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

  - by Ajarn Mark Caldwell

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

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

  - by thatjeffsmith

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

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• To SYNC or not to SYNC – Part 3

  - by AshishRay

  I can't believe it has been almost a year since my last blog post. I know, that's an absolute no-no in the blogosphere. And I know that "I have been busy" is not a good excuse. So - without trying to come up with an excuse - let me state this - my apologies for taking such a long time to write the next Part. Without further ado, here goes. This is Part 3 of a multi-part blog article where we are discussing various aspects of setting up Data Guard synchronous redo transport (SYNC). In Part 1 of this article, I debunked the myth that Data Guard SYNC is similar to a two-phase commit operation. In Part 2, I discussed the various ways that network latency may or may not impact a Data Guard SYNC configuration. In this article, I will talk in details regarding why Data Guard SYNC is a good thing. I will also talk about distance implications for setting up such a configuration. So, Why Good? Why is Data Guard SYNC a good thing? Because, at the end of the day, this gives you the assurance of zero data loss - it doesn’t matter what outage may befall your primary system. Befall! Boy, that sounds theatrical. But seriously - think about this - it minimizes your data risks. That’s a big deal. Whether you have an outage due to bad disks, faulty hardware components, hardware / software bugs, physical data corruptions, power failures, lightning that takes out significant part of your data center, fire that melts your assets, water leakage from the cooling system, human errors such as accidental deletion of online redo log files - it doesn’t matter - you can have that “Om - peace” look on your face and then you can failover to the standby system, without losing a single bit of data in your Oracle database. You will be a hero, as shown in this not so imaginary conversation: IT Manager: Well, what’s the status? You: John is doing the trace analysis on the storage array. IT Manager: So? How long is that gonna take? You: Well, he is stuck, waiting for a response from <insert your not-so-favorite storage vendor here>. IT Manager: So, no root cause yet? You: I told you, he is stuck. We have escalated with their Support, but you know how long these things take. IT Manager: Darn it - the site is down! You: Not really … IT Manager: What do you mean? You: John is stuck, but Sreeni has already done a failover to the Data Guard standby. IT Manager: Whoa, whoa - wait! Failover means we lost some data, why did you do this without letting the Business group know? You: We didn’t lose any data. Remember, we had set up Data Guard with SYNC? So now, any problems on the production – we just failover. No data loss, and we are up and running in minutes. The Business guys don’t need to know. IT Manager: Wow! Are we great or what!! You: I guess … Ok, so you get it - SYNC is good. But as my dear friend Larry Carpenter says, “TANSTAAFL”, or "There ain't no such thing as a free lunch". Yes, of course - investing in Data Guard SYNC means that you have to invest in a low-latency network, you have to monitor your applications and database especially in peak load conditions, and you cannot under-provision your standby systems. But all these are good and necessary things, if you are supporting mission-critical apps that are supposed to be running 24x7. The peace of mind that this investment will give you is priceless, especially if you are serious about HA. How Far Can We Go? Someone may say at this point - well, I can’t use Data Guard SYNC over my coast-to-coast deployment. Most likely - true. So how far can you go? Well, we have customers who have deployed Data Guard SYNC over 300+ miles! Does this mean that you can also deploy over similar distances? Duh - no! I am going to say something here that most IT managers don’t like to hear - “It depends!” It depends on your application design, application response time / throughput requirements, network topology, etc. However, because of the optimal way we do SYNC, customers have been able to stretch Data Guard SYNC deployments over longer distances compared to traditional, storage-centric ways of doing this. The MAA Database 10.2 best practices paper Data Guard Redo Transport & Network Configuration, and Oracle Database 11.2 High Availability Best Practices Manual talk about some of these SYNC-related metrics. For example, a test deployment of Data Guard SYNC over 330 miles with 10ms latency showed an impact less than 5% for a busy OLTP application. Even if you can’t deploy Data Guard SYNC over your WAN distance, or if you already have an ASYNC standby located 1000-s of miles away, here’s another nifty way to boost your HA. Have a local standby, configured SYNC. How local is “local”? Again - it depends. One customer runs a local SYNC standby across the campus. Another customer runs it across 15 miles in another data center. Both of these customers are running Data Guard SYNC as their HA standard. If a localized outage affects their primary system, no problem! They have all the data available on the standby, to which they can failover. Very fast. In seconds. Wait - did I say “seconds”? Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. But you have to wait till the next blog article to find out more. I assure you tho’ that this time you won’t have to wait for another year for this.

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• Passing a parameter so that it cannot be changed – C#

  - by nmarun

  I read this requirement of not allowing a user to change the value of a property passed as a parameter to a method. In C++, as far as I could recall (it’s been over 10 yrs, so I had to refresh memory), you can pass ‘const’ to a function parameter and this ensures that the parameter cannot be changed inside the scope of the function. There’s no such direct way of doing this in C#, but that does not mean it cannot be done!! Ok, so this ‘not-so-direct’ technique depends on the type of the parameter – a simple property or a collection. Parameter as a simple property: This is quite easy (and you might have guessed it already). Bulent Ozkir clearly explains how this can be done here. Parameter as a collection property: Obviously the above does not work if the parameter is a collection of some type. Let’s dig-in. Suppose I need to create a collection of type KeyTitle as defined below. 1: public class KeyTitle 2: { 3: public int Key { get; set; } 4: public string Title { get; set; } 5: } My class is declared as below: 1: public class Class1 2: { 3: public Class1() 4: { 5: MyKeyTitleList = new List<KeyTitle>(); 6: } 7: 8: public List<KeyTitle> MyKeyTitleList { get; set; } 9: public ReadOnlyCollection<KeyTitle> ReadonlyKeyTitleCollection 10: { 11: // .AsReadOnly creates a ReadOnlyCollection<> type 12: get { return MyKeyTitleList.AsReadOnly(); } 13: } 14: } See the .AsReadOnly() method used in the second property? As MSDN says it: “Returns a read-only IList<T> wrapper for the current collection.” Knowing this, I can implement my code as: 1: public static void Main() 2: { 3: Class1 class1 = new Class1(); 4: class1.MyKeyTitleList.Add(new KeyTitle { Key = 1, Title = "abc" }); 5: class1.MyKeyTitleList.Add(new KeyTitle { Key = 2, Title = "def" }); 6: class1.MyKeyTitleList.Add(new KeyTitle { Key = 3, Title = "ghi" }); 7: class1.MyKeyTitleList.Add(new KeyTitle { Key = 4, Title = "jkl" }); 8:  9: TryToModifyCollection(class1.MyKeyTitleList.AsReadOnly()); 10:  11: Console.ReadLine(); 12: } 13:  14: private static void TryToModifyCollection(ReadOnlyCollection<KeyTitle> readOnlyCollection) 15: { 16: // can only read 17: for (int i = 0; i < readOnlyCollection.Count; i++) 18: { 19: Console.WriteLine("{0} - {1}", readOnlyCollection[i].Key, readOnlyCollection[i].Title); 20: } 21: // Add() - not allowed 22: // even the indexer does not have a setter 23: } The output is as expected: The below image shows two things. In the first line, I’ve tried to access an element in my read-only collection through an indexer. It shows that the ReadOnlyCollection<> does not have a setter on the indexer. The second line tells that there’s no ‘Add()’ method for this type of collection. The capture below shows there’s no ‘Remove()’ method either, there-by eliminating all ways of modifying a collection. Mission accomplished… right? Now, even if you have a collection of different type, all you need to do is to somehow cast (used loosely) it to a List<> and then do a .AsReadOnly() to get a ReadOnlyCollection of your custom collection type. As an example, if you have an IDictionary<int, string>, you can create a List<T> of this type with a wrapper class (KeyTitle in our case). 1: public IDictionary<int, string> MyDictionary { get; set; } 2:  3: public ReadOnlyCollection<KeyTitle> ReadonlyDictionary 4: { 5: get 6: { 7: return (from item in MyDictionary 8: select new KeyTitle 9: { 10: Key = item.Key, 11: Title = item.Value, 12: }).ToList().AsReadOnly(); 13: } 14: } Cool huh? Just one thing you need to know about the .AsReadOnly() method is that the only way to modify your ReadOnlyCollection<> is to modify the original collection. So doing: 1: public static void Main() 2: { 3: Class1 class1 = new Class1(); 4: class1.MyKeyTitleList.Add(new KeyTitle { Key = 1, Title = "abc" }); 5: class1.MyKeyTitleList.Add(new KeyTitle { Key = 2, Title = "def" }); 6: class1.MyKeyTitleList.Add(new KeyTitle { Key = 3, Title = "ghi" }); 7: class1.MyKeyTitleList.Add(new KeyTitle { Key = 4, Title = "jkl" }); 8: TryToModifyCollection(class1.MyKeyTitleList.AsReadOnly()); 9:  10: Console.WriteLine(); 11:  12: class1.MyKeyTitleList.Add(new KeyTitle { Key = 5, Title = "mno" }); 13: class1.MyKeyTitleList[2] = new KeyTitle{Key = 3, Title = "GHI"}; 14: TryToModifyCollection(class1.MyKeyTitleList.AsReadOnly()); 15:  16: Console.ReadLine(); 17: } Gives me the output of: See that the second element’s Title is changed to upper-case and the fifth element also gets displayed even though we’re still looping through the same ReadOnlyCollection<KeyTitle>. Verdict: Now you know of a way to implement ‘Method(const param1)’ in your code!

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• Simplifying Human Capital Management with Mobile Applications

  - by HCM-Oracle

  By Aaron Green If you're starting to think 'mobility' is a recurring theme in your reading, you'd be right. For those who haven't started to build organisational capabilities to leverage it, it's fair to say you're late to the party. The good news: better late than never. Research firm eMarketer says the worldwide smartphone audience will total 1.75 billion this year, while communications technology and services provider Ericsson suggests smartphones will triple to 5.6 billion globally by 2019. It should be no surprise, smart phone adoption is reaching the farthest corners of the globe; the subsequent impact of enterprise applications enabled by these devices is driving business performance improvement and will continue to do so. Companies using advanced workforce analytics can add significantly to the bottom line, while impacting customer satisfaction, quality and productivity. It's a statement that makes most business leaders sit forward in their chairs. Achieving these three standards is like sipping The Golden Elixir for the business world. No-one would argue their importance. So what are 'advanced workforce analytics?' Simply, they're unprecedented access to workforce trends and performance markers. Many are made possible by a mobile world and the enterprise applications that come with it on smart devices. Some refer to it as 'the consumerisation of IT'. As this phenomenon has matured and become more widely appreciated it has impacted the spectrum of functional units within an enterprise differently, but powerfully. Whether it's sales, HR, marketing, IT, or operations, all have benefited from a more mobile approach. It has been the catalyst for improvement in, and management of, the employee experience. The net result of which is happier customers. The obvious benefits but the lesser realised impact Most people understand that mobility allows for greater efficiency and productivity, collaboration and flexibility, but how that translates into business outcomes within the various functional groups is lesser known. In actuality mobility has helped galvanise partnerships between cross-functional groups within the enterprise. Where in some quarters it was once feared mobility could fragment a workforce, its rallying cry of support is coming from what you might describe as an unlikely source - HR. As the bedrock of an enterprise, it is conceivable HR might contemplate the possible negative impact of a mobile workforce that no-longer sits in an office, at the same desks every day. After all, who would know what they were doing or saying? How would they collaborate? It's reasonable to see why HR might have a legitimate claim to try and retain as much 'perceived control' as possible. The reality however is mobility has emancipated human capital and its management. Mobility and enterprise applications are expediting decision making. Google calls it Zero Moment of Truth, or ZMOT. It enables smoother operation and can contribute to faster growth. From a collaborative perspective, with the growing use of enterprise social media, which in many cases is being driven by HR, workforce planning and the tangible impact of change is much easier to map. This in turn provides a platform from which individuals and teams can thrive. With more agility and ability to anticipate, staff satisfaction and retention is higher, and real time feedback constant. The management team can save time, energy and costs with more accurate data, which is then intelligently applied across the workforce to truly engage with staff, customers and partners. From a human capital management (HCM) perspective, mobility can help you close the loop on true talent management. It can enhance what managers can offer and what employees can provide in return. It can create nested relationships and powerful partnerships. IT and HR - partners and stewards of mobility One effect of enterprise mobility is an evolution in the nature of the relationship between HR and IT from one of service provision to partnership. The reason for the dynamic shift is largely due to the 'bring your own device' (BYOD) movement, which is transitioning to a 'bring your own application' (BYOA) scenario. As enterprise technology has in some ways reverse-engineered its solutions to help manage this situation, the partnership between IT (the functional owner) and HR (the strategic enabler) is deeply entrenched. And it has to be. The CIO and the HR leader are faced with compliance and regulatory issues and concerns around information security and personal privacy on a daily basis, complicated by global reach and varied domestic legislation. There are tens of thousands of new mobile apps entering the market each month and, unlike many consumer applications which get downloaded but are often never opened again after initial perusal, enterprise applications are being relied upon by functional groups, not least by HR to enhance people management. It requires a systematic approach across all applications in use within the enterprise in order to ensure they're used to best effect. No turning back, and no desire to With real time analytics on performance and the ability for immediate feedback, there is no turning back for managers. In my experience with Oracle, our customers' operational efficiency is at record levels. It's clear as a result of the combination of individual KPIs and organisational goals, CIOs have been able to give HR leaders the ability to build predictive models that feed into an enterprise organisations' evolving strategy. It also helps them ensure regulatory compliance much more easily. Once an arduous task, with mobile enabled automation and quality data, compliance is simpler. Their world has changed for the better. For the CIO, mobility also assists them to optimise performance. While it doesn't come without challenges, mobile-enabled applications and the native experience users have with them means employees don't need high-level technical expertise to train users. It reduces the training and engagement required from the IT team so they can focus on other things that deliver value to the bottom line; all the while lowering the cost of assets and related maintenance work by simplifying processes. Rewards of a mobile enterprise outweigh risks With mobile tools allowing us to increasingly integrate our personal and professional lives, terms like "office hours" are becoming irrelevant, so work/life balance is a cultural must. Enterprises are expected to offer tools that enable workers to access information from anywhere, at any time, from any device. Employees want simplicity and convenience but it doesn't stop at private enterprise. This is a societal shift. Governments, which traditionally have been known to be slower to adopt newer technology, are also offering support for local businesses to go mobile. Several state government websites have advice on how to create mobile apps and more. And as recently as last week the Victorian Minister for Technology Gordon Rich-Phillips unveiled his State government's ICT roadmap for the next two years, which details an increased use of the public cloud, as well as mobile communications, and improved access to online data-sets. Tech giants are investing significantly in solutions designed to simplify mobile deployment and enablement. The mobility trend is creating a wave of change in the industry and driving transformation in the enterprise. If you're not on that wave, the business risk continues to rise as your competitiveness drops. Aaron is the Vice President of HCM Strategy at Oracle Corporation where he is responsible for researching and identifying emerging trends in the practice of Human Resources and works to deliver industry-leading technology solutions. Other responsibilities include, ownership of Oracle's innovative HCM solutions across JAPAC and enabling organisations to transform and modernise their workforce tools. Follow him on Twitter @aaronjgreen

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• How to begin? Windows 8 Development

