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• Installing Lubuntu 14.04.1 fails, upowerd appears to hang

  - by Rantanplan

  On the live-CD session, I tried installing Lubuntu double clicking on the install button on the desktop. Here, the CD starts running but then stops running and nothing happens. Next, I rebooted and tried installing Lubuntu directly from the boot menu screen using forcepae again. After a while, I receive the following error message: The installer encountered an unrecoverable error. A desktop session will now be run so that you may investigate the problem or try installing again. Hitting Enter brings me to the desktop. For what errors should I search? And how? Thanks for some hints! On Lubuntu 12.04: uname -a Linux humboldt 3.2.0-67-generic #101-Ubuntu SMP Tue Jul 15 17:45:51 UTC 2014 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux lsb_release -a No LSB modules are available. Distributor ID: Ubuntu Description: Ubuntu 12.04.5 LTS Release: 12.04 Codename: precise upowerd appears to hang: Aug 25 10:53:28 lubuntu kernel: [ 367.920272] INFO: task upowerd:3002 blocked for more than 120 seconds. Aug 25 10:53:28 lubuntu kernel: [ 367.920288] Tainted: G S C 3.13.0-32-generic #57-Ubuntu Aug 25 10:53:28 lubuntu kernel: [ 367.920294] "echo 0 > /proc/sys/kernel/hung_task_timeout_secs" disables this message. Aug 25 10:53:28 lubuntu kernel: [ 367.920300] upowerd D e21f9da0 0 3002 1 0x00000000 Aug 25 10:53:28 lubuntu kernel: [ 367.920314] e21f9dfc 00000086 f5ef7094 e21f9da0 c1050272 c1a8d540 c1920a00 00000000 Aug 25 10:53:28 lubuntu kernel: [ 367.920333] c1a8d540 c1920a00 d9e44da0 f5ef6540 c1129061 00000002 000001c1 0001c37b Aug 25 10:53:28 lubuntu kernel: [ 367.920351] 00000000 00000002 00000000 e2276240 00000000 00000040 c12b0ec5 c19975a8 Aug 25 10:53:28 lubuntu kernel: [ 367.920368] Call Trace: Aug 25 10:53:28 lubuntu kernel: [ 367.920389] [<c1050272>] ? kmap_atomic_prot+0x42/0x100 Aug 25 10:53:28 lubuntu kernel: [ 367.920404] [<c1129061>] ? get_page_from_freelist+0x2a1/0x600 Aug 25 10:53:28 lubuntu kernel: [ 367.920417] [<c12b0ec5>] ? process_measurement+0x65/0x240 Aug 25 10:53:28 lubuntu kernel: [ 367.920432] [<c1654c73>] schedule_preempt_disabled+0x23/0x60 Aug 25 10:53:28 lubuntu kernel: [ 367.920443] [<c16565bd>] __mutex_lock_slowpath+0x10d/0x171 Aug 25 10:53:28 lubuntu kernel: [ 367.920454] [<c1655aec>] mutex_lock+0x1c/0x28 Aug 25 10:53:28 lubuntu kernel: [ 367.920478] [<f857223a>] acpi_smbus_transaction+0x48/0x210 [sbshc] Aug 25 10:53:28 lubuntu kernel: [ 367.920489] [<c11858e1>] ? do_last+0x1b1/0xf60 Aug 25 10:53:28 lubuntu kernel: [ 367.920504] [<f857242f>] acpi_smbus_read+0x2d/0x33 [sbshc] Aug 25 10:53:28 lubuntu kernel: [ 367.920520] [<f881e0f1>] acpi_battery_get_state+0x74/0x8b [sbs] Aug 25 10:53:28 lubuntu kernel: [ 367.920535] [<f881e8a9>] acpi_sbs_battery_get_property+0x2a/0x233 [sbs] Aug 25 10:53:28 lubuntu kernel: [ 367.920549] [<c14fa61f>] power_supply_show_property+0x3f/0x240 Aug 25 10:53:28 lubuntu kernel: [ 367.920561] [<c114664f>] ? handle_mm_fault+0x64f/0x8d0 Aug 25 10:53:28 lubuntu kernel: [ 367.920573] [<c14fa5e0>] ? power_supply_store_property+0x60/0x60 Aug 25 10:53:28 lubuntu kernel: [ 367.920586] [<c1407d20>] ? dev_uevent_name+0x30/0x30 Aug 25 10:53:28 lubuntu kernel: [ 367.920597] [<c1407d38>] dev_attr_show+0x18/0x40 Aug 25 10:53:28 lubuntu kernel: [ 367.920608] [<c11dad15>] sysfs_seq_show+0xe5/0x1c0 Aug 25 10:53:28 lubuntu kernel: [ 367.920621] [<c119846e>] seq_read+0xce/0x370 Aug 25 10:53:28 lubuntu kernel: [ 367.920633] [<c11983a0>] ? seq_hlist_next_percpu+0x90/0x90 Aug 25 10:53:28 lubuntu kernel: [ 367.920644] [<c1179238>] vfs_read+0x78/0x140 Aug 25 10:53:28 lubuntu kernel: [ 367.920654] [<c11799a9>] SyS_read+0x49/0x90 Aug 25 10:53:28 lubuntu kernel: [ 367.920667] [<c165efcd>] sysenter_do_call+0x12/0x28 /var/log/installer/debug shows upower related error: Ubiquity 2.18.8 Gtk-Message: Failed to load module "overlay-scrollbar" Gtk-Message: Failed to load module "overlay-scrollbar" ERROR:dbus.proxies:Introspect error on :1.23:/org/freedesktop/UPower: dbus.exceptions.DBusException: org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.NoReply: Did not receive a reply. Possible causes include: the remote application did not send a reply, the message bus security policy blocked the reply, the reply timeout expired, or the network connection was broken. Exception in GTK frontend (invoking crash handler): Traceback (most recent call last): File "/usr/lib/ubiquity/bin/ubiquity", line 636, in <module> main(oem_config) File "/usr/lib/ubiquity/bin/ubiquity", line 622, in main install(query=options.query) File "/usr/lib/ubiquity/bin/ubiquity", line 260, in install wizard = ui.Wizard(distro) File "/usr/lib/ubiquity/ubiquity/frontend/gtk_ui.py", line 290, in __init__ mod.ui = mod.ui_class(mod.controller) File "/usr/lib/ubiquity/plugins/ubi-prepare.py", line 93, in __init__ upower.setup_power_watch(self.prepare_power_source) File "/usr/lib/ubiquity/ubiquity/upower.py", line 21, in setup_power_watch power_state_changed() File "/usr/lib/ubiquity/ubiquity/upower.py", line 18, in power_state_changed not misc.get_prop(upower, UPOWER_PATH, 'OnBattery')) File "/usr/lib/ubiquity/ubiquity/misc.py", line 809, in get_prop return obj.Get(iface, prop, dbus_interface=dbus.PROPERTIES_IFACE) File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/dbus/proxies.py", line 70, in __call__ return self._proxy_method(*args, **keywords) File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/dbus/proxies.py", line 145, in __call__ **keywords) File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/dbus/connection.py", line 651, in call_blocking message, timeout)

