum = 0.0f; 12: for(int i = 0; i < W; i++) 13: sum += a(row, i) * b(i, col); 14: c[idx] = sum; 15: }); 16: } To turn this into a tiled example, first we need to decide our tile size. Let's say we want each tile to be 16*16 (which assumes that we'll have at least 256 threads to process, and that c.grid.extent.size() is divisible by 256, and moreover that c.grid.extent[0] and c.grid.extent[1] are divisible by 16). So we insert at line 03 the tile size (which must be a compile time constant). 03: static const int TS = 16; ...then we need to tile the grid to have tiles where each one has 16*16 threads, so we change line 07 to be as follows 07: parallel_for_each(c.grid.tile<TS,TS>(), ...that means that our index now has to be a tiled_index with the same characteristics as the tiled_grid, so we change line 08 08: [=](tiled_index<TS, TS> t_idx) restrict(direct3d) { ...which means, without changing our core algorithm, we need to be using the global index that the tiled_index gives us access to, so we insert line 09 as follows 09: index<2> idx = t_idx.global; ...and now this code just works and it is tiled! Closing thoughts on part 1 The process we followed just shows the mechanical transformation that can take place from the simple model to the tiled model (think of this as step 1). In fact, when we wrote the matrix multiplication example originally, the compiler was doing this mechanical transformation under the covers for us (and it has additional smarts to deal with the cases where the total number of threads scheduled cannot be divisible by the tile size). The point is that the thread scheduling is always tiled, even when you use the non-tiled model. But with this mechanical transformation, we haven't gained anything… Hint: our goal with explicitly using the tiled model is to gain even more performance. In the next post, we'll evolve this further (beyond what the compiler can automatically do for us, in this first release), so you can see the full usage of the tiled model and its benefits… Comments about this post by Daniel Moth welcome at the original blog.

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• Kubuntu 12.04 - Touchpad and keyboard stopped working at random