  - by Dennis Vroegop

  Ok. I convinced you in my last post to do some Win8 development. You want a piece of that cake, or whatever your reasons may be. Good! Welcome to the club! Now let me ask you a question: what are you going to write? Ah. That’s the big one, isn’t it? What indeed? If you have been creating applications for computers before you’re in for quite a shock. The way people perceive apps on a tablet is quite different from what we know as applications. There’s a reason we call them apps instead of applications! Yes, technically they are applications but we don’t call them apps only because it sounds cool. The abbreviated form of the word applications itself is a pointer. Apps are small. Apps are focused. Apps are more lightweight. Apps do one thing but they do that one thing extremely good. In the ‘old’ days we wrote huge systems. We build ecosystems of services, screens, databases and more to create a system that provides value for the user. Think about it: what application do you use most at work? Can you in one sentence describe what it is, or what it does and yet still distinctively describe its purpose? I doubt you can. Let’s have a look at Outlouk. We all know it and we all love or hate it. But what is it? A mail program? No, there’s so much more there: calendar, contacts, RSS feeds and so on. Some call it a ‘collaboration’  application but that’s not really true as well. After all, why should a collaboration application give me my schedule for the day? I think the best way to describe Outlook is “client for Exchange”  although that isn’t accurate either. Anyway: Outlook is a great application but it’s not an ‘app’ and therefor not very suitable for WinRT. Ok. Disclaimer here: yes, you can write big applications for WinRT. Some will. But that’s not what 99.9% of the developers will do. So I am stating here that big applications are not meant for WinRT. If 0.01% of the developers think that this is nonsense then they are welcome to go ahead but for the majority here this is not what we’re talking about. So: Apps are small, lightweight and good at what they do but only at that. If you’re a Phone developer you already know that: Phone apps on any platform fit the description I have above. If you’ve ever worked in a large cooperation before you might have seen one of these before: the Mission Statement. It’s supposed to be a oneliner that sums up what the company is supposed to do. Funny enough: although this doesn’t work for large companies it does work for defining your app. A mission statement for an app describes what it does. If it doesn’t fit in the mission statement then your app is going to get to big and will fail. A statement like this should be in the following style “<your app name> is the best app to <describe single task>” Fill in the blanks, write it and go! Mmm.. not really. There are some things there we need to think about. But the statement is a very, very important one. If you cannot fit your app in that line you’re preparing to fail. Your app will become to big, its purpose will be unclear and it will be hard to use. People won’t download it and those who do will give it a bad rating therefor preventing that huge success you’ve been dreaming about. Stick to the statement! Ok, let’s give it a try: “PlanesAreCool” is the best app to do planespotting in the field. You might have seen these people along runways of airports: taking photographs of airplanes and noting down their numbers and arrival- and departure times. We are going to help them out with our great app! If you look at the statement, can you guess what it does? I bet you can. If you find out it isn’t clear enough of if it’s too broad, refine it. This is probably the most important step in the development of your app so give it enough time! So. We’ve got the statement. Print it out, stick it to the wall and look at it. What does it tell you? If you see this, what do you think the app does? Write that down. Sit down with some friends and talk about it. What do they expect from an app like this? Write that down as well. Brainstorm. Make a list of features. This is mine: Note planes Look up aircraft carriers Add pictures of that plane Look up airfields Notify friends of new spots Look up details of a type of plane Plot a graph with arrival and departure times Share new spots on social media Look up history of a particular aircraft Compare your spots with friends Write down arrival times Write down departure times Write down wind conditions Write down the runway they take Look up weather conditions for next spotting day Invite friends to join you for a day of spotting. Now, I must make it clear that I am not a planespotter nor do I know what one does. So if the above list makes no sense, I apologize. There is a lesson: write apps for stuff you know about…. First of all, let’s look at our statement and then go through the list of features. Remove everything that has nothing to do with that statement! If you end up with an empty list, try again with both steps. Note planes Look up aircraft carriers Add pictures of that plane Look up airfields Notify friends of new spots Look up details of a type of plane Plot a graph with arrival and departure times Share new spots on social media Look up history of a particular aircraft Compare your spots with friends Write down arrival times Write down departure times Write down wind conditions Write down the runway they take Look up weather conditions for next spotting day Invite friends to join you for a day of spotting. That's better. The things I removed could be pretty useful to a plane spotter and could be fun to write. But do they match the statement? I said that the app is for spotting in the field, so “look up airfields” doesn’t belong there: I know where I am so why look it up? And the same goes for inviting friends or looking up the weather conditions for tomorrow. I am at the airfield right now, looking through my binoculars at the planes. I know the weather now and I don’t care about tomorrow. If you feel the items you’ve crossed out are valuable, then why not write another app? One that says “SpotNoter” is the best app for preparing a day of spotting with my friends. That’s a different app! Remember: Win8 apps are small and very good at doing ONE thing, and one thing only! If you have made that list, it’s time to prepare the navigation of your app. The navigation is how users see your app and how they use it. We’ll do that next time!

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• Delight and Excite

  - by Applications User Experience

  Mick McGee, CEO & President, EchoUser Editor’s Note: EchoUser is a User Experience design firm in San Francisco and a member of the Oracle Usability Advisory Board. Mick and his staff regularly consult on Oracle Applications UX projects. Being part of a user experience design firm, we have the luxury of working with a lot of great people across many great companies. We get to help people solve their problems.  At least we used to. The basic design challenge is still the same; however, the goal is not necessarily to solve “problems” anymore; it is, “I want our products to delight and excite!” The question for us as UX professionals is how to design to those goals, and then how to assess them from a usability perspective. I’m not sure where I first heard “delight and excite” (A book? blog post? Facebook  status? Steve Jobs quote?), but now I hear these listed as user experience goals all the time. In particular, somewhat paradoxically, I routinely hear them in enterprise software conversations. And when asking these same enterprise companies what will make the project successful, we very often hear, “Make it like Apple.” In past days, it was “make it like Yahoo (or Amazon or Google“) but now Apple is the common benchmark. Steve Jobs and Apple were not secrets, but with Jobs’ passing and Apple becoming the world’s most valuable company in the last year, the impact of great design and experience is suddenly very widespread. In particular, users’ expectations have gone way up. Being an enterprise company is no shield to the general expectations that users now have, for all products. Designing a “Minimum Viable Product” The user experience challenge has historically been, to echo the words of Eric Ries (author of Lean Startup) , to create a “minimum viable product”: the proverbial, “make it good enough”. But, in our profession, the “minimum viable” part of that phrase has oftentimes, unfortunately, referred to the design and user experience. Technology typically dominated the focus of the biggest, most successful companies. Few have had the laser focus of Apple to also create and sell design and user experience alongside great technology. But now that Apple is the most valuable company in the world, copying their success is a common undertaking. Great design is now a premium offering that everyone wants, from the one-person startup to the largest companies, consumer and enterprise. This emerging business paradigm will have significant impact across the user experience design process and profession. One area that particularly interests me is, how are we going to evaluate these new emerging “delight and excite” experiences, which are further customized to each particular domain? How to Measure “Delight and Excite” Traditional usability measures of task completion rate, assists, time, and errors are still extremely useful in many situations; however, they are too blunt to offer much insight into emerging experiences “Satisfaction” is usually assessed in user testing, in roughly equivalent importance to the above objective metrics. Various surveys and scales have provided ways to measure satisfying UX, with whatever questions they include. However, to meet the demands of new business goals and keep users at the center of design and development processes, we have to explore new methods to better capture custom-experience goals and emotion-driven user responses. We have had success assessing custom experiences, including “delight and excite”, by employing a variety of user testing methods that tend to combine formative and summative techniques (formative being focused more on identifying usability issues and ways to improve design, and summative focused more on metrics). Our most successful tool has been one we’ve been using for a long time, Magnitude Estimation Technique (MET). But it’s not necessarily about MET as a measure, rather how it is created. Caption: For one client, EchoUser did two rounds of testing.  Each test was a mix of performing representative tasks and gathering qualitative impressions. Each user participated in an in-person moderated 1-on-1 session for 1 hour, using a testing set-up where they held the phone. The primary goal was to identify usability issues and recommend design improvements. MET is based on a definition of the desired experience, which users will then use to rate items of interest (usually tasks in a usability test). In other words, a custom experience definition needs to be created. This can then be used to measure satisfaction in accomplishing tasks; “delight and excite”; or anything else from strategic goals, user demands, or elsewhere. For reference, our standard MET definition in usability testing is: “User experience is your perception of how easy to use, well designed and productive an interface is to complete tasks.” Articulating the User Experience We’ve helped construct experience definitions for several clients to better match their business goals. One example is a modification of the above that was needed for a company that makes medical-related products: “User experience is your perception of how easy to use, well-designed, productive and safe an interface is for conducting tasks. ‘Safe’ is how free an environment (including devices, software, facilities, people, etc.) is from danger, risk, and injury.” Another example is from a company that is pushing hard to incorporate “delight” into their enterprise business line: “User experience is your perception of a product’s ease of use and learning, satisfaction and delight in design, and ability to accomplish objectives.” I find the last one particularly compelling in that there is little that identifies the experience as being for a highly technical enterprise application. That definition could easily be applied to any number of consumer products. We have gone further than the above, including “sexy” and “cool” where decision-makers insisted they were part of the desired experience. We also applied it to completely different experiences where the “interface” was, for example, riding public transit, the “tasks” were train rides, and we followed the participants through the train-riding journey and rated various aspects accordingly: “A good public transportation experience is a cost-effective way of reliably, conveniently, and safely getting me to my intended destination on time.” To construct these definitions, we’ve employed both bottom-up and top-down approaches, depending on circumstances. For bottom-up, user inputs help dictate the terms that best fit the desired experience (usually by way of cluster and factor analysis). Top-down depends on strategic, visionary goals expressed by upper management that we then attempt to integrate into product development (e.g., “delight and excite”). We like a combination of both approaches to push the innovation envelope, but still be mindful of current user concerns. Hopefully the idea of crafting your own custom experience, and a way to measure it, can provide you with some ideas how you can adapt your user experience needs to whatever company you are in. Whether product-development or service-oriented, nearly every company is ultimately providing a user experience. The Bottom Line Creating great experiences may have been popularized by Steve Jobs and Apple, but I’ll be honest, it’s a good feeling to be moving from “good enough” to “delight and excite,” despite the challenge that entails. In fact, it’s because of that challenge that we will expand what we do as UX professionals to help deliver and assess those experiences. I’m excited to see how we, Oracle, and the rest of the industry will live up to that challenge.

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• VNIC - New feature of AK8 - Working with VNICs

  - by Steve Tunstall

  One of the important new features of the AK8 code is the ability to use multiple IP addresses on the same physical network port. This feature is called VNICs, or Virtual NICs. This allows us to no longer "burn" a whole port in a cluster when one cluster peer owns a network port. Traditionally, we have had to leave Net0 empty on controller 2, because it was used for managing controller 1. Vise-versa for Net1 on Controller 1. Then, if you have data going over 10GigE ports, you probably only had half of your ports running at any given time, and the partner 10GigE port on the other controller just sat there, doing nothing, unless the first controller went down. What a waste. Those days are over.  I want to thank and give a big shout-out to our good partner, OnX Enterprise Solutions, for allowing me to come into their lab and play around with their 7320 to do this demo. They let me make a big mess of their lab for the day as I played around with VNICs. If you're looking for a partner who knows Oracle well and can also piece together a solution from multiple vendors to get you what you need, OnX is a good choice. If you would like to talk to your local OnX rep, you can contact Scott Gill at [email protected] and he can point you in the right direction for your area.  Here we go: Here is what your Datalinks window looks like BEFORE you upgrade to AK8. Here's what the same screen looks like after you upgrade. See the new box? So here is my current network setup. I have my 4 physical interfaces setup each with an IP address. If I ping them, no problems.  So I can ping 180, 181, 251, and 252. However, if I try to ping 240, it does not work, as the 240 address is not being used by any of these interfaces, right?Let's change that. Here, I'm going to make a new Datalink by clicking the Datalink "Plus sign" button. I will check the VNIC box and tell it to use igb2, even though another interface is already using it. Now, I will create a new Interface, and choose "v_dl2" for it's datalink. My new network screen looks like this. A few things to take note of here. First, when I click the "igb2" device, it only highlights dl2 and int2. It does not highlight v_dl2 or v_int2.I think it should, but OK, it looks like VNICs don't highlight when you click the device. Second, note how the underscore character in v_dl2 and v_int2 do not seem to show on this screen. You can see it plainly if you go in and edit them, but from here it looks like a space instead of an underscore. Just a cosmetic bug, but something to be aware of. Now, if I click the VNIC datalink "v_dl2", on the other hand, it DOES highlight the device it belongs to, as it should. Seen here: Note that it did not, however, highlight int2 with it, even though int2 is connected to igb2. That's because we clicked v_dl2, which int2 has nothing to do with. So I'm OK with that. So let's try pinging 240 now. Of course, it works great.  So I now make another VNIC, and call it v_dl3 using igb3, and v_int3 with an address of 241. I then setup three shares, using ports 251, 240, and 241.Remember that IP 251 and 240 both are using the same physical port of igb2, and IP 241 is using port igb3. Next, I copy a folder full of stuff over to all three shares at the same time. I have analytics going so I can see the traffic. My top chart is showing the logical interfaces, and the bottom chart is showing the physical ports.Sure enough, look at the igb2 and vnic1 interfaces. They equal the traffic going over the igb2 physical port on the second chart. VNIC2, on the other hand, gets igb3 all to itself. This would work the same way with 10Gig or Infiniband ports. You can now have multiple IP addresses and even completely different subnets sharing the same physical ports. You may need to make route table entries for that. This allows us to use all of the ports you paid for with no more waste.  Very, very cool.  One small "bug" I found when doing this. It's really not a bug, it was designed to do this when VNICs were not around. But now that we have NVIC capability, they should probably change this. I've alerted the engineering team about this and they're looking into it, so perhaps it will be fixed in a later code. Here it is. Remember when we made the new VNIC datalink, I specifically said to click on the "Plus Sign" button to create it? I don't always do that. I really like to use the drag-and-drop method to create my datalinks in the network screen.HOWEVER, if you were to do that for building a VNIC, it will mess you up a little. Watch this. Here, I'm dragging igb3 over to make a new datalink. igb3 is already being used by dl3, but I'm going to make this a VNIC, so who cares, right? Well, the ZFSSA does not KNOW you are going to make it a VNIC, now does it? So... it works as designed and REMOVES the igb3 device from the current dl3 datalink in the background. See how it's now missing? At the same time, the dl3 datalink choice is missing from my list of possible VNICs for me to choose from!!!! Hey!!! I wanted to pick dl3. Why isn't it on the list??? Well, it can't be on this list because dl3 no longer has a device associated with it. Bummer for you. When you click cancel, the device is still missing from dl3. The fix is easy. Just edit dl3 by clicking the pencil button, do absolutely nothing, and click "Apply". The device will magically come back. Now, make the VNIC datalink by clicking the "Plus Sign" button. Sure enough, once you check the VNIC box, dl3 is a valid choice. No problem.  That's it for now. Have fun with VNICs.

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• C to C++ Conversion [closed]

  - by Annalyne

  Can someone convert this code to C++, pretty please? :( #include <stdio.h> #include <stdlib.h> #include <time.h> #define WEAPON_ROPE 10 #define WEAPON_REVOLVER 20 #define WEAPON_LEADPIPE 30 #define WEAPON_CANDLESTICK 40 #define WEAPON_KNIFE 50 #define WEAPON_WRENCH 60 #define PEOPLE_MRGREEN 100 #define PEOPLE_MSSCARLET 200 #define PEOPLE_CONLMUSTARD 300 #define PEOPLE_PROFPLUM 400 #define PEOPLE_MISPEACOCK 500 #define PEOPLE_MISWHITE 600 #define PLACE_KITCHEN 1 #define PLACE_HALL 2 #define PLACE_POOLROOM 3 #define PLACE_STUDY 4 #define PLACE_LOUNG 5 #define PLACE_LIBRARY 6 #define PLACE_CONSERVATORY 7 #define PLACE_DINING 8 #define PLACE_BILLIARDS 9 int main() { int die = 0; int players[6][9] = {{0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0}, {0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0}, {0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0}, {0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0}, {0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0}, {0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0}, {0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0}, {0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0}, {0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0}}; int allCards[] = {WEAPON_ROPE, WEAPON_REVOLVER, WEAPON_LEADPIPE, WEAPON_CANDLESTICK, WEAPON_CANDLESTICK, WEAPON_KNIFE, WEAPON_WRENCH, PEOPLE_MRGREEN, PEOPLE_MSSCARLET, PEOPLE_CONLMUSTARD, PEOPLE_CONLMUSTARD, PEOPLE_PROFPLUM, PEOPLE_MISPEACOCK, PEOPLE_MISWHITE, PLACE_KITCHEN, PLACE_HALL, PLACE_POOLROOM, PLACE_STUDY, PLACE_LOUNG, PLACE_LIBRARY, PLACE_CONSERVATORY, PLACE_DINING, PLACE_BILLIARDS}; int deckSize = 23; // number of cards in allCards array int count; for (count = 0; count < deckSize; ++count) { printf(", %d", allCards[count]); } // End for // These three array's are so you can put a card back, if need be... int weaponCards[] = {WEAPON_ROPE, WEAPON_REVOLVER, WEAPON_LEADPIPE, WEAPON_CANDLESTICK, WEAPON_CANDLESTICK, WEAPON_KNIFE, WEAPON_WRENCH}; int weaponDeckSize = 7; int peopleCards[] = {PEOPLE_MRGREEN, PEOPLE_MSSCARLET, PEOPLE_CONLMUSTARD, PEOPLE_CONLMUSTARD, PEOPLE_PROFPLUM, PEOPLE_MISPEACOCK, PEOPLE_MISWHITE}; int peopleDeckSize = 7; int placeCards[] = {PLACE_KITCHEN, PLACE_HALL, PLACE_POOLROOM, PLACE_STUDY, PLACE_LOUNG, PLACE_LIBRARY, PLACE_CONSERVATORY, PLACE_DINING, PLACE_BILLIARDS}; int placeDeckSize = 9; srand(clock()); // seed rand() using clock() which gives // the current tick your processor is at... int killer[3]; // no need to initialize yet. killer[0-2] will initialize int deckShuffle = rand() % weaponDeckSize; // picks one number out of the deck killer[0] = weaponCards[deckShuffle]; allCards[deckShuffle] = 0; // Card drawn. No longer exists in deck deckShuffle = rand() % peopleDeckSize; // picks another random card out of the deck killer[1] = peopleCards[deckShuffle]; allCards[deckShuffle + weaponDeckSize] = 0; // Card drawn. No longer exists in deck deckShuffle = rand() % placeDeckSize; // randomly picks the last card needed killer[2] = placeCards[deckShuffle]; allCards[deckShuffle + weaponDeckSize + peopleDeckSize] = 0; // Card drawn. No longer exists in deck int numberOfCards = 0; printf("CLUE\n"); printf("written by John Schintone\n"); printf("Origonal game delvoped by Hasbro\n"); int numberOfPlayers = 0; while ((numberOfPlayers < 3) || (numberOfPlayers > 6)) { printf("How many players are Going to play :\n"); printf("[number] > "); scanf("%d",&numberOfPlayers); // A very fast if statement which only uses integers/char's switch(numberOfPlayers) { case 6: { numberOfCards = 3; } break; case 5: { numberOfCards = 4; } break; case 4: { numberOfCards = 5; } break; case 3: { numberOfCards = 6; } break; default: { printf("You must enter a number between 3 and 6...\n"); } // End default } // End switch } // End while int index1, index2; // Note: ++index1; is faster than index1++; and will almost always // produce better code (index1++ happens after this statement line. // ++index1 increments index1 before this statement line) for (index1 = 0; index1 < numberOfPlayers; ++index1) { printf("Player %d", index1); for (index2 = 0; index2 < numberOfCards; ++index2) { // Remember that allCards[deckShuffle] == 0 because we removed that // card ages ago... works out well, just don't forget you did that : ) while (allCards[deckShuffle] == 0) { deckShuffle = rand() % deckSize; } // End while players[index1][index2] = allCards[deckShuffle]; allCards[deckShuffle] = 0; // Card removed for after loop... printf(", %d", players[index1][index2]); switch(players[index1][index2]) { case WEAPON_ROPE: { } break; // Add more... case PEOPLE_MRGREEN: { } break; // Add more... case PLACE_KITCHEN: { } break; // Add more... default: { printf("Program has caught player %d cheating...", index1); } // End default } // End switch } // End for printf("\n"); } // End for printf("The killer is %d, with the %d, and in the %d \n\n", killer[0], killer[1], killer[2]); printf("Type h for this help... \n"); printf("Type e to escape... \n"); printf("Type r to roll the die... \n"); char command = '\0'; // \0 represents zero, or the null character while (command != 'e') { printf("[one character] > "); scanf("%c", &command); if (command == 'r') { die = rand() % 6 + 1; printf("Your number is: %d \n", die); } // end while if (command == 'h') { printf("Type h for this help... \n"); printf("Type e to escape... \n"); printf("Type r to roll the die... \n"); } // End if printf("\n"); } // End while return(0); // Success. Program worked ok } // End main() Function