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• Login failed for user 'sa' because the account is currently locked out. The system administrator can

  - by cabhilash

  Login failed for user 'sa' because the account is currently locked out. The system administrator can unlock it. (Microsoft SQL Server, Error: 18486) SQL server has local password policies. If policy is enabled which locks down the account after X number of failed attempts then the account is automatically locked down.This error with 'sa' account is very common. sa is default administartor login available with SQL server. So there are chances that an ousider has tried to bruteforce your system. (This can cause even if a legitimate tries to access the account with wrong password.Sometimes a user would have changed the password without informing others. So the other users would try to lo) You can unlock the account with the following options (use another admin account or connect via windows authentication) Alter account & unlock ALTER LOGIN sa WITH PASSWORD='password' UNLOCK Use another account Almost everyone is aware of the sa account. This can be the potential security risk. Even if you provide strong password hackers can lock the account by providing the wrong password. ( You can provide extra security by installing firewall or changing the default port but these measures are not always practical). As a best practice you can disable the sa account and use another account with same privileges.ALTER LOGIN sa DISABLE You can edit the lock-ot options using gpedit.msc( in command prompt type gpedit.msc and press enter). Navigate to Account Lokout policy as shown in the figure The Following options are available Account lockout threshold This security setting determines the number of failed logon attempts that causes a user account to be locked out. A locked-out account cannot be used until it is reset by an administrator or until the lockout duration for the account has expired. You can set a value between 0 and 999 failed logon attempts. If you set the value to 0, the account will never be locked out. Failed password attempts against workstations or member servers that have been locked using either CTRL+ALT+DELETE or password-protected screen savers count as failed logon attempts. Account lockout duration This security setting determines the number of minutes a locked-out account remains locked out before automatically becoming unlocked. The available range is from 0 minutes through 99,999 minutes. If you set the account lockout duration to 0, the account will be locked out until an administrator explicitly unlocks it. If an account lockout threshold is defined, the account lockout duration must be greater than or equal to the reset time. Default: None, because this policy setting only has meaning when an Account lockout threshold is specified. Reset account lockout counter after This security setting determines the number of minutes that must elapse after a failed logon attempt before the failed logon attempt counter is reset to 0 bad logon attempts. The available range is 1 minute to 99,999 minutes. If an account lockout threshold is defined, this reset time must be less than or equal to the Account lockout duration. Default: None, because this policy setting only has meaning when an Account lockout threshold is specified.When creating SQL user you can set CHECK_POLICY=on which will enforce the windows password policy on the account. The following policies will be applied Define the Enforce password history policy setting so that several previous passwords are remembered. With this policy setting, users cannot use the same password when their password expires.  Define the Maximum password age policy setting so that passwords expire as often as necessary for your environment, typically, every 30 to 90 days. With this policy setting, if an attacker cracks a password, the attacker only has access to the network until the password expires.  Define the Minimum password age policy setting so that passwords cannot be changed until they are more than a certain number of days old. This policy setting works in combination with the Enforce password historypolicy setting. If a minimum password age is defined, users cannot repeatedly change their passwords to get around the Enforce password history policy setting and then use their original password. Users must wait the specified number of days to change their passwords.  Define a Minimum password length policy setting so that passwords must consist of at least a specified number of characters. Long passwords--seven or more characters--are usually stronger than short ones. With this policy setting, users cannot use blank passwords, and they have to create passwords that are a certain number of characters long.  Enable the Password must meet complexity requirements policy setting. This policy setting checks all new passwords to ensure that they meet basic strong password requirements.  Password must meet the following complexity requirement, when they are changed or created: Not contain the user's entire Account Name or entire Full Name. The Account Name and Full Name are parsed for delimiters: commas, periods, dashes or hyphens, underscores, spaces, pound signs, and tabs. If any of these delimiters are found, the Account Name or Full Name are split and all sections are verified not to be included in the password. There is no check for any character or any three characters in succession. Contain characters from three of the following five categories:  English uppercase characters (A through Z) English lowercase characters (a through z) Base 10 digits (0 through 9) Non-alphabetic characters (for example, !, $, #, %) A catch-all category of any Unicode character that does not fall under the previous four categories. This fifth category can be regionally specific.

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• MySQL Connector/Net 6.5.5 Maintenance Release has been released

