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• BizTalk: Instance Subscription: Details

  - by Leonid Ganeline

  It has interesting behavior and it is not always what we are waiting for. An orchestration can be enlisted with many subscriptions. In other word it can have several Receive shapes. Usually the first Receive uses the Activation subscription but other Receives create the Instance subscriptions. [See “Publish and Subscribe Architecture” in MSDN] Here is a sample process. This orchestration has two receives. It is a typical Sequential Convoy. [See "BizTalk Server 2004 Convoy Deep Dive" in MSDN by Stephen W. Thomas]. Let's experiment started.   There are three typical scenarios. First scenario: everything is OK Activation subscription for the Sample message is created when the orchestration the SampleProcess is enlisted. The Instance subscription is created only when the SampleProcess orchestration instance is started and it is removed when the orchestration instance is ended. So far so good, the Message_2 was delivered exactly in this time interval and was consumed. Second scenario: no consumers Three Sample_2 messages were delivered. One was delivered before the SampleProcess was started and before the instance subscription was created. Second message was delivered in the correct time interval. The third one was delivered after the SampleProcess orchestration was ended and the instance subscription was removed. Note: ·         It was not the first Sample_2 was consumed. It was first in the queue but in was not waiting, it was suspended when it was delivered to the Message Box and didn’t have any subscribers at this moment. The first and the last Sample_2 messages were Suspended (Nonresumable) in the Message Box. For each of this message we have got two (!) service instances associated with this suspended message. One service instance has the ServiceClass of Messaging, and we can see its Error Description:   The second service instance has the ServiceClass of RoutingFailureReport, and we can see its Error Description:   Third scenario: something goes wrong Two Sample_2 messages were delivered. Both were delivered in the same interval when the SampleProcess orchestration was working and the instance subscription was created and was working too. First Sample_2 was consumed. The second Sample_2 has the subscription but the subscriber, the SampleProcess orchestration, will not consume it. After the SampleProcess orchestration is ended (And only after! I will discuss this in the next article.), it is suspended (Nonresumable). In this time only one service instance associated with this kind of scenario is suspended. This service instance has the ServiceClass of Orchestration, and we can see its Error Description: In the Message tab we will see the Sample_2 message in the Suspended (Resumable) status. Note: ·         This behavior looks ambiguous. We see here the orchestration consumes the extra message(s) and gets suspended together with those extra messages. These messages are not consumed in term of “processed by orchestration”. But they are consumed in term of the “delivered to the subscriber”. The receive shape in the orchestration is not received these extra messages. But these messages are routed to the orchestration.     Unified Sequential convoy  Now one more scenario. It is the unified sequential convoy. That means the activation subscription is for the same message type as it for the instance subscription. The Sample_2 message is now the Sample message. For simplicity the SampleProcess orchestration consumes only two Sample messages. Usually the orchestration consumes a lot of messages inside loop, but now it is only two of them. First message starts the orchestration, the second message goes inside this orchestration. Then the next pair of messages follows, and so on. But if the input messages follow in shorter intervals we have got the problem. We lost messages in unpredictable manner. Note: ·         Maybe the better behavior would be if the orchestration removes the instance subscription after the message is consumed, not in the end on the orchestration. Right now it is a “feature” of the BizTalk subscription mechanism.

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• SQL SERVER – Unable to DELETE Project in Data Quality Projects (DQS)

  - by pinaldave

  Here is the email which made me write this blog post. When I write a blog post I write keeping in mind that if the developer is not familiar with the concept he will attempt this on the development server. If due to any reason you attempt it on any other server than your personal server, developer should make sure to have complete confidence on his own expertise and understand the risk behind it.  Well, let us read the email which I received. I have modified it a bit to remove information related to organizational and individual. “I just read your blog post on Beginning DQS. I went ahead and followed every single screenshot and it worked fine. I was able to execute the DQS project successfully. However, the same blog post got me in trouble – a serious trouble. After first successful deployment I went ahead and created a few of my own knowledge base and projects. I played around a bit and then decided to get back to real work. Now we had deployed DQS on production server only, so experiment on production server. Now, when I got back to my work, I forgot to close all the windows. My manager found the window open and have seen my test projects. He has asked me to delete my experiments immediately and have said words which I cannot write to you. Here is the problem. I am not able to delete the project which I have created earlier. I am able to open it and play with it but the delete option is disabled and grayed out (see attached image). Now I believe there is nothing wrong with this project as it was just a test project. Would you please write to my manager that it is not harmful to leave that project there as it is? It is also not using any resources. I think he will believe you.” As I said this kind of email makes me uncomfortable. I do not want someone to execute anything on production server. I often write notes and disclaimer on my post when something is dangerous to execute on production server. However, if someone is not expert with SQL Server and attempts something new on production server, I think the major issue is here with the person (admin) who gave new developer permission to production server. This has to be carefully avoided. Here was my response to the individual. “I cannot write to your manager anything as he has not asked me anything. Honestly I believe he is correct in his behavior as you should have not executed anything on the production server without prior approval and testing on the development server. Any R&D must be done on local box or development box. I suggest you request your manager to prevent access to users who does not need access. If he is a good manager, he might have already implemented by now recent event. I also see your screenshot. Here is the issue: While you were playing with project, you might have closed the project half the way, without completing it. Due to the same reason it is locked. You can open and continue from the same place where you have left the project. If you do not need the project any more. Right click on it, click on unlock the project. This will enable the DELETE option and now you can delete the project. Next time, be safe out there. It may be dangerous to have admin access to production server when not needed.“ I have yet not heard from him but I believe he will take my words positively. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology Tagged: Data Quality Services, DQS

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• Deliberate Practice

  - by Jeff Foster

  It’s easy to assume, as software engineers, that there is little need to “practice” writing code. After all, we write code all day long! Just by writing a little each day, we’re constantly learning and getting better, right? Unfortunately, that’s just not true. Of course, developers do improve with experience. Each time we encounter a problem we’re more likely to avoid it next time. If we’re in a team that deploys software early and often, we hone and improve the deployment process each time we practice it. However, not all practice makes perfect. To develop true expertise requires a particular type of practice, deliberate practice, the only goal of which is to make us better programmers. Everyday software development has other constraints and goals, not least the pressure to deliver. We rarely get the chance in the course of a “sprint” to experiment with potential solutions that are outside our current comfort zone. However, if we believe that software is a craft then it’s our duty to strive continuously to raise the standard of software development. This requires specific and sustained efforts to get better at something we currently can’t do well (from Harvard Business Review July/August 2007). One interesting way to introduce deliberate practice, in a sustainable way, is the code kata. The term kata derives from martial arts and refers to a set of movements practiced either solo or in pairs. One of the better-known examples is the Bowling Game kata by Bob Martin, the goal of which is simply to write some code to do the scoring for 10-pin bowling. It sounds too easy, right? What could we possibly learn from such a simple example? Trust me, though, that it’s not as simple as five minutes of typing and a solution. Of course, we can reach a solution in a short time, but the important thing about code katas is that we explore each technique fully and in a controlled way. We tackle the same problem multiple times, using different techniques and making different decisions, understanding the ramifications of each one, and exploring edge cases. The short feedback loop optimizes opportunities to learn. Another good example is Conway’s Game of Life. It’s a simple problem to solve, but try solving it in a functional style. If you’re used to mutability, solving the problem without mutating state will push you outside of your comfort zone. Similarly, if you try to solve it with the focus of “tell-don’t-ask“, how will the responsibilities of each object change? As software engineers, we don’t get enough opportunities to explore new ideas. In the middle of a development cycle, we can’t suddenly start experimenting on the team’s code base. Code katas offer an opportunity to explore new techniques in a safe environment. If you’re still skeptical, my challenge to you is simply to try it out. Convince a willing colleague to pair with you and work through a kata or two. It only takes an hour and I’m willing to bet you learn a few new things each time. The next step is to make it a sustainable team practice. Start with an hour every Friday afternoon (after all who wants to commit code to production just before they leave for the weekend?) for month and see how that works out. Finally, consider signing up for the Global Day of Code Retreat. It’s like a daylong code kata, it’s on December 8th and there’s probably an event in your area!

