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• Setting up a NAS with Citrix XenServer

  - by JasonBrown

  Just a quick query on anyone whos worked with XenServer, I want to setup a NAS at home but with virtualization (I've looked into VMWare Server and KVM, I quite like KVM!) but I was told about XenServer 5.5. I have comomodity hardware (ASUS board, dual core 2.66Ghz CPU with 8Gb RAM), I need to setup a fileserver to house about 2-3Tb worth of data (big chunky video - not porn!). Need to run Linux (preferably CentOS) but also run Windows virtualised for testing. I was thinking of going the XenServer route, however I want to be able to offer a VM access to the 2-3Tb of HDDs (5 HDD drives) directly so it can do its thing (maybe using FreeNAS). Would this be possible with XenServer? Or will I have to do more work - and another box - to offer this? My goals are to use FreeNAS (ZFS!) for the filesserver, CentOS for SVN and aother bits we need to use (LAMP Stack), Windows for our win32 testing all on one box. I see this iSCSI target bits and get scared.

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• Could git do not store history of specific folders when working with git-svn?

  - by Timofey Basanov

  In short: Is there a way to disable storing full history for specific folders in git-svn repo? We have pretty large SVN repo with big checkout. I would like to migrate it to Git for my local development, because Git speeds up update and status commands orders of magnitude. When I simply do git svn clone it creates very big repo. Big enough to be bigger then my whole HDD. The problem lies in binary directories for which history is too large. Latest binaries are required for proper local build, but history is not required at all for my development process. I will never change them myself. I would like to store only latest versions for specific folders, or may be a history, but for no more than a week. I could only found filter for git svn fetch, which excludes specific folders at all. This is not exactly what I need. It's OK with me to have Cron task which deletes history from specific folders, but I do not know how to make one. Also Cron does not solve problem of first git svn clone. P.S. SVN repository structure could not be changed by any means.

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• Database tables with dynamic information

  - by Tim Fennis

  I've googled this and found that it's almost impossible to create a database with dynamic collumns. I'll explain my problem first. I am making a webshop for a customer. It has multiple computer products for sale. CPU's HDD's RAM ect. All these products have different properties, a CPU has an FSB, RAM has a CAS latency. But this is very inconvenient because my orders table needs foreign keys to different tables which is impossible. An other option is to store all the product specific information in a varchar or blob field and let PHP figure it out. The problem with this solution is that the website needs a PC builder. A step-by-step guide to building your PC. So for instance if a customer decides he wants a new "i7 920" or whatever i want to be able to sellect all motherboards for socket 1366, which is impossible because all the data is stored in one field. I know it's possible to select all motherboards form the DB and let PHP figure out which ones are for socket 1366 but i was wondering, is there a better solution?

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• value types in the vm

  - by john.rose

  value types in the vm p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times} p.p2 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 14.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times} p.p3 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 12.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times} p.p4 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 15.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times} p.p5 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Courier} p.p6 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Courier; min-height: 17.0px} p.p7 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px} p.p8 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 36.0px; text-indent: -36.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px} p.p9 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 12.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px} p.p10 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 12.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; color: #000000} li.li1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times} li.li7 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px} span.s1 {font: 14.0px Courier} span.s2 {color: #000000} span.s3 {font: 14.0px Courier; color: #000000} ol.ol1 {list-style-type: decimal} Or, enduring values for a changing world. Introduction A value type is a data type which, generally speaking, is designed for being passed by value in and out of methods, and stored by value in data structures. The only value types which the Java language directly supports are the eight primitive types. Java indirectly and approximately supports value types, if they are implemented in terms of classes. For example, both Integer and String may be viewed as value types, especially if their usage is restricted to avoid operations appropriate to Object. In this note, we propose a definition of value types in terms of a design pattern for Java classes, accompanied by a set of usage restrictions. We also sketch the relation of such value types to tuple types (which are a JVM-level notion), and point out JVM optimizations that can apply to value types. This note is a thought experiment to extend the JVM’s performance model in support of value types. The demonstration has two phases.  Initially the extension can simply use design patterns, within the current bytecode architecture, and in today’s Java language. But if the performance model is to be realized in practice, it will probably require new JVM bytecode features, changes to the Java language, or both.  We will look at a few possibilities for these new features. An Axiom of Value In the context of the JVM, a value type is a data type equipped with construction, assignment, and equality operations, and a set of typed components, such that, whenever two variables of the value type produce equal corresponding values for their components, the values of the two variables cannot be distinguished by any JVM operation. Here are some corollaries: A value type is immutable, since otherwise a copy could be constructed and the original could be modified in one of its components, allowing the copies to be distinguished. Changing the component of a value type requires construction of a new value. The equals and hashCode operations are strictly component-wise. If a value type is represented by a JVM reference, that reference cannot be successfully synchronized on, and cannot be usefully compared for reference equality. A value type can be viewed in terms of what it doesn’t do. We can say that a value type omits all value-unsafe operations, which could violate the constraints on value types.  These operations, which are ordinarily allowed for Java object types, are pointer equality comparison (the acmp instruction), synchronization (the monitor instructions), all the wait and notify methods of class Object, and non-trivial finalize methods. The clone method is also value-unsafe, although for value types it could be treated as the identity function. Finally, and most importantly, any side effect on an object (however visible) also counts as an value-unsafe operation. A value type may have methods, but such methods must not change the components of the value. It is reasonable and useful to define methods like toString, equals, and hashCode on value types, and also methods which are specifically valuable to users of the value type. Representations of Value Value types have two natural representations in the JVM, unboxed and boxed. An unboxed value consists of the components, as simple variables. For example, the complex number x=(1+2i), in rectangular coordinate form, may be represented in unboxed form by the following pair of variables: /*Complex x = Complex.valueOf(1.0, 2.0):*/ double x_re = 1.0, x_im = 2.0; These variables might be locals, parameters, or fields. Their association as components of a single value is not defined to the JVM. Here is a sample computation which computes the norm of the difference between two complex numbers: double distance(/*Complex x:*/ double x_re, double x_im,         /*Complex y:*/ double y_re, double y_im) {     /*Complex z = x.minus(y):*/     double z_re = x_re - y_re, z_im = x_im - y_im;     /*return z.abs():*/     return Math.sqrt(z_re*z_re + z_im*z_im); } A boxed representation groups component values under a single object reference. The reference is to a ‘wrapper class’ that carries the component values in its fields. (A primitive type can naturally be equated with a trivial value type with just one component of that type. In that view, the wrapper class Integer can serve as a boxed representation of value type int.) The unboxed representation of complex numbers is practical for many uses, but it fails to cover several major use cases: return values, array elements, and generic APIs. The two components of a complex number cannot be directly returned from a Java function, since Java does not support multiple return values. The same story applies to array elements: Java has no ’array of structs’ feature. (Double-length arrays are a possible workaround for complex numbers, but not for value types with heterogeneous components.) By generic APIs I mean both those which use generic types, like Arrays.asList and those which have special case support for primitive types, like String.valueOf and PrintStream.println. Those APIs do not support unboxed values, and offer some problems to boxed values. Any ’real’ JVM type should have a story for returns, arrays, and API interoperability. The basic problem here is that value types fall between primitive types and object types. Value types are clearly more complex than primitive types, and object types are slightly too complicated. Objects are a little bit dangerous to use as value carriers, since object references can be compared for pointer equality, and can be synchronized on. Also, as many Java programmers have observed, there is often a performance cost to using wrapper objects, even on modern JVMs. Even so, wrapper classes are a good starting point for talking about value types. If there were a set of structural rules and restrictions which would prevent value-unsafe operations on value types, wrapper classes would provide a good notation for defining value types. This note attempts to define such rules and restrictions. Let’s Start Coding Now it is time to look at some real code. Here is a definition, written in Java, of a complex number value type. @ValueSafe public final class Complex implements java.io.Serializable {     // immutable component structure:     public final double re, im;     private Complex(double re, double im) {         this.re = re; this.im = im;     }     // interoperability methods:     public String toString() { return "Complex("+re+","+im+")"; }     public List<Double> asList() { return Arrays.asList(re, im); }     public boolean equals(Complex c) {         return re == c.re && im == c.im;     }     public boolean equals(@ValueSafe Object x) {         return x instanceof Complex && equals((Complex) x);     }     public int hashCode() {         return 31*Double.valueOf(re).hashCode()                 + Double.valueOf(im).hashCode();     }     // factory methods:     public static Complex valueOf(double re, double im) {         return new Complex(re, im);     }     public Complex changeRe(double re2) { return valueOf(re2, im); }     public Complex changeIm(double im2) { return valueOf(re, im2); }     public static Complex cast(@ValueSafe Object x) {         return x == null ? ZERO : (Complex) x;     }     // utility methods and constants:     public Complex plus(Complex c)  { return new Complex(re+c.re, im+c.im); }     public Complex minus(Complex c) { return new Complex(re-c.re, im-c.im); }     public double abs() { return Math.sqrt(re*re + im*im); }     public static final Complex PI = valueOf(Math.PI, 0.0);     public static final Complex ZERO = valueOf(0.0, 0.0); } This is not a minimal definition, because it includes some utility methods and other optional parts.  The essential elements are as follows: The class is marked as a value type with an annotation. The class is final, because it does not make sense to create subclasses of value types. The fields of the class are all non-private and final.  (I.e., the type is immutable and structurally transparent.) From the supertype Object, all public non-final methods are overridden. The constructor is private. Beyond these bare essentials, we can observe the following features in this example, which are likely to be typical of all value types: One or more factory methods are responsible for value creation, including a component-wise valueOf method. There are utility methods for complex arithmetic and instance creation, such as plus and changeIm. There are static utility constants, such as PI. The type is serializable, using the default mechanisms. There are methods for converting to and from dynamically typed references, such as asList and cast. The Rules In order to use value types properly, the programmer must avoid value-unsafe operations.  A helpful Java compiler should issue errors (or at least warnings) for code which provably applies value-unsafe operations, and should issue warnings for code which might be correct but does not provably avoid value-unsafe operations.  No such compilers exist today, but to simplify our account here, we will pretend that they do exist. A value-safe type is any class, interface, or type parameter marked with the @ValueSafe annotation, or any subtype of a value-safe type.  If a value-safe class is marked final, it is in fact a value type.  All other value-safe classes must be abstract.  The non-static fields of a value class must be non-public and final, and all its constructors must be private. Under the above rules, a standard interface could be helpful to define value types like Complex.  Here is an example: @ValueSafe public interface ValueType extends java.io.Serializable {     // All methods listed here must get redefined.     // Definitions must be value-safe, which means     // they may depend on component values only.     List<? extends Object> asList();     int hashCode();     boolean equals(@ValueSafe Object c);     String toString(); } //@ValueSafe inherited from supertype: public final class Complex implements ValueType { … The main advantage of such a conventional interface is that (unlike an annotation) it is reified in the runtime type system.  It could appear as an element type or parameter bound, for facilities which are designed to work on value types only.  More broadly, it might assist the JVM to perform dynamic enforcement of the rules for value types. Besides types, the annotation @ValueSafe can mark fields, parameters, local variables, and methods.  (This is redundant when the type is also value-safe, but may be useful when the type is Object or another supertype of a value type.)  Working forward from these annotations, an expression E is defined as value-safe if it satisfies one or more of the following: The type of E is a value-safe type. E names a field, parameter, or local variable whose declaration is marked @ValueSafe. E is a call to a method whose declaration is marked @ValueSafe. E is an assignment to a value-safe variable, field reference, or array reference. E is a cast to a value-safe type from a value-safe expression. E is a conditional expression E0 ? E1 : E2, and both E1 and E2 are value-safe. Assignments to value-safe expressions and initializations of value-safe names must take their values from value-safe expressions. A value-safe expression may not be the subject of a value-unsafe operation.  In particular, it cannot be synchronized on, nor can it be compared with the “==” operator, not even with a null or with another value-safe type. In a program where all of these rules are followed, no value-type value will be subject to a value-unsafe operation.  Thus, the prime axiom of value types will be satisfied, that no two value type will be distinguishable as long as their component values are equal. More Code To illustrate these rules, here are some usage examples for Complex: Complex pi = Complex.valueOf(Math.PI, 0); Complex zero = pi.changeRe(0);  //zero = pi; zero.re = 0; ValueType vtype = pi; @SuppressWarnings("value-unsafe")   Object obj = pi; @ValueSafe Object obj2 = pi; obj2 = new Object();  // ok List<Complex> clist = new ArrayList<Complex>(); clist.add(pi);  // (ok assuming List.add param is @ValueSafe) List<ValueType> vlist = new ArrayList<ValueType>(); vlist.add(pi);  // (ok) List<Object> olist = new ArrayList<Object>(); olist.add(pi);  // warning: "value-unsafe" boolean z = pi.equals(zero); boolean z1 = (pi == zero);  // error: reference comparison on value type boolean z2 = (pi == null);  // error: reference comparison on value type boolean z3 = (pi == obj2);  // error: reference comparison on value type synchronized (pi) { }  // error: synch of value, unpredictable result synchronized (obj2) { }  // unpredictable result Complex qq = pi; qq = null;  // possible NPE; warning: “null-unsafe" qq = (Complex) obj;  // warning: “null-unsafe" qq = Complex.cast(obj);  // OK @SuppressWarnings("null-unsafe")   Complex empty = null;  // possible NPE qq = empty;  // possible NPE (null pollution) The Payoffs It follows from this that either the JVM or the java compiler can replace boxed value-type values with unboxed ones, without affecting normal computations.  Fields and variables of value types can be split into their unboxed components.  Non-static methods on value types can be transformed into static methods which take the components as value parameters. Some common questions arise around this point in any discussion of value types. Why burden the programmer with all these extra rules?  Why not detect programs automagically and perform unboxing transparently?  The answer is that it is easy to break the rules accidently unless they are agreed to by the programmer and enforced.  Automatic unboxing optimizations are tantalizing but (so far) unreachable ideal.  