  - by fernando

  MySQL Connector/Net 6.5.5, a new maintenance release of our 6.5 series, has been released.  This release is GA quality and is appropriate for use in production environments.  Please note that 6.6 is our latest driver series and is the recommended product for development. It is now available in source and binary form from http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/connector/net/#downloads and mirror sites (note that not all mirror sites may be up to date at this point-if you can't find this version on some mirror, please try again later or choose another download site.) The 6.5.5 version of MySQL Connector/Net brings the following fixes: - Fix for ArgumentNull exception when using Take().Count() in a LINQ to Entities query (bug MySql #64749, Oracle bug #13913047). - Fix for type varchar changed to bit when saving in Table Designer (Oracle bug #13916560). - Fix for error when trying to change the name of an Index on the Indexes/Keys editor; along with this fix now users can change the Index type of a new Index which could not be done   in previous versions, and when changing the Index name the change is reflected on the list view at the left side of the Index/Keys editor (Oracle bug #13613801). - Fix for stored procedure call using only its name with EF code first (MySql bug #64999, Oracle bug #14008699). - Fix for List.Contains generates a bunch of ORs instead of more efficient IN clause in   LINQ to Entities (Oracle bug #14016344, MySql bug #64934). - Fix for performance issue in generated EF query: .NET StartsWith/Contains/EndsWith produces MySql's locate instead of Like (MySql bug #64935, Oracle bug #14009363). - Fix for script generated for code first contains wrong alter table and wrong declaration for byte[] (MySql bug #64216, Oracle bug #13900091). - Fix and code contribution for bug Timed out sessions are removed without notification which allow to enable the Expired CallBack when Session Provider times out any session (bug MySql #62266 Oracle bug # 13354935) - Fix for Exception thrown when using cascade delete in an EDM Model-First in Entity Framework (Oracle bug #14008752, MySql bug #64779). - Fix for Session locking issue with MySqlSessionStateStore (MySql bug #63997, Oracble bug #13733054). - Fixed deleting a user profile using Profile provider (MySQL bug #64470, Oracle bug #13790123) - Fix for bug Cannot Create an Entity with a Key of Type String (MySQL bug #65289, Oracle bug #14540202). This fix checks if the type has a FixedLength facet set in order to create a char otherwise should create varchar, mediumtext or longtext types when using a String CLR type in Code First or Model First also tested in Database First. Unit tests added for Code First and ProviderManifest. - Fix for bug "CacheServerProperties can cause 'Packet too large' error". The issue was due to a missing reading of Max_allowed_packet server property when CacheServerProperties is in true, since the value was read only in the first connection but the following pooled connections had a wrong value causing a Packet too large error. Including also a unit test for this scenario. All unit test passed. MySQL Bug #66578 Orabug #14593547. - Fix for handling unnamed parameter in MySQLCommand. This fix allows the mysqlcommand to handle parameters without requiring naming (e.g. INSERT INTO Test (id,name) VALUES (?, ?) ) (MySQL Bug #66060, Oracle bug #14499549). - Fixed inheritance on Entity Framework Code First scenarios. Discriminator column is created using its correct type as varchar(128) (MySql bug #63920 and Oracle bug #13582335). - Fixed "Trying to customize column precision in Code First does not work" (MySql bug #65001, Oracle bug #14469048). - Fixed bug ASP.NET Membership database fails on MySql database UTF32 (MySQL bug #65144, Oracle bug #14495292). - Fix for MySqlCommand.LastInsertedId holding only 32 bit values (MySql bug #65452, Oracle bug #14171960) by changing   several internal declaration of lastinsertid from int to long. - Fixed "Decimal type should have digits at right of decimal point", now default is 2, but user's changes in   EDM designer are recognized (MySql bug #65127, Oracle bug #14474342). - Fix for NullReferenceException when saving an uninitialized row in Entity Framework (MySql bug #66066, Oracle bug #14479715). - Fix for error when calling RoleProvider.RemoveUserFromRole(): causes an exception due to a wrong table being used (MySql bug #65805, Oracle bug #14405338). - Fix for "Memory Leak on MySql.Data.MySqlClient.MySqlCommand", too many MemoryStream's instances created (MySql bug #65696, Oracle bug #14468204). - Added ANTLR attribution notice (Oracle bug #14379162). - Fixed Entity Framework + mysql connector/net in partial trust throws exceptions (MySql bug #65036, Oracle bug #14668820). - Added support in Parser for Datetime and Time types with precision when using Server 5.6 (No bug Number). - Small improvement on MySqlPoolManager CleanIdleConnections for better mysqlpoolmanager idlecleanuptimer at startup (MySql bug #66472 and Oracle bug #14652624). - Fix for bug TIMESTAMP values are mistakenly represented as DateTime with Kind = Local (Mysql bug #66964, Oracle bug #14740705). - Fix for bug Keyword not supported. Parameter name: AttachDbFilename (Mysql bug #66880, Oracle bug #14733472). - Added support to MySql script file to retrieve data when using "SHOW" statements. - Fix for Package Load Failure in Visual Studio 2005 (MySql bug #63073, Oracle bug #13491674). - Fix for bug "Unable to connect using IPv6 connections" (MySQL bug #67253, Oracle bug #14835718). - Added auto-generated values for Guid identity columns (MySql bug #67450, Oracle bug #15834176). - Fix for method FirstOrDefault not supported in some LINQ to Entities queries (MySql bug #67377, Oracle bug #15856964). The release is available to download at http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/connector/net/6.5.html Documentation ------------------------------------- You can view current Connector/Net documentation at http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.5/en/connector-net.html You can find our team blog at http://blogs.oracle.com/MySQLOnWindows. You can also post questions on our forums at http://forums.mysql.com/. Enjoy and thanks for the support! 