  - by StepTNT

  As in the title, I've got this problem with my Kubuntu 12.04. At first I've thought that the whole system was hung, but it happened again 5 minutes ago and, while the keyboard and the touchpad stopped working, the music was still playing, so I guess that's just an "input" problem, because the system was still working! Any solution? Is there some data that you need to know about my setup? EDIT: Added my lshw outout description: Notebook product: N53SV () vendor: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. version: 1.0 serial: B2N0AS17695408A width: 64 bits capabilities: smbios-2.6 dmi-2.6 vsyscall32 configuration: boot=normal chassis=notebook family=N uuid=8083F2DA-A43E-E081-3F3F-BCAEC55F8AA1 *-core description: Motherboard product: N53SV vendor: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. physical id: 0 version: 1.0 serial: BSN12345678901234567 slot: MIDDLE *-firmware description: BIOS vendor: American Megatrends Inc. physical id: 0 version: N53SV.214 date: 08/10/2011 size: 64KiB capacity: 2496KiB capabilities: pci upgrade shadowing cdboot bootselect edd int13floppy1200 int13floppy720 int13floppy2880 int5printscreen int9keyboard int14serial int17printer acpi usb smartbattery biosbootspecification *-cpu description: CPU product: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-2630QM CPU @ 2.00GHz vendor: Intel Corp. physical id: 4 bus info: cpu@0 version: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-2630QM CPU @ 2.00GHz serial: To Be Filled By O.E.M. slot: CPU 1 size: 800MHz capacity: 4GHz width: 64 bits clock: 100MHz capabilities: x86-64 fpu fpu_exception wp vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe syscall nx rdtscp constant_tsc arch_perfmon pebs bts rep_good nopl xtopology nonstop_tsc aperfmperf pni pclmulqdq dtes64 monitor ds_cpl vmx est tm2 ssse3 cx16 xtpr pdcm pcid sse4_1 sse4_2 x2apic popcnt tsc_deadline_timer xsave avx lahf_lm ida arat epb xsaveopt pln pts tpr_shadow vnmi flexpriority ept vpid cpufreq configuration: cores=4 enabledcores=1 threads=2 *-cache description: L1 cache physical id: 5 slot: L1-Cache size: 32KiB capacity: 32KiB capabilities: internal write-back instruction *-memory description: System Memory physical id: 40 slot: System board or motherboard size: 10GiB *-bank:0 description: SODIMM DDR3 Synchronous 1333 MHz (0,8 ns) product: 99U5428-040.A00LF vendor: Kingston physical id: 0 serial: 103C28C3 slot: ChannelA-DIMM0 size: 4GiB width: 64 bits clock: 1333MHz (0.8ns) *-bank:1 description: SODIMM DDR3 Synchronous 1333 MHz (0,8 ns) product: HMT325S6BFR8C-H9 vendor: Hynix/Hyundai physical id: 1 serial: 58383D1F slot: ChannelA-DIMM1 size: 2GiB width: 64 bits clock: 1333MHz (0.8ns) *-bank:2 description: SODIMM DDR3 Synchronous 1333 MHz (0,8 ns) product: HMT325S6BFR8C-H9 vendor: Hynix/Hyundai physical id: 2 serial: 58183D19 slot: ChannelB-DIMM0 size: 2GiB width: 64 bits clock: 1333MHz (0.8ns) *-bank:3 description: SODIMM DDR3 Synchronous 1333 MHz (0,8 ns) product: HMT325S6BFR8C-H9 vendor: Hynix/Hyundai physical id: 3 serial: 58183C8F slot: ChannelB-DIMM1 size: 2GiB width: 64 bits clock: 1333MHz (0.8ns) *-pci description: Host bridge product: 2nd Generation Core Processor Family DRAM Controller vendor: Intel Corporation physical id: 100 bus info: pci@0000:00:00.0 version: 09 width: 32 bits clock: 33MHz configuration: driver=agpgart-intel resources: irq:0 *-pci:0 description: PCI bridge product: Xeon E3-1200/2nd Generation Core Processor Family PCI Express Root Port vendor: Intel Corporation physical id: 1 bus info: pci@0000:00:01.0 version: 09 width: 32 bits clock: 33MHz capabilities: pci pm msi pciexpress normal_decode bus_master cap_list configuration: driver=pcieport resources: irq:40 ioport:d000(size=4096) memory:db000000-dc0fffff ioport:c0000000(size=301989888) *-generic UNCLAIMED description: Unassigned class product: Illegal Vendor ID vendor: Illegal Vendor ID physical id: 0 bus info: pci@0000:01:00.0 version: ff width: 32 bits clock: 66MHz capabilities: bus_master vga_palette cap_list configuration: latency=255 maxlatency=255 mingnt=255 resources: memory:db000000-dbffffff memory:c0000000-cfffffff memory:d0000000-d1ffffff ioport:d000(size=128) memory:dc000000-dc07ffff *-display description: VGA compatible controller product: 2nd Generation Core Processor Family Integrated Graphics Controller vendor: Intel Corporation physical id: 2 bus info: pci@0000:00:02.0 version: 09 width: 64 bits clock: 33MHz capabilities: msi pm vga_controller bus_master cap_list rom configuration: driver=i915 latency=0 resources: irq:47 memory:dc400000-dc7fffff memory:b0000000-bfffffff ioport:e000(size=64) *-communication description: Communication controller product: 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family MEI Controller #1 vendor: Intel Corporation physical id: 16 bus info: pci@0000:00:16.0 version: 04 width: 64 bits clock: 33MHz capabilities: pm msi bus_master cap_list configuration: driver=mei latency=0 resources: irq:48 memory:df00b000-df00b00f *-usb:0 description: USB controller product: 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family USB Enhanced Host Controller #2 vendor: Intel Corporation physical id: 1a bus info: pci@0000:00:1a.0 version: 05 width: 32 bits clock: 33MHz capabilities: pm debug ehci bus_master cap_list configuration: driver=ehci_hcd latency=0 resources: irq:16 memory:df008000-df0083ff *-multimedia description: Audio device product: 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family High Definition Audio Controller vendor: Intel Corporation physical id: 1b bus info: pci@0000:00:1b.0 version: 05 width: 64 bits clock: 33MHz capabilities: pm msi pciexpress bus_master cap_list configuration: driver=snd_hda_intel latency=0 resources: irq:49 memory:df000000-df003fff *-pci:1 description: PCI bridge product: 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family PCI Express Root Port 1 vendor: Intel Corporation physical id: 1c bus info: pci@0000:00:1c.0 version: b5 width: 32 bits clock: 33MHz capabilities: pci pciexpress msi pm normal_decode bus_master cap_list configuration: driver=pcieport resources: irq:41 ioport:c000(size=4096) memory:de600000-deffffff ioport:d4200000(size=10485760) *-pci:2 description: PCI bridge product: 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family PCI Express Root Port 2 vendor: Intel Corporation physical id: 1c.1 bus info: pci@0000:00:1c.1 version: b5 width: 32 bits clock: 33MHz capabilities: pci pciexpress msi pm normal_decode bus_master cap_list configuration: driver=pcieport resources: irq:42 ioport:b000(size=4096) memory:ddc00000-de5fffff ioport:d3700000(size=10485760) *-network description: Wireless interface product: AR9285 Wireless Network Adapter (PCI-Express) vendor: Atheros Communications Inc. physical id: 0 bus info: pci@0000:03:00.0 logical name: wlan0 version: 01 serial: 48:5d:60:f2:2c:fd width: 64 bits clock: 33MHz capabilities: pm msi pciexpress bus_master cap_list ethernet physical wireless configuration: broadcast=yes driver=ath9k driverversion=3.2.0-24-generic firmware=N/A ip=192.168.1.6 latency=0 link=yes multicast=yes wireless=IEEE 802.11bgn resources: irq:17 memory:ddc00000-ddc0ffff *-pci:3 description: PCI bridge product: 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family PCI Express Root Port 4 vendor: Intel Corporation physical id: 1c.3 bus info: pci@0000:00:1c.3 version: b5 width: 32 bits clock: 33MHz capabilities: pci pciexpress msi pm normal_decode bus_master cap_list configuration: driver=pcieport resources: irq:43 ioport:a000(size=4096) memory:dd200000-ddbfffff ioport:d2c00000(size=10485760) *-usb description: USB controller product: FL1000G USB 3.0 Host Controller vendor: Fresco Logic physical id: 0 bus info: pci@0000:04:00.0 version: 04 width: 32 bits clock: 33MHz capabilities: pm msi pciexpress xhci bus_master cap_list configuration: driver=xhci_hcd latency=0 resources: irq:19 memory:dd200000-dd20ffff *-pci:4 description: PCI bridge product: 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family PCI Express Root Port 6 vendor: Intel Corporation physical id: 1c.5 bus info: pci@0000:00:1c.5 version: b5 width: 32 bits clock: 33MHz capabilities: pci pciexpress msi pm normal_decode bus_master cap_list configuration: driver=pcieport resources: irq:44 ioport:9000(size=4096) memory:dc800000-dd1fffff ioport:d2100000(size=10485760) *-network description: Ethernet interface product: RTL8111/8168B PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet controller vendor: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. physical id: 0 bus info: pci@0000:05:00.0 logical name: eth0 version: 06 serial: bc:ae:c5:5f:8a:a1 size: 10Mbit/s capacity: 1Gbit/s width: 64 bits clock: 33MHz capabilities: pm msi pciexpress msix vpd bus_master cap_list ethernet physical tp mii 10bt 10bt-fd 100bt 100bt-fd 1000bt 1000bt-fd autonegotiation configuration: autonegotiation=on broadcast=yes driver=r8169 driverversion=2.3LK-NAPI duplex=half firmware=rtl_nic/rtl8168e-2.fw latency=0 link=no multicast=yes port=MII speed=10Mbit/s resources: irq:46 ioport:9000(size=256) memory:d2104000-d2104fff memory:d2100000-d2103fff *-usb:1 description: USB controller product: 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family USB Enhanced Host Controller #1 vendor: Intel Corporation physical id: 1d bus info: pci@0000:00:1d.0 version: 05 width: 32 bits clock: 33MHz capabilities: pm debug ehci bus_master cap_list configuration: driver=ehci_hcd latency=0 resources: irq:23 memory:df007000-df0073ff *-isa description: ISA bridge product: HM65 Express Chipset Family LPC Controller vendor: Intel Corporation physical id: 1f bus info: pci@0000:00:1f.0 version: 05 width: 32 bits clock: 33MHz capabilities: isa bus_master cap_list configuration: latency=0 *-storage description: SATA controller product: 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family 6 port SATA AHCI Controller vendor: Intel Corporation physical id: 1f.2 bus info: pci@0000:00:1f.2 logical name: scsi0 logical name: scsi2 version: 05 width: 32 bits clock: 66MHz capabilities: storage msi pm ahci_1.0 bus_master cap_list emulated configuration: driver=ahci latency=0 resources: irq:45 ioport:e0b0(size=8) ioport:e0a0(size=4) ioport:e090(size=8) ioport:e080(size=4) ioport:e060(size=32) memory:df006000-df0067ff *-disk description: ATA Disk product: ST9750420AS vendor: Seagate physical id: 0 bus info: scsi@0:0.0.0 logical name: /dev/sda version: 0002 serial: 5WS0A7QR size: 698GiB (750GB) capabilities: partitioned partitioned:dos configuration: ansiversion=5 signature=e0c5913d *-volume:0 description: Windows FAT volume vendor: MSDOS5.0 physical id: 1 bus info: scsi@0:0.0.0,1 logical name: /dev/sda1 version: FAT32 serial: 4ce5-3acb size: 3004MiB capacity: 3004MiB capabilities: primary fat initialized configuration: FATs=2 filesystem=fat *-volume:1 description: EXT4 volume vendor: Linux physical id: 2 bus info: scsi@0:0.0.0,2 logical name: /dev/sda2 logical name: / version: 1.0 serial: c198cc2a-d86a-4460-a4d5-3fc0b21e439c size: 28GiB capacity: 28GiB capabilities: primary journaled extended_attributes large_files huge_files dir_nlink recover extents ext4 ext2 initialized configuration: created=2012-03-15 16:53:54 filesystem=ext4 lastmountpoint=/ modified=2012-05-02 18:52:04 mount.fstype=ext4 mount.options=rw,relatime,errors=remount-ro,user_xattr,acl,barrier=1,data=ordered mounted=2012-05-09 19:06:01 state=mounted *-volume:2 description: Windows NTFS volume physical id: 3 bus info: scsi@0:0.0.0,3 logical name: /dev/sda3 version: 3.1 serial: 4c1cdebc-ec09-2947-a3b5-c1f9f1cddc1c size: 152GiB capacity: 152GiB capabilities: primary bootable ntfs initialized configuration: clustersize=4096 created=2011-02-22 16:02:47 filesystem=ntfs label=OS state=clean *-volume:3 description: Extended partition physical id: 4 bus info: scsi@0:0.0.0,4 logical name: /dev/sda4 size: 514GiB capacity: 514GiB capabilities: primary extended partitioned partitioned:extended *-logicalvolume:0 description: Linux swap / Solaris partition physical id: 5 logical name: /dev/sda5 capacity: 10GiB capabilities: nofs *-logicalvolume:1 description: HPFS/NTFS partition physical id: 6 logical name: /dev/sda6 capacity: 504GiB *-cdrom description: DVD-RAM writer product: BD-MLT UJ240AS vendor: MATSHITA physical id: 1 bus info: scsi@2:0.0.0 logical name: /dev/cdrom logical name: /dev/cdrw logical name: /dev/dvd logical name: /dev/dvdrw logical name: /dev/sr0 version: 1.00 capabilities: removable audio cd-r cd-rw dvd dvd-r dvd-ram configuration: ansiversion=5 status=nodisc *-serial UNCLAIMED description: SMBus product: 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family SMBus Controller vendor: Intel Corporation physical id: 1f.3 bus info: pci@0000:00:1f.3 version: 05 width: 64 bits clock: 33MHz configuration: latency=0 resources: memory:df005000-df0050ff ioport:e040(size=32)

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• Master-slave vs. peer-to-peer archictecture: benefits and problems

