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• NIC is receiving, but not transmitting at all?

  - by Shtééf

  I'm trying to fix a very strange problem remotely on a machine at a customer site. The machine is a Dell PowerEdge, I believe a 1950 (haven't verified, but the lspci output matches specs I found.) The machine has two similar NICs, identified as Broadcom Corporation NetXtreme II BCM5708 Gigabit Ethernet (rev 12) by lspci, and using the bnx2 driver. (I suspect these are on-board and on the same controller, which is what I'm accustomed to for this type of machine.) The primary interface eth0 works perfectly, and is in fact how I am ssh'd in. However, the secondary interface eth1 is not transmitting. I can see this in ifconfig output, for example, where the TX field is always 0. However, it is receiving, and tcpdump shows ARP requests coming from the ISP's gateway on the other side. The interface is physically connected to a Siemens BSTU4 modem, configured by the ISP. The link is properly set to 10MBps and full duplex, without negotation, as the ISP requested. A small /30 subnet is configured. For the sake of anonimity, let's say the machine is 3.3.3.2/30, and the ISP's gateway .1. The machine has no firewall settings whatsoever. Even running something like arping -I eth1 3.3.3.1, and running tcpdump alongside, shows no traffic whatsoever being transmitted on the interface. (But the other side keeps steadily sending ARP requests, and that is all that can be seen.) What could be causing this? Here's some output, anonymized, which may hopefully help: $ ethtool eth1 Settings for eth1: Supported ports: [ TP ] Supported link modes: 10baseT/Half 10baseT/Full 100baseT/Half 100baseT/Full 1000baseT/Full Supports auto-negotiation: Yes Advertised link modes: Not reported Advertised auto-negotiation: No Speed: 10Mb/s Duplex: Full Port: Twisted Pair PHYAD: 1 Transceiver: internal Auto-negotiation: off Supports Wake-on: d Wake-on: d Link detected: yes $ ip link show eth1 3: eth1: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP> mtu 1500 qdisc pfifo_fast qlen 1000 link/ether 00:15:c5:xx:xx:xx brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff $ ip -4 addr show eth1 3: eth1: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP> mtu 1500 qdisc pfifo_fast qlen 1000 inet 3.3.3.2/30 brd 3.3.3.3 scope global eth1 $ ip -4 route show match 3.3.3.0/30 3.3.3.0/30 dev eth1 proto kernel scope link src 3.3.3.2 default via 10.0.0.5 dev eth0

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• lshw tells me my processor is a 64 bits but my motherboard has a 32 bits width

  - by bpetit

  Recently I noticed lshw tells me a strange thing. Here is the first part of my lshw output: bpetit-1025c description: Notebook product: 1025C (1025C) vendor: ASUSTeK COMPUTER INC. version: x.x serial: C3OAAS000774 width: 32 bits capabilities: smbios-2.7 dmi-2.7 smp-1.4 smp configuration: boot=normal chassis=notebook cpus=2 family=Eee PC... *-core description: Motherboard product: 1025C vendor: ASUSTeK COMPUTER INC. physical id: 0 version: x.xx serial: EeePC-0123456789 slot: To be filled by O.E.M. *-firmware description: BIOS vendor: American Megatrends Inc. physical id: 0 version: 1025C.0701 date: 01/06/2012 size: 64KiB capacity: 1984KiB capabilities: pci upgrade shadowing cdboot bootselect socketedrom edd... *-cpu:0 description: CPU product: Intel(R) Atom(TM) CPU N2800 @ 1.86GHz vendor: Intel Corp. physical id: 4 bus info: cpu@0 version: 6.6.1 serial: 0003-0661-0000-0000-0000-0000 slot: CPU 1 size: 798MHz capacity: 1865MHz width: 64 bits clock: 533MHz capabilities: x86-64 boot fpu fpu_exception wp vme de pse tsc ... configuration: cores=2 enabledcores=1 id=2 threads=2 *-cache:0 description: L1 cache physical id: 5 slot: L1-Cache size: 24KiB capacity: 24KiB capabilities: internal write-back unified *-cache:1 description: L2 cache physical id: 6 slot: L2-Cache size: 512KiB capacity: 512KiB capabilities: internal varies unified *-logicalcpu:0 description: Logical CPU physical id: 2.1 width: 64 bits capabilities: logical *-logicalcpu:1 description: Logical CPU physical id: 2.2 width: 64 bits capabilities: logical *-logicalcpu:2 description: Logical CPU physical id: 2.3 width: 64 bits capabilities: logical *-logicalcpu:3 description: Logical CPU physical id: 2.4 width: 64 bits capabilities: logical *-memory description: System Memory physical id: 13 slot: System board or motherboard size: 2GiB *-bank:0 description: SODIMM [empty] product: [Empty] vendor: [Empty] physical id: 0 serial: [Empty] slot: DIMM0 *-bank:1 description: SODIMM DDR3 Synchronous 1066 MHz (0.9 ns) product: SSZ3128M8-EAEEF vendor: Xicor physical id: 1 serial: 00000004 slot: DIMM1 size: 2GiB width: 64 bits clock: 1066MHz (0.9ns) *-cpu:1 physical id: 1 bus info: cpu@1 version: 6.6.1 serial: 0003-0661-0000-0000-0000-0000 size: 798MHz capacity: 798MHz capabilities: ht cpufreq configuration: id=2 *-logicalcpu:0 description: Logical CPU physical id: 2.1 capabilities: logical *-logicalcpu:1 description: Logical CPU physical id: 2.2 capabilities: logical *-logicalcpu:2 description: Logical CPU physical id: 2.3 capabilities: logical *-logicalcpu:3 description: Logical CPU physical id: 2.4 capabilities: logical So here I see my processor is effectively a 64 bits one. However, I'm wondering how my motherboard can have a "32 bits width". I've browsed the web to find an answer, without success. I imagine it's just a technical fact that I don't know about. Thanks.

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• Problems with MGCP proxy creation

  - by Popof

  Hi, I'm trying to bypass my ISP router with my FreeBSD server (I've an optical connection so I've a RJ45 used to connect the box to WAN) Internet and TV are working fine (Using igmpproxy to forward TV stream) but I've a problem with phone. ISP's box is connected to the server which gives it a LAN address. The problem is that when the box builds MGCP packets (and especially SDP ones) it uses its LAN address. So I've think of writing an UDP proxy to handle MGCP and SDP packets in order to replace LAN address with server WAN address and then forward packet to WAN. Before starting coding I've captured stream packets using my server as a bridge between WAN connection and the ISP's box. And, in order to see if my solution is viable, I've tried to send those packets to the box using nemesis. I tried to send a packet (found in capture) containing an endpoint audit: AUEP 1447 aaln/[email protected] MGCP 1.0 F: A In the wireshark capture the box replied: 200 1447 OK A: a:PCMU;PCMA;G726-16;G726-24;G726-32;G726-40;G.723.1-5.3;G.723.1-6.3;G729;TELEPHONE-EVENT, fmtp:"TELEPHONE-EVENT 0-15,144,149,159", p:10-30, b:4-40, e:on, t:00, s:on, v:L;M;G;D, m:sendonly;recvonly;sendrecv;inactive;confrnce;replcate;netwtest;netwloop, dq-gi But when I use nemesis, I got an ICMP error: Port unreachable (Type 3, Code 3). To build this packet, WAN source address of the capture is replaced with my server LAN address, using the mgcp-callagent port (2727) and the packet is sent to the LAN address of the box at mgcp-gateway port (2427). The command I use is nemesis udp -S 192.168.2.1 -D 192.168.2.2 -x 2727 -y 2427 -P packet_to_send. I also tried an UDP scan to the box on callagent and gateway port: PORT STATE SERVICE 2727/udp open|filtered unknown 2427/udp closed unknown I found those results a little bit strange because it should be the 2427 port opened, as it was in capture. Internet Protocol, Src: <ISP MGCP Server>, Dst: <My WAN Address> User Datagram Protocol, Src Port: mgcp-callagent (2727), Dst Port: mgcp-gateway (2427) Does someone has any idea about how having my box responding to my requests ? Thanks in advance and sorry for my english.

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• Both nginx and php5-fpm init.d startup scripts are non-functional and returning no errors..? But they used to work perfectly

  - by Ollie Treend

  I have been using nginx and php5-fpm on my Ubuntu box for a while now. Everything has been configured and setup correctly, and it ran like a charm. I have been keeping the packages updated & upgraded as usual, but haven't touched the nginx OR php5-fpm config files at all (thus I'm pretty sure this isn't my fault... ) Basically, I noticed nginx wasn't running as it should be. I ran the command sudo service nginx start, and the script did nothing. The same thing happens when trying to do anything - start, stop, restart or reload. This also happens for the "php5-fpm" init script - although all other init scripts seem to be functioning correctly. When trying to start nginx OR php5-fpm, this is what happens: root@HAL:/etc# service php5-fpm start root@HAL:/etc# I can't understand what is going wrong. The script isn't returning errors, but similarly it isn't starting the daemon or reporting success as usual. For reference, both installations are from the official nginx and php5-fpm PPAs. The fact that both started doing this at the same time has thrown me - since they are both unrelated packages. I have since purged both sets of packages from my system with apt-get purge ... and also apt-get remove --purge ... both of which have successfully removed the packages, their config files, and their init.d startup scripts. After having reinstalled nginx, I now have a functioning startup script again - I can start the web server as usual. However, php5-fpm is still experiencing the strange premature exiting of the startup script.. and I really can't figure out what's causing it. I have no idea what caused this to occur initially, but have managed to fix nginx. I now need to fix the php5-fpm startup script. If anybody could shed some light on this situation, I would be very grateful! The chances are both these issues are related - and they were caused by me doing something stupid. But now I need to fix it. This time I was lucky - because these problems are just on my development server. But I have 2 other live servers which are configured in a similar way, and I am worried the same thing will happen to these two as well! Has anybody else come across this? Do you have any words of advice? Thank you

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• How to remove RAID flag on unstriped drive without losing data?