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• Resetting Your Oracle User Password with SQL Developer

  - by thatjeffsmith

  There’s nothing more annoying than having to email, call, or log a support ticket to have one of your accounts reset. This is no less annoying in the Oracle database. Those pesky security folks have determined that your password should only be valid for X days, and your time is up. Time to reset the password! Except…you can’t log into the database to reset your password. What now? Wait a second, look at this nifty thing I see in SQL Developer: Right click on my connection, reset password not available! Why not? The JDBC Driver Doesn’t Support This Operation We can’t make this call over the Oracle JDBC layer, because it hasn’t been implemented. However our primary interface, OCI, does indeed support this. In order to use the Oracle Call Interface (OCI), you need to have an Oracle Client on your machine. The good news is that this is fairly easy to get going. The Instant Client will do. You have two options, the full or ‘Lite’ Instant Clients. If you want SQL*Plus and the other client tools, go for the full. If you just want the basic drivers, go for the Lite. Either of these is fine, but mind the bit level and version of Oracle! Make sure you get a 32 bit Instant Client if you run 32 bit SQL Developer or 64 bit if you run 64 Here’s the download link What, you didn’t believe me? Mind the version of Oracle too! You want to be at the same level or higher of the database you’re working with. You can use a 11.2.0.3 client with 11.2.0.1 database but not a 10gR2 client with 11gR2 database. Clear as mud? Download and Extract Put it where you want – Program Files is as good as place as any if you have the rights. When you’re done, copy that directory path you extracted the archive to, because we’re going to add it to your Windows PATH environment variable. The easiest way to find this in Windows 7 is to open the Start dialog and type ‘path’. In Windows 8 you’ll cast your spell and wave at your screen until something happens. I recommend you put it up front so we find our DLLs first. Now with that set, let’s start up SQL Developer. Check the Connection Context menu again Bingo! What happened there? SQL Developer looks to see if it can find the OCI resources. Guess where it looks? That’s right, the PATH. If it finds what it’s looking for, and confirms the bit level is right, it will activate the Reset Password option. We have a Preference to ‘force’ an OCI/THICK connection that gives you a few other edge case features, but you do not need to enable this to activate the Reset Password. Not necessary, but won’t hurt anything either. There are a few actual benefits to using OCI powered connections, but that’s beyond the scope of today’s blog post…to be continued. Ok, so we’re ready to go. Now, where was I again? Oh yeah, my password has expired… Right click on your connection and now choose ‘Reset Password’ You’ll need to know your existing password and select a new one that meets your databases’s security standards. I Need Another Option, This Ain’t Working! If you have another account in the database, you can use the DBA Panel to reset a user’s password, or of course you can spark up a SQL*Plus session and issue the ALTER USER JEFF IDENTIFIED BY _________; command – but you knew this already, yes? I need more help ‘installing’ the Instant Client, help! There are lots and lots of resources out there on this subject. But I also know from personal experience that many of you have problems getting this to ‘work.’ The key things to remember is to download the right bit level AND make sure the client install directory is in your path. I know many folks that will just ‘install’ the Instant Client directly to one of their ‘bin’ type directories. You can do that if you want, but I prefer the cleaner method. Of course if you lack admin privs to change the PATH variable, that might be your only option. Or you could do what the original ORA- message indicated and ‘contact your DBA.’

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• The Unintended Consequences of Sound Security Policy