  - by Ashok_Ora

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE Almost two decades ago, I was a member of a database development team that introduced adaptive locking. Locking, the most popular concurrency control technique in database systems, is pessimistic. Locking ensures that two or more conflicting operations on the same data item don’t “trample” on each other’s toes, resulting in data corruption. In a nutshell, here’s the issue we were trying to address. In everyday life, traffic lights serve the same purpose. They ensure that traffic flows smoothly and when everyone follows the rules, there are no accidents at intersections. As I mentioned earlier, the problem with typical locking protocols is that they are pessimistic. Regardless of whether there is another conflicting operation in the system or not, you have to hold a lock! Acquiring and releasing locks can be quite expensive, depending on how many objects the transaction touches. Every transaction has to pay this penalty. To use the earlier traffic light analogy, if you have ever waited at a red light in the middle of nowhere with no one on the road, wondering why you need to wait when there’s clearly no danger of a collision, you know what I mean. The adaptive locking scheme that we invented was able to minimize the number of locks that a transaction held, by detecting whether there were one or more transactions that needed conflicting eyou could get by without holding any lock at all. In many “well-behaved” workloads, there are few conflicts, so this optimization is a huge win. If, on the other hand, there are many concurrent, conflicting requests, the algorithm gracefully degrades to the “normal” behavior with minimal cost. We were able to reduce the number of lock requests per TPC-B transaction from 178 requests down to 2! Wow! This is a dramatic improvement in concurrency as well as transaction latency. The lesson from this exercise was that if you can identify the common scenario and optimize for that case so that only the uncommon scenarios are more expensive, you can make dramatic improvements in performance without sacrificing correctness. So how does this relate to the architecture and design of some of the modern NoSQL systems? NoSQL systems can be broadly classified as master-slave sharded, or peer-to-peer sharded systems. NoSQL systems with a peer-to-peer architecture have an interesting way of handling changes. Whenever an item is changed, the client (or an intermediary) propagates the changes synchronously or asynchronously to multiple copies (for availability) of the data. Since the change can be propagated asynchronously, during some interval in time, it will be the case that some copies have received the update, and others haven’t. What happens if someone tries to read the item during this interval? The client in a peer-to-peer system will fetch the same item from multiple copies and compare them to each other. If they’re all the same, then every copy that was queried has the same (and up-to-date) value of the data item, so all’s good. If not, then the system provides a mechanism to reconcile the discrepancy and to update stale copies. So what’s the problem with this? There are two major issues: First, IT’S HORRIBLY PESSIMISTIC because, in the common case, it is unlikely that the same data item will be updated and read from different locations at around the same time! For every read operation, you have to read from multiple copies. That’s a pretty expensive, especially if the data are stored in multiple geographically separate locations and network latencies are high. Second, if the copies are not all the same, the application has to reconcile the differences and propagate the correct value to the out-dated copies. This means that the application program has to handle discrepancies in the different versions of the data item and resolve the issue (which can further add to cost and operation latency). Resolving discrepancies is only one part of the problem. What if the same data item was updated independently on two different nodes (copies)? In that case, due to the asynchronous nature of change propagation, you might land up with different versions of the data item in different copies. In this case, the application program also has to resolve conflicts and then propagate the correct value to the copies that are out-dated or have incorrect versions. This can get really complicated. My hunch is that there are many peer-to-peer-based applications that don’t handle this correctly, and worse, don’t even know it. Imagine have 100s of millions of records in your database – how can you tell whether a particular data item is incorrect or out of date? And what price are you willing to pay for ensuring that the data can be trusted? Multiple network messages per read request? Discrepancy and conflict resolution logic in the application, and potentially, additional messages? All this overhead, when all you were trying to do was to read a data item. Wouldn’t it be simpler to avoid this problem in the first place? Master-slave architectures like the Oracle NoSQL Database handles this very elegantly. A change to a data item is always sent to the master copy. Consequently, the master copy always has the most current and authoritative version of the data item. The master is also responsible for propagating the change to the other copies (for availability and read scalability). Client drivers are aware of master copies and replicas, and client drivers are also aware of the “currency” of a replica. In other words, each NoSQL Database client knows how stale a replica is. This vastly simplifies the job of the application developer. If the application needs the most current version of the data item, the client driver will automatically route the request to the master copy. If the application is willing to tolerate some staleness of data (e.g. a version that is no more than 1 second out of date), the client can easily determine which replica (or set of replicas) can satisfy the request, and route the request to the most efficient copy. This results in a dramatic simplification in application logic and also minimizes network requests (the driver will only send the request to exactl the right replica, not many). So, back to my original point. A well designed and well architected system minimizes or eliminates unnecessary overhead and avoids pessimistic algorithms wherever possible in order to deliver a highly efficient and high performance system. If you’ve every programmed an Oracle NoSQL Database application, you’ll know the difference! /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;}

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• I Know What I Did This Summer: Put Down Trex Decking

  - by thatjeffsmith

  If you’re wondering why I would bore everyone with my pictures and frequent status updates/tweets from the past week – it’s so I could document the process of refurbishing my deck, or what some would call a porch. When we go to take a vacation, buy a car, do anything – we also read personal blogs to get the real story. So, if you’re curious about what it takes to tackle this sort of project, read on. Skills/Equipment/Manpower We Possessed I took the old decking out by myself. I’m about 230 lbs, more than 6′ tall, and I’m pretty healthy. This took about 8 hours over two afternoons. Three of us put the deck back together. My wife has two engineering degrees. Her father also has two engineering degrees. Lots of brainpower available here. Also, her dad ran the public works department for a country for more than 20 years – so lots and lots of practical experience on hand. We had a compound mitre saw, a skilsaw, 2-3 crowbars, a framing hammer, 3 cordless drills, a corded drill, lots of sawhorses, a power sander, an angle grinder, a 10×10 Coleman canopy tent, a Ford F-150 pickup truck, outdoor speakers and lots of iTunes playlists, plenty of water and cold beer. Why We Did This Our deck was relatively young – it was built in 2005. However, the pressure treated boards must not have been adequately maintained before we bought the house. I had powerwashed the deck every other year and had it stained a few times. The boards just rotted. We’re going to be in the house for a long time, and we wanted something that would look nice and require little maintenance. More bad deck boards The deck boards were in bad shape Things We Learned The two most important things: The hidden fasteners have to be put in JUST right. Wedge them into the grooved board, then bend down the bit that is screwed down. We didn’t do this on the first board and couldn’t get the second board to fit nearly close enough. Watching the official TREX YouTube video helped immensely, and we should have watched that first. When pre-drilling holes for the boards that need screwed down – DO NOT pre-drill through the underlying framing wood. ONLY pre-drill through the TREX itself. The screw won’t seat in the board properly. Instead of sitting down flush with the board, it will stop at the top of the board and just spin. I had to call the the place that sold me the screws to find this out. So about a third of our screws look like crap. If it doesn’t look or feel right – stop everything and pick up your computer or your phone. It’s not right, and it will be much easier to stop and find out why. We didn’t do this, and now I’m going to see every screw that’s not flush with the boards and get upset. Oh well. The Process How much time did it take? Well I spent about 8 hours taking the deck apart. And then the 3 of use spent 8 hours the first day, 10 hours the second day, 8 hours the third, and another 6 hours on the fourth day. That’s like 104 man-hours. We supposedly saved four or five thousand dollars in labor, but don’t do the math here or you might get a bit upset. The main thing is that we got what we wanted, and there won’t be any surprises later. Now for some pictures… This 6”+ pry bar made the destruction of the old deck much easier Most of the joists, once exposed, were OK. This joist wasn’t sitting on ANYTHING before. We think a lazy gas person cut the board to sneak a gas line in. Awesome… These monster lag bolts had to be accounted for when putting in the additional framing The border pattern Sheri wanted to put in required a lot more framing. These were the first boards to go down – we screwed them in as there was no way to attach clips I sat, kicked in the boards, and then drilled these clips in – but my wife was able to go MUCH faster by using her hands to lock the boards in and drill on her knees. I liked locking the board in with my feet when they needed to be ‘encouraged’ to go straight. The first board took FOREVER to go in, but then when we got rolling, we were able to put in a 20′ board in less than 10 minutes. This was end of construction day #2 – we got much further than we thought we would. Ah, the dreaded last 10% – what to do here? Remember those ‘floating’ stringers? Yeah, we fixed that up a bit, too. My wife used a website (and her brain) to calculate exactly how to cut the stringers to give us the rise/run we needed with the proper clearance and all that jazz. The stairs with stringers and toe kicks – this was worth the effort It started raining on us as I screwed down the steps – this we managed to get our shade tent up on the deck to protect us from the rain too The stairs, finished Finished, mostly Good corner shot The top of the stairs Stairs, looking down Celebratory beer In Summary There are a few things we’re not happy with. I think we can fix them up – but later. I have a few things left to finish, rewire the lighting, get the gas grille put back in, and rehang some screen doors. I was expecting this to be a lot worse than it was. If I didn’t have the help, I would have never done it myself. But I’m glad that I did have that help and did do that project. It’s not often you get to spend that kind of qualify time with family and building cool stuff.

