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Extra Life 2012 - The Final Plea ... Until the Next One

- by Chris Gardner

I thought I'd share the email stream that my friends and family get about the event.So, here we are again. We scream closer to the event, and the goal is not met.I was approached by the ghost of feral platypii past last night. Well, approached is putting it lightly. I was mugged by the ghost of platypii past last night. He reminded me, in no uncertain terms that I have only reached the midway point of my fundraising goal. He then reminded me, in even less uncertain terms, that we are one week away from the event. There were other reminders past that, but this is a family broadcast. *shudder*Now, let us be serious for a moment. The event organizers claim a personal story helps to tug heart strings, whatever those are...I've been to Children's Hospital of Birmingham. I had to take Spawn, the Latter, there to verify she was not going to die. Instead, she's just a ticking time bomb for the next generation, but I digress.While I was there, I saw things. I saw child after child after child waiting for their appointment. I saw the most sublime displays of children's art juxtaposed with hospital sterilization that I could ever possibly imagine. I saw and heard things that only occur in the nightmares of parents, and I was only in the waiting rooms.But I will never forget the 10-ish year old girl that came in for her regularly scheduled dialysis appointment ... as if it was just another Friday afternoon. She had her school books, a little snack, a book to read for pleasure, and a DVD, in case she finished her homework a little early. You know, everything you'd need for an afternoon hooked up to a huge medical machine that going to clean out all the toxins in your blood. As she entered the secured area, she warmly greeted all the doctors and nurses with the same familiarity that I would greet the staff of my favorite coffee shop as I stopped in for my morning cup of coffee.I don't know the status of that little girl. I don't know if she's healthy or, quite frankly, alive. I don't even know her name, as I only heard it in passing for the 37 seconds our paths crossed. However, I do remember being incredibly moved and touched by her upbeat attitude about the situations, and I hope that my efforts last two Octobers got her, in some way, a little comfort.And, if she is still with us, I hope we can get her a little more.=== PREVIOUS MESSAGE FOLLOWS ===Greetings (Again),If you are receiving this updated message, then you didn't feel generous the first time. Now, I tried to be nice the first time. I tried to send a simple, unobtrusive email message to get you into the spirit. Well, much like the bell ringers that I ignore in front of the Wal-Mart, you ignored me.I probably should have seen that coming...However, unlike those poor souls, I know how to contact you. And I can find out where you live. So, so, so, you better feel lucky that I'm too lazy to terrorize you people, but cause I could do it.Remember, it's not for me, it's for those poor kids... and the feral platypii. Because, we can make more children, but platypii are hard to come by.=== ORIGINAL MESSAGE FOLLOWS ===It's that time of year again. The time when I beg you for money for charity. See, unlike those bell ringers outside Wal-Mart, I don't do it when you have ten bazillion holiday obligations...Once again, I will be enduring a 24-hour marathon of gaming to raise money for Children Hospital in Birmingham. All the money goes straight to them, and you get to tell Uncie Samuel that you're good for that money. I'd REALLY like to break $1000 this year, as I have come REALLY close for the past 2 year to doing so.This year, the event will take place on October 20th, beginning at 8 A.M. Once again, I will try to provide some web streams, etc, if you want to point and laugh (especially if I have to result to playing Dance Central at 4 AM to stay awake for the last part.)Look at it this way, I'm going to badger you about this for the next month. You might as well donate some money so you can righteously tell me to shut the Smurf up.You can place your bid at the link below. Feel free to spread the word to anyone and everyone.I thank you. The children thank you. Several breeds of feral platypus thank you. Maybe, just maybe, doing so will help you feel the love felt by re-fried beans when lovingly hugged in a warm tortilla.Enjoy your burrito.http://www.extra-life.org/participant/cgardner

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Best Practices - Dynamic Reconfiguration

- by jsavit

This post is one of a series of "best practices" notes for Oracle VM Server for SPARC (formerly named Logical Domains) Overview of dynamic Reconfiguration Oracle VM Server for SPARC supports Dynamic Reconfiguration (DR), making it possible to add or remove resources to or from a domain (virtual machine) while it is running. This is extremely useful because resources can be shifted to or from virtual machines in response to load conditions without having to reboot or interrupt running applications. For example, if an application requires more CPU capacity, you can add CPUs to improve performance, and remove them when they are no longer needed. You can use even use Dynamic Resource Management (DRM) policies that automatically add and remove CPUs to domains based on load. How it works (in broad general terms) Dynamic Reconfiguration is done in coordination with Solaris, which recognises a hypervisor request to change its virtual machine configuration and responds appropriately. In essence, Solaris receives a message saying "you now have 16 more CPUs numbered 16 to 31" or "8GB more RAM starting at address X" or "here's a new network or disk device - have fun with it". These actions take very little time. Solaris then can start using the new resource. In the case of added CPUs, that means dispatching processes and potentially binding interrupts to the new CPUs. For memory, Solaris adds the new memory pages to its "free" list and starts using them. Comparable actions occur with network and disk devices: they are recognised by Solaris and then used. Removing is the reverse process: after receiving the DR message to free specific CPUs, Solaris unbinds interrupts assigned to the CPUs and stops dispatching process threads. That takes very little time. primary # ldm list NAME STATE FLAGS CONS VCPU MEMORY UTIL UPTIME primary active -n-cv- SP 16 4G 1.0% 6d 22h 29m ldom1 active -n---- 5000 16 8G 0.9% 6h 59m primary # ldm set-core 5 ldom1 primary # ldm list NAME STATE FLAGS CONS VCPU MEMORY UTIL UPTIME primary active -n-cv- SP 16 4G 0.2% 6d 22h 29m ldom1 active -n---- 5000 40 8G 0.1% 6h 59m primary # ldm set-core 2 ldom1 primary # ldm list NAME STATE FLAGS CONS VCPU MEMORY UTIL UPTIME primary active -n-cv- SP 16 4G 1.0% 6d 22h 29m ldom1 active -n---- 5000 16 8G 0.9% 6h 59m Memory pages are vacated by copying their contents to other memory locations and wiping them clean. Solaris may have to swap memory contents to disk if the remaining RAM isn't enough to hold all the contents. For this reason, deallocating memory can take longer on a loaded system. Even on a lightly loaded system it took several 7 or 8 seconds to switch the domain below between 8GB and 24GB of RAM. primary # ldm set-mem 24g ldom1 primary # ldm list NAME STATE FLAGS CONS VCPU MEMORY UTIL UPTIME primary active -n-cv- SP 16 4G 0.1% 6d 22h 36m ldom1 active -n---- 5000 16 24G 0.2% 7h 6m primary # ldm set-mem 8g ldom1 primary # ldm list NAME STATE FLAGS CONS VCPU MEMORY UTIL UPTIME primary active -n-cv- SP 16 4G 0.7% 6d 22h 37m ldom1 active -n---- 5000 16 8G 0.3% 7h 7m What if the device is in use? (this is the anecdote that inspired this blog post) If CPU or memory is being removed, releasing it pretty straightforward, using the method described above. The resources are released, and Solaris continues with less capacity. It's not as simple with a network or I/O device: you don't want to yank a device out from underneath an application that might be using it. In the following example, I've added a virtual network device to ldom1 and want to take it away, even though it's been plumbed. primary # ldm rm-vnet vnet19 ldom1 Guest LDom returned the following reason for failing the operation: Resource Information ---------------------------------------------------------- ----------------------- /devices/virtual-devices@100/channel-devices@200/network@1 Network interface net1 VIO operation failed because device is being used in LDom ldom1 Failed to remove VNET instance That's what I call a helpful error message - telling me exactly what was wrong. In this case the problem is easily solved. I know this NIC is seen in the guest as net1 so: ldom1 # ifconfig net1 down unplumb Now I can dispose of it, and even the virtual switch I had created for it: primary # ldm rm-vnet vnet19 ldom1 primary # ldm rm-vsw primary-vsw9 If I had to take away the device disruptively, I could have used ldm rm-vnet -f but that could disrupt whoever was using it. It's better if that can be avoided. Summary Oracle VM Server for SPARC provides dynamic reconfiguration, which lets you modify a guest domain's CPU, memory and I/O configuration on the fly without reboot. You can add and remove resources as needed, and even automate this for CPUs by setting up resource policies. Taking things away can be more complicated than giving, especially for devices like disks and networks that may contain application and system state or be involved in a transaction. LDoms and Solaris cooperative work together to coordinate resource allocation and de-allocation in a safe and effective way. For best practices, use dynamic reconfiguration to make the best use of your system's resources.

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Database Rebuild

- by Robert May

I promised I’d have a simpler mechanism for rebuilding the database. Below is a complete MSBuild targets file for rebuilding the database from scratch. I don’t know if I’ve explained the rational for this. The reason why you’d WANT to do this is so that each developer has a clean version of the database on their local machine. This also includes the continuous integration environment. Basically, you can do whatever you want to the database without fear, and in a minute or two, have a completely rebuilt database structure. DBDeploy (including the KTSC build task for dbdeploy) is used in this script to do change tracking on the database itself. The MSBuild ExtensionPack is used in this target file. You can get an MSBuild DBDeploy task here. There are two database scripts that you’ll see below. First is the task for creating an admin (dbo) user in the system. This script looks like the following: USE [master] GO If not Exists (select Name from sys.sql_logins where name = '$(User)') BEGIN CREATE LOGIN [$(User)] WITH PASSWORD=N'$(Password)', DEFAULT_DATABASE=[$(DatabaseName)], CHECK_EXPIRATION=OFF, CHECK_POLICY=OFF END GO EXEC master..sp_addsrvrolemember @loginame = N'$(User)', @rolename = N'sysadmin' GO USE [$(DatabaseName)] GO CREATE USER [$(User)] FOR LOGIN [$(User)] GO ALTER USER [$(User)] WITH DEFAULT_SCHEMA=[dbo] GO EXEC sp_addrolemember N'db_owner', N'$(User)' GO The second creates the changelog table. This script can also be found in the dbdeploy.net install\scripts directory. CREATE TABLE changelog ( change_number INTEGER NOT NULL, delta_set VARCHAR(10) NOT NULL, start_dt DATETIME NOT NULL, complete_dt DATETIME NULL, applied_by VARCHAR(100) NOT NULL, description VARCHAR(500) NOT NULL ) GO ALTER TABLE changelog ADD CONSTRAINT Pkchangelog PRIMARY KEY (change_number, delta_set) GO Finally, Here’s the targets file. <Projectxmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/msbuild/2003" ToolsVersion="4.0" DefaultTargets="Update"> <PropertyGroup> <DatabaseName>TestDatabase</DatabaseName> <Server>localhost</Server> <ScriptDirectory>.\Scripts</ScriptDirectory> <RebuildDirectory>.\Rebuild</RebuildDirectory> <TestDataDirectory>.\TestData</TestDataDirectory> <DbDeploy>.\DBDeploy</DbDeploy> <User>TestUser</User> <Password>TestPassword</Password> <BCP>bcp</BCP> <BCPOptions>-S$(Server) -U$(User) -P$(Password) -N -E -k</BCPOptions> <OutputFileName>dbDeploy-output.sql</OutputFileName> <UndoFileName>dbDeploy-output-undo.sql</UndoFileName> <LastChangeToApply>99999</LastChangeToApply> </PropertyGroup> <ImportProject="$(MSBuildExtensionsPath)\ExtensionPack\4.0\MSBuild.ExtensionPack.tasks"/> <UsingTask TaskName="Ktsc.Build.DBDeploy" AssemblyFile="$(DbDeploy)\Ktsc.Build.dll"/> <ItemGroup> <VariableInclude="DatabaseName"> <Value>$(DatabaseName)</Value> </Variable> <VariableInclude="Server"> <Value>$(Server)</Value> </Variable> <VariableInclude="User"> <Value>$(User)</Value> </Variable> <VariableInclude="Password"> <Value>$(Password)</Value> </Variable> </ItemGroup> <TargetName="Rebuild">  <MSBuild.ExtensionPack.SqlServer.SqlCmd Variables="@(Variable)" Database="$(DatabaseName)" TaskAction="Execute" CommandLineQuery ="ALTER DATABASE $(DatabaseName) SET OFFLINE WITH ROLLBACK IMMEDIATE"/>  <MSBuild.ExtensionPack.Sql2008.DatabaseTaskAction="SetOnline" DatabaseItem="$(DatabaseName)"/>  <MSBuild.ExtensionPack.Sql2008.DatabaseTaskAction="Delete" DatabaseItem="$(DatabaseName)"/>  <MSBuild.ExtensionPack.Sql2008.DatabaseTaskAction="Create" DatabaseItem="$(DatabaseName)" Force="True"/>  <MSBuild.ExtensionPack.SqlServer.SqlCmd TaskAction="Execute" Server="(local)" Database="$(DatabaseName)" InputFiles="$(RebuildDirectory)\0002 Create Admin User.sql" Variables="@(Variable)" />  <MSBuild.ExtensionPack.SqlServer.SqlCmd TaskAction="Execute" Server="(local)" Database="$(DatabaseName)" LogOn="$(User)" Password="$(Password)" InputFiles="$(RebuildDirectory)\0003 Create Changelog.sql" Variables="@(Variable)" /> <CallTarget Targets="Update;ImportData"/> </Target> <TargetName="Update" DependsOnTargets="CreateUpdateScript"> <MSBuild.ExtensionPack.SqlServer.SqlCmd TaskAction="Execute" Server="(local)" Database="$(DatabaseName)" LogOn="$(User)" Password="$(Password)" InputFiles="$(OutputFileName)" Variables="@(Variable)" /> </Target> <TargetName="CreateUpdateScript"> <ktsc.Build.DBDeploy DbType="mssql" DbConnection="User=$(User);Password=$(Password);Data Source=$(Server);Initial Catalog=$(DatabaseName);" Dir="$(ScriptDirectory)" OutputFile="..\$(OutputFileName)" UndoOutputFile="..\$(UndoFileName)" LastChangeToApply="$(LastChangeToApply)"/> </Target> <TargetName="ImportData"> <ItemGroup> <TestData Include="$(TestDataDirectory)\*.dat"/> </ItemGroup> <ExecCommand="$(BCP) $(DatabaseName).dbo.%(TestData.Filename) in"%(TestData.Identity)"$(BCPOptions)"/> </Target> </Project> Technorati Tags: MSBuild

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How do I cleanly design a central render/animation loop?

