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  • Desktop stops working in Windows 7

    - by Roger
    I'm having an odd problem on one of my Windows 7 machines. At machine startup, explorer.exe is working properly - I can use the Start menu, click on desktop icons, etc. At some later point, though, I lose the ability to interact with desktop icons. I can't double-click to open files on the desktop, and I can't right-click to see the properties window. Oddly enough the Start menu still works properly, and I can still open an Explorer window into my desktop and access everything. I can get around the problem by killing explorer.exe and restarting it using Task Manager, but it's annoying to have to do this over and over. Does anyone have any ideas? I took a look at startup files with msconfig and didn't see any obvious problems. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

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  • USB Mouse doesn't work after turning on Laptop

    - by Barry
    I have a USB mouse attached to my laptop which does not work when I switch my laptop on. I have to unplug it and plug it back in before it works. When I do this no driver installation occurs (presumably because it has already done this) the usual beep sound does occur and the mouse starts working again. If my laptop goes to sleep I can move the mouse and the laptop comes back to life. In fact it works perfectly apart from this annoying niggle on startup. Can anyone shed any light as to why I have to keep unplugging and plugging my mouse back on startup? I am running Windows 7 Home Premium Service Pack 1 (64 bit) on a Toshiba Satellite L755-1LL Laptop.

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  • What is better for a student programming in C++ to learn for writing GUI: C# vs QT?

    - by flashnik
    I'm a teacher(instructor) of CS in the university. The course is based on Cormen and Knuth and students program algorithms in C++. But sometimes it is good to show how an algorithm works or just a result of task through GUI. Also in my opinion it's very imporant to be able to write full programs. They will have courses concerning GUI but a three years, later, in fact, before graduatuion. I think that they should be able to write simple GUI applications earlier. So I want to teach them it. How do you think, what is more useful for them to learn: programming GUI with QT or writing GUI in C# and calling unmanaged C++ library? Update. For developing C++ applications students use MS Visual studio, so C# is already installed. But QT AFAIK also can be integrated into VS. I have following pros of C# (some were suggested there in answers): The need to make an additional layer. It's more work, but it forces you explicitly specify contract between GUI and processing data. The border between GUI and algorithms becomes very clear. It's more popular among employers. At least, in Russia where we live. It's rather common to write performance-critical algorithms in C++ and PInvoke them from well-looking C# application/ASP.Net website. Maybe it is not so widespread in the rest of the world but in Russia Windows is very popular, especially in companies and corporations due to some reasons, so most of b2b applications are Windows applications. Rapid development. It's much quicker to code in .Net then in C++ due to many reasons. And the con is that it's a new language with own specific for students. And the mess with invoking calls to library.

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  • Mount a remote Linux hard drive as another Windows 7 partition during boot?

    - by zhuanyi
    I would like to mount a hard drive on a remote computer (running on CentOS 6) as a Windows drive so that I can install programs to that drive. The primary hard drive for my Windows machine (which is at home) is pretty small, I have a Linux server sitting in a remote data center with a much larger hard drive and allow me to install more stuff. I know most of you are going to say Samba, unfortunately the biggest problem for me in this case is that I can not mount Samba as a network share unless I start OpenVPN or SSH tunneling first, which is not good for my case because I will install some startup programs to the remote drive as well. Therefore, the remote drive has to be ready and work just like another drive BEFORE any of the startup programs start to load. Is that possible? My home PC has Windows 7 Professional 32 bit installed and the remote server is a Xen virtual server running on CentOS 6. I have admin/root permissions for both. Thanks a lot!

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  • Windows 7 boot error

    - by jason
    I am running windows 7 professional, everything was working fine until I installed a software driver clearner suggested by nvidia customer service and I cleaned only nvidia graphic driver installation since then my windows does not work at all. I can access everything from startup repair, did lots of time repair but nothing happened. System restore does not work it says c: drive is not available, its 100% there and I can access every file from command prompt. Almost two days passed and I applied every solution discussed on several forums, now only thing left is either install fresh windows (Which i really don't want to do) or update windows (which windows does not let me to do, it says I have to update it from windows) My question is there any way to update (not fresh/custom installation) windows from command prompt? P.s: Safe mode, safe mode command nothing works except startup repair option. I ran sfc /scannow no problem found. I also removed all attached hardwares. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

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  • How do I check if a program can potentially be a virus?

    - by acidzombie24
    I am running Windows XP in a VM. I want to download a few applications and install the one by one and check if they potentially can be a virus. I assume virus would need to add something to the startup folder, or the application in the startup section in the registry or add a service. What else might it do to become active? Anyway, how can I check to see if a program may be a virus? I use hijack this to get a list of processes and I simply compare it from before I installed to after and see if there's anything different. Is this good enough? My main OS is Windows 7 but I do not have that in a VM and don't see a reason to test with that.

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  • Ubuntu 12.04LTS mountall: Disconnected from Plymouth

    - by user169954
    I have ubuntu 12.04LTS 64bit running on an i5 dual core 8G RAM. On startup I get the message mountall: Disconnected from Plymouth [OK] And the system looks stuck. However, if I go to tty1, then I can login and startx and everything seems to be fine except for being a bit sluggish. I can verify that my nfs mounts are ok, and that my swap is ok. Every time I reboot the system there is a _gdm_gdm_crash file in my /var/crash, which makes me think my problem is rooted in gdm, X configs and/or nvidia drivers. A bit of background in case it's relevant: 3 hours ago my desktop crashed. Following various 'tips' on the web I made a complete mess of my X server and X configuration files, and at one point I even had to recreate my swap partition. Anyway, after much struggle I managed to get to the state I mentioned above: I have a working system provided I always login through tty1. What is this Plymouth anyway? Would it make a difference if I used gnome-wm instead of gdm or lightdm? (I mean to the startup, not to me :-) What bit of config do I change to tell startx to use gnome-wm not gdm or ligthdm? Thank you in advance

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  • ILMerge - Unresolved assembly reference not allowed: System.Core

    - by Steve Michelotti
    ILMerge is a utility which allows you the merge multiple .NET assemblies into a single binary assembly more for convenient distribution. Recently we ran into problems when attempting to use ILMerge on a .NET 4 project. We received the error message: An exception occurred during merging: Unresolved assembly reference not allowed: System.Core.     at System.Compiler.Ir2md.GetAssemblyRefIndex(AssemblyNode assembly)     at System.Compiler.Ir2md.GetTypeRefIndex(TypeNode type)     at System.Compiler.Ir2md.VisitReferencedType(TypeNode type)     at System.Compiler.Ir2md.GetMemberRefIndex(Member m)     at System.Compiler.Ir2md.PopulateCustomAttributeTable()     at System.Compiler.Ir2md.SetupMetadataWriter(String debugSymbolsLocation)     at System.Compiler.Ir2md.WritePE(Module module, String debugSymbolsLocation, BinaryWriter writer)     at System.Compiler.Writer.WritePE(String location, Boolean writeDebugSymbols, Module module, Boolean delaySign, String keyFileName, String keyName)     at System.Compiler.Writer.WritePE(CompilerParameters compilerParameters, Module module)     at ILMerging.ILMerge.Merge()     at ILMerging.ILMerge.Main(String[] args) It turns out that this issue is caused by ILMerge.exe not being able to find the .NET 4 framework by default. The answer was ultimately found here. You either have to use the /lib option to point to your .NET 4 framework directory (e.g., “C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.30319” or “C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\v4.0.30319”) or just use an ILMerge.exe.config file that looks like this: 1: <configuration> 2: <startup useLegacyV2RuntimeActivationPolicy="true"> 3: <requiredRuntime safemode="true" imageVersion="v4.0.30319" version="v4.0.30319"/> 4: </startup> 5: </configuration> This was able to successfully resolve my issue.

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  • VS 2010 SP1 (Beta) and IIS Express