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• SQL Server Developer Tools &ndash; Codename Juneau vs. Red-Gate SQL Source Control

  - by Ajarn Mark Caldwell

  So how do the new SQL Server Developer Tools (previously code-named Juneau) stack up against SQL Source Control?  Read on to find out. At the PASS Community Summit a couple of weeks ago, it was announced that the previously code-named Juneau software would be released under the name of SQL Server Developer Tools with the release of SQL Server 2012.  This replacement for Database Projects in Visual Studio (also known in a former life as Data Dude) has some great new features.  I won’t attempt to describe them all here, but I will applaud Microsoft for making major improvements.  One of my favorite changes is the way database elements are broken down.  Previously every little thing was in its own file.  For example, indexes were each in their own file.  I always hated that.  Now, SSDT uses a pattern similar to Red-Gate’s and puts the indexes and keys into the same file as the overall table definition. Of course there are really cool features to keep your database model in sync with the actual source scripts, and the rename refactoring feature is now touted as being more than just a search and replace, but rather a “semantic-aware” search and replace.  Funny, it reminds me of SQL Prompt’s Smart Rename feature.  But I’m not writing this just to criticize Microsoft and argue that they are late to the party with this feature set.  Instead, I do see it as a viable alternative for folks who want all of their source code to be version controlled, but there are a couple of key trade-offs that you need to know about when you choose which tool set to use. First, the basics Both tool sets integrate with a wide variety of source control systems including the most popular: Subversion, GIT, Vault, and Team Foundation Server.  Both tools have integrated functionality to produce objects to upgrade your target database when you are ready (DACPACs in SSDT, integration with SQL Compare for SQL Source Control).  If you regularly live in Visual Studio or the Business Intelligence Development Studio (BIDS) then SSDT will likely be comfortable for you.  Like BIDS, SSDT is a Visual Studio Project Type that comes with SQL Server, and if you don’t already have Visual Studio installed, it will install the shell for you.  If you already have Visual Studio 2010 installed, then it will just add this as an available project type.  On the other hand, if you regularly live in SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) then you will really enjoy the SQL Source Control integration from within SSMS.  Both tool sets store their database model in script files.  In SSDT, these are on your file system like other source files; in SQL Source Control, these are stored in the folder structure in your source control system, and you can always GET them to your file system if you want to browse them directly. For me, the key differentiating factors are 1) a single, unified check-in, and 2) migration scripts.  How you value those two features will likely make your decision for you. Unified Check-In If you do a continuous-integration (CI) style of development that triggers an automated build with unit testing on every check-in of source code, and you use Visual Studio for the rest of your development, then you will want to really consider SSDT.  Because it is just another project in Visual Studio, it can be added to your existing Solution, and you can then do a complete, or unified single check-in of all changes whether they are application or database changes.  This is simply not possible with SQL Source Control because it is in a different development tool (SSMS instead of Visual Studio) and there is no way to do one unified check-in between the two.  You CAN do really fast back-to-back check-ins, but there is the possibility that the automated build that is triggered from the first check-in will cause your unit tests to fail and the CI tool to report that you broke the build.  Of course, the automated build that is triggered from the second check-in which contains the “other half” of your changes should pass and so the amount of time that the build was broken may be very, very short, but if that is very, very important to you, then SQL Source Control just won’t work; you’ll have to use SSDT. Refactoring and Migrations If you work on a mature system, or on a not-so-mature but also not-so-well-designed system, where you want to refactor the database schema as you go along, but you can’t have data suddenly disappearing from your target system, then you’ll probably want to go with SQL Source Control.  As I wrote previously, there are a number of changes which you can make to your database that the comparison tools (both from Microsoft and Red Gate) simply cannot handle without the possibility (or probability) of data loss.  Currently, SSDT only offers you the ability to inject PRE and POST custom deployment scripts.  There is no way to insert your own script in the middle to override the default behavior of the tool.  In version 3.0 of SQL Source Control (Early Access version now available) you have that ability to create your own custom migration script to take the place of the commands that the tool would have done, and ensure the preservation of your data.  Or, even if the default tool behavior would have worked, but you simply know a better way then you can take control and do things your way instead of theirs. You Decide In the environment I work in, our automated builds are not triggered off of check-ins, but off of the clock (currently once per night) and so there is no point at which the automated build and unit tests will be triggered without having both sides of the development effort already checked-in.  Therefore having a unified check-in, while handy, is not critical for us.  As for migration scripts, these are critically important to us.  We do a lot of new development on systems that have already been in production for years, and it is not uncommon for us to need to do a refactoring of the database.  Because of the maturity of the existing system, that often involves data migrations or other additional SQL tasks that the comparison tools just can’t detect on their own.  Therefore, the ability to create a custom migration script to override the tool’s default behavior is very important to us.  And so, you can see why we will continue to use Red Gate SQL Source Control for the foreseeable future.

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• Error while installation of CHMSee

  - by Anshuman Chakraborty

  I have recently migrated from Windows to Ubuntu. My current locale shows below output :- cha@COMPUTER:~$ locale LANG=en_IN LANGUAGE=en_IN:en LC_CTYPE="en_IN" LC_NUMERIC="en_IN" LC_TIME="en_IN" LC_COLLATE="en_IN" LC_MONETARY="en_IN" LC_MESSAGES="en_IN" LC_PAPER="en_IN" LC_NAME="en_IN" LC_ADDRESS="en_IN" LC_TELEPHONE="en_IN" LC_MEASUREMENT="en_IN" LC_IDENTIFICATION="en_IN" LC_ALL= When I am trying to install CHMSee (or any other Application) using UBUNTU Software Center. I am getting below error. installArchives() failed: perl: warning: Setting locale failed. perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings: LANGUAGE = (unset), LC_ALL = (unset), LANG = "en_IN.ISO8859-1" are supported and installed on your system. perl: warning: Falling back to the standard locale ("C"). locale: Cannot set LC_CTYPE to default locale: No such file or directory locale: Cannot set LC_MESSAGES to default locale: No such file or directory locale: Cannot set LC_ALL to default locale: No such file or directory perl: warning: Setting locale failed. perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings: LANGUAGE = (unset), LC_ALL = (unset), LANG = "en_IN.ISO8859-1" are supported and installed on your system. perl: warning: Falling back to the standard locale ("C"). locale: Cannot set LC_CTYPE to default locale: No such file or directory locale: Cannot set LC_MESSAGES to default locale: No such file or directory locale: Cannot set LC_ALL to default locale: No such file or directory perl: warning: Setting locale failed. perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings: LANGUAGE = (unset), LC_ALL = (unset), LANG = "en_IN.ISO8859-1" are supported and installed on your system. perl: warning: Falling back to the standard locale ("C"). locale: Cannot set LC_CTYPE to default locale: No such file or directory locale: Cannot set LC_MESSAGES to default locale: No such file or directory locale: Cannot set LC_ALL to default locale: No such file or directory perl: warning: Setting locale failed. perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings: LANGUAGE = (unset), LC_ALL = (unset), LANG = "en_IN.ISO8859-1" are supported and installed on your system. perl: warning: Falling back to the standard locale ("C"). locale: Cannot set LC_CTYPE to default locale: No such file or directory locale: Cannot set LC_MESSAGES to default locale: No such file or directory locale: Cannot set LC_ALL to default locale: No such file or directory Selecting previously unselected package libchm1. (Reading database ... (Reading database ... 5% (Reading database ... 10% (Reading database ... 15% (Reading database ... 20% (Reading database ... 25% (Reading database ... 30% (Reading database ... 35% (Reading database ... 40% (Reading database ... 45% (Reading database ... 50% (Reading database ... 55% (Reading database ... 60% (Reading database ... 65% (Reading database ... 70% (Reading database ... 75% (Reading database ... 80% (Reading database ... 85% (Reading database ... 90% (Reading database ... 95% (Reading database ... 100% (Reading database ... 207053 files and directories currently installed.) Unpacking libchm1 (from .../libchm1_2%3a0.40a-1_i386.deb) ... Selecting previously unselected package libjavascriptcoregtk-1.0-0. Unpacking libjavascriptcoregtk-1.0-0 (from .../libjavascriptcoregtk-1.0-0_1.8.0-0ubuntu2_i386.deb) ... Selecting previously unselected package libwebkitgtk-1.0-common. Unpacking libwebkitgtk-1.0-common (from .../libwebkitgtk-1.0-common_1.8.0-0ubuntu2_all.deb) ... Selecting previously unselected package libwebkitgtk-1.0-0. Unpacking libwebkitgtk-1.0-0 (from .../libwebkitgtk-1.0-0_1.8.0-0ubuntu2_i386.deb) ... Selecting previously unselected package chmsee. Unpacking chmsee (from .../chmsee_1.3.0-2ubuntu2_i386.deb) ... Processing triggers for bamfdaemon ... Rebuilding /usr/share/applications/bamf.index... Processing triggers for desktop-file-utils ... Processing triggers for gnome-menus ... Processing triggers for hicolor-icon-theme ... Processing triggers for man-db ... locale: Cannot set LC_CTYPE to default locale: No such file or directory locale: Cannot set LC_MESSAGES to default locale: No such file or directory locale: Cannot set LC_ALL to default locale: No such file or directory Setting up qmail (1.06-4) ... The hostname -f command returned: $1 Your system needs to have a fully qualified domain name (fqdn) in order to install the var-qmail packages. Installation aborted. dpkg: error processing qmail (--configure): subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 1 dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of qmail-run: qmail-run depends on qmail (>= 1.06-2.1); however: Package qmail is not configured yet. dpkg: error processing qmail-run (--configure): dependency problems - leaving unconfigured Setting up libchm1 (2:0.40a-1) ... No apport report written because the error message indicates its a followup error from a previous failure. Setting up libjavascriptcoregtk-1.0-0 (1.8.0-0ubuntu2) ... Setting up libwebkitgtk-1.0-common (1.8.0-0ubuntu2) ... Setting up libwebkitgtk-1.0-0 (1.8.0-0ubuntu2) ... Setting up chmsee (1.3.0-2ubuntu2) ... Processing triggers for libc-bin ... ldconfig deferred processing now taking place Errors were encountered while processing: qmail qmail-run Error in function: SystemError: E:Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1) Setting up qmail (1.06-4) ... The hostname -f command returned: $1 Your system needs to have a fully qualified domain name (fqdn) in order to install the var-qmail packages. Installation aborted. dpkg: error processing qmail (--configure): subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 1 dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of qmail-run: qmail-run depends on qmail (>= 1.06-2.1); however: Package qmail is not configured yet. dpkg: error processing qmail-run (--configure): dependency problems - leaving unconfigured Can someone please help me in resolving this issue. The elaboration would be most appreciated since I am very new to this. Thanks, Anshuman Chakraborty