  - by Alex Folland

  I have a Gigabyte Z68X-UD4-B3 motherboard. It advertises this new thing called "XHD", which is like RAID but makes a SSD and traditional-style drive work together to enable high speed with high capacity. I don't want to use this feature, and I already have Windows 7 64 installed without using this feature. When I first installed my 2 hard drives (1 SSD and 1 traditional-style drive) in my machine and booted it up for the first time, it ran a program from the mobo that asked me if I wanted to set up XHD. Thinking it would go to some config screen, I said yes. It immediately started doing something with my drives and finished. I considered that strange, but figured it wouldn't matter when I simply install Windows onto my SSD only. I now have my BIOS and Windows running in AHCI mode with no RAID arrays and separate drives. My SSD is one of those new Corsair Force GT drives which loses power every so often, causing Windows to BSOD. I've figured everything out about this problem, including installing the latest firmware from Corsair, and the only way to fix it at this point is by installing Intel Rapid Storage Technology to control AHCI instead of Windows, since the Windows AHCI driver disables the drive's power every once in a while and can't be configured not to do so. I've tried installing Intel Rapid Storage Technology. When I reboot my machine after doing so, it BSODs just after the Windows logo. I've figured out this is because my SSD and my traditional drive are flagged as RAID, as seen in the "Intel Matrix Storage Manager" program found by switching the BIOS hard drive handling to "RAID" mode. This is due to the XHD auto-config program I mentioned earlier. Normally, the BIOS is set to AHCI, and when the drives boot in AHCI mode, they work perfectly. So, I've concluded the data is stored in AHCI mode but the drives' flags are set to RAID. I've figured out that I can accomplish my objective by using the "Intel Matrix Storage Manager" program on the mobo (with "Reset disks to non-RAID"), but doing so would cause it to completely wipe the drives I select. I want to simply toggle these flags from RAID to AHCI so Intel Rapid Storage Technology doesn't fail and cause a BSOD upon booting, but without wiping the drives.

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• How can the Private Bytes of a process be significantly less than its effect on the system commit charge?

  - by bacar

  On a 64-bit Windows Server 2003, I can see using taskmgr or process explorer that the total commit charge is around 3.5GB, yet when I sum the Private Bytes consumed by each process (by running pslist -m and adding all values under the Priv column) the total comes in at 1.6GB. I know which process seems to be causing this (sqlservr.exe) as when I kill the process, the commit charge drops dramatically. However the process in question is consuming only ~220MB of Private Bytes yet killing the process drops the commit charge by ~1.6GB. How is this possible? How can the commit charge be so significantly greater than Private Bytes, which should represent the amount of committed memory? If some other factor contributes to the commit charge, what is that factor and how can I view its impact in process explorer? Note: I claim that I understand the difference between reserved and committed memory already: my investigations above relate specifically to Private Bytes which includes only committed memory and excludes reserved memory. the Virtual Size of the process in this case is over 4GB, but this should be irrelevant - Virtual Size in procexp represents reserved, not committed memory, and should not contribute to the commit charge. I'm particularly interested in generalised answers to this question: I'm assuming that if sqlservr.exe can behave in this way, that any process potentially could. Further Investigations I notice that pointing Sysinternals VMMap at this process reports a committed "Private Data" of 1.6GB despite Procexp's reported a Private Bytes of 220MB. This is particularly strange given that the documentation for this field in the "Windows® Sysinternals Administrator's Reference" states that: Private Data memory is memory that is allocated by VirtualAlloc and that is not further handled by the Heap Manager or the .NET runtime, or assigned to the Stack category... VMMap’s definition of “Private Data” is more granular than that of Process Explorer’s “private bytes.” Procexp’s “private bytes” includes all private committed memory belonging to the process. i.e. that VMMap's committed "Private Data" should be smaller than procexp's "Private Bytes". Also, after reading the 'Process committed memory' section of Mark Russinovich's excellent Pushing the Limits of Windows: Virtual Memory, he highlights two cases which won't show up in Private Bytes: File mapping views with copy-on-write semantics (however, according to VMMap there is no significant space allocated to Mapped Files). pagefile-backed virtual memory (however, I tried testlimit with the -l flag as suggested, and no significant memory is consumed by pagefile-backed sections)

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• SMBfs mounting OK, listing OK, Read KO, smbclient OK

  - by Kwaio

  I've tried to make the title the most meaningfull I could but it still looks ugly. The premises. We are using RHEL3-U8 as OS on most servers here, don't ask me why or suggest to upgrade, it's not on today's schedule. That means kernel used is 2.4.21 I have no access to the remote server, but I know it is a netApp NAS rack. $> smbclient --version Version 3.0.9-1.3E.9 Here is the /etc/fstab line : //NASHOSTNAME/share /mnt/mydir smbfs ro,uid=123,gid=123,workgroup=XXXX,credentials=/somefile 0 0 Here is the following mount output line //NASHOSTNAME/share on /mnt/mydir type smbfs (0) The symptoms. I can list the share without problems, even cd in there. The issue appears if I try to read any file : $> cat /mnt/mydir/fileX.txt cat: /mnt/mydir/fileX.txt: Input/output error In the system logs (/var/log/kernel for example) the following errors appear. Jul 30 15:40:02 hostname kernel: smb_errno: class ERRHRD, code 31 from command 0x2 Jul 30 15:40:02 hostname kernel: smb_errno: class ERRHRD, code 31 from command 0x2 Jul 30 15:40:02 hostname kernel: smb_open: fileX.txt open failed, result=-5 Jul 30 15:40:02 hostname kernel: smb_errno: class ERRHRD, code 31 from command 0x2 Jul 30 15:40:02 hostname kernel: smb_errno: class ERRHRD, code 31 from command 0x2 Jul 30 15:40:02 hostname kernel: smb_open: fileX.txt open failed, result=-5 Jul 30 15:40:02 hostname kernel: smb_readpage_sync: fileX.txt open failed, error=-5 The ERRHRD code 0x001F error is "General hardware failure" although it seems samba sometimes uses it for a different purpose, see http://www.ubiqx.org/cifs/SMB.html [Strange behaviour Alert] Additionnal informations : There is another SMB mountpoint on the system pointing to a (linux) host using samba and this one works. What I have tried. I have tried adding debug=4 to the mounting options and remounting the share and the logs still look the same. I have tried to mount the share with smbclient and I am able to fetch files with the get command. Both targets are in the same subnet, so network problem should be out, even if the LAN goes through a VPN with optimizers, MTU has already been decreased to 1450. I can also mount the share through NFS but then the files are all root.root 700 and I need to read them with another user...

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• SIGINT and SIGTSTP ignored by most common applications

  - by Vašek Potocek

  After the last upgrade to my Fedora, a strange behaviour started occurring in X terminal applications. I can't seem to stop any process using Ctrl+C, it just results in printing ^C to the console. Similarly, Ctrl+Z prints ^Z and the process goes on. Both work well in non-graphical virtual consoles. I checked stty -a and it seems perfectly normal: speed 38400 baud; rows 24; columns 80; line = 0; intr = ^C; quit = ^\; erase = ^?; kill = ^U; eof = ^D; eol = M-^?; eol2 = M-^?; swtch = M-^?; start = ^Q; stop = ^S; susp = ^Z; rprnt = ^R; werase = ^W; lnext = ^V; flush = ^O; min = 1; time = 0; -parenb -parodd cs8 hupcl -cstopb cread -clocal -crtscts -ignbrk brkint -ignpar -parmrk -inpck -istrip -inlcr -igncr icrnl ixon -ixoff -iuclc ixany imaxbel iutf8 opost -olcuc -ocrnl onlcr -onocr -onlret -ofill -ofdel nl0 cr0 tab0 bs0 vt0 ff0 isig icanon iexten echo echoe echok -echonl -noflsh -xcase -tostop -echoprt echoctl echoke This is independent of the terminal (gnome-terminal, XFCE4 terminal, xterm). I later noticed that it may not be caused by the terminal at all: INT or TSTP sent directly to the respective process are ignored, too. This comprises various applications I used to terminate using Ctrl+C on a regular basis (and which often don't have any better means of exiting): cat, find, tail -f, java, ping, mplayer when stuck on a broken file... Even bash ignores Ctrl+C when I want to break a command line I have been entering and then changed my mind (no ^C is printed in this case). I need to delete it character by character (of which there may be hundreds if filename completion has been used) or intentionally run the unwanted command. Strangely enough, vim does recognize Ctrl+C—just to say its "use :quit", of course. This is extremely annoying and prevents me from working efficiently. Everything had been working until lately, maybe a week ago or so. I can not find any possible causes in Google, perhaps I'm trying wrong search terms or misidentifying the main problem. What could be it and how could I revert the standard behaviour, please? Update Ctrl+Z works sometimes. It seems that in the very first terminal I launch after logging in it stops the running command but stops working after that.

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• What would cause my SendMail server not to acknowledge receiving a TCP Sequence?

