Search Results

Search found 6068 results on 243 pages for 'goal tracking'.

Page 215/243 | < Previous Page | 211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222  | Next Page >

• 7 Steps To Cut Recruiting Costs & Drive Exceptional Business Results

  - by Oracle Accelerate for Midsize Companies

  By Steve Viarengo, Vice President Product Management, Oracle Taleo Cloud Services  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 In good times, trimming operational costs is an ongoing goal. In tough times, it’s a necessity. In both good times and bad, however, recruiting occurs. Growth increases headcount in good times, and opportunistic or replacement hiring occurs in slow business cycles. By employing creative recruiting strategies in tandem with the latest technology developments, you can reduce recruiting costs while driving exceptional business results. Here are some critical areas to focus on. 1.  Target Direct Cost Savings Total recruiting process expenses are the sum of external costs plus internal labor costs. Most organizations can reduce recruiting expenses with direct cost savings. While additional savings on indirect costs can be realized from process improvement and efficiency gains, there are direct cost savings and benefits readily available in three broad areas: sourcing, assessments, and green recruiting. 2. Sourcing: Reduce Agency Costs Agency search firm fees can amount to 35 percent of a new employee’s annual base salary. Typically taken from the hiring department budget, these fees may not be visible to HR. By relying on internal mobility programs, referrals, candidate pipelines, and corporate career Websites, organizations can reduce or eliminate this agency spend. And when you do have to pay third-party agency fees, you can optimize the value you receive by collaborating with agencies to identify referred candidates, ensure access to candidate data and history, and receive automatic notifications and correspondence. 3. Sourcing: Reduce Advertising Costs You can realize significant cost reductions by placing all job positions on your corporate career Website. This will allow you to reap a substantial number of candidates at minimal cost compared to job boards and other sourcing options. 4.  Sourcing: Internal Talent Pool Internal talent pools provide a way to reduce sourcing and advertising costs while delivering improved productivity and retention. Internal redeployment reduces costs and ramp-up time while increasing retention and employee satisfaction. 5.  Sourcing: External Talent Pool Strategic recruiting requires identifying and matching people with a given set of skills to a particular job while efficiently allocating sourcing expenditures. By using an e-recruiting system (which drives external talent pool management) with a candidate relationship database, you can automate prescreening and candidate matching while communicating with targeted candidates. Candidate relationship management can lower sourcing costs by marketing new job opportunities to candidates sourced in the past. By mining the talent pool in this fashion, you eliminate the need to source a new pool of candidates for each new requisition. Managing and mining the corporate candidate database can reduce the sourcing cost per candidate by as much as 50 percent. 6.  Assessments: Reduce Turnover Costs By taking advantage of assessments during the recruitment process, you can achieve a range of benefits, including better productivity, superior candidate performance, and lower turnover (providing considerable savings). Assessments also save recruiter and hiring manager time by focusing on a short list of qualified candidates. Hired for fit, such candidates tend to stay with the organization and produce quality work—ultimately driving revenue.  7. Green Recruiting: Reduce Paper and Processing Costs You can reduce recruiting costs by automating the process—and making it green. A paperless process informs candidates that you’re dedicated to green recruiting. It also leads to direct cost savings. E-recruiting reduces energy use and pollution associated with manufacturing, transporting, and recycling paper products. And process automation saves energy in mailing, storage, handling, filing, and reporting tasks. Direct cost savings come from reduced paperwork related to résumés, advertising, and onboarding. Improving the recruiting process through sourcing, assessments, and green recruiting not only saves costs. It also positions the company to improve the talent base during the recession while retaining the ability to grow appropriately in recovery. /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";} Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";}

  Read the article

• Breaking 1NF to model subset constraints. Does this sound sane?

  - by Chris Travers

  My first question here. Appologize if it is in the wrong forum but this seems pretty conceptual. I am looking at doing something that goes against conventional wisdom and want to get some feedback as to whether this is totally insane or will result in problems, so critique away! I am on PostgreSQL 9.1 but may be moving to 9.2 for this part of this project. To re-iterate: Does it seem sane to break 1NF in this way? I am not looking for debugging code so much as where people see problems that this might lead. The Problem In double entry accounting, financial transactions are journal entries with an arbitrary number of lines. Each line has either a left value (debit) or a right value (credit) which can be modelled as a single value with negatives as debits and positives as credits or vice versa. The sum of all debits and credits must equal zero (so if we go with a single amount field, sum(amount) must equal zero for each financial journal entry). SQL-based databases, pretty much required for this sort of work, have no way to express this sort of constraint natively and so any approach to enforcing it in the database seems rather complex. The Write Model The journal entries are append only. There is a possibility we will add a delete model but it will be subject to a different set of restrictions and so is not applicable here. If and when we allow deletes, we will probably do them using a simple ON DELETE CASCADE designation on the foreign key, and require that deletes go through a dedicated stored procedure which can enforce the other constraints. So inserts and selects have to be accommodated but updates and deletes do not for this task. My Proposed Solution My proposed solution is to break first normal form and model constraints on arrays of tuples, with a trigger that breaks the rows out into another table. CREATE TABLE journal_line ( entry_id bigserial primary key, account_id int not null references account(id), journal_entry_id bigint not null, -- adding references later amount numeric not null ); I would then add "table methods" to extract debits and credits for reporting purposes: CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION debits(journal_line) RETURNS numeric LANGUAGE sql IMMUTABLE AS $$ SELECT CASE WHEN $1.amount < 0 THEN $1.amount * -1 ELSE NULL END; $$; CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION credits(journal_line) RETURNS numeric LANGUAGE sql IMMUTABLE AS $$ SELECT CASE WHEN $1.amount > 0 THEN $1.amount ELSE NULL END; $$; Then the journal entry table (simplified for this example): CREATE TABLE journal_entry ( entry_id bigserial primary key, -- no natural keys :-( journal_id int not null references journal(id), date_posted date not null, reference text not null, description text not null, journal_lines journal_line[] not null ); Then a table method and and check constraints: CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION running_total(journal_entry) returns numeric language sql immutable as $$ SELECT sum(amount) FROM unnest($1.journal_lines); $$; ALTER TABLE journal_entry ADD CONSTRAINT CHECK (((journal_entry.running_total) = 0)); ALTER TABLE journal_line ADD FOREIGN KEY journal_entry_id REFERENCES journal_entry(entry_id); And finally we'd have a breakout trigger: CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION je_breakout() RETURNS TRIGGER LANGUAGE PLPGSQL AS $$ BEGIN IF TG_OP = 'INSERT' THEN INSERT INTO journal_line (journal_entry_id, account_id, amount) SELECT NEW.id, account_id, amount FROM unnest(NEW.journal_lines); RETURN NEW; ELSE RAISE EXCEPTION 'Operation Not Allowed'; END IF; END; $$; And finally CREATE TRIGGER AFTER INSERT OR UPDATE OR DELETE ON journal_entry FOR EACH ROW EXECUTE_PROCEDURE je_breaout(); Of course the example above is simplified. There will be a status table that will track approval status allowing for separation of duties, etc. However the goal here is to prevent unbalanced transactions. Any feedback? Does this sound entirely insane? Standard Solutions? In getting to this point I have to say I have looked at four different current ERP solutions to this problems: Represent every line item as a debit and a credit against different accounts. Use of foreign keys against the line item table to enforce an eventual running total of 0 Use of constraint triggers in PostgreSQL Forcing all validation here solely through the app logic. My concerns are that #1 is pretty limiting and very hard to audit internally. It's not programmer transparent and so it strikes me as being difficult to work with in the future. The second strikes me as being very complex and required a series of contraints and foreign keys against self to make work, and therefore it strikes me as complex, hard to sort out at least in my mind, and thus hard to work with. The fourth could be done as we force all access through stored procedures anyway and this is the most common solution (have the app total things up and throw an error otherwise). However, I think proof that a constraint is followed is superior to test cases, and so the question becomes whether this in fact generates insert anomilies rather than solving them. If this is a solved problem it isn't the case that everyone agrees on the solution....

  Read the article

• How to Control Screen Layouts in LightSwitch

  - by ChrisD

  Visual Studio LightSwitch has a bunch of screen templates that you can use to quickly generate screens. They give you good starting points that you can customize further. When you add a new screen to your project you see a set of screen templates that you can choose from. These templates lay out all the related data you choose to put on a screen automatically for you. And don’t under estimate them; they do a great job of laying out controls in a smart way. For instance, a tab control will be used when you select more than one related set of data to display on a screen. However, you’re not limited to taking the layout as is. In fact, the screen designer is pretty flexible and allows you to create stacks of controls in a variety of configurations. You just need to visualize your screen as a series of containers that you can lay out in rows and columns. You then place controls or stacks of controls into these areas to align the screen exactly how you want. If you’re new in Visual Studio LightSwitch, you can see this tutorial. OK, Let’s start with a simple example. I have already designed my data entities for a simple order tracking system similar to the Northwind database. I also have added a Search Data  Screen to search my Products already. Now I will add a new Details Screen for my Products and make it the default screen via the “Add New Screen” dialog: The screen designer picks a simple layout for me based on the single entity I chose, in this case Product. Hit F5 to run the application, select a Product on the search screen to open the Product Details Screen. Notice that it’s pretty simple because my entity is simple. Click the “Customize” button in the top right of the screen so we can start tweaking it. The left side of the screen shows the containership of controls and data bindings (called the content tree) and the right side shows the live preview with data. Notice that we have a simple layout of two rows but only one row is populated (with a vertical stack of controls in this case). The bottom row is empty. You can envision the screen like this: Each container will display a group of data that you select. For instance in the above screen, the top row is set to a vertical stack control and the group of data to display is coming from Product. So when laying out screens you need to think in terms of containers of controls bound to groups of data. To change the data to which a container is bound, select the data item next to the container: You can select the “New Group” item in order to create more containers (or controls) within the current container. For instance to totally control the layout, select the Product in the top row and hit the delete key. This will delete the vertical stack and therefore all the controls on the screen. The content tree will still have two rows, but the rows are now both empty. If you want a layout of four containers (two rows and two columns) then select “New Group” for the data item and then change the vertical stack control to “Two Columns” for both of the rows as shown here: You can keep going on and on by selecting new groups and choosing between rows or columns. Here’s a layout with 8 containers, 4 rows and 2 columns: And here is a layout with 7 content areas; one row across the top of the screen and three rows with two columns below that: When you select Choose Content and select a data item like Product it will populate all the controls within the container (row or column in a vertical stack) however you have complete control on what to display within each group. You can delete fields you don’t want to display and/or change their controls. You can also change the size of controls and how they display by changing the settings in the properties window. If you are in the Screen Designer (and not the customization mode like we are here) you can also drag-drop data items from the left-hand side of the screen to the content tree. Note, however, that not all areas of the tree will allow you to drop a data item if there is a binding already set to a different set of data. For instance you can’t drop a Customer ID into the same group as a Product if they originate from different entities. To get around this, all you need to do is create a new group and content area as shown above. Let’s take a more complex example that deals with more than just product. I want to design a complex screen that displays Products and their Category, as well as all the OrderDetails for which that product is selected. This time I will create a new screen and select List and Details, select the Products screen data, and include the related OrderDetails. However I’m going to totally change the layout so that a Product grid is at the top left and below that is the selected Product detail. Below that will be the Category text fields and image in two columns below. On the right side I want the OrderDetails grid to take up the whole right side of the screen. All this can be done in customization mode while you’re debugging the application. To do this, I first deleted all the content items in the tree and then re-created the content tree as shown in the image below. I also set the image to be larger and the description textbox to be 5 rows using the property window below the live preview. I added the green lines to indicate the containers and show how it maps to the content tree (click to enlarge): I hope this demystifies the screen designer a little bit. Remember that screen templates are excellent starting points – you can take them as-is or customize them further. It takes a little fooling around with customizing screens to get them to do exactly what you want but there are a ton of possibilities once you get the hang of it. Stay tuned for more information on how to create your own screen templates that show up in the “Add New Screen” dialog. Enjoy! The tutorial that might be interested: Adding Custom Control In LightSwitch