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• Moving abroad - Relocation advice

  - by Tim Koekkoek

  Oracle offers graduates from different European countries the opportunity to start their career abroad. Some already have experience with living abroad as they have done an exchange semester or internship in another county, for others it is the first time they will move abroad. Rui started in October 2011 as a Business Development Consultant in Dublin and moved from Portugal to Dublin, Ireland to start his career. For those planning to leave their home country and who desire to work abroad, he will share some tips and tricks in this article. When you’re faced with an opportunity like this, there are lots of things that will come to your mind. Sometimes it can be either very exciting, or even stressful. 1. First of all, try to relax. If you are certain you are moving abroad, all you need to do is some research about the country where you’re going to live, get to know its culture (gastronomy, important dates and events, its economy and effective ways to keep you in touch with your family and friends – such as mobile companies and Internet services), and start to understand the best locations (with good access) you could/should live in are. Don’t forget that initially you can be limited by transport and therefore it is important to explore the ideal places for you. During this time, Oracle provides everything you’ll need (papers, documents, etc.) to cross borders. 2. When you arrive, you understand that you are in a new country, in a new place, where all things (or most) are unknown to you. Before you panic, try to see it as a new challenge where new opportunities will come. Sometimes, it’s not easy I know, but the very best a new place has to give to you, is the opportunity to understand a new culture, get to know other people, other ways of working, and grow both as a person and professionally. So, you have nothing to lose in this kind of experiment. 3. When you arrive at Oracle, there’s a fantastic team that will help you with settling in, HR, Payroll, Relocation, IT. In my case, Oracle helped me with the relocation, they supported me to arrange everything such as helping out with all the paperwork and finding a new apartment. As you can see they will do their best to help you to be successful! 4. Engage with your new co-workers. Going to a place where you don’t know anyone can be tough sometimes but see it as an opportunity to meet people from all over the world and share experiences. Embrace it. 5. Plan ahead, try to get the most information possible and use it. Oracle is a multinational enterprise that will allow you to get to know a new labour market and give you the flexibility you need to understand your view of employment and occupation, giving you the very best opportunities to join different teams and working areas, so that you can work where you fit best. Good luck! If you’re thinking about starting a career abroad, read the following article: http://www.overseasdigest.com/movingtips.htm it can be very useful to you. Interested in starting your career at Oracle like Rui has? Please have a look at https://campus.oracle.com for all of our latest vacancies.

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• Cream of the Crop

  - by KemButller

  JD Edwards has been working hard to ensure that you shouldn't have to work so hard! Yet there are still JD Edwards customers that may not be up to speed on all the new and or improved tools and utilities we have delivered, all designed to make your life easier. So today, I want to share what I consider to be the cream of the crop….those items that every customer should know about and leverage to make ERP life just a little bit (or A LOT) easier! These are my top picks, the cream of a very good crop! Explore and enjoy, and gain some of your time back to do with as you please. · www.runjde.com It’s where to go when you need to know! The Resource Kits available on www.runjde.com provide comprehensive Resource Kits (guides) by user type. The guides provide brief descriptions of the wide array of resources that are available to JD Edwards’s eco system and links to each of those resources. · My Oracle Support (MOS) Information Centers This link will take you to an index that is designed to provide you with simple and quick navigation to the available EnterpriseOne Information Centers. This index provides links to: · EnterpriseOne Application specific Information Centers · EnterpriseOne Tools and Technology Information Centers · EnterpriseOne Performance Information Center · EnterpriseOne 9.1 and 9.0 Information Centers Information Centers give Oracle the ability to aggregate content for a given focus area and present this content in categories for easy browsing by our customers. Information Centers offer a variety of focused dynamic content organized around one or more of the following tasks. · Overview · Use · Troubleshooting · Patching and Maintenance · Install and Configure · Upgrade · Optimize Performance · Security · Certify JD Edwards Newsletters Be in the know by reading the Global Customer Support Product Newsletters. They are PACKED with news and information covering a wide range of topics and news. It is a must read if you want to know what’s happening in the JD Edwards universe! Read the latest EntepriseOne newsletter Read the latest World newsletter Learn How to receive notification when a new newsletter edition is published Oracle Learning Library – (OLL) Oracle Learn Library is the place to go for easy access to JD Edwards Application and Tools training. For a comprehensive view of the training available for a specific product/functional area, explore the Knowledge Paths For Net Change (new feature) training, explore the TOI sessions (TOI stands for Transfer Of Information). Tip: Be sure to experiment with the search filters! · www.upgradejde.com The site designed to help customers and partners with the process of upgrading JD Edwards. The site is a wealth of information, tools and resources designed to assist in the evaluation, planning and execution steps required when upgrading. Of note is the wildly successful upgrade strategy known as “The Art of the Possible” wherein JD Edwards and many of our partners hold free workshops to teach customers how to conduct upgrades in 100 days or less. Equally important is the fact that on www.upgradejde.com, customers can gain visibility into planned enhancements using the Product and Technology Feature Catalogs. The catalogs are great for creating customer specific reports about the net change between older releases and current or planned releases. Examples of other key resources on www.upgradejde.com are the product data base changes between releases, extensibility guides, (formerly known as programmer’s guides), whitepapers, ROI calculators and much more!

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• Ask the Readers: How Many Monitors Do You Use with Your Computer?

  - by Asian Angel

  Most people have a single monitor for their computers, many have two, and some individuals enjoy “3 monitor plus” goodness. This week we would like to know how many monitors you use with your computer. Photo by DamnedNice. A good majority of people have a single monitor that they use with their computers and that single monitor serves their needs very well. It could be that these individuals do not engage in a heavy amount of work or play on their computers…they just need to do the basics like checking e-mail, using I.M., working with photos, etc. Another possibility is the use of virtual desktop software such as Dexpot, Yodm 3D, or Sysinternals Desktops on Windows systems. Linux systems such as Ubuntu already have that wonderful multi-desktop functionality built in. The wonderful part about virtual desktops is that a single monitor can feel equivalent to a small army of monitors. The ability to separate your open windows into “categories” and spread them out across multiple desktops is definitely nice. With each passing year dual monitor setups are becoming more common. Having twice the screen real-estate visible at the same time can be extremely convenient when you are multi-tasking. Perhaps you like to monitor your system’s stats and an e-mail account on the second monitor while working with software on the first. It certainly beats having windows popping up and down on your screen constantly while keeping on top of everything! Next we have the people who have three or more monitors in use with their computers. This may be a result of the type of work they do, an experiment to see if multiple monitors are right for them, or the cool, geeky factor that comes with having all those monitors. Needless to say these individuals can induce a good amount of envy and/or inspiration in the rest of us when we see their awesome setups. Are you perfectly content with a single monitor? Do you have two or more monitors that you use? If you have two or more monitors are they actually that useful to you? Perhaps you are getting ready even now to add additional monitors to your system. Whatever your situation may be at the moment, let us know your thoughts (and possible multi-monitor plans) in the comments! How-To Geek Polls require Javascript. Please Click Here to View the Poll. Latest Features How-To Geek ETC How to Use the Avira Rescue CD to Clean Your Infected PC The Complete List of iPad Tips, Tricks, and Tutorials Is Your Desktop Printer More Expensive Than Printing Services? 20 OS X Keyboard Shortcuts You Might Not Know HTG Explains: Which Linux File System Should You Choose? HTG Explains: Why Does Photo Paper Improve Print Quality? Hidden Tracks Your Stolen Mac; Free Until End of January Why the Other Checkout Line Always Moves Faster World of Warcraft Theme for Windows 7 Ubuntu Font Family Now Available for Download Oh No! WikiLeaks Published Santa Claus’s Naughty List [Video] Remember the Milk Now Supports HTTPS Encryption for the Entire Session

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• Try the Oracle Database Appliance Manager Configurator - For Fun!