  - by Mike B

  My TCP/IP Stack knowledge is a little rusty so please bear with me.... I have a CentOS 5.7 server with SendMail and am having seeing intermittent timeout issues sending email (particularly larger email) to other remote domains. It doesn't happen with all attachments or recipient domains. Just some. After some extended troubleshooting, I think I've narrowed it down to TCP Sequences not being acknowledged. Here's a breakdown of the TCP session from a packet capture I collected directly on my MTA (fooMTA): Packet 1 - 11: Standard TCP handshake followed by initial SMTP conversation. No errors. Packet #12 Recipient MTA: TCP sequence 231. Ack 91. Packet #13 FooMTA: TCP sequence 91. Ack 305. Packet #14 FooMTA: TCP sequence 1115. Ack 305. Packet #15 Recipient MTA: TCP sequence 305. Ack 2495. Packet #16 FooMTA: TCP sequence 2495. Ack 305. Packet #17 FooMTA: TCP sequence 5255. Ack 305. Packet #18: Recipient MTA: TCP sequence 305. Ack 5255. Packet #19: FooMTA: TCP sequence 6635. Ack 305. Packet #20: FooMTA: TCP sequence 8015. Ack 305. Packet #21: Recipient MTA: TCP Sequence 305. Ack 8015. Packet #22: FooMTA: TCP Sequence 10775. Ack 305. Packet #23: FooMTA: TCP Sequence 13535. Ack 305. Packet #24: Recipient MTA: TCP sequence 305. Ack 10775 Packet #25: FooMTA: TCP Sequence 14915. Ack 305 It keeps going like this with my server still thinking it hasn’t received sequence 305… in response the remote side eventually retransmits its prior data thinking that it never arrived. Eventually the gap gets so large that no new data is sent and the remote MTA keeps retransmitting old stuff. This contributes to an exponential backoff and eventually the remote side gives up. What’s strange to me is that I see the “missing” TCP sequence (305 in this case) arriving back to my server (via a packet capture collected directly from fooMTA) So I don’t get why my server keeps asking for it. Could this be firewall related? What would be the next step in troubleshooting?

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• SQL Server suddenly using only a small portion of CPU.

  - by hermiod

  We've got a Windows 2008 R2 server running SQL Server 2008. All of a sudden, the SQLServer process is refusing to go above 20% CPU usage. As of last week, when running a heavy query against the db it would rise to 100% usage as I would expect. We've had this server for a while and it seems strange that it would just suddenly have this limit. This limit is causing our queries to take a lot longer than they normally would. No one has (knowingly at least) made any changes to the server configuration. After a bit of investigation, I discovered the sys.dm_os_sys_memory view. This shows 'available physical memory is high' bu at the same time the available physical memory is 339552kb where as the total is 4193848kb. It is worth noting that this is a virtual server running on vmware. Is there a setting somewhere with in SQL Server that sets the maximum CPU usage? I've found the settings in resource governor, although this is currently off as it always has been. We have recently started using Spotlight for SQL Server by Quest Software. It's playback database was located on this server for a short time this morning, I first noticed the problem shortly afterwards, although I hadn't been doing any queries prior to this so I don't know if this is the point at which the problem began, however the database was working as expected on Friday afternoon. The Windows log shows that the following settings were applied to the SpotlightPlaybackDatabase when it was created. 02/21/2011 08:45:02,spid60,Unknown,Setting database option TORN_PAGE_DETECTION to ON for database SpotlightPlaybackDatabase. 02/21/2011 08:45:02,spid60,Unknown,Setting database option MULTI_USER to ON for database SpotlightPlaybackDatabase. 02/21/2011 08:45:02,spid60,Unknown,Setting database option READ_WRITE to ON for database SpotlightPlaybackDatabase. 02/21/2011 08:45:02,spid60,Unknown,Setting database option AUTO_UPDATE_STATISTICS to ON for database SpotlightPlaybackDatabase. 02/21/2011 08:45:02,spid60,Unknown,Setting database option AUTO_CREATE_STATISTICS to ON for database SpotlightPlaybackDatabase. 02/21/2011 08:45:02,spid60,Unknown,Setting database option ANSI_WARNINGS to OFF for database SpotlightPlaybackDatabase. 02/21/2011 08:45:02,spid60,Unknown,Setting database option CONCAT_NULL_YIELDS_NULL to ON for database SpotlightPlaybackDatabase. 02/21/2011 08:45:02,spid60,Unknown,Setting database option RECOVERY to SIMPLE for database SpotlightPlaybackDatabase. 02/21/2011 08:45:02,spid60,Unknown,Setting database option QUOTED_IDENTIFIER to OFF for database SpotlightPlaybackDatabase. 02/21/2011 08:45:02,spid60,Unknown,Setting database option AUTO_CLOSE to OFF for database SpotlightPlaybackDatabase. Could any of these settings changes modified the settings applied to the whole server?

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• Repeated requests on our server?

  - by pitty.platsch

  I encountered something strange in the access log of our Apache server which I cannot explain. Requests for webpages that I or my colleagues do from the office's Windows network get repeated by another IP (that we don't know) a couple of seconds later. The user agent repeating our requests is Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Windows NT 5.1; Trident/4.0; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.0.04506.648; .NET CLR 3.5.21022; .NET CLR 3.0.4506.2152; .NET CLR 3.5.30729; InfoPath.2) Has anyone an idea? Update: I've got some more information now. The referrer of the replicate is set to the URL I requested before and it's not the exact same request as the protocol version is changed from 'HTTP/1.1' to 'HTTP/1.0'. The IP is not just one, it's just one of a subnet (80.40.134.*). It's just the first request to a resource that's get repeated, so it seems the "spy" is building up some kind of cache of visited places. The repeater is also picky. I tried randomly URLs with different HTTP status codes and different file patterns. 301s and 200s are redone, 404s not. Image extensions seem to be ignored. While doing my tests I discovered that this behavior seems to be common as I found other clients visiting just after the first requests: 66.249.73.184 - - [25/Oct/2012:10:51:33 +0100] "GET /foobar/ HTTP/1.1" 200 10952 "-" "Mediapartners-Google" 50.17.125.180 - - [25/Oct/2012:10:51:33 +0100] "GET /foobar/ HTTP/1.1" 200 41312 "-" "Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; proximic; +http://www.proximic.com/info/spider.php)" I wasn't aware about this practice, so I don't see it that much as a threat anymore. I still want to find out who this is, so any further help is appreciated. I'll try later if this also happens if I query some other server where I have access to the access logs and will update here then.

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• Apache certificates for some urls not working

  - by Vegaasen

  We are having a rather strange problem with a Apache-installation. Here is a short summary: Currently I'm setting up Apache with https, and server-certificates. This is fairly easy and works straight out of the box - as expected. This is the configuration for this setup: Listen 443 SSLEngine on SSLCertificateFile "/progs/apache/ssl/example-site.no.pem" SSLCertificateKeyFile "/progs/apache/ssl/example-site.no.key" SSLCACertificateFile "/progs/apache/ssl/ca/example_root.pem" SSLCADNRequestFile "/progs/apache/ssl/ca/example_intermediate.pem" SSLVerifyClient none SSLVerifyDepth 3 SSLOptions +StdEnvVars +ExportCertData RequestHeader set ssl-ClientCert-Subject-CN "%{SSL_CLIENT_S_DN}s" RewriteEngine On ProxyPreserveHost On ProxyRequests On SSLProxyEngine On ... <LocationMatch /secureStuff/$> SSLVerifyClient require Order deny,allow Allow from All </LocationMatch> ... <Proxy balancer://exBalancer> Header add Set-Cookie "EX_ROUTE=EB.%{BALANCER_WORKER_ROUTE}e; path=/" env=BALANCER_ROUTE_CHANGED BalancerMember http://10.0.0.1:7200 route=ee1 retry=300 flushpackets=off keepalive=on BalancerMember http://10.0.0.2:7200 route=ee2 retry=300 flushpackets=off keepalive=on status=+H ProxySet stickysession=EX_ROUTE scolonpathdelim=Off timeout=10 nofailover=off failonstatus=505 maxattempts=1 lbmethod=bybusyness Order deny,allow Allow from all </Proxy> RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/index.html [NC] RewriteRule ^/(.*)$ balancer://exBalancer/$1 [P,NC] ProxyPassReverse / balancer://exBalancer/ Header edit Set-Cookie "(.*)" "$1;HttpsOnly" ... So - everything works fine and as expected for all of the pages that are not a part of the LocationMatch-directive. When requesting something that matches the LocationMatch-directive, I'm asked for a certificate (hence the SSLVerifyClient required attribute) - and getting all the correct certificates in my browser that is based on the root/intermediate chain. After choosing a certificate and clicking "OK", this is what pops up in the apache logs: [ssl:info] [pid 9530:tid 25] [client :43357] AH01998: Connection closed to child 86 with abortive shutdown ( [Thu Oct 11 09:27:36.221876 2012] [ssl:debug] [pid 9530:tid 25] ssl_engine_io.c(1171): (70014)End of file found: [client 10.235.128.55:45846] AH02007: SSL handshake interrupted by system [Hint: Stop button pressed in browser?!] And this just spams the logs. What is happening here? I can see this configuration working on my local machine, but not on one of our servers. There is no configration differences between the servers, only minor application-wise-changes. I've tried the following: 1) Removing CA-certificate-checking (works) 2) Adding required CA-certificate for the whole site (works) 3) Adding "SSLVerifyClient optional" does not work 4) ++ Server/Application Information Local: -OpenSSL v.1.0.1x -Apache 2.4.3 -Ubuntu -mpm: event -every configuration should be turned on (failing) server: -OpenSSL 0.9.8e -Apache 2.4.2 -SunOS -mpm: worker -every configuration should be turned on Please let me know if more information is needed, I'll provide it instantly. Brief sum-up: -Running apache 2.4 -Server certificates works just fine -Client certificates for some /Locations does not work, fails with errors PS: Could it be related with the OpenSSL version and the "Renegotiation" stuff related to TLS/SSLv3?