    - by ScottGu
    Last month we released the VS 2010 Service Pack 1 (SP1) Beta.  You can learn more about the VS 2010 SP1 Beta from Jason Zander’s two blog posts about it, and from Scott Hanselman’s blog post that covers some of the new capabilities enabled with it.  You can download and install the VS 2010 SP1 Beta here. IIS Express Earlier this summer I blogged about IIS Express.  IIS Express is a free version of IIS 7.5 that is optimized for developer scenarios.  We think it combines the ease of use of the ASP.NET Web Server (aka Cassini) currently built-into VS today with the full power of IIS.  Specifically: It’s lightweight and easy to install (less than 5Mb download and a quick install) It does not require an administrator account to run/debug applications from Visual Studio It enables a full web-server feature set – including SSL, URL Rewrite, and other IIS 7.x modules It supports and enables the same extensibility model and web.config file settings that IIS 7.x support It can be installed side-by-side with the full IIS web server as well as the ASP.NET Development Server (they do not conflict at all) It works on Windows XP and higher operating systems – giving you a full IIS 7.x developer feature-set on all Windows OS platforms IIS Express (like the ASP.NET Development Server) can be quickly launched to run a site from a directory on disk.  It does not require any registration/configuration steps. This makes it really easy to launch and run for development scenarios. Visual Studio 2010 SP1 adds support for IIS Express – and you can start to take advantage of this starting with last month’s VS 2010 SP1 Beta release. Downloading and Installing IIS Express IIS Express isn’t included as part of the VS 2010 SP1 Beta.  Instead it is a separate ~4MB download which you can download and install using this link (it uses WebPI to install it).  Once IIS Express is installed, VS 2010 SP1 will enable some additional IIS Express commands and dialog options that allow you to easily use it. Enabling IIS Express for Existing Projects Visual Studio today defaults to using the built-in ASP.NET Development Server (aka Cassini) when running ASP.NET Projects: Converting your existing projects to use IIS Express is really easy.  You can do this by opening up the project properties dialog of an existing project, and then by clicking the “web” tab within it and selecting the “Use IIS Express” checkbox. Or even simpler, just right-click on your existing project, and select the “Use IIS Express…” menu command: And now when you run or debug your project you’ll see that IIS Express now starts up and runs automatically as your web-server: You can optionally right-click on the IIS Express icon within your system tray to see/browse all of sites and applications running on it: Note that if you ever want to revert back to using the ASP.NET Development Server you can do this by right-clicking the project again and then select the “Use Visual Studio Development Server” option (or go into the project properties, click the web tab, and uncheck IIS Express).  This will revert back to the ASP.NET Development Server the next time you run the project. IIS Express Properties Visual Studio 2010 SP1 exposes several new IIS Express configuration options that you couldn’t previously set with the ASP.NET Development Server.  Some of these are exposed via the property grid of your project (select the project node in the solution explorer and then change them via the property window): For example, enabling something like SSL support (which is not possible with the ASP.NET Development Server) can now be done simply by changing the “SSL Enabled” property to “True”: Once this is done IIS Express will expose both an HTTP and HTTPS endpoint for the project that we can use: SSL Self Signed Certs IIS Express ships with a self-signed SSL cert that it installs as part of setup – which removes the need for you to install your own certificate to use SSL during development.  Once you change the above drop-down to enable SSL, you’ll be able to browse to your site with the appropriate https:// URL prefix and it will connect via SSL. One caveat with self-signed certificates, though, is that browsers (like IE) will go out of their way to warn you that they aren’t to be trusted: You can mark the certificate as trusted to avoid seeing dialogs like this – or just keep the certificate un-trusted and press the “continue” button when the browser warns you not to trust your local web server. Additional IIS Settings IIS Express uses its own per-user ApplicationHost.config file to configure default server behavior.  Because it is per-user, it can be configured by developers who do not have admin credentials – unlike the full IIS.  You can customize all IIS features and settings via it if you want ultimate server customization (for example: to use your own certificates for SSL instead of self-signed ones). We recommend storing all app specific settings for IIS and ASP.NET within the web.config file which is part of your project – since that makes deploying apps easier (since the settings can be copied with the application content).  IIS (since IIS 7) no longer uses the metabase, and instead uses the same web.config configuration files that ASP.NET has always supported – which makes xcopy/ftp based deployment much easier. Making IIS Express your Default Web Server Above we looked at how we can convert existing sites that use the ASP.NET Developer Web Server to instead use IIS Express.  You can configure Visual Studio to use IIS Express as the default web server for all new projects by clicking the Tools->Options menu  command and opening up the Projects and Solutions->Web Projects node with the Options dialog: Clicking the “Use IIS Express for new file-based web site and projects” checkbox will cause Visual Studio to use it for all new web site and projects. Summary We think IIS Express makes it even easier to build, run and test web applications.  It works with all versions of ASP.NET and supports all ASP.NET application types (including obviously both ASP.NET Web Forms and ASP.NET MVC applications).  Because IIS Express is based on the IIS 7.5 codebase, you have a full web-server feature-set that you can use.  This means you can build and run your applications just like they’ll work on a real production web-server.  In addition to supporting ASP.NET, IIS Express also supports Classic ASP and other file-types and extensions supported by IIS – which also makes it ideal for sites that combine a variety of different technologies. Best of all – you do not need to change any code to take advantage of it.  As you can see above, updating existing Visual Studio web projects to use it is trivial.  You can begin to take advantage of IIS Express today using the VS 2010 SP1 Beta. Hope this helps, Scott

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  • SQL Server and Hyper-V Dynamic Memory - Part 1

    - by SQLOS Team
    SQL and Dynamic Memory Blog Post Series   Hyper-V Dynamic Memory is a new feature in Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 that allows the memory assigned to guest virtual machines to vary according to demand. Using this feature with SQL Server is supported, but how well does it work in an environment where available memory can vary dynamically, especially since SQL Server likes memory, and is not very eager to let go of it? The next three posts will look at this question in detail. In Part 1 Serdar Sutay, a program manager in the Windows Hyper-V team, introduces Dynamic Memory with an overview of the basic architecture, configuration and monitoring concepts. In subsequent parts we will look at SQL Server memory handling, and develop some guidelines on using SQL Server with Dynamic Memory.   Part 1: Dynamic Memory Introduction   In virtualized environments memory is often the bottleneck for reaching higher VM densities. In Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 Hyper-V introduced a new feature “Dynamic Memory” to improve VM densities on Hyper-V hosts. Dynamic Memory increases the memory utilization in virtualized environments by enabling VM memory to be changed dynamically when the VM is running.   This brings up the question of how to utilize this feature with SQL Server VMs as SQL Server performance is very sensitive to the memory being used. In the next three posts we’ll discuss the internals of Dynamic Memory, SQL Server Memory Management and how to use Dynamic Memory with SQL Server VMs.   Memory Utilization Efficiency in Virtualized Environments   The primary reason memory is usually the bottleneck for higher VM densities is that users tend to be generous when assigning memory to their VMs. Here are some memory sizing practices we’ve heard from customers:   ·         I assign 4 GB of memory to my VMs. I don’t know if all of it is being used by the applications but no one complains. ·         I take the minimum system requirements and add 50% more. ·         I go with the recommendations provided by my software vendor.   In reality correctly sizing a virtual machine requires significant effort to monitor the memory usage of the applications. Since this is not done in most environments, VMs are usually over-provisioned in terms of memory. In other words, a SQL Server VM that is assigned 4 GB of memory may not need to use 4 GB.   How does Dynamic Memory help?   Dynamic Memory improves the memory utilization by removing the requirement to determine the memory need for an application. Hyper-V determines the memory needed by applications in the VM by evaluating the memory usage information in the guest with Dynamic Memory. VMs can start with a small amount of memory and they can be assigned more memory dynamically based on the workload of applications running inside.   Overview of Dynamic Memory Concepts   ·         Startup Memory: Startup Memory is the starting amount of memory when Dynamic Memory is enabled for a VM. Dynamic Memory will make sure that this amount of memory is always assigned to the VMs by default.   ·         Maximum Memory: Maximum Memory specifies the maximum amount of memory that a VM can grow to with Dynamic Memory. ·         Memory Demand: Memory Demand is the amount determined by Dynamic Memory as the memory needed by the applications in the VM. In Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1, this is equal to the total amount of committed memory of the VM. ·         Memory Buffer: Memory Buffer is the amount of memory assigned to the VMs in addition to their memory demand to satisfy immediate memory requirements and file cache needs.   Once Dynamic Memory is enabled for a VM, it will start with the “Startup Memory”. After the boot process Dynamic Memory will determine the “Memory Demand” of the VM. Based on this memory demand it will determine the amount of “Memory Buffer” that needs to be assigned to the VM. Dynamic Memory will assign the total of “Memory Demand” and “Memory Buffer” to the VM as long as this value is less than “Maximum Memory” and as long as physical memory is available on the host.   What happens when there is not enough physical memory available on the host?   Once there is not enough physical memory on the host to satisfy VM needs, Dynamic Memory will assign less than needed amount of memory to the VMs based on their importance. A concept known as “Memory Weight” is used to determine how much VMs should be penalized based on their needed amount of memory. “Memory Weight” is a configuration setting on the VM. It can be configured to be higher for the VMs with high performance requirements. Under high memory pressure on the host, the “Memory Weight” of the VMs are evaluated in a relative manner and the VMs with lower relative “Memory Weight” will be penalized more than the ones with higher “Memory Weight”.   Dynamic Memory Configuration   Based on these concepts “Startup Memory”, “Maximum Memory”, “Memory Buffer” and “Memory Weight” can be configured as shown below in Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 Hyper-V Manager. Memory Demand is automatically calculated by Dynamic Memory once VMs start running.     Dynamic Memory Monitoring    In Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1, Hyper-V Manager displays the memory status of VMs in the following three columns:         ·         Assigned Memory represents the current physical memory assigned to the VM. In regular conditions this will be equal to the sum of “Memory Demand” and “Memory Buffer” assigned to the VM. When there is not enough memory on the host, this value can go below the Memory Demand determined for the VM. ·         Memory Demand displays the current “Memory Demand” determined for the VM. ·         Memory Status displays the current memory status of the VM. This column can represent three values for a VM: o   OK: In this condition the VM is assigned the total of Memory Demand and Memory Buffer it needs. o   Low: In this condition the VM is assigned all the Memory Demand and a certain percentage of the Memory Buffer it needs. o   Warning: In this condition the VM is assigned a lower memory than its Memory Demand. When VMs are running in this condition, it’s likely that they will exhibit performance problems due to internal paging happening in the VM.    So far so good! But how does it work with SQL Server?   SQL Server is aggressive in terms of memory usage for good reasons. This raises the question: How do SQL Server and Dynamic Memory work together? To understand the full story, we’ll first need to understand how SQL Server Memory Management works. This will be covered in our second post in “SQL and Dynamic Memory” series. Meanwhile if you want to dive deeper into Dynamic Memory you can check the below posts from the Windows Virtualization Team Blog:   http://blogs.technet.com/virtualization/archive/2010/03/18/dynamic-memory-coming-to-hyper-v.aspx   http://blogs.technet.com/virtualization/archive/2010/03/25/dynamic-memory-coming-to-hyper-v-part-2.aspx   http://blogs.technet.com/virtualization/archive/2010/04/07/dynamic-memory-coming-to-hyper-v-part-3.aspx   http://blogs.technet.com/b/virtualization/archive/2010/04/21/dynamic-memory-coming-to-hyper-v-part-4.aspx   http://blogs.technet.com/b/virtualization/archive/2010/05/20/dynamic-memory-coming-to-hyper-v-part-5.aspx   http://blogs.technet.com/b/virtualization/archive/2010/07/12/dynamic-memory-coming-to-hyper-v-part-6.aspx   - Serdar Sutay   Originally posted at http://blogs.msdn.com/b/sqlosteam/

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  • SQL Server and Hyper-V Dynamic Memory - Part 1