  - by pwstephe-Oracle

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 If you would like to get a first hand glimpse of how easy it is to configure an ODA, even if you don’t have access to one, it’s possible to download the Appliance Manager Configurator from the Oracle Technology Network, and run it standalone on your PC or Linux/Unix  workstation. The configurator is packaged in a zip file that contains the complete Java environment to run standalone. Once the package is downloaded and unzipped it’s simply a matter of launching it using the config command or shell depending on your runtime environment. Oracle Appliance Manager Configurator is a Java-based tool that enables you to input your deployment plan and validate your network settings before an actual deployment, or you can just preview and experiment with it. Simply download and run the configurator on a local client system which can be a Windows, Linux, or UNIX system. (For Windows launch the batch file config.bat for Linux/Unix environments, run  ./ config.sh). You will be presented with the very same dialogs and options used to configure a production ODA but on your workstation. At the end of a configurator session, you may save your deployment plan in a configuration file. If you were actually ready to deploy, you could copy this configuration file to a real ODA where the online Oracle Appliance Manager Configurator would use the contents to deploy your plan in production. You may also print the file’s content and use the printout as a checklist for setting up your production external network configuration. Be sure to use the actual production network addresses you intend to use it as this will only work correctly if your client system is connected to same network that will be used for the ODA. (This step is not necessary if you are just previewing the Configurator). This is a great way to get an introductory look at the simple and intuitive Database Appliance configuration interface and the steps to configure a system. /* 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-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; 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-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}

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• Property overwrite behaviour

  - by jeremyj

  I thought it worth sharing about property overwrite behaviour because i found it confusing at first in the hope of preventing some learning pain for the uninitiated with MSBuild :-)The confusion for me came because of the redundancy of using a Condition statement in a _project_ level property to test that a property has not been previously set. What i mean is that the following two statements are always identical in behaviour, regardless if the property has been supplied on the command line -  <PropertyGroup>    <PropA Condition=" '$(PropA)' == '' ">PropA set at project level</PropA>  </PropertyGroup>has the same behaviour regardless of command line override as -  <PropertyGroup>     <PropA>PropA set at project level</PropA>   </PropertyGroup>  i.e. the two above property declarations have the same result whether the property is overridden on the command line or not.To prove this experiment with the following .proj file -<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?><Project ToolsVersion="4.0" >  <PropertyGroup>    <PropA Condition=" '$(PropA)' == '' ">PropA set at project level</PropA>  </PropertyGroup>  <Target Name="Target1">    <Message Text="PropA: $(PropA)"/>  </Target>  <Target Name="Target2">    <PropertyGroup>      <PropA>PropA set in Target2</PropA>    </PropertyGroup>    <Message Text="PropA: $(PropA)"/>  </Target>  <Target Name="Target3">    <PropertyGroup>      <PropA Condition=" '$(PropA)' == '' ">PropA set in Target3</PropA>    </PropertyGroup>    <Message Text="PropA: $(PropA)"/>  </Target>  <Target Name="Target4">    <PropertyGroup>      <PropA Condition=" '$(PropA)' != '' ">PropA set in Target4</PropA>    </PropertyGroup>    <Message Text="PropA: $(PropA)"/>  </Target></Project>Try invoking it using both of the following invocations and observe its output -1)>msbuild blog.proj /t:Target1;Target2;Target3;Target42)>msbuild blog.proj /t:Target1;Target2;Target3;Target4 "/p:PropA=PropA set on command line"Then try those two invocations with the following three variations of specifying PropA at the project level -1)  <PropertyGroup>     <PropA Condition=" '$(PropA)' == '' ">PropA set at project level</PropA>   </PropertyGroup> 2)   <PropertyGroup>     <PropA>PropA set at project level</PropA>   </PropertyGroup>3)  <PropertyGroup>     <PropA Condition=" '$(PropA)' != '' ">PropA set at project level</PropA>   </PropertyGroup>

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• MySQL Server 5.6 default my.cnf and my.ini

  - by user12626240

  We've introduced a default my.cnf / my.ini file for MySQL Server that you can now see in the 5.6.8 release candidate: # For advice on how to change settings please see # http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.6/en/server-configuration-defaults.html [mysqld] # Remove leading # and set to the amount of RAM for the most important data # cache in MySQL. Start at 70% of total RAM for dedicated server, else 10%. # innodb_buffer_pool_size = 128M   # Remove leading # to turn on a very important data integrity option: logging # changes to the binary log between backups. # log_bin   # These are commonly set, remove the # and set as required. # basedir = ..... # datadir = ..... # port = ..... # socket = ..... # server_id = .....   # Remove leading # to set options mainly useful for reporting servers. # The server defaults are faster for transactions and fast SELECTs. # Adjust sizes as needed, experiment to find the optimal values. # join_buffer_size = 128M # sort_buffer_size = 2M # read_rnd_buffer_size = 2M   sql_mode=NO_ENGINE_SUBSTITUTION,STRICT_TRANS_TABLES    There is also a template file called my-default.cnf or my-default.ini that has these lines near the start: # *** DO NOT EDIT THIS FILE. It's a template which will be copied to the # *** default location during install, and will be replaced if you # *** upgrade to a newer version of MySQL.   On Linux systems, the mysql_install_db command will copy the template file to the final location, where the server will read and use the file, removing the extra three lines. On Windows, the installer will create extra settings based on the answers you gave during installation. Neither will overwrite an existing my.cnf or my.ini file. The only initially active setting here is to change the value of  sql_mode from the server default of NO_ENGINE_SUBSTITUTION to NO_ENGINE_SUBSTITUTION,STRICT_TRANS_TABLES. This strict mode changes warnings for some non-standard behaviour into errors. This can cause applications which rely on the non-standard things, like dates that aren't valid, to lose data. If we had just changed the server default, the new setting would affect all servers that lack an explicit sql_mode setting, including those where strict mode is harmful. So we did it in the default file instead because that will only affect new server installations. You should expect that in our next version after 5.6, the server default will include STRICT_TRANS_TABLES. Our Windows installer and some of our connectors already use STRICT_TRANS_TABLES by default. Strict has been our preferred setting for many years and it is good to see some development platforms are using it. If you need the old behaviour, just remove the STRICT_TRANS_TABLES setting. If you do this, please also ask your application provider to make it unnecessary. They can do that by setting the session sql_mode setting in their own connections, so the rest of the applications using the server don't have to have an undesirable default. We've kept this file as small as possible because we found that our old files were too big and confused people. We've also now removed the old my-huge and related example files. One key part of this is the link to the documentation, where we will provide an introduction to some key settings. We'd like to hear your feedback on settings that will benefit most users or are most important to call out for existing users. Please do that by commenting here or if you prefer by adding comments to this bug report.

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• Win7 playback of dvr-ms files stutters

  - by Jim Lynn

  I've just had to install Windows 7 on my Media Center machine because my Vista installation had a faulty drive. I've got the latest drivers that I can find - Intel 945GM integrated Graphics, Realtek audio drivers. Things are working OK with one exception. Playback of old recordings, from dvr-ms format files, is choppy. The picture freezes for a fraction of a second, then quickly catches up. The sound is uninterrupted and doesn't pause. These freezes happen once every 5 seconds or so. It's very regular. Playback of Live TV from the digital tuner is perfectly smooth. DVD playback is perfectly smooth. As an experiment, I used the MPEG editing package VideoReDo to create a small test file in three different formats. This program takes the raw MPEG streams and repackages them into the desired container. I took the same clip and created three files in three formats: dvr-ms (Microsoft's old recorded TV format); mpg (standard MPEG); and ts (raw MPEG transport stream of the kind often produced by PVRs). When these three files are played back under Windows 7, the mpg and ts files play smoothly, but the dvr-ms file stutters. The last piece of data I have is that two other Windows 7 machines can play back dvr-ms files smoothly with no stuttering. One is a netbook, with less grunt than the media centre. So there must be something specific about my Media Center machine that's causing the problem. Does anyone have any idea where I can look now? I don't know much about AV software, codecs, filter graphs etc. but I suspect that's where the problem lies. Rendering the video isn't the problem, but extracting the streams is. How would I go about diagnosing the problem? Edited to add: I just used the GraphStudio tool to look at the filter graph on the offending PC. The filter graph it uses by default for dvr-ms looks identical to the other machines, and, interestingly, when I play the files using GraphStudio they run smoothly. Under Windows Media Player and Windows Media Center they stutter. I'd like to see the filter graph for WMP but GraphStudio won't show it. It looks like WMP and WMC are using a different decoding path to GraphStudio. Edited again to add: Today I purchased a new HDTV. The same Media Center driving the TV at 1080p is now playing back the old Recorded TV files smoothly, without stuttering. So whatever the cause of the original problem, using a different resolution seems to have removed the problem. It might also explain why nobody else has had this problem. I doubt many people use Media Centre with a 14in portable TV.