- by mtoast

I'm learning some graphics programming, and am in the midst of my first such project of any substance. But, I am really struggling at the moment with how to architect it cleanly. Let me explain. To display complicated graphics in my current language of choice (JavaScript -- have you heard of it?), you have to draw graphical content onto a <canvas> element. And to do animation, you must clear the <canvas> after every frame (unless you want previous graphics to remain). Thus, most canvas-related JavaScript demos I've seen have a function like this: function render() { clearCanvas(); // draw stuff here requestAnimationFrame(render); } render, as you may surmise, encapsulates the drawing of a single frame. What a single frame contains at a specific point in time, well... that is determined by the program state. So, in order for my program to do its thing, I just need to look at the state, and decide what to render. Right? Right. But that is more complicated than it seems. My program is called "Critter Clicker". In my program, you see several cute critters bouncing around the screen. Clicking on one of them agitates it, making it bounce around even more. There is also a start screen, which says "Click to start!" prior to the critters being displayed. Here are a few of the objects I'm working with in my program: StartScreenView // represents the start screen CritterTubView // represents the area in which the critters live CritterList // a collection of all the critters Critter // a single critter model CritterView // view of a single critter Nothing too egregious with this, I think. Yet, when I set out to flesh out my render function, I get stuck, because everything I write seems utterly ugly and reminiscent of a certain popular Italian dish. Here are a couple of approaches I've attempted, with my internal thought process included, and unrelated bits excluded for clarity. Approach 1: "It's conditions all the way down" // "I'll just write the program as I think it, one frame at a time." if (assetsLoaded) { if (userClickedToStart) { if (critterTubDisplayed) { if (crittersDisplayed) { forEach(crittersList, function(c) { if (c.wasClickedRecently) { c.getAgitated(); } }); } else { displayCritters(); } } else { displayCritterTub(); } } else { displayStartScreen(); } } That's a very much simplified example. Yet even with only a fraction of all the rendering conditions visible, render is already starting to get out of hand. So, I dispense with that and try another idea: Approach 2: Under the Rug // "Each view object shall be responsible for its own rendering. // "I'll pass each object the program state, and each can render itself." startScreen.render(state); critterTub.render(state); critterList.render(state); In this setup, I've essentially just pushed those crazy nested conditions to a deeper level in the code, hiding them from view. In other words, startScreen.render would check state to see if it needed actually to be drawn or not, and take the correct action. But this seems more like it only solves a code-aesthetic problem. The third and final approach I'm considering that I'll share is the idea that I could invent my own "wheel" to take care of this. I'm envisioning a function that takes a data structure that defines what should happen at any given point in the render call -- revealing the conditions and dependencies as a kind of tree. Approach 3: Mad Scientist renderTree({ phases: ['startScreen', 'critterTub', 'endCredits'], dependencies: { startScreen: ['assetsLoaded'], critterTub: ['startScreenClicked'], critterList ['critterTubDisplayed'] // etc. }, exclusions: { startScreen: ['startScreenClicked'], // etc. } }); That seems kind of cool. I'm not exactly sure how it would actually work, but I can see it being a rather nifty way to express things, especially if I flex some of JavaScript's events. In any case, I'm a little bit stumped because I don't see an obvious way to do this. If you couldn't tell, I'm coming to this from the web development world, and finding that doing animation is a bit more exotic than arranging an MVC application for handling simple requests - responses. What is the clean, established solution to this common-I-would-think problem?

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PanelGridLayout - A Layout Revolution

- by Duncan Mills

With the most recent 11.1.2 patchset (11.1.2.3) there has been a lot of excitement around ADF Essentials (and rightly so), however, in all the fuss I didn't want an even more significant change to get missed - yes you read that correctly, a more significant change! I'm talking about the new panelGridLayout component, I can confidently say that this one of the most revolutionary components that we've introduced in 11g, even though it sounds rather boring. To be totally accurate, panelGrid was introduced in 11.1.2.2 but without any presence in the component palette or other design time support, so it was largely missed unless you read the release notes. However in this latest patchset it's finally front and center. Its time to explore - we (really) need to talk about layout. Let's face it,with ADF Faces rich client, layout is a rather arcane pursuit, once you are a layout master, all bow before you, but it's more of an art than a science, and it is often, in fact, way too difficult to achieve what should (apparently) be a pretty simple. Here's a great example, it's a homework assignment I set for folks I'm teaching this stuff to: The requirements for this layout are: The header is 80px high, the footer is 30px. These are both fixed. The first section of the header containing the logo is 180px wide The logo is centered within the top left hand corner of the header The title text is start aligned in the center zone of the header and will wrap if the browser window is narrowed. It should be aligned in the center of the vertical space The about link is anchored to the right hand side of the browser with a 20px gap and again is center aligned vertically. It will move as the browser window is reduced in width. The footer has a right aligned copyright statement, again middle aligned within a 30px high footer region and with a 20px buffer to the right hand edge. It will move as the browser window is reduced in width. All remaining space is given to a central zone, which, in this case contains a panelSplitter. Expect that at some point in time you'll need a separate messages line in the center of the footer. In the homework assigment I set I also stipulate that no inlineStyles can be used to control alignment or margins and no use of other taglibs (e.g. JSF HTML or Trinidad HTML). So, if we take this purist approach, that basic page layout (in my stock solution) requires 3 panelStretchLayouts, 5 panelGroupLayouts and 4 spacers - not including the spacer I use for the logo and the contents of the central zone splitter - phew! The point is that even a seemingly simple layout needs a bit of thinking about, particulatly when you consider strechting and browser re-size behavior. In fact, this little sample actually teaches you much of what you need to know to become vaguely competant at layouts in the framework. The underlying result of "the way things are" is that most of us reach for panelStretchLayout before even finishing the first sip of coffee as we embark on a new page design. In fact most pages you will see in any moderately complex ADF page will basically be nested panelStretchLayouts and panelGroupLayouts, sometimes many, many levels deep. So this is a problem, we've known this for some time and now we have a good solution. (I should point out that the oft-used Trinidad trh tags are not a particularly good solution as you're tie-ing yourself to an HTML table based layout in that case with a host of attendent issues in resize and bi-di behavior, but I digress.) So, tadaaa, I give to you panelGridLayout. PanelGrid, as the name suggests takes a grid like (dare I say slightly gridbag-like) approach to layout, dividing your layout into rows and colums with margins, sizing, stretch behaviour, colspans and rowspans all rolled in, all without the use of inlineStyle. As such, it provides for a much more powerful and consise way of defining a layout such as the one above that is actually simpler and much more logical to design. The basic building blocks are the panelGridLayout itself, gridRow and gridCell. Your content sits inside the cells inside the rows, all helpfully allowing both streching, valign and halign definitions without the need to nest further panelGroupLayouts. So much simpler! If I break down the homework example above my nested comglomorate of 12 containers and spacers can be condensed down into a single panelGrid with 3 rows and 5 cell definitions (39 lines of source reduced to 24 in the case of the sample). What's more, the actual runtime representation in the browser DOM is much, much simpler, and clean, with basically one DIV per cell (Note that just because the panelGridLayout semantics looks like an HTML table does not mean that it's rendered that way!) . Another hidden benefit is the runtime cost. Because we can use a single layout to achieve much more complex geometries the client side layout code inside the browser is having to work a lot less. This will be a real benefit if your application needs to run on lower powered clients such as netbooks or tablets. So, it's time, if you're on 11.1.2.2 or above, to smile warmly at your panelStretchLayouts, wrap the blanket around it's knees and wheel it off to the Sunset Retirement Home for a well deserved rest. There's a new kid on the block and it wants to be your friend.

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ASP.NET Multi-Select Radio Buttons

- by Ajarn Mark Caldwell

“HERESY!” you say, “Radio buttons are for single-select items! If you want multi-select, use checkboxes!” Well, I would agree, and that is why I consider this a significant bug that ASP.NET developers need to be aware of. Here’s the situation. If you use ASP:RadioButton controls on your WebForm, then you know that in order to get them to behave properly, that is, to define a group in which only one of them can be selected by the user, you use the Group attribute and set the same value on each one. For example: 1: <asp:RadioButton runat="server" ID="rdo1" Group="GroupName" checked="true" /> 2: <asp:RadioButton runat="server" ID="rdo2" Group="GroupName" /> With this configuration, the controls will render to the browser as HTML Input / Type=radio tags and when the user selects one, the browser will automatically deselect the other one so that only one can be selected (checked) at any time. BUT, if you user server-side code to manipulate the Checked attribute of these controls, it is possible to set them both to believe that they are checked. 1: rdo2.Checked = true; // Does NOT change the Checked attribute of rdo1 to be false. As long as you remain in server-side code, the system will believe that both radio buttons are checked (you can verify this in the debugger). Therefore, if you later have code that looks like this 1: if (rdo1.Checked) 2: { 3: DoSomething1(); 4: } 5: else 6: { 7: DoSomethingElse(); 8: } then it will always evaluate the condition to be true and take the first action. The good news is that if you return to the client with multiple radio buttons checked, the browser tries to clean that up for you and make only one of them really checked. It turns out that the last one on the screen wins, so in this case, you will in fact end up with rdo2 as checked, and if you then make a trip to the server to run the code above, it will appear to be working properly. However, if your page initializes with rdo2 checked and in code you set rdo1 to checked also, then when you go back to the client, rdo2 will remain checked, again because it is the last one and the last one checked “wins”. And this gets even uglier if you ever set these radio buttons to be disabled. In that case, although the client browser renders the radio buttons as though only one of them is checked the system actually retains the value of both of them as checked, and your next trip to the server will really frustrate you because the browser showed rdo2 as checked, but your DoSomething1() routine keeps getting executed. The following is sample code you can put into any WebForm to test this yourself. 1: <body> 2: <form id="form1" runat="server"> 3: <h1>Radio Button Test</h1> 4: <hr /> 5: <asp:Button runat="server" ID="cmdBlankPostback" Text="Blank Postback" /> 6:             7: <asp:Button runat="server" ID="cmdEnable" Text="Enable All" OnClick="cmdEnable_Click" /> 8:             9: <asp:Button runat="server" ID="cmdDisable" Text="Disable All" OnClick="cmdDisable_Click" /> 10:             11: <asp:Button runat="server" ID="cmdTest" Text="Test" OnClick="cmdTest_Click" /> 12: <br /><br /><br /> 13: <asp:RadioButton ID="rdoG1R1" GroupName="Group1" runat="server" Text="Group 1 Radio 1" Checked="true" /><br /> 14: <asp:RadioButton ID="rdoG1R2" GroupName="Group1" runat="server" Text="Group 1 Radio 2" /><br /> 15: <asp:RadioButton ID="rdoG1R3" GroupName="Group1" runat="server" Text="Group 1 Radio 3" /><br /> 16: <hr /> 17: <asp:RadioButton ID="rdoG2R1" GroupName="Group2" runat="server" Text="Group 2 Radio 1" /><br /> 18: <asp:RadioButton ID="rdoG2R2" GroupName="Group2" runat="server" Text="Group 2 Radio 2" Checked="true" /><br /> 19: 20: </form> 21: </body> 1: protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e) 2: { 3: 4: } 5: 6: protected void cmdEnable_Click(object sender, EventArgs e) 7: { 8: rdoG1R1.Enabled = true; 9: rdoG1R2.Enabled = true; 10: rdoG1R3.Enabled = true; 11: rdoG2R1.Enabled = true; 12: rdoG2R2.Enabled = true; 13: } 14: 15: protected void cmdDisable_Click(object sender, EventArgs e) 16: { 17: rdoG1R1.Enabled = false; 18: rdoG1R2.Enabled = false; 19: rdoG1R3.Enabled = false; 20: rdoG2R1.Enabled = false; 21: rdoG2R2.Enabled = false; 22: } 23: 24: protected void cmdTest_Click(object sender, EventArgs e) 25: { 26: rdoG1R2.Checked = true; 27: rdoG2R1.Checked = true; 28: } 29: 30: protected void Page_PreRender(object sender, EventArgs e) 31: { 32: 33: } After you copy the markup and page-behind code into the appropriate files. I recommend you set a breakpoint on Page_Load as well as cmdTest_Click, and add each of the radio button controls to the Watch list so that you can walk through the code and see exactly what is happening. Use the Blank Postback button to cause a postback to the server so you can inspect things without making any changes. The moral of the story is: if you do server-side manipulation of the Checked status of RadioButton controls, then you need to set ALL of the controls in a group whenever you want to change one.