In the current state of the art, it is possible exhibit benchmarks in which automatic unboxing provides the desired effects, but it is not possible to provide a JVM with a performance model that assures the programmer when unboxing will occur.  This is why I’m writing this note, to enlist help from, and provide assurances to, the programmer.  Basically, I’m shooting for a good set of user-supplied “pragmas” to frame the desired optimization. Again, the important thing is that the unboxing must be done reliably, or else programmers will have no reason to work with the extra complexity of the value-safety rules.  There must be a reasonably stable performance model, wherein using a value type has approximately the same performance characteristics as writing the unboxed components as separate Java variables. There are some rough corners to the present scheme.  Since Java fields and array elements are initialized to null, value-type computations which incorporate uninitialized variables can produce null pointer exceptions.  One workaround for this is to require such variables to be null-tested, and the result replaced with a suitable all-zero value of the value type.  That is what the “cast” method does above. Generically typed APIs like List<T> will continue to manipulate boxed values always, at least until we figure out how to do reification of generic type instances.  Use of such APIs will elicit warnings until their type parameters (and/or relevant members) are annotated or typed as value-safe.  Retrofitting List<T> is likely to expose flaws in the present scheme, which we will need to engineer around.  Here are a couple of first approaches: public interface java.util.List<@ValueSafe T> extends Collection<T> { … public interface java.util.List<T extends Object|ValueType> extends Collection<T> { … (The second approach would require disjunctive types, in which value-safety is “contagious” from the constituent types.) With more transformations, the return value types of methods can also be unboxed.  This may require significant bytecode-level transformations, and would work best in the presence of a bytecode representation for multiple value groups, which I have proposed elsewhere under the title “Tuples in the VM”. But for starters, the JVM can apply this transformation under the covers, to internally compiled methods.  This would give a way to express multiple return values and structured return values, which is a significant pain-point for Java programmers, especially those who work with low-level structure types favored by modern vector and graphics processors.  The lack of multiple return values has a strong distorting effect on many Java APIs. Even if the JVM fails to unbox a value, there is still potential benefit to the value type.  Clustered computing systems something have copy operations (serialization or something similar) which apply implicitly to command operands.  When copying JVM objects, it is extremely helpful to know when an object’s identity is important or not.  If an object reference is a copied operand, the system may have to create a proxy handle which points back to the original object, so that side effects are visible.  Proxies must be managed carefully, and this can be expensive.  On the other hand, value types are exactly those types which a JVM can “copy and forget” with no downside. Array types are crucial to bulk data interfaces.  (As data sizes and rates increase, bulk data becomes more important than scalar data, so arrays are definitely accompanying us into the future of computing.)  Value types are very helpful for adding structure to bulk data, so a successful value type mechanism will make it easier for us to express richer forms of bulk data. Unboxing arrays (i.e., arrays containing unboxed values) will provide better cache and memory density, and more direct data movement within clustered or heterogeneous computing systems.  They require the deepest transformations, relative to today’s JVM.  There is an impedance mismatch between value-type arrays and Java’s covariant array typing, so compromises will need to be struck with existing Java semantics.  It is probably worth the effort, since arrays of unboxed value types are inherently more memory-efficient than standard Java arrays, which rely on dependent pointer chains. It may be sufficient to extend the “value-safe” concept to array declarations, and allow low-level transformations to change value-safe array declarations from the standard boxed form into an unboxed tuple-based form.  Such value-safe arrays would not be convertible to Object[] arrays.  Certain connection points, such as Arrays.copyOf and System.arraycopy might need additional input/output combinations, to allow smooth conversion between arrays with boxed and unboxed elements. Alternatively, the correct solution may have to wait until we have enough reification of generic types, and enough operator overloading, to enable an overhaul of Java arrays. Implicit Method Definitions The example of class Complex above may be unattractively complex.  I believe most or all of the elements of the example class are required by the logic of value types. If this is true, a programmer who writes a value type will have to write lots of error-prone boilerplate code.  On the other hand, I think nearly all of the code (except for the domain-specific parts like plus and minus) can be implicitly generated. Java has a rule for implicitly defining a class’s constructor, if no it defines no constructors explicitly.  Likewise, there are rules for providing default access modifiers for interface members.  Because of the highly regular structure of value types, it might be reasonable to perform similar implicit transformations on value types.  Here’s an example of a “highly implicit” definition of a complex number type: public class Complex implements ValueType {  // implicitly final     public double re, im;  // implicitly public final     //implicit methods are defined elementwise from te fields:     //  toString, asList, equals(2), hashCode, valueOf, cast     //optionally, explicit methods (plus, abs, etc.) would go here } In other words, with the right defaults, a simple value type definition can be a one-liner.  The observant reader will have noticed the similarities (and suitable differences) between the explicit methods above and the corresponding methods for List<T>. Another way to abbreviate such a class would be to make an annotation the primary trigger of the functionality, and to add the interface(s) implicitly: public @ValueType class Complex { … // implicitly final, implements ValueType (But to me it seems better to communicate the “magic” via an interface, even if it is rooted in an annotation.) Implicitly Defined Value Types So far we have been working with nominal value types, which is to say that the sequence of typed components is associated with a name and additional methods that convey the intention of the programmer.  A simple ordered pair of floating point numbers can be variously interpreted as (to name a few possibilities) a rectangular or polar complex number or Cartesian point.  The name and the methods convey the intended meaning. But what if we need a truly simple ordered pair of floating point numbers, without any further conceptual baggage?  Perhaps we are writing a method (like “divideAndRemainder”) which naturally returns a pair of numbers instead of a single number.  Wrapping the pair of numbers in a nominal type (like “QuotientAndRemainder”) makes as little sense as wrapping a single return value in a nominal type (like “Quotient”).  What we need here are structural value types commonly known as tuples. For the present discussion, let us assign a conventional, JVM-friendly name to tuples, roughly as follows: public class java.lang.tuple.$DD extends java.lang.tuple.Tuple {      double $1, $2; } Here the component names are fixed and all the required methods are defined implicitly.  The supertype is an abstract class which has suitable shared declarations.  The name itself mentions a JVM-style method parameter descriptor, which may be “cracked” to determine the number and types of the component fields. The odd thing about such a tuple type (and structural types in general) is it must be instantiated lazily, in response to linkage requests from one or more classes that need it.  The JVM and/or its class loaders must be prepared to spin a tuple type on demand, given a simple name reference, $xyz, where the xyz is cracked into a series of component types.  (Specifics of naming and name mangling need some tasteful engineering.) Tuples also seem to demand, even more than nominal types, some support from the language.  (This is probably because notations for non-nominal types work best as combinations of punctuation and type names, rather than named constructors like Function3 or Tuple2.)  At a minimum, languages with tuples usually (I think) have some sort of simple bracket notation for creating tuples, and a corresponding pattern-matching syntax (or “destructuring bind”) for taking tuples apart, at least when they are parameter lists.  Designing such a syntax is no simple thing, because it ought to play well with nominal value types, and also with pre-existing Java features, such as method parameter lists, implicit conversions, generic types, and reflection.  That is a task for another day. Other Use Cases Besides complex numbers and simple tuples there are many use cases for value types.  Many tuple-like types have natural value-type representations. These include rational numbers, point locations and pixel colors, and various kinds of dates and addresses. Other types have a variable-length ‘tail’ of internal values. The most common example of this is String, which is (mathematically) a sequence of UTF-16 character values. Similarly, bit vectors, multiple-precision numbers, and polynomials are composed of sequences of values. Such types include, in their representation, a reference to a variable-sized data structure (often an array) which (somehow) represents the sequence of values. The value type may also include ’header’ information. Variable-sized values often have a length distribution which favors short lengths. In that case, the design of the value type can make the first few values in the sequence be direct ’header’ fields of the value type. In the common case where the header is enough to represent the whole value, the tail can be a shared null value, or even just a null reference. Note that the tail need not be an immutable object, as long as the header type encapsulates it well enough. This is the case with String, where the tail is a mutable (but never mutated) character array. Field types and their order must be a globally visible part of the API.  The structure of the value type must be transparent enough to have a globally consistent unboxed representation, so that all callers and callees agree about the type and order of components  that appear as parameters, return types, and array elements.  This is a trade-off between efficiency and encapsulation, which is forced on us when we remove an indirection enjoyed by boxed representations.  A JVM-only transformation would not care about such visibility, but a bytecode transformation would need to take care that (say) the components of complex numbers would not get swapped after a redefinition of Complex and a partial recompile.  Perhaps constant pool references to value types need to declare the field order as assumed by each API user. This brings up the delicate status of private fields in a value type.  It must always be possible to load, store, and copy value types as coordinated groups, and the JVM performs those movements by moving individual scalar values between locals and stack.  If a component field is not public, what is to prevent hostile code from plucking it out of the tuple using a rogue aload or astore instruction?  Nothing but the verifier, so we may need to give it more smarts, so that it treats value types as inseparable groups of stack slots or locals (something like long or double). My initial thought was to make the fields always public, which would make the security problem moot.  But public is not always the right answer; consider the case of String, where the underlying mutable character array must be encapsulated to prevent security holes.  I believe we can win back both sides of the tradeoff, by training the verifier never to split up the components in an unboxed value.  Just as the verifier encapsulates the two halves of a 64-bit primitive, it can encapsulate the the header and body of an unboxed String, so that no code other than that of class String itself can take apart the values. Similar to String, we could build an efficient multi-precision decimal type along these lines: public final class DecimalValue extends ValueType {     protected final long header;     protected private final BigInteger digits;     public DecimalValue valueOf(int value, int scale) {         assert(scale >= 0);         return new DecimalValue(((long)value << 32) + scale, null);     }     public DecimalValue valueOf(long value, int scale) {         if (value == (int) value)             return valueOf((int)value, scale);         return new DecimalValue(-scale, new BigInteger(value));     } } Values of this type would be passed between methods as two machine words. Small values (those with a significand which fits into 32 bits) would be represented without any heap data at all, unless the DecimalValue itself were boxed. (Note the tension between encapsulation and unboxing in this case.  It would be better if the header and digits fields were private, but depending on where the unboxing information must “leak”, it is probably safer to make a public revelation of the internal structure.) Note that, although an array of Complex can be faked with a double-length array of double, there is no easy way to fake an array of unboxed DecimalValues.  (Either an array of boxed values or a transposed pair of homogeneous arrays would be reasonable fallbacks, in a current JVM.)  Getting the full benefit of unboxing and arrays will require some new JVM magic. Although the JVM emphasizes portability, system dependent code will benefit from using machine-level types larger than 64 bits.  For example, the back end of a linear algebra package might benefit from value types like Float4 which map to stock vector types.  This is probably only worthwhile if the unboxing arrays can be packed with such values. More Daydreams A more finely-divided design for dynamic enforcement of value safety could feature separate marker interfaces for each invariant.  An empty marker interface Unsynchronizable could cause suitable exceptions for monitor instructions on objects in marked classes.  More radically, a Interchangeable marker interface could cause JVM primitives that are sensitive to object identity to raise exceptions; the strangest result would be that the acmp instruction would have to be specified as raising an exception. @ValueSafe public interface ValueType extends java.io.Serializable,         Unsynchronizable, Interchangeable { … public class Complex implements ValueType {     // inherits Serializable, Unsynchronizable, Interchangeable, @ValueSafe     … It seems possible that Integer and the other wrapper types could be retro-fitted as value-safe types.  This is a major change, since wrapper objects would be unsynchronizable and their references interchangeable.  It is likely that code which violates value-safety for wrapper types exists but is uncommon.  It is less plausible to retro-fit String, since the prominent operation String.intern is often used with value-unsafe code. We should also reconsider the distinction between boxed and unboxed values in code.  The design presented above obscures that distinction.  As another thought experiment, we could imagine making a first class distinction in the type system between boxed and unboxed representations.  Since only primitive types are named with a lower-case initial letter, we could define that the capitalized version of a value type name always refers to the boxed representation, while the initial lower-case variant always refers to boxed.  For example: complex pi = complex.valueOf(Math.PI, 0); Complex boxPi = pi;  // convert to boxed myList.add(boxPi); complex z = myList.get(0);  // unbox Such a convention could perhaps absorb the current difference between int and Integer, double and Double. It might also allow the programmer to express a helpful distinction among array types. As said above, array types are crucial to bulk data interfaces, but are limited in the JVM.  Extending arrays beyond the present limitations is worth thinking about; for example, the Maxine JVM implementation has a hybrid object/array type.  Something like this which can also accommodate value type components seems worthwhile.  On the other hand, does it make sense for value types to contain short arrays?  And why should random-access arrays be the end of our design process, when bulk data is often sequentially accessed, and it might make sense to have heterogeneous streams of data as the natural “jumbo” data structure.  These considerations must wait for another day and another note. More Work It seems to me that a good sequence for introducing such value types would be as follows: Add the value-safety restrictions to an experimental version of javac. Code some sample applications with value types, including Complex and DecimalValue. Create an experimental JVM which internally unboxes value types but does not require new bytecodes to do so.  Ensure the feasibility of the performance model for the sample applications. Add tuple-like bytecodes (with or without generic type reification) to a major revision of the JVM, and teach the Java compiler to switch in the new bytecodes without code changes. A staggered roll-out like this would decouple language changes from bytecode changes, which is always a convenient thing. A similar investigation should be applied (concurrently) to array types.  In this case, it seems to me that the starting point is in the JVM: Add an experimental unboxing array data structure to a production JVM, perhaps along the lines of Maxine hybrids.  No bytecode or language support is required at first; everything can be done with encapsulated unsafe operations and/or method handles. Create an experimental JVM which internally unboxes value types but does not require new bytecodes to do so.  Ensure the feasibility of the performance model for the sample applications. Add tuple-like bytecodes (with or without generic type reification) to a major revision of the JVM, and teach the Java compiler to switch in the new bytecodes without code changes. That’s enough musing me for now.  Back to work!