    - by SQLOS Team
    SQL and Dynamic Memory Blog Post Series   Hyper-V Dynamic Memory is a new feature in Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 that allows the memory assigned to guest virtual machines to vary according to demand. Using this feature with SQL Server is supported, but how well does it work in an environment where available memory can vary dynamically, especially since SQL Server likes memory, and is not very eager to let go of it? The next three posts will look at this question in detail. In Part 1 Serdar Sutay, a program manager in the Windows Hyper-V team, introduces Dynamic Memory with an overview of the basic architecture, configuration and monitoring concepts. In subsequent parts we will look at SQL Server memory handling, and develop some guidelines on using SQL Server with Dynamic Memory.   Part 1: Dynamic Memory Introduction   In virtualized environments memory is often the bottleneck for reaching higher VM densities. In Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 Hyper-V introduced a new feature “Dynamic Memory” to improve VM densities on Hyper-V hosts. Dynamic Memory increases the memory utilization in virtualized environments by enabling VM memory to be changed dynamically when the VM is running.   This brings up the question of how to utilize this feature with SQL Server VMs as SQL Server performance is very sensitive to the memory being used. In the next three posts we’ll discuss the internals of Dynamic Memory, SQL Server Memory Management and how to use Dynamic Memory with SQL Server VMs.   Memory Utilization Efficiency in Virtualized Environments   The primary reason memory is usually the bottleneck for higher VM densities is that users tend to be generous when assigning memory to their VMs. Here are some memory sizing practices we’ve heard from customers:   ·         I assign 4 GB of memory to my VMs. I don’t know if all of it is being used by the applications but no one complains. ·         I take the minimum system requirements and add 50% more. ·         I go with the recommendations provided by my software vendor.   In reality correctly sizing a virtual machine requires significant effort to monitor the memory usage of the applications. Since this is not done in most environments, VMs are usually over-provisioned in terms of memory. In other words, a SQL Server VM that is assigned 4 GB of memory may not need to use 4 GB.   How does Dynamic Memory help?   Dynamic Memory improves the memory utilization by removing the requirement to determine the memory need for an application. Hyper-V determines the memory needed by applications in the VM by evaluating the memory usage information in the guest with Dynamic Memory. VMs can start with a small amount of memory and they can be assigned more memory dynamically based on the workload of applications running inside.   Overview of Dynamic Memory Concepts   ·         Startup Memory: Startup Memory is the starting amount of memory when Dynamic Memory is enabled for a VM. Dynamic Memory will make sure that this amount of memory is always assigned to the VMs by default.   ·         Maximum Memory: Maximum Memory specifies the maximum amount of memory that a VM can grow to with Dynamic Memory. ·         Memory Demand: Memory Demand is the amount determined by Dynamic Memory as the memory needed by the applications in the VM. In Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1, this is equal to the total amount of committed memory of the VM. ·         Memory Buffer: Memory Buffer is the amount of memory assigned to the VMs in addition to their memory demand to satisfy immediate memory requirements and file cache needs.   Once Dynamic Memory is enabled for a VM, it will start with the “Startup Memory”. After the boot process Dynamic Memory will determine the “Memory Demand” of the VM. Based on this memory demand it will determine the amount of “Memory Buffer” that needs to be assigned to the VM. Dynamic Memory will assign the total of “Memory Demand” and “Memory Buffer” to the VM as long as this value is less than “Maximum Memory” and as long as physical memory is available on the host.   What happens when there is not enough physical memory available on the host?   Once there is not enough physical memory on the host to satisfy VM needs, Dynamic Memory will assign less than needed amount of memory to the VMs based on their importance. A concept known as “Memory Weight” is used to determine how much VMs should be penalized based on their needed amount of memory. “Memory Weight” is a configuration setting on the VM. It can be configured to be higher for the VMs with high performance requirements. Under high memory pressure on the host, the “Memory Weight” of the VMs are evaluated in a relative manner and the VMs with lower relative “Memory Weight” will be penalized more than the ones with higher “Memory Weight”.   Dynamic Memory Configuration   Based on these concepts “Startup Memory”, “Maximum Memory”, “Memory Buffer” and “Memory Weight” can be configured as shown below in Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 Hyper-V Manager. Memory Demand is automatically calculated by Dynamic Memory once VMs start running.     Dynamic Memory Monitoring    In Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1, Hyper-V Manager displays the memory status of VMs in the following three columns:         ·         Assigned Memory represents the current physical memory assigned to the VM. In regular conditions this will be equal to the sum of “Memory Demand” and “Memory Buffer” assigned to the VM. When there is not enough memory on the host, this value can go below the Memory Demand determined for the VM. ·         Memory Demand displays the current “Memory Demand” determined for the VM. ·         Memory Status displays the current memory status of the VM. This column can represent three values for a VM: o   OK: In this condition the VM is assigned the total of Memory Demand and Memory Buffer it needs. o   Low: In this condition the VM is assigned all the Memory Demand and a certain percentage of the Memory Buffer it needs. o   Warning: In this condition the VM is assigned a lower memory than its Memory Demand. When VMs are running in this condition, it’s likely that they will exhibit performance problems due to internal paging happening in the VM.    So far so good! But how does it work with SQL Server?   SQL Server is aggressive in terms of memory usage for good reasons. This raises the question: How do SQL Server and Dynamic Memory work together? To understand the full story, we’ll first need to understand how SQL Server Memory Management works. This will be covered in our second post in “SQL and Dynamic Memory” series. Meanwhile if you want to dive deeper into Dynamic Memory you can check the below posts from the Windows Virtualization Team Blog:   http://blogs.technet.com/virtualization/archive/2010/03/18/dynamic-memory-coming-to-hyper-v.aspx   http://blogs.technet.com/virtualization/archive/2010/03/25/dynamic-memory-coming-to-hyper-v-part-2.aspx   http://blogs.technet.com/virtualization/archive/2010/04/07/dynamic-memory-coming-to-hyper-v-part-3.aspx   http://blogs.technet.com/b/virtualization/archive/2010/04/21/dynamic-memory-coming-to-hyper-v-part-4.aspx   http://blogs.technet.com/b/virtualization/archive/2010/05/20/dynamic-memory-coming-to-hyper-v-part-5.aspx   http://blogs.technet.com/b/virtualization/archive/2010/07/12/dynamic-memory-coming-to-hyper-v-part-6.aspx   - Serdar Sutay   Originally posted at http://blogs.msdn.com/b/sqlosteam/

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  • Don’t be a dinosaur. Use Calendar Tree!

    - by jamiet
    If one spends long enough in my company one will likely eventually have to listen to me bark on about subscribable calendars. I was banging on about them way back in 2009, I’ve cajoled SQLBits into providing one, provided one myself for the World Cup, and opined that they could be transformative for the delivery of BI. I believe subscribable calendars can change the world but have never been good at elucidating why I thought so, for that reason I always direct people to read a blog by Scott Adams (yes, the guy who draws Dilbert) entitled Calendar as Filter. In that blog post Scott writes: I think the family calendar is the organizing principle into which all external information should flow. I want the kids' school schedules for sports and plays and even lunch choices to automatically flow into the home calendar. Everything you do has a time dimension. If you are looking for a new home, the open houses are on certain dates, and certain houses that fit your needs are open at certain times. If you are shopping for some particular good, you often need to know the store hours. Your calendar needs to know your shopping list and preferences so it can suggest good times to do certain things I think the biggest software revolution of the future is that the calendar will be the organizing filter for most of the information flowing into your life. You think you are bombarded with too much information every day, but in reality it is just the timing of the information that is wrong. Once the calendar becomes the organizing paradigm and filter, it won't seem as if there is so much. I wholly agree and hence was delighted to discover (via the Hanselminutes podcast) that Scott has a startup called CalendarTree.com whose raison d’etre is to solve this very problem. What better way to describe a Scott Adams startup than with a Scott Adams comic: I implore you to check out Calendar Tree and make the world a tiny bit better by using it to share any information that has a time dimension to it. Don’t be a dinosaur, use Calendar tree! @Jamiet

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  • New <%: %> Syntax for HTML Encoding Output in ASP.NET 4 (and ASP.NET MVC 2)

    - by ScottGu
    [In addition to blogging, I am also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at: twitter.com/scottgu] This is the nineteenth in a series of blog posts I’m doing on the upcoming VS 2010 and .NET 4 release. Today’s post covers a small, but very useful, new syntax feature being introduced with ASP.NET 4 – which is the ability to automatically HTML encode output within code nuggets.  This helps protect your applications and sites against cross-site script injection (XSS) and HTML injection attacks, and enables you to do so using a nice concise syntax. HTML Encoding Cross-site script injection (XSS) and HTML encoding attacks are two of the most common security issues that plague web-sites and applications.  They occur when hackers find a way to inject client-side script or HTML markup into web-pages that are then viewed by other visitors to a site.  This can be used to both vandalize a site, as well as enable hackers to run client-script code that steals cookie data and/or exploits a user’s identity on a site to do bad things. One way to help mitigate against cross-site scripting attacks is to make sure that rendered output is HTML encoded within a page.  This helps ensures that any content that might have been input/modified by an end-user cannot be output back onto a page containing tags like <script> or <img> elements.  ASP.NET applications (especially those using ASP.NET MVC) often rely on using <%= %> code-nugget expressions to render output.  Developers today often use the Server.HtmlEncode() or HttpUtility.Encode() helper methods within these expressions to HTML encode the output before it is rendered.  This can be done using code like below: While this works fine, there are two downsides of it: It is a little verbose Developers often forget to call the HtmlEncode method New <%: %> Code Nugget Syntax With ASP.NET 4 we are introducing a new code expression syntax (<%:  %>) that renders output like <%= %> blocks do – but which also automatically HTML encodes it before doing so.  This eliminates the need to explicitly HTML encode content like we did in the example above.  Instead you can just write the more concise code below to accomplish the same thing: We chose the <%: %> syntax so that it would be easy to quickly replace existing instances of <%= %> code blocks.  It also enables you to easily search your code-base for <%= %> elements to find and verify any cases where you are not using HTML encoding within your application to ensure that you have the correct behavior. Avoiding Double Encoding While HTML encoding content is often a good best practice, there are times when the content you are outputting is meant to be HTML or is already encoded – in which case you don’t want to HTML encode it again.  ASP.NET 4 introduces a new IHtmlString interface (along with a concrete implementation: HtmlString) that you can implement on types to indicate that its value is already properly encoded (or otherwise examined) for displaying as HTML, and that therefore the value should not be HTML-encoded again.  The <%: %> code-nugget syntax checks for the presence of the IHtmlString interface and will not HTML encode the output of the code expression if its value implements this interface.  This allows developers to avoid having to decide on a per-case basis whether to use <%= %> or <%: %> code-nuggets.  Instead you can always use <%: %> code nuggets, and then have any properties or data-types that are already HTML encoded implement the IHtmlString interface. Using ASP.NET MVC HTML Helper Methods with <%: %> For a practical example of where this HTML encoding escape mechanism is useful, consider scenarios where you use HTML helper methods with ASP.NET MVC.  These helper methods typically return HTML.  For example: the Html.TextBox() helper method returns markup like <input type=”text”/>.  With ASP.NET MVC 2 these helper methods now by default return HtmlString types – which indicates that the returned string content is safe for rendering and should not be encoded by <%: %> nuggets.  This allows you to use these methods within both <%= %> code nugget blocks: As well as within <%: %> code nugget blocks: In both cases above the HTML content returned from the helper method will be rendered to the client as HTML – and the <%: %> code nugget will avoid double-encoding it. This enables you to default to always using <%: %> code nuggets instead of <%= %> code blocks within your applications.  If you want to be really hardcore you can even create a build rule that searches your application looking for <%= %> usages and flags any cases it finds as an error to enforce that HTML encoding always takes place. Scaffolding ASP.NET MVC 2 Views When you use VS 2010 (or the free Visual Web Developer 2010 Express) you’ll find that the views that are scaffolded using the “Add View” dialog now by default always use <%: %> blocks when outputting any content.  For example, below I’ve scaffolded a simple “Edit” view for an article object.  Note the three usages of <%: %> code nuggets for the label, textbox, and validation message (all output with HTML helper methods): Summary The new <%: %> syntax provides a concise way to automatically HTML encode content and then render it as output.  It allows you to make your code a little less verbose, and to easily check/verify that you are always HTML encoding content throughout your site.  This can help protect your applications against cross-site script injection (XSS) and HTML injection attacks.  Hope this helps, Scott