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• Mouse Error Code 24. Windows 7

  - by Cj.

  I've had the same mouse for a while, and it's been working fine until one day, it started giving me a message about a device not working properly. I tried updating the drivers, and re-installing, I even deleted old drivers in case my computer should be a little confused. It never made a difference, and my mouse seemed to be working just fine despite getting the permanent error in my device manager, I looked it up several times online, but I never found anything I could actually use, when I go to official websites, I always get the same response "plug in so so into a different place - drivers - install silverlight before you can watch this tutorial, try it on a different machine". so I gave up on that. But now is where I have a real problem, lately, my little strange error evolved into a fullblown Error 24, and my mouse is starting to turn on and off randomely, especially when it is being used, but I do hear it go "badum..dadum" when I'm off doing something else. when I looked up error code 24, I really didn't find much other than it meaning: Code 24 This device is not present, is not working properly, or does not have all its drivers installed. (Code 24) Cause The device is installed incorrectly. The problem could be a hardware failure, or a new driver might be needed. Devices stay in this state if they have been prepared for removal. After you remove the device, this error disappears. But, I have tried uninstalling the device entirely several times, and it'll go right back to its previous state with error 24, and turning on and off randomely. what do I do? I cannot afford taking it to a repair place, I can't really afford a new mouse either, I refuse to buy cheap ones as I am a gamer, in need of more than 3 buttons, and a good grip is important. Could there possibly be some confusion in the registry? I do remember having gotten some early problems after I converted my vista to windows7. But I hardly dare going in there unless I'm 100% certain of what I'm going for, and I can honestly say I am at a loss here. Edit: it is a USB mouse we're talking about here. MX™518 Optical Gaming Mouse (logitech) Edit2: I am seeing no rupture, so it must be on the inside of my mouse, or inside the rubber, protecting the cable, that would be really inconvenient to search for

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• How to use AD/GPO/Print Services to "push out" a new printer driver to replace a broken one? How did my server get a broken driver?

  - by Zac B

  Context: We have an AD/GPO-managed corporate network with a little over a hundred PCs running Windows 7 x64, and a few managed printers. Our Server2008R2 primary domain controller is configured as a print server for them all. Problem: After a recent windows update and restart (no printer driver updates were included) on the DC, a particular shared printer (Lexmark T650) has begin exhibiting some strange behavior. First, it prints a preceding and following blank page for almost every document, on jobs submitted by about half of client machines (no separator page is configured on the server or any of the clients I've seen). Second, whenever someone tries to access "Printing Preferences" on any client, they recieve the following error message (this happens everywhere, 100% of the time, and didn't happen before the update on the DC): Once they click "OK", the prefs screen appears (with no separator page selected) and everything seems fine. I'm not even sure if these two issues are related, but everyone seems affected by one or both of those issues. What I've Tried: I've been hesitant to un-deploy the problem printer, or remove it via GPO, as it's pretty heavily used. I've tried updating (via MS update and our internal WSUS server) client machines and the DC. No printer driver updates have appeared, and no number of updates or restarts on the server or the client seems to have achieved anything other than my boss getting grumpy that I'm bouncing the domain controller so often. I've tried deleting the drivers on the server, and re-installing them from the original source that has worked for the past year...no change. I've tried selecting "New Driver" for one of the shared printers on a client machine, running as domain admin, and pushed the latest driver found by MSupdate back up to the DC. This changed the version number of the driver recorded in the print server manager, but caused no change--on the client I pushed from, or on any other. The error still appears. Question: Why the heck is this happening? Obviously, I got a bad driver from somewhere, but how do I get rid of it? I don't know of any "roll back drivers" functionality for centrally managed print drivers like Windows offers for other devices. How would I a) get this issue resolved on a client, and b) push the fix to the other members of the domain?

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• IE9 Error: There was a pr?blem sending the command to the program

  - by HK1

  I'm working on a new/fresh Windows 7 32bit machine that now has IE9 installed. The user is using the Dell Stardock application as his primary "desktop" (all his links there). When we place an internet link there and click on it we get the following error message: There was a problem sending the command to the program. To me this indicates that IE9 is having trouble going to the website we want to go to, which should get passed as a parameter to the browser when it opens. I don't think this is a StarDock/ObjectDock problem because we also have some other problems with internet links. For example, we cannot move an internet link from the Desktop to the Quick Launch on the task bar. When we do try, it forces us to put the link with the IE icon as part of the IE menu instead of allowing us to have a shortcut there as it's own entry. I should mention however, that links on the desktop and in the taskbar do work as we expect them too (without showing the above error message). It appears that this problem started after installing Windows Updates. Since we installed a whole bunch of updates at once I have no idea which one caused the problem. I did have Google Chrome installed but I uninstalled it since the user wants to use IE. The problem started before I uninstalled Chrome. I also reset the browser settings on IE9. It didn't help. Next I uninstalled IE9 which took me back to IE8. This actually did resolve the problem but the problem came back as soon as I installed IE9 again. We have Verizon Internet Security installed. It's actually a McAfee product rebranded to look like Verizon. I'm not real crazy over this software but the customer has a subscription so we're not planning to change it. I have no reason to believe that this is causing the problem and yet I know that security software is often to blame for strange issues. I've looked at the registry settings for the following keys and everything appears to be ok for every single one of them: HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.htm HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.html HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\http\shell\open\command HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\http\shell\open\ddeexec\Application HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\https\shell\open\command HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\https\shell\open\ddeexec\Application HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\htmlfile\shell\open\command HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Microsoft.Website\Shell\Open\Command Edit1: I've found two potential solutions but I won't be able to try them until tomorrow. One is to disable the "Windows Font Cache" service. Another is to clear IE cache and browsing history. I won't be able to try out either solution until tomorrow since this is a remote client's machine. I see there are lots of other suggestions online but if you take the time to read them through you'll see that the other suggestions didn't fix the problem.

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• Low FPS in some games, but hardware not fully used

  - by Mario De Schaepmeester

  I just did a little funny experiment in the game/sim "Train Simulator 2013". I normally have good FPS in it (around 30) at full settings. What I did was make a really, really long train so that the calculations the sim needed to make were enormous (the sim is quite realistic, it takes all things into account like speed/acceleration, G-forces, comfort levels, possible wheel slip and many more, and most of those things on each carriage seperately). This resulted in only 14FPS as reported by the game, but it felt more like 8FPS or so. I have a Logitech G15 keyboard which has an LCD, and it allows me to monitor CPU/RAM and video card load on it. The strange thing is, all CPU cores were busy, but the total load was only about 60% maximum at all times. The video card was only on 30% load (possibly an important note, the memory was full, which is however not unusual for the game in question). The RAM had plenty of room and there weren't many operations as it didn't grow or shrink much. I just have the feeling that the game would run smoother if it used more of my hardware power. Why is it not doing so? I had the same in another game, The Elder Scrolls: Morrowind when using more than 100 mods (that all use scripting) and a few high res texture mods, + a full-on graphics improvement program. The engine is very old (2003), and so I thought this might be the cause (not being optimised for multithreading). I had thought of possible causes, like: The operating system doesn't let the games use all the resources. It doesn't make use of multi-threading appropriately. To eliminate the former, I tried a CPU stress tool and that got 100% CPU juice as I let it run, so the OS is not the problem. I gave its thread the "higher" priority though. My actual question In both games, I did things the engine was not really built to do or support. Can those games' framerate be limited cause of their own engine not being able to cope? What is the real reason and more importantly, can I help it? And in any case, could something actually be wrong with my hardware? It's all reasonably new, a couple of months, and I (almost) never experience any other trouble. Modern and much more demanding games work absolutely fine. Specs CPU: AMD Phenom II 965 X4 @ 3.4gHz RAM: 8GB of DDR3 RAM Video: MSI GTX560 (nVidia chip) with 1GB of GDDR5 memory OS: Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit Nothing overclocked.