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• Consuming ASP.NET Web API services from PHP script

  - by DigiMortal

  I introduced ASP.NET Web API in some of my previous posts. Although Web API is easy to use in ASP.NET web applications you can use Web API also from other platforms. This post shows you how to consume ASP.NET Web API from PHP scripts. Here are my previous posts about Web API: How content negotiation works? ASP.NET Web API: Extending content negotiation with new formats Query string based content formatting Although these posts cover content negotiation they give you some idea about how Web API works. Test application On Web API side I use the same sample application as in previous Web API posts – very primitive web application to manage contacts. Listing contacts On the other machine I will run the following PHP script that works against my Web API application: <?php   // request list of contacts from Web API $json = file_get_contents('http://vs2010dev:3613/api/contacts/'); // deserialize data from JSON $contacts = json_decode($json); ?> <html> <head>     <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" /> </head> <body>     <table>     <?php      foreach($contacts as $contact)     {         ?>         <tr>             <td valign="top">                 <?php echo $contact->FirstName ?>             </td>             <td valign="top">                 <?php echo $contact->LastName ?>             </td>             <td valign="middle">                 <form method="POST">                     <input type="hidden" name="id"                          value="<?php echo $contact-/>Id ?>" />                     <input type="submit" name="cmd"                          value="Delete"/>                 </form>             </td>         </tr>         <?php     }     ?>     </table> </body> </html> Notice how easy it is to handle JSON data in PHP! My PHP script produces the following output: Looks like data is here as it should be. Deleting contacts Now let’s write code to delete contacts. Add this block of code before any other code in PHP script. if(@$_POST['cmd'] == 'Delete') {     $errno = 0;     $errstr = '';     $id = @$_POST['id'];          $params = array('http' => array(               'method' => 'DELETE',               'content' => ""             ));     $url = 'http://vs2010dev:3613/api/contacts/'.$id;     $ctx = stream_context_create($params);     $fp = fopen($url, 'rb', false, $ctx);       if (!$fp) {         $res = false;       } else {         $res = stream_get_contents($fp);       }     fclose($fp);     header('Location: /json.php');     exit; } Again simple code. If we write also insert and update methods we may want to bundle those operations to single class. Conclusion ASP.NET Web API is not only ASP.NET fun. It is available also for all other platforms. In this posting we wrote simple PHP client that is able to communicate with our Web API application. We wrote only some simple code, nothing complex. Same way we can use also platforms like Java, PERL and Ruby.

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• Screenshot Tour: Ubuntu Touch 14.04 on a Nexus 7

  - by Chris Hoffman

  Ubuntu 14.04 LTS will “form the basis of the first commercially available Ubuntu tablets,” according to Canonical. We installed Ubuntu Touch 14.04 on our own hardware to see what those tablets will be like. We don’t recommend installing this yourself, as it’s still not a polished, complete experience. We’re using “Ubuntu Touch” as shorthand here — apparently this project’s new name is “Ubuntu For Devices.” The Welcome Screen Ubuntu’s touch interface is all about edge swipes and hidden interface elements — it has a lot in common with Windows 8, actually. You’ll see the welcome screen when you boot up or unlock a Ubuntu tablet or phone. If you have new emails, text messages, or other information, it will appear on this screen along with the time and date. If you don’t, you’ll just see a message saying “No data sources available.” The Dash Swipe in from the right edge of the welcome screen to access the Dash, or home screen. This is actually very similar to the Dash on Ubuntu’s Unity desktop. This isn’t a surprise — Canonical wants the desktop and touch versions of Ubuntu to use the same code. In the future, the desktop and touch versions of Ubuntu will use the same version of Unity and Unity will adjust its interface depending on what type of device your’e using. Here you’ll find apps you have installed and apps available to install. Tap an installed app to launch it or tap an available app to view more details and install it. Tap the My apps or Available headings to view a complete list of apps you have installed or apps you can install. Tap the Search box at the top of the screen to start searching — this is how you’d search for new apps to install. As you’d expect, a touch keyboard appears when you tap in the Search field or any other text field. The launcher isn’t just for apps. Tap the Apps heading at the top of the screen and you’ll see hidden text appear — Music, Video, and Scopes. This hidden navigation is used throughout Ubuntu’s different apps and can be easy to miss at first. Swipe to the left or right to move between these screens. These screens are also similar to the different panels in Unity on the desktop. The Scopes section allows you to view different search scopes you have installed. These are used to search different sources when you start a search from the Dash. Search from the Music or Videos scopes to search for local media files on your device or media files online. For example, searching in the Music scope will show you music results from Grooveshark by default. Navigating Ubuntu Touch Swipe in from the left edge anywhere on the system to open the launcher, a bar with shortcuts to apps. This launcher is very similar to the launcher on the left of Ubuntu’s Unity desktop — that’s the whole idea, after all. Once you’ve opened an app, you can leave the app by swiping in from the left. The launcher will appear — keep moving your finger towards the right edge of teh screen. This will swipe the current app off the screen, taking you back to the Dash. Once back on the Dash, you’ll see your open apps represented as thumbnails under Recent. Tap a thumbnail here to go back to a running app. To remove an app from here, long-press it and tap the X button that appears. Swipe in from the right edge in any app to quickly switch between recent apps. Swipe in from the right edge and hold your finger down to reveal an application switcher that shows all your recent apps and lets you choose between them. Swipe down from the top of the screen to access the indicator panel. Here you can connect to Wi-Fi networks, view upcoming events, control GPS and Bluetooth hardware, adjust sound settings, see incoming messages, and more. This panel is for quick access to hardware settings and notifications, just like the indicators on Ubuntu’s Unity desktop. The Apps System settings not included in the pull-down panel are available in the System Settings app. To access it, tap My apps on the Dash and tap System Settings, search for the System Settings app, or open the launcher bar and tap the settings icon. The settings here a bit limited compared to other operating systems, but many of the important options are available here. You can add Evernote, Ubuntu One, Twitter, Facebook, and Google accounts from here. A free Ubuntu One account is mandatory for downloading and updating apps. A Google account can be used to sync contacts and calendar events. Some apps on Ubuntu are native apps, while many are web apps. For example, the Twitter, Gmail, Amazon, Facebook, and eBay apps included by default are all web apps that open each service’s mobile website as an app. Other applications, such as the Weather, Calendar, Dialer, Calculator, and Notes apps are native applications. Theoretically, both types of apps will be able to scale to different screen resolutions. Ubuntu Touch and Ubuntu desktop may one day share the same apps, which will adapt to different display sizes and input methods. Like Windows 8 apps, Ubuntu apps hide interface elements by default, providing you with a full-screen view of the content. Swipe up from the bottom of an app’s screen to view its interface elements. For example, swiping up from the bottom of the Web Browser app reveals Back, Forward, and Refresh buttons, along with an address bar and Activity button so you can view current and recent web pages. Swipe up even more from the bottom and you’ll see a button hovering in the middle of the app. Tap the button and you’ll see many more settings. This is an overflow area for application options and functions that can’t fit on the navigation bar. The Terminal app has a few surprising Easter eggs in this panel, including a “Hack into the NSA” option. Tap it and the following text will appear in the terminal: That’s not very nice, now tracing your location . . . . . . . . . . . .Trace failed You got away this time, but don’t try again. We’d expect to see such Easter eggs disappear before Ubuntu Touch actually ships on real devices. Ubuntu Touch has come a long way, but it’s still not something you want to use today. For example, it doesn’t even have a built-in email client — you’ll have to us your email service’s mobile website. Few apps are available, and many of the ones that are are just mobile websites. It’s not a polished operating system intended for normal users yet — it’s more of a preview for developers and device manufacturers. If you really want to try it yourself, you can install it on a Wi-Fi Nexus 7 (2013), Nexus 10, or Nexus 4 device. Follow Ubuntu’s installation instructions here.