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  • Globally Handling Request Validation In ASP.NET MVC

    - by imran_ku07
       Introduction:           Cross Site Scripting(XSS) and Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) attacks are one of dangerous attacks on web.  They are among the most famous security issues affecting web applications. OWASP regards XSS is the number one security issue on the Web. Both ASP.NET Web Forms and ASP.NET MVC paid very much attention to make applications build with ASP.NET as secure as possible. So by default they will throw an exception 'A potentially dangerous XXX value was detected from the client', when they see, < followed by an exclamation(like <!) or < followed by the letters a through z(like <s) or & followed by a pound sign(like &#123) as a part of querystring, posted form and cookie collection. This is good for lot of applications. But this is not always the case. Many applications need to allow users to enter html tags, for example applications which uses  Rich Text Editor. You can allow user to enter these tags by just setting validateRequest="false" in your Web.config application configuration file inside <pages> element if you are using Web Form. This will globally disable request validation. But in ASP.NET MVC request handling is different than ASP.NET Web Form. Therefore for disabling request validation globally in ASP.NET MVC you have to put ValidateInputAttribute in your every controller. This become pain full for you if you have hundred of controllers. Therefore in this article i will present a very simple way to handle request validation globally through web.config.   Description:           Before starting how to do this it is worth to see why validateRequest in Page directive and web.config not work in ASP.NET MVC. Actually request handling in ASP.NET Web Form and ASP.NET MVC is different. In Web Form mostly the HttpHandler is the page handler which checks the posted form, query string and cookie collection during the Page ProcessRequest method, while in MVC request validation occur when ActionInvoker calling the action. Just see the stack trace of both framework.   ASP.NET MVC Stack Trace:     System.Web.HttpRequest.ValidateString(String s, String valueName, String collectionName) +8723114   System.Web.HttpRequest.ValidateNameValueCollection(NameValueCollection nvc, String collectionName) +111   System.Web.HttpRequest.get_Form() +129   System.Web.HttpRequestWrapper.get_Form() +11   System.Web.Mvc.ValueProviderDictionary.PopulateDictionary() +145   System.Web.Mvc.ValueProviderDictionary..ctor(ControllerContext controllerContext) +74   System.Web.Mvc.ControllerBase.get_ValueProvider() +31   System.Web.Mvc.ControllerActionInvoker.GetParameterValue(ControllerContext controllerContext, ParameterDescriptor parameterDescriptor) +53   System.Web.Mvc.ControllerActionInvoker.GetParameterValues(ControllerContext controllerContext, ActionDescriptor actionDescriptor) +109   System.Web.Mvc.ControllerActionInvoker.InvokeAction(ControllerContext controllerContext, String actionName) +399   System.Web.Mvc.Controller.ExecuteCore() +126   System.Web.Mvc.ControllerBase.Execute(RequestContext requestContext) +27   ASP.NET Web Form Stack Trace:    System.Web.HttpRequest.ValidateString(String s, String valueName, String collectionName) +3213202   System.Web.HttpRequest.ValidateNameValueCollection(NameValueCollection nvc, String collectionName) +108   System.Web.HttpRequest.get_QueryString() +119   System.Web.UI.Page.GetCollectionBasedOnMethod(Boolean dontReturnNull) +2022776   System.Web.UI.Page.DeterminePostBackMode() +60   System.Web.UI.Page.ProcessRequestMain(Boolean includeStagesBeforeAsyncPoint, Boolean includeStagesAfterAsyncPoint) +6953   System.Web.UI.Page.ProcessRequest(Boolean includeStagesBeforeAsyncPoint, Boolean includeStagesAfterAsyncPoint) +154   System.Web.UI.Page.ProcessRequest() +86                        Since the first responder of request in ASP.NET MVC is the controller action therefore it will check the posted values during calling the action. That's why web.config's requestValidate not work in ASP.NET MVC.            So let's see how to handle this globally in ASP.NET MVC. First of all you need to add an appSettings in web.config. <appSettings>    <add key="validateRequest" value="true"/>  </appSettings>              I am using the same key used in disable request validation in Web Form. Next just create a new ControllerFactory by derving the class from DefaultControllerFactory.     public class MyAppControllerFactory : DefaultControllerFactory    {        protected override IController GetControllerInstance(Type controllerType)        {            var controller = base.GetControllerInstance(controllerType);            string validateRequest=System.Configuration.ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["validateRequest"];            bool b;            if (validateRequest != null && bool.TryParse(validateRequest,out b))                ((ControllerBase)controller).ValidateRequest = bool.Parse(validateRequest);            return controller;        }    }                         Next just register your controller factory in global.asax.        protected void Application_Start()        {            //............................................................................................            ControllerBuilder.Current.SetControllerFactory(new MyAppControllerFactory());        }              This will prevent the above exception to occur in the context of ASP.NET MVC. But if you are using the Default WebFormViewEngine then you need also to set validateRequest="false" in your web.config file inside <pages> element            Now when you run your application you see the effect of validateRequest appsetting. One thing also note that the ValidateInputAttribute placed inside action or controller will always override this setting.    Summary:          Request validation is great security feature in ASP.NET but some times there is a need to disable this entirely. So in this article i just showed you how to disable this globally in ASP.NET MVC. I also explained the difference between request validation in Web Form and ASP.NET MVC. Hopefully you will enjoy this.

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  • Chock-full of Identity Customers at Oracle OpenWorld

    - by Tanu Sood
      Oracle Openworld (OOW) 2012 kicks off this coming Sunday. Oracle OpenWorld is known to bring in Oracle customers, organizations big and small, from all over the world. And, Identity Management is no exception. If you are looking to catch up with Oracle Identity Management customers, hear first-hand about their implementation experiences and discuss industry trends, business drivers, solutions and more at OOW, here are some sessions we recommend you attend: Monday, October 1, 2012 CON9405: Trends in Identity Management 10:45 a.m. – 11:45 a.m., Moscone West 3003 Subject matter experts from Kaiser Permanente and SuperValu share the stage with Amit Jasuja, Snior Vice President, Oracle Identity Management and Security to discuss how the latest advances in Identity Management are helping customers address emerging requirements for securely enabling cloud, social and mobile environments. CON9492: Simplifying your Identity Management Implementation 3:15 p.m. – 4:15 p.m., Moscone West 3008 Implementation experts from British Telecom, Kaiser Permanente and UPMC participate in a panel to discuss best practices, key strategies and lessons learned based on their own experiences. Attendees will hear first-hand what they can do to streamline and simplify their identity management implementation framework for a quick return-on-investment and maximum efficiency. CON9444: Modernized and Complete Access Management 4:45 p.m. – 5:45 p.m., Moscone West 3008 We have come a long way from the days of web single sign-on addressing the core business requirements. Today, as technology and business evolves, organizations are seeking new capabilities like federation, token services, fine grained authorizations, web fraud prevention and strong authentication. This session will explore the emerging requirements for access management, what a complete solution is like, complemented with real-world customer case studies from ETS, Kaiser Permanente and TURKCELL and product demonstrations. Tuesday, October 2, 2012 CON9437: Mobile Access Management 10:15 a.m. – 11:15 a.m., Moscone West 3022 With more than 5 billion mobile devices on the planet and an increasing number of users using their own devices to access corporate data and applications, securely extending identity management to mobile devices has become a hot topic. This session will feature Identity Management evangelists from companies like Intuit, NetApp and Toyota to discuss how to extend your existing identity management infrastructure and policies to securely and seamlessly enable mobile user access. CON9491: Enhancing the End-User Experience with Oracle Identity Governance applications 11:45 a.m. – 12:45 p.m., Moscone West 3008 As organizations seek to encourage more and more user self service, business users are now primary end users for identity management installations.  Join experts from Visa and Oracle as they explore how Oracle Identity Governance solutions deliver complete identity administration and governance solutions with support for emerging requirements like cloud identities and mobile devices. CON9447: Enabling Access for Hundreds of Millions of Users 1:15 p.m. – 2:15 p.m., Moscone West 3008 Dealing with scale problems? Looking to address identity management requirements with million or so users in mind? Then take note of Cisco’s implementation. Join this session to hear first-hand how Cisco tackled identity management and scaled their implementation to bolster security and enforce compliance. CON9465: Next Generation Directory – Oracle Unified Directory 5:00 p.m. – 6:00 p.m., Moscone West 3008 Get the 360 degrees perspective from a solution provider, implementation services partner and the customer in this session to learn how the latest Oracle Unified Directory solutions can help you build a directory infrastructure that is optimized to support cloud, mobile and social networking and yet deliver on scale and performance. Wednesday, October 3, 2012 CON9494: Sun2Oracle: Identity Management Platform Transformation 11:45 a.m. – 12:45 p.m., Moscone West 3008 Sun customers are actively defining strategies for how they will modernize their identity deployments. Learn how customers like Avea and SuperValu are leveraging their Sun investment, evaluating areas of expansion/improvement and building momentum. CON9631: Entitlement-centric Access to SOA and Cloud Services 11:45 a.m. – 12:45 p.m., Marriott Marquis, Salon 7 How do you enforce that a junior trader can submit 10 trades/day, with a total value of $5M, if market volatility is low? How can hide sensitive patient information from clerical workers but make it visible to specialists as long as consent has been given or there is an emergency? How do you externalize such entitlements to allow dynamic changes without having to touch the application code? In this session, Uberether and HerbaLife take the stage with Oracle to demonstrate how you can enforce such entitlements on a service not just within your intranet but also right at the perimeter. CON3957 - Delivering Secure Wi-Fi on the Tube as an Olympics Legacy from London 2012 11:45 a.m. – 12:45 p.m., Moscone West 3003 In this session, Virgin Media, the U.K.’s first combined provider of broadband, TV, mobile, and home phone services, shares how it is providing free secure Wi-Fi services to the London Underground, using Oracle Virtual Directory and Oracle Entitlements Server, leveraging back-end legacy systems that were never designed to be externalized. As an Olympics 2012 legacy, the Oracle architecture will form a platform to be consumed by other Virgin Media services such as video on demand. CON9493: Identity Management and the Cloud 1:15 p.m. – 2:15 p.m., Moscone West 3008 Security is the number one barrier to cloud service adoption.  Not so for industry leading companies like SaskTel, ConAgra foods and UPMC. This session will explore how these organizations are using Oracle Identity with cloud services and how some are offering identity management as a cloud service. CON9624: Real-Time External Authorization for Middleware, Applications, and Databases 3:30 p.m. – 4:30 p.m., Moscone West 3008 As organizations seek to grant access to broader and more diverse user populations, the importance of centrally defined and applied authorization policies become critical; both to identify who has access to what and to improve the end user experience.  This session will explore how customers are using attribute and role-based access to achieve these goals. CON9625: Taking control of WebCenter Security 5:00 p.m. – 6:00 p.m., Moscone West 3008 Many organizations are extending WebCenter in a business to business scenario requiring secure identification and authorization of business partners and their users. Leveraging LADWP’s use case, this session will focus on how customers are leveraging, securing and providing access control to Oracle WebCenter portal and mobile solutions. Thursday, October 4, 2012 CON9662: Securing Oracle Applications with the Oracle Enterprise Identity Management Platform 2:15 p.m. – 3:15 p.m., Moscone West 3008 Oracle Enterprise identity Management solutions are designed to secure access and simplify compliance to Oracle Applications.  Whether you are an EBS customer looking to upgrade from Oracle Single Sign-on or a Fusion Application customer seeking to leverage the Identity instance as an enterprise security platform, this session with Qualcomm and Oracle will help you understand how to get the most out of your investment. And here’s the complete listing of all the Identity Management sessions at Oracle OpenWorld.