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• 256 Windows Azure Worker Roles, Windows Kinect and a 90's Text-Based Ray-Tracer

  - by Alan Smith

  For a couple of years I have been demoing a simple render farm hosted in Windows Azure using worker roles and the Azure Storage service. At the start of the presentation I deploy an Azure application that uses 16 worker roles to render a 1,500 frame 3D ray-traced animation. At the end of the presentation, when the animation was complete, I would play the animation delete the Azure deployment. The standing joke with the audience was that it was that it was a “$2 demo”, as the compute charges for running the 16 instances for an hour was $1.92, factor in the bandwidth charges and it’s a couple of dollars. The point of the demo is that it highlights one of the great benefits of cloud computing, you pay for what you use, and if you need massive compute power for a short period of time using Windows Azure can work out very cost effective. The “$2 demo” was great for presenting at user groups and conferences in that it could be deployed to Azure, used to render an animation, and then removed in a one hour session. I have always had the idea of doing something a bit more impressive with the demo, and scaling it from a “$2 demo” to a “$30 demo”. The challenge was to create a visually appealing animation in high definition format and keep the demo time down to one hour.  This article will take a run through how I achieved this. Ray Tracing Ray tracing, a technique for generating high quality photorealistic images, gained popularity in the 90’s with companies like Pixar creating feature length computer animations, and also the emergence of shareware text-based ray tracers that could run on a home PC. In order to render a ray traced image, the ray of light that would pass from the view point must be tracked until it intersects with an object. At the intersection, the color, reflectiveness, transparency, and refractive index of the object are used to calculate if the ray will be reflected or refracted. Each pixel may require thousands of calculations to determine what color it will be in the rendered image. Pin-Board Toys Having very little artistic talent and a basic understanding of maths I decided to focus on an animation that could be modeled fairly easily and would look visually impressive. I’ve always liked the pin-board desktop toys that become popular in the 80’s and when I was working as a 3D animator back in the 90’s I always had the idea of creating a 3D ray-traced animation of a pin-board, but never found the energy to do it. Even if I had a go at it, the render time to produce an animation that would look respectable on a 486 would have been measured in months. PolyRay Back in 1995 I landed my first real job, after spending three years being a beach-ski-climbing-paragliding-bum, and was employed to create 3D ray-traced animations for a CD-ROM that school kids would use to learn physics. I had got into the strange and wonderful world of text-based ray tracing, and was using a shareware ray-tracer called PolyRay. PolyRay takes a text file describing a scene as input and, after a few hours processing on a 486, produced a high quality ray-traced image. The following is an example of a basic PolyRay scene file. background Midnight_Blue   static define matte surface { ambient 0.1 diffuse 0.7 } define matte_white texture { matte { color white } } define matte_black texture { matte { color dark_slate_gray } } define position_cylindrical 3 define lookup_sawtooth 1 define light_wood <0.6, 0.24, 0.1> define median_wood <0.3, 0.12, 0.03> define dark_wood <0.05, 0.01, 0.005>     define wooden texture { noise surface { ambient 0.2  diffuse 0.7  specular white, 0.5 microfacet Reitz 10 position_fn position_cylindrical position_scale 1  lookup_fn lookup_sawtooth octaves 1 turbulence 1 color_map( [0.0, 0.2, light_wood, light_wood] [0.2, 0.3, light_wood, median_wood] [0.3, 0.4, median_wood, light_wood] [0.4, 0.7, light_wood, light_wood] [0.7, 0.8, light_wood, median_wood] [0.8, 0.9, median_wood, light_wood] [0.9, 1.0, light_wood, dark_wood]) } } define glass texture { surface { ambient 0 diffuse 0 specular 0.2 reflection white, 0.1 transmission white, 1, 1.5 }} define shiny surface { ambient 0.1 diffuse 0.6 specular white, 0.6 microfacet Phong 7  } define steely_blue texture { shiny { color black } } define chrome texture { surface { color white ambient 0.0 diffuse 0.2 specular 0.4 microfacet Phong 10 reflection 0.8 } }   viewpoint {     from <4.000, -1.000, 1.000> at <0.000, 0.000, 0.000> up <0, 1, 0> angle 60     resolution 640, 480 aspect 1.6 image_format 0 }       light <-10, 30, 20> light <-10, 30, -20>   object { disc <0, -2, 0>, <0, 1, 0>, 30 wooden }   object { sphere <0.000, 0.000, 0.000>, 1.00 chrome } object { cylinder <0.000, 0.000, 0.000>, <0.000, 0.000, -4.000>, 0.50 chrome }   After setting up the background and defining colors and textures, the viewpoint is specified. The “camera” is located at a point in 3D space, and it looks towards another point. The angle, image resolution, and aspect ratio are specified. Two lights are present in the image at defined coordinates. The three objects in the image are a wooden disc to represent a table top, and a sphere and cylinder that intersect to form a pin that will be used for the pin board toy in the final animation. When the image is rendered, the following image is produced. The pins are modeled with a chrome surface, so they reflect the environment around them. Note that the scale of the pin shaft is not correct, this will be fixed later. Modeling the Pin Board The frame of the pin-board is made up of three boxes, and six cylinders, the front box is modeled using a clear, slightly reflective solid, with the same refractive index of glass. The other shapes are modeled as metal. object { box <-5.5, -1.5, 1>, <5.5, 5.5, 1.2> glass } object { box <-5.5, -1.5, -0.04>, <5.5, 5.5, -0.09> steely_blue } object { box <-5.5, -1.5, -0.52>, <5.5, 5.5, -0.59> steely_blue } object { cylinder <-5.2, -1.2, 1.4>, <-5.2, -1.2, -0.74>, 0.2 steely_blue } object { cylinder <5.2, -1.2, 1.4>, <5.2, -1.2, -0.74>, 0.2 steely_blue } object { cylinder <-5.2, 5.2, 1.4>, <-5.2, 5.2, -0.74>, 0.2 steely_blue } object { cylinder <5.2, 5.2, 1.4>, <5.2, 5.2, -0.74>, 0.2 steely_blue } object { cylinder <0, -1.2, 1.4>, <0, -1.2, -0.74>, 0.2 steely_blue } object { cylinder <0, 5.2, 1.4>, <0, 5.2, -0.74>, 0.2 steely_blue }   In order to create the matrix of pins that make up the pin board I used a basic console application with a few nested loops to create two intersecting matrixes of pins, which models the layout used in the pin boards. The resulting image is shown below. The pin board contains 11,481 pins, with the scene file containing 23,709 lines of code. For the complete animation 2,000 scene files will be created, which is over 47 million lines of code. Each pin in the pin-board will slide out a specific distance when an object is pressed into the back of the board. This is easily modeled by setting the Z coordinate of the pin to a specific value. In order to set all of the pins in the pin-board to the correct position, a bitmap image can be used. The position of the pin can be set based on the color of the pixel at the appropriate position in the image. When the Windows Azure logo is used to set the Z coordinate of the pins, the following image is generated. The challenge now was to make a cool animation. The Azure Logo is fine, but it is static. Using a normal video to animate the pins would not work; the colors in the video would not be the same as the depth of the objects from the camera. In order to simulate the pin board accurately a series of frames from a depth camera could be used. Windows Kinect The Kenect controllers for the X-Box 360 and Windows feature a depth camera. The Kinect SDK for Windows provides a programming interface for Kenect, providing easy access for .NET developers to the Kinect sensors. The Kinect Explorer provided with the Kinect SDK is a great starting point for exploring Kinect from a developers perspective. Both the X-Box 360 Kinect and the Windows Kinect will work with the Kinect SDK, the Windows Kinect is required for commercial applications, but the X-Box Kinect can be used for hobby projects. The Windows Kinect has the advantage of providing a mode to allow depth capture with objects closer to the camera, which makes for a more accurate depth image for setting the pin positions. Creating a Depth Field Animation The depth field animation used to set the positions of the pin in the pin board was created using a modified version of the Kinect Explorer sample application. In order to simulate the pin board accurately, a small section of the depth range from the depth sensor will be used. Any part of the object in front of the depth range will result in a white pixel; anything behind the depth range will be black. Within the depth range the pixels in the image will be set to RGB values from 0,0,0 to 255,255,255. A screen shot of the modified Kinect Explorer application is shown below. The Kinect Explorer sample application was modified to include slider controls that are used to set the depth range that forms the image from the depth stream. This allows the fine tuning of the depth image that is required for simulating the position of the pins in the pin board. The Kinect Explorer was also modified to record a series of images from the depth camera and save them as a sequence JPEG files that will be used to animate the pins in the animation the Start and Stop buttons are used to start and stop the image recording. En example of one of the depth images is shown below. Once a series of 2,000 depth images has been captured, the task of creating the animation can begin. Rendering a Test Frame In order to test the creation of frames and get an approximation of the time required to render each frame a test frame was rendered on-premise using PolyRay. The output of the rendering process is shown below. The test frame contained 23,629 primitive shapes, most of which are the spheres and cylinders that are used for the 11,800 or so pins in the pin board. The 1280x720 image contains 921,600 pixels, but as anti-aliasing was used the number of rays that were calculated was 4,235,777, with 3,478,754,073 object boundaries checked. The test frame of the pin board with the depth field image applied is shown below. The tracing time for the test frame was 4 minutes 27 seconds, which means rendering the2,000 frames in the animation would take over 148 hours, or a little over 6 days. Although this is much faster that an old 486, waiting almost a week to see the results of an animation would make it challenging for animators to create, view, and refine their animations. It would be much better if the animation could be rendered in less than one hour. Windows Azure Worker Roles The cost of creating an on-premise render farm to render animations increases in proportion to the number of servers. The table below shows the cost of servers for creating a render farm, assuming a cost of $500 per server. Number of Servers Cost 1 $500 16 $8,000 256 $128,000   As well as the cost of the servers, there would be additional costs for networking, racks etc. Hosting an environment of 256 servers on-premise would require a server room with cooling, and some pretty hefty power cabling. The Windows Azure compute services provide worker roles, which are ideal for performing processor intensive compute tasks. With the scalability available in Windows Azure a job that takes 256 hours to complete could be perfumed using different numbers of worker roles. The time and cost of using 1, 16 or 256 worker roles is shown below. Number of Worker Roles Render Time Cost 1 256 hours $30.72 16 16 hours $30.72 256 1 hour $30.72   Using worker roles in Windows Azure provides the same cost for the 256 hour job, irrespective of the number of worker roles used. Provided the compute task can be broken down into many small units, and the worker role compute power can be used effectively, it makes sense to scale the application so that the task is completed quickly, making the results available in a timely fashion. The task of rendering 2,000 frames in an animation is one that can easily be broken down into 2,000 individual pieces, which can be performed by a number of worker roles. Creating a Render Farm in Windows Azure The architecture of the render farm is shown in the following diagram. The render farm is a hybrid application with the following components: ·         On-Premise o   Windows Kinect – Used combined with the Kinect Explorer to create a stream of depth images. o   Animation Creator – This application uses the depth images from the Kinect sensor to create scene description files for PolyRay. These files are then uploaded to the jobs blob container, and job messages added to the jobs queue. o   Process Monitor – This application queries the role instance lifecycle table and displays statistics about the render farm environment and render process. o   Image Downloader – This application polls the image queue and downloads the rendered animation files once they are complete. ·         Windows Azure o   Azure Storage – Queues and blobs are used for the scene description files and completed frames. A table is used to store the statistics about the rendering environment.   The architecture of each worker role is shown below.   The worker role is configured to use local storage, which provides file storage on the worker role instance that can be use by the applications to render the image and transform the format of the image. The service definition for the worker role with the local storage configuration highlighted is shown below. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <ServiceDefinition name="CloudRay" >   <WorkerRole name="CloudRayWorkerRole" vmsize="Small">     <Imports>     </Imports>     <ConfigurationSettings>       <Setting name="DataConnectionString" />     </ConfigurationSettings>     <LocalResources>       <LocalStorage name="RayFolder" cleanOnRoleRecycle="true" />     </LocalResources>   </WorkerRole> </ServiceDefinition>     The two executable programs, PolyRay.exe and DTA.exe are included in the Azure project, with Copy Always set as the property. PolyRay will take the scene description file and render it to a Truevision TGA file. As the TGA format has not seen much use since the mid 90’s it is converted to a JPG image using Dave's Targa Animator, another shareware application from the 90’s. Each worker roll will use the following process to render the animation frames. 1.       The worker process polls the job queue, if a job is available the scene description file is downloaded from blob storage to local storage. 2.       PolyRay.exe is started in a process with the appropriate command line arguments to render the image as a TGA file. 3.       DTA.exe is started in a process with the appropriate command line arguments convert the TGA file to a JPG file. 4.       The JPG file is uploaded from local storage to the images blob container. 5.       A message is placed on the images queue to indicate a new image is available for download. 6.       The job message is deleted from the job queue. 7.       The role instance lifecycle table is updated with statistics on the number of frames rendered by the worker role instance, and the CPU time used. The code for this is shown below. public override void Run() {     // Set environment variables     string polyRayPath = Path.Combine(Environment.GetEnvironmentVariable("RoleRoot"), PolyRayLocation);     string dtaPath = Path.Combine(Environment.GetEnvironmentVariable("RoleRoot"), DTALocation);       LocalResource rayStorage = RoleEnvironment.GetLocalResource("RayFolder");     string localStorageRootPath = rayStorage.RootPath;       JobQueue jobQueue = new JobQueue("renderjobs");     JobQueue downloadQueue = new JobQueue("renderimagedownloadjobs");     CloudRayBlob sceneBlob = new CloudRayBlob("scenes");     CloudRayBlob imageBlob = new CloudRayBlob("images");     RoleLifecycleDataSource roleLifecycleDataSource = new RoleLifecycleDataSource();       Frames = 0;       while (true)     {         // Get the render job from the queue         CloudQueueMessage jobMsg = jobQueue.Get();           if (jobMsg != null)         {             // Get the file details             string sceneFile = jobMsg.AsString;             string tgaFile = sceneFile.Replace(".pi", ".tga");             string jpgFile = sceneFile.Replace(".pi", ".jpg");               string sceneFilePath = Path.Combine(localStorageRootPath, sceneFile);             string tgaFilePath = Path.Combine(localStorageRootPath, tgaFile);             string jpgFilePath = Path.Combine(localStorageRootPath, jpgFile);               // Copy the scene file to local storage             sceneBlob.DownloadFile(sceneFilePath);               // Run the ray tracer.             string polyrayArguments =                 string.Format("\"{0}\" -o \"{1}\" -a 2", sceneFilePath, tgaFilePath);             Process polyRayProcess = new Process();             polyRayProcess.StartInfo.FileName =                 Path.Combine(Environment.GetEnvironmentVariable("RoleRoot"), polyRayPath);             polyRayProcess.StartInfo.Arguments = polyrayArguments;             polyRayProcess.Start();             polyRayProcess.WaitForExit();               // Convert the image             string dtaArguments =                 string.Format(" {0} /FJ /P{1}", tgaFilePath, Path.GetDirectoryName (jpgFilePath));             Process dtaProcess = new Process();             dtaProcess.StartInfo.FileName =                 Path.Combine(Environment.GetEnvironmentVariable("RoleRoot"), dtaPath);             dtaProcess.StartInfo.Arguments = dtaArguments;             dtaProcess.Start();             dtaProcess.WaitForExit();               // Upload the image to blob storage             imageBlob.UploadFile(jpgFilePath);               // Add a download job.             downloadQueue.Add(jpgFile);               // Delete the render job message             jobQueue.Delete(jobMsg);               Frames++;         }         else         {             Thread.Sleep(1000);         }           // Log the worker role activity.         roleLifecycleDataSource.Alive             ("CloudRayWorker", RoleLifecycleDataSource.RoleLifecycleId, Frames);     } }     Monitoring Worker Role Instance Lifecycle In order to get more accurate statistics about the lifecycle of the worker role instances used to render the animation data was tracked in an Azure storage table. The following class was used to track the worker role lifecycles in Azure storage.   public class RoleLifecycle : TableServiceEntity {     public string ServerName { get; set; }     public string Status { get; set; }     public DateTime StartTime { get; set; }     public DateTime EndTime { get; set; }     public long SecondsRunning { get; set; }     public DateTime LastActiveTime { get; set; }     public int Frames { get; set; }     public string Comment { get; set; }       public RoleLifecycle()     {     }       public RoleLifecycle(string roleName)     {         PartitionKey = roleName;         RowKey = Utils.GetAscendingRowKey();         Status = "Started";         StartTime = DateTime.UtcNow;         LastActiveTime = StartTime;         EndTime = StartTime;         SecondsRunning = 0;         Frames = 0;     } }     A new instance of this class is created and added to the storage table when the role starts. It is then updated each time the worker renders a frame to record the total number of frames rendered and the total processing time. These statistics are used be the monitoring application to determine the effectiveness of use of resources in the render farm. Rendering the Animation The Azure solution was deployed to Windows Azure with the service configuration set to 16 worker role instances. This allows for the application to be tested in the cloud environment, and the performance of the application determined. When I demo the application at conferences and user groups I often start with 16 instances, and then scale up the application to the full 256 instances. The configuration to run 16 instances is shown below. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <ServiceConfiguration serviceName="CloudRay" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/ServiceHosting/2008/10/ServiceConfiguration" osFamily="1" osVersion="*">   <Role name="CloudRayWorkerRole">     <Instances count="16" />     <ConfigurationSettings>       <Setting name="DataConnectionString"         value="DefaultEndpointsProtocol=https;AccountName=cloudraydata;AccountKey=..." />     </ConfigurationSettings>   </Role> </ServiceConfiguration>     About six minutes after deploying the application the first worker roles become active and start to render the first frames of the animation. The CloudRay Monitor application displays an icon for each worker role instance, with a number indicating the number of frames that the worker role has rendered. The statistics on the left show the number of active worker roles and statistics about the render process. The render time is the time since the first worker role became active; the CPU time is the total amount of processing time used by all worker role instances to render the frames.   Five minutes after the first worker role became active the last of the 16 worker roles activated. By this time the first seven worker roles had each rendered one frame of the animation.   With 16 worker roles u and running it can be seen that one hour and 45 minutes CPU time has been used to render 32 frames with a render time of just under 10 minutes.     At this rate it would take over 10 hours to render the 2,000 frames of the full animation. In order to complete the animation in under an hour more processing power will be required. Scaling the render farm from 16 instances to 256 instances is easy using the new management portal. The slider is set to 256 instances, and the configuration saved. We do not need to re-deploy the application, and the 16 instances that are up and running will not be affected. Alternatively, the configuration file for the Azure service could be modified to specify 256 instances.   <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <ServiceConfiguration serviceName="CloudRay" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/ServiceHosting/2008/10/ServiceConfiguration" osFamily="1" osVersion="*">   <Role name="CloudRayWorkerRole">     <Instances count="256" />     <ConfigurationSettings>       <Setting name="DataConnectionString"         value="DefaultEndpointsProtocol=https;AccountName=cloudraydata;AccountKey=..." />     </ConfigurationSettings>   </Role> </ServiceConfiguration>     Six minutes after the new configuration has been applied 75 new worker roles have activated and are processing their first frames.   Five minutes later the full configuration of 256 worker roles is up and running. We can see that the average rate of frame rendering has increased from 3 to 12 frames per minute, and that over 17 hours of CPU time has been utilized in 23 minutes. In this test the time to provision 140 worker roles was about 11 minutes, which works out at about one every five seconds.   We are now half way through the rendering, with 1,000 frames complete. This has utilized just under three days of CPU time in a little over 35 minutes.   The animation is now complete, with 2,000 frames rendered in a little over 52 minutes. The CPU time used by the 256 worker roles is 6 days, 7 hours and 22 minutes with an average frame rate of 38 frames per minute. The rendering of the last 1,000 frames took 16 minutes 27 seconds, which works out at a rendering rate of 60 frames per minute. The frame counts in the server instances indicate that the use of a queue to distribute the workload has been very effective in distributing the load across the 256 worker role instances. The first 16 instances that were deployed first have rendered between 11 and 13 frames each, whilst the 240 instances that were added when the application was scaled have rendered between 6 and 9 frames each.   Completed Animation I’ve uploaded the completed animation to YouTube, a low resolution preview is shown below. Pin Board Animation Created using Windows Kinect and 256 Windows Azure Worker Roles   The animation can be viewed in 1280x720 resolution at the following link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5jy6bvSxWc Effective Use of Resources According to the CloudRay monitor statistics the animation took 6 days, 7 hours and 22 minutes CPU to render, this works out at 152 hours of compute time, rounded up to the nearest hour. As the usage for the worker role instances are billed for the full hour, it may have been possible to render the animation using fewer than 256 worker roles. When deciding the optimal usage of resources, the time required to provision and start the worker roles must also be considered. In the demo I started with 16 worker roles, and then scaled the application to 256 worker roles. It would have been more optimal to start the application with maybe 200 worker roles, and utilized the full hour that I was being billed for. This would, however, have prevented showing the ease of scalability of the application. The new management portal displays the CPU usage across the worker roles in the deployment. The average CPU usage across all instances is 93.27%, with over 99% used when all the instances are up and running. This shows that the worker role resources are being used very effectively. Grid Computing Scenarios Although I am using this scenario for a hobby project, there are many scenarios where a large amount of compute power is required for a short period of time. Windows Azure provides a great platform for developing these types of grid computing applications, and can work out very cost effective. ·         Windows Azure can provide massive compute power, on demand, in a matter of minutes. ·         The use of queues to manage the load balancing of jobs between role instances is a simple and effective solution. ·         Using a cloud-computing platform like Windows Azure allows proof-of-concept scenarios to be tested and evaluated on a very low budget. ·         No charges for inbound data transfer makes the uploading of large data sets to Windows Azure Storage services cost effective. (Transaction charges still apply.) Tips for using Windows Azure for Grid Computing Scenarios I found the implementation of a render farm using Windows Azure a fairly simple scenario to implement. I was impressed by ease of scalability that Azure provides, and by the short time that the application took to scale from 16 to 256 worker role instances. In this case it was around 13 minutes, in other tests it took between 10 and 20 minutes. The following tips may be useful when implementing a grid computing project in Windows Azure. ·         Using an Azure Storage queue to load-balance the units of work across multiple worker roles is simple and very effective. The design I have used in this scenario could easily scale to many thousands of worker role instances. ·         Windows Azure accounts are typically limited to 20 cores. If you need to use more than this, a call to support and a credit card check will be required. ·         Be aware of how the billing model works. You will be charged for worker role instances for the full clock our in which the instance is deployed. Schedule the workload to start just after the clock hour has started. ·         Monitor the utilization of the resources you are provisioning, ensure that you are not paying for worker roles that are idle. ·         If you are deploying third party applications to worker roles, you may well run into licensing issues. Purchasing software licenses on a per-processor basis when using hundreds of processors for a short time period would not be cost effective. ·         Third party software may also require installation onto the worker roles, which can be accomplished using start-up tasks. Bear in mind that adding a startup task and possible re-boot will add to the time required for the worker role instance to start and activate. An alternative may be to use a prepared VM and use VM roles. ·         Consider using the Windows Azure Autoscaling Application Block (WASABi) to autoscale the worker roles in your application. When using a large number of worker roles, the utilization must be carefully monitored, if the scaling algorithms are not optimal it could get very expensive!