  Read the article

• Oracle NoSQL Database Exceeds 1 Million Mixed YCSB Ops/Sec

  - by Charles Lamb

  We ran a set of YCSB performance tests on Oracle NoSQL Database using SSD cards and Intel Xeon E5-2690 CPUs with the goal of achieving 1M mixed ops/sec on a 95% read / 5% update workload. We used the standard YCSB parameters: 13 byte keys and 1KB data size (1,102 bytes after serialization). The maximum database size was 2 billion records, or approximately 2 TB of data. We sized the shards to ensure that this was not an "in-memory" test (i.e. the data portion of the B-Trees did not fit into memory). All updates were durable and used the "simple majority" replica ack policy, effectively 'committing to the network'. All read operations used the Consistency.NONE_REQUIRED parameter allowing reads to be performed on any replica. In the past we have achieved 100K ops/sec using SSD cards on a single shard cluster (replication factor 3) so for this test we used 10 shards on 15 Storage Nodes with each SN carrying 2 Rep Nodes and each RN assigned to its own SSD card. After correcting a scaling problem in YCSB, we blew past the 1M ops/sec mark with 8 shards and proceeded to hit 1.2M ops/sec with 10 shards.  Hardware Configuration We used 15 servers, each configured with two 335 GB SSD cards. We did not have homogeneous CPUs across all 15 servers available to us so 12 of the 15 were Xeon E5-2690, 2.9 GHz, 2 sockets, 32 threads, 193 GB RAM, and the other 3 were Xeon E5-2680, 2.7 GHz, 2 sockets, 32 threads, 193 GB RAM.  There might have been some upside in having all 15 machines configured with the faster CPU, but since CPU was not the limiting factor we don't believe the improvement would be significant. The client machines were Xeon X5670, 2.93 GHz, 2 sockets, 24 threads, 96 GB RAM. Although the clients had 96 GB of RAM, neither the NoSQL Database or YCSB clients require anywhere near that amount of memory and the test could have just easily been run with much less. Networking was all 10GigE. YCSB Scaling Problem We made three modifications to the YCSB benchmark. The first was to allow the test to accommodate more than 2 billion records (effectively int's vs long's). To keep the key size constant, we changed the code to use base 32 for the user ids. The second change involved to the way we run the YCSB client in order to make the test itself horizontally scalable.The basic problem has to do with the way the YCSB test creates its Zipfian distribution of keys which is intended to model "real" loads by generating clusters of key collisions. Unfortunately, the percentage of collisions on the most contentious keys remains the same even as the number of keys in the database increases. As we scale up the load, the number of collisions on those keys increases as well, eventually exceeding the capacity of the single server used for a given key.This is not a workload that is realistic or amenable to horizontal scaling. YCSB does provide alternate key distribution algorithms so this is not a shortcoming of YCSB in general. We decided that a better model would be for the key collisions to be limited to a given YCSB client process. That way, as additional YCSB client processes (i.e. additional load) are added, they each maintain the same number of collisions they encounter themselves, but do not increase the number of collisions on a single key in the entire store. We added client processes proportionally to the number of records in the database (and therefore the number of shards). This change to the use of YCSB better models a use case where new groups of users are likely to access either just their own entries, or entries within their own subgroups, rather than all users showing the same interest in a single global collection of keys. If an application finds every user having the same likelihood of wanting to modify a single global key, that application has no real hope of getting horizontal scaling. Finally, we used read/modify/write (also known as "Compare And Set") style updates during the mixed phase. This uses versioned operations to make sure that no updates are lost. This mode of operation provides better application behavior than the way we have typically run YCSB in the past, and is only practical at scale because we eliminated the shared key collision hotspots.It is also a more realistic testing scenario. To reiterate, all updates used a simple majority replica ack policy making them durable. Scalability Results In the table below, the "KVS Size" column is the number of records with the number of shards and the replication factor. Hence, the first row indicates 400m total records in the NoSQL Database (KV Store), 2 shards, and a replication factor of 3. The "Clients" column indicates the number of YCSB client processes. "Threads" is the number of threads per process with the total number of threads. Hence, 90 threads per YCSB process for a total of 360 threads. The client processes were distributed across 10 client machines. Shards KVS Size Clients Mixed (records) Threads OverallThroughput(ops/sec) Read Latencyav/95%/99%(ms) Write Latencyav/95%/99%(ms) 2 400m(2x3) 4 90(360) 302,152 0.76/1/3 3.08/8/35 4 800m(4x3) 8 90(720) 558,569 0.79/1/4 3.82/16/45 8 1600m(8x3) 16 90(1440) 1,028,868 0.85/2/5 4.29/21/51 10 2000m(10x3) 20 90(1800) 1,244,550 0.88/2/6 4.47/23/53

  Read the article

• WEBLOGIC 12C HANDS-ON BOOTCAMP

  - by agallego

    Oracle PartnerNetwork | Account | Feedback   JOIN THE ORACLE WEBLOGIC PARTNER COMMUNITY AND ATTEND A WEBLOGIC 12C HANDS-ON BOOTCAMP Dear partner As a valued partner we would like to invite you for the WebLogic Partner Community and our WebLogic 12c hands-on Bootcamps – free of charge! Please first login at http://partner.oracle.com and then visit: WebLogic Partner Community. (If you need support with your account please contact the Oracle Partner Business Center). The goal of the WebLogic Partner Community is to provide you with the latest information on Oracle's offerings and to facilitate the exchange of experience within community members. Register Now FREE Assessment vouchers to become certified and WebLogic Server 12c 200 new Features and Training Connect and Network   WebLogic Blogs   WebLogic on Facebook   WebLogic on LinkedIn   WebLogic on Twitter   WebLogic on Oracle Mix WebLogic 12c hands-on Workshops We offer free3 days hands-on WebLogic 12c workshops for Oracle partners who want to become Application Grid Specialized: Register Here! Country Date Location Registration   Germany  3-5 April 2012 Oracle Düsseldorf Click here   France  24-26 April 2012 Oracle Colombes Click here   Spain 08-10 May 2012  Oracle Madrid  Click here   Netherlands  22-24 May 2012  Oracle Amsterdam  Click here   United Kingdom  06-08 June 2012  Oracle Reading  Click here   Italy  19-21 June 2012  Oracle Cinisello Balsamo  Click here   Portugal  10-12 July 2012  Oracle Lisbon  Click here Skill requirements Attendees need to have the following skills as this is required by the product-set and to make sure they get the most out of the training: Basic knowledge in Java and JavaEE Understanding the Application Server concept Basic knowledge in older releases of WebLogic Server would be beneficial Member of WebLogic Partner Community for registration please vist http://www.oracle.com/partners/goto/wls-emea Hardware requirements Every participant works on his own notebook. The minimal hardware requirements are: 4Gb physical RAM (we will boot the image with 2Gb RAM)  dual core CPU 15 GB HD Software requirements Please install Oracle VM VirtualBox 4.1.8 Follow-up and certification  With the workshop registration you agree to the following next steps Follow-up training attend and pass the Oracle Application Grid Certified Implementation Specialist Registration For details and registration please visit Register Here Free WebLogic Certification (Free assessment voucher to become certified) For all WebLogic experts, we offer free vouchers worth $195 for the Oracle Application Grid Certified Implementation Specialist assessment. To demonstrate your WebLogic knowledge you first have to pass the free online assessment Oracle Application Grid PreSales Specialist. For free vouchers, please send an e-mail with the screenshot of your Oracle Application Grid PreSales certirficate to [email protected] including your Name, Company, E-mail and Country. Note: This offer is limited to partners from Europe Middle East and Africa. Partners from other countries please contact your Oracle partner manager. WebLogic Specialization To become specialized in Application Grid, please make sure that you access the: Application Grid Specialization Guide Application Grid Specialization Checklist If you have any questions please contact the Oracle Partner Business Center. Oracle WebLogic Server 12c Key New Capabilities Java EE 6 and Developer Productivity Simplified Deployment and Management with Virtualization Integrated Traffic Management Enhanced High Availability and Disaster Recovery Much Higher Performance For more information please visit: Presentation from the WebLogic 12c launch Technical Presentation from the WebLogic 12c launch WebLogic OTN Website WebLogic 12c Virtual Conference Environment WebLogic Partner Community For regular information become a member in the WebLogic Partner Community please visit: http://www.oracle.com/partners/goto/wls-emea (OPN account required). If you need support with your account please contact the Oracle Partner Business Center. Best regards, Jürgen Kress WebLogic Partner Adoption EMEA Tel. +49 89 1430 1479 E-Mail: [email protected]   Copyright © 2012, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Contact PBC | Legal Notices and Terms of Use | Privacy Statement Oracle Corporation - Worldwide Headquarters, 500 Oracle Parkway, OPL - E-mail Services, Redwood Shores, CA 94065, United States Your privacy is important to us. You can login to your account to update your e-mail subscriptions or you can opt-out of all Oracle Marketing e-mails at any time. Please note that opting-out of Marketing communications does not affect your receipt of important business communications related to your current relationship with Oracle such as Security Updates, Event Registration notices, Account Management and Support/Service communications.

  Read the article

• Social Engagement: One Size Doesn't Fit Anyone

  - by Mike Stiles

  The key to achieving meaningful social engagement is to know who you’re talking to, know what they like, and consistently deliver that kind of material to them. Every magazine for women knows this. When you read the article titles promoted on their covers, there’s no mistaking for whom that magazine is intended. And yet, confusion still reigns at many brands as to exactly whom they want to talk to, what those people want to hear, and what kind of content they should be creating for them. In most instances, the root problem is brands want to be all things to all people. Their target audience…the world! Good luck with that. It’s 2012, the age of aggregation and custom content delivery. To cope with the modern day barrage of information, people have constructed technological filters so that content they regard as being “for them” is mostly what gets through. Even if your brand is for men and women, young and old, you may want to consider social properties that divide men from women, and young from old. Yes, a man might find something in a women’s magazine that interests him. But that doesn’t mean he’s going to subscribe to it, or buy even one issue. In fact he’ll probably never see the article he’d otherwise be interested in, because in his mind, “This isn’t for me.” It wasn’t packaged for him. News Flash: men and women are different. So it’s a tall order to craft your Facebook Page or Twitter handle to simultaneously exude the motivators for both. The Harris Interactive study “2012 Connecting and Communicating Online: State of Social Media” sheds light on the differing social behaviors and drivers. -65% of women (vs. 59% of men) stay glued to social because they don’t want to miss anything. -25% of women check social when they wake up, before they check email. Only 18% of men check social before e-mail. -95% of women surveyed belong to Facebook vs. 86% of men. -67% of women log in to Facebook once a day or more vs. 54% of men. -Conventional wisdom is Pinterest is mostly a woman-thing, right? That may be true for viewing, but not true for sharing. Men are actually more likely to share on Pinterest than women, 23% to 10%. -The sharing divide extends to YouTube. 68% of women use it mainly for consumption, as opposed to 52% of men. -Women are as likely to have a Twitter account as men, but they’re much less likely to check it often. 54% of women check it once a week compared to 2/3 of men. Obviously, there are some takeaways from this depending on your target. Women don’t want to miss out on anything, so serialized content might be a good idea, right? Promotional posts that lead to a big payoff could keep them hooked. Posts for women might be better served first thing in the morning. If sharing is your goal, maybe male-targeted content is more likely to get those desired shares. And maybe Twitter is a better place to aim your male-targeted content than Facebook. Some grocery stores started experimenting with male-only aisles. The results have been impressive. Why? Because while it’s true men were finding those same items in the store just fine before, now something has been created just for them. They have a place in the store where they belong. Each brand’s strategy and targets are going to differ. The point is…know who you’re talking to, know how they behave, know what they like, and deliver content using any number of social relationship management targeting tools that meets their expectations. If, however, you’re committed to a one-size-fits-all, “our content is for everybody” strategy (or even worse, a “this is what we want to put out and we expect everybody to love it” strategy), your content will miss the mark for more often than it hits. @mikestilesPhoto via stock.schng