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• Configuring Novel iPrint client on ubuntu 13.10

  - by Mahdi Sadeghi

  Recently I have struggled a lot to make Novel iPrint client to work on my laptop. I need it to use Follow Me printers in our university(you can take your print form any printer). Using this tutorial from Novel, I tried to convert the rpm package and install it on Ubuntu 13.04 & 13.10. The post install script from installing generated deb package had a typo which I saw in post install messages and I fixed that. Now I have the client running. To see the client UI I installed cinnamon desktop(because unity does not have system tray and old solutions did'nt work to whitelist Novel clinet). I have iPrint plugin installed on firefox as well(I copied the shared object files to plugin directories). I try installing printers from provided ipp URL(which lists available printers on the server) with no success. After clicking the printer name I see this: I have various errors: Formerly firefox used to asked my network username/password for installing SSL printer but now it returns this: iPrint Printer - The printer is currently not available. However I can install non-SSL version but the printer location is either empty or points to: file:///dev/null even if I change it to the exact address which I see on working machines still it prints nothing. I have tried the novel command line tool, iprntcmd to print. It is being installed at: /opt/novell/iprint/bin/ msadeghi@werkstatt:/opt/novell/iprint/bin$ ./iprntcmd --addprinter ipp://iprint.rz.hs-offenburg.de/ipp/Follow-me\ -\ IPP iprntcmd v05.04.00 Adding printer ipp://iprint.rz.hs-offenburg.de/ipp/Follow-me - IPP. Added printer ipp://iprint.rz.hs-offenburg.de/ipp/Follow-me - IPP successfully. It adds the printer with empty location and again no print. What I found interesting is the log file at ~/.iprint/errors.txt with strange errors which I hope somebody here can understand. When I try to install the SSL printer I receive these logs(note that HP is my local printer and has nothing to do with iprint): Thu Oct 31 11:02:03 2013 Trace Info: iprint.c, line 6690 Group Info: IPRINT-lib Error Code: 4096 (0x1000) User ID: 1000 Error Msg: iPrint Lib - Bad URI type supplied (not IPP:, HTTP:, or HTTPS:). Debug Msg: IPRINTInterpretURI for file:///dev/null - Unknown Port Type - file Thu Oct 31 11:02:03 2013 Trace Info: iprint.c, line 6800 Group Info: IPRINT-lib Error Code: 4096 (0x1000) User ID: 1000 Error Msg: iPrint Lib - Bad URI type supplied (not IPP:, HTTP:, or HTTPS:). Debug Msg: IPRINTInterpretURI for hp:/usb/HP_LaserJet_1018?serial=KP103A1 - No Port type specified Thu Oct 31 11:02:05 2013 Trace Info: iprint.c, line 6690 Group Info: IPRINT-lib Error Code: 4096 (0x1000) User ID: 1000 Error Msg: iPrint Lib - Bad URI type supplied (not IPP:, HTTP:, or HTTPS:). Debug Msg: IPRINTInterpretURI for file:///dev/null - Unknown Port Type - file Thu Oct 31 11:02:05 2013 Trace Info: iprint.c, line 6800 Group Info: IPRINT-lib Error Code: 4096 (0x1000) User ID: 1000 Error Msg: iPrint Lib - Bad URI type supplied (not IPP:, HTTP:, or HTTPS:). Debug Msg: IPRINTInterpretURI for hp:/usb/HP_LaserJet_1018?serial=KP103A1 - No Port type specified Thu Oct 31 11:02:06 2013 Trace Info: mydoreq.c, line 676 Group Info: CLIB Error Code: 0 (0x0) User ID: 1000 Error Msg: Success Debug Msg: MyCupsDoFileRequest - httpReconnect failed (0) Thu Oct 31 11:02:06 2013 Trace Info: mydoreq.c, line 1293 Group Info: CUPS-IPP Error Code: 1282 (0x502) User ID: 1000 Error Msg: iPrint Printer - The printer is currently not available. Debug Msg: MyCupsDoFileRequest - IPP SERVICE UNAVAILABLE Thu Oct 31 11:02:06 2013 Trace Info: iprint.c, line 6690 Group Info: IPRINT-lib Error Code: 4096 (0x1000) User ID: 1000 Error Msg: iPrint Lib - Bad URI type supplied (not IPP:, HTTP:, or HTTPS:). Debug Msg: IPRINTInterpretURI for file:///dev/null - Unknown Port Type - file Thu Oct 31 11:02:06 2013 Trace Info: iprint.c, line 6800 Group Info: IPRINT-lib Error Code: 4096 (0x1000) User ID: 1000 Error Msg: iPrint Lib - Bad URI type supplied (not IPP:, HTTP:, or HTTPS:). Debug Msg: IPRINTInterpretURI for hp:/usb/HP_LaserJet_1018?serial=KP103A1 - No Port type specified Thu Oct 31 11:02:08 2013 Trace Info: iprint.c, line 6690 Group Info: IPRINT-lib Error Code: 4096 (0x1000) User ID: 1000 Error Msg: iPrint Lib - Bad URI type supplied (not IPP:, HTTP:, or HTTPS:). Debug Msg: IPRINTInterpretURI for file:///dev/null - Unknown Port Type - file Thu Oct 31 11:02:08 2013 Trace Info: iprint.c, line 6800 Group Info: IPRINT-lib Error Code: 4096 (0x1000) User ID: 1000 Error Msg: iPrint Lib - Bad URI type supplied (not IPP:, HTTP:, or HTTPS:). Debug Msg: IPRINTInterpretURI for hp:/usb/HP_LaserJet_1018?serial=KP103A1 - No Port type specified I should say that my friend can print using the same instructions on CrunchBang easily and another guy on 12.04 LTS but with more struggling. It worked for me on linux mint maya with my old laptop as well. Is there anybody out there who can help me to solve these problems? I am really disappointed with Novell and our university support. PS. I had the same problemwith 13.04. No matter if I am within the network or I connect with VPN, I have the same issues.

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• jQuery 1.4 Opacity and IE Filters

  - by Rick Strahl

  Ran into a small problem today with my client side jQuery library after switching to jQuery 1.4. I ran into a problem with a shadow plugin that I use to provide drop shadows for absolute elements – for Mozilla WebKit browsers the –moz-box-shadow and –webkit-box-shadow CSS attributes are used but for IE a manual element is created to provide the shadow that underlays the original element along with a blur filter to provide the fuzziness in the shadow. Some of the key pieces are: var vis = el.is(":visible"); if (!vis) el.show(); // must be visible to get .position var pos = el.position(); if (typeof shEl.style.filter == "string") sh.css("filter", 'progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.Blur(makeShadow=true, pixelradius=3, shadowOpacity=' + opt.opacity.toString() + ')'); sh.show() .css({ position: "absolute", width: el.outerWidth(), height: el.outerHeight(), opacity: opt.opacity, background: opt.color, left: pos.left + opt.offset, top: pos.top + opt.offset }); This has always worked in previous versions of jQuery, but with 1.4 the original filter no longer works. It appears that applying the opacity after the original filter wipes out the original filter. IOW, the opacity filter is not applied incrementally, but absolutely which is a real bummer. Luckily the workaround is relatively easy by just switching the order in which the opacity and filter are applied. If I apply the blur after the opacity I get my correct behavior back with both opacity: sh.show() .css({ position: "absolute", width: el.outerWidth(), height: el.outerHeight(), opacity: opt.opacity, background: opt.color, left: pos.left + opt.offset, top: pos.top + opt.offset }); if (typeof shEl.style.filter == "string") sh.css("filter", 'progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.Blur(makeShadow=true, pixelradius=3, shadowOpacity=' + opt.opacity.toString() + ')'); While this works this still causes problems in other areas where opacity is implicitly set in code such as for fade operations or in the case of my shadow component the style/property watcher that keeps the shadow and main object linked. Both of these may set the opacity explicitly and that is still broken as it will effectively kill the blur filter. This seems like a really strange design decision by the jQuery team, since clearly the jquery css function does the right thing for setting filters. Internally however, the opacity setting doesn’t use .css instead hardcoding the filter which given jQuery’s usual flexibility and smart code seems really inappropriate. The following is from jQuery.js 1.4: var style = elem.style || elem, set = value !== undefined; // IE uses filters for opacity if ( !jQuery.support.opacity && name === "opacity" ) { if ( set ) { // IE has trouble with opacity if it does not have layout // Force it by setting the zoom level style.zoom = 1; // Set the alpha filter to set the opacity var opacity = parseInt( value, 10 ) + "" === "NaN" ? "" : "alpha(opacity=" + value * 100 + ")"; var filter = style.filter || jQuery.curCSS( elem, "filter" ) || ""; style.filter = ralpha.test(filter) ? filter.replace(ralpha, opacity) : opacity; } return style.filter && style.filter.indexOf("opacity=") >= 0 ? (parseFloat( ropacity.exec(style.filter)[1] ) / 100) + "": ""; } You can see here that the style is explicitly set in code rather than relying on $.css() to assign the value resulting in the old filter getting wiped out. jQuery 1.32 looks a little different: // IE uses filters for opacity if ( !jQuery.support.opacity && name == "opacity" ) { if ( set ) { // IE has trouble with opacity if it does not have layout // Force it by setting the zoom level elem.zoom = 1; // Set the alpha filter to set the opacity elem.filter = (elem.filter || "").replace( /alpha\([^)]*\)/, "" ) + (parseInt( value ) + '' == "NaN" ? "" : "alpha(opacity=" + value * 100 + ")"); } return elem.filter && elem.filter.indexOf("opacity=") >= 0 ? (parseFloat( elem.filter.match(/opacity=([^)]*)/)[1] ) / 100) + '': ""; } Offhand I’m not sure why the latter works better since it too is assigning the filter. However, when checking with the IE script debugger I can see that there are actually a couple of filter tags assigned when using jQuery 1.32 but only one when I use jQuery 1.4. Note also that the jQuery 1.3 compatibility plugin for jQUery 1.4 doesn’t address this issue either. Resources ww.jquery.js (shadow plug-in $.fn.shadow) © Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2010Posted in jQuery  

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• Clean Up the New Ubuntu Grub2 Boot Menu