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• Using R to Analyze G1GC Log Files

  - by user12620111

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  Using R to Analyze G1GC Log Files   Using R to Analyze G1GC Log Files Introduction Working in Oracle Platform Integration gives an engineer opportunities to work on a wide array of technologies. My team’s goal is to make Oracle applications run best on the Solaris/SPARC platform. When looking for bottlenecks in a modern applications, one needs to be aware of not only how the CPUs and operating system are executing, but also network, storage, and in some cases, the Java Virtual Machine. I was recently presented with about 1.5 GB of Java Garbage First Garbage Collector log file data. If you’re not familiar with the subject, you might want to review Garbage First Garbage Collector Tuning by Monica Beckwith. The customer had been running Java HotSpot 1.6.0_31 to host a web application server. I was told that the Solaris/SPARC server was running a Java process launched using a commmand line that included the following flags: -d64 -Xms9g -Xmx9g -XX:+UseG1GC -XX:MaxGCPauseMillis=200 -XX:InitiatingHeapOccupancyPercent=80 -XX:PermSize=256m -XX:MaxPermSize=256m -XX:+PrintGC -XX:+PrintGCTimeStamps -XX:+PrintHeapAtGC -XX:+PrintGCDateStamps -XX:+PrintFlagsFinal -XX:+DisableExplicitGC -XX:+UnlockExperimentalVMOptions -XX:ParallelGCThreads=8 Several sources on the internet indicate that if I were to print out the 1.5 GB of log files, it would require enough paper to fill the bed of a pick up truck. Of course, it would be fruitless to try to scan the log files by hand. Tools will be required to summarize the contents of the log files. Others have encountered large Java garbage collection log files. There are existing tools to analyze the log files: IBM’s GC toolkit The chewiebug GCViewer gchisto HPjmeter Instead of using one of the other tools listed, I decide to parse the log files with standard Unix tools, and analyze the data with R. Data Cleansing The log files arrived in two different formats. I guess that the difference is that one set of log files was generated using a more verbose option, maybe -XX:+PrintHeapAtGC, and the other set of log files was generated without that option. Format 1 In some of the log files, the log files with the less verbose format, a single trace, i.e. the report of a singe garbage collection event, looks like this: {Heap before GC invocations=12280 (full 61): garbage-first heap total 9437184K, used 7499918K [0xfffffffd00000000, 0xffffffff40000000, 0xffffffff40000000) region size 4096K, 1 young (4096K), 0 survivors (0K) compacting perm gen total 262144K, used 144077K [0xffffffff40000000, 0xffffffff50000000, 0xffffffff50000000) the space 262144K, 54% used [0xffffffff40000000, 0xffffffff48cb3758, 0xffffffff48cb3800, 0xffffffff50000000) No shared spaces configured. 2014-05-14T07:24:00.988-0700: 60586.353: [GC pause (young) 7324M->7320M(9216M), 0.1567265 secs] Heap after GC invocations=12281 (full 61): garbage-first heap total 9437184K, used 7496533K [0xfffffffd00000000, 0xffffffff40000000, 0xffffffff40000000) region size 4096K, 0 young (0K), 0 survivors (0K) compacting perm gen total 262144K, used 144077K [0xffffffff40000000, 0xffffffff50000000, 0xffffffff50000000) the space 262144K, 54% used [0xffffffff40000000, 0xffffffff48cb3758, 0xffffffff48cb3800, 0xffffffff50000000) No shared spaces configured. } A simple grep can be used to extract a summary: $ grep "\[ GC pause (young" g1gc.log 2014-05-13T13:24:35.091-0700: 3.109: [GC pause (young) 20M->5029K(9216M), 0.0146328 secs] 2014-05-13T13:24:35.440-0700: 3.459: [GC pause (young) 9125K->6077K(9216M), 0.0086723 secs] 2014-05-13T13:24:37.581-0700: 5.599: [GC pause (young) 25M->8470K(9216M), 0.0203820 secs] 2014-05-13T13:24:42.686-0700: 10.704: [GC pause (young) 44M->15M(9216M), 0.0288848 secs] 2014-05-13T13:24:48.941-0700: 16.958: [GC pause (young) 51M->20M(9216M), 0.0491244 secs] 2014-05-13T13:24:56.049-0700: 24.066: [GC pause (young) 92M->26M(9216M), 0.0525368 secs] 2014-05-13T13:25:34.368-0700: 62.383: [GC pause (young) 602M->68M(9216M), 0.1721173 secs] But that format wasn't easily read into R, so I needed to be a bit more tricky. I used the following Unix command to create a summary file that was easy for R to read. $ echo "SecondsSinceLaunch BeforeSize AfterSize TotalSize RealTime" $ grep "\[GC pause (young" g1gc.log | grep -v mark | sed -e 's/[A-SU-z\(\),]/ /g' -e 's/->/ /' -e 's/: / /g' | more SecondsSinceLaunch BeforeSize AfterSize TotalSize RealTime 2014-05-13T13:24:35.091-0700 3.109 20 5029 9216 0.0146328 2014-05-13T13:24:35.440-0700 3.459 9125 6077 9216 0.0086723 2014-05-13T13:24:37.581-0700 5.599 25 8470 9216 0.0203820 2014-05-13T13:24:42.686-0700 10.704 44 15 9216 0.0288848 2014-05-13T13:24:48.941-0700 16.958 51 20 9216 0.0491244 2014-05-13T13:24:56.049-0700 24.066 92 26 9216 0.0525368 2014-05-13T13:25:34.368-0700 62.383 602 68 9216 0.1721173 Format 2 In some of the log files, the log files with the more verbose format, a single trace, i.e. the report of a singe garbage collection event, was more complicated than Format 1. Here is a text file with an example of a single G1GC trace in the second format. As you can see, it is quite complicated. It is nice that there is so much information available, but the level of detail can be overwhelming. I wrote this awk script (download) to summarize each trace on a single line. #!/usr/bin/env awk -f BEGIN { printf("SecondsSinceLaunch IncrementalCount FullCount UserTime SysTime RealTime BeforeSize AfterSize TotalSize\n") } ###################### # Save count data from lines that are at the start of each G1GC trace. # Each trace starts out like this: # {Heap before GC invocations=14 (full 0): # garbage-first heap total 9437184K, used 325496K [0xfffffffd00000000, 0xffffffff40000000, 0xffffffff40000000) ###################### /{Heap.*full/{ gsub ( "\\)" , "" ); nf=split($0,a,"="); split(a[2],b," "); getline; if ( match($0, "first") ) { G1GC=1; IncrementalCount=b[1]; FullCount=substr( b[3], 1, length(b[3])-1 ); } else { G1GC=0; } } ###################### # Pull out time stamps that are in lines with this format: # 2014-05-12T14:02:06.025-0700: 94.312: [GC pause (young), 0.08870154 secs] ###################### /GC pause/ { DateTime=$1; SecondsSinceLaunch=substr($2, 1, length($2)-1); } ###################### # Heap sizes are in lines that look like this: # [ 4842M->4838M(9216M)] ###################### /\[ .*]$/ { gsub ( "\\[" , "" ); gsub ( "\ \]" , "" ); gsub ( "->" , " " ); gsub ( "\\( " , " " ); gsub ( "\ \)" , " " ); split($0,a," "); if ( split(a[1],b,"M") > 1 ) {BeforeSize=b[1]*1024;} if ( split(a[1],b,"K") > 1 ) {BeforeSize=b[1];} if ( split(a[2],b,"M") > 1 ) {AfterSize=b[1]*1024;} if ( split(a[2],b,"K") > 1 ) {AfterSize=b[1];} if ( split(a[3],b,"M") > 1 ) {TotalSize=b[1]*1024;} if ( split(a[3],b,"K") > 1 ) {TotalSize=b[1];} } ###################### # Emit an output line when you find input that looks like this: # [Times: user=1.41 sys=0.08, real=0.24 secs] ###################### /\[Times/ { if (G1GC==1) { gsub ( "," , "" ); split($2,a,"="); UserTime=a[2]; split($3,a,"="); SysTime=a[2]; split($4,a,"="); RealTime=a[2]; print DateTime,SecondsSinceLaunch,IncrementalCount,FullCount,UserTime,SysTime,RealTime,BeforeSize,AfterSize,TotalSize; G1GC=0; } } The resulting summary is about 25X smaller that the original file, but still difficult for a human to digest. SecondsSinceLaunch IncrementalCount FullCount UserTime SysTime RealTime BeforeSize AfterSize TotalSize ... 2014-05-12T18:36:34.669-0700: 3985.744 561 0 0.57 0.06 0.16 1724416 1720320 9437184 2014-05-12T18:36:34.839-0700: 3985.914 562 0 0.51 0.06 0.19 1724416 1720320 9437184 2014-05-12T18:36:35.069-0700: 3986.144 563 0 0.60 0.04 0.27 1724416 1721344 9437184 2014-05-12T18:36:35.354-0700: 3986.429 564 0 0.33 0.04 0.09 1725440 1722368 9437184 2014-05-12T18:36:35.545-0700: 3986.620 565 0 0.58 0.04 0.17 1726464 1722368 9437184 2014-05-12T18:36:35.726-0700: 3986.801 566 0 0.43 0.05 0.12 1726464 1722368 9437184 2014-05-12T18:36:35.856-0700: 3986.930 567 0 0.30 0.04 0.07 1726464 1723392 9437184 2014-05-12T18:36:35.947-0700: 3987.023 568 0 0.61 0.04 0.26 1727488 1723392 9437184 2014-05-12T18:36:36.228-0700: 3987.302 569 0 0.46 0.04 0.16 1731584 1724416 9437184 Reading the Data into R Once the GC log data had been cleansed, either by processing the first format with the shell script, or by processing the second format with the awk script, it was easy to read the data into R. g1gc.df = read.csv("summary.txt", row.names = NULL, stringsAsFactors=FALSE,sep="") str(g1gc.df) ## 'data.frame': 8307 obs. of 10 variables: ## $ row.names : chr "2014-05-12T14:00:32.868-0700:" "2014-05-12T14:00:33.179-0700:" "2014-05-12T14:00:33.677-0700:" "2014-05-12T14:00:35.538-0700:" ... ## $ SecondsSinceLaunch: num 1.16 1.47 1.97 3.83 6.1 ... ## $ IncrementalCount : int 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 ... ## $ FullCount : int 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 ... ## $ UserTime : num 0.11 0.05 0.04 0.21 0.08 0.26 0.31 0.33 0.34 0.56 ... ## $ SysTime : num 0.04 0.01 0.01 0.05 0.01 0.06 0.07 0.06 0.07 0.09 ... ## $ RealTime : num 0.02 0.02 0.01 0.04 0.02 0.04 0.05 0.04 0.04 0.06 ... ## $ BeforeSize : int 8192 5496 5768 22528 24576 43008 34816 53248 55296 93184 ... ## $ AfterSize : int 1400 1672 2557 4907 7072 14336 16384 18432 19456 21504 ... ## $ TotalSize : int 9437184 9437184 9437184 9437184 9437184 9437184 9437184 9437184 9437184 9437184 ... head(g1gc.df) ## row.names SecondsSinceLaunch IncrementalCount ## 1 2014-05-12T14:00:32.868-0700: 1.161 0 ## 2 2014-05-12T14:00:33.179-0700: 1.472 1 ## 3 2014-05-12T14:00:33.677-0700: 1.969 2 ## 4 2014-05-12T14:00:35.538-0700: 3.830 3 ## 5 2014-05-12T14:00:37.811-0700: 6.103 4 ## 6 2014-05-12T14:00:41.428-0700: 9.720 5 ## FullCount UserTime SysTime RealTime BeforeSize AfterSize TotalSize ## 1 0 0.11 0.04 0.02 8192 1400 9437184 ## 2 0 0.05 0.01 0.02 5496 1672 9437184 ## 3 0 0.04 0.01 0.01 5768 2557 9437184 ## 4 0 0.21 0.05 0.04 22528 4907 9437184 ## 5 0 0.08 0.01 0.02 24576 7072 9437184 ## 6 0 0.26 0.06 0.04 43008 14336 9437184 Basic Statistics Once the data has been read into R, simple statistics are very easy to generate. All of the numbers from high school statistics are available via simple commands. For example, generate a summary of every column: summary(g1gc.df) ## row.names SecondsSinceLaunch IncrementalCount FullCount ## Length:8307 Min. : 1 Min. : 0 Min. : 0.0 ## Class :character 1st Qu.: 9977 1st Qu.:2048 1st Qu.: 0.0 ## Mode :character Median :12855 Median :4136 Median : 12.0 ## Mean :12527 Mean :4156 Mean : 31.6 ## 3rd Qu.:15758 3rd Qu.:6262 3rd Qu.: 61.0 ## Max. :55484 Max. :8391 Max. :113.0 ## UserTime SysTime RealTime BeforeSize ## Min. :0.040 Min. :0.0000 Min. : 0.0 Min. : 5476 ## 1st Qu.:0.470 1st Qu.:0.0300 1st Qu.: 0.1 1st Qu.:5137920 ## Median :0.620 Median :0.0300 Median : 0.1 Median :6574080 ## Mean :0.751 Mean :0.0355 Mean : 0.3 Mean :5841855 ## 3rd Qu.:0.920 3rd Qu.:0.0400 3rd Qu.: 0.2 3rd Qu.:7084032 ## Max. :3.370 Max. :1.5600 Max. :488.1 Max. :8696832 ## AfterSize TotalSize ## Min. : 1380 Min. :9437184 ## 1st Qu.:5002752 1st Qu.:9437184 ## Median :6559744 Median :9437184 ## Mean :5785454 Mean :9437184 ## 3rd Qu.:7054336 3rd Qu.:9437184 ## Max. :8482816 Max. :9437184 Q: What is the total amount of User CPU time spent in garbage collection? sum(g1gc.df$UserTime) ## [1] 6236 As you can see, less than two hours of CPU time was spent in garbage collection. Is that too much? To find the percentage of time spent in garbage collection, divide the number above by total_elapsed_time*CPU_count. In this case, there are a lot of CPU’s and it turns out the the overall amount of CPU time spent in garbage collection isn’t a problem when viewed in isolation. When calculating rates, i.e. events per unit time, you need to ask yourself if the rate is homogenous across the time period in the log file. Does the log file include spikes of high activity that should be separately analyzed? Averaging in data from nights and weekends with data from business hours may alias problems. If you have a reason to suspect that the garbage collection rates include peaks and valleys that need independent analysis, see the “Time Series” section, below. Q: How much garbage is collected on each pass? The amount of heap space that is recovered per GC pass is surprisingly low: At least one collection didn’t recover any data. (“Min.=0”) 25% of the passes recovered 3MB or less. (“1st Qu.=3072”) Half of the GC passes recovered 4MB or less. (“Median=4096”) The average amount recovered was 56MB. (“Mean=56390”) 75% of the passes recovered 36MB or less. (“3rd Qu.=36860”) At least one pass recovered 2GB. (“Max.=2121000”) g1gc.df$Delta = g1gc.df$BeforeSize - g1gc.df$AfterSize summary(g1gc.df$Delta) ## Min. 1st Qu. Median Mean 3rd Qu. Max. ## 0 3070 4100 56400 36900 2120000 Q: What is the maximum User CPU time for a single collection? The worst garbage collection (“Max.”) is many standard deviations away from the mean. The data appears to be right skewed. summary(g1gc.df$UserTime) ## Min. 1st Qu. Median Mean 3rd Qu. Max. ## 0.040 0.470 0.620 0.751 0.920 3.370 sd(g1gc.df$UserTime) ## [1] 0.3966 Basic Graphics Once the data is in R, it is trivial to plot the data with formats including dot plots, line charts, bar charts (simple, stacked, grouped), pie charts, boxplots, scatter plots histograms, and kernel density plots. Histogram of User CPU Time per Collection I don't think that this graph requires any explanation. hist(g1gc.df$UserTime, main="User CPU Time per Collection", xlab="Seconds", ylab="Frequency") Box plot to identify outliers When the initial data is viewed with a box plot, you can see the one crazy outlier in the real time per GC. Save this data point for future analysis and drop the outlier so that it’s not throwing off our statistics. Now the box plot shows many outliers, which will be examined later, using times series analysis. Notice that the scale of the x-axis changes drastically once the crazy outlier is removed. par(mfrow=c(2,1)) boxplot(g1gc.df$UserTime,g1gc.df$SysTime,g1gc.df$RealTime, main="Box Plot of Time per GC\n(dominated by a crazy outlier)", names=c("usr","sys","elapsed"), xlab="Seconds per GC", ylab="Time (Seconds)", horizontal = TRUE, outcol="red") crazy.outlier.df=g1gc.df[g1gc.df$RealTime > 400,] g1gc.df=g1gc.df[g1gc.df$RealTime < 400,] boxplot(g1gc.df$UserTime,g1gc.df$SysTime,g1gc.df$RealTime, main="Box Plot of Time per GC\n(crazy outlier excluded)", names=c("usr","sys","elapsed"), xlab="Seconds per GC", ylab="Time (Seconds)", horizontal = TRUE, outcol="red") box(which = "outer", lty = "solid") Here is the crazy outlier for future analysis: crazy.outlier.df ## row.names SecondsSinceLaunch IncrementalCount ## 8233 2014-05-12T23:15:43.903-0700: 20741 8316 ## FullCount UserTime SysTime RealTime BeforeSize AfterSize TotalSize ## 8233 112 0.55 0.42 488.1 8381440 8235008 9437184 ## Delta ## 8233 146432 R Time Series Data To analyze the garbage collection as a time series, I’ll use Z’s Ordered Observations (zoo). “zoo is the creator for an S3 class of indexed totally ordered observations which includes irregular time series.” require(zoo) ## Loading required package: zoo ## ## Attaching package: 'zoo' ## ## The following objects are masked from 'package:base': ## ## as.Date, as.Date.numeric head(g1gc.df[,1]) ## [1] "2014-05-12T14:00:32.868-0700:" "2014-05-12T14:00:33.179-0700:" ## [3] "2014-05-12T14:00:33.677-0700:" "2014-05-12T14:00:35.538-0700:" ## [5] "2014-05-12T14:00:37.811-0700:" "2014-05-12T14:00:41.428-0700:" options("digits.secs"=3) times=as.POSIXct( g1gc.df[,1], format="%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%OS%z:") g1gc.z = zoo(g1gc.df[,-c(1)], order.by=times) head(g1gc.z) ## SecondsSinceLaunch IncrementalCount FullCount ## 2014-05-12 17:00:32.868 1.161 0 0 ## 2014-05-12 17:00:33.178 1.472 1 0 ## 2014-05-12 17:00:33.677 1.969 2 0 ## 2014-05-12 17:00:35.538 3.830 3 0 ## 2014-05-12 17:00:37.811 6.103 4 0 ## 2014-05-12 17:00:41.427 9.720 5 0 ## UserTime SysTime RealTime BeforeSize AfterSize ## 2014-05-12 17:00:32.868 0.11 0.04 0.02 8192 1400 ## 2014-05-12 17:00:33.178 0.05 0.01 0.02 5496 1672 ## 2014-05-12 17:00:33.677 0.04 0.01 0.01 5768 2557 ## 2014-05-12 17:00:35.538 0.21 0.05 0.04 22528 4907 ## 2014-05-12 17:00:37.811 0.08 0.01 0.02 24576 7072 ## 2014-05-12 17:00:41.427 0.26 0.06 0.04 43008 14336 ## TotalSize Delta ## 2014-05-12 17:00:32.868 9437184 6792 ## 2014-05-12 17:00:33.178 9437184 3824 ## 2014-05-12 17:00:33.677 9437184 3211 ## 2014-05-12 17:00:35.538 9437184 17621 ## 2014-05-12 17:00:37.811 9437184 17504 ## 2014-05-12 17:00:41.427 9437184 28672 Example of Two Benchmark Runs in One Log File The data in the following graph is from a different log file, not the one of primary interest to this article. I’m including this image because it is an example of idle periods followed by busy periods. It would be uninteresting to average the rate of garbage collection over the entire log file period. More interesting would be the rate of garbage collect in the two busy periods. Are they the same or different? Your production data may be similar, for example, bursts when employees return from lunch and idle times on weekend evenings, etc. Once the data is in an R Time Series, you can analyze isolated time windows. Clipping the Time Series data Flashing back to our test case… Viewing the data as a time series is interesting. You can see that the work intensive time period is between 9:00 PM and 3:00 AM. Lets clip the data to the interesting period:     par(mfrow=c(2,1)) plot(g1gc.z$UserTime, type="h", main="User Time per GC\nTime: Complete Log File", xlab="Time of Day", ylab="CPU Seconds per GC", col="#1b9e77") clipped.g1gc.z=window(g1gc.z, start=as.POSIXct("2014-05-12 21:00:00"), end=as.POSIXct("2014-05-13 03:00:00")) plot(clipped.g1gc.z$UserTime, type="h", main="User Time per GC\nTime: Limited to Benchmark Execution", xlab="Time of Day", ylab="CPU Seconds per GC", col="#1b9e77") box(which = "outer", lty = "solid") Cumulative Incremental and Full GC count Here is the cumulative incremental and full GC count. When the line is very steep, it indicates that the GCs are repeating very quickly. Notice that the scale on the Y axis is different for full vs. incremental. plot(clipped.g1gc.z[,c(2:3)], main="Cumulative Incremental and Full GC count", xlab="Time of Day", col="#1b9e77") GC Analysis of Benchmark Execution using Time Series data In the following series of 3 graphs: The “After Size” show the amount of heap space in use after each garbage collection. Many Java objects are still referenced, i.e. alive, during each garbage collection. This may indicate that the application has a memory leak, or may indicate that the application has a very large memory footprint. Typically, an application's memory footprint plateau's in the early stage of execution. One would expect this graph to have a flat top. The steep decline in the heap space may indicate that the application crashed after 2:00. The second graph shows that the outliers in real execution time, discussed above, occur near 2:00. when the Java heap seems to be quite full. The third graph shows that Full GCs are infrequent during the first few hours of execution. The rate of Full GC's, (the slope of the cummulative Full GC line), changes near midnight.   plot(clipped.g1gc.z[,c("AfterSize","RealTime","FullCount")], xlab="Time of Day", col=c("#1b9e77","red","#1b9e77")) GC Analysis of heap recovered Each GC trace includes the amount of heap space in use before and after the individual GC event. During garbage coolection, unreferenced objects are identified, the space holding the unreferenced objects is freed, and thus, the difference in before and after usage indicates how much space has been freed. The following box plot and bar chart both demonstrate the same point - the amount of heap space freed per garbage colloection is surprisingly low. par(mfrow=c(2,1)) boxplot(as.vector(clipped.g1gc.z$Delta), main="Amount of Heap Recovered per GC Pass", xlab="Size in KB", horizontal = TRUE, col="red") hist(as.vector(clipped.g1gc.z$Delta), main="Amount of Heap Recovered per GC Pass", xlab="Size in KB", breaks=100, col="red") box(which = "outer", lty = "solid") This graph is the most interesting. The dark blue area shows how much heap is occupied by referenced Java objects. This represents memory that holds live data. The red fringe at the top shows how much data was recovered after each garbage collection. barplot(clipped.g1gc.z[,c("AfterSize","Delta")], col=c("#7570b3","#e7298a"), xlab="Time of Day", border=NA) legend("topleft", c("Live Objects","Heap Recovered on GC"), fill=c("#7570b3","#e7298a")) box(which = "outer", lty = "solid") When I discuss the data in the log files with the customer, I will ask for an explaination for the large amount of referenced data resident in the Java heap. There are two are posibilities: There is a memory leak and the amount of space required to hold referenced objects will continue to grow, limited only by the maximum heap size. After the maximum heap size is reached, the JVM will throw an “Out of Memory” exception every time that the application tries to allocate a new object. If this is the case, the aplication needs to be debugged to identify why old objects are referenced when they are no longer needed. The application has a legitimate requirement to keep a large amount of data in memory. The customer may want to further increase the maximum heap size. Another possible solution would be to partition the application across multiple cluster nodes, where each node has responsibility for managing a unique subset of the data. Conclusion In conclusion, R is a very powerful tool for the analysis of Java garbage collection log files. The primary difficulty is data cleansing so that information can be read into an R data frame. Once the data has been read into R, a rich set of tools may be used for thorough evaluation.