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  • Solaris X86 AESNI OpenSSL Engine

    - by danx
    Solaris X86 AESNI OpenSSL Engine Cryptography is a major component of secure e-commerce. Since cryptography is compute intensive and adds a significant load to applications, such as SSL web servers (https), crypto performance is an important factor. Providing accelerated crypto hardware greatly helps these applications and will help lead to a wider adoption of cryptography, and lower cost, in e-commerce and other applications. The Intel Westmere microprocessor has six new instructions to acclerate AES encryption. They are called "AESNI" for "AES New Instructions". These are unprivileged instructions, so no "root", other elevated access, or context switch is required to execute these instructions. These instructions are used in a new built-in OpenSSL 1.0 engine available in Solaris 11, the aesni engine. Previous Work Previously, AESNI instructions were introduced into the Solaris x86 kernel and libraries. That is, the "aes" kernel module (used by IPsec and other kernel modules) and the Solaris pkcs11 library (for user applications). These are available in Solaris 10 10/09 (update 8) and above, and Solaris 11. The work here is to add the aesni engine to OpenSSL. X86 AESNI Instructions Intel's Xeon 5600 is one of the processors that support AESNI. This processor is used in the Sun Fire X4170 M2 As mentioned above, six new instructions acclerate AES encryption in processor silicon. The new instructions are: aesenc performs one round of AES encryption. One encryption round is composed of these steps: substitute bytes, shift rows, mix columns, and xor the round key. aesenclast performs the final encryption round, which is the same as above, except omitting the mix columns (which is only needed for the next encryption round). aesdec performs one round of AES decryption aesdeclast performs the final AES decryption round aeskeygenassist Helps expand the user-provided key into a "key schedule" of keys, one per round aesimc performs an "inverse mixed columns" operation to convert the encryption key schedule into a decryption key schedule pclmulqdq Not a AESNI instruction, but performs "carryless multiply" operations to acclerate AES GCM mode. Since the AESNI instructions are implemented in hardware, they take a constant number of cycles and are not vulnerable to side-channel timing attacks that attempt to discern some bits of data from the time taken to encrypt or decrypt the data. Solaris x86 and OpenSSL Software Optimizations Having X86 AESNI hardware crypto instructions is all well and good, but how do we access it? The software is available with Solaris 11 and is used automatically if you are running Solaris x86 on a AESNI-capable processor. AESNI is used internally in the kernel through kernel crypto modules and is available in user space through the PKCS#11 library. For OpenSSL on Solaris 11, AESNI crypto is available directly with a new built-in OpenSSL 1.0 engine, called the "aesni engine." This is in lieu of the extra overhead of going through the Solaris OpenSSL pkcs11 engine, which accesses Solaris crypto and digest operations. Instead, AESNI assembly is included directly in the new aesni engine. Instead of including the aesni engine in a separate library in /lib/openssl/engines/, the aesni engine is "built-in", meaning it is included directly in OpenSSL's libcrypto.so.1.0.0 library. This reduces overhead and the need to manually specify the aesni engine. Since the engine is built-in (that is, in libcrypto.so.1.0.0), the openssl -engine command line flag or API call is not needed to access the engine—the aesni engine is used automatically on AESNI hardware. Ciphers and Digests supported by OpenSSL aesni engine The Openssl aesni engine auto-detects if it's running on AESNI hardware and uses AESNI encryption instructions for these ciphers: AES-128-CBC, AES-192-CBC, AES-256-CBC, AES-128-CFB128, AES-192-CFB128, AES-256-CFB128, AES-128-CTR, AES-192-CTR, AES-256-CTR, AES-128-ECB, AES-192-ECB, AES-256-ECB, AES-128-OFB, AES-192-OFB, and AES-256-OFB. Implementation of the OpenSSL aesni engine The AESNI assembly language routines are not a part of the regular Openssl 1.0.0 release. AESNI is a part of the "HEAD" ("development" or "unstable") branch of OpenSSL, for future release. But AESNI is also available as a separate patch provided by Intel to the OpenSSL project for OpenSSL 1.0.0. A minimal amount of "glue" code in the aesni engine works between the OpenSSL libcrypto.so.1.0.0 library and the assembly functions. The aesni engine code is separate from the base OpenSSL code and requires patching only a few source files to use it. That means OpenSSL can be more easily updated to future versions without losing the performance from the built-in aesni engine. OpenSSL aesni engine Performance Here's some graphs of aesni engine performance I measured by running openssl speed -evp $algorithm where $algorithm is aes-128-cbc, aes-192-cbc, and aes-256-cbc. These are using the 64-bit version of openssl on the same AESNI hardware, a Sun Fire X4170 M2 with a Intel Xeon E5620 @2.40GHz, running Solaris 11 FCS. "Before" is openssl without the aesni engine and "after" is openssl with the aesni engine. The numbers are MBytes/second. OpenSSL aesni engine performance on Sun Fire X4170 M2 (Xeon E5620 @2.40GHz) (Higher is better; "before"=OpenSSL on AESNI without AESNI engine software, "after"=OpenSSL AESNI engine) As you can see the speedup is dramatic for all 3 key lengths and for data sizes from 16 bytes to 8 Kbytes—AESNI is about 7.5-8x faster over hand-coded amd64 assembly (without aesni instructions). Verifying the OpenSSL aesni engine is present The easiest way to determine if you are running the aesni engine is to type "openssl engine" on the command line. No configuration, API, or command line options are needed to use the OpenSSL aesni engine. If you are running on Intel AESNI hardware with Solaris 11 FCS, you'll see this output indicating you are using the aesni engine: intel-westmere $ openssl engine (aesni) Intel AES-NI engine (no-aesni) (dynamic) Dynamic engine loading support (pkcs11) PKCS #11 engine support If you are running on Intel without AESNI hardware you'll see this output indicating the hardware can't support the aesni engine: intel-nehalem $ openssl engine (aesni) Intel AES-NI engine (no-aesni) (dynamic) Dynamic engine loading support (pkcs11) PKCS #11 engine support For Solaris on SPARC or older Solaris OpenSSL software, you won't see any aesni engine line at all. Third-party OpenSSL software (built yourself or from outside Oracle) will not have the aesni engine either. Solaris 11 FCS comes with OpenSSL version 1.0.0e. The output of typing "openssl version" should be "OpenSSL 1.0.0e 6 Sep 2011". 64- and 32-bit OpenSSL OpenSSL comes in both 32- and 64-bit binaries. 64-bit executable is now the default, at /usr/bin/openssl, and OpenSSL 64-bit libraries at /lib/amd64/libcrypto.so.1.0.0 and libssl.so.1.0.0 The 32-bit executable is at /usr/bin/i86/openssl and the libraries are at /lib/libcrytpo.so.1.0.0 and libssl.so.1.0.0. Availability The OpenSSL AESNI engine is available in Solaris 11 x86 for both the 64- and 32-bit versions of OpenSSL. It is not available with Solaris 10. You must have a processor that supports AESNI instructions, otherwise OpenSSL will fallback to the older, slower AES implementation without AESNI. Processors that support AESNI include most Westmere and Sandy Bridge class processor architectures. Some low-end processors (such as for mobile/laptop platforms) do not support AESNI. The easiest way to determine if the processor supports AESNI is with the isainfo -v command—look for "amd64" and "aes" in the output: $ isainfo -v 64-bit amd64 applications pclmulqdq aes sse4.2 sse4.1 ssse3 popcnt tscp ahf cx16 sse3 sse2 sse fxsr mmx cmov amd_sysc cx8 tsc fpu Conclusion The Solaris 11 OpenSSL aesni engine provides easy access to powerful Intel AESNI hardware cryptography, in addition to Solaris userland PKCS#11 libraries and Solaris crypto kernel modules.