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• Benchmarking hosting providers IO with Bonnie

  - by Derek Organ

  Ok, because of a bunch of projects I'm working on I've access to dedicated Servers on a 3 hosting providers. As an experiment and for educational purposes I decided to see if I could benchmark how good the IO is with each. Bit of research lead me to Bonnie++ So I installed it on the server and ran this simple command /usr/sbin/bonnie -d /tmp/foo The 3 machines in different hosting providers are all dedicated machines, one is a VPS, other two are on some cloud platform e.g. VMWare / Xen using some kind of clustered SAN for storage This might be a naive thing to do but here are the results I found. HOST A Version 1.03c ------Sequential Output------ --Sequential Input- --Random- -Per Chr- --Block-- -Rewrite- -Per Chr- --Block-- --Seeks-- Machine Size K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP /sec %CP xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 1G 45081 88 56244 14 19167 4 20965 40 67110 6 67.2 0 ------Sequential Create------ --------Random Create-------- -Create-- --Read--- -Delete-- -Create-- --Read--- -Delete-- files /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP 16 15264 28 +++++ +++ +++++ +++ +++++ +++ +++++ +++ +++++ +++ xxxxxxxx,1G,45081,88,56244,14,19167,4,20965,40,67110,6,67.2,0,16,15264,28,+++++,+++,+++++,+++,+++++,+++,+++++,+++,+++++,+++ HOST B Version 1.03d ------Sequential Output------ --Sequential Input- --Random- -Per Chr- --Block-- -Rewrite- -Per Chr- --Block-- --Seeks-- Machine Size K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP /sec %CP xxxxxxxxxxxx 4G 43070 91 64510 15 19092 0 29276 47 39169 0 448.2 0 ------Sequential Create------ --------Random Create-------- -Create-- --Read--- -Delete-- -Create-- --Read--- -Delete-- files /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP 16 24799 52 +++++ +++ +++++ +++ 25443 54 +++++ +++ +++++ +++ xxxxxxx,4G,43070,91,64510,15,19092,0,29276,47,39169,0,448.2,0,16,24799,52,+++++,+++,+++++,+++,25443,54,+++++,+++,+++++,+++ HOST C Version 1.03c ------Sequential Output------ --Sequential Input- --Random- -Per Chr- --Block-- -Rewrite- -Per Chr- --Block-- --Seeks-- Machine Size K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP /sec %CP xxxxxxxxxxxxx 1536M 15598 22 85698 13 258969 20 16194 22 723655 21 +++++ +++ ------Sequential Create------ --------Random Create-------- -Create-- --Read--- -Delete-- -Create-- --Read--- -Delete-- files /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP 16 14142 22 +++++ +++ 18621 22 13544 22 +++++ +++ 17363 21 xxxxxxxx,1536M,15598,22,85698,13,258969,20,16194,22,723655,21,+++++,+++,16,14142,22,+++++,+++,18621,22,13544,22,+++++,+++,17363,21 Ok, so first off what is the best way to read the figures and are there any issues with really comparing these numbers? Is this in any way a true representation of IO Speed? If not is there any way for me to test that? Note: these 3 machines are using either Ubuntu or Debian (I presume that doesn't really matter)

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• ZFS/Btrfs/LVM2-like storage with advanced features on Linux?

  - by Easter Sunshine

  I have 3 identical internal 7200 RPM SATA hard disk drives on a Linux machine. I'm looking for a storage set-up that will give me all of this: Different data sets (filesystems or subtrees) can have different RAID levels so I can choose performance, space overhead, and risk trade-offs differently for different data sets while having a few number of physical disks (very important data can be 3xRAID1, important data can be 3xRAID5, unimportant reproducible data can be 3xRAID0). If each data set has an explicit size or size limit, then the ability to grow and shrink the size limit (offline if need be) Avoid out-of-kernel modules R/W or read-only COW snapshots. If it's a block-level snapshots, the filesystem should be synced and quiesced during a snapshot. Ability to add physical disks and then grow/redistribute RAID1, RAID5, and RAID0 volumes to take advantage of the new spindle and make sure no spindle is hotter than the rest (e.g., in NetApp, growing a RAID-DP raid group by a few disks will not balance the I/O across them without an explicit redistribution) Not required but nice-to-haves: Transparent compression, per-file or subtree. Even better if, like NetApps, analyzes the data first for compressibility and only compresses compressible data Deduplication that doesn't have huge performance penalties or require obscene amounts of memory (NetApp does scheduled deduplication on weekends, which is good) Resistance to silent data corruption like ZFS (this is not required because I have never seen ZFS report any data corruption on these specific disks) Storage tiering, either automatic (based on caching rules) or user-defined rules (yes, I have all-identical disks now but this will let me add a read/write SSD cache in the future). If it's user-defined rules, these rules should have the ability to promote to SSD on a file level and not a block level. Space-efficient packing of small files I tried ZFS on Linux but the limitations were: Upgrading is additional work because the package is in an external repository and is tied to specific kernel versions; it is not integrated with the package manager Write IOPS does not scale with number of devices in a raidz vdev. Cannot add disks to raidz vdevs Cannot have select data on RAID0 to reduce overhead and improve performance without additional physical disks or giving ZFS a single partition of the disks ext4 on LVM2 looks like an option except I can't tell whether I can shrink, extend, and redistribute onto new spindles RAID-type logical volumes (of course, I can experiment with LVM on a bunch of files). As far as I can tell, it doesn't have any of the nice-to-haves so I was wondering if there is something better out there. I did look at LVM dangers and caveats but then again, no system is perfect.

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• Windows 7 playback of dvr-Microsoft files stutters

  - by Jim Lynn

  I've just had to install Windows 7 on my Media Center machine because my Vista installation had a faulty drive. I've got the latest drivers that I can find - Intel 945GM integrated Graphics, Realtek audio drivers. Things are working OK with one exception. Playback of old recordings, from dvr-Microsoft format files, is choppy. The picture freezes for a fraction of a second, then quickly catches up. The sound is uninterrupted and doesn't pause. These freezes happen once every 5 seconds or so. It's very regular. Playback of Live TV from the digital tuner is perfectly smooth. DVD playback is perfectly smooth. As an experiment, I used the MPEG editing package VideoReDo to create a small test file in three different formats. This program takes the raw MPEG streams and repackages them into the desired container. I took the same clip and created three files in three formats: dvr-Microsoft (Microsoft's old recorded TV format); mpg (standard MPEG); and ts (raw MPEG transport stream of the kind often produced by PVRs). When these three files are played back under Windows 7, the mpg and ts files play smoothly, but the dvr-Microsoft file stutters. The last piece of data I have is that two other Windows 7 machines can play back dvr-Microsoft files smoothly with no stuttering. One is a netbook, with less grunt than the media centre. So there must be something specific about my Media Center machine that's causing the problem. Does anyone have any idea where I can look now? I don't know much about AV software, codecs, filter graphs etc. but I suspect that's where the problem lies. Rendering the video isn't the problem, but extracting the streams is. How would I go about diagnosing the problem? Edited to add: I just used the GraphStudio tool to look at the filter graph on the offending PC. The filter graph it uses by default for dvr-Microsoft looks identical to the other machines, and, interestingly, when I play the files using GraphStudio they run smoothly. Under Windows Media Player and Windows Media Center they stutter. I'd like to see the filter graph for Windows Media Player but GraphStudio won't show it. It looks like Windows Media Player and WMC are using a different decoding path to GraphStudio. Edited again to add: Today I purchased a new HDTV. The same Media Center driving the TV at 1080p is now playing back the old Recorded TV files smoothly, without stuttering. So whatever the cause of the original problem, using a different resolution seems to have removed the problem. It might also explain why nobody else has had this problem. I doubt many people use Media Centre with a 14in portable TV.