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• Adventures in Windows 8: Working around the navigation animation issues in LayoutAwarePage

  - by Laurent Bugnion

  LayoutAwarePage is a pretty cool add-on to Windows 8 apps, which facilitates greatly the implementation of orientation-aware (portrait, landscape) as well as state-aware (snapped, filled, fullscreen) apps. It has however a few issues that are obvious when you use transformed elements on your page. Adding a LayoutAwarePage to your application If you start with a blank app, the MainPage is a vanilla Page, with no such feature. In order to have a LayoutAwarePage into your app, you need to add this class (and a few helpers) with the following operation: Right click on the Solution and select Add, New Item from the context menu. From the dialog, select a Basic Page (not a Blank Page, which is another vanilla page). If you prefer, you can also use Split Page, Items Page, Item Detail Page, Grouped Items Page or Group Detail Page which are all LayoutAwarePages. Personally I like to start with a Basic Page, which gives me more creative freedom. Adding this new page will cause Visual Studio to show a prompt asking you for permission to add additional helper files to the Common folder. One of these helpers in the LayoutAwarePage class, which is where the magic happens. LayoutAwarePage offers some help for the detection of orientation and state (which makes it a pleasure to design for all these scenarios in Blend, by the way) as well as storage for the navigation state (more about that in a future article). Issue with LayoutAwarePage When you use UI elements such as a background picture, a watermark label, logos, etc, it is quite common to do a few things with those: Making them partially transparent (this is especially true for background pictures; for instance I really like a black Page background with a half transparent picture placed on top of it). Transforming them, for instance rotating them a bit, scaling them, etc. Here is an example with a picture of my two beautiful daughters in the Bird Park in Kuala Lumpur, as well as a transformed TextBlock. The image has an opacity of 40% and the TextBlock a simple RotateTransform. If I create an application with a MainPage that navigates to this LayoutAwarePage, however, I will have a very annoying effect: The background picture appears with an Opacity of 100%. The TextBlock is not rotated. This lasts only for less than a second (during the navigation animation) before the elements “snap into place” and get their desired effect. Here is the XAML that cause the annoying effect: <common:LayoutAwarePage x:Name="pageRoot" x:Class="App13.BasicPage1" xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml" xmlns:common="using:App13.Common" xmlns:d="http://schemas.microsoft.com/expression/blend/2008" xmlns:mc="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/markup-compatibility/2006" mc:Ignorable="d"> <Grid Style="{StaticResource LayoutRootStyle}"> <Grid.RowDefinitions> <RowDefinition Height="140" /> <RowDefinition Height="*" /> </Grid.RowDefinitions> <Image Source="Assets/el20120812025.jpg" Stretch="UniformToFill" Opacity="0.4" Grid.RowSpan="2" /> <Grid> <Grid.ColumnDefinitions> <ColumnDefinition Width="Auto" /> <ColumnDefinition Width="*" /> </Grid.ColumnDefinitions> <Button x:Name="backButton" Click="GoBack" IsEnabled="{Binding Frame.CanGoBack, ElementName=pageRoot}" Style="{StaticResource BackButtonStyle}" /> <TextBlock x:Name="pageTitle" Grid.Column="1" Text="Welcome" Style="{StaticResource PageHeaderTextStyle}" /> </Grid> <TextBlock HorizontalAlignment="Center" TextWrapping="Wrap" Text="Welcome to my Windows 8 Application" Grid.Row="1" VerticalAlignment="Bottom" FontFamily="Segoe UI Light" FontSize="70" FontWeight="Light" TextAlignment="Center" Foreground="#FFFFA200" RenderTransformOrigin="0.5,0.5" UseLayoutRounding="False" d:LayoutRounding="Auto" Margin="0,0,0,153"> <TextBlock.RenderTransform> <CompositeTransform Rotation="-6.545" /> </TextBlock.RenderTransform> </TextBlock> <VisualStateManager.VisualStateGroups> [...] </VisualStateManager.VisualStateGroups> </Grid> </common:LayoutAwarePage> Solving the issue In order to solve this “snapping” issue, the solution is to wrap the elements that are transformed into an empty Grid. Honestly, to me it sounds like a bug in the LayoutAwarePage navigation animation, but thankfully the workaround is not that difficult: Simple change the main Grid as follows: <Grid Style="{StaticResource LayoutRootStyle}"> <Grid.RowDefinitions> <RowDefinition Height="140" /> <RowDefinition Height="*" /> </Grid.RowDefinitions> <Grid Grid.RowSpan="2"> <Image Source="Assets/el20120812025.jpg" Stretch="UniformToFill" Opacity="0.4" /> </Grid> <Grid> <Grid.ColumnDefinitions> <ColumnDefinition Width="Auto" /> <ColumnDefinition Width="*" /> </Grid.ColumnDefinitions> <Button x:Name="backButton" Click="GoBack" IsEnabled="{Binding Frame.CanGoBack, ElementName=pageRoot}" Style="{StaticResource BackButtonStyle}" /> <TextBlock x:Name="pageTitle" Grid.Column="1" Text="Welcome" Style="{StaticResource PageHeaderTextStyle}" /> </Grid> <Grid Grid.Row="1"> <TextBlock HorizontalAlignment="Center" TextWrapping="Wrap" Text="Welcome to my Windows 8 Application" VerticalAlignment="Bottom" FontFamily="Segoe UI Light" FontSize="70" FontWeight="Light" TextAlignment="Center" Foreground="#FFFFA200" RenderTransformOrigin="0.5,0.5" UseLayoutRounding="False" d:LayoutRounding="Auto" Margin="0,0,0,153"> <TextBlock.RenderTransform> <CompositeTransform Rotation="-6.545" /> </TextBlock.RenderTransform> </TextBlock> </Grid> <VisualStateManager.VisualStateGroups> [...] </Grid> Hopefully this will help a few people, I banged my head on the wall for a while before someone at Microsoft pointed me to the solution ;) Happy coding, Laurent   Laurent Bugnion (GalaSoft) Subscribe | Twitter | Facebook | Flickr | LinkedIn

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• Nokia Windows Phone 8 App Collection

  - by Tim Murphy

  I recently upgraded to a Nokia Lumia 920.  Along with it came the availability of a number of Nokia developed apps or apps that Nokia has made available from other developers.  Below is a summary of some of the ones that I have used to this point.  There are quite a few of them so I won’t be covering everything that is available. Nokia Maps I am quite pleased with the accuracy of Nokia Maps and not having to tap the screen for each turn any more.  The information on the screen is quite good as well.  The couple of improvements I would like to see are for the voice directions to include which street or exit you need to use and improve the search accuracy.  Bing maps had much better search results in my opinion. Nokia Drive This one really had me confused when I first setup the phone.  I was driving down the road and suddenly I am getting notification tones, but there were no visual notifications on the phone.  It seems that in their infinite wisdom Nokia thinks I don’t know when I am going over the speed limit and need to be told. ESPN I really liked my ESPN app on Windows Phone 7.5, but I am not getting the type of experience I was looking for out of this app.  While it allows me to pick my favorite teams, but there isn’t a pivot page or panorama page that shows a summary of my favorite teams.  I have also found that the live tile don’t update very often.  Over all I am rather disappointed compared app produced by ESPN. Smart Shoot I really need to get the kids to let me use this on.  I like the concept, but I need to spend more time with it.  The idea how running the camera through a continuous shooting mode and then picking the best is something that I have done with my DSLR and am glad to see it available here. Cinemagraph Here is a fun filter.  It doesn’t have the most accurate editing features, but it is fun to stop certain parts of a scene and let other parts move.  As a test I stopped the traffic on the highway and let the traffic on the frontage road flow.  It makes for a fun effect.  If nothing else it could be great for sending prank animations to your friends. YouSendIt I have only briefly touched this application.  What I don’t understand is why it is needed.  Most of the functionality seems to be similar to SkyDrive and it gives you less storage.  They only feature that seems to differentiate the app is the signature capability. Creative Studio This app has some nice quick edits, but it is not very comprehensive.  I am also not to thrilled with the user experience.  It puts you though an initial color cast series that I’m not sure why it is there.  Discovery of the remaining adjustments isn’t that great.  In the end I found myself wanting Thumbia back. Panorama This is one of the apps that I like.  I found it easy to use as it guides you with a target circle that you center for it to take the next pictures.  It also stitches the images with amazing speed.  The one thing I wish it had was the capability to turn the phone into portrait orientation and do a taller panorama.  Perhaps we will see this in the future. Nokia Music After getting over the missing album art I found that there were a number of missing features with this app as well.  I have a Zune HD and I am used to being able to go through my collection and adding songs, albums or artists to my now playing.  There also doesn’t seem to be a way to manage playlists that I have seen yet.  Other than that the UI is familiar and it give Nokia City Lens Augmented reality is a cool concept, but I still haven’t seen it implemented in a compelling fashion beyond a demo at TED a couple of years ago.  The app still leaves me wanting as well.  It does give an interesting toy.  It gives you the ability to look for general categories and see general direction and clusters of locations.  I think as this concept is better thought out it will become more compelling. Nokia Trailers I don’t know how often I will use this app, but I do like being able to see what movies are being promoted.  I can’t wait for The Hobbit to come out and the trailer was just what the doctor ordered.  I can see coming back to this app from time to time. PhotoBeamer PhotoBeamer is a strange beast that needs a better instruction manual.  It seems a lot like magic but very confusing.  I need some more testing, but I don’t think this is something that most people are going to understand quickly and may give up before getting it to work.  I may put an update here after playing with it further. Ringtone Maker The app was just published and it didn’t work very well for me. It couldn’t find 95% of the songs that Nokia Music was playing for me and crashed several times.  It also had songs named wrong that when I checked them in Nokia Music they were fine.  This app looks like it has a long way to go. Summary In all I think that Nokia is offering a well rounded set of initial applications that can get any new owner started.  There is definitely room for improvement in all of these apps.  The main need is usability upgrades.  I would guess that with feedback from users they will come up to acceptable levels.  Try them out and see if you agree. del.icio.us Tags: Windows Phone,Nokia,Lumia,Nokia Apps,ESPN,PhotoBeamer,City Lens,YouSendIt,Drive,Maps

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• b2Body moves without stopping

  - by SentineL

  I got a quite strange bug. It is difficult to explain it in two words, but i'll try to do this in short. My b2Body has restitution, friction, density, mass and collision group. I controlling my b2Body via setting linear velocity to it (called on every iteration): (void)moveToDirection:(CGPoint)direction onlyHorizontal:(BOOL)horizontal { b2Vec2 velocity = [controlledObject getBody]-GetLinearVelocity(); double horizontalSpeed = velocity.x + controlledObject.acceleration * direction.x; velocity.x = (float32) (abs((int) horizontalSpeed) < controlledObject.runSpeed ? horizontalSpeed : controlledObject.maxSpeed * direction.x); if (!horizontal) { velocity.y = velocity.y + controlledObject.runSpeed * direction.y; } [controlledObject getBody]->SetLinearVelocity(velocity); } My floor is static b2Body, it has as restitution, friction, density, mass and same collision group in some reason, I'm setting b2Body's friction of my Hero to zero when it is moving, and returning it to 1 when he stops. When I'm pushing run button, hero runs. when i'm releasing it, he stops. All of this works perfect. On jumping, I'm setting linear velocity to my Hero: (void)jump { b2Vec2 velocity = [controlledObject getBody]->GetLinearVelocity(); velocity.y = velocity.y + [[AppDel cfg] getHeroJumpVlelocity]; [controlledObject getBody]->SetLinearVelocity(velocity); } If I'll run, jump, and release run button, while he is in air, all will work fine. And here is my problem: If I'll run, jump, and continue running on landing (or when he goes from one static body to another: there is small fall, probably), Hero will start move, like he has no friction, but he has! I checked this via beakpoints: he has friction, but I can move left of right, and he will never stop, until i'll jump (or go from one static body to another), with unpressed running button. I allready tried: Set friction to body on every iteration double-check am I setting friction to right fixture. set Linear Damping to Hero: his move slows down on gugged moveing. A little more code: I have a sensor and body fixtures in my hero: (void) addBodyFixture { b2CircleShape dynamicBox; dynamicBox.m_radius = [[AppDel cfg] getHeroRadius]; b2FixtureDef bodyFixtureDef; bodyFixtureDef.shape = &dynamicBox; bodyFixtureDef.density = 1.0f; bodyFixtureDef.friction = [[AppDel cfg] getHeroFriction]; bodyFixtureDef.restitution = [[AppDel cfg] getHeroRestitution]; bodyFixtureDef.filter.categoryBits = 0x0001; bodyFixtureDef.filter.maskBits = 0x0001; bodyFixtureDef.filter.groupIndex = 0; bodyFixtureDef.userData = [NSNumber numberWithInt:FIXTURE_BODY]; [physicalBody addFixture:bodyFixtureDef]; } (void) addSensorFixture { b2CircleShape sensorBox; sensorBox.m_radius = [[AppDel cfg] getHeroRadius] * 0.95; sensorBox.m_p.Set(0, -[[AppDel cfg] getHeroRadius] / 10); b2FixtureDef sensor; sensor.shape = &sensorBox; sensor.filter.categoryBits = 0x0001; sensor.filter.maskBits = 0x0001; sensor.filter.groupIndex = 0; sensor.isSensor = YES; sensor.userData = [NSNumber numberWithInt:FIXTURE_SENSOR]; [physicalBody addFixture:sensor]; } Here I'm tracking is hero in air: void FixtureContactListener::BeginContact(b2Contact* contact) { // We need to copy out the data because the b2Contact passed in // is reused. Squirrel *squirrel = (Squirrel *)contact->GetFixtureB()->GetBody()->GetUserData(); if (squirrel) { [squirrel addContact]; } } void FixtureContactListener::EndContact(b2Contact* contact) { Squirrel *squirrel = (Squirrel *)contact->GetFixtureB()->GetBody()->GetUserData(); if (squirrel) { [squirrel removeContact]; } } here is Hero's logic on contacts: - (void) addContact { if (contactCount == 0) [self landing]; contactCount++; } - (void) removeContact { contactCount--; if (contactCount == 0) [self flying]; if (contactCount <0) contactCount = 0; } - (void)landing { inAir = NO; acceleration = [[AppDel cfg] getHeroRunAcceleration]; [sprite stopAllActions]; (running ? [sprite runAction:[self runAction]] : [sprite runAction:[self standAction]]); } - (void)flying { inAir = YES; acceleration = [[AppDel cfg] getHeroAirAcceleration]; [sprite stopAllActions]; [self flyAction]; } here is Hero's moving logic: - (void)stop { running = NO; if (!inAir) { [sprite stopAllActions]; [sprite runAction:[self standAction]]; } } - (void)left { [physicalBody setFriction:0]; if (!running && !inAir) { [sprite stopAllActions]; [sprite runAction:[self runAction]]; } running = YES; moveingDirection = NO; [bodyControls moveToDirection:CGPointMake(-1, 0) onlyHorizontal:YES]; } - (void)right { [physicalBody setFriction:0]; if (!running && !inAir) { [sprite stopAllActions]; [sprite runAction:[self runAction]]; } running = YES; moveingDirection = YES; [bodyControls moveToDirection:CGPointMake(1, 0) onlyHorizontal:YES]; } - (void)jump { if (!inAir) { [bodyControls jump]; } } and here is my update method (called on every iteration): - (void)update:(NSMutableDictionary *)buttons { if (!isDead) { [self updateWithButtonName:BUTTON_LEFT inButtons:buttons whenPressed:@selector(left) whenUnpressed:@selector(stop)]; [self updateWithButtonName:BUTTON_RIGHT inButtons:buttons whenPressed:@selector(right) whenUnpressed:@selector(stop)]; [self updateWithButtonName:BUTTON_UP inButtons:buttons whenPressed:@selector(jump) whenUnpressed:@selector(nothing)]; [self updateWithButtonName:BUTTON_DOWN inButtons:buttons whenPressed:@selector(nothing) whenUnpressed:@selector(nothing)]; [sprite setFlipX:(moveingDirection)]; } [self checkPosition]; if (!running) [physicalBody setFriction:[[AppDel cfg] getHeroFriction]]; else [physicalBody setFriction:0]; } - (void)updateWithButtonName:(NSString *)buttonName inButtons:(NSDictionary *)buttons whenPressed:(SEL)pressedSelector whenUnpressed:(SEL)unpressedSelector { NSNumber *buttonNumber = [buttons objectForKey:buttonName]; if (buttonNumber == nil) return; if ([buttonNumber boolValue]) [self performSelector:pressedSelector]; else [self performSelector:unpressedSelector]; } - (void)checkPosition { b2Body *body = [self getBody]; b2Vec2 position = body->GetPosition(); CGPoint inWorldPosition = [[AppDel cfg] worldMeterPointFromScreenPixel:CGPointMake(position.x * PTM_RATIO, position.y * PTM_RATIO)]; if (inWorldPosition.x < 0 || inWorldPosition.x > WORLD_WIDGH / PTM_RATIO || inWorldPosition.y <= 0) { [self kill]; } }