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Using BizTalk to bridge SQL Job and Human Intervention (Requesting Permission)

- by Kevin Shyr

I start off the process with either a BizTalk Scheduler (http://biztalkscheduledtask.codeplex.com/releases/view/50363) or a manual file drop of the XML message. The manual file drop is to allow the SQL Job to call a "File Copy" SSIS step to copy the trigger file for the next process and allows SQL Job to be linked back into BizTalk processing. The Process Trigger XML looks like the following. It is basically the configuration hub of the business process <ns0:MsgSchedulerTriggerSQLJobReceive xmlns:ns0="urn:com:something something"> <ns0:IsProcessAsync>YES</ns0:IsProcessAsync> <ns0:IsPermissionRequired>YES</ns0:IsPermissionRequired> <ns0:BusinessProcessName>Data Push</ns0:BusinessProcessName> <ns0:EmailFrom>[email protected]</ns0:EmailFrom> <ns0:EmailRecipientToList>[email protected]</ns0:EmailRecipientToList> <ns0:EmailRecipientCCList>[email protected]</ns0:EmailRecipientCCList> <ns0:EmailMessageBodyForPermissionRequest>This message was sent to request permission to start the Data Push process. The SQL Job to be run is WeeklyProcessing_DataPush</ns0:EmailMessageBodyForPermissionRequest> <ns0:SQLJobName>WeeklyProcessing_DataPush</ns0:SQLJobName> <ns0:SQLJobStepName>Push_To_Production</ns0:SQLJobStepName> <ns0:SQLJobMinToWait>1</ns0:SQLJobMinToWait> <ns0:PermissionRequestTriggerPath>\\server\ETL-BizTalk\Automation\TriggerCreatedByBizTalk\</ns0:PermissionRequestTriggerPath> <ns0:PermissionRequestApprovedPath>\\server\ETL-BizTalk\Automation\Approved\</ns0:PermissionRequestApprovedPath> <ns0:PermissionRequestNotApprovedPath>\\server\ETL-BizTalk\Automation\NotApproved\</ns0:PermissionRequestNotApprovedPath> </ns0:MsgSchedulerTriggerSQLJobReceive> Every node of this schema was promoted to a distinguished field so that the values can be used for decision making in the orchestration. The first decision made is on the "IsPermissionRequired" field. If permission is required (IsPermissionRequired=="YES"), BizTalk will use the configuration info in the XML trigger to format the email message. Here is the snippet of how the email message is constructed. SQLJobEmailMessage.EmailBody = new Eai.OrchestrationHelpers.XlangCustomFormatters.RawString( MsgSchedulerTriggerSQLJobReceive.EmailMessageBodyForPermissionRequest + "<br><br>" + "By moving the file, you are either giving permission to the process, or disapprove of the process." + "<br>" + "This is the file to move: \"" + PermissionTriggerToBeGenereatedHere + "\"<br>" + "(You may find it easier to open the destination folder first, then navigate to the sibling folder to get to this file)" + "<br><br>" + "To approve, move(NOT copy) the file here: " + MsgSchedulerTriggerSQLJobReceive.PermissionRequestApprovedPath + "<br><br>" + "To disapprove, move(NOT copy) the file here: " + MsgSchedulerTriggerSQLJobReceive.PermissionRequestNotApprovedPath + "<br><br>" + "The file will be IMMEDIATELY picked up by the automated process. This is normal. You should receive a message soon that the file is processed." + "<br>" + "Thank you!" ); SQLJobSendNotification(Microsoft.XLANGs.BaseTypes.Address) = "mailto:" + MsgSchedulerTriggerSQLJobReceive.EmailRecipientToList; SQLJobEmailMessage.EmailBody(Microsoft.XLANGs.BaseTypes.ContentType) = "text/html"; SQLJobEmailMessage(SMTP.Subject) = "Requesting Permission to Start the " + MsgSchedulerTriggerSQLJobReceive.BusinessProcessName; SQLJobEmailMessage(SMTP.From) = MsgSchedulerTriggerSQLJobReceive.EmailFrom; SQLJobEmailMessage(SMTP.CC) = MsgSchedulerTriggerSQLJobReceive.EmailRecipientCCList; SQLJobEmailMessage(SMTP.EmailBodyFileCharset) = "UTF-8"; SQLJobEmailMessage(SMTP.SMTPHost) = "localhost"; SQLJobEmailMessage(SMTP.MessagePartsAttachments) = 2; After the Permission request email is sent, the next step is to generate the actual Permission Trigger file. A correlation set is used here on SQLJobName and a newly generated GUID field. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?><ns0:SQLJobAuthorizationTrigger xmlns:ns0="somethingsomething"><SQLJobName>Data Push</SQLJobName><CorrelationGuid>9f7c6b46-0e62-46a7-b3a0-b5327ab03753</CorrelationGuid></ns0:SQLJobAuthorizationTrigger> The end user (the human intervention piece) will either grant permission for this process, or deny it, by moving the Permission Trigger file to either the "Approved" folder or the "NotApproved" folder. A parallel Listen shape is waiting for either response. The next set of steps decide how the SQL Job is to be called, or whether it is called at all. If permission denied, it simply sends out a notification. If permission is granted, then the flag (IsProcessAsync) in the original Process Trigger is used. The synchonous part is not really synchronous, but a loop timer to check the status within the calling stored procedure (for more information, check out my previous post: http://geekswithblogs.net/LifeLongTechie/archive/2010/11/01/execute-sql-job-synchronously-for-biztalk-via-a-stored-procedure.aspx) If it's async, then the sp starts the job and BizTalk sends out an email. And of course, some error notification: Footnote: The next version of this orchestration will have an additional parallel line near the Listen shape with a Delay built in and a Loop to send out a daily reminder if no response has been received from the end user. The synchronous part is used to gather results and execute a data clean up process so that the SQL Job can be re-tried. There are manu possibilities here.

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Migrating Virtual Iron guest to Oracle VM 3.x

- by scoter

As stated on the official site, Oracle in 2009, acquired a provider of server virtualization management software named Virtual Iron; you can find all the acquisition details at this link. Into the FAQ on the official site you can also view that, for the future, Oracle plans to fully integrate Virtual Iron technology into Oracle VM products, and any enhancements will be delivered as a part of the combined solution; this is what is going on with Oracle VM 3.x. So, customers started asking us to migrate Virtual Iron guests to Oracle VM. IMPORTANT: This procedure needs a dedicated OVM-Server with no-guests running on top; be careful while execute this procedure on production environments. In these little steps you will find how-to migrate, as fast as possible, your guests between VI ( Virtual Iron ) and Oracle VM; keep in mind that OracleVM has a built-in P2V utility ( Official Documentation ) that you can use to migrate guests between VI and Oracle VM. Concepts: VI repositories. On VI we have the same "repository" concept as in Oracle VM; the difference between these two products is that VI use a raw-lun as repository ( instead of using ocfs2 and its capabilities, like ref-links ). The VI "raw-lun" repository, with a pure operating-system perspective, may be presented as in this picture: Infact on this "raw-lun" VI create an LVM2 volume-group. The VI "raw-lun" repository, with an hypervisor perspective, may be presented as in this picture: So, the relationships are: LVM2-Volume-Group <-> VI Repository LVM2-Logical-Volume <-> VI guest virtual-disk The first step is to present the VI repository ( raw-lun ) to your dedicated OVM-Server. Prepare dedicated OVM-Server On the OVM-Server ( OVS ) you need to discover new lun and, after that, discover volume-group and logical-volumes containted in VI repository; due to default OVS configuration you need to edit lvm2 configuration file: /etc/lvm/lvm.conf # By default for OVS we restrict every block device: # filter = [ "r/.*/" ] and comment the line starting with "filter" as above. Now you have to discover the raw-lun presented and, next, activate volume-group and logical-volumes: #!/bin/bash for HOST in `ls /sys/class/scsi_host`;do echo '- - -' > /sys/class/scsi_host/$HOST/scan; done CPATH=`pwd` cd /dev for DEVICE in `ls sd[a-z] sd?[a-z]`;do echo '1' > /sys/block/$DEVICE/device/rescan; done cd $CPATH cd /dev/mapper for PARTITION in `ls *[a-z] *?[a-z]`;do partprobe /dev/mapper/$PARTITION; done cd $CPATH vgchange -a yAfter that you will see a new device:[root@ovs01 ~]# cd /dev/6000F4B00000000000210135bef64994[root@ovs01 6000F4B00000000000210135bef64994]# ls -l 6000F4B0000000000061013* lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 77 Oct 29 10:50 6000F4B00000000000610135c3a0b8cb -> /dev/mapper/6000F4B00000000000210135bef64994-6000F4B00000000000610135c3a0b8cb By your OVM-Manager create a guest server with the same definition as on VI:same core number as VI source guestsame memory as VI source guestsame number of disks as VI source guest ( you can create OVS virtual disk with a small size of 1GB because the "clone" will, eventually, extend the size of your new virtual disks )Summarizing:source-virtual-disk path ( VI ):/dev/mapper/6000F4B00000000000210135bef64994-6000F4B00000000000610135c3a0b8cbdest-virtual-disk path ( OVS ):/OVS/Repositories/0004fb00000300006cfeb81c12f12f00/VirtualDisks/0004fb000012000055e0fc4c5c8a35ee.img ** ** = to identify your virtual disk you have verify its name under the "vm.cfg" file of your new guest.Clone VI virtual-disk to OVS virtual-diskdd if=/dev/mapper/6000F4B00000000000210135bef64994-6000F4B00000000000610135c3a0b8cb of=/OVS/Repositories/0004fb00000300006cfeb81c12f12f00/VirtualDisks/0004fb000012000055e0fc4c5c8a35ee.img Clean unsupported parameters and changes on OVS.1. Restore original /etc/lvm/lvm.conf # By default for OVS we restrict every block device: filter = [ "r/.*/" ] and uncomment the line starting with "filter" as above.2. Force-stop lvm2-monitor service # service lvm2-monitor force-stop 3. Restore original /etc/lvm directories ( archive, backup and cache ) # cd /etc/lvm # rm -fr archive backup cache; mkdir archive backup cache4. Reboot OVSRefresh OVS repository and start your guest.By OracleVM Manager refresh your repository:By OracleVM Manager start your "migrated" guest: Comments and corrections are welcome. Simon COTER

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Business Case for investing time developing Stubs and BizUnit Tests

- by charlie.mott

I was recently in a position where I had to justify why effort should be spent developing Stubbed Integration Tests for BizTalk solutions. These tests are usually developed using the BizUnit framework. I assumed that most seasoned BizTalk developers would consider this best practice. Even though Microsoft suggest use of BizUnit on MSDN, I've not found a single site listing the justifications for investing time writing stubs and BizUnit tests. Stubs Stubs should be developed to isolate your development team from external dependencies. This is described by Michael Stephenson here. Failing to do this can result in the following problems: In contract-first scenarios, the external system interface will have been defined. But the interface may not have been setup or even developed yet for the BizTalk developers to work with. By the time you open the target location to see the data BizTalk has sent, it may have been swept away. If you are relying on the UI of the target system to see the data BizTalk has sent, what do you do if it fails to arrive? It may take time for the data to be processed or it may be scheduled to be processed later. Learning how to use the source\target systems and investigations into where things go wrong in these systems will slow down the BizTalk development effort. By the time the data is visible in a UI it may have undergone further transformations. In larger development teams working together, do you all use the same source and target instances. How do you know which data was created by whose tests? How do you know which event log error message are whose? Another developer may have “cleaned up” your data. It is harder to write BizUnit tests that clean up the data\logs after each test run. What if your B2B partners' source or target system cannot support the sort of testing you want to do. They may not even have a development or test instance that you can work with. Their single test instance may be used by the SIT\UAT teams. There may be licencing costs of setting up an instances of the external system. The stubs I like to use are generic stubs that can accept\return any message type. Usually I need to create one per protocol. They should be driven by BizUnit steps to: validates the data received; and select a response messages (or error response). Once built, they can be re-used for many integration tests and from project to project. I’m not saying that developers should never test against a real instance. Every so often, you still need to connect to real developer or test instances of the source and target endpoints\services. The interface developers may ask you to send them some data to see if everything still works. Or you might want some messages sent to BizTalk to get confidence that everything still works beyond BizTalk. Tests Automated “Stubbed Integration Tests” are usually built using the BizUnit framework. These facilitate testing of the entire integration process from source stub to target stub. It will ensure that all of the BizTalk components are configured together correctly to meet all the requirements. More fine grained unit testing of individual BizTalk components is still encouraged. But BizUnit provides much the easiest way to test some components types (e.g. Orchestrations). Using BizUnit with the Behaviour Driven Development approach described by Mike Stephenson delivers the following benefits: source: http://biztalkbddsample.codeplex.com – Video 1. Requirements can be easily defined using Given/When/Then Requirements are close to the code so easier to manage as features and scenarios Requirements are defined in domain language The feature files can be used as part of the documentation The documentation is accurate to the build of code and can be published with a release The scenarios are effective to document the scenarios and are not over excessive The scenarios are maintained with the code There’s an abstraction between the intention and implementation of tests making them easier to understand The requirements drive the testing These same tests can also be used to drive load testing as described here. If you don't do this ... If you don't follow the above “Stubbed Integration Tests” approach, the developer will need to manually trigger the tests. This has the following risks: Developers are unlikely to check all the scenarios each time and all the expected conditions each time. After the developer leaves, these manual test steps may be lost. What test scenarios are there? What test messages did they use for each scenario? There is no mechanism to prove adequate test coverage. A test team may attempt to automate integration test scenarios in a test environment through the triggering of tests from a source system UI. If this is a replacement for BizUnit tests, then this carries the following risks: It moves the tests downstream, so problems will be found later in the process. Testers may not check all the expected conditions within the BizTalk infrastructure such as: event logs, suspended messages, etc. These automated tests may also get in the way of manual tests run on these environments.