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  • mount network drive

    - by CaptnLenz
    since i updated my ubuntu to natty narwhal(from 10.04), my mount script doesn't work anymore. The scripts mounts a folder from a NAS (WD mybookworld) in the local network to a folder in my home folder. script looked like that: #!/bin/bash sudo mount //192.168.2.222/Public/Shared\ Music/ /home/simon/Musik/ error: mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on //192.168.2.222/Public/Shared Music/, missing codepage or helper program, or other error (for several filesystems (e.g. nfs, cifs) you might need a /sbin/mount.<type> helper program) Manchmal liefert das Syslog wertvolle Informationen – versuchen Sie dmesg | tail oder so now, because the script doesn't work anymore i decided to add the mount-process to my fstab, because the network drive should be mounted on every startup. My fstab entry looks like this: //192.168.2.222/Public/Shared\ Music/ /home/simon/Musik cifs credentials=/home/simon/.smbcredentials 0 0 But it doesn't work, too. I get a message during the startup process, that Musik couldn't be mounted. Are there any log files i can check for errors? The system is a fresh installed 11.04. Greetings

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  • Evolution email forgets all settings after reboot

    - by jbrendel
    My Evolution email client keeps forgetting all settings after a reboot or even a logout/login! Please help! I have recently installed Ubuntu 12.04 on a new laptop. To move my Evolution settings and email over to the new machine, I selected "backup", which creates a single tar.gz archive of all Evolution settings and mail. I copied the file to the new computer, started Evolution which presented me with the startup assistant. I selected 'restore from backup', pointed at the tar.gz file and all was beautifully restored. All seemed to work just fine. However, after a reboot I noticed that Evolution seems to have forgotten all settings: I get the startup assistant again when I start Evolution. I checked that the .conf/evolution and .local/share/evolution directories were still present, yet, none of that seemed to matter, it wanted me to restore from a backup again. The version of Ubuntu (12.04) and Evolution (3.2.3) are the same on the old and new laptop. Just stopping and restarting Evolution does not cause this problem. Even if I manually kill all Evolution related processes, the settings will be remembered and it can start up no problem. The problem only happens on logout/login or reboot. Any help is greatly appreciated! Thank you very much!

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  • Solaris X86 AESNI OpenSSL Engine

    - by danx
    Solaris X86 AESNI OpenSSL Engine Cryptography is a major component of secure e-commerce. Since cryptography is compute intensive and adds a significant load to applications, such as SSL web servers (https), crypto performance is an important factor. Providing accelerated crypto hardware greatly helps these applications and will help lead to a wider adoption of cryptography, and lower cost, in e-commerce and other applications. The Intel Westmere microprocessor has six new instructions to acclerate AES encryption. They are called "AESNI" for "AES New Instructions". These are unprivileged instructions, so no "root", other elevated access, or context switch is required to execute these instructions. These instructions are used in a new built-in OpenSSL 1.0 engine available in Solaris 11, the aesni engine. Previous Work Previously, AESNI instructions were introduced into the Solaris x86 kernel and libraries. That is, the "aes" kernel module (used by IPsec and other kernel modules) and the Solaris pkcs11 library (for user applications). These are available in Solaris 10 10/09 (update 8) and above, and Solaris 11. The work here is to add the aesni engine to OpenSSL. X86 AESNI Instructions Intel's Xeon 5600 is one of the processors that support AESNI. This processor is used in the Sun Fire X4170 M2 As mentioned above, six new instructions acclerate AES encryption in processor silicon. The new instructions are: aesenc performs one round of AES encryption. One encryption round is composed of these steps: substitute bytes, shift rows, mix columns, and xor the round key. aesenclast performs the final encryption round, which is the same as above, except omitting the mix columns (which is only needed for the next encryption round). aesdec performs one round of AES decryption aesdeclast performs the final AES decryption round aeskeygenassist Helps expand the user-provided key into a "key schedule" of keys, one per round aesimc performs an "inverse mixed columns" operation to convert the encryption key schedule into a decryption key schedule pclmulqdq Not a AESNI instruction, but performs "carryless multiply" operations to acclerate AES GCM mode. Since the AESNI instructions are implemented in hardware, they take a constant number of cycles and are not vulnerable to side-channel timing attacks that attempt to discern some bits of data from the time taken to encrypt or decrypt the data. Solaris x86 and OpenSSL Software Optimizations Having X86 AESNI hardware crypto instructions is all well and good, but how do we access it? The software is available with Solaris 11 and is used automatically if you are running Solaris x86 on a AESNI-capable processor. AESNI is used internally in the kernel through kernel crypto modules and is available in user space through the PKCS#11 library. For OpenSSL on Solaris 11, AESNI crypto is available directly with a new built-in OpenSSL 1.0 engine, called the "aesni engine." This is in lieu of the extra overhead of going through the Solaris OpenSSL pkcs11 engine, which accesses Solaris crypto and digest operations. Instead, AESNI assembly is included directly in the new aesni engine. Instead of including the aesni engine in a separate library in /lib/openssl/engines/, the aesni engine is "built-in", meaning it is included directly in OpenSSL's libcrypto.so.1.0.0 library. This reduces overhead and the need to manually specify the aesni engine. Since the engine is built-in (that is, in libcrypto.so.1.0.0), the openssl -engine command line flag or API call is not needed to access the engine—the aesni engine is used automatically on AESNI hardware. Ciphers and Digests supported by OpenSSL aesni engine The Openssl aesni engine auto-detects if it's running on AESNI hardware and uses AESNI encryption instructions for these ciphers: AES-128-CBC, AES-192-CBC, AES-256-CBC, AES-128-CFB128, AES-192-CFB128, AES-256-CFB128, AES-128-CTR, AES-192-CTR, AES-256-CTR, AES-128-ECB, AES-192-ECB, AES-256-ECB, AES-128-OFB, AES-192-OFB, and AES-256-OFB. Implementation of the OpenSSL aesni engine The AESNI assembly language routines are not a part of the regular Openssl 1.0.0 release. AESNI is a part of the "HEAD" ("development" or "unstable") branch of OpenSSL, for future release. But AESNI is also available as a separate patch provided by Intel to the OpenSSL project for OpenSSL 1.0.0. A minimal amount of "glue" code in the aesni engine works between the OpenSSL libcrypto.so.1.0.0 library and the assembly functions. The aesni engine code is separate from the base OpenSSL code and requires patching only a few source files to use it. That means OpenSSL can be more easily updated to future versions without losing the performance from the built-in aesni engine. OpenSSL aesni engine Performance Here's some graphs of aesni engine performance I measured by running openssl speed -evp $algorithm where $algorithm is aes-128-cbc, aes-192-cbc, and aes-256-cbc. These are using the 64-bit version of openssl on the same AESNI hardware, a Sun Fire X4170 M2 with a Intel Xeon E5620 @2.40GHz, running Solaris 11 FCS. "Before" is openssl without the aesni engine and "after" is openssl with the aesni engine. The numbers are MBytes/second. OpenSSL aesni engine performance on Sun Fire X4170 M2 (Xeon E5620 @2.40GHz) (Higher is better; "before"=OpenSSL on AESNI without AESNI engine software, "after"=OpenSSL AESNI engine) As you can see the speedup is dramatic for all 3 key lengths and for data sizes from 16 bytes to 8 Kbytes—AESNI is about 7.5-8x faster over hand-coded amd64 assembly (without aesni instructions). Verifying the OpenSSL aesni engine is present The easiest way to determine if you are running the aesni engine is to type "openssl engine" on the command line. No configuration, API, or command line options are needed to use the OpenSSL aesni engine. If you are running on Intel AESNI hardware with Solaris 11 FCS, you'll see this output indicating you are using the aesni engine: intel-westmere $ openssl engine (aesni) Intel AES-NI engine (no-aesni) (dynamic) Dynamic engine loading support (pkcs11) PKCS #11 engine support If you are running on Intel without AESNI hardware you'll see this output indicating the hardware can't support the aesni engine: intel-nehalem $ openssl engine (aesni) Intel AES-NI engine (no-aesni) (dynamic) Dynamic engine loading support (pkcs11) PKCS #11 engine support For Solaris on SPARC or older Solaris OpenSSL software, you won't see any aesni engine line at all. Third-party OpenSSL software (built yourself or from outside Oracle) will not have the aesni engine either. Solaris 11 FCS comes with OpenSSL version 1.0.0e. The output of typing "openssl version" should be "OpenSSL 1.0.0e 6 Sep 2011". 64- and 32-bit OpenSSL OpenSSL comes in both 32- and 64-bit binaries. 64-bit executable is now the default, at /usr/bin/openssl, and OpenSSL 64-bit libraries at /lib/amd64/libcrypto.so.1.0.0 and libssl.so.1.0.0 The 32-bit executable is at /usr/bin/i86/openssl and the libraries are at /lib/libcrytpo.so.1.0.0 and libssl.so.1.0.0. Availability The OpenSSL AESNI engine is available in Solaris 11 x86 for both the 64- and 32-bit versions of OpenSSL. It is not available with Solaris 10. You must have a processor that supports AESNI instructions, otherwise OpenSSL will fallback to the older, slower AES implementation without AESNI. Processors that support AESNI include most Westmere and Sandy Bridge class processor architectures. Some low-end processors (such as for mobile/laptop platforms) do not support AESNI. The easiest way to determine if the processor supports AESNI is with the isainfo -v command—look for "amd64" and "aes" in the output: $ isainfo -v 64-bit amd64 applications pclmulqdq aes sse4.2 sse4.1 ssse3 popcnt tscp ahf cx16 sse3 sse2 sse fxsr mmx cmov amd_sysc cx8 tsc fpu Conclusion The Solaris 11 OpenSSL aesni engine provides easy access to powerful Intel AESNI hardware cryptography, in addition to Solaris userland PKCS#11 libraries and Solaris crypto kernel modules.