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• how to notify a program of another program? dll? directory? path?

  - by Brady Trainor

  I am trying to experiment with GNUS email in Emacs, in Windows (EDIT: x64 bit). I've got it to work in Ubuntu, but struggling with it in Windows. From http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_mono/emacs-gnutls.html#Help-For-Users I read in second paragraph: This is a little bit trickier on the W32 (Windows) platform, but if you have the GnuTLS DLLs (available from http://sourceforge.net/projects/ezwinports/files/ thanks to Eli Zaretskii) in the same directory as Emacs, you should be OK. I have downloaded and unzipped the gnutls-3.0.9-w32-bin package, but am not sure what to do with it. I have tried putting it in Program Files (x86), which is "the same directory as Emacs". I have tried putting it in the emacs-24.3 folder. I consider merging all the folders in between the two, but am hesitant as that seems a difficult troubleshoot attempt compared to my knowledge on these matters. I think Emacs needs to somehow see the gnutls binaries and/or dlls. My knowledge is limited on this. I've also struggled to understand PATHs for sometime now, and am not sure if that approach is relevant here. FYI, the emacs directory contains folders labeled bin, etc, info, leim, lisp and site-lisp. The gnutls directory contains folder labeled bin, include, lib and share. Hmm, now I'm finding lots of links on adding paths. Still, I'm skeptical that I would only add gnutls.exe path, as it seems the dlls are needed. Some additional data for Ramhound's first comment I have been attempting the (require 'gnutls) route. This seems to be the most relevant parts in the log: Opening connection to imap.gmail.com via tls... gnutls.c: [1] (Emacs) GnuTLS library not found Opening TLS connection to `imap.gmail.com'... Opening TLS connection with `gnutls-cli --insecure -p 993 imap.gmail.com'...failed Opening TLS connection with `gnutls-cli --insecure -p 993 imap.gmail.com --protocols ssl3'...failed Opening TLS connection with `openssl s_client -connect imap.gmail.com:993 -no_ssl2 -ign_eof'...failed Opening TLS connection to `imap.gmail.com'...failed I am not sure what "in stallion" means. Emacs seems to have installed itself in program files (x86), so I assume it is 32 bit. I can try and figure out how to double check, but did not realize I would get such fast response time, and am headed out right now. I will try merging the files later tonight?

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• Convert mkv/h264 video so it can be played on a "mid-range" Sony Ericsson phone. (using Ubuntu).

  - by Johan

  Hi As a little experiment I thinking of converting some video/movies/tv-series into a format that could be playable on my K850, but to be a little bit more generic in this question let's say "mid range Sony Ericsson" phone since they all more or less behave the same and has the same screen resolution (240 x 320). I am looking for command line based tools (for Ubuntu), since I am thinking about writing a "convert and move" script later if it is successful. A lot of the video I have is encoded in mkv/h264, but since that is not supported by the phone I guess that I need to convert it into some mp4/mpeg4 low quality video. After some googling it seems like a good candidate for the job is ffmpeg, but that seems to be a very versatile tool with a lot of magic tricks. Am I on the right track? And if so how do I use ffmpeg to do this? Thanks Johan Update: After plating a little bit with ffmeg I noticed that it only uses 1 of my 4 cores, so the transcoding takes forever. I found a arg called -threads but that did not change much, maybe I got it wrong. I also found that something like this plays in the phone. ffmpeg -i Mythbusters\ S1D1_1.mkv -threads 4 -t 180 -vcodec mpeg4 -r 15 -s 320x240 Mythbusters\ S1D1_1_mini.mp4 It was possible to use 3gp/h263, but the quality was really useless. ffmpeg -i Mythbusters\ S1D1_1.mkv -t 180 -vcodec h263 -acodec libfaac -s cif Mythbusters\ S1D1_1_cif.3gp And it seems like mp4/h264 is also possible and the result is ok, thanks to this question, this one seem to use more than one core as well so it was a little bit faster for me. ffmpeg -i Mythbusters_S1D1_1.mkv -t 180 -acodec libfaac -ab 60k -s 320x240 -vcodec libx264 -b 500k -flags +loop -cmp +chroma -partitions +parti4x4+partp8x8+partb8x8 -flags2 +mixed_refs -me_method umh -subq 6 -trellis 1 -refs 5 -coder 0 -me_range 16 -g 250 -keyint_min 25 -sc_threshold 40 -i_qfactor 0.71 -bt 500k -maxrate 768k -bufsize 2M -qcomp 0.6 -qmin 10 -qmax 51 -qdiff 4 -level 13 -threads 0 -f mp4 Mythbusters_S1D1_1_qvga.mp4 Update: I have tried to use HandBrakeCLI and it is no problem creating a new file that seem to be the same as the one created with ffmpeg with something like this. HandBrakeCLI -i Mythbusters_S1D1_1.mkv --size 100 -E faac -B 60 --maxHeight 240 -r 15 -e x264 -o Mythbusters_S1D1_1_hand.mp4 But that one did not play in the phone... I found this in the official manual: If you transfer video clips using another program than Media Go™, we recommend that you select H.264 Baseline profile video, up to QVGA at 30 fps, VBR 384 kbps (max 768 kps) with AAC+ audio at 128 kbps (max 255 kbps), 48 kHz and stereo audio in mp4 file format. So the idea to use H264 seems to be correct.

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• Routing RFC1918 addresses through dd-wrt via a switch

  - by espenfjo

  I am a bit stuck with an experiment of mine. I have a network looking somewhat like this. | Internet | | ---- |Switch| ---- | | Server w/pub IP | DD-WRT router 192.168.1.1 | | RFC1918 clients 192.168.1.0/24 What I want is for the RFC1918 clients to speak directly with each others. On the server with the public IP I have this route: 192.168.1.0/24 dev eth0 scope link and can see that packets are infact reaching the dd-wrt router for 192.168.1.1, even though if I get no answer. Trying to reach one of the RFC1918 clients from the public IP server will get no result, as the dd-wrt router is not announcing that network on to its external interface (arp who-has 192.168.1.107 tell xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx, but no answer). The router being an WLAN dd-wrt router has of course a load of routes, VLANs and interfaces: xxx.xxx.xxx.1 dev vlan2 scope link 192.168.1.0/24 dev br0 proto kernel scope link src 192.168.1.1 192.168.1.0/24 dev eth1 proto kernel scope link src 192.168.1.244 84.215.64.0/18 dev vlan2 proto kernel scope link src xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx 169.254.0.0/16 dev br0 proto kernel scope link src 169.254.255.1 127.0.0.0/8 dev lo scope link 0.0.0.0 via xxx.xxx.xxx.1 dev vlan2 xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx being the public IP, and xxx.xxx.xxx.1 being the default route for the public IP. I am not sure where to continue with this. I would recon that I both need routing on the dd-wrt router, as well as some iptables magic? Why do something this complex? Why not ;) Also, do not mind that "Internet" can get RFC1918 traffic, it wont go outside of the walls. EDIT 1: Following the tip from stew I do indeed get the correct ARP flowing. And adding an iptables rule for allowing traffic from that specific public IPd machine I get traffic between the systems! Oddly enough though, the speed I get from Server w/pub IP - RFC1918 clients are the same as if the traffic were routed out onto the Internet and back. Edit 2: Ok, disconnecting the external Internet connection will still give the same, crappy transfer speed. So it has to be something else. Edit 3: Ok, I guess there are other reasons for this crappy speed. Case closed. :)

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• networked storage for a research group, 10-100 TB