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Managing common code on Windows 7 (.NET) and Windows 8 (WinRT)

- by ryanabr

Recent announcements regarding Windows Phone 8 and the fact that it will have the WinRT behind it might make some of this less painful but I discovered the "XmlDocument" object is in a new location in WinRT and is almost the same as it's brother in .NET System.Xml.XmlDocument (.NET) Windows.Data.Xml.Dom.XmlDocument (WinRT) The problem I am trying to solve is how to work with both types in the code that performs the same task on both Windows Phone 7 and Windows 8 platforms. The first thing I did was define my own XmlNode and XmlNodeList classes that wrap the actual Microsoft objects so that by using the "#if" compiler directive either work with the WinRT version of the type, or the .NET version from the calling code easily. public class XmlNode { #if WIN8 public Windows.Data.Xml.Dom.IXmlNode Node { get; set; } public XmlNode(Windows.Data.Xml.Dom.IXmlNode xmlNode) { Node = xmlNode; } #endif #if !WIN8 public System.Xml.XmlNode Node { get; set ; } public XmlNode(System.Xml.XmlNode xmlNode) { Node = xmlNode; } #endif } public class XmlNodeList { #if WIN8 public Windows.Data.Xml.Dom.XmlNodeList List { get; set; } public int Count {get {return (int)List.Count;}} public XmlNodeList(Windows.Data.Xml.Dom.XmlNodeList list) { List = list; } #endif #if !WIN8 public System.Xml.XmlNodeList List { get; set ; } public int Count { get { return List.Count;}} public XmlNodeList(System.Xml.XmlNodeList list) { List = list; } #endif } From there I can then use my XmlNode and XmlNodeList in the calling code with out having to clutter the code with all of the additional #if switches. The challenge after this was the code that worked directly with the XMLDocument object needed to be seperate on both platforms since the method for populating the XmlDocument object is completly different on both platforms. To solve this issue. I made partial classes, one partial class for .NET and one for WinRT. Both projects have Links to the Partial Class that contains the code that is the same for the majority of the class, and the partial class contains the code that is unique to the version of the XmlDocument. The files with the little arrow in the lower left corner denotes 'linked files' and are shared in multiple projects but only exist in one location in source control. You can see that the _Win7 partial class is included directly in the project since it include code that is only for the .NET platform, where as it's cousin the _Win8 (not pictured above) has all of the code specific to the _Win8 platform. In the _Win7 partial class is this code: public partial class WUndergroundViewModel { public static WUndergroundData GetWeatherData( double lat, double lng) { WUndergroundData data = new WUndergroundData(); System.Net. WebClient c = new System.Net. WebClient(); string req = "http://api.wunderground.com/api/xxx/yesterday/conditions/forecast/q/[LAT],[LNG].xml" ; req = req.Replace( "[LAT]" , lat.ToString()); req = req.Replace( "[LNG]" , lng.ToString()); XmlDocument doc = new XmlDocument(); doc.Load(c.OpenRead(req)); foreach (XmlNode item in doc.SelectNodes("/response/features/feature" )) { switch (item.Node.InnerText) { case "yesterday" : ParseForecast( new FishingControls.XmlNodeList (doc.SelectNodes( "/response/forecast/txt_forecast/forecastdays/forecastday" )), new FishingControls.XmlNodeList (doc.SelectNodes( "/response/forecast/simpleforecast/forecastdays/forecastday" )), data); break ; case "conditions" : ParseCurrent( new FishingControls.XmlNode (doc.SelectSingleNode("/response/current_observation" )), data); break ; case "forecast" : ParseYesterday( new FishingControls.XmlNodeList (doc.SelectNodes( "/response/history/observations/observation" )),data); break ; } } return data; } } in _win8 partial class is this code: public partial class WUndergroundViewModel { public async static Task< WUndergroundData > GetWeatherData(double lat, double lng) { WUndergroundData data = new WUndergroundData (); HttpClient c = new HttpClient (); string req = "http://api.wunderground.com/api/xxxx/yesterday/conditions/forecast/q/[LAT],[LNG].xml" ; req = req.Replace( "[LAT]" , lat.ToString()); req = req.Replace( "[LNG]" , lng.ToString()); HttpResponseMessage msg = await c.GetAsync(req); string stream = await msg.Content.ReadAsStringAsync(); XmlDocument doc = new XmlDocument (); doc.LoadXml(stream, null); foreach ( IXmlNode item in doc.SelectNodes("/response/features/feature" )) { switch (item.InnerText) { case "yesterday" : ParseForecast( new FishingControls.XmlNodeList (doc.SelectNodes( "/response/forecast/txt_forecast/forecastdays/forecastday" )), new FishingControls.XmlNodeList (doc.SelectNodes( "/response/forecast/simpleforecast/forecastdays/forecastday" )), data); break; case "conditions" : ParseCurrent( new FishingControls.XmlNode (doc.SelectSingleNode("/response/current_observation" )), data); break; case "forecast" : ParseYesterday( new FishingControls.XmlNodeList (doc.SelectNodes( "/response/history/observations/observation")), data); break; } } return data; } } Summary: This method allows me to have common 'business' code for both platforms that is pretty clean, and I manage the technology differences separately. Thank you tostringtheory for your suggestion, I was considering that approach.

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Avoiding coupling

- by Seralize

It is also true that a system may become so coupled, where each class is dependent on other classes that depend on other classes, that it is no longer possible to make a change in one place without having a ripple effect and having to make subsequent changes in many places.[1] This is why using an interface or an abstract class can be valuable in any object-oriented software project. Quote from Wikipedia Starting from scratch I'm starting from scratch with a project that I recently finished because I found the code to be too tightly coupled and hard to refactor, even when using MVC. I will be using MVC on my new project aswell but want to try and avoid the pitfalls this time, hopefully with your help. Project summary My issue is that I really wish to keep the Controller as clean as possible, but it seems like I can't do this. The basic idea of the program is that the user picks wordlists which is sent to the game engine. It will pick random words from the lists until there are none left. Problem at hand My main problem is that the game will have 'modes', and need to check the input in different ways through a method called checkWord(), but exactly where to put this and how to abstract it properly is a challenge to me. I'm new to design patterns, so not sure whether there exist any might fit my problem. My own attempt at abstraction Here is what I've gotten so far after hours of 'refactoring' the design plans, and I know it's long, but it's the best I could do to try and give you an overview (Note: As this is the sketch, anything is subject to change, all help and advice is very welcome. Also note the marked coupling points): Wordlist class Wordlist { // Basic CRUD etc. here! // Other sample methods: public function wordlistCount($user_id) {} // Returns count of how many wordlists a user has public function getAll($user_id) {} // Returns all wordlists of a user } Word class Word { // Basic CRUD etc. here! // Other sample methods: public function wordCount($wordlist_id) {} // Returns count of words in a wordlist public function getAll($wordlist_id) {} // Returns all words from a wordlist public function getWordInfo($word_id) {} // Returns information about a word } Wordpicker class Wordpicker { // The class needs to know which words and wordlists to exclude protected $_used_words = array(); protected $_used_wordlists = array(); // Wordlists to pick words from protected $_wordlists = array(); /* Public Methods */ public function setWordlists($wordlists = array()) {} public function setUsedWords($used_words = array()) {} public function setUsedWordlists($used_wordlists = array()) {} public function getRandomWord() {} // COUPLING POINT! Will most likely need to communicate with both the Wordlist and Word classes /* Protected Methods */ protected function _checkAvailableWordlists() {} // COUPLING POINT! Might need to check if wordlists are deleted etc. protected function _checkAvailableWords() {} // COUPLING POINT! Method needs to get all words in a wordlist from the Word class } Game class Game { protected $_session_id; // The ID of a game session which gets stored in the database along with game details protected $_game_info = array(); // Game instantiation public function __construct($user_id) { if (! $this->_session_id = $this->_gameExists($user_id)) { // New game } else { // Resume game } } // This is the method I tried to make flexible by using abstract classes etc. // Does it even belong in this class at all? public function checkWord($answer, $native_word, $translation) {} // This method checks the answer against the native word / translation word, depending on game mode public function getGameInfo() {} // Returns information about a game session, or creates it if it does not exist public function deleteSession($session_id) {} // Deletes a game session from the database // Methods dealing with game session information protected function _gameExists($user_id) {} protected function _getProgress($session_id) {} protected function _updateProgress($game_info = array()) {} } The Game /* CONTROLLER */ /* "Guess the word" page */ // User input $game_type = $_POST['game_type']; // Chosen with radio buttons etc. $wordlists = $_POST['wordlists']; // Chosen with checkboxes etc. // Starts a new game or resumes one from the database $game = new Game($_SESSION['user_id']); $game_info = $game->getGameInfo(); // Instantiates a new Wordpicker $wordpicker = new Wordpicker(); $wordpicker->setWordlists((isset($game_info['wordlists'])) ? $game_info['wordlists'] : $wordlists); $wordpicker->setUsedWordlists((isset($game_info['used_wordlists'])) ? $game_info['used_wordlists'] : NULL); $wordpicker->setUsedWords((isset($game_info['used_words'])) ? $game_info['used_words'] : NULL); // Fetches an available word if (! $word_id = $wordpicker->getRandomWord()) { // No more words left - game over! $game->deleteSession($game_info['id']); redirect(); } else { // Presents word details to the user $word = new Word(); $word_info = $word->getWordInfo($word_id); } The Bit to Finish /* CONTROLLER */ /* "Check the answer" page */ // ?????????????????? ( http://pastebin.com/cc6MtLTR ) Make sure you toggle the 'Layout Width' to the right for a better view. Thanks in advance. Questions To which extent should objects be loosely coupled? If object A needs info from object B, how is it supposed to get this without losing too much cohesion? As suggested in the comments, models should hold all business logic. However, as objects should be independent, where to glue them together? Should the model contain some sort of "index" or "client" area which connects the dots? Edit: So basically what I should do for a start is to make a new model which I can more easily call with oneliners such as $model->doAction(); // Lots of code in here which uses classes! How about the method for checking words? Should it be it's own object? I'm not sure where I should put it as it's pretty much part of the 'game'. But on another hand, I could just leave out the 'abstraction and OOPness' and make it a method of the 'client model' which will be encapsulated from the controller anyway. Very unsure about this.