  - by Trevor Bekolay

  Ubuntu adopted the new version of the Grub boot manager in version 9.10, getting rid of the old problematic menu.lst. Today we look at how to change the boot menu options in Grub2. Grub2 is a step forward in a lot of ways, and most of the annoying menu.lst issues from the past are gone. Still, if you’re not vigilant with removing old versions of the kernel, the boot list can still end up being longer than it needs to be. Note: You may have to hold the SHIFT button on your keyboard while booting up to get this menu to show. If only one operating system is installed on your computer, it may load it automatically without displaying this menu. Remove Old Kernel Entries The most common clean up task for the boot menu is to remove old kernel versions lying around on your machine. In our case we want to remove the 2.6.32-21-generic boot menu entries. In the past, this meant opening up /boot/grub/menu.lst…but with Grub2, if we remove the kernel package from our computer, Grub automatically removes those options. To remove old kernel versions, open up Synaptic Package Manager, found in the System > Administration menu. When it opens up, type the kernel version that you want to remove in the Quick search text field. The first few numbers should suffice. For each of the entries associated with the old kernel (e.g. linux-headers-2.6.32-21 and linux-image-2.6.32-21-generic), right-click and choose Mark for Complete Removal. Click the Apply button in the toolbar and then Apply in the summary window that pops up. Close Synaptic Package Manager. The next time you boot up your computer, the Grub menu will not contain the entries associated with the removed kernel version. Remove Any Option by Editing /etc/grub.d If you need more fine-grained control, or want to remove entries that are not kernel versions, you must change the files located in /etc/grub.d. /etc/grub.d contains files that hold the menu entries that used to be contained in /boot/grub/menu.lst. If you want to add new boot menu entries, you would create a new file in this folder, making sure to mark it as executable. If you want to remove boot menu entries, as we do, you would edit files in this folder. If we wanted to remove all of the memtest86+ entries, we could just make the 20_memtest86+ file non-executable, with the terminal command sudo chmod –x 20_memtest86+ Followed by the terminal command sudo update-grub Note that memtest86+ was not found by update-grub because it will only consider executable files. However, instead, we’re going to remove the Serial console 115200 entry for memtest86+… Open a terminal window Applications > Accessories > Terminal. In the terminal window, type in the command: sudo gedit /etc/grub.d/20_memtest86+ The menu entries are found at the bottom of this file. Comment out the menu entry for serial console 115200 by adding a “#” to the start of each line. Save and close this file. In the terminal window you opened, enter in the command sudo update-grub Note: If you don’t run update-grub, the boot menu options will not change! Now, the next time you boot up, that strange entry will be gone, and you’re left with a simple and clean boot menu. Conclusion While changing Grub2’s boot menu may seem overly complicated to legacy Grub masters, for normal users, Grub2 means that you won’t have to change the boot menu that often. Fortunately, if you do have to do it, the process is still pretty easy. For more detailed information about how to change entries in Grub2, this Ubuntu forum thread is a great resource. If you’re using an older version of Ubuntu, check out our article on how to clean up Ubuntu grub boot menu after upgrades. Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Clean Up Ubuntu Grub Boot Menu After UpgradesReinstall Ubuntu Grub Bootloader After Windows Wipes it OutChange the GRUB Menu Timeout on UbuntuHow To Switch to Console Mode for Ubuntu VMware GuestSet Windows as Default OS when Dual Booting Ubuntu TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips VMware Workstation 7 Acronis Online Backup DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Daily Motivator (Firefox) FetchMp3 Can Download Videos & Convert Them to Mp3 Use Flixtime To Create Video Slideshows Creating a Password Reset Disk in Windows Bypass Waiting Time On Customer Service Calls With Lucyphone MELTUP – "The Beginning Of US Currency Crisis And Hyperinflation"

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• Simultaneously calling multiple methods on a WCF service from silverlight

  - by ola karlsson

  A while back I had to debug some performance issues in an existing Silverlight app, as the problem / solution was a bit obscure and finding info about it was quite tricky, I thought I’d share, maybe it can help the next person with this problem. The App On start, the app would do a number of calls to different methods on a WCF service, this to populate the UI with the necessary data. Recently one of those services had been changed and was now taking quite a bit longer than it used to. This was resulting in quite a long loading time for the whole UI, which was set up so it wouldn’t let the user interact with anything, until all the service calls had finished. First I broke out the longer running service call from the others, then removed the constraint that it had to be loaded for the UI in general to become responsive. I also added a loading indicator just on that area of the UI, thinking that the main UI would load while this particular section could keep loading independently. The Problem However this is where things started to get a bit strange. I found that even after these changes, the main UI wouldn’t activate until the long running call returned. So now, I did what I should have done to start with, I got Fiddler out and had a look at what was really happening. What I found was that, once the call to the long running service method was placed, all subsequent call were waiting for that one to return before executing. Not having really worked with WCF previously or knowing much about it in general, I was stumped… I knew of the issues where Silverlight is restricted by the browsers networking features in regards to number of simultaneous connections etc. However that just didn’t seem to be the issue here, you can clearly see in Fiddler that there’s numerous calls, but they’re just not returning. I thought of the problem maybe being in the WCF service, but the calls were really not that complicated and surely the service should be able to handle a lot more than what I was throwing at it! So I did what every developer does in this type of scenario, I hit the search engines. I did a whole bunch of searching on things like “multiple simultaneous WCF calls from Silverlight” and “Calling long running WCF services from Silverlight” etc. etc. This however, pretty much got me nowhere, I found a whole heap of resources on how to do WCF calls from Silverlight but most of them were very basic and of no use what so ever. The fog is clearing It wasn’t until I came across the term “ WCF blocking calls” and started incorporating that in my searches I started to get somewhere. Those searches quite quickly brought me to the following thread in the Silverlight forum “Long-running WCF call blocking subsequent calls” which discussed the exact problem I was facing and the best part, one of the guys there had the solution! The short answer is in the forum post and the guys answering, has also done a more extensive blog post about it called “Silverlight, WCF, and ASP.Net Configuration Gotchas” which covers it very well.  So come on what’s the solution?! I heard you ask, unless you’ve already gone to the links and looked it up ;) The Solution Well, it turns out that the issue is founded in a mix of Silverlight, Asp.Net and WCF, basically if you’re doing multiple calls to a single WCF web-service and you have Asp.Net session state enabled, the calls will be executed sequentially by the service, hence any long running calls will block subsequent ones. So why is Asp.Net session state effecting us, we’re working in Silverlight, right? We'll as mentioned earlier, by default Silverlight uses the browsers networking stack when doing service calls, hence to the WCF service, the call looks like it might as well be coming from a normal Asp.Net. To get around this, we look to a feature introduced in Silverlight 3, namely the Client HTTP Stack. The Client HTTP Stack to the rescue By using the following syntax (for example in our App.xaml.cs, Application_Startup method) WebRequest.RegisterPrefix("http://", WebRequestCreator.ClientHttp); we can set our Silverlight application to use the Client HTTP Stack, which incidentally solves our problem! By using Silverlights own networking stack, rather than that of the browser, we get around the Asp.Net - WCF session state issue. The above code specifies that all calls to addresses starting with “http://” should go through the client stack, this can actually be set more granular and you can specify it to be used only for certain domains etc. Summary The actual solution is well covered in the forum and blog posts I link to above. This post is more about sharing my experience, hopefully helping to spread the word about this and maybe make it a bit easier for the next poor guy with this issue to find the solution. Until next time, Ola

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• Personal search – the future of search

  - by jamiet

  [Four months ago I wrote a meandering blog post on another blogging site entitled Personal search – the future of search. The points I made therein are becoming more relevant to what I'm reading about and hoping to get involved in in the future so I'm re-posting here to a wider audience to hopefully get some more feedback and guage reaction to it. This has been prompted by the book Pull by David Siegel that is forming my current holiday reading (recommended to me by a commenter on my previous post Interesting things – Twitter annotations and your phone as a web server) and in particular by Siegel's notion of us all in the future having a personal online data vault.] My one-time colleague Paul Dawson recently wrote an article called The Future of Search and in it he proposed some interesting ideas. Some choice quotes: The growth of Chinese search giant Baidu is an indicator that fully localised and tailored content and offerings have great traction with local audiences This trend is already driving an increase in the use of specialist searches … Look at how Farecast is now integrated into Bing for example, or how Flightstats is now integrated into Google. Search does not necessarily have to begin with a keyword, but could start instead with a click or a touch. Take a look at Retrievr. Start drawing a picture in the box and see what happens. This is certainly search without the need for typing in keywords search technology has advanced greatly in recent years. The recent launch of Microsoft Live Labs’ Pivot has given us a taste of what we can expect to see in the future This really got me thinking about where search might go in the future and as my mind wandered I realised that as the amount of data that we collect about ourselves increases so too will the need and the desire to search it. The amount of electronic data that exists about each and every person is increasing and in the near future I fully expect that we are going to be able to store personal data such as: A history of our location (in fact Google Latitude already offers this facility) Recordings of all our phone conversations Health information history (weight, blood pressure etc…) Energy usage Spending history What films we watch, what radio stations we listen to Voting history Of course, most of this stuff is already stored somewhere but crucially we don’t have easy access to it. My utilities supplier knows how much electricity I’m using but if I want to know for myself I have to go and dig through my statements (assuming I have kept them). Similarly my doctor probably has ready access to all of my health records, my bank knows exactly what I have spent my money on, my cable supplier knows what I watch on TV and my mobile phone supplier probably knows exactly where I am and where I’ve been for the past few years. Strange then that none of this electronic information is available to me in a way that I can really make use of it; after all, its MY information. Its MY data. I created it. That is set to change. As technologies mature and customers become more technically cognizant they will demand more access to the data that companies hold about them. The companies themselves will realise the benefit that they derive from giving users what they want and will embrace ways of providing it. As a result the amount of data that we store about ourselves is going to increase exponentially and the desire to search and derive value from that data is going to grow with it; we are about to enter the era of the “personal datastore” and we will want, and need, to search through it in order to make sense of it all. Its interesting then that today when we think of search we think of search engines and yet in these personal datastores we’re referring to data that search engines can’t touch because WE own it and we (hopefully) choose to keep it private. Someone, I know not who, is going to lead in this space by making it easy for us to search our data and retrieve information that we have either forgotten or maybe didn’t even know in the first place. We will learn new things about ourselves and about our habits; we will share these findings with whomever we choose; we will compare what we discover with others; we will collaborate for mutual benefit and, most of all, we will educate ourselves as to how to live our lives better. Search will be the means to that end, it will enable us to make sense of the wealth of information that we will collect day in day out. The future of search is personal, why would we be interested in anything else? @Jamiet Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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• Integrating Code Metrics in TFS 2010 Build