  Read the article

• 2D isometric picking

  - by Bikonja

  I'm trying to implement picking in my isometric 2D game, however, I am failing. First of all, I've searched for a solution and came to several, different equations and even a solution using matrices. I tried implementing every single one, but none of them seem to work for me. The idea is that I have an array of tiles, with each tile having it's x and y coordinates specified (in this simplified example it's by it's position in the array). I'm thinking that the tile (0, 0) should be on the left, (max, 0) on top, (0, max) on the bottom and (max, max) on the right. I came up with this loop for drawing, which googling seems to have verified as the correct solution, as has the rendered scene (ofcourse, it could still be wrong, also, forgive the messy names and stuff, it's just a WIP proof of concept code) // Draw code int col = 0; int row = 0; for (int i = 0; i < nrOfTiles; ++i) { // XOffset and YOffset are currently hardcoded values, but will represent camera offset combined with HUD offset Point tile = IsoToScreen(col, row, TileWidth / 2, TileHeight / 2, XOffset, YOffset); int x = tile.X; int y = tile.Y; spriteBatch.Draw(_tiles[i], new Rectangle(tile.X, tile.Y, TileWidth, TileHeight), Color.White); col++; if (col >= Columns) // Columns is the number of tiles in a single row { col = 0; row++; } } // Get selection overlay location (removed check if selection exists for simplicity sake) Point tile = IsoToScreen(_selectedTile.X, _selectedTile.Y, TileWidth / 2, TileHeight / 2, XOffset, YOffset); spriteBatch.Draw(_selectionTexture, new Rectangle(tile.X, tile.Y, TileWidth, TileHeight), Color.White); // End of draw code public Point IsoToScreen(int isoX, int isoY, int widthHalf, int heightHalf, int xOffset, int yOffset) { Point newPoint = new Point(); newPoint.X = widthHalf * (isoX + isoY) + xOffset; newPoint.Y = heightHalf * (-isoX + isoY) + yOffset; return newPoint; } This code draws the tiles correctly. Now I wanted to do picking to select the tiles. For this, I tried coming up with equations of my own (including reversing the drawing equation) and I tried multiple solutions I found on the internet and none of these solutions worked. Trying out lots of solutions, I came upon one that didn't work, but it seemed like an axis was just inverted. I fiddled around with the equations and somehow managed to get it to actually work (but have no idea why it works), but while it's close, it still doesn't work. I'm not really sure how to describe the behaviour, but it changes the selection at wrong places, while being fairly close (sometimes spot on, sometimes a tile off, I believe never more off than the adjacent tile). This is the code I have for getting which tile coordinates are selected: public Point? ScreenToIso(int screenX, int screenY, int tileHeight, int offsetX, int offsetY) { Point? newPoint = null; int nX = -1; int nY = -1; int tX = screenX - offsetX; int tY = screenY - offsetY; nX = -(tY - tX / 2) / tileHeight; nY = (tY + tX / 2) / tileHeight; newPoint = new Point(nX, nY); return newPoint; } I have no idea why this code is so close, especially considering it doesn't even use the tile width and all my attempts to write an equation myself or use a solution I googled failed. Also, I don't think this code accounts for the area outside the "tile" (the transparent part of the tile image), for which I intend to add a color map, but even if that's true, it's not the problem as the selection sometimes switches on approx 25% or 75% of width or height. I'm thinking I've stumbled upon a wrong path and need to backtrack, but at this point, I'm not sure what to do so I hope someone can shed some light on my error or point me to the right path. It may be worth mentioning that my goal is to not only pick the tile. Each main tile will be divided into 5x5 smaller tiles which won't be drawn seperately from the whole main tile, but they will need to be picked out. I think a color map of a main tile with different colors for different coordinates within the main tile should take care of that though, which would fall within using a color map for the main tile (for the transparent parts of the tile, meaning parts that possibly belong to other tiles).

  Read the article

• SQL Server - Rebuilding Indexes

  - by Renso

  Goal: Rebuild indexes in SQL server. This can be done one at a time or with the example script below to rebuild all index for a specified table or for all tables in a given database. Why? The data in indexes gets fragmented over time. That means that as the index grows, the newly added rows to the index are physically stored in other sections of the allocated database storage space. Kind of like when you load your Christmas shopping into the trunk of your car and it is full you continue to load some on the back seat, in the same way some storage buffer is created for your index but once that runs out the data is then stored in other storage space and your data in your index is no longer stored in contiguous physical pages. To access the index the database manager has to "string together" disparate fragments to create the full-index and create one contiguous set of pages for that index. Defragmentation fixes that. What does the fragmentation affect?Depending of course on how large the table is and how fragmented the data is, can cause SQL Server to perform unnecessary data reads, slowing down SQL Server’s performance.Which index to rebuild?As a rule consider that when reorganize a table's clustered index, all other non-clustered indexes on that same table will automatically be rebuilt. A table can only have one clustered index.How to rebuild all the index for one table:The DBCC DBREINDEX command will not automatically rebuild all of the indexes on a given table in a databaseHow to rebuild all indexes for all tables in a given database:USE [myDB]    -- enter your database name hereDECLARE @tableName varchar(255)DECLARE TableCursor CURSOR FORSELECT table_name FROM information_schema.tablesWHERE table_type = 'base table'OPEN TableCursorFETCH NEXT FROM TableCursor INTO @tableNameWHILE @@FETCH_STATUS = 0BEGINDBCC DBREINDEX(@tableName,' ',90)     --a fill factor of 90%FETCH NEXT FROM TableCursor INTO @tableNameENDCLOSE TableCursorDEALLOCATE TableCursorWhat does this script do?Reindexes all indexes in all tables of the given database. Each index is filled with a fill factor of 90%. While the command DBCC DBREINDEX runs and rebuilds the indexes, that the table becomes unavailable for use by your users temporarily until the rebuild has completed, so don't do this during production  hours as it will create a shared lock on the tables, although it will allow for read-only uncommitted data reads; i.e.e SELECT.What is the fill factor?Is the percentage of space on each index page for storing data when the index is created or rebuilt. It replaces the fill factor when the index was created, becoming the new default for the index and for any other nonclustered indexes rebuilt because a clustered index is rebuilt. When fillfactor is 0, DBCC DBREINDEX uses the fill factor value last specified for the index. This value is stored in the sys.indexes catalog view. If fillfactor is specified, table_name and index_name must be specified. If fillfactor is not specified, the default fill factor, 100, is used.How do I determine the level of fragmentation?Run the DBCC SHOWCONTIG command. However this requires you to specify the ID of both the table and index being. To make it a lot easier by only requiring you to specify the table name and/or index you can run this script:DECLARE@ID int,@IndexID int,@IndexName varchar(128)--Specify the table and index namesSELECT @IndexName = ‘index_name’    --name of the indexSET @ID = OBJECT_ID(‘table_name’)  -- name of the tableSELECT @IndexID = IndIDFROM sysindexesWHERE id = @ID AND name = @IndexName--Show the level of fragmentationDBCC SHOWCONTIG (@id, @IndexID)Here is an example:DBCC SHOWCONTIG scanning 'Tickets' table...Table: 'Tickets' (1829581556); index ID: 1, database ID: 13TABLE level scan performed.- Pages Scanned................................: 915- Extents Scanned..............................: 119- Extent Switches..............................: 281- Avg. Pages per Extent........................: 7.7- Scan Density [Best Count:Actual Count].......: 40.78% [115:282]- Logical Scan Fragmentation ..................: 16.28%- Extent Scan Fragmentation ...................: 99.16%- Avg. Bytes Free per Page.....................: 2457.0- Avg. Page Density (full).....................: 69.64%DBCC execution completed. If DBCC printed error messages, contact your system administrator.What's important here?The Scan Density; Ideally it should be 100%. As time goes by it drops as fragmentation occurs. When the level drops below 75%, you should consider re-indexing.Here are the results of the same table and clustered index after running the script:DBCC SHOWCONTIG scanning 'Tickets' table...Table: 'Tickets' (1829581556); index ID: 1, database ID: 13TABLE level scan performed.- Pages Scanned................................: 692- Extents Scanned..............................: 87- Extent Switches..............................: 86- Avg. Pages per Extent........................: 8.0- Scan Density [Best Count:Actual Count].......: 100.00% [87:87]- Logical Scan Fragmentation ..................: 0.00%- Extent Scan Fragmentation ...................: 22.99%- Avg. Bytes Free per Page.....................: 639.8- Avg. Page Density (full).....................: 92.10%DBCC execution completed. If DBCC printed error messages, contact your system administrator.What's different?The Scan Density has increased from 40.78% to 100%; no fragmentation on the clustered index. Note that since we rebuilt the clustered index, all other index were also rebuilt.

  Read the article

• Why Executives Need Enterprise Project Portfolio Management: 3 Key Considerations to Drive Value Across the Organization

  - by Melissa Centurio Lopes

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Cambria","serif";} By: Guy Barlow, Oracle Primavera Industry Strategy Director Over the last few years there has been a tremendous shift – some would say tectonic in nature – that has brought project management to the forefront of executive attention. Many factors have been driving this growing awareness, most notably, the global financial crisis, heightened regulatory environments and a need to more effectively operationalize corporate strategy. Executives in India are no exception. In fact, given the phenomenal rate of progress of the country, top of mind for all executives (whether in finance, operations, IT, etc.) is the need to build capacity, ramp-up production and ensure that the right resources are in place to capture growth opportunities. This applies across all industries from asset-intensive – like oil & gas, utilities and mining – to traditional manufacturing and the public sector, including services-based sectors such as the financial, telecom and life sciences segments are also part of the mix. However, compounding matters is a complex, interplay between projects – big and small, complex and simple – as companies expand and grow both domestically and internationally. So, having a standardized, enterprise wide solution for project portfolio management is natural. Failing to do so is akin to having two ERP systems, one to manage “large” invoices and one to manage “small” invoices. It makes no sense and provides no enterprise wide visibility. Therefore, it is imperative for executives to understand the full range of their business commitments, the benefit to the company, current performance and associated course corrections if needed. Irrespective of industry and regardless of the use case (e.g., building a power plant, launching a new financial service or developing a new automobile) company leaders need to approach the value of enterprise project portfolio management via 3 critical areas: Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Cambria","serif";} 1. Greater Financial Discipline – Improve financial rigor and results through better governance and control is an imperative given today’s financial uncertainty and greater investment scrutiny. For example, as India plans a US$1 trillion investment in the country’s infrastructure how do companies ensure costs are managed? How do you control cash flow? Can you easily report this to stakeholders? 2. Improved Operational Excellence – Increase efficiency and reduce costs through robust collaboration and integration. Upwards of 66% of cost variances are driven by poor supplier collaboration. As you execute initiatives do you have visibility into the performance of your supply base? How are they integrated into the broader program plan? 3. Enhanced Risk Mitigation – Manage and react to uncertainty through improved transparency and contingency planning. What happens if you’re faced with a skills shortage? How do you plan and account for geo-political or weather related events? In summary, projects are not just the delivery of a product or service to a customer inside a predetermined schedule; they often form a contractual and even moral obligation to shareholders and stakeholders alike. Hence the intimate connection between executives and projects, with the latter providing executives with the platform to demonstrate that their organization has the capabilities and competencies needed to meet and, whenever possible, exceed their customer commitments. Effectively developing and operationalizing corporate strategy is the hallmark of successful executives and enterprise project and portfolio management allows them to achieve this goal. Article was first published for Manage India, an e-newsletter, PMI India.