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Collision Detection problems in Voxel Engine (XNA)

- by Darestium

I am creating a minecraft like terrain engine in XNA and have had some collision problems for quite some time. I have checked and changed my code based on other peoples collision code and I still have the same problem. It always seems to be off by about a block. for instance, if I walk across a bridge which is one block high I fall through it. Also, if you walk towards a "row" of blocks like this: You are able to stand "inside" the left most one, and you collide with nothing in the right most side (where there is no block and is not visible on this image). Here is all my collision code: private void Move(GameTime gameTime, Vector3 direction) { float speed = playermovespeed * (float)gameTime.ElapsedGameTime.TotalSeconds; Matrix rotationMatrix = Matrix.CreateRotationY(player.Camera.LeftRightRotation); Vector3 rotatedVector = Vector3.Transform(direction, rotationMatrix); rotatedVector.Normalize(); Vector3 testVector = rotatedVector; testVector.Normalize(); Vector3 movePosition = player.position + testVector * speed; Vector3 midBodyPoint = movePosition + new Vector3(0, -0.7f, 0); Vector3 headPosition = movePosition + new Vector3(0, 0.1f, 0); if (!world.GetBlock(movePosition).IsSolid && !world.GetBlock(midBodyPoint).IsSolid && !world.GetBlock(headPosition).IsSolid) { player.position += rotatedVector * speed; } //player.position += rotatedVector * speed; } ... public void UpdatePosition(GameTime gameTime) { player.velocity.Y += playergravity * (float)gameTime.ElapsedGameTime.TotalSeconds; Vector3 footPosition = player.Position + new Vector3(0f, -1.5f, 0f); Vector3 headPosition = player.Position + new Vector3(0f, 0.1f, 0f); // If the block below the player is solid the Y velocity should be zero if (world.GetBlock(footPosition).IsSolid || world.GetBlock(headPosition).IsSolid) { player.velocity.Y = 0; } UpdateJump(gameTime); UpdateCounter(gameTime); ProcessInput(gameTime); player.Position = player.Position + player.velocity * (float)gameTime.ElapsedGameTime.TotalSeconds; velocity = Vector3.Zero; } and the one and only function in the camera class: protected void CalculateView() { Matrix rotationMatrix = Matrix.CreateRotationX(upDownRotation) * Matrix.CreateRotationY(leftRightRotation); lookVector = Vector3.Transform(Vector3.Forward, rotationMatrix); cameraFinalTarget = Position + lookVector; Vector3 cameraRotatedUpVector = Vector3.Transform(Vector3.Up, rotationMatrix); viewMatrix = Matrix.CreateLookAt(Position, cameraFinalTarget, cameraRotatedUpVector); } which is called when the rotation variables are changed: public float LeftRightRotation { get { return leftRightRotation; } set { leftRightRotation = value; CalculateView(); } } public float UpDownRotation { get { return upDownRotation; } set { upDownRotation = value; CalculateView(); } } World class: public Block GetBlock(int x, int y, int z) { if (InBounds(x, y, z)) { Vector3i regionalPosition = GetRegionalPosition(x, y, z); Vector3i region = GetRegionPosition(x, y, z); return regions[region.X, region.Y, region.Z].Blocks[regionalPosition.X, regionalPosition.Y, regionalPosition.Z]; } return new Block(BlockType.none); } public Vector3i GetRegionPosition(int x, int y, int z) { int regionx = x == 0 ? 0 : x / Variables.REGION_SIZE_X; int regiony = y == 0 ? 0 : y / Variables.REGION_SIZE_Y; int regionz = z == 0 ? 0 : z / Variables.REGION_SIZE_Z; return new Vector3i(regionx, regiony, regionz); } public Vector3i GetRegionalPosition(int x, int y, int z) { int regionx = x == 0 ? 0 : x / Variables.REGION_SIZE_X; int X = x % Variables.REGION_SIZE_X; int regiony = y == 0 ? 0 : y / Variables.REGION_SIZE_Y; int Y = y % Variables.REGION_SIZE_Y; int regionz = z == 0 ? 0 : z / Variables.REGION_SIZE_Z; int Z = z % Variables.REGION_SIZE_Z; return new Vector3i(X, Y, Z); } Any ideas how to fix this problem? EDIT 1: Graphic of the problem: EDIT 2 GetBlock, Vector3 version: public Block GetBlock(Vector3 position) { int x = (int)Math.Floor(position.X); int y = (int)Math.Floor(position.Y); int z = (int)Math.Ceiling(position.Z); Block block = GetBlock(x, y, z); return block; } Now, the thing is I tested the theroy that the Z is always "off by one" and by ceiling the value it actually works as intended. Altough it still could be greatly more accurate (when you go down holes you can see through the sides, and I doubt it will work with negitive positions). I also does not feel clean Flooring the X and Y values and just Ceiling the Z. I am surely not doing something correctly still.

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My own personal use of Oracle Linux

- by wcoekaer

It always is easier to explain something with examples... Many people still don't seem to understand some of the convenient things around using Oracle Linux and since I personally (surprise!) use it at home, let me give you an idea. I have quite a few servers at home and I also have 2 hosted servers with a hosted provider. The servers at home I use mostly to play with random Linux related things, or with Oracle VM or just try out various new Oracle products to learn more. I like the technology, it's like a hobby really. To be able to have a good installation experience and use an officially certified Linux distribution and not waste time trying to find the right libraries, I, of course, use Oracle Linux. Now, at least I can get a copy of Oracle Linux for free (even if I was not working for Oracle) and I can/could use that on as many servers at home (or at my company if I worked elsewhere) for testing, development and production. I just go to http://edelivery.oracle.com/linux and download the version(s) I want and off I go. Now, I also have the right (and not because I am an employee) to take those images and put them on my own server and give them to someone else, I in fact, just recently set up my own mirror on my own hosted server. I don't have to remove oracle-logos, I don't have to rebuild the ISO images, I don't have to recompile anything, I can just put the whole binary distribution on my own server without contract. Perfectly free to do so. Of course the source code of all of this is there, I have a copy of the UEK code at home, just cloned from https://oss.oracle.com/git/?p=linux-2.6-unbreakable.git. And as you can see, the entire changelog, checkins, merges from Linus's tree, complete overview of everything that got changed from kernel to kernel, from patch to patch, errata to errata. No obfuscating, no tar balls and spending time with diff, or go read bug reports to find out what changed (seems silly to me). Some of my servers are on the external network and I need to be current with security errata, but guess what, no problem, my servers are hooked up to http://public-yum.oracle.com which is open, free, and completely up to date, in a consistent, reliable way with any errata, security or bugfix. So I have nothing to worry about. Also, not because I am an employee. Anyone can. And, with this, I also can, and have, set up my own mirror site that hosts these RPMs. both binary and source rpms. Because I am free to get them and distribute them. I am quite capable of supporting my servers on my own, so I don't need to rely on the support organization so I don't need to have a support subscription :-). So I don't need to pay. Neither would you, at least not with Oracle Linux. Another cool thing. The hosted servers came (unfortunately) with Centos installed. While Centos works just fine as is, I tend to prefer to be current with my security errata(reliably) and I prefer to just maintain one yum repository instead of 2, I converted them over to Oracle Linux as well (in place) so they happily receive and use the exact same RPMs. Since Oracle Linux is exactly the same from a user/application point of view as RHEL, including files like /etc/redhat-release and no changes from .el. to .centos. I know I have nothing to worry about installing one of the RHEL applications. So, OL everywhere makes my life a lot easier and why not... Next! Since I run Oracle VM and I have -tons- of VM's on my machines, in some cases on my big WOPR box I have 15-20 VMs running. Well, no problem, OL is free and I don't have to worry about counting the number of VMs, whether it's 1, or 4, or more than 10 ... like some other alternatives started doing... and finally :) I like to try out new stuff, not 3 year old stuff. So with UEK2 as part of OL6 (and 6.3 in particular) I can play with a 3.0.x based kernel and it just installs and runs perfectly clean with OL6, so quite current stuff in an environment that I know works, no need to toy around with an unsupported pre-alpha upstream distribution with libraries and versions that are not compatible with production software (I have nothing against ubuntu or fedora or opensuse... just not what I can rely on or use for what I need, and I don't need a desktop). pretty compelling. I say... and again, it doesn't matter that I work for Oracle, if I was working elsewhere, or not at all, all of the above would still apply. Student, teacher, developer, whatever. contrast this with $349 for 2 sockets and oneguest and selfsupport per year to even just get the software bits.

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No More NCrunch For Me

- by Steve Wilkes

When I opened up Visual Studio this morning, I was greeted with this little popup: NCrunch is a Visual Studio add-in which runs your tests while you work so you know if and when you've broken anything, as well as providing coverage indicators in the IDE and coverage metrics on demand. It recently went commercial (which I thought was fair enough), and time is running out for the free version I've been using for the last couple of months. From my experiences using NCrunch I'm going to let it expire, and go about my business without it. Here's why. Before I start, let me say that I think NCrunch is a good product, which is to say it's had a positive impact on my programming. I've used it to help test-drive a library I'm making right from the start of the project, and especially at the beginning it was very useful to have it run all my tests whenever I made a change. The first problem is that while that was cool to start with, it’s recently become a bit of a chore. Problems Running Tests NCrunch has two 'engine modes' in which it can run tests for you - it can run all your tests when you make a change, or it can figure out which tests were impacted and only run those. Unfortunately, it became clear pretty early on that that second option (which is marked as 'experimental') wasn't really working for me, so I had to have it run everything. With a smallish number of tests and while I was adding new features that was great, but I've now got 445 tests (still not exactly loads) and am more in a 'clean and tidy' mode where I know that a change I'm making will probably only affect a particular subset of the tests. With that in mind it's a bit of a drag sitting there after I make a change and having to wait for NCrunch to run everything. I could disable it and manually run the tests I know are impacted, but then what's the point of having NCrunch? If the 'impacted only' engine mode worked well this problem would go away, but that's not what I found. Secondly, what's wrong with this picture? I've got 445 tests, and NCrunch has queued 455 tests to run. So it's queued duplicate tests - in this quickly-screenshotted case 10, but I've seen the total queue get up over 600. If I'm already itchy waiting for it to run all my tests against a change I know only affects a few, I'm even itchier waiting for it to run a lot of them twice. Problems With Code Coverage NCrunch marks each line of code with a dot to say if it's covered by tests - a black dot says the line isn't covered, a red dot says it's covered but at least one of the covering tests is failing, and a green dot means all the covering tests pass. It also calculates coverage statistics for you. Unfortunately, there's a couple of flaws in the coverage. Firstly, it doesn't support ExcludeFromCodeCoverage attributes. This feature has been requested and I expect will be included in a later release, but right now it doesn't. So this: ...is counted as a non-covered line, and drags your coverage statistics down. Hmph. As well as that, coverage of certain types of code is missed. This: ...is definitely covered. I am 100% absolutely certain it is, by several tests. NCrunch doesn't pick it up, down go my coverage statistics. I've had NCrunch find genuinely uncovered code which I've been able to remove, and that's great, but what's the coverage percentage on this project? Umm... I don't know. Conclusion None of these are major, tool-crippling problems, and I expect NCrunch to get much better in future releases. The current version has some great features, like this: ...that's a line of code with a failing test covering it, and NCrunch can run that failing test and take me to that line exquisitely easily. That's awesome! I'd happily pay for a tool that can do that. But here's the thing: NCrunch (currently) costs $159 (about £100) for a personal licence and $289 (about £180) for a commercial one. I'm not sure which one I'd need as my project is a personal one which I'm intending to open-source, but I'm a professional, self-employed developer, but in any case - that seems like a lot of money for an imperfect tool. If it did everything it's advertised to do more or less perfectly I'd consider it, but it doesn't. So no more NCrunch for me.

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Some Early Considerations

- by Chris Massey

Following on from my previous post, I want to say "thank you" to everyone who has got in touch and got involved – you are pioneers! An update on where we are right now: paper prototypes v1 To be more specific, we’ve picked two of the ideas that seem to have more pros than cons, turned them into Balsamiq mockups, and are getting them fleshed out with realistic content. We’ll initially make these available to the aforementioned pioneers (thank you again), roll in the feedback, and then open up to get more data on what works and what doesn’t. If you’ve got any questions about this (or what we’re working on right now), feel free to ask me in the comments below. I’ve had a few people express an interest in the process we’re going through, and I’m more than happy to share details more frequently as we go along – not least because you, dear reader, will help us stay on target and create something Good. To start with, here’s a quick flashback to bring you all up to speed. A Brief Retrospective As you may already know, we’re creating a new publishing asset specifically focused on providing great content for web developers. We don’t yet know exactly what this thing will look like, or exactly how it will work, but we know we want to create something that is useful different. For my part, I’m seriously excited at the prospect of building a genuinely digital publishing system (as opposed to what most publishing is these days, which is print-style publishing which just happens to be on the web). The main challenge at this point is working out our build-measure-assess loop to speed up our experimental turn-around, and that’ll get better as we run more trials. Of course, there are a few things we’ve been pondering at this early conceptual stage: Do we publishing about heterogeneous technology stacks from day 1, or do we start with ASP.NET (which we’re familiar with) & branch out later? There are challenges with either approach. What publishing "modes" are already being well-handled? For example, the likes of Pluralsight, TekPub, and Treehouse have pretty much nailed video training (debate about price, if you like), and unless we think we can do it faster / better / cheaper (unlikely, for the record), we should leave them to it. Where should we base whatever we create? Should we create a completely new asset under a new name, graft something onto Simple-Talk (like the labs), or just build something directly into Simple-Talk? It sounds trivial, but it does have at least some impact on infrastructure and what how we manage the different types of content we (will) have. Are there any obvious problems or niches that we think could address really well, or should we just throw ideas out and see what readers respond to? What kind of users do we want to provide for? This actually deserves a little bit of unpacking… Why are you here? We currently divide readers into (broadly) the categories: Category 1: I know nothing about X, and I’d like to learn about it. Category 2: I know something about X, but I’d like to learn how to do something specific with it. Category 3: Ah man, I have a problem with X, and I need to fix it now. Now that I think about it, I might also include a 4th class of reader: Category 4: I’m looking for something interesting to engage my brain. These are clearly task-based categorizations, and depending on which task you’re performing when you arrive here, you’re going to need different types of content, or will have specific discovery needs. One of the questions that’s at the back of my mind whenever I consider a new idea is “How many of the categories will this satisfy?” As an example, typical video training is very well suited to categories 1, 2, and 4. StackOverflow is very well suited to category 3, and serves as a sign-posting system to the rest. Clearly it’s not necessary to satisfy every category need to be useful and popular, but being aware of what behavior readers might be exhibiting when they arrive will help us tune our ideas appropriately. < / Flashback > We don’t have clean answers to most of these considerations – they’re things we’re aware of, and each idea we look at is going to be best suited to a different mix of the options I’ve described. Our first experimental loop will be coming full circle in the next few days, so we should start to see how the different possibilities vary between ideas. Free to chime in with questions and suggestions about anything I’ve just brain-dumped, or at any stage as we go along. If you see anything that intrigued or enrages you, or just have an idea you’d like to share, I’d love to hear from you.