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• Silverlight 4 Twitter Client &ndash; Part 3

  - by Max

  Finally Silverlight 4 RC is released and also that Windows 7 Phone Series will rely heavily on Silverlight platform for apps platform. its a really good news for Silverlight developers and designers. More information on this here. You can use SL 4 RC with VS 2010. SL 4 RC does not come with VS 2010, you need to download it separately and install it. So for the next part, be ready with VS 2010 and SL4 RC, we will start using them and not With this momentum, let us go to the next part of our twitter client tutorial. This tutorial will cover setting your status in Twitter and also retrieving your 1) As everything in Silverlight is asynchronous, we need to have some visual representation showing that something is going on in the background. So what I did was to create a progress bar with indeterminate animation. The XAML is here below. <ProgressBar Maximum="100" Width="300" Height="50" Margin="20" Visibility="Collapsed" IsIndeterminate="True" Name="progressBar1" VerticalAlignment="Center" HorizontalAlignment="Center" /> 2) I will be toggling this progress bar to show the background work. So I thought of writing this small method, which I use to toggle the visibility of this progress bar. Just pass a bool to this method and this will toggle it based on its current visibility status. public void toggleProgressBar(bool Option){ if (Option) { if (progressBar1.Visibility == System.Windows.Visibility.Collapsed) progressBar1.Visibility = System.Windows.Visibility.Visible; } else { if (progressBar1.Visibility == System.Windows.Visibility.Visible) progressBar1.Visibility = System.Windows.Visibility.Collapsed; }} 3) Now let us create a grid to hold a textbox and a update button. The XAML will look like something below <Grid HorizontalAlignment="Center"> <Grid.RowDefinitions> <RowDefinition Height="50"></RowDefinition> </Grid.RowDefinitions> <Grid.ColumnDefinitions> <ColumnDefinition Width="400"></ColumnDefinition> <ColumnDefinition Width="200"></ColumnDefinition> </Grid.ColumnDefinitions> <TextBox Name="TwitterStatus" Width="380" Height="50"></TextBox> <Button Name="UpdateStatus" Content="Update" Grid.Row="1" Grid.Column="2" Width="200" Height="50" Click="UpdateStatus_Click"></Button></Grid> 4) The click handler for this update button will be again using the Web Client to post values. Posting values using Web Client. The code is: private void UpdateStatus_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e){ toggleProgressBar(true); string statusupdate = "status=" + TwitterStatus.Text; WebRequest.RegisterPrefix("https://", System.Net.Browser.WebRequestCreator.ClientHttp);  WebClient myService = new WebClient(); myService.AllowReadStreamBuffering = true; myService.UseDefaultCredentials = false; myService.Credentials = new NetworkCredential(GlobalVariable.getUserName(), GlobalVariable.getPassword());  myService.UploadStringCompleted += new UploadStringCompletedEventHandler(myService_UploadStringCompleted); myService.UploadStringAsync(new Uri("https://twitter.com/statuses/update.xml"), statusupdate);  this.Dispatcher.BeginInvoke(() => ClearTextBoxValue());} 5) In the above code, we have a event handler which will be fired on this request is completed – !! Remember SL is Asynch !! So in the myService_UploadStringCompleted, we will just toggle the progress bar and change some status text to say that its done. The code for this will be StatusMessage is just another textblock conveniently positioned in the page.  void myService_UploadStringCompleted(object sender, UploadStringCompletedEventArgs e){ if (e.Error != null) { StatusMessage.Text = "Status Update Failed: " + e.Error.Message.ToString(); } else { toggleProgressBar(false); TwitterCredentialsSubmit(); }} 6) Now let us look at fetching the friends updates of the logged in user and displaying it in a datagrid. So just define a data grid and set its autogenerate columns as true. 7) Let us first create a data structure for use with fetching the friends timeline. The code is something like below: namespace MaxTwitter.Classes{ public class Status { public Status() {} public string ID { get; set; } public string Text { get; set; } public string Source { get; set; } public string UserID { get; set; } public string UserName { get; set; } }} You can add as many fields as you want, for the list of fields, have a look at here. It will ask for your Twitter username and password, just provide them and this will display the xml file. Go through them pick and choose your desired fields and include in your Data Structure. 8) Now the web client request for this is similar to the one we saw in step 4. Just change the uri in the last but one step to https://twitter.com/statuses/friends_timeline.xml Be sure to change the event handler to something else and within that we will use XLINQ to fetch the required details for us. Now let us how this event handler fetches details. public void parseXML(string text){ XDocument xdoc; if(text.Length> 0) xdoc = XDocument.Parse(text); else xdoc = XDocument.Parse(@"I USED MY OWN LOCAL COPY OF XML FILE HERE FOR OFFLINE TESTING"); statusList = new List<Status>(); statusList = (from status in xdoc.Descendants("status") select new Status { ID = status.Element("id").Value, Text = status.Element("text").Value, Source = status.Element("source").Value, UserID = status.Element("user").Element("id").Value, UserName = status.Element("user").Element("screen_name").Value, }).ToList(); //MessageBox.Show(text); //this.Dispatcher.BeginInvoke(() => CallDatabindMethod(StatusCollection)); //MessageBox.Show(statusList.Count.ToString()); DataGridStatus.ItemsSource = statusList; StatusMessage.Text = "Datagrid refreshed."; toggleProgressBar(false);} in the event handler, we call this method with e.Result.ToString() Parsing XML files using LINQ is super cool, I love it.   I am stopping it here for  this post. Will post the completed files in next post, as I’ve worked on a few more features in this page and don’t want to confuse you. See you soon in my next post where will play with Twitter lists. Have a nice day! Technorati Tags: Silverlight,LINQ,XLINQ,Twitter API,Twitter,Network Credentials

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• how to use 3D map Actionscript class in mxml file for display map.