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• What's up with LDoms: Part 5 - A few Words about Consoles

  - by Stefan Hinker

  Back again to look at a detail of LDom configuration that is often forgotten - the virtual console server. Remember, LDoms are SPARC systems.  As such, each guest will have it's own OBP running.  And to connect to that OBP, the administrator will need a console connection.  Since it's OBP, and not some x86 BIOS, this console will be very serial in nature ;-)  It's really very much like in the good old days, where we had a terminal concentrator where all those serial cables ended up in.  Just like with other components in LDoms, the virtualized solution looks very similar. Every LDom guest requires exactly one console connection.  Envision this similar to the RS-232 port on older SPARC systems.  The LDom framework provides one or more console services that provide access to these connections.  This would be the virtual equivalent of a network terminal server (NTS), where all those serial cables are plugged in.  In the physical world, we'd have a list somewhere, that would tell us which TCP-Port of the NTS was connected to which server.  "ldm list" does just that: root@sun # ldm list NAME STATE FLAGS CONS VCPU MEMORY UTIL UPTIME primary active -n-cv- UART 16 7680M 0.4% 27d 8h 22m jupiter bound ------ 5002 20 8G mars active -n---- 5000 2 8G 0.5% 55d 14h 10m venus active -n---- 5001 2 8G 0.5% 56d 40m pluto inactive ------ 4 4G The column marked "CONS" tells us, where to reach the console of each domain. In the case of the primary domain, this is actually a (more) physical connection - it's the console connection of the physical system, which is either reachable via the ILOM of that system, or directly via the serial console port on the chassis. All the other guests are reachable through the console service which we created during the inital setup of the system.  Note that pluto does not have a port assigned.  This is because pluto is not yet bound.  (Binding can be viewed very much as the assembly of computer parts - CPU, Memory, disks, network adapters and a serial console cable are all put together when binding the domain.)  Unless we set the port number explicitly, LDoms Manager will do this on a first come, first serve basis.  For just a few domains, this is fine.  For larger deployments, it might be a good idea to assign these port numbers manually using the "ldm set-vcons" command.  However, there is even better magic associated with virtual consoles. You can group several domains into one console group, reachable through one TCP port of the console service.  This can be useful when several groups of administrators are to be given access to different domains, or for other grouping reasons.  Here's an example: root@sun # ldm set-vcons group=planets service=console jupiter root@sun # ldm set-vcons group=planets service=console pluto root@sun # ldm bind jupiter root@sun # ldm bind pluto root@sun # ldm list NAME STATE FLAGS CONS VCPU MEMORY UTIL UPTIME primary active -n-cv- UART 16 7680M 6.1% 27d 8h 24m jupiter bound ------ 5002 200 8G mars active -n---- 5000 2 8G 0.6% 55d 14h 12m pluto bound ------ 5002 4 4G venus active -n---- 5001 2 8G 0.5% 56d 42m root@sun # telnet localhost 5002 Trying 127.0.0.1... Connected to localhost. Escape character is '^]'. sun-vnts-planets: h, l, c{id}, n{name}, q:l DOMAIN ID DOMAIN NAME DOMAIN STATE 2 jupiter online 3 pluto online sun-vnts-planets: h, l, c{id}, n{name}, q:npluto Connecting to console "pluto" in group "planets" .... Press ~? for control options .. What I did here was add the two domains pluto and jupiter to a new console group called "planets" on the service "console" running in the primary domain.  Simply using a group name will create such a group, if it doesn't already exist.  By default, each domain has its own group, using the domain name as the group name.  The group will be available on port 5002, chosen by LDoms Manager because I didn't specify it.  If I connect to that console group, I will now first be prompted to choose the domain I want to connect to from a little menu. Finally, here's an example how to assign port numbers explicitly: root@sun # ldm set-vcons port=5044 group=pluto service=console pluto root@sun # ldm bind pluto root@sun # ldm list NAME STATE FLAGS CONS VCPU MEMORY UTIL UPTIME primary active -n-cv- UART 16 7680M 3.8% 27d 8h 54m jupiter active -t---- 5002 200 8G 0.5% 30m mars active -n---- 5000 2 8G 0.6% 55d 14h 43m pluto bound ------ 5044 4 4G venus active -n---- 5001 2 8G 0.4% 56d 1h 13m With this, pluto would always be reachable on port 5044 in its own exclusive console group, no matter in which order other domains are bound. Now, you might be wondering why we always have to mention the console service name, "console" in all the examples here.  The simple answer is because there could be more than one such console service.  For all "normal" use, a single console service is absolutely sufficient.  But the system is flexible enough to allow more than that single one, should you need them.  In fact, you could even configure such a console service on a domain other than the primary (or control domain), which would make that domain a real console server.  I actually have a customer who does just that - they want to separate console access from the control domain functionality.  But this is definately a rather sophisticated setup. Something I don't want to go into in this post is access control.  vntsd, which is the daemon providing all these console services, is fully RBAC-aware, and you can configure authorizations for individual users to connect to console groups or individual domain's consoles.  If you can't wait until I get around to security, check out the man page of vntsd. Further reading: The Admin Guide is rather reserved on this subject.  I do recommend to check out the Reference Manual. The manpage for vntsd will discuss all the control sequences as well as the grouping and authorizations mentioned here.

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• Accessing your web server via IPv6

  Being able to run your systems on IPv6, have automatic address assignment and the ability to resolve host names are the necessary building blocks in your IPv6 network infrastructure. Now, that everything is in place it is about time that we are going to enable another service to respond to IPv6 requests. The following article will guide through the steps on how to enable Apache2 httpd to listen and respond to incoming IPv6 requests. This is the fourth article in a series on IPv6 configuration: Configure IPv6 on your Linux system DHCPv6: Provide IPv6 information in your local network Enabling DNS for IPv6 infrastructure Accessing your web server via IPv6 Piece of advice: This is based on my findings on the internet while reading other people's helpful articles and going through a couple of man-pages on my local system. Surfing the web - IPv6 style Enabling IPv6 connections in Apache 2 is fairly simply. But first let's check whether your system has a running instance of Apache2 or not. You can check this like so: $ service apache2 status Apache2 is running (pid 2680). In case that you got a 'service unknown' you have to install Apache to proceed with the following steps: $ sudo apt-get install apache2 Out of the box, Apache binds to all your available network interfaces and listens to TCP port 80. To check this, run the following command: $ sudo netstat -lnptu | grep "apache2\W*$"tcp6       0      0 :::80                   :::*                    LISTEN      28306/apache2 In this case Apache2 is already binding to IPv6 (and implicitly to IPv4). If you only got a tcp output, then your HTTPd is not yet IPv6 enabled. Check your Listen directive, depending on your system this might be in a different location than the default in Ubuntu. $ sudo nano /etc/apache2/ports.conf # If you just change the port or add more ports here, you will likely also# have to change the VirtualHost statement in# /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/000-default# This is also true if you have upgraded from before 2.2.9-3 (i.e. from# Debian etch). See /usr/share/doc/apache2.2-common/NEWS.Debian.gz and# README.Debian.gzNameVirtualHost *:80Listen 80<IfModule mod_ssl.c>    # If you add NameVirtualHost *:443 here, you will also have to change    # the VirtualHost statement in /etc/apache2/sites-available/default-ssl    # to <VirtualHost *:443>    # Server Name Indication for SSL named virtual hosts is currently not    # supported by MSIE on Windows XP.    Listen 443</IfModule><IfModule mod_gnutls.c>    Listen 443</IfModule> Just in case that you don't have a ports.conf file, look for it like so: $ cd /etc/apache2/$ fgrep -r -i 'listen' ./* And modify the related file instead of the ports.conf. Which most probably might be either apache2.conf or httpd.conf anyways. Okay, please bear in mind that Apache can only bind once on the same interface and port. So, eventually, you might be interested to add another port which explicitly listens to IPv6 only. In that case, you would add the following in your configuration file: Listen 80Listen [2001:db8:bad:a55::2]:8080 But this is completely optional... Anyways, just to complete all steps, you save the file, and then check the syntax like so: $ sudo apache2ctl configtestSyntax OK Ok, now let's apply the modifications to our running Apache2 instances: $ sudo service apache2 reload * Reloading web server config apache2   ...done. $ sudo netstat -lnptu | grep "apache2\W*$"                                                                                               tcp6       0      0 2001:db8:bad:a55:::8080 :::*                    LISTEN      5922/apache2    tcp6       0      0 :::80                   :::*                    LISTEN      5922/apache2 There we have two daemons running and listening to different TCP ports. Now, that the basics are in place, it's time to prepare any website to respond to incoming requests on the IPv6 address. Open up any configuration file you have below your sites-enabled folder. $ ls -al /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/... $ sudo nano /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/000-default <VirtualHost *:80 [2001:db8:bad:a55::2]:8080>        ServerAdmin [email protected]        ServerName server.ios.mu        ServerAlias server Here, we have to check and modify the VirtualHost directive and enable it to respond to the IPv6 address and port our web server is listening to. Save your changes, run the configuration test and reload Apache2 in order to apply your modifications. After successful steps you can launch your favourite browser and navigate to your IPv6 enabled web server. Accessing an IPv6 address in the browser That looks like a successful surgery to me... Note: In case that you received a timeout, check whether your client is operating on IPv6, too.