  Read the article

• ADF Business Components

  - by Arda Eralp

  ADF Business Components and JDeveloper simplify the development, delivery, and customization of business applications for the Java EE platform. With ADF Business Components, developers aren't required to write the application infrastructure code required by the typical Java EE application to: Connect to the database Retrieve data Lock database records Manage transactions   ADF Business Components addresses these tasks through its library of reusable software components and through the supporting design time facilities in JDeveloper. Most importantly, developers save time using ADF Business Components since the JDeveloper design time makes typical development tasks entirely declarative. In particular, JDeveloper supports declarative development with ADF Business Components to: Author and test business logic in components which automatically integrate with databases Reuse business logic through multiple SQL-based views of data, supporting different application tasks Access and update the views from browser, desktop, mobile, and web service clients Customize application functionality in layers without requiring modification of the delivered application The goal of ADF Business Components is to make the business services developer more productive.   ADF Business Components provides a foundation of Java classes that allow your business-tier application components to leverage the functionality provided in the following areas: Simplifying Data Access Design a data model for client displays, including only necessary data Include master-detail hierarchies of any complexity as part of the data model Implement end-user Query-by-Example data filtering without code Automatically coordinate data model changes with business services layer Automatically validate and save any changes to the database   Enforcing Business Domain Validation and Business Logic Declaratively enforce required fields, primary key uniqueness, data precision-scale, and foreign key references Easily capture and enforce both simple and complex business rules, programmatically or declaratively, with multilevel validation support Navigate relationships between business domain objects and enforce constraints related to compound components   Supporting Sophisticated UIs with Multipage Units of Work Automatically reflect changes made by business service application logic in the user interface Retrieve reference information from related tables, and automatically maintain the information when the user changes foreign-key values Simplify multistep web-based business transactions with automatic web-tier state management Handle images, video, sound, and documents without having to use code Synchronize pending data changes across multiple views of data Consistently apply prompts, tooltips, format masks, and error messages in any application Define custom metadata for any business components to support metadata-driven user interface or application functionality Add dynamic attributes at runtime to simplify per-row state management   Implementing High-Performance Service-Oriented Architecture Support highly functional web service interfaces for business integration without writing code Enforce best-practice interface-based programming style Simplify application security with automatic JAAS integration and audit maintenance "Write once, run anywhere": use the same business service as plain Java class, EJB session bean, or web service   Streamlining Application Customization Extend component functionality after delivery without modifying source code Globally substitute delivered components with extended ones without modifying the application   ADF Business Components implements the business service through the following set of cooperating components: Entity object An entity object represents a row in a database table and simplifies modifying its data by handling all data manipulation language (DML) operations for you. These are basically your 1 to 1 representation of a database table. Each table in the database will have 1 and only 1 EO. The EO contains the mapping between columns and attributes. EO's also contain the business logic and validation. These are you core data services. They are responsible for updating, inserting and deleting records. The Attributes tab displays the actual mapping between attributes and columns, the mapping has following fields: Name : contains the name of the attribute we expose in our data model. Type : defines the data type of the attribute in our application. Column : specifies the column to which we want to map the attribute with Column Type : contains the type of the column in the database   View object A view object represents a SQL query. You use the full power of the familiar SQL language to join, filter, sort, and aggregate data into exactly the shape required by the end-user task. The attributes in the View Objects are actually coming from the Entity Object. In the end the VO will generate a query but you basically build a VO by selecting which EO need to participate in the VO and which attributes of those EO you want to use. That's why you have the Entity Usage column so you can see the relation between VO and EO. In the query tab you can clearly see the query that will be generated for the VO. At this stage we don't need it and just use it for information purpose. In later stages we might use it. Application module An application module is the controller of your data layer. It is responsible for keeping hold of the transaction. It exposes the data model to the view layer. You expose the VO's through the Application Module. This is the abstraction of your data layer which you want to show to the outside word.It defines an updatable data model and top-level procedures and functions (called service methods) related to a logical unit of work related to an end-user task. While the base components handle all the common cases through built-in behavior, customization is always possible and the default behavior provided by the base components can be easily overridden or augmented. When you create EO's, a foreign key will be translated into an association in our model. It defines the type of relation and who is the master and child as well as how the visibility of the association looks like. A similar concept exists to identify relations between view objects. These are called view links. These are almost identical as association except that a view link is based upon attributes defined in the view object. It can also be based upon an association. Here's a short summary: Entity Objects: representations of tables Association: Relations between EO's. Representations of foreign keys View Objects: Logical model View Links: Relationships between view objects Application Model: interface to your application  

  Read the article

• World Backup Day

  - by red(at)work

  Here at Red Gate Towers, the SQL Backup development team have been hunkered down in their shed for the last few months, with the toolbox, blowtorch and chamois leather out, upgrading SQL Backup. When we started, autumn leaves were falling. Now we're about to finish, spring flowers are budding. If not quite a gleaming new machine, at the very least a familiar, reliable engine with some shiny new bits on it will trundle magnificently out of the workshop. One of the interesting things I've noticed about working on software development teams is that the team is together for so long 'implementing' stuff - designing, coding, testing, fixing bugs and so on - that you occasionally forget why you're doing what you're doing. Doubt creeps in. It feels like a long time since we launched this project in a fanfare of optimism and enthusiasm, and all that clarity of purpose and mission "yee-haw" has dissipated with the daily pressures of development. Every now and again, we look up from our bunker and notice all those thousands of users out there, with their different configurations and working practices and each with their own set of problems and requirements, and we ask ourselves "does anyone care about what we're doing?" Has the world moved on while we've been busy? Could we have been doing something more useful with the time and talent of all these excellent people we've assembled? In truth, you can research and test and validate all you like, but you never really know if you've done the right thing (or at least, something valuable for some users) until you release. All projects suffer this insecurity. If they don't, maybe you're not worrying enough about what you're building. The two enemies of software development are certainty and complacency. Oh, and of course, rival teams with Nerf guns. The goal of SQL Backup 7 is to make it so easy to schedule regular restores of your backups that you have no excuse not to. Why schedule a restore? Because your data is not as good as your last backup. It's only as good as your last successful restore. If you're not checking your backups by restoring them and running an integrity check on the database, you're only doing half the job. It seems that most DBAs know that this is best practice, but it can be tricky and time-consuming to set up, so it's one of those tasks that can get forgotten in the midst all the other demands on their time. Sometimes, they're just too busy firefighting. But if it was simple to do? That was our inspiration for SQL Backup 7. So it was heartening to read Brent Ozar's blog post the other day about World Backup Day. To be honest, I'd never heard of World Backup Day (Talk Like a Pirate Day, yes, but not this one); however, its emphasis on not just backing up your data but checking the validity of those backups was exactly the same message we had in mind when building SQL Backup 7. It's printed on a piece of A3 above our planning board - "Make backup verification so easy to do that no DBA has an excuse for not doing it" It's the missing piece that completes the puzzle. Simple idea, great concept, useful feature, but, as it turned out, far from straightforward to implement. The problem is the future. As Marty McFly discovered over the course of three movies, the future is uncertain and hard to predict - so when you are scheduling a restore to take place an hour, day, week or month after the backup, there are all kinds of questions that you wouldn't normally have to consider. Where will this backup live? Will it even exist at the time? Will it be split into multiple files? What will the file names be? Will it be encrypted? What files should it be restored to? SQL Backup needs to know what to expect at the time the restore job is actually run. Of course, a DBA will know the answer to all these questions, but to deliver the whole point of version 7, we wanted to make it easy for them to input that information into SQL Backup. We think we've done that. When you create your scheduled backup job, there is now an option to create a "reminder" to follow it up with a scheduled restore to verify the resulting backups. Actually, it's much more than a reminder, as it stores all the relevant data so you can click it and pre-populate the wizard with all the right settings to set up your verification restores. Simple. But, what do you think? We'd love you to try it. Post by Brian Harris

  Read the article

• Identity Globe Trotters (Sep Edition): The Social Customer

  - by Tanu Sood

  Welcome to the inaugural edition of our monthly series - Identity Globe Trotters. Starting today, the last Friday of every month, we will explore regional commentary on Identity Management. We will invite guest contributors from around the world to share their opinions and experiences around Identity Management and highlight regional nuances, specific drivers, solutions and more. Today's feature is contributed by Michael Krebs, Head of Business Development at esentri consulting GmbH, a (SOA) specialized Oracle Gold Partner based in Ettlingen, Germany. In his current role, Krebs is dealing with the latest developments in Enterprise Social Networking and the Integration of Social Media within business processes.  By Michael Krebs The relevance of "easy sign-on" in the age of the "Social Customer" With the growth of Social Networks, the time people spend within those closed "eco-systems" is growing year by year. With social networks looking to integrate search engines, like Facebook announced some weeks ago, their relevance will continue to grow in contrast to the more conventional search engines. This is one of the reasons why social network accounts of the users are getting more and more like a virtual fingerprint. With the growing relevance of social networks the importance of a simple way for customers to get in touch with say, customer care or contract departments, will be crucial for sales processes in critical markets. Customers want to have one single point of contact and also an easy "login-method" with no dedicated usernames, passwords or proprietary accounts. The golden rule in the future social media driven markets will be: The lower the complexity of the initial contact, the better a company can profit from social networks. If you, for example, can generate a smart way of how an existing customer can use self-service portals, the cost in providing phone support can be lowered significantly. Recruiting and Hiring of "Digital Natives" Another particular example is "social" recruiting processes. The so called "digital natives" don´t want to type in their profile facts and CV´s in proprietary systems. Why not use the actual LinkedIn profile? In German speaking region, the market in the area of professional social networks is dominated by XING, the equivalent to LinkedIn. A few weeks back, this network also opened up their interfaces for integrating social sign-ons or the usage of profile data for recruiting-purposes. In the European (and especially the German) employment market, where the number of young candidates is shrinking because of the low birth rate in the region, it will become essential to use social-media supported hiring processes to find and on-board the rare talents. In fact, you will see traditional recruiting websites integrated with social hiring to attract the best talents in the market, where the pool of potential candidates has decreased dramatically over the years. Identity Management as a key factor in the Customer Experience process To create the biggest value for customers and also future employees, companies need to connect their HCM or CRM-systems with powerful Identity management solutions. With the highly efficient Oracle (social & mobile enabling) Identity Management solution, enterprises can combine easy sign on with secure connections to the backend infrastructure. This combination enables a "one-stop" service with personalized content for customers and talents. In addition, companies can collect valuable data for the enrichment of their CRM-data. The goal is to enrich the so called "Customer Experience" via all available customer channels and contact points. Those systems have already gained importance in the B2C-markets and will gradually spread out to B2B-channels in the near future. Conclusion: Central and "Social" Identity management is key to Customer Experience Management and Talent Management For a seamless delivery of "Customer Experience Management" and a modern way of recruiting the best talent, companies need to integrate Social Sign-on capabilities with modern CX - and Talent management infrastructure. This lowers the barrier for existing and future customers or employees to get in touch with sales, support or human resources. Identity management is the technology enabler and backbone for a modern Customer Experience Infrastructure. Oracle Identity management solutions provide the opportunity to secure Social Applications and connect them with modern CX-solutions. At the end, companies benefit from "best of breed" processes and solutions for enriching customer experience without compromising security. About esentri: esentri is a provider of enterprise social networking and brings the benefits of social network communication into business environments. As one key strength, esentri uses Oracle Identity Management solutions for delivering Social and Mobile access for Oracle’s CRM- and HCM-solutions. …..End Guest Post…. With new and enhanced features optimized to secure the new digital experience, the recently announced Oracle Identity Management 11g Release 2 enables organizations to securely embrace cloud, mobile and social infrastructures and reach new user communities to help further expand and develop their businesses. Additional Resources: Oracle Identity Management 11gR2 release Oracle Identity Management website Datasheet: Mobile and Social Access (pdf) IDM at OOW: Focus on Identity Management Facebook: OracleIDM Twitter: OracleIDM We look forward to your feedback on this post and welcome your suggestions for topics to cover in Identity Globe Trotters. Last Friday, every month!