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• Windows XP SP3 - Library not registered error... IE8 not installing.

  - by Wesley

  Specs to put things in context: AMD Athlon XP 2400+ @ 1987 MHz / 2 x 512MB PC3200 DDR RAM / WD 160GB IDE HDD / 3DFuzion 128MB GeForce 6200 AGP 4x / FIC AM37 / Windows XP SP3 Just recently, I was unable to start Windows Media Player. I clicked it and the busy cursor came up, but then nothing happened. Also, I tried doing a search for a file, and same thing. It would show busy cursor then suddenly stop doing anything. I couldn't find it in the Processes of the Task Manager. (Perhaps I don't know what I'm looking for?) Also, I was trying to update my DirectX, which has been running something older than DX9 9.0c for a while now, except the installation fails due to "internal error". I think the failed DirectX installation has been like that for a while... (I remember trying to install DX9 9.0c a while back, but still failed.) The Windows programs not starting, I don't think I've ever had before... what could be the cause of these problems?! Thanks in advance. =) EDIT1: Weird thing now is that when I try to open User Accounts, I get a message saying "Wrong number of arguments or invalid property assignment." Also, when I'm trying to open services.msc, I'm getting a script error that says that "Library not registered." (Code: 0, URL: res://C:\WINDOWS\System32\mmcndmgr.dll/views.htm) Perhaps this is related to my other question, where I seemed to have an unregistered library of some sort. EDIT2: The DirectX End-User Runtime Web Installer freakishly worked and updated successfully. Now, I have focussed the question on the bigger problem. For WMP11, H&S, and Search, I click it once, get a busy icon for a second, and then nothing happens. Refer to EDIT1 for other problems. EDIT3: Seems that my problems may be related to some Internet Explorer Script Errors. So what I did was download the IE8 installer from the Microsoft website, but when I run it and get to the main portion of the installer, it just keeps looping on the Downloading step of the installation. The installer is still running, but I left it for at least 4 hours and the downloading step was still not finished. What is the problem? Also, I uninstalled Ubuntu 9.10 after these problems, but they still remain. EDIT4: I'm getting an active desktop recovery background on startup now. And within seconds my computer hangs again. EDIT3 explains main issue though.

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• Windows 7 + Deep Freeze - I'm stuck in an endless reboot loop

  - by myermian

  I have the following setup: Windows 7 Ultimate Deep Freeze I "thawed" my machine last night and performed a Windows Update. The update is having issues (it gets stuck at 32%, fails, and restarts my machine). When it reboots it attempts it again, and again, and again, etc. (Endless loop). I looked online and found some solutions, but none of them seem to be working: When I run Safe Mode, Safe Mode w/ Network, or Safe Mode w/ Command Prompt it attempts to revert the Windows Update changes. However, the problem is with Deep Freeze on (and now in "Frozen" mode) the reverted changes don't stay, and I'm back into the loop of death. Oh, and side note: "Safe Mode w/ Command Prompt" does not actually take me to a command prompt window? Perhaps because it is attempting to complete the Windows Update changes first? I have tried to select the option to NOT restart when an windows error occurs, but it still does. I tried the remainder of all the other options in the F8 screen. The only other option left is to find my Windows 7 Media Disc (I can't find it right now) and use it to repair windows (because for some reason the repair option does not show up in the F8 screen). Is there a way to disable Deep Freeze from loading? When I selected "Safe Mode w/ Command Prompt" I noticed that it loads the DpFrz.sys file. I know that when I'm in the Windows Boot Manager if I press F10 instead of F8 (while highlighting Windows 7) it takes me to an "Edit Boot Options" screen: Edit Windows boot options for: Windows 7 Path: \Windows\system32\winload.exe Partition: 2 Hard Disk: 8e90e329 [ /NOEXECUTE=OPTIN (I CAN EDIT THIS LINE) ] Update: I found my Windows 7 Media Disk and it did not help out. The laptop had the "System Restore" as a partition on the HDD. I later received (in the mail) a Windows 7 Upgrade Disc from Sony to upgrade my system from Windows Vista to Windows 7 Ultimate. I placed the disc into the DVD drive and it does not come up as a "bootable" disc. I'm going to try to find an alternative disc to see if I can get into Command Prompt. Update 2: I got a Windows Repair disc and got into a command prompt window. I got into the registry and disabled Deep Freeze. Also: I renamed the Pending.xml file to Pending.old I cleared out the Windows Temp directory I still am stuck in the loop (though, it isn't an issue with DeepFreeze anymore because I can make changes to the hard drive and they persist). Not sure what to do at this point? Update 3: I ran the repair option and it couldn't repair, but it did point me to something. It says the error was due to a driver that was failing. I have a feeling it is my UPEK Fingerprint scanner.

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• missing files after reassemble of RAID-5

  - by Kris_R

  I had to open my file-server's housing on Sunday to replace a faulty fan. What I didn't see was that one of the sata-cables was not properly connected. The 1st thing I did after a reboot was a check of the RAID status and it showed immediately that one drive is missing. Till this moment the device was not used (however it was mounted, so I'm not 100% sure that system did nothing). I stopped md0 and re-plugged the cable: mdadm --stop /dev/md0 poweroff After another reboot I checked the removed drive: mdadm --examine /dev/sdd1 ... Checksum : 3276bc1d - correct Events : 315782 Layout : left-symmetric Chunk Size : 32K Number Major Minor RaidDevice State this 0 8 49 0 active sync /dev/sdd1 0 0 8 49 0 active sync /dev/sdd1 1 1 8 65 1 active sync /dev/sde1 2 2 8 33 2 active sync /dev/sdc1 3 3 8 17 3 active sync /dev/sdb1 I was a bit surprised that it was shown as active (even if earlier mdadm said, that this device was removed from array) and its checksum was OK. I recreated RAID with: mdadm --assemble /dev/md0 --scan The command mdadm --detail /dev/md0 showed that all drives were running and system was in "clean" state. I mounted the device md0 and then came hic-cup. I wanted to work on one of the last files that I had been using before all the situation and it was not there. In another place I missed actually all files from the directory where I was working. As far as I can see most of the files that are older than a few days are intact but some newer ones are missing. Now the big question: what would be your advice? Is there a way to get these data? I thought about removing the drive that was earlier labeled by mdadm and rebuild array with another empty HDD. I've found that after re-assemble the "broken" drive has another label (changed from sdd to sdb). Can this have influence on rebuilt process? If yes, how to reassemble the array properly? I'm sure the SATA-cables are connected still in the same order to the controller. p.s. Please no advises like "restore from backup". I'm doing back-ups on Sunday's night and this happened in the late afternoon, so backup is not really options for me. p.s.s. I asked this question on Unix&Linux but no answer came up during last two days. I'm getting quite anxious. Sorry for duplicating if any of you reading the other forum.