  - by Marc

  this is related to this post: http://serverfault.com/questions/80854/scalable-24-tb-nas-for-research-department but perhaps a little more general. Background: We're a research lab of around 10 people who do a lot of experiments that involve taking pictures at one of several lab setups and then analyzing it an one of several lab computers. Each experiment may produce 2 or 3 GB of data, and we are generating data at the rate of about 10 TB/year. Right now, we are storing the data on a 6-bay netgear readynas pro, but even with 2 TB drive, this only gives us 10 TB of storage. Also, right now we are not backing up at all. Our short term backup plan is to get a second readynas, put it in a different building and mirror the one drive onto the other. Obviously, this is somewhat non-ideal. Our options: 1) We can pay our university $400/ TB /year for "backed up" online storage. We trust them more than we trust us, but not a whole lot. 2) We can continue to buy small NASs and mirror them between offices. One limit, although stupid, is that we don't have an unlimited number of ethernet jacks. 3) We can try to implement our own data storage solution, which is why I'm asking you guys. One thing to consider is that we're a very transient population and none of us are network administration experts. I will probably be here only another year or so, and graduate students, who are here the longest, have a 5-6 year time scale. So nothing can require expert oversight. Our data transfer rates are low - most of the data will just sit on the server waiting for someone to look at it once or twice - so we don't need a really high speed system. Given these contraints, can someone recommend a fairly low-cost, scalable, more or less turn key shared data storage system with backup in a separate physical location. Does such a thing exist or should we just pay the university to take care of it for us? As a second question, our professor just got tenure and is putting together a budget. Here the goal is to ask for as much as you can and hope you get a fraction of it. So the same question, minus the low-cost. Without budget constraints, can you recommend a scalable turn-key backed up storage system. Thanks

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• I have been told to accept one error with Memtest86+

  - by DustByte

  Bought a new computer back in August with 4x4 GB RAM. Had problems with the RAM. They sent me four new sticks, which also generated errors. Singled out four sticks (from the eight I now had) that didn't generate any errors. Discovered by coincident a new RAM error last week (this time no BSOD). Contacted the company. According to them there have been issues with a bad stock from last summer so I got two tested 8 GB sticks sent to me. Been running Memtest86+ over the weekend. After 20 hours I got an error (see attached photo). The test has now been running for 37 hours but so far only this one error. I contacted the company where I bought the computer. They wrote back: I wouldn't worry about hat one fail. We have had similar situations here whereby it passes numerous times but then fails once. We think it's an issue with memtest, after all memory is faulty or it isn't so you can't really have it pass a few times, fail the next time around and then pass again! Please trust me on this and continue with the memory we sent you and if your problems continue we'll look at getting it replaced again. I gather from other forum posts that many people do not accept a single error. What could this single error signify, faulty RAM or a glitch in the MEMTEST program (or other)? Update: From the helpful comments below I conclude that an occasional (and rare) "random" error could occur and be acceptable, but repeated errors at the same address would indicate malfunction. Memtest has now run for 45 hours and I still have only one error. For everyone's information, I will keep running the test. In less than two days I am going away for a month. I will most likely leave Memtest running. As I do not have a UPS there is a risk that a power outage will ruin the experiment. The computer is a desktop so I cannot bring it with me (which would curiously have exposed it to more cosmic rays as I will be flying ;)).

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• Hyper-V Ubuntu Networking Problems Copying Large Amounts of Data

  - by Anonymous

  I am trying to copy a large amount (about 50 GB) of data over my network from a Hyper-V-hosted virtual machine running Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty Narwhal) to another (non-virtual) Ubuntu host that I plan to use for testing upgrades to one of our web applications. The problem I am having is with the virtual machine, which I shall refer to in what follows as "source.host". This machine is running 64-bit Ubuntu Server with the 2.6.38-8-server kernel and the Microsoft Linux Integration Components for Hyper-V kernel modules (hv_utils, hv_timesource, hv_netvsc, hv_blkvsc, hv_storvsc, and hv_vmbus) loaded. It uses a Hyper-V "synthetic network adapter" for its networking interface. To do the copy, I log on to the machine with the data and run the following commands (Call the remote machine "destination.host".): $ cd /path/to/data $ tar -cvf - datafolder/ | ssh [email protected] "cat > ~/data.tar" This runs for a while and then suddenly stops after transferring somewhere from 2-6 GB. The terminal on the source.host machine displays a Write failed: broken pipe error. The odd part is this: after this occurs, the "source.host" machine is no longer able to talk to the rest of the network. I cannot ping any other hosts on the network from the "source.host" machine, and I cannot ping the "source.host" machine from any other host on the network. I am equally unable to access the any of the web services hosted on "source.host". Running ifconfig on "source.host" shows the network adapter to be up and running as usual with the correct IP address and everything. I tried restarting the networking service with $ /etc/init.d/networking restart but the problem does not go away. Restarting the machine makes it capable of talking to the network again -- it can ping and be pinged by other hosts, and the web services are also accessible and usable as normal -- but attempting the copy operation again results in the same failure, requiring another restart. As an experiment, I tried replacing the tar -- ssh pipeline above with a straight scp: $ scp -r datafolder/ [email protected]:~ but to no avail Thinking that the issue might have to do with the kernel packet-send buffers filling up, I tried increasing the buffer size to 12 MB (up from the 128 KB default) with # echo 12582911 > /proc/sys/net/core/wmem_max but this also had no effect. I'm guessing at this point that it might be a problem with the Microsoft synthetic network driver, but I don't really know. Does anyone have any suggestions? Thank you very much in advance!

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• Low FPS in some games, but hardware not fully used

  - by Mario De Schaepmeester

  I just did a little funny experiment in the game/sim "Train Simulator 2013". I normally have good FPS in it (around 30) at full settings. What I did was make a really, really long train so that the calculations the sim needed to make were enormous (the sim is quite realistic, it takes all things into account like speed/acceleration, G-forces, comfort levels, possible wheel slip and many more, and most of those things on each carriage seperately). This resulted in only 14FPS as reported by the game, but it felt more like 8FPS or so. I have a Logitech G15 keyboard which has an LCD, and it allows me to monitor CPU/RAM and video card load on it. The strange thing is, all CPU cores were busy, but the total load was only about 60% maximum at all times. The video card was only on 30% load (possibly an important note, the memory was full, which is however not unusual for the game in question). The RAM had plenty of room and there weren't many operations as it didn't grow or shrink much. I just have the feeling that the game would run smoother if it used more of my hardware power. Why is it not doing so? I had the same in another game, The Elder Scrolls: Morrowind when using more than 100 mods (that all use scripting) and a few high res texture mods, + a full-on graphics improvement program. The engine is very old (2003), and so I thought this might be the cause (not being optimised for multithreading). I had thought of possible causes, like: The operating system doesn't let the games use all the resources. It doesn't make use of multi-threading appropriately. To eliminate the former, I tried a CPU stress tool and that got 100% CPU juice as I let it run, so the OS is not the problem. I gave its thread the "higher" priority though. My actual question In both games, I did things the engine was not really built to do or support. Can those games' framerate be limited cause of their own engine not being able to cope? What is the real reason and more importantly, can I help it? And in any case, could something actually be wrong with my hardware? It's all reasonably new, a couple of months, and I (almost) never experience any other trouble. Modern and much more demanding games work absolutely fine. Specs CPU: AMD Phenom II 965 X4 @ 3.4gHz RAM: 8GB of DDR3 RAM Video: MSI GTX560 (nVidia chip) with 1GB of GDDR5 memory OS: Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit Nothing overclocked.

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• How can I minimize the amount my router slows down my Internet connection speed?

  - by Lord Torgamus

  Background I'm working with what I assume is a pretty common Internet setup: a cable modem, a wireless router and a few Internet-connected devices. Lately, I've started being more demanding on my Internet connection, and noticed that using my router slows down my download speeds considerably. I just kind of dealt with it until Zune Marketplace on the Xbox 360 told me that a movie was going to take well over ten hours to download, and I just didn't want to wait that long. Good little scientist that I am, I tried to reduce the problem down to one variable. The test As a control, I turned off all the devices in the house that use wireless Internet, and unplugged all the wired devices except for the Xbox. I also power-cycled both the modem and the router. I then tried to download the movie again, and was told that it would still take over ten hours. Next, I unplugged the router, and connected the Xbox directly to the modem. The movie downloaded in just over one hour. As far as I can tell, this means that my ISP, other cable users near me, the remote servers, anything wireless-related and my machines' disk speeds can't be at fault. A similar experiment that replaced the Xbox with a wired laptop produced similar results. To me, this says "the router is responsible for things taking around ten times longer to download." My question I'd still prefer to use the router for a few reasons: it's a pain to connect and disconnect everything every time there's a big file to download direct connection to the modem isn't good for security only one machine can be connected directly to the modem at a time What can I do to have fast connection speeds while still using the router? I don't mind turning other machines off, as long as I don't have to mess with power and ethernet cables. EDIT : After asking this followup question and then this one, I installed dd-wrt on my router, and I seem to be getting higher and more consistent speeds. Perhaps more importantly, my memory use is fairly constant. I know this isn't an answer — which is why I'm not posting it as an answer — but it is how I resolved the situation, and hopefully it'll be helpful for someone.