  - by Jakob Ehn

  The build process template and custom activity described in this post is available here: http://cid-ee034c9f620cd58d.office.live.com/self.aspx/BlogSamples/CodeMetricsSample.zip Running code metrics has been available since VS 2008, but only from inside the IDE. Yesterday Microsoft finally releases a Visual Studio Code Metrics Power Tool 10.0, a command line tool that lets you run code metrics on your applications.  This means that it is now possible to perform code metrics analysis on the build server as part of your nightly/QA builds (for example). In this post I will show how you can run the metrics command line tool, and also a custom activity that reads the output and appends the results to the build log, and also fails he build if the metric values exceeds certain (configurable) treshold values. The code metrics tool analyzes all the methods in the assemblies, measuring cyclomatic complexity, class coupling, depth of inheritance and lines of code. Then it calculates a Maintainability Index from these values that is a measure f how maintanable this method is, between 0 (worst) and 100 (best). For information on hwo this value is calculated, see http://blogs.msdn.com/b/codeanalysis/archive/2007/11/20/maintainability-index-range-and-meaning.aspx. After this it aggregates the information and present it at the class, namespace and module level as well. Running Metrics.exe in a build definition Running the actual tool is easy, just use a InvokeProcess activity last in the Compile the Project sequence, reference the metrics.exe file and pass the correct arguments and you will end up with a result XML file in the drop directory. Here is how it is done in the attached build process template: In the above sequence I first assign the path to the code metrics result file ([BinariesDirectory]\result.xml) to a variable called MetricsResultFile, which is then sent to the InvokeProcess activity in the Arguments property. Here are the arguments for the InvokeProcess activity: Note that we tell metrics.exe to analyze all assemblies located in the Binaries folder. You might want to do some more intelligent filtering here, you probably don’t want to analyze all 3rd party assemblies for example. Note also the path to the metrics.exe, this is the default location when you install the Code Metrics power tool. You must of course install the power tool on all build servers. Using the standard output logging (in the Handle Standard Output/Handle Error Output sections), we get the following output when running the build: Integrating Code Metrics into the build Having the results available next to the build result is nice, but we want to have results integrated in the build result itself, and also to affect the outcome of the build. The point of having QA builds that measure, for example, code metrics is to make it very clear how the code being built measures up to the standards of the project/company. Just having a XML file available in the drop location will not cause the developers to improve their code, but a (partially) failing build will! To do this, we need to write a custom activity that parses the metrics result file, logs it to the build log and fails the build if the values frfom the metrics is below/above some predefined treshold values. The custom activity performs the following steps Parses the XML. I’m using Linq 2 XSD for this, since the XML schema for the result file is available, it is vey easy to generate code that lets you query the structure using standard Linq operators. Runs through the metric result hierarchy and logs the metrics for each level and also verifies maintainability index and the cyclomatic complexity with the treshold values. The treshold values are defined in the build process template are are sent in as arguments to the custom activity If the treshold values are exceeded, the activity either fails or partially fails the current build. For more information about the structure of the code metrics result file, read Cameron Skinner's post about it. It is very simpe and easy to understand. I won’t go through the code of the custom activity here, since there is nothing special about it and it is available for download so you can look at it and play with it yourself. The treshold values for Maintainability Index and Cyclomatic Complexity is defined in the build process template, and can be modified per build definition: I have taken the default value for these settings from my colleague Terje Sandström post on Code Metrics - suggestions for approriate limits. You’ll notice that this is quite an improvement compared to using code metrics inside the IDE, where Red/Yellow/Green limits are fixed (and the default values are somewaht strange, see Terjes post for a discussion on this) This is the first version of the code metrics integration with TFS 2010 Build, I will proabably enhance the functionality and the logging (the “tree view” structure in the log becomes quite hard to read) soon. I will also consider adding it to the Community TFS Build Extensions site when it becomes a bit more mature. Another obvious improvement is to extend the data warehouse of TFS and push the metric results back to the warehouse and make it visible in the reports.

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• Personal search – the future of search

  - by jamiet

  [Four months ago I wrote a meandering blog post on another blogging site entitled Personal search – the future of search. The points I made therein are becoming more relevant to what I'm reading about and hoping to get involved in in the future so I'm re-posting here to a wider audience to hopefully get some more feedback and guage reaction to it. This has been prompted by the book Pull by David Siegel that is forming my current holiday reading (recommended to me by a commenter on my previous post Interesting things – Twitter annotations and your phone as a web server) and in particular by Siegel's notion of us all in the future having a personal online data vault.] My one-time colleague Paul Dawson recently wrote an article called The Future of Search and in it he proposed some interesting ideas. Some choice quotes: The growth of Chinese search giant Baidu is an indicator that fully localised and tailored content and offerings have great traction with local audiences This trend is already driving an increase in the use of specialist searches … Look at how Farecast is now integrated into Bing for example, or how Flightstats is now integrated into Google. Search does not necessarily have to begin with a keyword, but could start instead with a click or a touch. Take a look at Retrievr. Start drawing a picture in the box and see what happens. This is certainly search without the need for typing in keywords search technology has advanced greatly in recent years. The recent launch of Microsoft Live Labs’ Pivot has given us a taste of what we can expect to see in the future This really got me thinking about where search might go in the future and as my mind wandered I realised that as the amount of data that we collect about ourselves increases so too will the need and the desire to search it. The amount of electronic data that exists about each and every person is increasing and in the near future I fully expect that we are going to be able to store personal data such as: A history of our location (in fact Google Latitude already offers this facility) Recordings of all our phone conversations Health information history (weight, blood pressure etc…) Energy usage Spending history What films we watch, what radio stations we listen to Voting history Of course, most of this stuff is already stored somewhere but crucially we don’t have easy access to it. My utilities supplier knows how much electricity I’m using but if I want to know for myself I have to go and dig through my statements (assuming I have kept them). Similarly my doctor probably has ready access to all of my health records, my bank knows exactly what I have spent my money on, my cable supplier knows what I watch on TV and my mobile phone supplier probably knows exactly where I am and where I’ve been for the past few years. Strange then that none of this electronic information is available to me in a way that I can really make use of it; after all, its MY information. Its MY data. I created it. That is set to change. As technologies mature and customers become more technically cognizant they will demand more access to the data that companies hold about them. The companies themselves will realise the benefit that they derive from giving users what they want and will embrace ways of providing it. As a result the amount of data that we store about ourselves is going to increase exponentially and the desire to search and derive value from that data is going to grow with it; we are about to enter the era of the “personal datastore” and we will want, and need, to search through it in order to make sense of it all. Its interesting then that today when we think of search we think of search engines and yet in these personal datastores we’re referring to data that search engines can’t touch because WE own it and we (hopefully) choose to keep it private. Someone, I know not who, is going to lead in this space by making it easy for us to search our data and retrieve information that we have either forgotten or maybe didn’t even know in the first place. We will learn new things about ourselves and about our habits; we will share these findings with whomever we choose; we will compare what we discover with others; we will collaborate for mutual benefit and, most of all, we will educate ourselves as to how to live our lives better. Search will be the means to that end, it will enable us to make sense of the wealth of information that we will collect day in day out. The future of search is personal, why would we be interested in anything else? @Jamiet Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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• Why are pieces of my HTML showing up on the page and breaking it? Is it PHP related?