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• XSL Template outputting massive chunk of text, rather than HTML. But only on one section

  - by Throlkim

  I'm having a slightly odd situation with an XSL template. Most of it outputs fine, but a certain for-each loop is causing me problems. Here's the XML: <area> <feature type="Hall"> <Heading><![CDATA[Hall]]></Heading> <Para><![CDATA[Communal gardens, pathway leading to PVCu double glazed communal front door to]]></Para> </feature> <feature type="Entrance Hall"> <Heading><![CDATA[Communal Entrance Hall]]></Heading> <Para><![CDATA[Plain ceiling, centre light fitting, fire door through to inner hallway, wood and glazed panelled front door to]]></Para> </feature> <feature type="Inner Hall"> <Heading><![CDATA[Inner Hall]]></Heading> <Para><![CDATA[Plain ceiling with pendant light fitting and covings, security telephone, airing cupboard housing gas boiler serving domestic hot water and central heating, telephone point, storage cupboard housing gas and electric meters, wooden panelled doors off to all rooms.]]></Para> </feature> <feature type="Lounge (Reception)" width="3.05" length="4.57" units="metre"> <Heading><![CDATA[Lounge (Reception)]]></Heading> <Para><![CDATA[15' 6" x 10' 7" (4.72m x 3.23m) Window to the side and rear elevation, papered ceiling with pendant light fitting and covings, two double panelled radiators, power points, wall mounted security entry phone, TV aerial point.]]></Para> </feature> <feature type="Kitchen" width="3.05" length="3.66" units="metre"> <Heading><![CDATA[Kitchen]]></Heading> <Para><![CDATA[12' x 10' (3.66m x 3.05m) Double glazed window to the rear elevation, textured ceiling with strip lighting, range of base and wall units in Beech with brushed aluminium handles, co-ordinated working surfaces with inset stainless steel sink with mixer taps over, co-ordinated tiled splashbacks, gas and electric cooker points, large storage cupboard with shelving, power points.]]></Para> </feature> <feature type="Entrance Porch"> <Heading><![CDATA[Balcony]]></Heading> <Para><![CDATA[Views across the communal South facing garden, wrought iron balustrade.]]></Para> </feature> <feature type="Bedroom" width="3.35" length="3.96" units="metre"> <Heading><![CDATA[Bedroom One]]></Heading> <Para><![CDATA[13' 6" x 11' 5" (4.11m x 3.48m) Double glazed windows to the front and side elevations, papered ceiling with pendant light fittings and covings, single panelled radiator, power points, telephone point, security entry phone.]]></Para> </feature> <feature type="Bedroom" width="3.05" length="3.35" units="metre"> <Heading><![CDATA[Bedroom Two]]></Heading> <Para><![CDATA[11' 4" x 10' 1" (3.45m x 3.07m) Double glazed window to the front elevation, plain ceiling with centre light fitting and covings, power points.]]></Para> </feature> <feature type="bathroom"> <Heading><![CDATA[Bathroom]]></Heading> <Para><![CDATA[Obscure double glazed window to the rear elevation, textured ceiling with centre light fitting and extractor fan, suite in white comprising of low level WC, wall mounted wash hand basin and walk in shower housing 'Triton T80' electric shower, co-ordinated tiled splashbacks.]]></Para> </feature> </area> And here's the section of my template that processes it: <xsl:for-each select="area"> <li> <xsl:for-each select="feature"> <li> <h5> <xsl:value-of select="Heading"/> </h5> <xsl:value-of select="Para"/> </li> </xsl:for-each> </li> </xsl:for-each> And here's the output: Hall Communal gardens, pathway leading to PVCu double glazed communal front door to Communal Entrance Hall Plain ceiling, centre light fitting, fire door through to inner hallway, wood and glazed panelled front door to Inner Hall Plain ceiling with pendant light fitting and covings, security telephone, airing cupboard housing gas boiler serving domestic hot water and central heating, telephone point, storage cupboard housing gas and electric meters, wooden panelled doors off to all rooms. Lounge (Reception) 15' 6" x 10' 7" (4.72m x 3.23m) Window to the side and rear elevation, papered ceiling with pendant light fitting and covings, two double panelled radiators, power points, wall mounted security entry phone, TV aerial point. Kitchen 12' x 10' (3.66m x 3.05m) Double glazed window to the rear elevation, textured ceiling with strip lighting, range of base and wall units in Beech with brushed aluminium handles, co-ordinated working surfaces with inset stainless steel sink with mixer taps over, co-ordinated tiled splashbacks, gas and electric cooker points, large storage cupboard with shelving, power points. Balcony Views across the communal South facing garden, wrought iron balustrade. Bedroom One 13' 6" x 11' 5" (4.11m x 3.48m) Double glazed windows to the front and side elevations, papered ceiling with pendant light fittings and covings, single panelled radiator, power points, telephone point, security entry phone. Bedroom Two 11' 4" x 10' 1" (3.45m x 3.07m) Double glazed window to the front elevation, plain ceiling with centre light fitting and covings, power points. Bathroom Obscure double glazed window to the rear elevation, textured ceiling with centre light fitting and extractor fan, suite in white comprising of low level WC, wall mounted wash hand basin and walk in shower housing 'Triton T80' electric shower, co-ordinated tiled splashbacks. For reference, here's the entire XSLT: http://pastie.org/private/eq4gjvqoc1amg9ynyf6wzg The rest of it all outputs fine - what am I missing from the above section?

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• HT Link Sync Error after Ubuntu 10.04 LTS Installation

  - by marklab

  Update 1 I just assembled an exact replica of this server, and successfully installed Ubuntu 10.04 LTS in a RAID10 configuration. The success was confirmed by a login to the initial account. There must be a hardware component that is faulty. Since the error mentions HT, which I believe to be Hyper Threading, I will start with the CPUs. Please indicate if this error is more strongly associated with any other piece of hardware. Or make a recommendation of another approach that would be good for this issue. Issue I was attempting to install Ubuntu 10.04 LTS on this system with the board RAID10 configured. However, the installation failed at the partitioning stage by rebooting the system. Upon reboot, there is an error report after POST listing the following: Node0: NB WatchDog Timer Error Node1: HT Link Sync Error Node2: HT Link Sync Error ... Node7: HT Link Sync Error Press F1 to continue/resume. After pressing F1 the system will boot from the Ubuntu 10.04 LTS installation disc. However, it will fail at the same stage, and go through the same process from there. Hardware CPU: AMD OPTERON X12 6172 G34 2.1G 18MB Motherboard: Supermicro H8QG6-F HDD: WD Caviar Green 2TB 5.4K RPM Troubleshooting I disabled RAID10 on the system, and installed the Ubuntu on a single drive. It installed successfully. I then went back to a RAID10 setup and attempted to install on the system again, and was able to make it through the partitioning stage. However, upon reboot, the system reported: Error: file not found, and then booted me into the Grub Rescue console. I feel I have aggravated the problem at this point because when I attempted to install from the boot disc again, the system reboots upon hitting enter to even start the installation process. It does the same thing when trying to boot from an Ubuntu 11 disc. I have not been able to find any information on this HT Link Sync Error, which I feel may have started the problems I am experiencing now with the installation of the OS. I am also aware that Ubuntu is said not to be supported by the motherboard according to Supermicro's site. However, since I was able to install it successfully on a single drive, I do not believe it is incompatible. I would like to know a reason for why it's failing to install on/off.

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• ubuntu hardrive repartition without uninstalling ubuntu or windows 7 and losing data of hardrive

  - by user141692

  I have and asus r500v with 750 gb gpt system uefi motherboard core i7 3610qm, nvidia geforce gt, with ubuntu and w7 dual boot, I had problems installing ubuntu because of the grub but I fix it with https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/grub2/+bug/807801, but I still have the problem of "warning: the partition is misaligned by 3072 bytes. this may result iin very poor performance. Repartitioning is suggested" in every linux partitioin I made and my 750 gb is not being used at the maximun capacity it only uses 698 gb. I want to make partitions so that the warning doesnt show up and I can use the maximum capacity of the HDD, as I did with another dual boot laptop (compaq presario cq40). I have the following partitions: unknown 1.0Mb: partition type: lynux Basic DAta partition, device: /dev/sda2 Usage: --, Partition flags: --, partition label:-- warning: the partition is misaligned by 3072 bytes. this may result in very poor performance. repartitioning is suggested. -system 210 Mb FAt, usage: Filesystem, partition type: EFI system Partition, Partition Flags:--, Label: system, Device: /dev/sda1, partition label: EFI system partition, Capacity 210MB, avilable:--, Mount Point: mounted at /boot/efi -134 Mb NTFS, usage: filesystem, partition type: linux basic data partition, partition flags:.--, device: /dev/sda7, partition label: --, capacity: 134MB,available:--, mount point: not mounted -OS 250 GB NTFS, usage: file system, partititon type: linux basic data partition, partition flags: --, type: NTFS, label: OS, device: /dev/sda3, partition label: basic data partition, capacity: 250 GB, available:-, mount point: not mounted -10GB FAT 32, usage: filesystem, partition type: EFI system partition, partition flags:--, type: FAT 32, label: --, device: /dev/sda4, partition label: --, capacity: 10GB, available:--, mount point: not mounted warning: the partition is misaligned by 3072 bytes. this may result in very poor performance. repartitioning is suggested. -10gb ext 4, usage: file system, partition type: linux basic data partition, partition flags:--, type: EXT4(version1) label:--, device: /dev/sda9, partition label:--, capacity: 10 GB, available:--, mount point at / warning: the partition is misaligned by 1536 bytes. this may result in very poor performance. repartitioning is suggested. -478GB ext4, usage: filesystem, partition type: linux basic data partition, partition flags:--, type: EXT4, label:--, device: /dev/sda5, partition label:--, capacity: 478gb, available:--, mount point: mounted at /home warning: the partition is misaligned by 512 bytes. this may result in very poor performance. repartitioning is suggested. -2.0gb Swap 2.0Gb, usage: swap space, partition type: linux swap partitioin, partition flags:-, device: /dev/sda6, partition label: capacity: 2.0gb warning: the partition is misaligned by 512 bytes. this may result in very poor performance. repartitioning is suggested. and as you can see it is not well organized so please help me to organize the partitions witahout uninstalling the w7, and if possible the grub2

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• USB ports causing Wireless and Mobile Phone tethering drop out

  - by chrolli

  I have a problem with my USB ports and I can't seem to pinpoint the problem. I'm hoping that I can get some idea as to how to troubleshoot my problem. Problem description: I recently bought a USB Wireless Adapter in order to connect my Desktop PC to the WLAN. The dongle keeps dropping off connection regularly on average once a minute. And the connection is slow. What I've tried: I installed a network scanner to determine signal strength. The PC/adapter combo is getting about 70% signal strength. I have a laptop that has an internal Wireless adapter. I moved the laptop near the location of the PC. The signal strength was above 90%. I installed the USB adapter on the laptop. I placed the laptop near the location of the PC. The signal strength was above 80%. And there is no drop out issue. I've isolated the problem to be on the PC. I used internet tethering on my mobile phone in order to test the USB ports. I get the same problem, themobile phone keeps dropping in and out. I plugged the adapter and phone on all USB ports, and it is still dropping out on all ports. I've isolated the problem to be the Motherboard, USB hub. I updated the BIOS, and USB driver. Still dropping out. I noticed that when I used the mobile phone tethering method, the phone (iphone 5) is guarenteed to drop out and does not appear to charge if I jiggle the the 8-pin connector on the base of the phone. If I push the pin tightly on the phone, the phone starts charging, as soon as I let go, it stops and drops out from the PC. This is strange because this doesn't happen when it is plugged to the powerboard. Which means that the 8 pin connector is fine. I'm not sure what the problem is. I assume that it is to do with the USB ports not supplying enough power which in turn causes the devices to intermittently drop out. The reason I say this is because the USB cable works fine when plugged into a powerboard with enough power supplied to the phone. Only when it is plugged into the USB port on the PC, does it drop out. My motherboard is Asus P8z68-v le. My Wireless adapter is the D-link DWA131. I can't seem to find any settings in the BIOS to increase the south bridge voltage so as to supply more power to the USB ports. Although this problem only occurs when I'm trying to hook up to a device supplying internet connection. My USB HDD, Flash drives, and Mouse and Key are working fine! Any suggestions please?

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• What is the fastest cyclic synchronization in Java (ExecutorService vs. CyclicBarrier vs. X)?

  - by Alex Dunlop

  Which Java synchronization construct is likely to provide the best performance for a concurrent, iterative processing scenario with a fixed number of threads like the one outlined below? After experimenting on my own for a while (using ExecutorService and CyclicBarrier) and being somewhat surprised by the results, I would be grateful for some expert advice and maybe some new ideas. Existing questions here do not seem to focus primarily on performance, hence this new one. Thanks in advance! The core of the app is a simple iterative data processing algorithm, parallelized to the spread the computational load across 8 cores on a Mac Pro, running OS X 10.6 and Java 1.6.0_07. The data to be processed is split into 8 blocks and each block is fed to a Runnable to be executed by one of a fixed number of threads. Parallelizing the algorithm was fairly straightforward, and it functionally works as desired, but its performance is not yet what I think it could be. The app seems to spend a lot of time in system calls synchronizing, so after some profiling I wonder whether I selected the most appropriate synchronization mechanism(s). A key requirement of the algorithm is that it needs to proceed in stages, so the threads need to sync up at the end of each stage. The main thread prepares the work (very low overhead), passes it to the threads, lets them work on it, then proceeds when all threads are done, rearranges the work (again very low overhead) and repeats the cycle. The machine is dedicated to this task, Garbage Collection is minimized by using per-thread pools of pre-allocated items, and the number of threads can be fixed (no incoming requests or the like, just one thread per CPU core). V1 - ExecutorService My first implementation used an ExecutorService with 8 worker threads. The program creates 8 tasks holding the work and then lets them work on it, roughly like this: // create one thread per CPU executorService = Executors.newFixedThreadPool( 8 ); ... // now process data in cycles while( ...) { // package data into 8 work items ... // create one Callable task per work item ... // submit the Callables to the worker threads executorService.invokeAll( taskList ); } This works well functionally (it does what it should), and for very large work items indeed all 8 CPUs become highly loaded, as much as the processing algorithm would be expected to allow (some work items will finish faster than others, then idle). However, as the work items become smaller (and this is not really under the program's control), the user CPU load shrinks dramatically: blocksize | system | user | cycles/sec 256k 1.8% 85% 1.30 64k 2.5% 77% 5.6 16k 4% 64% 22.5 4096 8% 56% 86 1024 13% 38% 227 256 17% 19% 420 64 19% 17% 948 16 19% 13% 1626 Legend: - block size = size of the work item (= computational steps) - system = system load, as shown in OS X Activity Monitor (red bar) - user = user load, as shown in OS X Activity Monitor (green bar) - cycles/sec = iterations through the main while loop, more is better The primary area of concern here is the high percentage of time spent in the system, which appears to be driven by thread synchronization calls. As expected, for smaller work items, ExecutorService.invokeAll() will require relatively more effort to sync up the threads versus the amount of work being performed in each thread. But since ExecutorService is more generic than it would need to be for this use case (it can queue tasks for threads if there are more tasks than cores), I though maybe there would be a leaner synchronization construct. V2 - CyclicBarrier The next implementation used a CyclicBarrier to sync up the threads before receiving work and after completing it, roughly as follows: main() { // create the barrier barrier = new CyclicBarrier( 8 + 1 ); // create Runable for thread, tell it about the barrier Runnable task = new WorkerThreadRunnable( barrier ); // start the threads for( int i = 0; i < 8; i++ ) { // create one thread per core new Thread( task ).start(); } while( ... ) { // tell threads about the work ... // N threads + this will call await(), then system proceeds barrier.await(); // ... now worker threads work on the work... // wait for worker threads to finish barrier.await(); } } class WorkerThreadRunnable implements Runnable { CyclicBarrier barrier; WorkerThreadRunnable( CyclicBarrier barrier ) { this.barrier = barrier; } public void run() { while( true ) { // wait for work barrier.await(); // do the work ... // wait for everyone else to finish barrier.await(); } } } Again, this works well functionally (it does what it should), and for very large work items indeed all 8 CPUs become highly loaded, as before. However, as the work items become smaller, the load still shrinks dramatically: blocksize | system | user | cycles/sec 256k 1.9% 85% 1.30 64k 2.7% 78% 6.1 16k 5.5% 52% 25 4096 9% 29% 64 1024 11% 15% 117 256 12% 8% 169 64 12% 6.5% 285 16 12% 6% 377 For large work items, synchronization is negligible and the performance is identical to V1. But unexpectedly, the results of the (highly specialized) CyclicBarrier seem MUCH WORSE than those for the (generic) ExecutorService: throughput (cycles/sec) is only about 1/4th of V1. A preliminary conclusion would be that even though this seems to be the advertised ideal use case for CyclicBarrier, it performs much worse than the generic ExecutorService. V3 - Wait/Notify + CyclicBarrier It seemed worth a try to replace the first cyclic barrier await() with a simple wait/notify mechanism: main() { // create the barrier // create Runable for thread, tell it about the barrier // start the threads while( ... ) { // tell threads about the work // for each: workerThreadRunnable.setWorkItem( ... ); // ... now worker threads work on the work... // wait for worker threads to finish barrier.await(); } } class WorkerThreadRunnable implements Runnable { CyclicBarrier barrier; @NotNull volatile private Callable<Integer> workItem; WorkerThreadRunnable( CyclicBarrier barrier ) { this.barrier = barrier; this.workItem = NO_WORK; } final protected void setWorkItem( @NotNull final Callable<Integer> callable ) { synchronized( this ) { workItem = callable; notify(); } } public void run() { while( true ) { // wait for work while( true ) { synchronized( this ) { if( workItem != NO_WORK ) break; try { wait(); } catch( InterruptedException e ) { e.printStackTrace(); } } } // do the work ... // wait for everyone else to finish barrier.await(); } } } Again, this works well functionally (it does what it should). blocksize | system | user | cycles/sec 256k 1.9% 85% 1.30 64k 2.4% 80% 6.3 16k 4.6% 60% 30.1 4096 8.6% 41% 98.5 1024 12% 23% 202 256 14% 11.6% 299 64 14% 10.0% 518 16 14.8% 8.7% 679 The throughput for small work items is still much worse than that of the ExecutorService, but about 2x that of the CyclicBarrier. Eliminating one CyclicBarrier eliminates half of the gap. V4 - Busy wait instead of wait/notify Since this app is the primary one running on the system and the cores idle anyway if they're not busy with a work item, why not try a busy wait for work items in each thread, even if that spins the CPU needlessly. The worker thread code changes as follows: class WorkerThreadRunnable implements Runnable { // as before final protected void setWorkItem( @NotNull final Callable<Integer> callable ) { workItem = callable; } public void run() { while( true ) { // busy-wait for work while( true ) { if( workItem != NO_WORK ) break; } // do the work ... // wait for everyone else to finish barrier.await(); } } } Also works well functionally (it does what it should). blocksize | system | user | cycles/sec 256k 1.9% 85% 1.30 64k 2.2% 81% 6.3 16k 4.2% 62% 33 4096 7.5% 40% 107 1024 10.4% 23% 210 256 12.0% 12.0% 310 64 11.9% 10.2% 550 16 12.2% 8.6% 741 For small work items, this increases throughput by a further 10% over the CyclicBarrier + wait/notify variant, which is not insignificant. But it is still much lower-throughput than V1 with the ExecutorService. V5 - ? So what is the best synchronization mechanism for such a (presumably not uncommon) problem? I am weary of writing my own sync mechanism to completely replace ExecutorService (assuming that it is too generic and there has to be something that can still be taken out to make it more efficient). It is not my area of expertise and I'm concerned that I'd spend a lot of time debugging it (since I'm not even sure my wait/notify and busy wait variants are correct) for uncertain gain. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