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• How to Create Auto Playlists in Windows Media Player 12

  - by DigitalGeekery

  Are you getting tired of the same old playlists in Windows Media Player? Today we’ll show you how to create dynamic auto playlists based on criteria you choose in WMP 12 in Windows 7. Auto Playlists In Library view, click on Create playlist dropdown arrow and select Create auto playlist. On the New Auto Playlist window type in a name for the playlist in the text box. Now we need to choose our criteria by which to filter your playlist. Select Click here to add criteria. For our example, we will create a playlist of songs that were added to the library in the last week from the Alternative genre. So, we will first select Date Added from the dropdown list. Many criteria will have addition options to configure. In the example below you will see that we have a few options to fine tune.   We will filter all the songs added to the library in the last 7 days. We will select Is After from the first dropdown list. Then select Last 7 Days from the second dropdown list. You can add multiple criteria to further filter your playlist. If you can’t find the criteria you are looking for, select “More” at the bottom of the dropdown list.   This will pull up a filter window with all the criteria. Select a filter and then click OK when finished.   From the Genre dropdown, we will select Alternative. If you’d like to add Pictures, Videos, or TV Shows to your auto playlists you can do so by selecting them from the dropdown list under And also include. You will then be able to select criteria for your pictures, videos, or TV shows from the dropdown list.   Finally, you can also add restrictions to your music such as the number of items, duration, or total size. We will limit the duration of our playlist to one hour by selecting Limit Total Duration To… Then type in 1 hour…Click OK.   Our library is automatically filtered and a playlist is created based on the criteria we selected. When additional songs are added to the Windows Media Player library, any of new songs that fit the criteria will automatically be added to the New Songs playlist. You can also save a copy of an auto playlist as a regular playlist. Switch to Playlists view by clicking Playlists from either the top menu or the navigation bar. Select the Play tab and then click Clear list to remove any tracks from the list pane.   Right-click on the playlist you want to save, select Add to, and then Play list. The songs from your auto playlist will appear as an Unsaved list on the list pane. Click Save list. Type in a name for your playlist. Your auto playlist will continue to change as you add or remove items from your Media Player library that meet the criteria you established. The new saved playlist we just created will stay as it is currently. Editing a Auto playlist is easy. Right-click on the playlist and select Edit. Now you are ready to enjoy your playlist. Conclusion Auto playlists are great way to keep your playlists fresh in Windows Media Player 12. Users can get creative and experiment with the wide variety of criteria to customize their listening experience. If you are new to playlists in Windows Media Player, you may want to check our our previous post on how to create custom playlists in Windows Media Player 12. Are you looking to get better sound from WMP 12? Take a look at how to improve playback using enhancements in Windows Media Player 12. Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Create Custom Playlists in Windows Media Player 12Fixing When Windows Media Player Library Won’t Let You Add FilesInstall and Use the VLC Media Player on Ubuntu LinuxMake Windows Media Player Automatically Open in Mini Player ModeMake VLC Player Look like Windows Media Player 10 TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips VMware Workstation 7 Acronis Online Backup DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Error Goblin Explains Windows Error Codes Twelve must-have Google Chrome plugins Cool Looking Skins for Windows Media Player 12 Move the Mouse Pointer With Your Face Movement Using eViacam Boot Windows Faster With Boot Performance Diagnostics Create Ringtones For Your Android Phone With RingDroid

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• MySQL 5.5 brings in new ways to authenticate users

  - by Georgi Kodinov

  Ever wanted to use your server's OS for authenticating MySQL users ? Or the corporate LDAP repository ? Unfortunately options like the above are plentiful nowadays. And providing hard-coded support for protocol X or service Y is not the best possible idea. MySQL 5.5 has taken the step into the right direction by providing an infrastructure allowing one to make the server understand different authentication protocols by creating a set of simple plugins (one for the client and one for the server). So now you can easily extend MySQL to search for and authenticate users in your favorite user directory. In fact the API supplied is so versatile that we took the possibility to re-design the current "native" authentication mechanism into a built-in always-on plugin ! OK, let me give you an example: Imagine we have a bunch of users defined in your OS, e.g. we have a user joro with his respective password. And we have a MySQL instance running on the same computer. It would not be unexpected to need to let joro access and/or modify MySQL data. The first step is to define him as a MySQL user. And there's a problem right there : MySQL's CREATE USER joro@localhost IDENTIFIED BY 'joros_password' statement needs a password. And this is a password in no way related to the password that joro have set up in the OS. What's worse : if joro changes his OS password this will in no way be reflected in MySQL. So he'll need to change his MySQL password in a separate step. Not very convenient, specially when you have a lot of users. This is a laborious setup for joro's DBA as well : he'll have to disable his access in both MySQL and the OS should he decides that joro's out of the "nice" list. Now mysql 5.5 to the rescue: Imagine that the smart DBA has created a MySQL server plugin that will check if the name of the user logging in is a valid and enabled OS name and if the password supplied to the mysql client matches the OS and has called this plugin 'auth_os'. Now all that's left to do is to define joro as a MySQL user that will be authenticated externally. This is done by the following command : CREATE USER 'joro'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED WITH 'auth_os'; Now joro can login to MySQL using his current OS password. Note : joro is still a valid MySQL user, so you can grant privileges to him just like you would for all other users. What's better: you can have users that authenticate using different mechanisms in the same server. So you can e.g. safely experiment with external authentication for selected users while keeping your current user base operational. What happens under the hood when joro logs in ? The server will find out by the user definition that it needs to use a non-default authentication and will ask the client to "switch" to using the appropriate client-side plugin (if of course the client is not already using it). If the client can't do this (e.g. because it's an old client or doesn't have the necessary plugin available) the server will reject the login. Otherwise the server will let the server-side plugin decide (while possibly talking to the client side plugin and the OS user directory) if this is a valid login or not. If it is the login process will continue as usual, while if it's not the login will get rejected. There's a lot more that MySQL 5.5 can do for you than just the simple case above. Stay tuned for more advanced use cases like mapping groups of external users to a single MySQL user (so you won't have to have 1-to-1 mapping between your external user directory and your mysql user repository) or ways to control the process as a DBA. Or you can simply skip ahead and read the relevant topics from MySQL's excellent online documentation. Or take a look at the example plugins in plugin/auth. Or take a look at the test suite in mysql-test/t/plugin_auth.test. Changelog entry: http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.5/en/news-5-5-7.html Primary new sections: Pluggable authentication Proxy users Client plugin C API functions Revised sections: New PROXY privilege New proxies_priv grant table Passwords might be external New external_user and proxy_user system variables New --default-auth and --plugin-dir mysql options New MYSQL_DEFAULT_AUTH and MYSQL_PLUGIN_DIR options for mysql_options() CREATE USER has IDENTIFIED WITH clause to specify auth plugin GRANT has PROXY privilege, IDENTIFIED WITH clause to specify auth plugin The data structure for writing client plugins

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• SQL SERVER – PAGEIOLATCH_DT, PAGEIOLATCH_EX, PAGEIOLATCH_KP, PAGEIOLATCH_SH, PAGEIOLATCH_UP – Wait Type – Day 9 of 28