  Read the article

• iOS Support with Windows Azure Mobile Services – now with Push Notifications

  - by ScottGu

  A few weeks ago I posted about a number of improvements to Windows Azure Mobile Services. One of these was the addition of an Objective-C client SDK that allows iOS developers to easily use Mobile Services for data and authentication.  Today I'm excited to announce a number of improvement to our iOS SDK and, most significantly, our new support for Push Notifications via APNS (Apple Push Notification Services).  This makes it incredibly easy to fire push notifications to your iOS users from Windows Azure Mobile Service scripts. Push Notifications via APNS We've provided two complete tutorials that take you step-by-step through the provisioning and setup process to enable your Windows Azure Mobile Service application with APNS (Apple Push Notification Services), including all of the steps required to configure your application for push in the Apple iOS provisioning portal: Getting started with Push Notifications - iOS Push notifications to users by using Mobile Services - iOS Once you've configured your application in the Apple iOS provisioning portal and uploaded the APNS push certificate to the Apple provisioning portal, it's just a matter of uploading your APNS push certificate to Mobile Services using the Windows Azure admin portal: Clicking the “upload” within the “Push” tab of your Mobile Service allows you to browse your local file-system and locate/upload your exported certificate.  As part of this you can also select whether you want to use the sandbox (dev) or production (prod) Apple service: Now, the code to send a push notification to your clients from within a Windows Azure Mobile Service is as easy as the code below: push.apns.send(deviceToken, {      alert: 'Toast: A new Mobile Services task.',      sound: 'default' }); This will cause Windows Azure Mobile Services to connect to APNS (Apple Push Notification Service) and send a notification to the iOS device you specified via the deviceToken: Check out our reference documentation for full details on how to use the new Windows Azure Mobile Services apns object to send your push notifications. Feedback Scripts An important part of working with any PNS (Push Notification Service) is handling feedback for expired device tokens and channels. This typically happens when your application is uninstalled from a particular device and can no longer receive your notifications. With Windows Notification Services you get an instant response from the HTTP server.  Apple’s Notification Services works in a slightly different way and provides an additional endpoint you can connect to poll for a list of expired tokens. As with all of the capabilities we integrate with Mobile Services, our goal is to allow developers to focus more on building their app and less on building infrastructure to support their ideas. Therefore we knew we had to provide a simple way for developers to integrate feedback from APNS on a regular basis.  This week’s update now includes a new screen in the portal that allows you to optionally provide a script to process your APNS feedback – and it will be executed by Mobile Services on an ongoing basis: This script is invoked periodically while your service is active. To poll the feedback endpoint you can simply call the apns object's getFeedback method from within this script: push.apns.getFeedback({       success: function(results) {           // results is an array of objects with a deviceToken and time properties      } }); This returns you a list of invalid tokens that can now be removed from your database. iOS Client SDK improvements Over the last month we've continued to work with a number of iOS advisors to make improvements to our Objective-C SDK. The SDK is being developed under an open source license (Apache 2.0) and is available on github. Many of the improvements are behind the scenes to improve performance and memory usage. However, one of the biggest improvements to our iOS Client API is the addition of an even easier login method.  Below is the Objective-C code you can now write to invoke it: [client loginWithProvider:@"twitter"                     onController:self                        animated:YES                      completion:^(MSUser *user, NSError *error) {      // if no error, you are now logged in via twitter }]; This code will automatically present and dismiss our login view controller as a modal dialog on the specified controller.  This does all the hard work for you and makes login via Twitter, Google, Facebook and Microsoft Account identities just a single line of code. My colleague Josh just posted a short video demonstrating these new features which I'd recommend checking out: Summary The above features are all now live in production and are available to use immediately.  If you don’t already have a Windows Azure account, you can sign-up for a free trial and start using Mobile Services today. Visit the Windows Azure Mobile Developer Center to learn more about how to build apps with Mobile Services. Hope this helps, Scott P.S. In addition to blogging, I am also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at: twitter.com/scottgu

  Read the article

• 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]; } }

  Read the article

• FOUR questions to ask if you are implementing DATABASE-AS-A-SERVICE

  - by Sudip Datta

  During my ongoing tenure at Oracle, I have met all types of DBAs. Happy DBAs, unhappy DBAs, proud DBAs, risk-loving DBAs, cautious DBAs. These days, as Database-as-a-Service (DBaaS) becomes more mainstream, I find some complacent DBAs who are basking in their achievement of having implemented DBaaS. Some others, however, are not that happy. They grudgingly complain that they did not have much of a say in the implementation, they simply had to follow what their cloud architects (mostly infrastructure admins) offered them. In most cases it would be a database wrapped inside a VM that would be labeled as “Database as a Service”. In other cases, it would be existing brute-force automation simply exposed in a portal. As much as I think that there is more to DBaaS than those approaches and often get tempted to propose Enterprise Manager 12c, I try to be objective. Neither do I want to dampen the spirit of the happy ones, nor do I want to stoke the pain of the unhappy ones. As I mentioned in my previous post, I don’t deny vanilla automation could be useful. I like virtualization too for what it has helped us accomplish in terms of resource management, but we need to scrutinize its merit on a case-by-case basis and apply it meaningfully. For DBAs who either claim to have implemented DBaaS or are planning to do so, I simply want to provide four key questions to ponder about: 1. Does it make life easier for your end users? Database-as-a-Service can have several types of end users. Junior DBAs, QA Engineers, Developers- each having their own skillset. The objective of DBaaS is to make their life simple, so that they can focus on their core responsibilities without having to worry about additional stuff. For example, if you are a Developer using Oracle Application Express (APEX), you want to deal with schema, objects and PL/SQL code and not with datafiles or listener configuration. If you are a QA Engineer needing database copies for functional testing, you do not want to deal with underlying operating system patching and compliance issues. The question to ask, therefore, is, whether DBaaS makes life easier for those users. It is often convenient to give them VM shells to deal with a la Amazon EC2 IaaS, but is that what they really want? Is it a productive use of a developer's time if he needs to apply RPM errata to his Linux operating system. Asking him to keep the underlying operating system current is like making a guest responsible for a restaurant's decor. 2. Does it make life easier for your administrators? Cloud, in general, is supposed to free administrators from attending to mundane tasks like provisioning services for every single end user request. It is supposed to enable a readily consumable platform and enforce standardization in the process. For example, if a Service Catalog exposes DBaaS of specific database versions and configurations, it, by its very nature, enforces certain discipline and standardization within the IT environment. What if, instead of specific database configurations, cloud allowed each end user to create databases of their liking resulting in hundreds of version and patch levels and thousands of individual databases. Therefore the right question to ask is whether the unwanted consequence of DBaaS is OS and database sprawl. And if so, who is responsible for tracking them, backing them up, administering them? Studies have shown that these administrative overheads increase exponentially with new targets, and it could result in a management nightmare. That leads us to our next question. 3. Does it satisfy your Security Officers and Compliance Auditors? Compliance Auditors need to know who did what and when. They also want the cloud platform to be secure, so that end users have little freedom in tampering with it. Dealing with VM sprawl is not the easiest of challenges, let alone dealing with them as they keep getting reconfigured and moved around. This leads to the proverbial needle in the haystack problem, and all it needs is one needle to cause a serious compliance issue in the enterprise. Bottomline is, flexibility and agility should not come at the expense of compliance and it is very important to get the balance right. Can we have security and isolation without creating compliance challenges? Instead of a ‘one size fits all approach’ i.e. OS level isolation, can we think smartly about database isolation or schema based isolation? This is where the appropriate resource modeling needs to be applied. The usual systems management vendors out there with heterogeneous common-denominator approach have compromised on these semantics. If you follow Enterprise Manager’s DBaaS solution, you will see that we have considered different models, not precluding virtualization, for different customer use cases. The judgment to use virtual assemblies versus databases on physical RAC versus Schema-as-a-Service in a single database, should be governed by the need of the applications and not by putting compliance considerations in the backburner. 4. Does it satisfy your CIO? Finally, does it satisfy your higher ups? As the sponsor of cloud initiative, the CIO is expected to lead an IT transformation project, not merely a run-of-the-mill IT operations. Simply virtualizing server resources and delivering them through self-service is a good start, but hardly transformational. CIOs may appreciate the instant benefit from server consolidation, but studies have revealed that the ROI from consolidation would flatten out at 20-25%. The question would be: what next? As we go higher up in the stack, the need to virtualize, segregate and optimize shifts to those layers that are more palpable to the business users. As Sushil Kumar noted in his blog post, " the most important thing to note here is the enterprise private cloud is not just an IT project, rather it is a business initiative to create an IT setup that is more aligned with the needs of today's dynamic and highly competitive business environment." Business users could not care less about infrastructure consolidation or virtualization - they care about business agility and service level assurance. Last but not the least, lot of CIOs get miffed if we ask them to throw away their existing hardware investments for implementing DBaaS. In Oracle, we always emphasize on freedom of choosing a platform; hence Enterprise Manager’s DBaaS solution is platform neutral. It can work on any Operating System (that the agent is certified on) Oracle’s hardware as well as 3rd party hardware. As a parting note, I urge you to remember these 4 questions. Remember that your satisfaction as an implementer lies in the satisfaction of others.

  Read the article

• Data Source Security Part 1

  - by Steve Felts

  I’ve written a couple of articles on how to store data source security credentials using the Oracle wallet.  I plan to write a few articles on the various types of security available to WebLogic Server (WLS) data sources.  There are more options than you might think! There have been several enhancements in this area in WLS 10.3.6.  There are a couple of more enhancements planned for release WLS 12.1.2 that I will include here for completeness.  This isn’t intended as a teaser.  If you call your Oracle support person, you can get them now as minor patches to WLS 10.3.6.   The current security documentation is scattered in a few places, has a few incorrect statements, and is missing a few topics.  It also seems that the knowledge of how to apply some of these features isn’t written down.  The goal of these articles is to talk about WLS data source security in a unified way and to introduce some approaches to using the available features.  Introduction to WebLogic Data Source Security Options By default, you define a single database user and password for a data source.  You can store it in the data source descriptor or make use of the Oracle wallet.  This is a very simple and efficient approach to security.  All of the connections in the connection pool are owned by this user and there is no special processing when a connection is given out.  That is, it’s a homogeneous connection pool and any request can get any connection from a security perspective (there are other aspects like affinity).  Regardless of the end user of the application, all connections in the pool use the same security credentials to access the DBMS.   No additional information is needed when you get a connection because it’s all available from the data source descriptor (or wallet). java.sql.Connection conn =  mydatasource.getConnection(); Note: You can enter the password as a name-value pair in the Properties field (this not permitted for production environments) or you can enter it in the Password field of the data source descriptor. The value in the Password field overrides any password value defined in the Properties passed to the JDBC Driver when creating physical database connections. It is recommended that you use the Password attribute in place of the password property in the properties string because the Password value is encrypted in the configuration file (stored as the password-encrypted attribute in the jdbc-driver-params tag in the module file) and is hidden in the administration console.  The Properties and Password fields are located on the administration console Data Source creation wizard or Data Source Configuration tab. The JDBC API can also be used to programmatically specify a database user name and password as in the following.  java.sql.Connection conn = mydatasource.getConnection(“user”, “password”); According to the JDBC specification, it’s supposed to take a database user and associated password but different vendors implement this differently.  WLS, by default, treats this as an application server user and password.  The pair is authenticated to see if it’s a valid user and that user is used for WLS security permission checks.  By default, the user is then mapped to a database user and password using the data source credential mapper, so this API sort of follows the specification but database credentials are one-step removed from the application code.  More details and the rationale are described later. While the default approach is simple, it does mean that only one database user is doing all of the work.  You can’t figure out who actually did the update and you can’t restrict SQL operations by who is running the operation, at least at the database level.   Any type of per-user logic will need to be in the application code instead of having the database do it.  There are various WLS data source features that can be configured to provide some per-user information about the operations to the database. WebLogic Data Source Security Options This table describes the features available for WebLogic data sources to configure database security credentials and a brief description.  It also captures information about the compatibility of these features with one another. Feature Description Can be used with Can’t be used with User authentication (default) Default getConnection(user, password) behavior – validate the input and use the user/password in the descriptor. Set client identifier Proxy Session, Identity pooling, Use database credentials Use database credentials Instead of using the credential mapper, use the supplied user and password directly. Set client identifier, Proxy session, Identity pooling User authentication, Multi Data Source Set Client Identifier Set a client identifier property associated with the connection (Oracle and DB2 only). Everything Proxy Session Set a light-weight proxy user associated with the connection (Oracle-only). Set client identifier, Use database credentials Identity pooling, User authentication Identity pooling Heterogeneous pool of connections owned by specified users. Set client identifier, Use database credentials Proxy session, User authentication, Labeling, Multi-datasource, Active GridLink Note that all of these features are available with both XA and non-XA drivers. Currently, the Proxy Session and Use Database Credentials options are on the Oracle tab of the Data Source Configuration tab of the administration console (even though the Use Database Credentials feature is not just for Oracle databases – oops).  The rest of the features are on the Identity tab of the Data Source Configuration tab in the administration console (plan on seeing them all in one place in the future). The subsequent articles will describe these features in more detail.  Keep referring back to this table to see the big picture.