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• ndd on Solaris 10

  - by user12620111

  This is mostly a repost of LaoTsao's Weblog with some tweaks. Last time that I tried to cut & paste directly off of his page, some of the XML was messed up. I run this from my MacBook. It should also work from your windows laptop if you use cygwin. ================If not already present, create a ssh key on you laptop================ # ssh-keygen -t rsa ================ Enable passwordless ssh from my laptop. Need to type in the root password for the remote machines. Then, I no longer need to type in the password when I ssh or scp from my laptop to servers. ================ #!/usr/bin/env bash for server in `cat servers.txt` do   echo root@$server   cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub | ssh root@$server "cat >> .ssh/authorized_keys" done ================ servers.txt ================ testhost1testhost2 ================ etc_system_addins ================ set rpcmod:clnt_max_conns=8 set zfs:zfs_arc_max=0x1000000000 set nfs:nfs3_bsize=131072 set nfs:nfs4_bsize=131072 ================ ndd-nettune.txt ================ #!/sbin/sh # # ident   "@(#)ndd-nettune.xml    1.0     01/08/06 SMI" . /lib/svc/share/smf_include.sh . /lib/svc/share/net_include.sh # Make sure that the libraries essential to this stage of booting  can be found. LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/lib; export LD_LIBRARY_PATH echo "Performing Directory Server Tuning..." >> /tmp/smf.out # # Standard SuperCluster Tunables # /usr/sbin/ndd -set /dev/tcp tcp_max_buf 2097152 /usr/sbin/ndd -set /dev/tcp tcp_xmit_hiwat 1048576 /usr/sbin/ndd -set /dev/tcp tcp_recv_hiwat 1048576 # Reset the library path now that we are past the critical stage unset LD_LIBRARY_PATH ================ ndd-nettune.xml ================ <?xml version="1.0"?> <!DOCTYPE service_bundle SYSTEM "/usr/share/lib/xml/dtd/service_bundle.dtd.1"> <!-- ident "@(#)ndd-nettune.xml 1.0 04/09/21 SMI" --> <service_bundle type='manifest' name='SUNWcsr:ndd'>   <service name='network/ndd-nettune' type='service' version='1'>     <create_default_instance enabled='true' />     <single_instance />     <dependency name='fs-minimal' type='service' grouping='require_all' restart_on='none'>       <service_fmri value='svc:/system/filesystem/minimal' />     </dependency>     <dependency name='loopback-network' grouping='require_any' restart_on='none' type='service'>       <service_fmri value='svc:/network/loopback' />     </dependency>     <dependency name='physical-network' grouping='optional_all' restart_on='none' type='service'>       <service_fmri value='svc:/network/physical' />     </dependency>     <exec_method type='method' name='start' exec='/lib/svc/method/ndd-nettune' timeout_seconds='3' > </exec_method>     <exec_method type='method' name='stop'  exec=':true'                       timeout_seconds='3' > </exec_method>     <property_group name='startd' type='framework'>       <propval name='duration' type='astring' value='transient' />     </property_group>     <stability value='Unstable' />     <template>       <common_name>     <loctext xml:lang='C'> ndd network tuning </loctext>       </common_name>       <documentation>     <manpage title='ndd' section='1M' manpath='/usr/share/man' />       </documentation>     </template>   </service> </service_bundle> ================ system_tuning.sh ================ #!/usr/bin/env bash for server in `cat servers.txt` do   cat etc_system_addins | ssh root@$server "cat >> /etc/system"   scp ndd-nettune.xml root@${server}:/var/svc/manifest/site/ndd-nettune.xml   scp ndd-nettune.txt root@${server}:/lib/svc/method/ndd-nettune   ssh root@$server chmod +x /lib/svc/method/ndd-nettune   ssh root@$server svccfg validate /var/svc/manifest/site/ndd-nettune.xml   ssh root@$server svccfg import /var/svc/manifest/site/ndd-nettune.xml done

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• Vlc And other Multi Media Problems

  - by MrMagu

  ive tried numerous Free Multimedia Programs on ubuntu and i get the same result when i go to watch one of my movies off my other hardrive it allways ends up full screening with a stuck image in the middle and vlc ends up looking pitch black. ive look all over the web for this issue im wondering if anyone is experinceing the same problems I Dont know if it has to do with the duel monitors ive tried adding and re adding the repositorys but it seems to be doing the same repetive thing for over a month now do i need to reinstall the whole system or what idk anyhelp please would be much appreciated Ty MrMagu Xorg Conf File nvidia-settings: X configuration file generated by nvidia-settings nvidia-settings: version 304.37 (buildd@allspice) Sun Sep 9 05:59:26 UTC 2012 Section "ServerLayout" Identifier "Layout0" Screen 0 "Screen0" 0 0 InputDevice "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard" InputDevice "Mouse0" "CorePointer" Option "Xinerama" "0" EndSection Section "Files" EndSection Section "InputDevice" # generated from default Identifier "Mouse0" Driver "mouse" Option "Protocol" "auto" Option "Device" "/dev/psaux" Option "Emulate3Buttons" "no" Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5" EndSection Section "InputDevice" # generated from default Identifier "Keyboard0" Driver "kbd" EndSection Section "Monitor" # HorizSync source: edid, VertRefresh source: edid Identifier "Monitor0" VendorName "Unknown" ModelName "Ancor Communications Inc VE247" HorizSync 30.0 - 83.0 VertRefresh 50.0 - 76.0 Option "DPMS" EndSection Section "Monitor" Identifier "Monitor1" VendorName "Unknown" ModelName "Ancor Communications Inc VE247" HorizSync 30.0 - 83.0 VertRefresh 50.0 - 76.0 EndSection Section "Device" Identifier "Device0" Driver "nvidia" VendorName "NVIDIA Corporation" BoardName "Quadro FX 1500" EndSection Section "Device" Identifier "Device1" Driver "nvidia" VendorName "NVIDIA Corporation" BoardName "Quadro FX 1500" BusID "PCI:1:0:0" Screen 1 EndSection Section "Screen" Removed Option "metamodes" "DFP-0: nvidia-auto-select +0+0, DFP-1: nvidia-auto-select +1920+0; DFP-0: 1920x1080 +0+0, DFP-1: 1920x1080 +1920+0" Removed Option "metamodes" "DFP-0: nvidia-auto-select +0+0; DFP-0: 1920x1080 +0+0; DFP-0: 1920x1080_60 +0+0; DFP-0: 1680x1050 +0+0; DFP-0: 1680x1050_60 +0+0; DFP-0: 1440x900 +0+0; DFP-0: 1440x900_60 +0+0; DFP-0: 1280x1024 +0+0; DFP-0: 1280x1024_75 +0+0; DFP-0: 1280x1024_60 +0+0; DFP-0: 1280x960 +0+0; DFP-0: 1280x960_60 +0+0; DFP-0: 1152x864 +0+0; DFP-0: 1152x864_75 +0+0; DFP-0: 1024x768 +0+0; DFP-0: 1024x768_75 +0+0; DFP-0: 1024x768_70 +0+0; DFP-0: 1024x768_60 +0+0; DFP-0: 800x600 +0+0; DFP-0: 800x600_75 +0+0; DFP-0: 800x600_72 +0+0; DFP-0: 800x600_60 +0+0; DFP-0: 800x600_56 +0+0; DFP-0: 640x480 +0+0; DFP-0: 640x480_75 +0+0; DFP-0: 640x480_72 +0+0; DFP-0: 640x480_60 +0+0; DFP-0: nvidia-auto-select @1920x720 +0+0" Removed Option "metamodes" "DFP-0: nvidia-auto-select +0+0; DFP-0: 1920x1080 +0+0; DFP-0: 1920x1080_60 +0+0; DFP-0: 1680x1050 +0+0; DFP-0: 1680x1050_60 +0+0; DFP-0: 1440x900 +0+0; DFP-0: 1440x900_60 +0+0; DFP-0: 1280x1024 +0+0; DFP-0: 1280x1024_75 +0+0; DFP-0: 1280x1024_60 +0+0; DFP-0: 1280x960 +0+0; DFP-0: 1280x960_60 +0+0; DFP-0: 1152x864 +0+0; DFP-0: 1152x864_75 +0+0; DFP-0: 1024x768 +0+0; DFP-0: 1024x768_75 +0+0; DFP-0: 1024x768_70 +0+0; DFP-0: 1024x768_60 +0+0; DFP-0: 800x600 +0+0; DFP-0: 800x600_75 +0+0; DFP-0: 800x600_72 +0+0; DFP-0: 800x600_60 +0+0; DFP-0: 800x600_56 +0+0; DFP-0: 640x480 +0+0; DFP-0: 640x480_75 +0+0; DFP-0: 640x480_72 +0+0; DFP-0: 640x480_60 +0+0" Identifier "Screen0" Device "Device0" Monitor "Monitor0" DefaultDepth 24 Option "TwinView" "1" Option "TwinViewXineramaInfoOrder" "DFP-0" Option "Stereo" "0" Option "nvidiaXineramaInfoOrder" "DFP-0" Option "metamodes" "DFP-0: nvidia-auto-select +0+0, DFP-1: 1920x1080 +1920+0; DFP-0: 1920x1080 +0+0, DFP-1: nvidia-auto-select +1920+0; DFP-0: 1920x1080_60 +0+0; DFP-0: 1680x1050 +0+0; DFP-0: 1680x1050_60 +0+0; DFP-0: 1440x900 +0+0; DFP-0: 1440x900_60 +0+0; DFP-0: 1280x1024 +0+0; DFP-0: 1280x1024_75 +0+0; DFP-0: 1280x1024_60 +0+0; DFP-0: 1280x960 +0+0; DFP-0: 1280x960_60 +0+0; DFP-0: 1152x864 +0+0; DFP-0: 1152x864_75 +0+0; DFP-0: 1024x768 +0+0; DFP-0: 1024x768_75 +0+0; DFP-0: 1024x768_70 +0+0; DFP-0: 1024x768_60 +0+0; DFP-0: 800x600 +0+0; DFP-0: 800x600_75 +0+0; DFP-0: 800x600_72 +0+0; DFP-0: 800x600_60 +0+0; DFP-0: 800x600_56 +0+0; DFP-0: 640x480 +0+0; DFP-0: 640x480_75 +0+0; DFP-0: 640x480_72 +0+0; DFP-0: 640x480_60 +0+0" SubSection "Display" Depth 24 EndSubSection EndSection Section "Screen" Identifier "Screen1" Device "Device1" Monitor "Monitor1" DefaultDepth 24 Option "Stereo" "0" Option "metamodes" "DFP-1: 1920x1080 +0+0" SubSection "Display" Depth 24 EndSubSection EndSection Section "InputClass" Identifier "Mouse Remap" MatchProduct "Saitek Cyborg R.A.T.7 Mouse" MatchDevicePath "/dev/input/event*" Option "ButtonMapping" "1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 0 0 0 0 0" EndSection Pictures http://tinypic.com/r/34o7j1h/6 http://tinypic.com/r/3rn20/6 Ty so Much Mr Magu