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  • links for 2011-03-04

    - by Bob Rhubart
    Joao Oliveira: Forms and Reports 11g Fusion Startup Script "After Fusion Middleware 11g Linux installation (Weblogic, Forms, Reports, Discoverer and Portal or others) probably most of the newcomers will wonder how to create a startup script to start the Weblogic managed Servers when the server starts up or reboots." (tags: oracle fusionmiddleware weblogic) Anthony Shorten: SOA Suite Integration: Part 3: Loading files Anthony says: "One of the most common scenarios in SOA Integration is the loading of a file into the product from an external source. In Oracle SOA Suite there is a File Adapter that can process many file types into your BPEL process." (tags: oracle otn soa soasuite) Francisco Munoz Alvarez: Playing with Oracle 11gR2, OEL 5.6 and VirtualBox 4.0.2 (1st Part) Oracle ACE Francisco Munoz Alvarez kicks off a tutorial on creating an Oracle Database 11gR2 instance using Oracle VirtualBox and OEL. (tags: oracle database virtualbox virtualization) ORACLENERD: VirtualBox and Shared Folders Oracle ACE Chet Justice shares some tips. (tags: oracle otn oracleace virtualization virtualbox) Chris Muir: Check out the ADF content at this year's ODTUG KScope11 conference Oracle ACE Director Chris Muir shares information on this year's ODTUD Kaleidoscope event in Long Beach, CA, June 26-30. (tags: oracle otn oracleace odtug adf) Edwin Biemond: Setting a virtual IP on a specific Network interface with WebLogic 10.3.4 PS3 Edwin says: "If you want High Availability in WebLogic you need to enable the WebLogic server migration, configure the nodemanager, use a virtual / floating IP in your managed servers and channels." (tags: oracle otn oracleace highavailability weblogic virtualization) Markus Eisele: High Performance JPA with GlassFish and Coherence - Part 3 Markus says: "In this third part of my four part series I'll explain strategy number two of using Coherence with EclipseLink and GlassFish. This is all about using Coherence as Second Level Cache (L2) with EclipseLink." (tags: oracle otn oracleace glassfish coherence) Michel Schildmeijer: Set Oracle ESB montoring with Enterprise Manager Grid Control "Monitoring your Oracle SOA Suite environment...can be very complicated, but if you are using Grid Control, Oracle provides you the SOA Management Pack. Unfortunately this SOA Management Pack has pretty detailed OOTB info about BPEL, but for ESB you won’t find any OOTB metrics." (tags: oracle otn soa grid servicebus)

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  • Adding and accessing custom sections in your C# App.config

    - by deadlydog
    So I recently thought I’d try using the app.config file to specify some data for my application (such as URLs) rather than hard-coding it into my app, which would require a recompile and redeploy of my app if one of our URLs changed.  By using the app.config it allows a user to just open up the .config file that sits beside their .exe file and edit the URLs right there and then re-run the app; no recompiling, no redeployment necessary. I spent a good few hours fighting with the app.config and looking at examples on Google before I was able to get things to work properly.  Most of the examples I found showed you how to pull a value from the app.config if you knew the specific key of the element you wanted to retrieve, but it took me a while to find a way to simply loop through all elements in a section, so I thought I would share my solutions here.   Simple and Easy The easiest way to use the app.config is to use the built-in types, such as NameValueSectionHandler.  For example, if we just wanted to add a list of database server urls to use in my app, we could do this in the app.config file like so: 1: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?> 2: <configuration> 3: <configSections> 4: <section name="ConnectionManagerDatabaseServers" type="System.Configuration.NameValueSectionHandler" /> 5: </configSections> 6: <startup> 7: <supportedRuntime version="v4.0" sku=".NETFramework,Version=v4.5" /> 8: </startup> 9: <ConnectionManagerDatabaseServers> 10: <add key="localhost" value="localhost" /> 11: <add key="Dev" value="Dev.MyDomain.local" /> 12: <add key="Test" value="Test.MyDomain.local" /> 13: <add key="Live" value="Prod.MyDomain.com" /> 14: </ConnectionManagerDatabaseServers> 15: </configuration>   And then you can access these values in code like so: 1: string devUrl = string.Empty; 2: var connectionManagerDatabaseServers = ConfigurationManager.GetSection("ConnectionManagerDatabaseServers") as NameValueCollection; 3: if (connectionManagerDatabaseServers != null) 4: { 5: devUrl = connectionManagerDatabaseServers["Dev"].ToString(); 6: }   Sometimes though you don’t know what the keys are going to be and you just want to grab all of the values in that ConnectionManagerDatabaseServers section.  In that case you can get them all like this: 1: // Grab the Environments listed in the App.config and add them to our list. 2: var connectionManagerDatabaseServers = ConfigurationManager.GetSection("ConnectionManagerDatabaseServers") as NameValueCollection; 3: if (connectionManagerDatabaseServers != null) 4: { 5: foreach (var serverKey in connectionManagerDatabaseServers.AllKeys) 6: { 7: string serverValue = connectionManagerDatabaseServers.GetValues(serverKey).FirstOrDefault(); 8: AddDatabaseServer(serverValue); 9: } 10: }   And here we just assume that the AddDatabaseServer() function adds the given string to some list of strings.  So this works great, but what about when we want to bring in more values than just a single string (or technically you could use this to bring in 2 strings, where the “key” could be the other string you want to store; for example, we could have stored the value of the Key as the user-friendly name of the url).   More Advanced (and more complicated) So if you want to bring in more information than a string or two per object in the section, then you can no longer simply use the built-in System.Configuration.NameValueSectionHandler type provided for us.  Instead you have to build your own types.  Here let’s assume that we again want to configure a set of addresses (i.e. urls), but we want to specify some extra info with them, such as the user-friendly name, if they require SSL or not, and a list of security groups that are allowed to save changes made to these endpoints. So let’s start by looking at the app.config: 1: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?> 2: <configuration> 3: <configSections> 4: <section name="ConnectionManagerDataSection" type="ConnectionManagerUpdater.Data.Configuration.ConnectionManagerDataSection, ConnectionManagerUpdater" /> 5: </configSections> 6: <startup> 7: <supportedRuntime version="v4.0" sku=".NETFramework,Version=v4.5" /> 8: </startup> 9: <ConnectionManagerDataSection> 10: <ConnectionManagerEndpoints> 11: <add name="Development" address="Dev.MyDomain.local" useSSL="false" /> 12: <add name="Test" address="Test.MyDomain.local" useSSL="true" /> 13: <add name="Live" address="Prod.MyDomain.com" useSSL="true" securityGroupsAllowedToSaveChanges="ConnectionManagerUsers" /> 14: </ConnectionManagerEndpoints> 15: </ConnectionManagerDataSection> 16: </configuration>   The first thing to notice here is that my section is now using the type “ConnectionManagerUpdater.Data.Configuration.ConnectionManagerDataSection” (the fully qualified path to my new class I created) “, ConnectionManagerUpdater” (the name of the assembly my new class is in).  Next, you will also notice an extra layer down in the <ConnectionManagerDataSection> which is the <ConnectionManagerEndpoints> element.  This is a new collection class that I created to hold each of the Endpoint entries that are defined.  Let’s look at that code now: 1: using System; 2: using System.Collections.Generic; 3: using System.Configuration; 4: using System.Linq; 5: using System.Text; 6: using System.Threading.Tasks; 7:  8: namespace ConnectionManagerUpdater.Data.Configuration 9: { 10: public class ConnectionManagerDataSection : ConfigurationSection 11: { 12: /// <summary> 13: /// The name of this section in the app.config. 14: /// </summary> 15: public const string SectionName = "ConnectionManagerDataSection"; 16: 17: private const string EndpointCollectionName = "ConnectionManagerEndpoints"; 18:  19: [ConfigurationProperty(EndpointCollectionName)] 20: [ConfigurationCollection(typeof(ConnectionManagerEndpointsCollection), AddItemName = "add")] 21: public ConnectionManagerEndpointsCollection ConnectionManagerEndpoints { get { return (ConnectionManagerEndpointsCollection)base[EndpointCollectionName]; } } 22: } 23:  24: public class ConnectionManagerEndpointsCollection : ConfigurationElementCollection 25: { 26: protected override ConfigurationElement CreateNewElement() 27: { 28: return new ConnectionManagerEndpointElement(); 29: } 30: 31: protected override object GetElementKey(ConfigurationElement element) 32: { 33: return ((ConnectionManagerEndpointElement)element).Name; 34: } 35: } 36: 37: public class ConnectionManagerEndpointElement : ConfigurationElement 38: { 39: [ConfigurationProperty("name", IsRequired = true)] 40: public string Name 41: { 42: get { return (string)this["name"]; } 43: set { this["name"] = value; } 44: } 45: 46: [ConfigurationProperty("address", IsRequired = true)] 47: public string Address 48: { 49: get { return (string)this["address"]; } 50: set { this["address"] = value; } 51: } 52: 53: [ConfigurationProperty("useSSL", IsRequired = false, DefaultValue = false)] 54: public bool UseSSL 55: { 56: get { return (bool)this["useSSL"]; } 57: set { this["useSSL"] = value; } 58: } 59: 60: [ConfigurationProperty("securityGroupsAllowedToSaveChanges", IsRequired = false)] 61: public string SecurityGroupsAllowedToSaveChanges 62: { 63: get { return (string)this["securityGroupsAllowedToSaveChanges"]; } 64: set { this["securityGroupsAllowedToSaveChanges"] = value; } 65: } 66: } 67: }   So here the first class we declare is the one that appears in the <configSections> element of the app.config.  It is ConnectionManagerDataSection and it inherits from the necessary System.Configuration.ConfigurationSection class.  This class just has one property (other than the expected section name), that basically just says I have a Collection property, which is actually a ConnectionManagerEndpointsCollection, which is the next class defined.  The ConnectionManagerEndpointsCollection class inherits from ConfigurationElementCollection and overrides the requied fields.  The first tells it what type of Element to create when adding a new one (in our case a ConnectionManagerEndpointElement), and a function specifying what property on our ConnectionManagerEndpointElement class is the unique key, which I’ve specified to be the Name field. The last class defined is the actual meat of our elements.  It inherits from ConfigurationElement and specifies the properties of the element (which can then be set in the xml of the App.config).  The “ConfigurationProperty” attribute on each of the properties tells what we expect the name of the property to correspond to in each element in the app.config, as well as some additional information such as if that property is required and what it’s default value should be. Finally, the code to actually access these values would look like this: 1: // Grab the Environments listed in the App.config and add them to our list. 2: var connectionManagerDataSection = ConfigurationManager.GetSection(ConnectionManagerDataSection.SectionName) as ConnectionManagerDataSection; 3: if (connectionManagerDataSection != null) 4: { 5: foreach (ConnectionManagerEndpointElement endpointElement in connectionManagerDataSection.ConnectionManagerEndpoints) 6: { 7: var endpoint = new ConnectionManagerEndpoint() { Name = endpointElement.Name, ServerInfo = new ConnectionManagerServerInfo() { Address = endpointElement.Address, UseSSL = endpointElement.UseSSL, SecurityGroupsAllowedToSaveChanges = endpointElement.SecurityGroupsAllowedToSaveChanges.Split(',').Where(e => !string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(e)).ToList() } }; 8: AddEndpoint(endpoint); 9: } 10: } This looks very similar to what we had before in the “simple” example.  The main points of interest are that we cast the section as ConnectionManagerDataSection (which is the class we defined for our section) and then iterate over the endpoints collection using the ConnectionManagerEndpoints property we created in the ConnectionManagerDataSection class.   Also, some other helpful resources around using app.config that I found (and for parts that I didn’t really explain in this article) are: How do you use sections in C# 4.0 app.config? (Stack Overflow) <== Shows how to use Section Groups as well, which is something that I did not cover here, but might be of interest to you. How to: Create Custom Configuration Sections Using Configuration Section (MSDN) ConfigurationSection Class (MSDN) ConfigurationCollectionAttribute Class (MSDN) ConfigurationElementCollection Class (MSDN)   I hope you find this helpful.  Feel free to leave a comment.  Happy Coding!