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The Dreaded Startup Repair Loop on Win 7

- by HighAltitudeCoder

For most people, upgrading to Windows 7 has been a relatively painless process. Not me. I am in the unlucky 1% or less who had a somewhat less pleasant experience. First, I cloned my entire onto a larger (and much faster) solid state hard drive, only experiencing minimal problems. Then, I bought the Retail version of Windows 7 Ultimate, took a deep breath and... oh yeah, I almost forgot - BACK UP THE COMPUTER. The next morning I upgraded to Win 7 and everything seemed fine, until... I rebooted the system, the nice Windows 7 launch graphics come up, it's about to launch and AWWW, are you kidding me?!?! Back to the BIOS splash screen? Next comes the sequence of failure - attempt repair - unable to repair - do you want to wipe your hard drive decisions. Because I purchased the retail version, a number is provided where I could call Microsoft Tech support. When I did, they instructed me to click "Install" from my installation CD, which did not work. When I tried the "Upgrade" option, it reaches an impasse, telling you that yoiu have a newer version of Win 7, and thus cannot Upgrade. If you choose "Install" you willl lose everything... files, programs, EVERYTHING. Or at least this is what it tells you. I was not willing to take the risk. To make things worse, I had installed a new antivirus software application before I realized my system was unstable (Trend Micro Titanium Internet Security), and this was causing additional problems. One interesting thing, and the only saving grace as it turns out, was that my system WOULD successfully reboot into the OS if I chose to restart it, rather than shut it down. If I chose to shut down, I would have to go through the loop again until I was given the option to restart. As it turned out, I needed to update my BIOS. I assumed that since I had updated my BIOS a long time ago to settings that were stable under Windows Vista Ultimate x64, I incorrectly expected Win 7 to adopt the same settings and didn't expect there to be any problems. WRONG. My BIOS had a setting to halt the boot cycle if various kinds of errors were detected. Windows Vista didn't care about this, but forget it under Windows 7. I turned immediately corrected that BIOS setting. Next, there were the two separate BIOS settings: enable USB mouse and enable USB keyboard. The only sequence of events that would work were to start my reboot process over from stratch with a hard-wired non-usb keyboard and mouse. Whent the system booted under these settings, it doesn't detect any errors due to either the mouse or keyboard, and actually booted for the first time in a long while (let me tell ya, that's an amazing experience after fiddling with settings for two entire weekends!) Next step: leave your old mouse and keyboard connected, but also connect your other two devices (mouse, keyboard) that use USB connections. During the boot cycle, the operating system will not fail due to missing requirements during startup, and it will then pick up the new drivers necessary to use your new hardware. If you think you are in the clear here, you are wrong. The next VERY IMPORTANT step is to remember to change your settings in the BIOS upon next startup. Specifically, yoiu will need ot change your BIOS to enable USB mouse and enable USB keyboard input. If you don't, Windows will detect an incompatibility upon the next startup, and you will be stuck once again in the endless cycle of reboot/Startup Repair/reboot/Startup Repair, without ever reaching a successful boot. Here's the thing - the BIOS and the drivers registered in Win 7 need to match. If they don't, you're going to lose another weekend worrying and fiddling, all the while wondering if you've permanently damaged your hard drive beyond repair. (Sigh). In the end, things worked out. I must note that it is saddening to see how many posts there are out there that recommend just doing a clean install, as if it's the only option. How many countless poor souls have lost their data, their backups, their pictures and videos, all for nothing other than the fact that the person giving advice just didn't know what to do at that point? My advice to you, try having a look at your BIOS settings first and making sure Win 7 can find your BIOS settings, and also disabling in your BIOS anything that might halt your system boot-up process if it encounters errors.

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Solaris 11.1 changes building of code past the point of __NORETURN

- by alanc

While Solaris 11.1 was under development, we started seeing some errors in the builds of the upstream X.Org git master sources, such as: "Display.c", line 65: Function has no return statement : x_io_error_handler "hostx.c", line 341: Function has no return statement : x_io_error_handler from functions that were defined to match a specific callback definition that declared them as returning an int if they did return, but these were calling exit() instead of returning so hadn't listed a return value. These had been generating warnings for years which we'd been ignoring, but X.Org has made enough progress in cleaning up code for compiler warnings and static analysis issues lately, that the community turned up the default error levels, including the gcc flag -Werror=return-type and the equivalent Solaris Studio cc flags -v -errwarn=E_FUNC_HAS_NO_RETURN_STMT, so now these became errors that stopped the build. Yet on Solaris, gcc built this code fine, while Studio errored out. Investigation showed this was due to the Solaris headers, which during Solaris 10 development added a number of annotations to the headers when gcc was being used for the amd64 kernel bringup before the Studio amd64 port was ready. Since Studio did not support the inline form of these annotations at the time, but instead used #pragma for them, the definitions were only present for gcc. To resolve this, I fixed both sides of the problem, so that it would work for building new X.Org sources on older Solaris releases or with older Studio compilers, as well as fixing the general problem before it broke more software building on Solaris. To the X.Org sources, I added the traditional Studio #pragma does_not_return to recognize that functions like exit() don't ever return, in patches such as this Xserver patch. Adding a dummy return statement was ruled out as that introduced unreachable code errors from compilers and analyzers that correctly realized you couldn't reach that code after a return statement. And on the Solaris 11.1 side, I updated the annotation definitions in <sys/ccompile.h> to enable for Studio 12.0 and later compilers the annotations already existing in a number of system headers for functions like exit() and abort(). If you look in that file you'll see the annotations we currently use, though the forms there haven't gone through review to become a Committed interface, so may change in the future. Actually getting this integrated into Solaris though took a bit more work than just editing one header file. Our ELF binary build comparison tool, wsdiff, actually showed a large number of differences in the resulting binaries due to the compiler using this information for branch prediction, code path analysis, and other possible optimizations, so after comparing enough of the disassembly output to be comfortable with the changes, we also made sure to get this in early enough in the release cycle so that it would get plenty of test exposure before the release. It also required updating quite a bit of code to avoid introducing new lint or compiler warnings or errors, and people building applications on top of Solaris 11.1 and later may need to make similar changes if they want to keep their build logs similarly clean. Previously, if you had a function that was declared with a non-void return type, lint and cc would warn if you didn't return a value, even if you called a function like exit() or panic() that ended execution. For instance: #include <stdlib.h> int callback(int status) { if (status == 0) return status; exit(status); } would previously require a never executed return 0; after the exit() to avoid lint warning "function falls off bottom without returning value". Now the compiler & lint will both issue "statement not reached" warnings for a return 0; after the final exit(), allowing (or in some cases, requiring) it to be removed. However, if there is no return statement anywhere in the function, lint will warn that you've declared a function returning a value that never does so, suggesting you can declare it as void. Unfortunately, if your function signature is required to match a certain form, such as in a callback, you not be able to do so, and will need to add a /* LINTED */ to the end of the function. If you need your code to build on both a newer and an older release, then you will either need to #ifdef these unreachable statements, or, to keep your sources common across releases, add to your sources the corresponding #pragma recognized by both current and older compiler versions, such as: #pragma does_not_return(exit) #pragma does_not_return(panic) Hopefully this little extra work is paid for by the compilers & code analyzers being able to better understand your code paths, giving you better optimizations and more accurate errors & warning messages.

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Can't change text color in Microsoft Word 2010

- by Wesley

I have Microsoft Office 2010 32-bit running on Windows 7 32-bit. When text is highlighted and a color is selected from the mini-toolbar or the ribbon, the text does not change color. If I change the color for multiple words, and select a different color for each word, the toolbar and ribbon will reflect each of the different colors that I chose, however it is not displayed in the document. So it appears that Word is aware of the text color and not as if it is simply not applying the change. What may be causing this inability to view text colors and how might I fix it? My only troubleshooting attempt so far has been to perform a repair installation of Office. EDIT 1 I created a document, typed a word, selected it and changed the color. I then saved the document as HTML. The text did not change color. This is the HTML in the document: <html xmlns:v="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:vml" xmlns:o="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" xmlns:w="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:word" xmlns:m="http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/2004/12/omml" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40"> <head> <meta http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; charset=windows-1252"> <meta name=ProgId content=Word.Document> <meta name=Generator content="Microsoft Word 14"> <meta name=Originator content="Microsoft Word 14"> <link rel=File-List href="Document_1_files/filelist.xml">  <link rel=themeData href="Document_1_files/themedata.thmx"> <link rel=colorSchemeMapping href="Document_1_files/colorschememapping.xml">  <style>  </style>  </head> <body lang=EN-US style='tab-interval:.5in'> <div class=WordSection1> <p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class=MsoNormal><span class=GramE><span style='color:red'>blah</span></span><span style='color:red'><o:p></o:p></span></p> </div> </body> </html> EDIT 2 I recorded a macro and did the following: Typed a word Selected the word Changed the color. Oddly, I had some strange issues while the macro was recorded. I could not select text with my cursor. I had to select the text with control a and then apply the color change. I then couldn't deselect the selected text. Nonetheless, the text showed that it had a different color in the toolbar, but the color did not display in the document. Here's the macro: Sub Change_Text_Color() ' ' Change_Text_Color Macro ' ' Selection.TypeText Text:="Test Text" Selection.WholeStory Selection.WholeStory End Sub EDIT 3 I opened WordPad and created some text and was able to successfully change the color. If I copy and paste the colored text into a Word 2010 document, the color is lost. However, if you place the I-beam in the text and then look at the color selection drop-down menu on the ribbon or mini-toolbar, you can see that the proper color that the text should be in is highlighted. Edit 4 I uninstalled the entire Office 2010 Suite, rebooted and then reinstalled the suite. No change in behavior. Edit 5 Text cannot be colored in Excel either.

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Postfix - am I sending spam?

- by olrehm

today I received like 30 messages within 5 minutes telling me that some mail I send could not be delivered, mostly to *.ru email addresses which I did not send any mail to. I have my own webserver (postfix/dovecot) set up using this guide (http://workaround.org/ispmail/lenny) but adjusted a little bit for Ubuntu. I tested whether I am an Open Relay which I am apparently not. Now there are two possible reasons for the above mentioned emails: Either I am sending out spam, or somebody wants me to think that, correct? How can I check this? I selected one particular address that I supposedly send spam to. Then I searched my mail.log for this entry. I found two blocks that record that somebody from the server connected to my server and delivered some message to two different users. I cannot find an entry reporting that anyone from my server send an email to that server. Does this mean its just some mail to scare me or could it still have been send by me in the first place? Here is one such block from the log (I replaced some confidential stuff): Jun 26 23:23:28 mycustomernumber postfix/smtpd[29970]: connect from mx.webstyle.ru[195.144.251.97] Jun 26 23:23:29 mycustomernumber postfix/smtpd[29970]: 044991528995: client=mx.webstyle.ru[195.144.251.97] Jun 26 23:23:29 mycustomernumber postfix/cleanup[29974]: 044991528995: message-id=<[email protected]> Jun 26 23:23:29 mycustomernumber postfix/qmgr[3369]: 044991528995: from=<>, size=2198, nrcpt=1 (queue active) Jun 26 23:23:29 mycustomernumber amavis[28598]: (28598-11) ESMTP::10024 /var/lib/amavis/tmp/amavis-20110626T223137-28598: <> -> <[email protected]> SIZE=2198 Received: from mycustomernumber.stratoserver.net ([127.0.0.1]) by localhost (rehmsen.de [127.0.0.1]) (amavisd-new, port 10024) with ESMTP for <[email protected]>; Sun, 26 Jun 2011 23:23:29 +0200 (CEST) Jun 26 23:23:29 mycustomernumber amavis[28598]: (28598-11) Checking: YakjkrdFq6A8 [195.144.251.97] <> -> <[email protected]> Jun 26 23:23:29 mycustomernumber postfix/smtpd[29970]: disconnect from mx.webstyle.ru[195.144.251.97] Jun 26 23:23:29 mycustomernumber amavis[28598]: (28598-11) lookup_sql_field(id) (WARN: no such field in the SQL table), "[email protected]" result=undef Jun 26 23:23:32 mycustomernumber postfix/smtpd[29979]: connect from localhost.localdomain[127.0.0.1] Jun 26 23:23:32 mycustomernumber postfix/smtpd[29979]: 0A1FA1528A21: client=localhost.localdomain[127.0.0.1] Jun 26 23:23:32 mycustomernumber postfix/cleanup[29974]: 0A1FA1528A21: message-id=<[email protected]> Jun 26 23:23:32 mycustomernumber postfix/qmgr[3369]: 0A1FA1528A21: from=<>, size=2841, nrcpt=1 (queue active) Jun 26 23:23:32 mycustomernumber postfix/smtpd[29979]: disconnect from localhost.localdomain[127.0.0.1] Jun 26 23:23:32 mycustomernumber amavis[28598]: (28598-11) FWD via SMTP: <> -> <[email protected]>,BODY=7BIT 250 2.0.0 Ok, id=28598-11, from MTA([127.0.0.1]:10025): 250 2.0.0 Ok: queued as 0A1FA1528A21 Jun 26 23:23:32 mycustomernumber amavis[28598]: (28598-11) Passed CLEAN, [195.144.251.97] [195.144.251.97] <> -> <[email protected]>, Message-ID: <[email protected]>, mail_id: YakjkrdFq6A8, Hits: 2.249, size: 2197, queued_as: 0A1FA1528A21, 2882 ms Jun 26 23:23:32 mycustomernumber postfix/smtp[29975]: 044991528995: to=<[email protected]>, relay=127.0.0.1[127.0.0.1]:10024, delay=3.3, delays=0.39/0.01/0.01/2.9, dsn=2.0.0, status=sent (250 2.0.0 Ok, id=28598-11, from MTA([127.0.0.1]:10025): 250 2.0.0 Ok: queued as 0A1FA1528A21) Jun 26 23:23:32 mycustomernumber postfix/qmgr[3369]: 044991528995: removed Jun 26 23:23:33 mycustomernumber postfix/smtp[29980]: 0A1FA1528A21: to=<[email protected]>, orig_to=<[email protected]>, relay=mx3.hotmail.com[65.54.188.110]:25, delay=1.2, delays=0.15/0.02/0.51/0.55, dsn=2.0.0, status=sent (250 <[email protected]> Queued mail for delivery) Jun 26 23:23:33 mycustomernumber postfix/qmgr[3369]: 0A1FA1528A21: removed Jun 26 23:26:49 mycustomernumber postfix/anvil[29972]: statistics: max connection rate 1/60s for (smtp:195.144.251.97) at Jun 26 23:23:28 Jun 26 23:26:49 mycustomernumber postfix/anvil[29972]: statistics: max connection count 1 for (smtp:195.144.251.97) at Jun 26 23:23:28 Jun 26 23:26:49 mycustomernumber postfix/anvil[29972]: statistics: max cache size 1 at Jun 26 23:23:28 I can provide more info if you tell me what you need to know. Thank you for you help!