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• Postfix configuration - Uing virtual min but server is bouncing back my mail.

  - by brodiebrodie

  I have no experience in setting up postfix, and thought virtualmin minght do the legwork for me. Appears not. When I try to send mail to the domain (either [email protected] [email protected] or [email protected]) I get the following message returned This is the mail system at host dedq239.localdomain. I'm sorry to have to inform you that your message could not be delivered to one or more recipients. It's attached below. For further assistance, please send mail to <postmaster> If you do so, please include this problem report. You can delete your own text from the attached returned message. The mail system <[email protected]> (expanded from <[email protected]>): User unknown in virtual alias table Final-Recipient: rfc822; [email protected] Original-Recipient: rfc822;[email protected] Action: failed Status: 5.0.0 Diagnostic-Code: X-Postfix; User unknown in virtual alias table How can I diagnose the problem here? It seems that the mail gets to my server but the server fails to locally deliver the message to the correct user. (This is a guess, truthfully I have no idea what is happening). I have checked my virtual alias table and it seems to be set up correctly (I can post if this would be helpful). Can anyone give me a clue as to the next step? Thanks alias_database = hash:/etc/aliases alias_maps = hash:/etc/aliases broken_sasl_auth_clients = yes command_directory = /usr/sbin config_directory = /etc/postfix daemon_directory = /usr/libexec/postfix debug_peer_level = 2 html_directory = no local_recipient_maps = $virtual_mailbox_maps mailq_path = /usr/bin/mailq.postfix manpage_directory = /usr/share/man mydestination = $myhostname, localhost.$mydomain, localhost, $mydomain myorigin = $mydomain newaliases_path = /usr/bin/newaliases.postfix readme_directory = /usr/share/doc/postfix-2.3.3/README_FILES sample_directory = /usr/share/doc/postfix-2.3.3/samples sendmail_path = /usr/sbin/sendmail.postfix setgid_group = postdrop smtpd_recipient_restrictions = permit_mynetworks reject_unauth_destination smtpd_sasl_auth_enable = yes soft_bounce = no unknown_local_recipient_reject_code = 550 virtual_alias_maps = hash:/etc/postfix/virtual My mail log file (the last entry) Sep 30 15:13:47 dedq239 postfix/cleanup[7237]: 207C6B18158: message-id=<[email protected]> Sep 30 15:13:47 dedq239 postfix/qmgr[7177]: 207C6B18158: from=<[email protected]>, size=1805, nrcpt=1 (queue active) Sep 30 15:13:47 dedq239 postfix/error[7238]: 207C6B18158: to=<[email protected]>, orig_to=<[email protected]>, relay=none, delay=0.64, delays=0.61/0.01/0/0.02, dsn=5.0.0, status=bounced (User unknown in virtual alias table) Sep 30 15:13:47 dedq239 postfix/cleanup[7237]: 8DC13B18169: message-id=<[email protected]> Sep 30 15:13:47 dedq239 postfix/qmgr[7177]: 8DC13B18169: from=<>, size=3691, nrcpt=1 (queue active) Sep 30 15:13:47 dedq239 postfix/bounce[7239]: 207C6B18158: sender non-delivery notification: 8DC13B18169 Sep 30 15:13:47 dedq239 postfix/qmgr[7177]: 207C6B18158: removed Sep 30 15:13:48 dedq239 postfix/smtp[7240]: 8DC13B18169: to=<[email protected]>, relay=gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com[209.85.216.55]:25, delay=1.3, delays=0.02/0.01/0.58/0.75, dsn=2.0.0, status=sent (250 2.0.0 OK 1254348828 36si15082901pxi.91) Sep 30 15:13:48 dedq239 postfix/qmgr[7177]: 8DC13B18169: removed Sep 30 15:14:17 dedq239 postfix/smtpd[7233]: disconnect from mail-bw0-f228.google.com[209.85.218.228] etc.aliases file below I have not touched this file - myvirtualdomain is a replacement for my real domain name # Aliases in this file will NOT be expanded in the header from # Mail, but WILL be visible over networks or from /bin/mail. # # >>>>>>>>>> The program "newaliases" must be run after # >> NOTE >> this file is updated for any changes to # >>>>>>>>>> show through to sendmail. # # Basic system aliases -- these MUST be present. mailer-daemon: postmaster postmaster: root # General redirections for pseudo accounts. bin: root daemon: root adm: root lp: root sync: root shutdown: root halt: root mail: root news: root uucp: root operator: root games: root gopher: root ftp: root nobody: root radiusd: root nut: root dbus: root vcsa: root canna: root wnn: root rpm: root nscd: root pcap: root apache: root webalizer: root dovecot: root fax: root quagga: root radvd: root pvm: root amanda: root privoxy: root ident: root named: root xfs: root gdm: root mailnull: root postgres: root sshd: root smmsp: root postfix: root netdump: root ldap: root squid: root ntp: root mysql: root desktop: root rpcuser: root rpc: root nfsnobody: root ingres: root system: root toor: root manager: root dumper: root abuse: root newsadm: news newsadmin: news usenet: news ftpadm: ftp ftpadmin: ftp ftp-adm: ftp ftp-admin: ftp www: webmaster webmaster: root noc: root security: root hostmaster: root info: postmaster marketing: postmaster sales: postmaster support: postmaster # trap decode to catch security attacks decode: root # Person who should get root's mail #root: marc abuse-myvirtualdomain.com: [email protected] My etc/postfix/virtual file is below - again myvirtualdomain is a replacement. I think this file was generated by Virtualmin and I have tried messing around with is with no success... This is the version without my changes. myunixusername@myvirtualdomain .com myunixusername myvirtualdomain .com myvirtualdomain.com [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected]

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