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• Windows 7 x64 installation freezes on new PC build

  - by jhsowter

  Symptoms While attempting to install Windows 7 (64 bit) on my new PC build, it freezes usually at the point where it is expanding the windows image, but has frozen as early as accepting the licence agreement, and as late as just after the first restart. My specs are at the bottom of the post. So far I have tried the following to identify the problem, in rough chronological order: Tried different hard drives with different sata cables. Same symptoms. I later used a different computer to install windows on the same hard drive with no problems. Tried the RAM in different slots, and tried one RAM stick instead of two. Same symptoms. Updated the BIOS to 1.60. Same symptoms. Ran Memtest86+ with RAM in dual channel. It passed about 6 times when I left it running overnight. Used USB to install windows instead of an optical drive. Same symptoms. Change SATA configuration from AHCI to IDE. Same symptoms. Tried various different SATA ports. Same symptoms. Updated BIOS to 1.70. Same symptoms. I saw the RAM did not list my motherboard as being supported even though the motherboard did list the RAM as being supported. So I tried some Kingston DDR3 1333MHz RAM instead. Same symptoms. Other (possibly) pertinent information My CPU idles at about 30 °C. I can't tell what it gets to when it's working. When I installed the CPU, the lever which locks the CPU in place took quite a bit of force to pull down. Now I didn't just yank it down without rechecking the CPU was seated properly about 5 times, but it does seems unusual, and I wonder if the CPU was seated badly if I would see these symptoms? I am out of ideas and don't know how to diagnose any further. I suppose either the motherboard or CPU must be the problem. I am on the verge of taking it to a specialist. The Question How should I proceed from here? Is there anything I can rule out as being the source of the symptoms I am seeing? My Specs CPU: Intel i5 3570k RAM: G.Skill RipjawsX 8GB kit HDD: single 3.5" 500GB SATA or 160GB 2.5" SATA (at different times and sometime together. But no RAID or anything). MB: ASRock Extreme4 Z77 PSU: Silverstone Strider Plus 600W ST60F-P

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• Windows 7 remains powered on when restarting

  - by BombDefused

  I'm running windows 7 x64 on an MSI P67A-GD53 motherboard, in an Antec P280 Super Midi Towercase with a Corsair 650w PSU. I've just installed a second instance of windows 7 x64 on a separate disk (this is to keep my games separate from my work OS). The problem is that it appears now that I cannot restart from either instance of Windows 7. The shut down command, and sleep commands work as expected. When I try to restart, the shutdown happens but the system never reboots. Everything remains powered on, until I hold down the power button to force the power off. Ithink (but am not 100% sure) this has only started since I installed the second OS, and am assuming this has something to do with the motherboard needing to know which OS to run up again? Some other forums I've read suggest that the PSU has a major role in restart and could be at fault. Changing the boot order of the disks in the BIOS does not change anything. Any suggestions greatfully recieved! Update: I now have a reproduceable issue: I think the secondary OS install may have been a red herring. It was when windows tried to reboot during the install that I noticed the issue. After playing around with installing drivers, and rebooting many many times, I have found that it is the OC genie setting on the MSI motherboard that seems to trigger the problem. This makes sense as I only started using the OC genie feature a couple of weeks ago, and probably hadn't used restart in that time. However... simply turning off OC genie does not make the issue go away. I have to turn off OC genie, shutdown, start enter bios, go to the "Save and Exit" menu "Restore Defaults" yes to "Load optimized defaults", which will reset to clear the problem. Now when the PC boots into windows, I can restart as normal (and from the OS on either HDD). I only know how to control the issue, and don't still know the root cause. I'd like to be able to use the OC genie function if anyone can suggest a why I'm seeing this problem. Could it be that I'm drawing too much power when using OC feature?

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• Custom initrd init script: how to create /dev/initctl

  - by Posco Grubb

  I have a virtual machine (VMM is Xen 3.3) equipped with two IDE HDD's (/dev/hda and /dev/hdb). The root file system is in /dev/hda1, where Scientific Linux 5.4 is installed. /dev/hdb contains an empty ext2 file system. I want to protect the root file system from writes by the VM by using aufs (AnotherUnionFS) to layer a writable file system on top of the root file system. The changes to / will be written to the file system located on /dev/hdb. (Furthermore, outside the VM, the file backing the /dev/hda will also be set to read-only permissions, so the VMM should also prevent the VM from modifying at that level.) (The purpose of this setup: be able to corrupt a virtual machine using software-implemented fault injection but preserve the file system image in order to quickly reboot the VM to a fault-free state.) How do I get an initrd init script to do the necessary mounts to create the union file system? I've tried 2 approaches: I've tried modifying the nash script that mkinitrd creates, but I don't know what setuproot and switchroot do and how to make them use my aufs as the new root. Apparently, nobody else here knows either. (EDIT: I take that back.) I've tried building a LiveCD (using linux-live-6.3.0) and then modifying the Bash /linuxrc script from the generated initrd, and I got the mounts correct, but the final /sbin/init complains about /dev/initctl. Specifically, my /linuxrc mounts the aufs at /union. The last few lines of /linuxrc effectively do the following: cd /union mkdir -p mnt/live pivot_root . mnt/live exec sbin/chroot . sbin/init </dev/console >/dev/console 2>&1 When init starts, it outputs something like init: /dev/initctl: No such file or directory. What is supposed to create this FIFO? I found no such filename in the original linuxrc and liblinuxlive scripts. I tried creating it via "mkfifo /dev/initctl", but then init complained about a timeout opening or writing to the FIFO. Would appreciate any help or pointers. Thanks.

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• where on disk is space allocated for new files inside LVM lv with ext4 file system?

  - by Jost

  I run a multi-disk server with LVM2. Several large disks serve as LVM2 physical volumes for one volume group, containing one logical volume formatted with ext4. Nothing fancy, just your standard linear setup. Recently an additional, very small disk was added as physical volume to that volume group and I expanded both the logical volume, and the ext4 file system therein onto that disk. This lv is used to store incremental backups using rsync and is only about 30% full, there have rarely been any files deleted from it, only incremental writes. Now this new HDD I added to the pre-existing volume group has unexpectedly died on me, and the volume group won't come up because it is missing one physical volume. As fate will have it, this WAS the "in an event of catastrophic failure on the primary server"-backup, the event happened, the boss is not happy, so this kinda has to work... According to this (Part 3): http://www.novell.com/coolsolutions/appnote/19386.html it is possible to trick LVM into starting anyway by creating a new pv with identical metadata to the failed disk, which will make the volume accessible, but of course leave giant holes in the file system. I have'n tried it yet, because it involves repairing (writing to) the file system which eliminates the possibility of trying other things if it fails. Now my question is: How does this setup actually allocate disk space for new data? Is it allocated linearly from beginning to end of PVs, in the order they were added to the vg? Is it striped somehow in order to increase performance/balance load? since this defective disk was added only later to an existing lvm2 vg and lv, containing a half-empty ext4, what are the chances that there was never any data written to the defective disk? In other words: what are the chances of recovering all my data, even without the defective disk, by just starting the volume group as-is? Am I about to go spend $1500 on having 250GB of empty space recovered when I send the defective disk in for repair? Is there a way to check without mounting the file system and opening the files, hoping they contain something other than zeros? (comparing addresses of used data blocks inside ext4 to address ranges that were on the missing pv, something like that, preferably easy to automate) I know bitwise-copying the entire lv into an image file before trying to repair the ext4 would probably be a good idea, but since this lv is very large and I just suffered major file system failure on several systems it is probably a luxury I don't have... Any suggestions?

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• Using smartctl to get vendor specific Attributes from ssd drive behind a SmartArray P410 controller

  - by Lairsdragon

  Hi! Recently I have deployed some HP server with SSD's behind a SmartArray P410 controller. While not official supported from HP the server work well sofar. Now I like to get wear level info's, error statistics etc from the drive. While the SA P410 supports a passthru of the SMART Command to a single drive in the array the output I was not able to the the interesting things from the drive. In this case especially the value the Wear level indicator is from interest for me (Attr.ID 233), but this is ony present if the drive is directly attanched to a SATA Controller. smartctl on directly connected ssd: # smartctl -A /dev/sda smartctl version 5.38 [x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu] Copyright (C) 2002-8 Bruce Allen Home page is http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net/ === START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION === SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 5 Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds: ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME FLAG VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE UPDATED WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE 3 Spin_Up_Time 0x0000 100 000 000 Old_age Offline In_the_past 0 4 Start_Stop_Count 0x0000 100 000 000 Old_age Offline In_the_past 0 5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct 0x0002 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 0 9 Power_On_Hours 0x0002 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 8561 12 Power_Cycle_Count 0x0002 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 55 192 Power-Off_Retract_Count 0x0002 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 29 232 Unknown_Attribute 0x0003 100 100 010 Pre-fail Always - 0 233 Unknown_Attribute 0x0002 088 088 000 Old_age Always - 0 225 Load_Cycle_Count 0x0000 198 198 000 Old_age Offline - 508509 226 Load-in_Time 0x0002 255 000 000 Old_age Always In_the_past 0 227 Torq-amp_Count 0x0002 000 000 000 Old_age Always FAILING_NOW 0 228 Power-off_Retract_Count 0x0002 000 000 000 Old_age Always FAILING_NOW 0 smartctl on P410 connected ssd: # ./smartctl -A -d cciss,0 /dev/cciss/c1d0 smartctl 5.39.1 2010-01-28 r3054 [x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu] (local build) Copyright (C) 2002-10 by Bruce Allen, http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net (Right, it is complety empty) smartctl on P410 connected hdd: # ./smartctl -A -d cciss,0 /dev/cciss/c0d0 smartctl 5.39.1 2010-01-28 r3054 [x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu] (local build) Copyright (C) 2002-10 by Bruce Allen, http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net Current Drive Temperature: 27 C Drive Trip Temperature: 68 C Vendor (Seagate) cache information Blocks sent to initiator = 1871654030 Blocks received from initiator = 1360012929 Blocks read from cache and sent to initiator = 2178203797 Number of read and write commands whose size <= segment size = 46052239 Number of read and write commands whose size > segment size = 0 Vendor (Seagate/Hitachi) factory information number of hours powered up = 3363.25 number of minutes until next internal SMART test = 12 Do I hunt here a bug, or is this a limitation of the p410 SMART cmd Passthru?

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• DirectShow: Video-Preview and Image (with working code)