  - by nemade-vipin

  hello friends, I have created the application in which I have to use 3D map Action Script class in mxml file to display a map in form. that is in tab navigator last tab. My ActionScript 3D map class is(FlyingDirections):- package src.SBTSCoreObject { import src.SBTSCoreObject.JSONDecoder; import com.google.maps.InfoWindowOptions; import com.google.maps.LatLng; import com.google.maps.LatLngBounds; import com.google.maps.Map3D; import com.google.maps.MapEvent; import com.google.maps.MapOptions; import com.google.maps.MapType; import com.google.maps.MapUtil; import com.google.maps.View; import com.google.maps.controls.NavigationControl; import com.google.maps.geom.Attitude; import com.google.maps.interfaces.IPolyline; import com.google.maps.overlays.Marker; import com.google.maps.overlays.MarkerOptions; import com.google.maps.services.Directions; import com.google.maps.services.DirectionsEvent; import com.google.maps.services.Route; import flash.display.Bitmap; import flash.display.DisplayObject; import flash.display.DisplayObjectContainer; import flash.display.Loader; import flash.display.LoaderInfo; import flash.display.Sprite; import flash.events.Event; import flash.events.IOErrorEvent; import flash.events.MouseEvent; import flash.events.TimerEvent; import flash.filters.DropShadowFilter; import flash.geom.Point; import flash.net.URLLoader; import flash.net.URLRequest; import flash.net.navigateToURL; import flash.text.TextField; import flash.text.TextFieldAutoSize; import flash.text.TextFormat; import flash.utils.Timer; import flash.utils.getTimer; public class FlyingDirections extends Map3D { /** * Panoramio home page. */ private static const PANORAMIO_HOME:String = "http://www.panoramio.com/"; /** * The icon for the car. */ [Embed("assets/car-icon-24px.png")] private static const Car:Class; /** * The Panoramio icon. */ [Embed("assets/iw_panoramio.png")] private static const PanoramioIcon:Class; /** * We animate a zoom in to the start the route before the car starts * to move. This constant sets the time in seconds over which this * zoom occurs. */ private static const LEAD_IN_DURATION:Number = 3; /** * Duration of the trip in seconds. */ private static const TRIP_DURATION:Number = 40; /** * Constants that define the geometry of the Panoramio image markers. */ private static const BORDER_T:Number = 3; private static const BORDER_L:Number = 10; private static const BORDER_R:Number = 10; private static const BORDER_B:Number = 3; private static const GAP_T:Number = 2; private static const GAP_B:Number = 1; private static const IMAGE_SCALE:Number = 1; /** * Trajectory that the camera follows over time. Each element is an object * containing properties used to generate parameter values for flyTo(..). * fraction = 0 corresponds to the start of the trip; fraction = 1 * correspondsto the end of the trip. */ private var FLY_TRAJECTORY:Array = [ { fraction: 0, zoom: 6, attitude: new Attitude(0, 0, 0) }, { fraction: 0.2, zoom: 8.5, attitude: new Attitude(30, 30, 0) }, { fraction: 0.5, zoom: 9, attitude: new Attitude(30, 40, 0) }, { fraction: 1, zoom: 8, attitude: new Attitude(50, 50, 0) }, { fraction: 1.1, zoom: 8, attitude: new Attitude(130, 50, 0) }, { fraction: 1.2, zoom: 8, attitude: new Attitude(220, 50, 0) }, ]; /** * Number of panaramio photos for which we load data. We&apos;ll select a * subset of these approximately evenly spaced along the route. */ private static const NUM_GEOTAGGED_PHOTOS:int = 50; /** * Number of panaramio photos that we actually show. */ private static const NUM_SHOWN_PHOTOS:int = 7; /** * Scaling between real trip time and animation time. */ private static const SCALE_TIME:Number = 0.001; /** * getTimer() value at the instant that we start the trip. If this is 0 then * we have not yet started the car moving. */ private var startTimer:int = 0; /** * The current route. */ private var route:Route; /** * The polyline for the route. */ private var polyline:IPolyline; /** * The car marker. */ private var marker:Marker; /** * The cumulative duration in seconds over each step in the route. * cumulativeStepDuration[0] is 0; cumulativeStepDuration[1] adds the * duration of step 0; cumulativeStepDuration[2] adds the duration * of step 1; etc. */ private var cumulativeStepDuration:/*Number*/Array = []; /** * The cumulative distance in metres over each vertex in the route polyline. * cumulativeVertexDistance[0] is 0; cumulativeVertexDistance[1] adds the * distance to vertex 1; cumulativeVertexDistance[2] adds the distance to * vertex 2; etc. */ private var cumulativeVertexDistance:Array; /** * Array of photos loaded from Panoramio. This array has the same format as * the &apos;photos&apos; property within the JSON returned by the Panoramio API * (see http://www.panoramio.com/api/), with additional properties added to * individual photo elements to hold the loader structures that fetch * the actual images. */ private var photos:Array = []; /** * Array of polyline vertices, where each element is in world coordinates. * Several computations can be faster if we can use world coordinates * instead of LatLng coordinates. */ private var worldPoly:/*Point*/Array; /** * Whether the start button has been pressed. */ private var startButtonPressed:Boolean = false; /** * Saved event from onDirectionsSuccess call. */ private var directionsSuccessEvent:DirectionsEvent = null; /** * Start button. */ private var startButton:Sprite; /** * Alpha value used for the Panoramio image markers. */ private var markerAlpha:Number = 0; /** * Index of the current driving direction step. Used to update the * info window content each time we progress to a new step. */ private var currentStepIndex:int = -1; /** * The fly directions map constructor. * * @constructor */ public function FlyingDirections() { key="ABQIAAAA7QUChpcnvnmXxsjC7s1fCxQGj0PqsCtxKvarsoS-iqLdqZSKfxTd7Xf-2rEc_PC9o8IsJde80Wnj4g"; super(); addEventListener(MapEvent.MAP_PREINITIALIZE, onMapPreinitialize); addEventListener(MapEvent.MAP_READY, onMapReady); } /** * Handles map preintialize. Initializes the map center and zoom level. * * @param event The map event. */ private function onMapPreinitialize(event:MapEvent):void { setInitOptions(new MapOptions({ center: new LatLng(-26.1, 135.1), zoom: 4, viewMode: View.VIEWMODE_PERSPECTIVE, mapType:MapType.PHYSICAL_MAP_TYPE })); } /** * Handles map ready and looks up directions. * * @param event The map event. */ private function onMapReady(event:MapEvent):void { enableScrollWheelZoom(); enableContinuousZoom(); addControl(new NavigationControl()); // The driving animation will be updated on every frame. addEventListener(Event.ENTER_FRAME, enterFrame); addStartButton(); // We start the directions loading now, so that we&apos;re ready to go when // the user hits the start button. var directions:Directions = new Directions(); directions.addEventListener( DirectionsEvent.DIRECTIONS_SUCCESS, onDirectionsSuccess); directions.addEventListener( DirectionsEvent.DIRECTIONS_FAILURE, onDirectionsFailure); directions.load("48 Pirrama Rd, Pyrmont, NSW to Byron Bay, NSW"); } /** * Adds a big blue start button. */ private function addStartButton():void { startButton = new Sprite(); startButton.buttonMode = true; startButton.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK, onStartClick); startButton.graphics.beginFill(0x1871ce); startButton.graphics.drawRoundRect(0, 0, 150, 100, 10, 10); startButton.graphics.endFill(); var startField:TextField = new TextField(); startField.autoSize = TextFieldAutoSize.LEFT; startField.defaultTextFormat = new TextFormat("_sans", 20, 0xffffff, true); startField.text = "Start!"; startButton.addChild(startField); startField.x = 0.5 * (startButton.width - startField.width); startField.y = 0.5 * (startButton.height - startField.height); startButton.filters = [ new DropShadowFilter() ]; var container:DisplayObjectContainer = getDisplayObject() as DisplayObjectContainer; container.addChild(startButton); startButton.x = 0.5 * (container.width - startButton.width); startButton.y = 0.5 * (container.height - startButton.height); var panoField:TextField = new TextField(); panoField.autoSize = TextFieldAutoSize.LEFT; panoField.defaultTextFormat = new TextFormat("_sans", 11, 0x000000, true); panoField.text = "Photos provided by Panoramio are under the copyright of their owners."; container.addChild(panoField); panoField.x = container.width - panoField.width - 5; panoField.y = 5; } /** * Handles directions success. Starts flying the route if everything * is ready. * * @param event The directions event. */ private function onDirectionsSuccess(event:DirectionsEvent):void { directionsSuccessEvent = event; flyRouteIfReady(); } /** * Handles click on the start button. Starts flying the route if everything * is ready. */ private function onStartClick(event:MouseEvent):void { startButton.removeEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK, onStartClick); var container:DisplayObjectContainer = getDisplayObject() as DisplayObjectContainer; container.removeChild(startButton); startButtonPressed = true; flyRouteIfReady(); } /** * If we have loaded the directions and the start button has been pressed * start flying the directions route. */ private function flyRouteIfReady():void { if (!directionsSuccessEvent || !startButtonPressed) { return; } var directions:Directions = directionsSuccessEvent.directions; // Extract the route. route = directions.getRoute(0); // Draws the polyline showing the route. polyline = directions.createPolyline(); addOverlay(directions.createPolyline()); // Creates a car marker that is moved along the route. var car:DisplayObject = new Car(); marker = new Marker(route.startGeocode.point, new MarkerOptions({ icon: car, iconOffset: new Point(-car.width / 2, -car.height) })); addOverlay(marker); transformPolyToWorld(); createCumulativeArrays(); // Load Panoramio data for the region covered by the route. loadPanoramioData(directions.bounds); var duration:Number = route.duration; // Start a timer that will trigger the car moving after the lead in time. var leadInTimer:Timer = new Timer(LEAD_IN_DURATION * 1000, 1); leadInTimer.addEventListener(TimerEvent.TIMER, onLeadInDone); leadInTimer.start(); var flyTime:Number = -LEAD_IN_DURATION; // Set up the camera flight trajectory. for each (var flyStep:Object in FLY_TRAJECTORY) { var time:Number = flyStep.fraction * duration; var center:LatLng = latLngAt(time); var scaledTime:Number = time * SCALE_TIME; var zoom:Number = flyStep.zoom; var attitude:Attitude = flyStep.attitude; var elapsed:Number = scaledTime - flyTime; flyTime = scaledTime; flyTo(center, zoom, attitude, elapsed); } } /** * Loads Panoramio data for the route bounds. We load data about more photos * than we need, then select a subset lying along the route. * @param bounds Bounds within which to fetch images. */ private function loadPanoramioData(bounds:LatLngBounds):void { var params:Object = { order: "popularity", set: "full", from: "0", to: NUM_GEOTAGGED_PHOTOS.toString(10), size: "small", minx: bounds.getWest(), miny: bounds.getSouth(), maxx: bounds.getEast(), maxy: bounds.getNorth() }; var loader:URLLoader = new URLLoader(); var request:URLRequest = new URLRequest( "http://www.panoramio.com/map/get_panoramas.php?" + paramsToString(params)); loader.addEventListener(Event.COMPLETE, onPanoramioDataLoaded); loader.addEventListener(IOErrorEvent.IO_ERROR, onPanoramioDataFailed); loader.load(request); } /** * Transforms the route polyline to world coordinates. */ private function transformPolyToWorld():void { var numVertices:int = polyline.getVertexCount(); worldPoly = new Array(numVertices); for (var i:int = 0; i < numVertices; ++i) { var vertex:LatLng = polyline.getVertex(i); worldPoly[i] = fromLatLngToPoint(vertex, 0); } } /** * Returns the time at which the route approaches closest to the * given point. * @param world Point in world coordinates. * @return Route time at which the closest approach occurs. */ private function getTimeOfClosestApproach(world:Point):Number { var minDistSqr:Number = Number.MAX_VALUE; var numVertices:int = worldPoly.length; var x:Number = world.x; var y:Number = world.y; var minVertex:int = 0; for (var i:int = 0; i < numVertices; ++i) { var dx:Number = worldPoly[i].x - x; var dy:Number = worldPoly[i].y - y; var distSqr:Number = dx * dx + dy * dy; if (distSqr < minDistSqr) { minDistSqr = distSqr; minVertex = i; } } return cumulativeVertexDistance[minVertex]; } /** * Returns the array index of the first element that compares greater than * the given value. * @param ordered Ordered array of elements. * @param value Value to use for comparison. * @return Array index of the first element that compares greater than * the given value. */ private function upperBound(ordered:Array, value:Number, first:int=0, last:int=-1):int { if (last < 0) { last = ordered.length; } var count:int = last - first; var index:int; while (count > 0) { var step:int = count >> 1; index = first + step; if (value >= ordered[index]) { first = index + 1; count -= step - 1; } else { count = step; } } return first; } /** * Selects up to a given number of photos approximately evenly spaced along * the route. * @param ordered Array of photos, each of which is an object with * a property &apos;closestTime&apos;. * @param number Number of photos to select. */ private function selectEvenlySpacedPhotos(ordered:Array, number:int):Array { var start:Number = cumulativeVertexDistance[0]; var end:Number = cumulativeVertexDistance[cumulativeVertexDistance.length - 2]; var closestTimes:Array = []; for each (var photo:Object in ordered) { closestTimes.push(photo.closestTime); } var selectedPhotos:Array = []; for (var i:int = 0; i < number; ++i) { var idealTime:Number = start + ((end - start) * (i + 0.5) / number); var index:int = upperBound(closestTimes, idealTime); if (index < 1) { index = 0; } else if (index >= ordered.length) { index = ordered.length - 1; } else { var errorToPrev:Number = Math.abs(idealTime - closestTimes[index - 1]); var errorToNext:Number = Math.abs(idealTime - closestTimes[index]); if (errorToPrev < errorToNext) { --index; } } selectedPhotos.push(ordered[index]); } return selectedPhotos; } /** * Handles completion of loading the Panoramio index data. Selects from the * returned photo indices a subset of those that lie along the route and * initiates load of each of these. * @param event Load completion event. */ private function onPanoramioDataLoaded(event:Event):void { var loader:URLLoader = event.target as URLLoader; var decoder:JSONDecoder = new JSONDecoder(loader.data as String); var allPhotos:Array = decoder.getValue().photos; for each (var photo:Object in allPhotos) { var latLng:LatLng = new LatLng(photo.latitude, photo.longitude); photo.closestTime = getTimeOfClosestApproach(fromLatLngToPoint(latLng, 0)); } allPhotos.sortOn("closestTime", Array.NUMERIC); photos = selectEvenlySpacedPhotos(allPhotos, NUM_SHOWN_PHOTOS); for each (photo in photos) { var photoLoader:Loader = new Loader(); // The images aren&apos;t on panoramio.com: we can&apos;t acquire pixel access // using "new LoaderContext(true)". photoLoader.load( new URLRequest(photo.photo_file_url)); photo.loader = photoLoader; // Save the loader info: we use this to find the original element when // the load completes. photo.loaderInfo = photoLoader.contentLoaderInfo; photoLoader.contentLoaderInfo.addEventListener( Event.COMPLETE, onPhotoLoaded); } } /** * Creates a MouseEvent listener function that will navigate to the given * URL in a new window. * @param url URL to which to navigate. */ private function createOnClickUrlOpener(url:String):Function { return function(event:MouseEvent):void { navigateToURL(new URLRequest(url)); }; } /** * Handles completion of loading an individual Panoramio image. * Adds a custom marker that displays the image. Initially this is made * invisible so that it can be faded in as needed. * @param event Load completion event. */ private function onPhotoLoaded(event:Event):void { var loaderInfo:LoaderInfo = event.target as LoaderInfo; // We need to find which photo element this image corresponds to. for each (var photo:Object in photos) { if (loaderInfo == photo.loaderInfo) { var imageMarker:Sprite = createImageMarker(photo.loader, photo.owner_name, photo.owner_url); var options:MarkerOptions = new MarkerOptions({ icon: imageMarker, hasShadow: true, iconAlignment: MarkerOptions.ALIGN_BOTTOM | MarkerOptions.ALIGN_LEFT }); var latLng:LatLng = new LatLng(photo.latitude, photo.longitude); var marker:Marker = new Marker(latLng, options); photo.marker = marker; addOverlay(marker); // A hack: we add the actual image after the overlay has been added, // which creates the shadow, so that the shadow is valid even if we // don&apos;t have security privileges to generate the shadow from the // image. marker.foreground.visible = false; marker.shadow.alpha = 0; var imageHolder:Sprite = new Sprite(); imageHolder.addChild(photo.loader); imageHolder.buttonMode = true; imageHolder.addEventListener( MouseEvent.CLICK, createOnClickUrlOpener(photo.photo_url)); imageMarker.addChild(imageHolder); return; } } trace("An image was loaded which could not be found in the photo array."); } /** * Creates a custom marker showing an image. */ private function createImageMarker(child:DisplayObject, ownerName:String, ownerUrl:String):Sprite { var content:Sprite = new Sprite(); var panoramioIcon:Bitmap = new PanoramioIcon(); var iconHolder:Sprite = new Sprite(); iconHolder.addChild(panoramioIcon); iconHolder.buttonMode = true; iconHolder.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK, onPanoramioIconClick); panoramioIcon.x = BORDER_L; panoramioIcon.y = BORDER_T; content.addChild(iconHolder); // NOTE: we add the image as a child only after we&apos;ve added the marker // to the map. Currently the API requires this if it&apos;s to generate the // shadow for unprivileged content. // Shrink the image, so that it doesn&apos;t obcure too much screen space. // Ideally, we&apos;d subsample, but we don&apos;t have pixel level access. child.scaleX = IMAGE_SCALE; child.scaleY = IMAGE_SCALE; var imageW:Number = child.width; var imageH:Number = child.height; child.x = BORDER_L + 30; child.y = BORDER_T + iconHolder.height + GAP_T; var authorField:TextField = new TextField(); authorField.autoSize = TextFieldAutoSize.LEFT; authorField.defaultTextFormat = new TextFormat("_sans", 12); authorField.text = "author:"; content.addChild(authorField); authorField.x = BORDER_L; authorField.y = BORDER_T + iconHolder.height + GAP_T + imageH + GAP_B; var ownerField:TextField = new TextField(); ownerField.autoSize = TextFieldAutoSize.LEFT; var textFormat:TextFormat = new TextFormat("_sans", 14, 0x0e5f9a); ownerField.defaultTextFormat = textFormat; ownerField.htmlText = "<a href=\"" + ownerUrl + "\" target=\"_blank\">" + ownerName + "</a>"; content.addChild(ownerField); ownerField.x = BORDER_L + authorField.width; ownerField.y = BORDER_T + iconHolder.height + GAP_T + imageH + GAP_B; var totalW:Number = BORDER_L + Math.max(imageW, ownerField.width + authorField.width) + BORDER_R; var totalH:Number = BORDER_T + iconHolder.height + GAP_T + imageH + GAP_B + ownerField.height + BORDER_B; content.graphics.beginFill(0xffffff); content.graphics.drawRoundRect(0, 0, totalW, totalH, 10, 10); content.graphics.endFill(); var marker:Sprite = new Sprite(); marker.addChild(content); content.x = 30; content.y = 0; marker.graphics.lineStyle(); marker.graphics.beginFill(0xff0000); marker.graphics.drawCircle(0, totalH + 30, 3); marker.graphics.endFill(); marker.graphics.lineStyle(2, 0xffffff); marker.graphics.moveTo(30 + 10, totalH - 10); marker.graphics.lineTo(0, totalH + 30); return marker; } /** * Handles click on the Panoramio icon. */ private function onPanoramioIconClick(event:MouseEvent):void { navigateToURL(new URLRequest(PANORAMIO_HOME)); } /** * Handles failure of a Panoramio image load. */ private function onPanoramioDataFailed(event:IOErrorEvent):void { trace("Load of image failed: " + event); } /** * Returns a string containing cgi query parameters. * @param Associative array mapping query parameter key to value. * @return String containing cgi query parameters. */ private static function paramsToString(params:Object):String { var result:String = ""; var separator:String = ""; for (var key:String in params) { result += separator + encodeURIComponent(key) + "=" + encodeURIComponent(params[key]); separator = "&"; } return result; } /** * Called once the lead-in flight is done. Starts the car driving along * the route and starts a timer to begin fade in of the Panoramio * images in 1.5 seconds. */ private function onLeadInDone(event:Event):void { // Set startTimer non-zero so that the car starts to move. startTimer = getTimer(); // Start a timer that will fade in the Panoramio images. var fadeInTimer:Timer = new Timer(1500, 1); fadeInTimer.addEventListener(TimerEvent.TIMER, onFadeInTimer); fadeInTimer.start(); } /** * Handles the fade in timer&apos;s TIMER event. Sets markerAlpha above zero * which causes the frame enter handler to fade in the markers. */ private function onFadeInTimer(event:Event):void { markerAlpha = 0.01; } /** * The end time of the flight. */ private function get endTime():Number { if (!cumulativeStepDuration || cumulativeStepDuration.length == 0) { return startTimer; } return startTimer + cumulativeStepDuration[cumulativeStepDuration.length - 1]; } /** * Creates the cumulative arrays, cumulativeStepDuration and * cumulativeVertexDistance. */ private function createCumulativeArrays():void { cumulativeStepDuration = new Array(route.numSteps + 1); cumulativeVertexDistance = new Array(polyline.getVertexCount() + 1); var polylineTotal:Number = 0; var total:Number = 0; var numVertices:int = polyline.getVertexCount(); for (var stepIndex:int = 0; stepIndex < route.numSteps; ++stepIndex) { cumulativeStepDuration[stepIndex] = total; total += route.getStep(stepIndex).duration; var startVertex:int = stepIndex >= 0 ? route.getStep(stepIndex).polylineIndex : 0; var endVertex:int = stepIndex < (route.numSteps - 1) ? route.getStep(stepIndex + 1).polylineIndex : numVertices; var duration:Number = route.getStep(stepIndex).duration; var stepVertices:int = endVertex - startVertex; var latLng:LatLng = polyline.getVertex(startVertex); for (var vertex:int = startVertex; vertex < endVertex; ++vertex) { cumulativeVertexDistance[vertex] = polylineTotal; if (vertex < numVertices - 1) { var nextLatLng:LatLng = polyline.getVertex(vertex + 1); polylineTotal += nextLatLng.distanceFrom(latLng); } latLng = nextLatLng; } } cumulativeStepDuration[stepIndex] = total; } /** * Opens the info window above the car icon that details the given * step of the driving directions. * @param stepIndex Index of the current step. */ private function openInfoForStep(stepIndex:int):void { // Sets the content of the info window. var content:String; if (stepIndex >= route.numSteps) { content = "<b>" + route.endGeocode.address + "</b>" + "<br /><br />" + route.summaryHtml; } else { content = "<b>" + stepIndex + ".</b> " + route.getStep(stepIndex).descriptionHtml; } marker.openInfoWindow(new InfoWindowOptions({ contentHTML: content })); } /** * Displays the driving directions step appropriate for the given time. * Opens the info window showing the step instructions each time we * progress to a new step. * @param time Time for which to display the step. */ private function displayStepAt(time:Number):void { var stepIndex:int = upperBound(cumulativeStepDuration, time) - 1; var minStepIndex:int = 0; var maxStepIndex:int = route.numSteps - 1; if (stepIndex >= 0 && stepIndex <= maxStepIndex && currentStepIndex != stepIndex) { openInfoForStep(stepIndex); currentStepIndex = stepIndex; } } /** * Returns the LatLng at which the car should be positioned at the given * time. * @param time Time for which LatLng should be found. * @return LatLng. */ private function latLngAt(time:Number):LatLng { var stepIndex:int = upperBound(cumulativeStepDuration, time) - 1; var minStepIndex:int = 0; var maxStepIndex:int = route.numSteps - 1; if (stepIndex < minStepIndex) { return route.startGeocode.point; } else if (stepIndex > maxStepIndex) { return route.endGeocode.point; } var stepStart:Number = cumulativeStepDuration[stepIndex]; var stepEnd:Number = cumulativeStepDuration[stepIndex + 1]; var stepFraction:Number = (time - stepStart) / (stepEnd - stepStart); var startVertex:int = route.getStep(stepIndex).polylineIndex; var endVertex:int = (stepIndex + 1) < route.numSteps ? route.getStep(stepIndex + 1).polylineIndex : polyline.getVertexCount(); var stepVertices:int = endVertex - startVertex; var stepLeng

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• Poor upload/download speed on 2 x ADSL lines into a Cisco 2621XM