  - by pinaldave

  It is very easy to say that you replace your hardware as that is not up to the mark. In reality, it is very difficult to implement. It is really hard to convince an infrastructure team to change any hardware because they are not performing at their best. I had a nightmare related to this issue in a deal with an infrastructure team as I suggested that they replace their faulty hardware. This is because they were initially not accepting the fact that it is the fault of their hardware. But it is really easy to say “Trust me, I am correct”, while it is equally important that you put some logical reasoning along with this statement. PAGEIOLATCH_XX is such a kind of those wait stats that we would directly like to blame on the underlying subsystem. Of course, most of the time, it is correct – the underlying subsystem is usually the problem. From Book On-Line: PAGEIOLATCH_DT Occurs when a task is waiting on a latch for a buffer that is in an I/O request. The latch request is in Destroy mode. Long waits may indicate problems with the disk subsystem. PAGEIOLATCH_EX Occurs when a task is waiting on a latch for a buffer that is in an I/O request. The latch request is in Exclusive mode. Long waits may indicate problems with the disk subsystem. PAGEIOLATCH_KP Occurs when a task is waiting on a latch for a buffer that is in an I/O request. The latch request is in Keep mode. Long waits may indicate problems with the disk subsystem. PAGEIOLATCH_SH Occurs when a task is waiting on a latch for a buffer that is in an I/O request. The latch request is in Shared mode. Long waits may indicate problems with the disk subsystem. PAGEIOLATCH_UP Occurs when a task is waiting on a latch for a buffer that is in an I/O request. The latch request is in Update mode. Long waits may indicate problems with the disk subsystem. PAGEIOLATCH_XX Explanation: Simply put, this particular wait type occurs when any of the tasks is waiting for data from the disk to move to the buffer cache. ReducingPAGEIOLATCH_XX wait: Just like any other wait type, this is again a very challenging and interesting subject to resolve. Here are a few things you can experiment on: Improve your IO subsystem speed (read the first paragraph of this article, if you have not read it, I repeat that it is easy to say a step like this than to actually implement or do it). This type of wait stats can also happen due to memory pressure or any other memory issues. Putting aside the issue of a faulty IO subsystem, this wait type warrants proper analysis of the memory counters. If due to any reasons, the memory is not optimal and unable to receive the IO data. This situation can create this kind of wait type. Proper placing of files is very important. We should check file system for the proper placement of files – LDF and MDF on separate drive, TempDB on separate drive, hot spot tables on separate filegroup (and on separate disk), etc. Check the File Statistics and see if there is higher IO Read and IO Write Stall SQL SERVER – Get File Statistics Using fn_virtualfilestats. It is very possible that there are no proper indexes on the system and there are lots of table scans and heap scans. Creating proper index can reduce the IO bandwidth considerably. If SQL Server can use appropriate cover index instead of clustered index, it can significantly reduce lots of CPU, Memory and IO (considering cover index has much lesser columns than cluster table and all other it depends conditions). You can refer to the two articles’ links below previously written by me that talk about how to optimize indexes. Create Missing Indexes Drop Unused Indexes Updating statistics can help the Query Optimizer to render optimal plan, which can only be either directly or indirectly. I have seen that updating statistics with full scan (again, if your database is huge and you cannot do this – never mind!) can provide optimal information to SQL Server optimizer leading to efficient plan. Checking Memory Related Perfmon Counters SQLServer: Memory Manager\Memory Grants Pending (Consistent higher value than 0-2) SQLServer: Memory Manager\Memory Grants Outstanding (Consistent higher value, Benchmark) SQLServer: Buffer Manager\Buffer Hit Cache Ratio (Higher is better, greater than 90% for usually smooth running system) SQLServer: Buffer Manager\Page Life Expectancy (Consistent lower value than 300 seconds) Memory: Available Mbytes (Information only) Memory: Page Faults/sec (Benchmark only) Memory: Pages/sec (Benchmark only) Checking Disk Related Perfmon Counters Average Disk sec/Read (Consistent higher value than 4-8 millisecond is not good) Average Disk sec/Write (Consistent higher value than 4-8 millisecond is not good) Average Disk Read/Write Queue Length (Consistent higher value than benchmark is not good) Note: The information presented here is from my experience and there is no way that I claim it to be accurate. I suggest reading Book OnLine for further clarification. All of the discussions of Wait Stats in this blog is generic and varies from system to system. It is recommended that you test this on a development server before implementing it to a production server. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: Pinal Dave, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Scripts, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQL Wait Stats, SQL Wait Types, T SQL, Technology

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• Using the new CSS Analyzer in JavaFX Scene Builder

  - by Jerome Cambon

  As you know, JavaFX provides from the API many properties that you can set to customize or make your components to behave as you want. For instance, for a Button, you can set its font, or its max size.Using Scene Builder, these properties can be explored and modified using the inspector. However, JavaFX also provides many other properties to have a fine grained customization of your components : the css properties. These properties are typically set from a css stylesheet. For instance, you can set a background image on a Button, change the Button corners, etc... Using Scene Builder, until now, you could set a css property using the inspector Style and Stylesheet editors. But you had to go to the JavaFX css documentation to know the css properties that can be applied to a given component. Hopefully, Scene Builder 1.1 added recently a very interesting new feature : the CSS Analyzer.It allows you to explore all the css properties available for a JavaFX component, and helps you to build your css rules. A very simple example : make a Button rounded Let’s take a very simple example:you would like to customize your Buttons to make them rounded. First, enable the CSS Analyzer, using the ‘View->Show CSS Analyzer’ menu. Grow the main window, and the CSS Analyzer to get more room: Then, drop a Button from the Library to the ContentView: the CSS Analyzer is now showing the Button css properties: As you can see, there is a ‘-fx-background-radius’ css property that allow to define the radius of the background (note that you can get the associated css documentation by clicking on the property name). You can then experiment this by setting the Button style property from the inspector: As you can see in the css doc, one can set the same radius for the 4 corners by a simple number. Once the style value is applied, the Button is now rounded, as expected.Look at the CSS Analyzer: the ‘-fx-background-radius’ property has now 2 entries: the default one, and the one we just entered from the Style property. The new value “win”: it overrides the default one, and become the actual value (to highlight this, the cell background becomes blue). Now, you will certainly prefer to apply this new style to all the Buttons of your FXML document, and have a css rule for this.To do this, save you document first, and create a css file in the same directory than the new document.Create an empty css file (e.g. test.css), and attach it the the root AnchorPane, by first selecting the AnchorPane, then using the Stylesheets editor from the inspector: Add the corresponding css rule to your new test.css file, from your preferred editor (Netbeans for me ;-) and save it. .button { -fx-background-radius: 10px;} Now, select your Button and have a look at the CSS Analyzer. As you can see, the Button is inheriting the css rule (since the Button is a child of the AnchorPane), and still have its inline Style. The Inline style “win”, since it has precedence on the stylesheet. The CSS Analyzer columns are displayed by precedence order.Note the small right-arrow icons, that allow to jump to the source of the value (either test.css, or the inspector in this case).Of course, unless you want to set a specific background radius for this particular Button, you can remove the inline Style from the inspector. Changing the color of a TitledPane arrow In some cases, it can be useful to be able to select the inner element you want to style directly from the Content View . Drop a TitledPane to the Content View. Then select from the CSS Analyzer the CSS cursor (the other cursor on the left allow you to come back to ‘standard’ selection), that will allow to select an inner element: height: 62px;" align="LEFT" border="0"> … and select the TitledPane arrow, that will get a yellow background: … and the Styleable Path is updated: To define a new css rule, you can first copy the Styleable path : .. then paste it in your test.css file. Then, add an entry to set the -fx-background-color to red. You should have something like: .titled-pane:expanded .title .arrow-button .arrow { -fx-background-color : red;} As soon as the test.css is saved, the change is taken into account in Scene Builder. You can also use the Styleable Path to discover all the inner elements of TitledPane, by clicking on the arrow icon: More details You can see the CSS Analyzer in action (and many other features) from the Java One BOF: BOF4279 - In-Depth Layout and Styling with the JavaFX Scene Builder presented by my colleague Jean-Francois Denise. On the right hand, click on the Media link to go to the video (streaming) of the presa. The Scene Builder support of CSS starts at 9:20 The CSS Analyzer presentation starts at 12:50

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