  - by xsl

  Questions / Issues If someone can recommend me a good free hosting site I can provide the whole project file. As mentioned in the text below the TakePicture() method is not working properly on the HTC HD 2 device. It would be nice if someone could look at the code below and tell me if it is right or wrong what I'm doing. Introduction I recently asked a question about displaying a video preview, taking camera image and rotating a video stream with DirectShow. The tricky thing about the topic is, that it's very hard to find good examples and the documentation and the framework itself is very hard to understand for someone who is new to windows programming and C++ in general. Nevertheless I managed to create a class that implements most of this features and probably works with most mobile devices. Probably because the DirectShow implementation depends a lot on the device itself. I could only test it with the HTC HD and HTC HD2, which are known as quite incompatible. HTC HD Working: Video preview, writing photo to file Not working: Set video resolution (CRASH), set photo resolution (LOW quality) HTC HD 2 Working: Set video resolution, set photo resolution Problematic: Video Preview rotated Not working: Writing photo to file To make it easier for others by providing a working example, I decided to share everything I have got so far below. I removed all of the error handling for the sake of simplicity. As far as documentation goes, I can recommend you to read the MSDN documentation, after that the code below is pretty straight forward. void Camera::Init() { CreateComObjects(); _captureGraphBuilder->SetFiltergraph(_filterGraph); InitializeVideoFilter(); InitializeStillImageFilter(); } Dipslay a video preview (working with any tested handheld): void Camera::DisplayVideoPreview(HWND windowHandle) { IVideoWindow *_vidWin; _filterGraph->QueryInterface(IID_IMediaControl,(void **) &_mediaControl); _filterGraph->QueryInterface(IID_IVideoWindow, (void **) &_vidWin); _videoCaptureFilter->QueryInterface(IID_IAMVideoControl, (void**) &_videoControl); _captureGraphBuilder->RenderStream(&PIN_CATEGORY_PREVIEW, &MEDIATYPE_Video, _videoCaptureFilter, NULL, NULL); CRect rect; long width, height; GetClientRect(windowHandle, &rect); _vidWin->put_Owner((OAHWND)windowHandle); _vidWin->put_WindowStyle(WS_CHILD | WS_CLIPSIBLINGS); _vidWin->get_Width(&width); _vidWin->get_Height(&height); height = rect.Height(); _vidWin->put_Height(height); _vidWin->put_Width(rect.Width()); _vidWin->SetWindowPosition(0,0, rect.Width(), height); _mediaControl->Run(); } HTC HD2: If set SetPhotoResolution() is called FindPin will return E_FAIL. If not, it will create a file full of null bytes. HTC HD: Works void Camera::TakePicture(WCHAR *fileName) { CComPtr<IFileSinkFilter> fileSink; CComPtr<IPin> stillPin; CComPtr<IUnknown> unknownCaptureFilter; CComPtr<IAMVideoControl> videoControl; _imageSinkFilter.QueryInterface(&fileSink); fileSink->SetFileName(fileName, NULL); _videoCaptureFilter.QueryInterface(&unknownCaptureFilter); _captureGraphBuilder->FindPin(unknownCaptureFilter, PINDIR_OUTPUT, &PIN_CATEGORY_STILL, &MEDIATYPE_Video, FALSE, 0, &stillPin); _videoCaptureFilter.QueryInterface(&videoControl); videoControl->SetMode(stillPin, VideoControlFlag_Trigger); } Set resolution: Works great on HTC HD2. HTC HD won't allow SetVideoResolution() and only offers one low resolution photo resolution: void Camera::SetVideoResolution(int width, int height) { SetResolution(true, width, height); } void Camera::SetPhotoResolution(int width, int height) { SetResolution(false, width, height); } void Camera::SetResolution(bool video, int width, int height) { IAMStreamConfig *config; config = NULL; if (video) { _captureGraphBuilder->FindInterface(&PIN_CATEGORY_PREVIEW, &MEDIATYPE_Video, _videoCaptureFilter, IID_IAMStreamConfig, (void**) &config); } else { _captureGraphBuilder->FindInterface(&PIN_CATEGORY_STILL, &MEDIATYPE_Video, _videoCaptureFilter, IID_IAMStreamConfig, (void**) &config); } int resolutions, size; VIDEO_STREAM_CONFIG_CAPS caps; config->GetNumberOfCapabilities(&resolutions, &size); for (int i = 0; i < resolutions; i++) { AM_MEDIA_TYPE *mediaType; if (config->GetStreamCaps(i, &mediaType, reinterpret_cast<BYTE*>(&caps)) == S_OK ) { int maxWidth = caps.MaxOutputSize.cx; int maxHeigth = caps.MaxOutputSize.cy; if(maxWidth == width && maxHeigth == height) { VIDEOINFOHEADER *info = reinterpret_cast<VIDEOINFOHEADER*>(mediaType->pbFormat); info->bmiHeader.biWidth = maxWidth; info->bmiHeader.biHeight = maxHeigth; info->bmiHeader.biSizeImage = DIBSIZE(info->bmiHeader); config->SetFormat(mediaType); DeleteMediaType(mediaType); break; } DeleteMediaType(mediaType); } } } Other methods used to build the filter graph and create the COM objects: void Camera::CreateComObjects() { CoInitialize(NULL); CoCreateInstance(CLSID_CaptureGraphBuilder, NULL, CLSCTX_INPROC_SERVER, IID_ICaptureGraphBuilder2, (void **) &_captureGraphBuilder); CoCreateInstance(CLSID_FilterGraph, NULL, CLSCTX_INPROC_SERVER, IID_IGraphBuilder, (void **) &_filterGraph); CoCreateInstance(CLSID_VideoCapture, NULL, CLSCTX_INPROC, IID_IBaseFilter, (void**) &_videoCaptureFilter); CoCreateInstance(CLSID_IMGSinkFilter, NULL, CLSCTX_INPROC, IID_IBaseFilter, (void**) &_imageSinkFilter); } void Camera::InitializeVideoFilter() { _videoCaptureFilter->QueryInterface(&_propertyBag); wchar_t deviceName[MAX_PATH] = L"\0"; GetDeviceName(deviceName); CComVariant comName = deviceName; CPropertyBag propertyBag; propertyBag.Write(L"VCapName", &comName); _propertyBag->Load(&propertyBag, NULL); _filterGraph->AddFilter(_videoCaptureFilter, L"Video Capture Filter Source"); } void Camera::InitializeStillImageFilter() { _filterGraph->AddFilter(_imageSinkFilter, L"Still image filter"); _captureGraphBuilder->RenderStream(&PIN_CATEGORY_STILL, &MEDIATYPE_Video, _videoCaptureFilter, NULL, _imageSinkFilter); } void Camera::GetDeviceName(WCHAR *deviceName) { HRESULT hr = S_OK; HANDLE handle = NULL; DEVMGR_DEVICE_INFORMATION di; GUID guidCamera = { 0xCB998A05, 0x122C, 0x4166, 0x84, 0x6A, 0x93, 0x3E, 0x4D, 0x7E, 0x3C, 0x86 }; di.dwSize = sizeof(di); handle = FindFirstDevice(DeviceSearchByGuid, &guidCamera, &di); StringCchCopy(deviceName, MAX_PATH, di.szLegacyName); } Full header file: #ifndef __CAMERA_H__ #define __CAMERA_H__ class Camera { public: void Init(); void DisplayVideoPreview(HWND windowHandle); void TakePicture(WCHAR *fileName); void SetVideoResolution(int width, int height); void SetPhotoResolution(int width, int height); private: CComPtr<ICaptureGraphBuilder2> _captureGraphBuilder; CComPtr<IGraphBuilder> _filterGraph; CComPtr<IBaseFilter> _videoCaptureFilter; CComPtr<IPersistPropertyBag> _propertyBag; CComPtr<IMediaControl> _mediaControl; CComPtr<IAMVideoControl> _videoControl; CComPtr<IBaseFilter> _imageSinkFilter; void GetDeviceName(WCHAR *deviceName); void InitializeVideoFilter(); void InitializeStillImageFilter(); void CreateComObjects(); void SetResolution(bool video, int width, int height); }; #endif

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• Toshiba Satellite L630 broken after bios update

  - by Mustafa Kamal

  I have Toshiba Satellite L630, which has been broken. It had no more OS installed in it. All the disk partition were cleared into one single empty unformatted partition. So I begin to install windows XP on this laptop. Apparently, win XP's driver support for this laptop is very limited. So I have to find almost all important driver (display, sound, etherned, wireless etc) on the net and install it manually one by one. So I start googling, and I got some driver download page from several Toshiba's website (the global version, the europe, asia, etc). Pretty hard to find the exact drivers, but I managed to find pretty good drivers. It's all works quite fine, although still have a few glitches. But everything turned into a big mess when I downloaded the "BIOS Update", which is also listed on Toshiba's official driver directory site. When I installed it, it show a big red warning sign telling me not to do anything while flashing the BIOS . I follow that instruction prudently. The process was finished, and that update BIOS software (it is InsydeH2O BIOS) told me that the BIOS has been succesfully updated and the computer need to restart. So I restart the computer. This is where the problem appear. I can no longer boot to my laptop. The booting process seems to be able to enter windows for a moment (it shows the windows XP loading screen), and then suddenly it just got that hateful blue screen and then instantiy restarts the machine. It goes on a loop. Boot bios - enter XP - blue screen - restart. I can't even try to reinstall my win XP again. Evertime the machine tries to boot to win XP CD, it got the same blue screen as I gets when loading from HDD. Many google search results said that I should open the laptop cover and try to clear CMOS with some kind of jumper or something. Or to unplug/re-plug the CMOS battery. Do I really need to do that? Is there anyway I could do without disassembling my laptop? I read some tricks about booting from USB device but I can't get the exat tools that I need to do that thing... Btw, this is my detailed laptop number photographed from the back of my laptop

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• Preinstalled Windows 8 and Linux UEFI dual boot on a laptop

  - by itchy355

  I am trying to set up Windows 8 and Arch Linux on a new Sony Vaio E14 with preinstalled windows 8. So far: installed W8 to my new SSD (switched for the original HDD) using Recovery Media shrunk the W8 partition, deleted recovery partition, disabled swap confirmed W8 booting just fine On to Arch: disabled Secure Boot in bios confirmed W8 booting just fine Booted Arch off the CD and installed everything to 4th and 5th partition set up rEFInd for EFIstub kernel bootloader After that it got worse. I was unable to boot anything else than Windows 8 (although I was glad that they at least kept working just fine). Tried: creating EFI\refind\ and putting the .efi there (as per Arch manual overwriting EFI\boot\bootx64.efi overwriting EFI\Microsoft\Boot\bootmgr.efi overwriting EFI\Microsoft\Boot\bootmgfw.efi --- YAY rEFInd shown up! So far, so good. I've kept the whole W8 Boot\ directory in EFI\windows8 and set up a boot menuentry for it; and it booted just fine. But, upon restart, everything was wrong -- 'Operating system not found' instead of any bootloader (refind or w8). Booted back into Arch using the live CD to find out that the EFI partition had erroneous FAT table. fsck.vfat fixed it, and I've found that EFI\Microsoft\Boot was back to it's original state (all refind files deleted and replaced with W8 bootloaders). I've overwritten them again and got back to rEFInd showing up correctly and Arch being perfectly bootable. After that I've tried only renaming EFI\Microsoft\Boot\bootmgfw.efi to bootmgfw.001.efi (then copying refind's .efi to bootmgfw.efi and keeping EVERY OTHER file as it was), but with exactly the same result. Tried marking the GPT EFI partition as read-only, same result. Now I'm kinda out of luck. Arch boots fine, so does W8 but it destroys the EFI partition in the process. Thanks for any ideas, Googling brought me this far and I can't find any better. PS -- windows 8 MAYBE destroys the partition upon shutdown -- when I order a shutdown in W8, it takes unusually long (about half a minute instead of ~5 seconds). So in theory I could solve this by hard-resetting the laptop instead of a normal shutdown, but that's just not nice.

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• Mounting a drive in Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala)

  - by morpheous

  I have just installed Ubuntu on a machine that previously had XP installed on it. The machine has 2 HDD (hard disk drives). I opted to install Ubuntu completely over XP. I am new to Linux, and I am still learning how to navigate teh file structure. However, AFAICT), there is only one drive. I want to be able to store programs etc on the first drive, and store data (program output etc) on the second drive. It appears Ubuntu is not aware that I have 2 drives (on XP, these were drives C and D). How can I mount the second drive (ideally, I want to do this automatically on login, so that the drive is available to me whenever I login - withou manual intervention from me) In XP, I could refer to files on a specific drive by prefixing with the drive letter (e.g. c:\foobar.cpp and d:\foobar.dat). I suspect the notation on ubuntu is different. How may I specify specific files on different drives? Last but notbthe least (a bit unrelated to previous questions). This relates to direcory structure again. I am a developer (C++ for desktops and PHP for websites), I want to install the following apps/ libraries. i). Apache 2.2 ii). PHP 5.2.11 iii). MySQL (5.1) iv). SVN v). Netbeans vi). C++ development tools (gcc, gdb, emacs etc) vii). QT toolkit viii). Some miscellaeous scientific software (e.g. www.r-project.org, www.gnu.org/software/octave/) I would be grateful if a someone can recommend a directory layout for these applications. Regarding development, I would also be grateful if someone could point out where to store my project and source files i.e: (i) *.cpp, *.hpp, *.mak files for cpp projects (ii) individual websites On my XP machine the layout for C++ dev was like this: c:\dev\devtools (common libs and headers etc) c:\dev\workarea (root folder for projects) c:\dev\workarea\c++ (c++ projects) c:\dev\workarea\websites (web projects) I would like to create a similar folder structure on the linux machine, but its not clear whether to place these folders under /, /usr, /home or swomewhere else (there seems to be abffling number of choices, so I want to get it "right" first time - i.e having a directory structure that most developer use, so it is easier when communicating with other ubuntu/linux developers)

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• Areca 1280ml RAID6 volume set failed

  - by Richard

  Today we hit some kind of worst case scenario and are open to any kind of good ideas. Here is our problem: We are using several dedicated storage servers to host our virtual machines. Before I continue, here are the specs: Dedicated Server Machine Areca 1280ml RAID controller, Firmware 1.49 12x Samsung 1TB HDDs We configured one RAID6-set with 10 discs that contains one logical volume. We have two hot spares in the system. Today one HDD failed. This happens from time to time, so we replaced it. Upon rebuilding a second disc failed. Normally this is no fun. We stopped heavy IO-operations to ensure a stable RAID rebuild. Sadly the hot-spare disc failed while rebuilding and the whole thing stopped. Now we have the following situation: The controller says that the raid set is rebuilding The controller says that the volume failed It is a RAID 6 system and two discs failed, so the data has to be intact, but we cannot bring the volume online again to access the data. While searching we found the following leads. I don't know whether they are good or bad: Mirroring all the discs to a second set of drives. So we would have the possibility to try different things without loosing more than we already have. Trying to rebuild the array in R-Studio. But we have no real experience with the software. Pulling all drives, rebooting the system, changing into the areca controller bios, reinserting the HDDs one-by-one. Some people are saying that the brought the system online by this. Some are saying that the effect is zero. Some say, that they blew the whole thing. Using undocumented areca commands like "rescue" or "LeVel2ReScUe". Contacting a computer forensics service. But whoa... primary estimates by phone exceeded 20.000€. That's why we would kindly ask for help. Maybe we are missing the obvious? And yes of course, we have backups. But some systems lost one week of data, thats why we'd like to get the system up and running again. Any help, suggestions and questions are more than welcome.

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• Win 8: Adding a boot volume to an MBR dynamic disk [NOT about changing to basic disks]

  - by Stilez

  (This is NOT aiming to convert to basic disk. In this question, the disk stays dynamic but becomes bootable) There doesn't seem to be a clear, well stated answer I can find, for the question "What are the criteria for Windows 8 to successfully boot from an MBR dynamic disk", or "how do I fix a dynamic MBR partition that's failing boot"? I've tried to educate myself but can't find crucial information to clear it all up. My existing HDD/SSD setup: DISK 0 ~ 60GB SSD/MBR/basic: (350MB recovery)(60GB windows 8 bootable) DISK 1 ~ 512GB SSD/MBR/dynamic: (350MB recovery)(60GB unallocated)(410GB mirrored data) DISK 2 ~ 512GB SSD/MBR/dynamic: (350MB recovery)(60GB unallocated)(410GB mirrored data) DISKS 3, 4, 5: (ignored for simplicity: 2xHDD RAID1 + caching SSD) I'm heavy duty on data crunching and virtualisation, just maxxed out 32GB RAM @ 2133 and moved to 4960X + 64GB. Disk 0 is a pure system disk of little value, and virtualisations runs off mirrored SSDs (Samsung 840 Pro 512 x 2) for double speed reading and so they snapshot in reasonable time. I'm using 4 SATA3 ports and the board only has two decent Intel ports (onboard Marvell are poorer quality). I'm wary of choosing between LSI, HighPoint and other 3rd party controllers as I'm unfamiliar with the maze of decent RAID cards (that's a whole other issue!). I want to cut down my SSD needs by moving the boot volume and caching volume to the 840 pros, giving a setup with 2 fewer SSDs: DISK 0 ~ 512GB SSD/MBR/dynamic: (350MB recovery)(60GB boot)(410GB mirrored data) DISK 1 ~ 512GB SSD/MBR/dynamic: (350MB recovery)(30GB cache for the ICH10R mirror)(30GB temp)(410GB mirrored data) DISKS 2, 3: (2xHDD RAID1) Intel's RST allows this, Win 8 allows booting off a MBR/dynamic disk, and the two 60GB SSDs are hardly the fastest SSDs anyway, they'll get repurposed. Moving the caching volume is easy. Moving the boot volume has me stumped. The difficulty is, I'm hitting a wall of knowledge here. I have a UEFI Asus motherboard with an previous traditional MBR/basic boot disk, and I want it to boot from a disk and volume that's MBR/dynamic. The disk copy is physically ok (Partition Wizard Server will copy to dynamic volumes) but then hits a light blue 0xc000000e boot error. No real surprise, I expected to have some boot fixing, but had expected Windows to boot-fix it (all drivers exist), or the usual manual fixes to work. Specifically, I don't know enough, to know what's got to be manually checked and perhaps corrected for the disk to boot (legacy/uefi/bios, odd partitions, boot tables, disk IDs, hidden boot files, oh my!), or if I need to change any of this secure boot/UEFI/legacy stuff in the bios, convert a 512 SSD to basic and then back to dynamic when working, or if the issue is pure OS config using "diskpart", "bootsect" and "bootrec" from the Win8 DVD. The old system disk still boots but I don't know enough to figure what to fix, to make the system boot as I want. The answers probably aren't hard but the real issue is my confusion and missing information. Thanks for helping!

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