  Read the article

• Revisiting the Generations

  - by Row Henson

  I was asked earlier this year to contribute an article to the IHRIM publication – Workforce Solutions Review.  My topic focused on the reality of the Gen Y population 10 years after their entry into the workforce.  Below is an excerpt from that article: It seems like yesterday that we were all talking about the entry of the Gen Y'ers into the workforce and what a radical change that would have on how we attract, retain, motivate, reward, and engage this new, younger segment of the workforce.  We all heard and read that these youngsters would be more entrepreneurial than their predecessors – the Gen X'ers – who were said to be more loyal to their profession than their employer. And, we heard that these “youngsters” would certainly be far less loyal to their employers than the Baby Boomers or even earlier Traditionalists. It was also predicted that – at least for the developed parts of the world – they would be more interested in work/life balance than financial reward; they would need constant and immediate reinforcement and recognition and we would be lucky to have them in our employment for two to three years. And, to keep them longer than that we would need to promote them often so they would be continuously learning since their long-term (10-year) goal would be to own their own business or be an independent consultant.  Well, it occurred to me recently that the first of the Gen Y'ers are now in their early 30s and it is time to look back on some of these predictions. Many really believed the Gen Y'ers would enter the workforce with an attitude – expect everything to be easy for them – have their employers meet their demands or move to the next employer, and I believe that we can now say that, generally, has not been the case. Speaking from personal experience, I have mentored a number of Gen Y'ers and initially felt that with a 40-year career in Human Resources and Human Resources Technology – I could share a lot with them. I found out very quickly that I was learning at least as much from them! Some of the amazing attributes I found from these under-30s was their fearlessness, ease of which they were able to multi-task, amazing energy and great technical savvy. They were very comfortable with collaborating with colleagues from both inside the company and peers outside their organization to problem-solve quickly. Most were eager to learn and willing to work hard.  This brings me to the generation that will follow the Gen Y'ers – the Generation Z'ers – those born after 1998. We have come full circle. If we look at the Silent Generation or Traditionalists, we find a workforce that preceded the television and even very early telephones. We Baby Boomers (as I fall right squarely in this category) remembered the invention of the television and telephone – but laptop computers and personal digital assistants (PDAs) were a thing of “StarTrek” and other science fiction movies and publications. Certainly, the Gen X'ers and Gen Y'ers grew up with the comfort of these devices just as we did with calculators. But, what of those under the age of 10 – how will the workplace look in 15 more years and what type of workforce will be required to operate in the mobile, global, virtual world. I spoke to a friend recently who had her four-year-old granddaughter for a visit. She said she found her in the den in front of the TV trying to use her hand to get the screen to move! So, you see – we have come full circle. The under-70 Traditionalist grew up in a world without TV and the Generation Z'er may never remember the TV we knew just a few years ago. As with every generation – we spend much time generalizing on their characteristics. The most important thing to remember is every generation – just like every individual – is different. The important thing for those of us in Human Resources to remember is that one size doesn’t fit all. What motivates one employee to come to work for you and stay there and be productive is very different than what the next employee is looking for and the organization that can provide this fluidity and flexibility will be the survivor for generations to come. And, finally, just when we think we have it figured out, a multitude of external factors such as the economy, world politics, industries, and technologies we haven’t even thought about will come along and change those predictions. As I reach retirement age – I do so believing that our organizations are in good hands with the generations to follow – energetic, collaborative and capable of working hard while still understanding the need for balance at work, at home and in the community! Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}

  Read the article

• Exiting a reboot loop

  - by user12617035

  If you're in a situation where the system is panic'ing during boot, you can use # boot net -s to regain control of your system. In my case, I'd added some diagnostic code to a (PCI) driver (that is used to boot the root filesystem). There was a bug in the driver, and each time during boot, the bug occurred, and so caused the system to panic: ... 000000000180b950 genunix:vfs_mountroot+60 (800, 200, 0, 185d400, 1883000, 18aec00) %l0-3: 0000000000001770 0000000000000640 0000000001814000 00000000000008fc %l4-7: 0000000001833c00 00000000018b1000 0000000000000600 0000000000000200 000000000180ba10 genunix:main+98 (18141a0, 1013800, 18362c0, 18ab800, 180e000, 1814000) %l0-3: 0000000070002000 0000000000000001 000000000180c000 000000000180e000 %l4-7: 0000000000000001 0000000001074800 0000000000000060 0000000000000000 skipping system dump - no dump device configured rebooting... If you're logged in via the console, you can send a BREAK sequence in order to gain control of the firmware's (OBP's) prompt. Enter Ctrl-Shift-[ in order to get the TELNET prompt. Once telnet has control, enter this: telnet> send brk You'll be presented with OBP's prompt: ok You then enter the following in order to boot into single-user mode via the network: ok boot net -s Note that booting from the network under Solaris will implicitly cause the system to be INSTALLED with whatever software had last been configured to be installed. However, we are using boot net -s as a "handle" with which to get at the Solaris prompt. Once at that prompt, we can perform actions as root that will let us back out our buggy driver (ok... MY buggy driver :-)) ...and replace it with the original, non-buggy driver. Entering the boot command caused the following output, as well as left us at the Solaris prompt (in single-user-mode): Sun Blade 1500, No Keyboard Copyright 1998-2004 Sun Microsystems, Inc. All rights reserved. OpenBoot 4.16.4, 1024 MB memory installed, Serial #53463393. Ethernet address 0:3:ba:2f:c9:61, Host ID: 832fc961. Rebooting with command: boot net -s Boot device: /pci@1f,700000/network@2 File and args: -s 1000 Mbps FDX Link up Timeout waiting for ARP/RARP packet Timeout waiting for ARP/RARP packet 4000 1000 Mbps FDX Link up Requesting Internet address for 0:3:ba:2f:c9:61 SunOS Release 5.10 Version Generic_118833-17 64-bit Copyright 1983-2005 Sun Microsystems, Inc. All rights reserved. Use is subject to license terms. Booting to milestone "milestone/single-user:default". Configuring devices. Using RPC Bootparams for network configuration information. Attempting to configure interface bge0... Configured interface bge0 Requesting System Maintenance Mode SINGLE USER MODE # Our goal is to now move to the directory containing the buggy driver and replace it with the original driver (that we had saved away before ever loading our buggy driver! :-) However, since we booted from the network, the root filesystem ("/") is NOT mounted on one of our local disks. It is mounted on an NFS filesystem exported by our install server. To verify this, enter the following command: # mount | head -1 / on my-server:/export/install/media/s10u2/solarisdvd.s10s_u2dvd/latest/Solaris_10/Tools/Boot remote/read/write/setuid/devices/dev=4ac0001 on Wed Dec 31 16:00:00 1969 As a result, we have to create a temporary mount point and then mount the local disk onto that mount point: # mkdir /tmp/mnt # mount /dev/dsk/c0t0d0s0 /tmp/mnt Note that your system will not necessarily have had its root filesystem on "c0t0d0s0". This is something that you should also have recorded before you ever loaded your.. er... "my" buggy driver! :-) One can find the local disk mounted under the root filesystem by entering: # df -k / Filesystem kbytes used avail capacity Mounted on /dev/dsk/c0t0d0s0 76703839 4035535 71901266 6% / To continue with our example, we can now move to the directory of buggy-driver in order to replace it with the original driver. Note that /tmp/mnt is prefixed to the path of where we'd "normally" find the driver: # cd /tmp/mnt/platform/sun4u/kernel/drv/sparcv9 # ls -l pci\* -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 288504 Dec 6 15:38 pcisch -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 288504 Dec 6 15:38 pcisch.aar -rwxr-xr-x 1 root sys 211616 Jun 8 2006 pcisch.orig # cp -p pcisch.orig pcisch We can now synchronize any in-memory filesystem data structures with those on disk... and then reboot. The system will then boot correctly... as expected: # sync;sync # reboot syncing file systems... done Sun Blade 1500, No Keyboard Copyright 1998-2004 Sun Microsystems, Inc. All rights reserved. OpenBoot 4.16.4, 1024 MB memory installed, Serial #xxxxxxxx. Ethernet address 0:3:ba:2f:c9:61, Host ID: yyyyyyyy. Rebooting with command: boot Boot device: /pci@1e,600000/ide@d/disk@0,0:a File and args: SunOS Release 5.10 Version Generic_118833-17 64-bit Copyright 1983-2005 Sun Microsystems, Inc. All rights reserved. Use is subject to license terms. Hostname: my-host NIS domain name is my-campus.Central.Sun.COM my-host console login: ...so that's how it's done! Of course, the easier way is to never write a buggy-driver... but.. then.. we all "have an eraser on the end of each of our pencils"... don't we ? :-) "...thank you... and good night..."

  Read the article

• Notes from AT&T ARO Session at Oredev 2013

  - by Geertjan

  The mobile internet is 12 times bigger than internet was 12 years ago. Explosive growth, faster networks, and more powerful devices. 85% of users prefer mobile apps, while 56% have problems. Almost 60% want less than 2 second mobile app startup. App with poor mobile experience results in not buying stuff, going to competitor, not liking your company. Battery life. Bad mobile app is worse than no app at all because it turns people away from brand, etc. Apps didn't exist 10 years ago, 72 billion dollars a year in 2013, 151 billion in 2017.Testing performance. Mobile is different than regular app. Need to fix issues before customers discover them. ARO is free and open source AT&T tool for identifying mobile app performance problems. Mobile data is different -- radio resource control state machine. Radio resource control -- radio from idle to continuous reception -- drains battery, sends data, packets coming through, after packets come through radio is still on which is tail time, after 10 seconds of no data coming through radio goes off. For example, YouTube, e.g., 10 to 15 seconds after every connection, can be huge drain on battery, app traffic triggers RRC state. Goal. Balance fast network connectivity against battery usage. ARO is free and open source and test any platform and won awards. How do I test my app? pcap or tcdump network. Native collector: Android and iOS. Android rooted device is needed. Test app on phone, background data, idle for ads and analytics. Graded against 25 best practices. See all the processes, all network traffic mapped to processes, stats about trace, can look just at your app, exlude Facebook, etc. Many tests conducted, e.g., file download, HTML (wrapped applications, e.g., cordova). Best Practices. Make stuff smaller. GZIP, smaller files, download faster, best for files larger than 800 bytes, minification -- remove tabs and commenting -- browser doesn't need that, just give processor what it needs remove wheat from chaff. Images -- make images smaller, 1024x1024 image for a checkmark, swish it, make it 33% smaller, ARO records the screen, probably could be 9 times smaller. Download less stuff. 17% of HTTP content on mobile is duplicate data because of caching, reloading from cache is 75% to 99% faster than downloading again, 75% possible savings which means app will start up faster because using cache -- everyone wants app starting up 2 seconds. Make fewer HTTP requests. Inline and combine CSS and JS when possible reduces the number of requests, spread images used often. Fewer connections. Faster and use less battery, for example, download an image every 60 secs, download an add every 60 seconds, send analytics every 60 seconds -- instead of that, use transaction manager, download everything at once, reduce amount of time connected to network by 40% also -- 80% of applications do NOT close connections when they are finished, e.g., download picture, 10 seconds later the radio turns off, if you do not explicitly close, eventually server closes, 38% more tail time, 40% less energy if you close connection right away, background data traffic is 27% of data and 55% of network time, this kills the battery. Look at redirection. Adds 200 to 600 ms on each connection, waterfall diagram to all the requests -- e.g., xyz.com redirect to www.xyz.com redirect to xyz.mobi to www.xyz.com, waterfall visualization of packets, minimize redirects but redirects are fine. HTML best practices. Order matters and hiding code (JS downloading blocks rendering, always do CSS before JS or JS asynchronously, CSS 'display:none' hides images from user but the browser downloads them which adds latency to application. Some apps turn on GPS for no reason. Tell network when down, but maybe some other app is using the radio at the same time. It's all about knowing best practices: everyone wins with ARO (carriers, e.g., AT&T, developers, customers). Faster apps, better battery usage, network traffic better, better app reviews, happier customers. MBTA app, referenced as an example.ARO is free, open source, can test all platforms.