  - by 2020mobile

  Hi, Sorry never been on this site before so I apologise if not the right section or even forum. I have users complaining of very slow internetn connectivity on site and have checked with our ISP who have said that the line is testing at 8mb. We have 2 x BT lines that have our ISP broadand on them. Both lines go into a Cisco 2600 series router that then has a PIX firewall off that. Connectivity is successful just gone really slow and unable to download anything. Config is below: version 12.3 no service pad service tcp-keepalives-in service tcp-keepalives-out service timestamps debug datetime msec service timestamps log datetime msec service password-encryption ! hostname ROUTER-ADSL-INTERNET ! logging buffered 16384 informational enable secret xxx enable password xxx ! username xxx username xxx clock summer-time UK recurring last Sun Mar 1:00 last Sun Oct 1:00 aaa new-model ! ! aaa authentication login default local aaa authorization exec default local aaa session-id common ip subnet-zero no ip source-route ! ! ! ip audit notify log ip audit po max-events 100 no ip bootp server ip name-server 213.208.106.212 no mpls ldp logging neighbor-changes no ftp-server write-enable ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! no voice hpi capture buffer no voice hpi capture destination ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! interface ATM0/0 description 01270 111111 no ip address no atm ilmi-keepalive pvc 0/38 encapsulation aal5mux ppp dialer dialer pool-member 1 ! dsl operating-mode auto ! interface FastEthernet0/0 ip address 82.133.32.9 255.255.255.248 shutdown speed 100 full-duplex no cdp enable ! interface ATM0/1 description 01270 222222 no ip address no atm ilmi-keepalive pvc 0/38 encapsulation aal5mux ppp dialer dialer pool-member 1 ! dsl operating-mode auto ! interface FastEthernet0/1 ip address 217.146.115.49 255.255.255.240 duplex auto speed auto no cdp enable ! interface Dialer0 ip address 217.146.115.250 255.255.255.248 encapsulation ppp dialer pool 1 dialer-group 1 ppp authentication chap callin ppp chap hostname [email protected] ppp chap password 7 xxxxx ppp multilink ! ip classless ip route 0.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 Dialer0 ! no ip http server no ip http secure-server ! no logging trap access-list 10 permit 217.146.115.50 access-list 10 permit 82.133.32.10 access-list 10 deny any access-list 22 permit 217.146.115.50 access-list 22 permit 217.206.239.86 access-list 22 permit 82.133.32.10 access-list 22 deny any dialer-list 1 protocol ip permit no cdp run ! ! snmp-server community xxxxxx RO 10 snmp-server enable traps tty radius-server authorization permit missing Service-Type ! ! ! ! ! ! line con 0 exec-timeout 5 0 password 7 xxxxxx line aux 0 no exec line vty 0 4 access-class 22 in exec-timeout 5 0 password 7 xxxxxx transport input telnet ssh transport output none line vty 5 15 password 7 xxxxxx transport input telnet ssh ! ntp clock-period 17180095 ntp server 130.88.200.98 ! ! end Now my knowledge is very limited but ISP have said that while the lines are bonded each needs a seperate login as they've recently changed their L2TP router and that enforces the use of seperate logins - when the lines were configured we were given two logins. So, my question is what changes do I need to make to the config in order to get this working? it was ok before their change and I do have another login :- 01270 111111 - [email protected] 01270 222222 - [email protected] Apologies for the long email and thanks for taking the time to read it. Any more info I can provide please let me know. Thanks,

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• Improving SAS multipath to JBOD performance on Linux

  - by user36825

  Hello all I'm trying to optimize a storage setup on some Sun hardware with Linux. Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated. We have the following hardware: Sun Blade X6270 2* LSISAS1068E SAS controllers 2* Sun J4400 JBODs with 1 TB disks (24 disks per JBOD) Fedora Core 12 2.6.33 release kernel from FC13 (also tried with latest 2.6.31 kernel from FC12, same results) Here's the datasheet for the SAS hardware: http://www.sun.com/storage/storage_networking/hba/sas/PCIe.pdf It's using PCI Express 1.0a, 8x lanes. With a bandwidth of 250 MB/sec per lane, we should be able to do 2000 MB/sec per SAS controller. Each controller can do 3 Gb/sec per port and has two 4 port PHYs. We connect both PHYs from a controller to a JBOD. So between the JBOD and the controller we have 2 PHYs * 4 SAS ports * 3 Gb/sec = 24 Gb/sec of bandwidth, which is more than the PCI Express bandwidth. With write caching enabled and when doing big writes, each disk can sustain about 80 MB/sec (near the start of the disk). With 24 disks, that means we should be able to do 1920 MB/sec per JBOD. multipath { rr_min_io 100 uid 0 path_grouping_policy multibus failback manual path_selector "round-robin 0" rr_weight priorities alias somealias no_path_retry queue mode 0644 gid 0 wwid somewwid } I tried values of 50, 100, 1000 for rr_min_io, but it doesn't seem to make much difference. Along with varying rr_min_io I tried adding some delay between starting the dd's to prevent all of them writing over the same PHY at the same time, but this didn't make any difference, so I think the I/O's are getting properly spread out. According to /proc/interrupts, the SAS controllers are using a "IR-IO-APIC-fasteoi" interrupt scheme. For some reason only core #0 in the machine is handling these interrupts. I can improve performance slightly by assigning a separate core to handle the interrupts for each SAS controller: echo 2 /proc/irq/24/smp_affinity echo 4 /proc/irq/26/smp_affinity Using dd to write to the disk generates "Function call interrupts" (no idea what these are), which are handled by core #4, so I keep other processes off this core too. I run 48 dd's (one for each disk), assigning them to cores not dealing with interrupts like so: taskset -c somecore dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/mapper/mpathx oflag=direct bs=128M oflag=direct prevents any kind of buffer cache from getting involved. None of my cores seem maxed out. The cores dealing with interrupts are mostly idle and all the other cores are waiting on I/O as one would expect. Cpu0 : 0.0%us, 1.0%sy, 0.0%ni, 91.2%id, 7.5%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.2%si, 0.0%st Cpu1 : 0.0%us, 0.8%sy, 0.0%ni, 93.0%id, 0.2%wa, 0.0%hi, 6.0%si, 0.0%st Cpu2 : 0.0%us, 0.6%sy, 0.0%ni, 94.4%id, 0.1%wa, 0.0%hi, 4.8%si, 0.0%st Cpu3 : 0.0%us, 7.5%sy, 0.0%ni, 36.3%id, 56.1%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st Cpu4 : 0.0%us, 1.3%sy, 0.0%ni, 85.7%id, 4.9%wa, 0.0%hi, 8.1%si, 0.0%st Cpu5 : 0.1%us, 5.5%sy, 0.0%ni, 36.2%id, 58.3%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st Cpu6 : 0.0%us, 5.0%sy, 0.0%ni, 36.3%id, 58.7%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st Cpu7 : 0.0%us, 5.1%sy, 0.0%ni, 36.3%id, 58.5%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st Cpu8 : 0.1%us, 8.3%sy, 0.0%ni, 27.2%id, 64.4%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st Cpu9 : 0.1%us, 7.9%sy, 0.0%ni, 36.2%id, 55.8%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st Cpu10 : 0.0%us, 7.8%sy, 0.0%ni, 36.2%id, 56.0%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st Cpu11 : 0.0%us, 7.3%sy, 0.0%ni, 36.3%id, 56.4%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st Cpu12 : 0.0%us, 5.6%sy, 0.0%ni, 33.1%id, 61.2%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st Cpu13 : 0.1%us, 5.3%sy, 0.0%ni, 36.1%id, 58.5%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st Cpu14 : 0.0%us, 4.9%sy, 0.0%ni, 36.4%id, 58.7%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st Cpu15 : 0.1%us, 5.4%sy, 0.0%ni, 36.5%id, 58.1%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st Given all this, the throughput reported by running "dstat 10" is in the range of 2200-2300 MB/sec. Given the math above I would expect something in the range of 2*1920 ~= 3600+ MB/sec. Does anybody have any idea where my missing bandwidth went? Thanks!

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• Installing nGinX Reverse Proxy on CentOS 5

  - by heavymark

  I'm trying to install nGinX as a reverse proxy on CentOS 5 with apache. The instructions to do this are here: http://wiki.mediatemple.net/w/(dv):Configure_nginx_as_reverse_proxy_web_server Note- in the instructions, for the url to get nginx I'm using the following: http://nginx.org/download/nginx-1.0.10.tar.gz Now here is my problem. After installing the required packages and running .configure I get the following: checking for OS + Linux 2.6.18-028stab094.3 x86_64 checking for C compiler ... found + using GNU C compiler + gcc version: 4.1.2 20080704 (Red Hat 4.1.2-51) checking for gcc -pipe switch ... found checking for gcc builtin atomic operations ... found checking for C99 variadic macros ... found checking for gcc variadic macros ... found checking for unistd.h ... found checking for inttypes.h ... found checking for limits.h ... found checking for sys/filio.h ... not found checking for sys/param.h ... found checking for sys/mount.h ... found checking for sys/statvfs.h ... found checking for crypt.h ... found checking for Linux specific features checking for epoll ... found checking for sendfile() ... found checking for sendfile64() ... found checking for sys/prctl.h ... found checking for prctl(PR_SET_DUMPABLE) ... found checking for sched_setaffinity() ... found checking for crypt_r() ... found checking for sys/vfs.h ... found checking for nobody group ... found checking for poll() ... found checking for /dev/poll ... not found checking for kqueue ... not found checking for crypt() ... not found checking for crypt() in libcrypt ... found checking for F_READAHEAD ... not found checking for posix_fadvise() ... found checking for O_DIRECT ... found checking for F_NOCACHE ... not found checking for directio() ... not found checking for statfs() ... found checking for statvfs() ... found checking for dlopen() ... not found checking for dlopen() in libdl ... found checking for sched_yield() ... found checking for SO_SETFIB ... not found checking for SO_ACCEPTFILTER ... not found checking for TCP_DEFER_ACCEPT ... found checking for accept4() ... not found checking for int size ... 4 bytes checking for long size ... 8 bytes checking for long long size ... 8 bytes checking for void * size ... 8 bytes checking for uint64_t ... found checking for sig_atomic_t ... found checking for sig_atomic_t size ... 4 bytes checking for socklen_t ... found checking for in_addr_t ... found checking for in_port_t ... found checking for rlim_t ... found checking for uintptr_t ... uintptr_t found checking for system endianess ... little endianess checking for size_t size ... 8 bytes checking for off_t size ... 8 bytes checking for time_t size ... 8 bytes checking for setproctitle() ... not found checking for pread() ... found checking for pwrite() ... found checking for sys_nerr ... found checking for localtime_r() ... found checking for posix_memalign() ... found checking for memalign() ... found checking for mmap(MAP_ANON|MAP_SHARED) ... found checking for mmap("/dev/zero", MAP_SHARED) ... found checking for System V shared memory ... found checking for POSIX semaphores ... not found checking for POSIX semaphores in libpthread ... found checking for struct msghdr.msg_control ... found checking for ioctl(FIONBIO) ... found checking for struct tm.tm_gmtoff ... found checking for struct dirent.d_namlen ... not found checking for struct dirent.d_type ... found checking for PCRE library ... found checking for system md library ... not found checking for system md5 library ... not found checking for OpenSSL md5 crypto library ... found checking for sha1 in system md library ... not found checking for OpenSSL sha1 crypto library ... found checking for zlib library ... found creating objs/Makefile Configuration summary + using system PCRE library + OpenSSL library is not used + md5: using system crypto library + sha1: using system crypto library + using system zlib library nginx path prefix: "/usr/local/nginx" nginx binary file: "/usr/local/nginx/sbin/nginx" nginx configuration prefix: "/usr/local/nginx/conf" nginx configuration file: "/usr/local/nginx/conf/nginx.conf" nginx pid file: "/usr/local/nginx/logs/nginx.pid" nginx error log file: "/usr/local/nginx/logs/error.log" nginx http access log file: "/usr/local/nginx/logs/access.log" nginx http client request body temporary files: "client_body_temp" nginx http proxy temporary files: "proxy_temp" nginx http fastcgi temporary files: "fastcgi_temp" nginx http uwsgi temporary files: "uwsgi_temp" nginx http scgi temporary files: "scgi_temp" It says if you get errors to stop and make sure packages are installed. I didn't get errors but as you can see I got several "not founds". Are those considered errors? If so how do I resolve that. And as noted in the link, I cannot install through yum, because it wont work with plesk then. Thanks!

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• If Nvidia Shield can stream a game via WiFi (~150-300Mbps), where is the 1-10Gbps wired streaming?

  - by Enigma

  Facts: It is surprising and uncharacteristic that a wireless game streaming solution is the *first to hit the market when a 1000mbps+ Ethernet connection would accomplish the same feat with roughly 6x the available bandwidth. 150-300mbps WiFi is in no way superior to a 1000mbps+ LAN connection aside from well wireless mobility. Throughout time, (since the internet was created) wired services have **always come first yet in this particular case, the opposite seems to be true. We had wired internet first, wired audio streaming, and wired video streaming all before their wireless counterparts. Why? Largely because the wireless bandwidth was and is inferior. Even today despite being significantly better and capable of a lot more, it is still inferior to a wired connection. Situation: Chief among these is that NVIDIA’s Shield handheld game console will be getting a microconsole-like mode, dubbed “Shield Console Mode”, that will allow the handheld to be converted into a more traditional TV-connected console. In console mode Shield can be controlled with a Bluetooth controller, and in accordance with the higher resolution of TVs will accept 1080p game streaming from a suitably equipped PC, versus 720p in handheld mode. With that said 1080p streaming will require additional bandwidth, and while 720p can be done over WiFi NVIDIA will be requiring a hardline GigE connection for 1080p streaming (note that Shield doesn’t have Ethernet, so this is presumably being done over USB). Streaming aside, in console mode Shield will also support its traditional local gaming/application functionality. - http://www.anandtech.com/show/7435/nvidia-consolidates-game-streaming-tech-under-gamestream-brand-announces-shield-console-mode ^ This is not acceptable to me for a number of reasons not to mention the ridiculousness of having a little screen+controller unit sitting there while using a secondary controller and screen instead. That kind of redundant absurdity exemplifies how wrong of a solution that is. They need a second product for this solution without the screen or controller for it to make sense... at which point your just buying a little computer that does what most other larger computers do better. While this secondary project will provide a wired connection, it still shouldn't be necessary to purchase a Shield to have this benefit. Not only this but Intel's WiDi claims game streaming support as well - wirelessly. Where is the wired streaming? All that is required, by my understanding, is the ability to decode H.264 video compression and transmit control/feedback so by any logical comparison, one (Nvidia especially) should have no difficulty in creating an application for PC's (win32/64 environment) that does the exact same thing their android app does. I have 2 video cards capable of streaming (encoding) H.264 so by right they must be capable of decoding it I would think. I should be able to stream to my second desktop or my laptop both of which by hardware comparison are superior to the Shield. I haven't found anything stating plans to allow non-shield owners to do this. Can a third party create this software or does it hinge on some limitation that only Nvidia can overcome? Reiteration of questions: Is there a technical reason (non marketing) for why Nvidia opted to bottleneck the streaming service with a wireless connection limiting the resolution to 720p and introducing intermittent video choppiness when on a wired connection one could achieve, presumably, 1080p with significantly less or zero choppiness? Is there anything limiting developers from creating a PC/Desktop application emulating the same H.264 decoding functionality that circumvents the need to get an Nvidia Shield altogether? (It is not a matter of being too cheap to support Nvidia - I have many Nvidia cards that aren't being used. One should not have to purchase specialty hardware when = hardware already exists) Same questions go for Intel Widi also. I am just utterly perplexed that there are wireless live streaming solution and yet no wired. How on earth can wireless be the goto transmission medium? Is there another solution that takes advantage of H.264 video compression allowing live streaming over a wired connection? (*) - Perhaps this isn't the first but afaik it is the first complete package. (**) - I cant back that up with hard evidence/links but someone probably could. Edit: Maybe this will be the solution I am looking for but I still find it hard to believe that they would be the first and after wireless solutions already exist. In-home Streaming You can play all your Windows and Mac games on your SteamOS machine, too. Just turn on your existing computer and run Steam as you always have - then your SteamOS machine can stream those games over your home network straight to your TV! - http://store.steampowered.com/livingroom/SteamOS/

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• What is Causing this IIS 7 Web Service Sporadic Connectivity Error?