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Can't get MySQL to install

- by James Marthenal

I'd like to think I know what I'm doing in a Unix shell but maybe not. I made a mistake in a configuration file for MySQL, so I decided to just uninstall it and then reinstall it, so I did: sudo apt-get --purge remove mysql-server mysql-server-5.0 mysql-client The files were deleted, so I then tried to install it, but it didn't ask me for a root password or anything else, so I uninstalled it using the above command again and then did sudo rm -rf /etc/mysql sudo rm /etc/init.d/mysql sudo rm -rf /var/lib/mysql* I then restarted the computer then installed it again: sudo apt-get install mysql-server mysql-client It asked for a root password, and everything looked like it would work, until I saw this: $ sudo apt-get install mysql-server mysql-client Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done The following extra packages will be installed: mysql-server-5.0 Suggested packages: tinyca The following NEW packages will be installed: mysql-client mysql-server mysql-server-5.0 0 upgraded, 3 newly installed, 0 to remove and 1 not upgraded. Need to get 0B/27.4MB of archives. After this operation, 86.7MB of additional disk space will be used. Do you want to continue [Y/n]? y WARNING: The following packages cannot be authenticated! mysql-server-5.0 mysql-client mysql-server Authentication warning overridden. Preconfiguring packages ... Can't exec "/tmp/mysql-server-5.0.config.28101": Permission denied at /usr/share/perl/5.10/IPC/Open3.pm line 168. open2: exec of /tmp/mysql-server-5.0.config.28101 configure failed at /usr/share/perl5/Debconf/ConfModule.pm line 59 mysql-server-5.0 failed to preconfigure, with exit status 255 Selecting previously deselected package mysql-server-5.0. (Reading database ... 160284 files and directories currently installed.) Unpacking mysql-server-5.0 (from .../mysql-server-5.0_5.0.51a-24+lenny5_amd64.deb) ... Selecting previously deselected package mysql-client. Unpacking mysql-client (from .../mysql-client_5.0.51a-24+lenny5_all.deb) ... Selecting previously deselected package mysql-server. Unpacking mysql-server (from .../mysql-server_5.0.51a-24+lenny5_all.deb) ... Processing triggers for man-db ... Setting up mysql-server-5.0 (5.0.51a-24+lenny5) ... Stopping MySQL database server: mysqld. /var/lib/dpkg/info/mysql-server-5.0.postinst: line 144: /etc/mysql/conf.d/old_passwords.cnf: No such file or directory dpkg: error processing mysql-server-5.0 (--configure): subprocess post-installation script returned error exit status 1 Setting up mysql-client (5.0.51a-24+lenny5) ... dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of mysql-server: mysql-server depends on mysql-server-5.0; however: Package mysql-server-5.0 is not configured yet. dpkg: error processing mysql-server (--configure): dependency problems - leaving unconfigured Errors were encountered while processing: mysql-server-5.0 mysql-server E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1) Now I can't seem to figure out what to do. I just want to get a clean MySQL installation at this point. I'm running the latest stable release of Debian. All help is appreciated—thanks! Edit: I looked at this similar question, which suggests that I uninstall mysql-common, but when I try to do so I see: The following packages will be REMOVED: apache2 apache2-mpm-prefork apache2-utils apache2.2-common git-svn libapache2-mod-php5 libapache2-mod-python libapache2-svn libaprutil1 libdbd-mysql-perl libdbd-mysql-rubygem libmysql-ruby libmysql-ruby1.8 libmysql-rubygem libmysqlclient15-dev libmysqlclient15off librdf-perl librdf0 libserf-0-0 libsvn-perl libsvn1 mysql-client-5.0 mysql-common mytop ndn-apache22-php5 ndn-apache22-svn ndn-interpreters ndn-lighttpd ndn-netsaint-plugins ndn-perl-modules ndn-php5-cgi ndn-php5-xcache ndn-php53 ndn-php53-suhosin ndn-rubygems php5 php5-mcrypt php5-mysql proftpd proftpd-mod-mysql python-django python-mysqldb python-subversion python-svn subversion subversion-tools trac zendoptimizer 0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 48 to remove and 1 not upgraded. Eeek! Any suggestions?

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Apache 2.2 and FastCGI stops responding, warnings, crashes

- by Brett

I've seen this question posted a few times using a Google search, with no real answers. I have a multi-threaded FastCGI application running with Apache 2.2 on FreeBSD 7.2. There are a few issues with it, and I am unable to really figure out the source of the problem even after poking through a bunch of the mod_fastcgi source code. My FastCGI application gets anywhere from 2 to 15 or so hits per second, and mostly services a back-end API (the majority of web server usage is for this, and not actually serving content). Everything seems to work ok under normal conditions, but recently this problem has been becoming worse. It starts out with the FastCGI process manager apparently trying to close unneeded processes, sending them a SIGTERM signal. I catch the signal, clean up some stuff, and exit (by calling exit()) with status code 0. This process seems to result in three log messages in my httpd error log: [Tue Jun 01 14:03:31 2010] [warn] FastCGI: (dynamic) server "/home/program/wwwroot/domains/www.mydomain.com/cgi-bin/program.cgi" (pid 98182) termination signaled [Tue Jun 01 14:03:31 2010] [warn] FastCGI: (dynamic) server "/home/program/wwwroot/domains/www.mydomain.com/cgi-bin/program.cgi" (pid 98182) terminated by calling exit with status '0' [Tue Jun 01 14:03:31 2010] [warn] FastCGI: (dynamic) server "/home/program/wwwroot/domains/www.mydomain.com/cgi-bin/program.cgi" restarted (pid 98294) I am not sure why it says it is restarting the process, but in any case no core dump is ever generated so I do believe it is the FastCGI process manager doing it's thing. This makes sense because it begins to happen after the initial load increase from restarting Apache. Since it's down for a few seconds, it gets hit with a couple of hundred requests over the first few seconds it's running again (sometimes even hitting the upper limit of MAXCLIENTS in Apache), and this seems to be the process manager doing the work of spawning more processes to handle the increased load. So this all seems fine, but here is where things get weird. There are really two problems that I see. First, my multithreaded FastCGI process spawns 25 worker threads, and all seem to be used according to my internal log files (multiple processes are clearly using multiple threads to do work). However it seems that 3 or 4 FastCGI processes is not enough to handle the 5 to 15 hit per second load, even though the requests take about .02s or so to process internally. In order to be at all responsive, it seems I need 50 or more FastCGI processes, leading me to believe that FastCGI does not realize that my program is multithreaded. I've read the documentation at http://www.fastcgi.com/mod_fastcgi/docs/mod_fastcgi.html and do not see any option pertaining to multithreaded-ness, and my internal code is more or less set up just like the examples provided by the FastCGI library. The second problem I am having is that once process termination has happened a bunch of times as above (and seemingly at random), I begin getting a lot of these messages in my error log: [Tue Jun 01 14:06:22 2010] [warn] (32)Broken pipe: FastCGI: write() to PM failed (ignore if a restart or shutdown is pending) The messages occur for about half the hits I get to the server, and it completely kills the responsiveness of my application - it seems FastCGI will look for a working "pipe" until it finds one, and fail to realize that whatever application it is trying to contact is dead. It does still work though, it's just incredibly unresponsive - sometimes taking up to 40 or so seconds to process a request. I recompiled mod_fastcgi with some extra debugging around the point of the error message, and it appears that the error happens when it tries to write() to the application. The call to write() fails with a -1 return code, and sets errno to EPIPE. I am noticing that the issue happens mostly when either a crash occurs in one of the FastCGI processes, or a bunch of them are seemingly terminated by the process manager. I haven't had any core dumps though, except for one, where the backtrace outputted by gdb is just a single call to free() at address 0x0000000000000000 with nothing else in the stack trace, so I don't really know what to make of that. I'm thinking it happens sometime after the SIGTERM signal is caught, maybe some global variable not being cleaned up properly or something.

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Error when installing Lync Server, "Installing OcsCore.msi(Feature_LocalMgmtStore)...failure code 1603"

- by Trikks

Im battling to install Lync Server in a test environment and are at the "Install Local Configuration Store" step. The prerequisites seems alright but bombs when installing the OcsCore.msi ... Checking prerequisite SqlNativeClient...prerequisite satisfied. Checking prerequisite SqlBackcompat...prerequisite satisfied. Checking prerequisite UcmaRedist...prerequisite satisfied. Installing OcsCore.msi(Feature_LocalMgmtStore)...failure code 1603 Error returned while installing OcsCore.msi(Feature_LocalMgmtStore), code 1603. Please consult log at C:\Users\Administrator.HAWC\AppData\Local\Temp\1\Add-OcsCore.msi-Feature_LocalMgmtStore-[2012_07_08][12_00_27].log The logfile doesn't really help me either, this is the end of it Property(S): Privileged = 1 Property(S): USERNAME = Windows User Property(S): DATABASE = C:\Windows\Installer\9525f.msi Property(S): OriginalDatabase = C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Lync Server\Deployment\cache\4.0.7577.0\setup\OcsCore.msi Property(S): UILevel = 2 Property(S): Preselected = 1 Property(S): ACTION = INSTALL Property(S): WIX_ACCOUNT_LOCALSYSTEM = NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM Property(S): WIX_ACCOUNT_LOCALSERVICE = NT AUTHORITY\LOCAL SERVICE Property(S): WIX_ACCOUNT_NETWORKSERVICE = NT AUTHORITY\NETWORK SERVICE Property(S): WIX_ACCOUNT_ADMINISTRATORS = BUILTIN\Administrators Property(S): WIX_ACCOUNT_USERS = BUILTIN\Users Property(S): WIX_ACCOUNT_GUESTS = BUILTIN\Guests Property(S): ROOTDRIVE = C:\ Property(S): CostingComplete = 1 Property(S): OutOfDiskSpace = 0 Property(S): OutOfNoRbDiskSpace = 0 Property(S): PrimaryVolumeSpaceAvailable = 0 Property(S): PrimaryVolumeSpaceRequired = 0 Property(S): PrimaryVolumeSpaceRemaining = 0 Property(S): INSTALLLEVEL = 1 Property(S): SOURCEDIR = C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Lync Server\Deployment\cache\4.0.7577.0\setup\ Property(S): SourcedirProduct = {9521B708-9D80-46A3-9E58-A74ACF4E343E} === Logging stopped: 2012-07-08 12:01:46 === MSI (s) (98:F8) [12:01:46:354]: Note: 1: 1729 MSI (s) (98:F8) [12:01:46:354]: Product: Microsoft Lync Server 2010, Core Components -- Configuration failed. MSI (s) (98:F8) [12:01:46:354]: Windows Installer reconfigured the product. Product Name: Microsoft Lync Server 2010, Core Components. Product Version: 4.0.7577.0. Product Language: 1033. Manufacturer: Microsoft Corporation. Reconfiguration success or error status: 1603. MSI (s) (98:F8) [12:01:46:356]: Deferring clean up of packages/files, if any exist MSI (s) (98:F8) [12:01:46:356]: MainEngineThread is returning 1603 MSI (s) (98:84) [12:01:46:362]: RESTART MANAGER: Session closed. MSI (s) (98:84) [12:01:46:362]: No System Restore sequence number for this installation. MSI (s) (98:84) [12:01:46:363]: User policy value 'DisableRollback' is 0 MSI (s) (98:84) [12:01:46:363]: Machine policy value 'DisableRollback' is 0 MSI (s) (98:84) [12:01:46:363]: Incrementing counter to disable shutdown. Counter after increment: 0 MSI (s) (98:84) [12:01:46:364]: Note: 1: 1402 2: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Installer\Rollback\Scripts 3: 2 MSI (s) (98:84) [12:01:46:364]: Note: 1: 1402 2: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Installer\Rollback\Scripts 3: 2 MSI (s) (98:84) [12:01:46:364]: Decrementing counter to disable shutdown. If counter >= 0, shutdown will be denied. Counter after decrement: -1 MSI (s) (98:84) [12:01:46:364]: Restoring environment variables MSI (s) (98:84) [12:01:46:373]: Destroying RemoteAPI object. MSI (s) (98:D4) [12:01:46:373]: Custom Action Manager thread ending. MSI (c) (20:64) [12:01:46:379]: Decrementing counter to disable shutdown. If counter >= 0, shutdown will be denied. Counter after decrement: -1 MSI (c) (20:64) [12:01:46:380]: MainEngineThread is returning 1603 === Verbose logging stopped: 2012-07-08 12:01:46 === Any advice where to start in this? Thanks