  Read the article

• Ubuntu 10.10 Ad-Hoc Setup (from Wireless Router, to Ubuntu Server/Desktop to Wireless Router)

  - by user60375

  Okay, so I know there are different approaches for this, but I will explain my story briefly before getting to the technical stuff. My fiancée and I are going through some financial issues (as I assume a lot of us are). We ended up having to move from our house and stay with some friends/family for 6 months, just to get ourselves caught up. (Medical bills, among other issues,etc). So this is where it gets fun. At our friends house, we are staying in the loft setup which is not near the cable modem and wireless router. I have a "hand-crafted" media center running XBMC, an Ubuntu 10.10 Server/Desktop (multi-purpose, very powerful and tons drive space), two working laptops, a between the two of us we have multiple wireless devices/phones. Now our friends Wireless router doesn't have any options for assigning IP addresses, but my router does. My current setup is: Friends Cable Modem -- Friend's Wireless Router -- Ubuntu 10.10 Server -- My Wireless Router (local-link from Friend's wireless (incoming) to sharing connection on ETH0 (outgoing)) -- to all devices. (Wireless Modem, Ubuntu Server that share's it's wireless incoming connection to the ethernet port my Wireless router share's with the rest of the devices). I setup my router to use default settings from my friend's router, using Google's DNS on my router (disabled DNS setup on Ubuntu Server), everything is assigned nicely and runs smooth. My Ubuntu server was given the address 10.42.43.1 (assuming standard from Network-Manager). (On the Ubuntu machine that shares to my wireless router; I have some server apps installed, but mainly just use Samba/NFS/Tangerine action. My problem/goal is that every device has no problem of accessing the internet from my router, the media-center has an assigned ip address, all services from all devices (ZeroConf, Avanhi, Bonjour, GIT, SSH, FTP, Apache2, etc) all work correctly except from my Ubuntu Server (which serves the wireless connection to ETH0 to another Wireless Router). The Ubuntu 10.10 Server/Desktop is not broadcasting anything (the Zeroconf Service Discovery 0.4 Gnome Applet shows the services from the Ubuntu server but no other computers can see them). I can access it from my Media-Center (Running Xbuntu 10.04) if I direct it to 10.42.43.1, no problem. But I cannot access Tangerine (Daapd) and the Samba shares do not show up on any computers for 10.42.43.1 (not in the WORKGROUP which Samba is setup simple and default but I can direct computers to that address and the shares will add except on a damn Windows 7 parition). Is this an issue with how I have my router setup and possible the gateway? An issue with Network-Manager? And issue with my Ubuntu Server/Desktop? I know there is a lot to that, but it's simpler than I probably have explained? Any help would be appreciated. If you need more details, I can provide them. If there is a better way of my attempting this home-network, please let me know. Thanks in advance for the help.

  Read the article

• apache2 how to trace caller of SIGTERM

  - by art vanderlay

  I have a dex x64 on a virtualbox win7pro host. My apache2 will stop responding after a page request or other activity such as upload via ftp. The php.cgi becomes non responsive and a restart is required any help tracking down the culprit sending the SIGTERM would be much appreciated. thx Art my apache2.conf has <IfModule mpm_prefork_module> ServerLimit 1024 StartServers 10 MinSpareServers 10 MaxSpareServers 20 MaxClients 1024 MaxRequestsPerChild 0 </IfModule> ` From the apache2 log I have [Wed Jun 20 05:07:01 2012] [notice] caught SIGTERM, shutting down [Wed Jun 20 05:07:03 2012] [notice] FastCGI: process manager initialized (pid 4369) [Wed Jun 20 05:07:03 2012] [notice] Apache/2.2.16 (Debian) mod_fastcgi/2.4.6 PHP/5.3.3-7+squeeze13 with Suhosin-Patch mod_perl/2.0.4 Perl/v5.10.1 configured -- resuming normal operations and from the accounting output with lastcomm php.cgi www-data __ 0.13 secs Wed Jun 20 04:49 lastcomm root pts/2 0.10 secs Wed Jun 20 04:49 php.cgi www-data __ 0.18 secs Wed Jun 20 04:49 php.cgi www-data __ 0.18 secs Wed Jun 20 04:47 apache2 root pts/1 0.02 secs Wed Jun 20 04:46 tput root pts/1 0.00 secs Wed Jun 20 04:46 apache2 F root pts/1 0.00 secs Wed Jun 20 04:46 apache2ctl root pts/1 0.00 secs Wed Jun 20 04:46 apache2 S root pts/1 0.77 secs Wed Jun 20 04:46 rm root pts/1 0.01 secs Wed Jun 20 04:46 install root pts/1 0.01 secs Wed Jun 20 04:46 mkdir root pts/1 0.00 secs Wed Jun 20 04:46 apache2ctl F root pts/1 0.00 secs Wed Jun 20 04:46 sleep root pts/1 0.00 secs Wed Jun 20 04:46 apache2 SF root __ 0.54 secs Wed Jun 20 04:34 apache2 SF www-data __ 0.14 secs Wed Jun 20 04:34 apache2 SF www-data __ 0.07 secs Wed Jun 20 04:34 apache2 SF www-data __ 0.06 secs Wed Jun 20 04:36 apache2 SF www-data __ 0.07 secs Wed Jun 20 04:34 apache2 SF www-data __ 0.11 secs Wed Jun 20 04:34 apache2 SF www-data __ 0.02 secs Wed Jun 20 04:34 apache2 SF www-data __ 0.04 secs Wed Jun 20 04:34 apache2 SF www-data __ 0.06 secs Wed Jun 20 04:34 apache2 SF www-data __ 0.08 secs Wed Jun 20 04:34 apache2 SF www-data __ 0.03 secs Wed Jun 20 04:34 apache2 SF www-data __ 0.02 secs Wed Jun 20 04:34 apache2 SF www-data __ 0.01 secs Wed Jun 20 04:34 grep root pts/1 0.00 secs Wed Jun 20 04:46 apache2ctl root pts/1 0.02 secs Wed Jun 20 04:46 apache2 root pts/1 0.24 secs Wed Jun 20 04:46 apache2 SF www-data __ 0.00 secs Wed Jun 20 04:34 apache2ctl F root pts/1 0.00 secs Wed Jun 20 04:46 apache2ctl root pts/1 0.00 secs Wed Jun 20 04:46 apache2 root pts/1 0.22 secs Wed Jun 20 04:46 apache2ctl F root pts/1 0.01 secs Wed Jun 20 04:46 apache2 F root pts/1 0.00 secs Wed Jun 20 04:46 grep root pts/1 0.00 secs Wed Jun 20 04:46 tr root pts/1 0.00 secs Wed Jun 20 04:46 pidof S root pts/1 0.11 secs Wed Jun 20 04:46 cat root pts/1 0.00 secs Wed Jun 20 04:46 apache2 F root pts/1 0.00 secs Wed Jun 20 04:46 grep root pts/1 0.00 secs Wed Jun 20 04:46 tr root pts/1 0.00 secs Wed Jun 20 04:46 pidof S root pts/1 0.05 secs Wed Jun 20 04:46 cat root pts/1 0.01 secs Wed Jun 20 04:46 apache2 F root pts/1 0.00 secs Wed Jun 20 04:46 apache2ctl root pts/1 0.00 secs Wed Jun 20 04:46 apache2 root pts/1 0.34 secs Wed Jun 20 04:46 apache2ctl F root pts/1 0.00 secs Wed Jun 20 04:46 apache2 F root pts/1 0.00 secs Wed Jun 20 04:46 apache2 F root pts/1 0.00 secs Wed Jun 20 04:46 smbd SF root __ 0.25 secs Wed Jun 20 04:46 php.cgi www-data __ 0.14 secs Wed Jun 20 04:45 php.cgi www-data __ 0.19 secs Wed Jun 20 04:42 cron SF root __ 0.02 secs Wed Jun 20 04:39 sh S root __ 0.00 secs Wed Jun 20 04:39 find root __ 0.00 secs Wed Jun 20 04:39 maxlifetime root __ 0.02 secs Wed Jun 20 04:39 php5 root __ 0.13 secs Wed Jun 20 04:39 which root __ 0.00 secs Wed Jun 20 04:39 exim4 S root __ 0.01 secs Wed Jun 20 04:37 php.cgi www-data __ 0.04 secs Wed Jun 20 04:36 php.cgi www-data __ 0.12 secs Wed Jun 20 04:35 php.cgi www-data __ 0.11 secs Wed Jun 20 04:35 php.cgi www-data __ 0.14 secs Wed Jun 20 04:34 lastcomm root pts/2 0.09 secs Wed Jun 20 04:34 apache2 root pts/1 0.02 secs Wed Jun 20 04:34 tput root pts/1 0.00 secs Wed Jun 20 04:34 apache2 F root pts/1 0.00 secs Wed Jun 20 04:34 apache2ctl root pts/1 0.00 secs Wed Jun 20 04:34 apache2 S root pts/1 0.54 secs Wed Jun 20 04:34 rm root pts/1 0.00 secs Wed Jun 20 04:34 install root pts/1 0.00 secs Wed Jun 20 04:34 mkdir root pts/1 0.00 secs Wed Jun 20 04:34 apache2ctl F root pts/1 0.00 secs Wed Jun 20 04:34 sleep root pts/1 0.00 secs Wed Jun 20 04:34 apache2 SF root __ 0.80 secs Wed Jun 20 03:58 sleep root pts/1 0.00 secs Wed Jun 20 04:34 apache2 SF www-data __ 0.26 secs Wed Jun 20 03:58 apache2 SF www-data __ 0.12 secs Wed Jun 20 03:59 apache2 SF www-data __ 0.13 secs Wed Jun 20 03:58 apache2 SF www-data __ 0.13 secs Wed Jun 20 03:59 apache2 SF www-data __ 0.15 secs Wed Jun 20 03:58 apache2 SF www-data __ 0.18 secs Wed Jun 20 03:58 apache2 SF www-data __ 0.07 secs Wed Jun 20 04:21 apache2 SF www-data __ 0.18 secs Wed Jun 20 03:58 apache2 SF www-data __ 0.17 secs Wed Jun 20 03:58 apache2 SF www-data __ 0.30 secs Wed Jun 20 03:58 apache2 SF www-data __ 0.09 secs Wed Jun 20 03:58 apache2 SF www-data __ 0.02 secs Wed Jun 20 04:13

  Read the article

• Play music on iPhone through computer

  - by Kyle Cronin

  Now that I've had my iPhone for a few months, I'm trying an experiment to see if I can't replace the laptop I carry around with my iPhone + internet connected computer. To this end, I've been trying to find a program that will let me play the music on my iPhone through the hardware and software on the host computer. If I recall correctly this was possible a few years ago with the iPod - Linux software like Rhythmbox and Banshee was able to read the music off an iPod and play it through the speakers. I even thought I recalled iTunes itself being capable of this at one time. Now, however, iTunes greys out/disables the music on my iPhone and I can't find any documented support for the iPhone in any other music program. Is this really no longer possible? Am I limited to using the headphone jack to get music to play? (note: I am using an iPhone 3G with the 3.0 software. I am attempting to play music on computers other than the one I sync with) Several replies mention that I should check "manually manage" to do this. I just tried this on a computer that I don't sync my iPhone to and it asked me to erase and sync, which is obviously something I don't want to do. update: OK, I checked the "Manually manage music and videos" box on a computer that I didn't sync to (now known as "Computer A"), and it told me that I needed to erase & sync to cause the changes to have effect, so I did. At this point I'm guessing that my iPhone thinks that it's syncing with that computer. I copied over a few songs using the autofill feature. At this point, Computer A sees the maybe 10 or so songs I've copied using autofill. I then plug my iPhone into my Macbook ("Computer B") which I've been syncing with. At this point, I'm pretty sure that it still thought that all my synced content was still on my iPhone. The "manually manage music and videos" checkbox isn't checked, so I check it and go through a similar process where iTunes erases the synced content and I copy over a playlist. At this point, there's no trace of the songs that I copied over from Computer A. So I plug my iPhone into Computer A - in the Music section are the handful of songs that I had copied over earlier, greyed out and unplayable. To make sure that this wasn't some sort of caching issue, I plugged my iPhone into my sister's Macbook ("Computer C") and it lists the same few, greyed out songs that I had copied over from Computer A. Plugging into Computer B doesn't reveal these songs at all, only the songs that it copied over (these are playable). A few things: This inconsistent behavior is driving me insane. Why would my iPhone report two versions of its contents to different computers? Is there a way to get a computer to completely forget about an iPhone and just resync everything to get everything into a consistent state? Even if I get the phone into a consistent state, I still can't play the files on my phone anywhere but the computer I sync with, which was my original goal. What am I doing wrong? maybe I should read the fine print before I mess with my iPhone So going over this thread with a fine-toothed comb again yields this lovely tidbit in the Apple docs: Note: Even when manually managing, some content may only be available from one library at time. This includes all content on iPhone and video content on iPods. OK, so manually managing is a dead end on the iPhone. Are there any other options? Any unofficial third-party programs or drivers that will work?