  - by Jason Rhodes

  I've been building a site in PHP, HTML, CSS, and using a healthy dose of jQuery javascript. The site looks absolutely fine on my Mac browsers, but for some reason, when my client uses PC Safari, she's seeing strange bits of my HTML show up on the page. Here are some (small) screenshot examples: Figure 1: This one is just a closing </li> tag that should've been on the Media li element. Not much harm done, but strange. Figure 2: Here this was part of <div class='submenu'> and since the div tag didn't render properly, the entire contents of that div don't get styled correctly by CSS. Figure 3: This last example shows what should have been <a class='top current' href=... but for some reason half of the HTML tag stops being rendered and just gets printed out. So the rest of that list menu is completely broken. Here's the code from the header.php file itself. The main navigation section (seen in the screenshots) is further down, marked by a line of asterisks if you want to skip there. <?php // Setting up location variables if(isset($_GET['page'])) { $page = Page::find_by_slug($_GET['page']); } elseif(isset($_GET['post'])) { $page = Page::find_by_id(4); } else { $page = Page::find_by_id(1); } $post = isset($_GET['post']) ? Blogpost::find_by_slug($_GET['post']) : false; $front = $page->id == 1 ? true : false; $buildblog = $page->id == 4 ? true : false; $eventpage = $page->id == 42 ? true : false; // Setting up content edit variables $edit = isset($_GET['edit']) ? true : false; $preview = isset($_GET['preview']) ? true : false; // Finding page slug value $pageslug = $page->get_slug($loggedIn); ?> <!DOCTYPE html> <head> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" /> <title> <?php if(!$post) { if($page->id != 1) { echo $page->title." | "; } echo $database->site_name(); } elseif($post) { echo "BuildBlog | ".$post->title; } ?> </title> <link href="<?php echo SITE_URL; ?>/styles/style.css" media="all" rel="stylesheet" /> <?php include(SITE_ROOT."/scripts/myJS.php"); ?> </head> <body class=" <?php if($loggedIn) { echo "logged"; } else { echo "public"; } if($front) { echo " front"; } ?>"> <?php $previewslug = str_replace("&edit", "", $pageslug); ?> <?php if($edit) { echo "<form id='editPageForm' action='?page={$previewslug}&preview' method='post'>"; } ?> <?php if($edit && !$preview) : // Edit original ?> <div id="admin_meta_nav" class="admin_meta_nav"> <ul class="center nolist"> <li class="title">Edit</li> <li class="cancel"><a class="cancel" href="?page=<?php echo $pageslug; ?>&cancel">Cancel</a></li> <li class="save"><input style='position: relative; z-index: 500' class='save' type="submit" name="newpreview" value="Preview" /></li> <li class="publish"><input style='position: relative; z-index: 500' class='publish button' type="submit" name="publishPreview" value="Publish" /></li> </ul> </div> <?php elseif($preview && !$edit) : // Preview your edits ?> <div id="admin_meta_nav" class="admin_meta_nav"> <ul class="center nolist"> <li class="title">Preview</li> <li class="cancel"><a class="cancel" href="?page=<?php echo $pageslug; ?>&cancel">Cancel</a></li> <li class="save"><a class="newpreview" href="?page=<?php echo $pageslug; ?>&preview&edit">Continue Editing</a></li> <li class="publish"><a class="publish" href="?page=<?php echo $pageslug; ?>&publishLastPreview">Publish</a></li> </ul> </div> <?php elseif($preview && $edit) : // Return to preview and continue editing ?> <div id="admin_meta_nav" class="admin_meta_nav"> <ul class="center nolist"> <li class="title">Edit Again</li> <li class="cancel"><a class="cancel" href="?page=<?php echo $pageslug; ?>&cancel">Cancel</a></li> <li class="save"><input style='position: relative; z-index: 500' class='save button' type="submit" name="newpreview" value="Preview" /></li> <li class="publish"><input style='position: relative; z-index: 500' class='publish button' type="submit" name="publishPreview" value="Publish" /></li> </ul> </div> <?php else : ?> <div id="meta_nav" class="meta_nav"> <ul class="center nolist"> <li><a href="login.php?logout">Logout</a></li> <li><a href="<?php echo SITE_URL; ?>/admin">Admin</a></li> <li><a href="<?php if($front) { echo "admin/?admin=frontpage"; } elseif($event || $eventpage) { echo "admin/?admin=events"; } elseif($buildblog) { if($post) { echo "admin/editpost.php?post={$post->id}"; } else { echo "admin/?admin=blog"; } } else { echo "?page=".$pageslug."&edit"; } ?>">Edit Mode</a></li> <li><a href="<?php echo SITE_URL; ?>/?page=donate">Donate</a></li> <li><a href="<?php echo SITE_URL; ?>/?page=calendar">Calendar</a></li> </ul> <div class="clear"></div> </div> <?php endif; ?> <div id="public_meta_nav" class="public_meta_nav"> <div class="center"> <ul class="nolist"> <li><a href="<?php echo SITE_URL; ?>/?page=donate">Donate</a></li> <li><a href="<?php echo SITE_URL; ?>/?page=calendar">Calendar</a></li> </ul> <div class="clear"></div> </div> </div> * Main Navigation Section, as seen in screenshots above, starts here ** <div class="header"> <div class="center"> <a class="front_logo" href="<?php echo SITE_URL; ?>"><?php echo $database->site_name(); ?></a> <ul class="nolist main_nav"> <?php $tops = Page::get_top_pages(); $topcount = 1; foreach($tops as $top) { $current = $top->id == $topID ? true : false; $title = $top->title == "Front Page" ? "Home" : ucwords($top->title); $url = ($top->title == "Front Page" || !$top->get_slug($loggedIn)) ? SITE_URL : SITE_URL . "/?page=".$top->get_slug($loggedIn); if(isset($_GET['post']) && $top->id == 1) { $current = false; } if(isset($_GET['post']) && $top->id == 4) { $current = true; } echo "<li"; if($topcount > 3) { echo " class='right'"; } echo "><a class='top"; if($current) { echo " current"; } echo "' href='{$url}'>{$title}</a>"; if($children = Page::get_children($top->id)) { echo "<div class='submenu'>"; echo "<div class='corner-helper'></div>"; foreach($children as $child) { echo "<ul class='nolist level1"; if(!$subchildren = Page::get_children($child->id)) { echo " nochildren"; } echo "'>"; $title = ucwords($child->title); $url = !$child->get_slug($loggedIn) ? SITE_URL : SITE_URL . "/?page=".$child->get_slug($loggedIn); if($child->has_published() || $loggedIn) { echo "<li><a class='title' href='{$url}'>{$title}</a>"; if($subchildren = Page::get_children($child->id)) { echo "<ul class='nolist level2'>"; foreach($subchildren as $subchild) { if($subchild->has_published() || $loggedIn) { $title = ucwords($subchild->title); $url = !$subchild->get_slug($loggedIn) ? SITE_URL : SITE_URL . "/?page=".$subchild->get_slug($loggedIn); echo "<li><a href='{$url}'>{$title}</a>"; } } echo "</ul>"; } echo "</li>"; } echo "</ul>"; } echo "</div>"; } echo "</li>"; $topcount++; } ?> </ul> <div class="clear"></div> </div> </div> <div id="mediaLibraryPopup" class="mediaLibraryPopup"> <h3>Media Library</h3> <ul class="box nolist"></ul> <div class="clear"></div> <a href="#" class="cancel">Cancel</a> </div> <div class="main_content"> Does anyone have any idea why the PC Safari browser would be breaking things up like this? I'm assuming it's PHP related but I cannot figure out why it would do that.

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• Justifiable Perks.

  - by Phil Factor

      I was once the director of a start-up IT Company, and had the task of recruiting a proportion of the management team. As my background was in IT management, I was rather more familiar with recruiting Geeks for technology jobs, but here, one of my early tasks was interviewing a Marketing Director.  The small group of financiers had suggested a rather strange Irishman called  Halleran.  From my background in City of London dealing-rooms, I was slightly unprepared for the experience of interviewing anyone wearing a pink suit. Many of my older City colleagues would have required resuscitation after seeing his white leather shoes. However, nobody will accuse me of prejudging an interviewee. After all, many Linux experts who I’ve come to rely on have appeared for interview dressed as hobbits. In fact, the interview went well, and we had even settled his salary.  I was somewhat unprepared for the coda.    ‘And I will need to be provided with a Ferrari  by the company.’    ‘Hmm. That seems reasonable.’    Initially, he looked startled, and then a slow smile of victory spread across his face.    ‘What colour would you like?’ I asked genially.    ‘It has to be red.’ He looked very earnest on this point.    ‘Fine. I have to go past Hamleys on the way home this evening, so I’ll pick one up then for you.’    ‘Er.. Hamley’s is a toyshop, not a Ferrari Dealership.’    I stared at him in bafflement for a few seconds. ‘You’re not seriously asking for a real Ferrari are you?’     ‘Well, yes. Not for my own sake, you understand. I’d much prefer a simple run-about, but my position demands it. How could I maintain the necessary status in the office without one? How could I do my job in marketing when my grey Datsun was all too visible in the car Park? It is a tool of the job.’    ‘Excuse me a moment, but I must confer with the MD’    I popped out to see Chris, the MD. ‘Chris, I’m interviewing a lunatic in a pink suit who is trying to demand that a Ferrari is a precondition of his employment. I tried the ‘misunderstanding trick’ but it didn’t faze him.’     ‘Sorry, Phil, but we’ve got to hire him. The VCs insist on it. You’ve got to think of something that doesn’t involve committing to the purchase of a Ferrari. Current funding barely covers the rent for the building.’    ‘OK boss. Leave it to me.’    On return, I slapped O’Halleran’s file on the table with a genial, paternalistic smile. ‘Of course you should have a Ferrari. The only trouble is that it will require a justification document that can be presented to the board. I’m sure you’ll have no problem in preparing this document in the required format.’ The initial look of despair was quickly followed by a bland look of acquiescence. He had, earlier in the interview, argued with great eloquence his skill in preparing the tiresome documents that underpin the essential corporate and government deals that were vital to the success of this new enterprise. The justification of a Ferrari should be a doddle.     After the interview, Chris nervously asked how I’d fared.     ‘I think it is all solved.’    ‘… without promising a Ferrari, I hope.’    ‘Well, I did actually; on condition he justified it in writing.’    Chris issued a stream of invective. The strain of juggling the resources in an underfunded startup was beginning to show.    ‘Don’t worry. In the unlikely event of him coming back with the required document, I’ll give him mine.’    ‘Yours?’ He strode over to the window to stare down at the car park.    He needn’t have worried: I knew that his breed of marketing man could more easily lay an ostrich egg than to prepare a decent justification document. My Ferrari is still there at the back of my garage. Few know of the Ferrari cultivator, a simple inexpensive motorized device designed for the subsistence farmers of southern Italy. It is the very devil to start, but it creates a perfect tilth for the seedbed.

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