  - by dpalau

  On sporadic occasions we receive the following error when attempting to call an .asmx web service from a .Net client application: "The underlying connection was closed: A connection that was expected to be kept alive was closed by the server. Unable to read data from the transport connection: An existing connection was forcibly closed by the remote host." By sporadic I mean that it might occur zero, once every few days, or a half-dozen times a day for some users. It will never occur for the first web service call of a user. And the subsequent (usually the same) call will always work immediately after the failure. The failures happen across a variety of methods in the service and usually happens between 15-20 seconds (according to the log) from the time of the request. Looking in the IIS site log for the particular call will show one or the other of the following windows error codes: 121: The semaphore timeout period has elapsed. 1236: The network connection was aborted by the local system. Some additional environment details: Running on internal network web farm consisting of two servers running IIS7 on Windows Server 2008 OS. These problems did not occur when running in an older IIS6 web farm of three servers running on Windows Server 2003 (and we use a single IIS6/2003 instance for our development and staging environments with no issues). EDIT: Also, all of these server instances are VMWare virtual machines, not sure if that is a surprise anymore or not. The web service is a .Net 2.0/3.5 compiled .asmx web service that has its own application pool (.Net 2.0, integrated pipeline). Only has Windows Authentication enabled. We have another web service on the farm that uses the same physical path as the primary service, the only difference being that Basic Authentication is enabled. This is used for a portion of our ERP system. Have tried using the same and different application pool - no effect on the error. This site isn't hit as often as the primary site and has never had an error. As mentioned, the error will only happen when called from the .Net client - not from other applications. The client application is always creating a new web service object for each request and setting the service credentials to System.Net.CredentialCache.DefaultCredentials. The application is either deployed locally to a client or run in a Citrix server session. Those users running in Citrix doesn't seem to experience the issue, only locally deployed clients. The Citrix servers and the web farm are located in the same physical location and are located in the same IP range (10.67.xx.xx). Locally deployed clients experiencing the error are located elsewhere (10.105.xx.xx, 10.31.xx.xx). I've checked the OS logs to see if I can see any problems but nothing really sticks out. EDIT: Actually, I myself just ran into the error a little bit ago. I decided to check out the logs again and saw that there was a Security log entry of "Audit Failure" at the 'same' time (IIS log entry at 1:39:59, event log entry at 1:39:50). Not sure if this is a coincidence or not, I'll have to check out the logs of previous errors. I'm probably grasping for straws but the details: Log Name: Security Source: Microsoft-Windows-Security-Auditing Date: 7/8/2009 1:39:50 PM Event ID: 5159 Task Category: Filtering Platform Connection Level: Information Keywords: Audit Failure User: N/A Computer: is071019.<**.net Description: The Windows Filtering Platform has blocked a bind to a local port. Application Information: Process ID: 1260 Application Name: \device\harddiskvolume1\windows\system32\svchost.exe Network Information: Source Address: 0.0.0.0 Source Port: 54802 Protocol: 17 Filter Information: Filter Run-Time ID: 0 Layer Name: Resource Assignment Layer Run-Time ID: 36 I've also tried to use Failed Request Tracing in IIS7 but the service call never actually gets to where FRT can capture it (even though the failure is logged in the web service log). The network infrastructure group said they checked out the DNS and any NIC settings are correct so there is no 'flapping'. Everything pans out. I'm not sure that they checked out any domain controller servers though to see if that could be an issue. Any ideas? Or any other debugging strategies to get to the bottom of this? I'm just the developer in charge of the software and don't really have the knowledge on what to investigate from the networking side of things - although it does sound like a networking issue to me based on what is happening. Thanks in advance for any help.

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• Two network interfaces and two IP addresses on the same subnet in Linux

  - by Scott Duckworth

  I recently ran into a situation where I needed two IP addresses on the same subnet assigned to one Linux host so that we could run two SSL/TLS sites. My first approach was to use IP aliasing, e.g. using eth0:0, eth0:1, etc, but our network admins have some fairly strict settings in place for security that squashed this idea: They use DHCP snooping and normally don't allow static IP addresses. Static addressing is accomplished by using static DHCP entries, so the same MAC address always gets the same IP assignment. This feature can be disabled per switchport if you ask and you have a reason for it (thankfully I have a good relationship with the network guys and this isn't hard to do). With the DHCP snooping disabled on the switchport, they had to put in a rule on the switch that said MAC address X is allowed to have IP address Y. Unfortunately this had the side effect of also saying that MAC address X is ONLY allowed to have IP address Y. IP aliasing required that MAC address X was assigned two IP addresses, so this didn't work. There may have been a way around these issues on the switch configuration, but in an attempt to preserve good relations with the network admins I tried to find another way. Having two network interfaces seemed like the next logical step. Thankfully this Linux system is a virtual machine, so I was able to easily add a second network interface (without rebooting, I might add - pretty cool). A few keystrokes later I had two network interfaces up and running and both pulled IP addresses from DHCP. But then the problem came in: the network admins could see (on the switch) the ARP entry for both interfaces, but only the first network interface that I brought up would respond to pings or any sort of TCP or UDP traffic. After lots of digging and poking, here's what I came up with. It seems to work, but it also seems to be a lot of work for something that seems like it should be simple. Any alternate ideas out there? Step 1: Enable ARP filtering on all interfaces: # sysctl -w net.ipv4.conf.all.arp_filter=1 # echo "net.ipv4.conf.all.arp_filter = 1" >> /etc/sysctl.conf From the file networking/ip-sysctl.txt in the Linux kernel docs: arp_filter - BOOLEAN 1 - Allows you to have multiple network interfaces on the same subnet, and have the ARPs for each interface be answered based on whether or not the kernel would route a packet from the ARP'd IP out that interface (therefore you must use source based routing for this to work). In other words it allows control of which cards (usually 1) will respond to an arp request. 0 - (default) The kernel can respond to arp requests with addresses from other interfaces. This may seem wrong but it usually makes sense, because it increases the chance of successful communication. IP addresses are owned by the complete host on Linux, not by particular interfaces. Only for more complex setups like load- balancing, does this behaviour cause problems. arp_filter for the interface will be enabled if at least one of conf/{all,interface}/arp_filter is set to TRUE, it will be disabled otherwise Step 2: Implement source-based routing I basically just followed directions from http://lartc.org/howto/lartc.rpdb.multiple-links.html, although that page was written with a different goal in mind (dealing with two ISPs). Assume that the subnet is 10.0.0.0/24, the gateway is 10.0.0.1, the IP address for eth0 is 10.0.0.100, and the IP address for eth1 is 10.0.0.101. Define two new routing tables named eth0 and eth1 in /etc/iproute2/rt_tables: ... top of file omitted ... 1 eth0 2 eth1 Define the routes for these two tables: # ip route add default via 10.0.0.1 table eth0 # ip route add default via 10.0.0.1 table eth1 # ip route add 10.0.0.0/24 dev eth0 src 10.0.0.100 table eth0 # ip route add 10.0.0.0/24 dev eth1 src 10.0.0.101 table eth1 Define the rules for when to use the new routing tables: # ip rule add from 10.0.0.100 table eth0 # ip rule add from 10.0.0.101 table eth1 The main routing table was already taken care of by DHCP (and it's not even clear that its strictly necessary in this case), but it basically equates to this: # ip route add default via 10.0.0.1 dev eth0 # ip route add 130.127.48.0/23 dev eth0 src 10.0.0.100 # ip route add 130.127.48.0/23 dev eth1 src 10.0.0.101 And voila! Everything seems to work just fine. Sending pings to both IP addresses works fine. Sending pings from this system to other systems and forcing the ping to use a specific interface works fine (ping -I eth0 10.0.0.1, ping -I eth1 10.0.0.1). And most importantly, all TCP and UDP traffic to/from either IP address works as expected. So again, my question is: is there a better way to do this? This seems like a lot of work for a seemingly simple problem.

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• Why is my mdadm raid-1 recovery so slow?

  - by dimmer

  On a system I'm running Ubuntu 10.04. My raid-1 restore started out fast but quickly became ridiculously slow (at this rate the restore will take 150 days!): dimmer@paimon:~$ cat /proc/mdstat Personalities : [linear] [multipath] [raid0] [raid1] [raid6] [raid5] [raid4] [raid10] md0 : active raid1 sdc1[2] sdb1[1] 1953513408 blocks [2/1] [_U] [====>................] recovery = 24.4% (477497344/1953513408) finish=217368.0min speed=113K/sec unused devices: <none> Eventhough I have set the kernel variables to reasonably quick values: dimmer@paimon:~$ cat /proc/sys/dev/raid/speed_limit_min 1000000 dimmer@paimon:~$ cat /proc/sys/dev/raid/speed_limit_max 100000000 I am using 2 2.0TB Western Digital Hard Disks, WDC WD20EARS-00M and WDC WD20EARS-00J. I believe they have been partitioned such that their sectors are aligned. dimmer@paimon:/sys$ sudo parted /dev/sdb GNU Parted 2.2 Using /dev/sdb Welcome to GNU Parted! Type 'help' to view a list of commands. (parted) p Model: ATA WDC WD20EARS-00M (scsi) Disk /dev/sdb: 2000GB Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B Partition Table: gpt Number Start End Size File system Name Flags 1 1049kB 2000GB 2000GB ext4 (parted) unit s (parted) p Number Start End Size File system Name Flags 1 2048s 3907028991s 3907026944s ext4 (parted) q dimmer@paimon:/sys$ sudo parted /dev/sdc GNU Parted 2.2 Using /dev/sdc Welcome to GNU Parted! Type 'help' to view a list of commands. (parted) p Model: ATA WDC WD20EARS-00J (scsi) Disk /dev/sdc: 2000GB Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/4096B Partition Table: gpt Number Start End Size File system Name Flags 1 1049kB 2000GB 2000GB ext4 I am beginning to think that I have a hardware problem, otherwise I can't imagine why the mdadm restore should be so slow. I have done a benchmark on /dev/sdc using Ubuntu's disk utility GUI app, and the results looked normal so I know that sdc has the capability to write faster than this. I also had the same problem on a similar WD drive that I RMAd because of bad sectors. I suppose it's possible they sent me a replacement with bad sectors too, although there are no SMART values showing them yet. Any ideas? Thanks. As requested, output of top sorted by cpu usage (notice there is ~0 cpu usage). iowait is also zero which seems strange: top - 11:35:13 up 2 days, 9:40, 3 users, load average: 2.87, 2.58, 2.30 Tasks: 142 total, 1 running, 141 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie Cpu(s): 0.0%us, 0.2%sy, 0.0%ni, 99.8%id, 0.0%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st Mem: 3096304k total, 1482164k used, 1614140k free, 617672k buffers Swap: 1526132k total, 0k used, 1526132k free, 535416k cached PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND 45 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 2:17.02 scsi_eh_0 1 root 20 0 2808 1752 1204 S 0 0.1 0:00.46 init 2 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 kthreadd 3 root RT 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.02 migration/0 4 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.17 ksoftirqd/0 5 root RT 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 watchdog/0 6 root RT 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.02 migration/1 ... dmesg errors, definitely looking like hardware: [202884.000157] ata5.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x0 action 0x6 frozen [202884.007015] ata5.00: failed command: FLUSH CACHE EXT [202884.013728] ata5.00: cmd ea/00:00:00:00:00/00:00:00:00:00/a0 tag 0 [202884.013730] res 40/00:00:ff:59:2e/00:00:35:00:00/e0 Emask 0x4 (timeout) [202884.033667] ata5.00: status: { DRDY } [202884.040329] ata5: hard resetting link [202889.400050] ata5: link is slow to respond, please be patient (ready=0) [202894.048087] ata5: COMRESET failed (errno=-16) [202894.054663] ata5: hard resetting link [202899.412049] ata5: link is slow to respond, please be patient (ready=0) [202904.060107] ata5: COMRESET failed (errno=-16) [202904.066646] ata5: hard resetting link [202905.840056] ata5: SATA link up 3.0 Gbps (SStatus 123 SControl 300) [202905.849178] ata5.00: configured for UDMA/133 [202905.849188] ata5: EH complete [203899.000292] ata5.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x0 action 0x6 frozen [203899.007096] ata5.00: failed command: IDENTIFY DEVICE [203899.013841] ata5.00: cmd ec/00:01:00:00:00/00:00:00:00:00/00 tag 0 pio 512 in [203899.013843] res 40/00:00:ff:f9:f6/00:00:38:00:00/e0 Emask 0x4 (timeout) [203899.041232] ata5.00: status: { DRDY } [203899.048133] ata5: hard resetting link [203899.816134] ata5: SATA link up 3.0 Gbps (SStatus 123 SControl 300) [203899.826062] ata5.00: configured for UDMA/133 [203899.826079] ata5: EH complete [204375.000200] ata5.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x0 action 0x6 frozen [204375.007421] ata5.00: failed command: IDENTIFY DEVICE [204375.014799] ata5.00: cmd ec/00:01:00:00:00/00:00:00:00:00/00 tag 0 pio 512 in [204375.014800] res 40/00:00:ff:0c:0f/00:00:39:00:00/e0 Emask 0x4 (timeout) [204375.044374] ata5.00: status: { DRDY } [204375.051842] ata5: hard resetting link [204380.408049] ata5: link is slow to respond, please be patient (ready=0) [204384.440076] ata5: SATA link up 3.0 Gbps (SStatus 123 SControl 300) [204384.449938] ata5.00: configured for UDMA/133 [204384.449955] ata5: EH complete [204395.988135] ata5.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x0 action 0x6 frozen [204395.988140] ata5.00: failed command: IDENTIFY DEVICE [204395.988147] ata5.00: cmd ec/00:01:00:00:00/00:00:00:00:00/00 tag 0 pio 512 in [204395.988149] res 40/00:00:ff:0c:0f/00:00:39:00:00/e0 Emask 0x4 (timeout) [204395.988151] ata5.00: status: { DRDY } [204395.988156] ata5: hard resetting link [204399.320075] ata5: SATA link up 3.0 Gbps (SStatus 123 SControl 300) [204399.330487] ata5.00: configured for UDMA/133 [204399.330503] ata5: EH complete

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• Bridging LXC containers to host eth0 so they can have a public IP

  - by Vianney Stroebel

  UPDATE: I found the solution there: http://www.linuxfoundation.org/collaborate/workgroups/networking/bridge#No_traffic_gets_trough_.28except_ARP_and_STP.29 # cd /proc/sys/net/bridge # ls bridge-nf-call-arptables bridge-nf-call-iptables bridge-nf-call-ip6tables bridge-nf-filter-vlan-tagged # for f in bridge-nf-*; do echo 0 $f; done But I'd like to have expert opinions on this: is it safe to disable all bridge-nf-*? What are they here for? END OF UPDATE I need to bridge LXC containers to the physical interface (eth0) of my host, reading numerous tutorials, documents and blog posts on the subject. I need the containers to have their own public IP (which I've previously done KVM/libvirt). After two days of searching and trying, I still can't make it work with LXC containers. The host runs a freshly installed Ubuntu Server Quantal (12.10) with only libvirt (which I'm not using here) and lxc installed. I created the containers with : lxc-create -t ubuntu -n mycontainer So they also run Ubuntu 12.10. Content of /var/lib/lxc/mycontainer/config is: lxc.utsname = mycontainer lxc.mount = /var/lib/lxc/test/fstab lxc.rootfs = /var/lib/lxc/test/rootfs lxc.network.type = veth lxc.network.flags = up lxc.network.link = br0 lxc.network.name = eth0 lxc.network.veth.pair = vethmycontainer lxc.network.ipv4 = 179.43.46.233 lxc.network.hwaddr= 02:00:00:86:5b:11 lxc.devttydir = lxc lxc.tty = 4 lxc.pts = 1024 lxc.arch = amd64 lxc.cap.drop = sys_module mac_admin mac_override lxc.pivotdir = lxc_putold # uncomment the next line to run the container unconfined: #lxc.aa_profile = unconfined lxc.cgroup.devices.deny = a # Allow any mknod (but not using the node) lxc.cgroup.devices.allow = c *:* m lxc.cgroup.devices.allow = b *:* m # /dev/null and zero lxc.cgroup.devices.allow = c 1:3 rwm lxc.cgroup.devices.allow = c 1:5 rwm # consoles lxc.cgroup.devices.allow = c 5:1 rwm lxc.cgroup.devices.allow = c 5:0 rwm #lxc.cgroup.devices.allow = c 4:0 rwm #lxc.cgroup.devices.allow = c 4:1 rwm # /dev/{,u}random lxc.cgroup.devices.allow = c 1:9 rwm lxc.cgroup.devices.allow = c 1:8 rwm lxc.cgroup.devices.allow = c 136:* rwm lxc.cgroup.devices.allow = c 5:2 rwm # rtc lxc.cgroup.devices.allow = c 254:0 rwm #fuse lxc.cgroup.devices.allow = c 10:229 rwm #tun lxc.cgroup.devices.allow = c 10:200 rwm #full lxc.cgroup.devices.allow = c 1:7 rwm #hpet lxc.cgroup.devices.allow = c 10:228 rwm #kvm lxc.cgroup.devices.allow = c 10:232 rwm Then I changed my host /etc/network/interfaces to: auto lo iface lo inet loopback auto br0 iface br0 inet static bridge_ports eth0 bridge_fd 0 address 92.281.86.226 netmask 255.255.255.0 network 92.281.86.0 broadcast 92.281.86.255 gateway 92.281.86.254 dns-nameservers 213.186.33.99 dns-search ovh.net When I try command line configuration ("brctl addif", "ifconfig eth0", etc.) my remote host becomes inaccessible and I have to hard reboot it. I changed the content of /var/lib/lxc/mycontainer/rootfs/etc/network/interfaces to: auto lo iface lo inet loopback auto eth0 iface eth0 inet static address 179.43.46.233 netmask 255.255.255.255 broadcast 178.33.40.233 gateway 92.281.86.254 It takes several minutes for mycontainer to start (lxc-start -n mycontainer). I tried replacing gateway 92.281.86.254 by : post-up route add 92.281.86.254 dev eth0 post-up route add default gw 92.281.86.254 post-down route del 92.281.86.254 dev eth0 post-down route del default gw 92.281.86.254 My container then starts instantly. But whatever configuration I set in /var/lib/lxc/mycontainer/rootfs/etc/network/interfaces, I cannot ping from mycontainer to any IP (including the host's) : ubuntu@mycontainer:~$ ping 92.281.86.226 PING 92.281.86.226 (92.281.86.226) 56(84) bytes of data. ^C --- 92.281.86.226 ping statistics --- 6 packets transmitted, 0 received, 100% packet loss, time 5031ms And my host cannot ping the container: root@host:~# ping 179.43.46.233 PING 179.43.46.233 (179.43.46.233) 56(84) bytes of data. ^C --- 179.43.46.233 ping statistics --- 5 packets transmitted, 0 received, 100% packet loss, time 4000ms My container's ifconfig: ubuntu@mycontainer:~$ ifconfig eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 02:00:00:86:5b:11 inet addr:179.43.46.233 Bcast:255.255.255.255 Mask:0.0.0.0 inet6 addr: fe80::ff:fe79:5a31/64 Scope:Link UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:64 errors:0 dropped:6 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:54 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 RX bytes:4070 (4.0 KB) TX bytes:4168 (4.1 KB) lo Link encap:Local Loopback inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0 inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1 RX packets:32 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:32 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 RX bytes:2496 (2.4 KB) TX bytes:2496 (2.4 KB) My host's ifconfig: root@host:~# ifconfig br0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 4c:72:b9:43:65:2b inet addr:92.281.86.226 Bcast:91.121.67.255 Mask:255.255.255.0 inet6 addr: fe80::4e72:b9ff:fe43:652b/64 Scope:Link UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:1453 errors:0 dropped:18 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:1630 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 RX bytes:145125 (145.1 KB) TX bytes:299943 (299.9 KB) eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 4c:72:b9:43:65:2b UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:3178 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:1637 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 RX bytes:298263 (298.2 KB) TX bytes:309167 (309.1 KB) Interrupt:20 Memory:fe500000-fe520000 lo Link encap:Local Loopback inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0 inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1 RX packets:6 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:6 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 RX bytes:300 (300.0 B) TX bytes:300 (300.0 B) vethtest Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr fe:0d:7f:3e:70:88 inet6 addr: fe80::fc0d:7fff:fe3e:7088/64 Scope:Link UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:54 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:67 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 RX bytes:4168 (4.1 KB) TX bytes:4250 (4.2 KB) virbr0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr de:49:c5:66:cf:84 inet addr:192.168.122.1 Bcast:192.168.122.255 Mask:255.255.255.0 UP BROADCAST MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 RX bytes:0 (0.0 B) TX bytes:0 (0.0 B) I have disabled lxcbr0 (USE_LXC_BRIDGE="false" in /etc/default/lxc). root@host:~# brctl show bridge name bridge id STP enabled interfaces br0 8000.4c72b943652b no eth0 vethtest I have configured the IP 179.43.46.233 to point to 02:00:00:86:5b:11 in my hosting provider (OVH) config panel. (The IPs in this post are not the real ones.) Thanks for reading this long question! :-) Vianney