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Weird networking problem ( Linksys, Windows 7 )

- by Rohit Nair

Okay it's a bit tough to figure out where to start from, but here is the basic summary of the issue: During general internet usage, there are times when any attempt to visit a website stalls at "Waiting for somedomain.com". This problem occurs in Firefox, IE and Chrome. No website will load, INCLUDING the router configuration page at 192.168.1.1. Curiously, ping works fine, and other network apps such as MSN Messenger continue to work and I can send and receive messages. Disconnecting and reconnecting to the wireless network seems to fix the problem for a bit, but there are times when it relapses into not loading after every 2-3 http requests. Restarting the router seems to fix the issue, but it can crop up hours or days later. I have a CCNA cert and I know my way around the Windows family of operating systems, so I'm going to list all the things I've tried here. Other computers on the network seem to suffer the same problem, which makes me think it might be a specific problem with something in Win7. The random nature of this issue makes it a bit difficult to confirm, but I can definitely say that I have experienced this on the following systems: Windows 7 64-bit on my desktop Windows Vista 32-bit on my desktop ( the desktop has 2 wireless NICs and the problem existed on both ) Windows Vista 32-bit on my laptop ( both with wireless and wired ) Windows XP SP3 on another laptop ( both wireless and wired ) Using Wireshark to sniff packets seemed to indicate that although HTTP requests were being SENT out, no packets were coming in to respond to the HTTP request. However, other network apps continued to work i.e I would still receive IMs on Windows Live Messenger. Disabling IPV6 had no effect. Updating router firmware to the latest stock firmware by Linksys had no effect. Switching to dd-wrt firmware had no effect. By "no effect" I mean that although the restart required by firmware updates fixed the problem at the time, it still came back. A couple of weeks back, after a LOT of googling and flipping of various options, I figured it might be a case of router slowdown ( http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Router%5FSlowdown ) caused by the fact that I occasionally run a torrent client. I tried changing the configuration as suggested in that router slowdown link, and restarted the router. However I have not run the torrent client for 12 days now, and yet I still randomly experience this problem. Currently the computer I am using is running Windows 7 64-bit. I would just like to reiterate some of the reasons that I was confused by the issue. Even the router config page at 192.168.1.1 would not load, indicating that it's not a problem with the WAN link, but probably a router issue or a local computer issue. For some reason, disconnecting and reconnecting to the wireless network immediately seems to fix the problem. Updating the router firmware, even switching to open source firmware did nothing. So it seemed to be a computer issue. On the other hand, I have not seen any mass outrage of people having networking problems with Windows 7 and Linksys routers, especially a problem of this sort, and I have tweaked every network setting I could think of. Although HTTP seems to have trouble, ping works fine, DNS lookups work fine, other networking apps work fine. However if I disconnect from Windows Live Messenger and try to reconnect, it fails to reconnect. So although it could receive data over the existing TCP/IP connection, trying to start a new one failed? Does anyone have any further ideas on debugging or fixing this issue? I am reasonably certain there are no viruses or other malicious apps on my network, and I am also reasonably certain that nobody is accessing my router without my consent. Router: Linksys WRT54G2 1.0 running dd-wrt firmware Wireless Card: Alfa AWUS036H OS: Windows 7 64-bit EDIT: I tried switching to a clean wireless channel free from interference, but the problem still persisted. I tried connecting directly with a cable, but the problem still persisted. Signed A very confused and bewildered geek whose knowledge seems to be useless in the face of this frustrating network issue.

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Windows 7 Boot to VHD using a VHD clone of the system drive

- by daveh551

This seems like a not too difficult problem, and, after several hurdles, I'm maddeningly close. But I can't quite get there. I'm running Windows 7 in development shop. I want to start using VS2010 to work on some stuff that won't be released for awhile. My boss said no beta code on the production machine, but I could run VS2010 for this project IF I could do it in an isolated environment, like a virtual PC. Well, I've used the beta and RC of Win7 on VPC's before, and it was painfully slow because of the VPC environment. But everyone has been singing the praises of Windows 7's boot-to-VHD capability, where only the disk is virtualized, and you're actually running on the hardware. Supposed to be little slower, but nowhere near the speed penalty of VPC. I've spent a fair amount of time getting everything installed the way I want it. So I figured, I'll just clone my system drive using Disk2VHD, and boot off of that, and then install VS2010 onto that. (I keep most of my user data, including all my projects, in a separate partition, so that wouldn't have to be duplicated and would still be available.) Well, I had some difficulties with that, owing mainly to the fact that I was using an old version of Disk2VHD - (get the latest if you're going to try it.) But I did finally get it to boot. (Scott Hanselman has a good blog post on boot to VHD). But it wasn't exactly what I was expecting or hoping for. What I expected was that the VHD would become the C: drive, and the original (physical) C: drive would be either hidden or mounted under a different letter, and thus isolated and protected from any changes. What you actually get is that the VHD becomes the D: drive AND you boot from the D: drive, BUT your original C: drive is still there. Which is sort of okay EXCEPT that the Registry on the VHD is a clone of the Registry on C: drive, and includes many hard-coded references to C:. So the result is that some things come from (and modify) D: (the VHD), but some things come from (and modify) C:. (If you open a cmd prompt and do a SET to look at your environment variables, you will see a mixture of D:\ and C:\ paths.) So I don't really have an isolated environment. Most importantly, %ProgramFiles% is still set to C:\Program Files. What I really need is a tool that can access the registry files on the mounted VHD AS FILES, not as registry entries, and do a global search and replace on all the C:\ in strings to D:. I haven't found such a program. (I've tried to do it with a program called Registry Replace, but, even when running as Administrator, there are certain entries that the Registry won't let you change.) Does anyone know of one? Or any other solution to my problem (other than starting from scratch with a clean VHD and installing Win7 and all my programs on it.)?

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Postfix/SMTPD Relay Access Denied when sending outside the network

- by David

I asked a very similar question some 4 or 5 months ago, but haven't tracked down a suitable answer. I decided to post a new question so that I can ... a) Post updated info b) post my most current postconf -n output When a user sends mail from inside the network (via webmail) to email addresses both inside and outside the network, the email is delivered. When a user with an email account on the system sends mail from outside the network, using the server as the relay, to addresses inside the network, the email is delivered. But [sometimes] when a user connects via SMTPD to send email to an external address, a Relay Access Denied error is returned: Feb 25 19:33:49 myers postfix/smtpd[8044]: NOQUEUE: reject: RCPT from host-68-169-158-182.WISOLT2.epbfi.com[68.169.158.182]: 554 5.7.1 <host-68-169-158-182.WISOLT2.epbfi.com[68.169.158.182]>: Client host rejected: Access denied; from=<[email protected]> to=<[email protected]> proto=ESMTP helo=<my-computer-name> Feb 25 19:33:52 myers postfix/smtpd[8044]: disconnect from host-68-169-158-182.WISOLT2.epbfi.com[68.169.158.182] Sending this through Microsoft Outlook 2003 generates the above log. However, sending through my iPhone, with the exact same settings, goes through fine: Feb 25 19:37:18 myers postfix/qmgr[3619]: A2D861302C9: from=<[email protected]>, size=1382, nrcpt=1 (queue active) Feb 25 19:37:18 myers amavis[2799]: (02799-09) FWD via SMTP: <[email protected]> -> <[email protected]>,BODY=7BIT 250 2.0.0 Ok, id=02799-09, from MTA([127.0.0.1]:10025): 250 2.0.0 Ok: queued as A2D861302C9 Feb 25 19:37:18 myers amavis[2799]: (02799-09) Passed CLEAN, [68.169.158.182] [68.169.158.182] <[email protected]> -> <[email protected]>, Message-ID: <[email protected]>, mail_id: yMLvzVQJloFV, Hits: -9.607, size: 897, queued_as: A2D861302C9, 6283 ms Feb 25 19:37:18 myers postfix/lmtp[8752]: 2ED3A1302C8: to=<[email protected]>, relay=127.0.0.1[127.0.0.1]:10024, delay=6.6, delays=0.25/0.01/0.19/6.1, dsn=2.0.0, status=sent (250 2.0.0 Ok, id=02799-09, from MTA([127.0.0.1]:10025): 250 2.0.0 Ok: queued as A2D861302C9) Feb 25 19:37:18 myers postfix/qmgr[3619]: 2ED3A1302C8: removed Outgoing Settings on Outlook 2003 match the settings on my iPhone: SMTP server: mail.my-domain.com Username: My full email address Uses SSL Server Port 587 Now, here's postconf -n. I realize the "My Networks" Parameter is a bit nasty. I have these IP addresses in here for just this reason, as others have been complaining of this problem too: alias_database = hash:/etc/postfix/aliases alias_maps = $alias_database append_dot_mydomain = no biff = no broken_sasl_auth_clients = yes command_directory = /usr/sbin config_directory = /etc/postfix content_filter = amavisfeed:[127.0.0.1]:10024 daemon_directory = /usr/libexec/postfix debug_peer_level = 2 disable_vrfy_command = yes html_directory = no inet_interfaces = all mail_owner = postfix mail_spool_directory = /var/spool/mail mailbox_size_limit = 0 mailq_path = /usr/bin/mailq manpage_directory = /usr/share/man message_size_limit = 20480000 mydestination = $myhostname, localhost, localhost.$mydomain mydomain = my-domain.com myhostname = myers.my-domain.com mynetworks = 127.0.0.0/8, 74.125.113.27, 74.125.82.49, 74.125.79.27, 209.85.161.0/24, 209.85.214.0/24, 209.85.216.0/24, 209.85.212.0/24, 209.85.160.0/24 myorigin = $myhostname newaliases_path = /usr/bin/newaliases queue_directory = /var/spool/postfix readme_directory = /usr/share/doc/postfix-2.3.3/README_FILES receive_override_options = no_address_mappings recipient_delimiter = + relay_domains = $mydestination sample_directory = /usr/share/doc/postfix-2.3.3/samples sendmail_path = /usr/sbin/sendmail setgid_group = postdrop smtp_bind_address = my-primary-server's IP address smtpd_banner = mail.my-domain.com smtpd_helo_required = yes smtpd_sasl_auth_enable = yes smtpd_sasl_path = private/auth smtpd_sasl_type = dovecot smtpd_tls_auth_only = yes smtpd_tls_cert_file = /etc/ssl/mailserver/postfix.pem smtpd_tls_key_file = /etc/ssl/mailserver/private/postfix.pem smtpd_tls_loglevel = 3 smtpd_tls_received_header = no smtpd_tls_session_cache_timeout = 3600s smtpd_use_tls = yes tls_random_source = dev:/dev/urandom unknown_local_recipient_reject_code = 554 virtual_alias_maps = mysql:/etc/postfix/mysql-virtual-alias-maps.cf,mysql:/etc/postfix/mysql-email2email.cf virtual_gid_maps = static:5000 virtual_mailbox_base = /var/vmail virtual_mailbox_domains = mysql:/etc/postfix/mysql-virtual-mailbox-domains.cf virtual_mailbox_maps = mysql:/etc/postfix/mysql-virtual-mailbox-maps.cf virtual_minimum_uid = 5000 virtual_transport = dovecot virtual_uid_maps = static:5000 If anyone has any ideas and can help me finally solve this issue once and for all, I'd be eternally grateful.

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