  Read the article

• ufw portforwarding to virtualbox guest

  - by user85116

  My goal is to be able to connect using remote desktop on my desktop machine, to windows xp running in virtualbox on my linux server. My setup: server = debian squeeze, 64 bit, with a public IP address (host) virtualbox-ose 3.2.10 (from debian repo) windows xp running inside VBox as a guest; bridged networking mode in VBox, ip = 192.168.1.100 ufw as the firewall on debian, 3 ports are opened: 22 / ssh, 80 / apache, and 3389 for remote desktop My problem: If I try to use remote desktop on my home computer, I am unable to connect to the windows guest. If I first "ssh -X -C" into the debian server, then run "rdesktop 192.168.1.100", I am able to connect without issue. The windows firewall was configured to allow remote desktop connections, and I've even turned it off (as it is redundant here) to see if that was the problem but it made no difference. Since I am able to connect from inside the local subnet, I suspect that I have not setup my debian firewall correctly to handle connections from outside the LAN. Here is what I've done... First my ufw status: ufw status Status: active To Action From -- ------ ---- 22 ALLOW Anywhere 80 ALLOW Anywhere 3389 ALLOW Anywhere I edited /etc/ufw/sysctl.conf and added: net/ipv4/ip_forward=1 Edited /etc/default/ufw and added: DEFAULT_FORWARD_POLICY="ACCEPT" Edited /etc/ufw/before.rules and added: # setup port forwarding to forward rdp to windows VM *nat :PREROUTING - [0:0] -A PREROUTING -i eth0 -p tcp --dport 3389 -j DNAT --to-destination 192.168.1.100 -A PREROUTING -i eth0 -p udp --dport 3389 -j DNAT --to-destination 192.168.1.100 COMMIT # Don't delete these required lines, otherwise there will be errors *filter <snip> Restarted the firewall etc., but no connection. My log files on the debian host show this (my public ip address was removed for this posting but it is correct in the actual log): Feb 6 11:11:21 localhost kernel: [171991.856941] [UFW AUDIT] IN=eth0 OUT=eth0 SRC=aaa.bbb.ccc.dd DST=192.168.1.100 LEN=60 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=45 ID=27518 DF PROTO=TCP SPT=54201 DPT=3389 WINDOW=5840 RES=0x00 SYN URGP=0 Feb 6 11:11:21 localhost kernel: [171991.856963] [UFW ALLOW] IN=eth0 OUT=eth0 SRC=aaa.bbb.ccc.dd DST=192.168.1.100 LEN=60 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=45 ID=27518 DF PROTO=TCP SPT=54201 DPT=3389 WINDOW=5840 RES=0x00 SYN URGP=0 Feb 6 11:11:24 localhost kernel: [171994.856701] [UFW AUDIT] IN=eth0 OUT=eth0 SRC=aaa.bbb.ccc.dd DST=192.168.1.100 LEN=60 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=45 ID=27519 DF PROTO=TCP SPT=54201 DPT=3389 WINDOW=5840 RES=0x00 SYN URGP=0 Feb 6 11:11:24 localhost kernel: [171994.856723] [UFW ALLOW] IN=eth0 OUT=eth0 SRC=aaa.bbb.ccc.dd DST=192.168.1.100 LEN=60 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=45 ID=27519 DF PROTO=TCP SPT=54201 DPT=3389 WINDOW=5840 RES=0x00 SYN URGP=0 Feb 6 11:11:30 localhost kernel: [172000.856656] [UFW AUDIT] IN=eth0 OUT=eth0 SRC=aaa.bbb.ccc.dd DST=192.168.1.100 LEN=60 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=45 ID=27520 DF PROTO=TCP SPT=54201 DPT=3389 WINDOW=5840 RES=0x00 SYN URGP=0 Feb 6 11:11:30 localhost kernel: [172000.856678] [UFW ALLOW] IN=eth0 OUT=eth0 SRC=aaa.bbb.ccc.dd DST=192.168.1.100 LEN=60 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=45 ID=27520 DF PROTO=TCP SPT=54201 DPT=3389 WINDOW=5840 RES=0x00 SYN URGP=0 Although this is the current setup / configuration, I've also tried several variations of this; I thought maybe the ISP would be blocking 3389 for some reason and tried using different ports, but again there was no connection. Any ideas...? Did I forget to modify some file somewhere?

  Read the article

• Ubuntu 9.10 and Squid 2.7 Transparent Proxy TCP_DENIED

  - by user38400

  Hi, We've spent the last two days trying to get squid 2.7 to work with ubuntu 9.10. The computer running ubuntu has two network interfaces: eth0 and eth1 with dhcp running on eth1. Both interfaces have static ip's, eth0 is connected to the Internet and eth1 is connected to our LAN. We have followed literally dozens of different tutorials with no success. The tutorial here was the last one we did that actually got us some sort of results: http://www.basicconfig.com/linuxnetwork/setup_ubuntu_squid_proxy_server_beginner_guide. When we try to access a site like seriouswheels.com from the LAN we get the following message on the client machine: ERROR The requested URL could not be retrieved Invalid Request error was encountered while trying to process the request: GET / HTTP/1.1 Host: www.seriouswheels.com Connection: keep-alive User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US) AppleWebKit/532.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/5.0.307.11 Safari/532.9 Cache-Control: max-age=0 Accept: application/xml,application/xhtml+xml,text/html;q=0.9,text/plain;q=0.8,image/png,/;q=0.5 Accept-Encoding: gzip,deflate,sdch Cookie: __utmz=88947353.1269218405.1.1.utmccn=(direct)|utmcsr=(direct)|utmcmd=(none); __qca=P0-1052556952-1269218405250; __utma=88947353.1027590811.1269218405.1269218405.1269218405.1; __qseg=Q_D Accept-Language: en-US,en;q=0.8 Accept-Charset: ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.3 Some possible problems are: Missing or unknown request method. Missing URL. Missing HTTP Identifier (HTTP/1.0). Request is too large. Content-Length missing for POST or PUT requests. Illegal character in hostname; underscores are not allowed. Your cache administrator is webmaster. Below are all the configuration files: /etc/squid/squid.conf, /etc/network/if-up.d/00-firewall, /etc/network/interfaces, /var/log/squid/access.log. Something somewhere is wrong but we cannot figure out where. Our end goal for all of this is the superimpose content onto every page that a client requests on the LAN. We've been told that squid is the way to do this but at this point in the game we are just trying to get squid setup correctly as our proxy. Thanks in advance. squid.conf acl all src all acl manager proto cache_object acl localhost src 127.0.0.1/32 acl to_localhost dst 127.0.0.0/8 acl localnet src 192.168.0.0/24 acl SSL_ports port 443 # https acl SSL_ports port 563 # snews acl SSL_ports port 873 # rsync acl Safe_ports port 80 # http acl Safe_ports port 21 # ftp acl Safe_ports port 443 # https acl Safe_ports port 70 # gopher acl Safe_ports port 210 # wais acl Safe_ports port 1025-65535 # unregistered ports acl Safe_ports port 280 # http-mgmt acl Safe_ports port 488 # gss-http acl Safe_ports port 591 # filemaker acl Safe_ports port 777 # multiling http acl Safe_ports port 631 # cups acl Safe_ports port 873 # rsync acl Safe_ports port 901 # SWAT acl purge method PURGE acl CONNECT method CONNECT http_access allow manager localhost http_access deny manager http_access allow purge localhost http_access deny purge http_access deny !Safe_ports http_access deny CONNECT !SSL_ports http_access allow localhost http_access allow localnet http_access deny all icp_access allow localnet icp_access deny all http_port 3128 hierarchy_stoplist cgi-bin ? cache_dir ufs /var/spool/squid/cache1 1000 16 256 access_log /var/log/squid/access.log squid refresh_pattern ^ftp: 1440 20% 10080 refresh_pattern ^gopher: 1440 0% 1440 refresh_pattern -i (/cgi-bin/|\?) 0 0% 0 refresh_pattern (Release|Package(.gz)*)$ 0 20% 2880 refresh_pattern . 0 20% 4320 acl shoutcast rep_header X-HTTP09-First-Line ^ICY.[0-9] upgrade_http0.9 deny shoutcast acl apache rep_header Server ^Apache broken_vary_encoding allow apache extension_methods REPORT MERGE MKACTIVITY CHECKOUT cache_mgr webmaster cache_effective_user proxy cache_effective_group proxy hosts_file /etc/hosts coredump_dir /var/spool/squid access.log 1269243042.740 0 192.168.1.11 TCP_DENIED/400 2576 GET NONE:// - NONE/- text/html 00-firewall iptables -F iptables -t nat -F iptables -t mangle -F iptables -X echo 1 | tee /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -j MASQUERADE iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -p tcp --dport 80 -j REDIRECT --to-port 3128 networking auto lo iface lo inet loopback auto eth0 iface eth0 inet static address 142.104.109.179 netmask 255.255.224.0 gateway 142.104.127.254 auto eth1 iface eth1 inet static address 192.168.1.100 netmask 255.255.255.0

  Read the article

• Sharing the same `ssh-agent` among multiple login sessions

  - by intuited

  Is there a convenient way to ensure that all logins from a given user (ie me) use the same ssh-agent? I hacked out a script to make this work most of the time, but I suspected all along that there was some way to do it that I had just missed. Additionally, since that time there have been amazing advances in computing technology, like for example this website. So the goal here is that whenever I log in to the box, regardless of whether it's via SSH, or in a graphical session started from gdm/kdm/etc, or at a console: if my username does not currently have an ssh-agent running, one is started, the environment variables exported, and ssh-add called. otherwise, the existing agent's coordinates are exported in the login session's environment variables. This facility is especially valuable when the box in question is used as a relay point when sshing into a third box. In this case it avoids having to type in the private key's passphrase every time you ssh in and then want to, for example, do git push or something. The script given below does this mostly reliably, although it botched recently when X crashed and I then started another graphical session. There might have been other screwiness going on in that instance. Here's my bad-is-good script. I source this from my .bashrc. # ssh-agent-procure.bash # v0.6.4 # ensures that all shells sourcing this file in profile/rc scripts use the same ssh-agent. # copyright me, now; licensed under the DWTFYWT license. mkdir -p "$HOME/etc/ssh"; function ssh-procure-launch-agent { eval `ssh-agent -s -a ~/etc/ssh/ssh-agent-socket`; ssh-add; } if [ ! $SSH_AGENT_PID ]; then if [ -e ~/etc/ssh/ssh-agent-socket ] ; then SSH_AGENT_PID=`ps -fC ssh-agent |grep 'etc/ssh/ssh-agent-socket' |sed -r 's/^\S+\s+(\S+).*$/\1/'`; if [[ $SSH_AGENT_PID =~ [0-9]+ ]]; then # in this case the agent has already been launched and we are just attaching to it. ##++ It should check that this pid is actually active & belongs to an ssh instance export SSH_AGENT_PID; SSH_AUTH_SOCK=~/etc/ssh/ssh-agent-socket; export SSH_AUTH_SOCK; else # in this case there is no agent running, so the socket file is left over from a graceless agent termination. rm ~/etc/ssh/ssh-agent-socket; ssh-procure-launch-agent; fi; else ssh-procure-launch-agent; fi; fi; Please tell me there's a better way to do this. Also please don't nitpick the inconsistencies/gaffes ( eg putting var stuff in etc ); I wrote this a while ago and have since learned many things.

  Read the article

< Previous Page | 211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222  | Next Page >