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  • Can't boot Ubuntu 12.04 from external Hard Drive using Mac

    - by Catgirl the Crazy
    Recently, I upgraded the RAM and hard drive on my Early 2008 Macbook to improve the performance. Rather than throw away the old hard drive, I bought an enclosure for it to turn it into an external hard drive, and, since all the data was migrated to my new drive, I decided to install Ubuntu on it for funsies (note: I am a near-total Ubuntu n00b). My first attempt to install Ubuntu didn't work (it gave me errors about not being able to find the BIOS or something), but my second attempt finished successfully (can't remember what, if anything, I did different). However, when I plug the external drive into my Macbook, it gives me a message saying it can't read the disk. Moreover, when I go into the Startup Manager (i.e.: what you get when you turn on the Macbook while holding the option key), the external drive is not one of the available startup disks. I thought this might be because I have an older Macbook, so I tried booting it with my mom's Late 2011 Macbook, and got the same results. Then I tried booting it through my dad's Dell laptop that runs Windows 7, and that time it worked. This is really counter intuitive to me, since the hard drive originally came from a Macbook, so if anything you'd think it would be less compatible with the Windows laptop than the Macbook. In case it helps, here's a link to a picture of how I set up the partition table while doing the install (not shown there is the fact that I checked the "Format?" box next to the /boot partition, since it gave me a warning when I tried to continue the installation without doing so) Anyone have any clue at all? If it helps, the hard drive I'm using is a 120GB 5400-rpm Serial ATA hard disk drive.

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  • People, Process & Engagement: WebCenter Partner Keste

    - by Michael Snow
    v\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} o\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} w\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} .shape {behavior:url(#default#VML);} Within the WebCenter group here at Oracle, discussions about people, process and engagement cross over many vertical industries and products. Amidst our growing partner ecosystem, the community provides us insight into great customer use cases every day. Such is the case with our partner, Keste, who provides us a guest post on our blog today with an overview of their innovative solution for a customer in the transportation industry. Keste is an Oracle software solutions and development company headquartered in Dallas, Texas. As a Platinum member of the Oracle® PartnerNetwork, Keste designs, develops and deploys custom solutions that automate complex business processes. Seamless Customer Self-Service Experience in the Trucking Industry with Oracle WebCenter Portal  Keste, Oracle Platinum Partner Customer Overview Omnitracs, Inc., a Qualcomm company provides mobility solutions for trucking fleets to companies in the transportation industry. Omnitracs’ mobility services include basic communications such as text as well as advanced monitoring services such as GPS tracking, temperature tracking of perishable goods, load tracking and weighting distribution, and many others. Customer Business Needs Already the leading provider of mobility solutions for large trucking fleets, they chose to target smaller trucking fleets as new customers. However their existing high-touch customer support method would not be a cost effective or scalable method to manage and service these smaller customers. Omnitracs needed to provide several self-service features to make customer support more scalable while keeping customer satisfaction levels high and the costs manageable. The solution also had to be very intuitive and easy to use. The systems that Omnitracs sells to these trucking customers require professional installation and smaller customers need to track and schedule the installation. Information captured in Oracle eBusiness Suite needed to be readily available for new customers to track these purchases and delivery details. Omnitracs wanted a high impact User Interface to significantly improve customer experience with the ability to integrate with EBS, provisioning systems as well as CRM systems that were already implemented. Omnitracs also wanted to build an architecture platform that could potentially be extended to other Portals. Omnitracs’ stated goal was to deliver an “eBay-like” or “Amazon-like” experience for all of their customers so that they could reach a much broader market beyond their large company customer base. Solution Overview In order to manage the increased complexity, the growing support needs of global customers and improve overall product time-to-market in a cost-effective manner, IT began to deliver a self-service model. This self service model not only transformed numerous business processes but is also allowing the business to keep up with the growing demands of the (internal and external) customers. This solution was a customer service Portal that provided self service capabilities for large and small customers alike for Activation of mobility products, managing add-on applications for the devices (much like the Apple App Store), transferring services when trucks are sold to other companies as well as deactivation all without the involvement of a call service agent or sending multiple emails to different Omnitracs contacts. This is a conceptual view of the Customer Portal showing the details of the components that make up the solution. 12.00 The portal application for transactions was entirely built using ADF 11g R2. Omnitracs’ business had a pressing requirement to have a portal available 24/7 for its customers. Since there were interactions with EBS in the back-end, the downtimes on the EBS would negate this availability. Omnitracs devised a decoupling strategy at the database side for the EBS data. The decoupling of the database was done using Oracle Data Guard and completely insulated the solution from any eBusiness Suite down time. The customer has no knowledge whether eBS is running or not. Here are two sample screenshots of the portal application built in Oracle ADF. Customer Benefits The Customer Portal not only provided the scalability to grow the business but also provided the seamless integration with other disparate applications. Some of the key benefits are: Improved Customer Experience: With a modern look and feel and a Portal that has the aspects of an App Store, the customer experience was significantly improved. Page response times went from several seconds to sub-second for all of the pages. Enabled new product launches: After successfully dominating the large fleet market, Omnitracs now has a scalable solution to sell and manage smaller fleet customers giving them a huge advantage over their nearest competitors. Dozens of new customers have been acquired via this portal through an onboarding process that now takes minutes Seamless Integrations Improves Customer Support: ADF 11gR2 allowed Omnitracs to bring a diverse list of applications into one integrated solution. This provided a seamless experience for customers to route them from Marketing focused application to a customer-oriented portal. Internally, it also allowed Sales Representatives to have an integrated flow for taking a prospect through the various steps to onboard them as a customer. Key integrations included: Unity Core Salesforce.com Merchant e-Solution for credit card Custom Omnitracs Applications like CUPS and AUTO Security utilizing OID and OVD Back end integration with EBS (Data Guard) and iQ Database Business Impact Significant business impacts were realized through the launch of customer portal. It not only allows the business to push through in underserved segments, but also reduces the time it needs to spend on customer support—allowing the business to focus more on sales and identifying the market for new products. Some of the Immediate Benefits are The entire onboarding process is now completely automated and now completes in minutes. This represents an 85% productivity improvement over their previous processes. And it was 160 times faster! With the success of this self-service solution, the business is now targeting about 3X customer growth in the next five years. This represents a tripling of their overall customer base and significant downstream revenue for the ongoing services. 90%+ improvement of customer onboarding and management process by utilizing, single sign on integration using OID/OAM solution, performance improvements and new self-service functionality Unified login for all Customers, Partners and Internal Users enables login to a common portal and seamless access to all other integrated applications targeted at the respective audience Significantly improved customer experience with a better look and feel with a more user experience focused Portal screens. Helped sales of the new product by having an easy way of ordering and activating the product. Data Guard helped increase availability of the Portal to 99%+ and make it independent of EBS downtime. This gave customers the feel of high availability of the portal application. Some of the anticipated longer term Benefits are: Platform that can be leveraged to launch any new product introduction and enable all product teams to reach new customers and new markets Easy integration with content management to allow business owners more control of the product catalog Overall reduced TCO with standardization of the Oracle platform Managed IT support cost savings through optimization of technology skills needed to support and modify this solution ------------------------------------------------------------ 12.00 Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 -"/ /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";}

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  • Is an ACPI GPE storm normal in an Ubuntu session?

    - by Tinellus
    In a previous question (What is a an ACPI GPE storm?), I asked about ACPI GPE storm. Looking closer to my kern.log file in /var/log/, I notice that in every session at some point (usually withing 20' after startup) a GPE storm is triggered. When I open kern.log immediately after startup, I see that the 'GPE-storm' can be triggered by anything (a copy-action, the opening of an app like Firefox or Thunderbird, etc...). This worries me. Looking for other ACPI related events in kern.log, I find these error messages. I hope someone can give some advice: Jun 10 16:33:20 Guy-VAIO kernel: [ 0.724505] ACPI FADT declares the system doesn't support PCIe ASPM, so disable it Jun 10 16:33:20 Guy-VAIO kernel: [ 0.795205] [Firmware Bug]: ACPI: BIOS _OSI(Linux) query ignored Jun 10 16:33:20 Guy-VAIO kernel: [ 1.024009] ACPI: Deprecated procfs I/F for battery is loaded, please retry with CONFIG_ACPI_PROCFS_POWER cleared Jun 10 16:33:20 Guy-VAIO kernel: [ 23.140259] [Firmware Bug]: ACPI(VGA) defines _DOD but not _DOS There's also a video driver message that worries me, don't know if it's related though: Jun 10 16:33:20 Guy-VAIO kernel: [ 23.162154] fglrx: module license 'Proprietary. (C) 2002 - ATI Technologies, Starnberg, GERMANY' taints kernel. Jun 10 16:33:20 Guy-VAIO kernel: [ 23.162158] Disabling lock debugging due to kernel taint As mentioned in my previous question, I'm experiencing frequent (several times /d) application crashes, that seem random, with apport messages being sent, and less frequent (once a week or so) complete system freezes where the system becomes unresponsive to keyboard, mouse or touchpad input and the only solution is a hard reboot (press start button) My questions: what about the Firmware Bugs in ACPI? how and where do I have to 'clear CONFIG_ACPI_PROCFS_POWER'? what does it mean when fglrx 'taints the kernel', is it serious and what could I do about it? Ubuntu 12.04, 64-bit, 3.2.0-25-generic Kernel, Intel® Core™ i5-2430M CPU @ 2.40GHz × 4 Thanks

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  • How to emulate pressing the Close button from a script?

    - by Karthik
    I wanted Thunderbird to stay in the Background to notify me of incoming mails. After a bit of searching, I found this post. How to keep Thunderbird and Pidgin running on background? The solution is to install an addon so that when we close Thunderbird it just stays in the background. Now, to have thunderbird running at Start up we can just add it to Startup Applications. But, when I open my system, Thunderbird also gets opened and I have to manually press the close button everytime to make Thunderbird go into the background. The solution given in the above post for this problem is to select Minimize on start. But doing so affects the way in which Thunderbird works when invoked from the Messaging menu. So I deselected this option. But, if there is a way to emulate pressing the Close button from a script, I can just add that script to Startup Applications So is there a way to achieve this? Note : If there is a simpler way to solve my original problem of keeping Thunderbird in background please post that also. Many thanks.

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