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• Cisco: unable to negotiate IP using IPCP with Windows server

  - by lnk

  I am connecting to Windows server using PPP (for vpn), I establish connection but server does not respond me for my address requests: *Mar 23 00:40:06.055: Vi1 MS-CHAP-V2: I CHALLENGE id 0 len 25 from "MSDC" *Mar 23 00:40:06.063: Vi1 MS CHAP V2: Using hostname from interface CHAP *Mar 23 00:40:06.063: Vi1 MS CHAP V2: Using password from interface CHAP *Mar 23 00:40:06.067: Vi1 MS-CHAP-V2: O RESPONSE id 0 len 69 from "XXX" *Mar 23 00:40:06.087: Vi1 PPP: I pkt type 0xC223, datagramsize 50 link[ppp] *Mar 23 00:40:06.087: Vi1 MS-CHAP-V2: I SUCCESS id 0 len 46 msg is "S=XXX" *Mar 23 00:40:06.087: Vi1 MS CHAP V2 No Password found for : XXX *Mar 23 00:40:06.091: Vi1 MS CHAP V2 Check AuthenticatorResponse Success for : XXX *Mar 23 00:40:06.091: Vi1 IPCP: O CONFREQ [Closed] id 1 len 20 *Mar 23 00:40:06.091: Vi1 IPCP: VSO OUI 0x00000C kind 1 (0x000A00000C0100000000) *Mar 23 00:40:06.091: Vi1 IPCP: Address 0.0.0.0 (0x030600000000) *Mar 23 00:40:07.091: %LINEPROTO-5-UPDOWN: Line protocol on Interface Virtual-Access1, changed state to up *Mar 23 00:40:07.091: Vi1 LCP: O ECHOREQ [Open] id 1 len 12 magic 0x194CAFCF *Mar 23 00:40:07.103: Vi1 LCP-FS: I ECHOREP [Open] id 1 len 12 magic 0x361B62E5 *Mar 23 00:40:07.103: Vi1 LCP-FS: Received id 1, sent id 1, line up *Mar 23 00:40:08.083: Vi1 IPCP: TIMEout: State REQsent *Mar 23 00:40:08.083: Vi1 IPCP: O CONFREQ [REQsent] id 2 len 20 *Mar 23 00:40:08.083: Vi1 IPCP: VSO OUI 0x00000C kind 1 (0x000A00000C0100000000) *Mar 23 00:40:08.083: Vi1 IPCP: Address 0.0.0.0 (0x030600000000) *Mar 23 00:40:10.099: Vi1 IPCP: TIMEout: State REQsent *Mar 23 00:40:10.099: Vi1 IPCP: O CONFREQ [REQsent] id 3 len 20 *Mar 23 00:40:10.099: Vi1 IPCP: VSO OUI 0x00000C kind 1 (0x000A00000C0100000000) *Mar 23 00:40:10.099: Vi1 IPCP: Address 0.0.0.0 (0x030600000000) *Mar 23 00:40:12.115: Vi1 IPCP: TIMEout: State REQsent *Mar 23 00:40:12.115: Vi1 IPCP: O CONFREQ [REQsent] id 4 len 20 *Mar 23 00:40:12.115: Vi1 IPCP: VSO OUI 0x00000C kind 1 (0x000A00000C0100000000) *Mar 23 00:40:12.115: Vi1 IPCP: Address 0.0.0.0 (0x030600000000) *Mar 23 00:40:12.211: Vi1 LCP: O ECHOREQ [Open] id 2 len 12 magic 0x194CAFCF *Mar 23 00:40:12.219: Vi1 LCP-FS: I ECHOREP [Open] id 2 len 12 magic 0x361B62E5 *Mar 23 00:40:12.219: Vi1 LCP-FS: Received id 2, sent id 2, line up *Mar 23 00:40:14.131: Vi1 IPCP: TIMEout: State REQsent *Mar 23 00:40:14.131: Vi1 IPCP: O CONFREQ [REQsent] id 5 len 20 *Mar 23 00:40:14.131: Vi1 IPCP: VSO OUI 0x00000C kind 1 (0x000A00000C0100000000) *Mar 23 00:40:14.131: Vi1 IPCP: Address 0.0.0.0 (0x030600000000) *Mar 23 00:40:16.147: Vi1 IPCP: TIMEout: State REQsent *Mar 23 00:40:16.147: Vi1 IPCP: O CONFREQ [REQsent] id 6 len 20 *Mar 23 00:40:16.147: Vi1 IPCP: VSO OUI 0x00000C kind 1 (0x000A00000C0100000000) *Mar 23 00:40:16.147: Vi1 IPCP: Address 0.0.0.0 (0x030600000000) *Mar 23 00:40:17.331: Vi1 LCP: O ECHOREQ [Open] id 3 len 12 magic 0x194CAFCF *Mar 23 00:40:17.343: Vi1 LCP-FS: I ECHOREP [Open] id 3 len 12 magic 0x361B62E5 *Mar 23 00:40:17.343: Vi1 LCP-FS: Received id 3, sent id 3, line up You see: My router asks for address, but only keepalives are on line. But the same server works with windows client!! ! version 12.4 no service pad service timestamps debug datetime msec service timestamps log datetime msec no service password-encryption service internal ! hostname Router ! boot-start-marker boot-end-marker ! ! no aaa new-model ! resource policy ! ip subnet-zero ! ! ip cef vpdn enable ! vpdn-group pptp request-dialin protocol pptp pool-member 1 initiate-to ip XXXX ! ! ! ! ! ! ! bridge irb ! ! interface ATM0 no ip address shutdown no atm ilmi-keepalive dsl operating-mode auto ! interface FastEthernet0 ! interface FastEthernet1 ! interface FastEthernet2 ! interface FastEthernet3 ! interface Dot11Radio0 no ip address shutdown speed basic-1.0 basic-2.0 basic-5.5 6.0 9.0 basic-11.0 12.0 18.0 24.0 36.0 48.0 54.0 station-role root ! interface Vlan1 no ip address bridge-group 1 ! interface Dialer0 ip address negotiated encapsulation ppp dialer pool 1 dialer idle-timeout 0 dialer string XXX dialer persistent dialer vpdn dialer-group 1 keepalive 5 3 no cdp enable ppp authentication ms-chap-v2 optional ppp eap refuse ppp chap hostname XXX ppp chap password 0 XXX ppp ipcp mask request ppp ipcp ignore-map ppp ipcp address accept ! interface BVI1 mac-address XXX.XXX.XXX ip address dhcp ! ip classless ip route 172.0.0.0 255.0.0.0 Dialer0 ! no ip http server no ip http secure-server ! dialer-list 1 protocol ip permit ! control-plane ! bridge 1 protocol vlan-bridge bridge 1 route ip ! line con 0 no modem enable line aux 0 line vty 0 4 login ! scheduler max-task-time 5000 end

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• a friendly elaboratation on how iceweasel misses as recent request was discovered in post tut

  - by v3x3n

  I would like to specify what you asked about in how iceweasel misses on in hopes that you are interested in considering the answer to be valid considering the package should run efficient to a novice user especially when getting a first impression on a new software, browser, or package they are given by default. First let me say that I am very grateful for all debian has and continues to do for its user base and I am not complaining, only hoping that in mentioning such it will eventually aid in improving the disappointing experience iceweasel gave me in multiple ways right from the start of using it. I am sure tremendous amounts of hard work went into making it work as well as it does, and tremendous effort continues to go into IW like the rest of the package and distros such as this... Having said that, I do aim to keep my examples simple as possible but also explained in enough detail as to not leave out important info to get a full idea of my issue... (Thanks for understanding if I sound novice to debian, I am but continue to learn and advance by trial and error each day, and of course the wonderful help from all the great minds available here and there)... Well, my bone to pick (unfortunately as I disdain being a complainer when so much has been done for us, the end user) with IW is mainly 3 immediately noticed problems in offering me a smooth test drive (completely normal browsing conduct of your average user, I should indicate) as soon as I started out a task using IW (heading directly to google images and searched for a few web sized images, then saved a few (no more than 800 to 900 in dimensions, typically a normal procedure I would imagine) I experienced a horrendous reoccurring freeze and lag time that almost left me to kill the process more than once on each attempt and continued to compound so that by a few attempts later, even 1 single image save locked up the entire browser, ultimately giving up on my procedure in its simplicity with a bit of aggravation, if there was something I had done wrong on my end pre-attempt or during installation. Secondly, visiting video player sites in this case youtube will not allow for any video feed to play whatsoever and again, experienced a slight freezing that eventually dissipated as long as I didn't attempt to press play or reload another video trial... Very annoying and possibly related to my first issue (which could rely on my own lack of knowledge in setup config, but that troubles me if so).... Lastly as another user has stated already, in which brought you to ask them what exactly seemed to be the problem in the first place is also my final straw that broke the weasel's back, leading me here to find a solution to a updated version of firefox... being that iceweasel (an apparent build of firefox 17.x.x) leaving the user to find themselves out of luck when installing their favorite or much useful add-ons or plugins that aid their task or normal usage online.... As the other user clearly stated... there is almost zero options and barely any luck to find compatible plugins with such an outdated version still being used... I can only imagine if as a novoice or standard user to linux... and beginner to debian (which I am all for btw!) if I am discovering major conductivity issues which hinder normal user conduct right off the bat... that there is probably a bundle or more of security vulnerabilities that would unravel to me if I continued to give mr Hommey's package any further attention, or interest in continuing to use... This is a deal breaker on any account, unless all 3 of these issues stated are due to a very n00berish setting or lack thereof (which if that is the case, such was not properly stated for beginner in any place available by following installation tutorials such as LVM installers, which I felt lacked a clear understanding to someone who is trying to learn why and how, rather than, a fix to a potentially broken out of box installation... I really think that is irrelevant in any case however, as there is much step by step support regarding that kind of thing, just saying... its very challenging, along side a job to keep deadlines on, and the need to learn a better and more costomizible system, that was not as popularized when I became a dev via windows (OK OK I know thats a huge mistake and now I am way off original topic but anyway) Thanks very much for taking the time to read over this, and I hope it honestly gives you a few good and valid reasons for users wanting and seeking a way to get around iceweasel altogether... Finally, if I am missing something vital that renders all I've stated invalid or useless, please feel free to shove that elephant in the room my direction! Thanks for all you do, as I am sure it is very useful and dedicated, being you are a debian maintainer, and super user! Much love for intelligence, freedom and sharing the secrets of the web! May it remain unregulated and a good place to grow and learn for generations to come! Stay true! Take care now! -v3x (v3x @ gmx .com)

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• Most secure way to access my home Linux server while I am on the road? Specialized solution wanted

  - by Ace Paus

  I think many people may be in my situation. I travel on business with a laptop. And I need secure access to files from the office (which in my case is my home). The short version of my question: How can I make SSH/SFTP really secure when only one person needs to connect to the server from one laptop? In this situation, what special steps would make it almost impossible for anyone else to get online access to the server? A lot more details: I use Ubuntu Linux on both my laptop (KDE) and my home/office server. Connectivity is not a problem. I can tether to my phone's connection if needed. I need access to a large number of files (around 300 GB). I don't need all of them at once, but I don't know in advance which files I might need. These files contain confidential client info and personal info such as credit card numbers, so they must be secure. Given this, I don't want store all these files on Dropbox or Amazon AWS, or similar. I couldn't justify that cost anyway (Dropbox don't even publish prices for plans above 100 GB, and security is a concern). However, I am willing to spend some money on a proper solution. A VPN service, for example, might be part of the solution? Or other commercial services? I've heard about PogoPlug, but I don't know if there is a similar service that might address my security concerns? I could copy all my files to my laptop because it has the space. But then I have to sync between my home computer and my laptop and I found in the past that I'm not very good about doing this. And if my laptop is lost or stolen, my data would be on it. The laptop drive is an SSD and encryption solutions for SSD drives are not good. Therefore, it seems best to keep all my data on my Linux file server (which is safe at home). Is that a reasonable conclusion, or is anything connected to the Internet such a risk that I should just copy the data to the laptop (and maybe replace the SSD with an HDD, which reduces battery life and performance)? I view the risks of losing a laptop to be higher. I am not an obvious hacking target online. My home broadband is cable Internet, and it seems very reliable. So I want to know the best (reasonable) way to securely access my data (from my laptop) while on the road. I only need to access it from this one computer, although I may connect from either my phone's 3G/4G or via WiFi or some client's broadband, etc. So I won't know in advance which IP address I'll have. I am leaning toward a solution based on SSH and SFTP (or similar). SSH/SFTP would provided about all the functionality I anticipate needing. I would like to use SFTP and Dolphin to browse and download files. I'll use SSH and the terminal for anything else. My Linux file server is set up with OpenSSH. I think I have SSH relatively secured. I'm using Denyhosts too. But I want to go several steps further. I want to get the chances that anyone can get into my server as close to zero as possible while still allowing me to get access from the road. I'm not a sysadmin or programmer or real "superuser". I have to spend most of my time doing other things. I've heard about "port knocking" but I have never used it and I don't know how to implement it (although I'm willing to learn). I have already read a number of articles with titles such as: Top 20 OpenSSH Server Best Security Practices 20 Linux Server Hardening Security Tips Debian Linux Stop SSH User Hacking / Cracking Attacks with DenyHosts Software more... I have not implemented every single thing I've read about. I probably can't do that. But maybe there is something even better I can do in my situation because I only need access from a single laptop. I'm just one user. My server does not need to be accessible to the general public. Given all these facts, I'm hoping I can get some suggestions here that are within my capability to implement and that leverage these facts to create a great deal better security than general purpose suggestions in the articles above.

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