  - by Tanu Sood

  v\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} o\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} w\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} .shape {behavior:url(#default#VML);} 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";} Author: Kevin Moulton, CISSP, CISM Meet the Author: Kevin Moulton, Senior Sales Consulting Manager, Oracle Kevin Moulton, CISSP, CISM, has been in the security space for more than 25 years, and with Oracle for 7 years. He manages the East Enterprise Security Sales Consulting Team. He is also a Distinguished Toastmaster. Follow Kevin on Twitter at twitter.com/kevin_moulton, where he sometimes tweets about security, but might also tweet about running, beer, food, baseball, football, good books, or whatever else grabs his attention. Kevin will be a regular contributor to this blog so stay tuned for more posts from him. When I speak to a room of IT administrators, I like to begin by asking them if they have implemented a complex password policy. Generally, they all nod their heads enthusiastically. I ask them if that password policy requires long passwords. More nodding. I ask if that policy requires upper and lower case letters – faster nodding – numbers – even faster – special characters – enthusiastic nodding all around! I then ask them if their policy also includes a requirement for users to regularly change their passwords. Now we have smiles with the nodding! I ask them if the users have different IDs and passwords on the many systems that they have access to. Of course! I then ask them if, when they walk around the building, they see something like this: Thanks to Jake Ludington for the nice example. Can these administrators be faulted for their policies? Probably not but, in the end, end-users will find a way to get their job done efficiently. Post-It Notes to the rescue! I was visiting a business in New York City one day which was a perfect example of this problem. First I walked up to the security desk and told them where I was headed. They asked me if they should call upstairs to have someone escort me. Is that my call? Is that policy? I said that I knew where I was going, so they let me go. Having the conference room number handy, I wandered around the place in a search of my destination. As I walked around, unescorted, I noticed the post-it note problem in abundance. Had I been so inclined, I could have logged in on almost any machine and into any number of systems. When I reached my intended conference room, I mentioned my post-it note observation to the two gentlemen with whom I was meeting. One of them said, “You mean like this,” and he produced a post it note full of login IDs and passwords from his breast pocket! I gave him kudos for not hanging the list on his monitor. We then talked for the rest of the meeting about the difficulties faced by the employees due to the security policies. These policies, although well-intended, made life very difficult for the end-users. Most users had access to 8 to 12 systems, and the passwords for each expired at a different times. The post-it note solution was understandable. Who could remember even half of them? What could this customer have done differently? I am a fan of using a provisioning system, such as Oracle Identity Manager, to manage all of the target systems. With OIM, and email could be automatically sent to all users when it was time to change their password. The end-users would follow a link to change their password on a web page, and then OIM would propagate that password out to all of the systems that the user had access to, even if the login IDs were different. Another option would be an Enterprise Single-Sign On Solution. With Oracle eSSO, all of a user’s credentials would be stored in a central, encrypted credential store. The end-user would only have to login to their machine each morning and then, as they moved to each new system, Oracle eSSO would supply the credentials. Good-bye post-it notes! 3M may be disappointed, but your end users will thank you. I hear people say that this post-it note problem is not a big deal, because the only people who would see the passwords are fellow employees. Do you really know who is walking around your building? What are the password policies in your business? How do the end-users respond?

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• Am I Leaking ADO.NET Connections?

  - by HardCode

  Here is an example of my code in a DAL. All calls to the database's Stored Procedures are structured this way, and there is no in-line SQL. Friend Shared Function Save(ByVal s As MyClass) As Boolean Dim cn As SqlClient.SqlConnection = Dal.Connections.MyAppConnection Dim cmd As New SqlClient.SqlCommand Try cmd.Connection = cn cmd.CommandType = CommandType.StoredProcedure cmd.CommandText = "proc_save_my_class" cmd.Parameters.AddWithValue("@param1", s.Foo) cmd.Parameters.AddWithValue("@param2", s.Bar) Return True Finally Dal.Utility.CleanupAdoObjects(cmd, cn) End Try End Function Here is the Connection factory (if I am using the correct term): Friend Shared Function MyAppConnection() As SqlClient.SqlConnection Dim cn As New SqlClient.SqlConnection(ConfigurationManager.ConnectionStrings("MyConnectionString").ToString) cn.Open() If cn.State <> ConnectionState.Open Then ' CriticalException is a custom object inheriting from Exception. Throw New CriticalException("Could not connect to the database.") Else Return cn End If End Function Here is the Dal.Utility.CleaupAdoObjects() function: Friend Shared Sub CleanupAdoObjects(ByVal cmd As SqlCommand, ByVal cn As SqlConnection) If cmd IsNot Nothing Then cmd.Dispose() If cn IsNot Nothing AndAlso cn.State <> ConnectionState.Closed Then cn.Close() End Sub I am getting a lot of "Timeout expired. The timeout period elapsed prior to completion of the operation or the server is not responding." error messages reported by the users. The application's DAL opens a connection, reads or saves data, and closes it. No connections are ever left open - intentionally! There is nothing obvious on the Windows 2000 Server hosting the SQL Server 2000 that would indicate a problem. Nothing in the Event Logs and nothing in the SQL Server logs. The timeouts happen randomly - I cannot reproduce. It happens early in the day with only 1 to 5 users in the system. It also happens with around 50 users in the system. The most connections to SQL Server via Performance Monitor, for all databases, has been about 74. The timeouts happen in code that both saves to, and reads from, the database in different parts of the application. The stack trace does not point to one or two offending DAL functions. It's happened in many different places. Does my ADO.NET code appear to be able to leak connections? I've goolged around a bit, and I've read that if the connection pool fills up, this can happen. However, I'm not explicitly setting any connection pooling. I've even tried to increase the Connection Timeout in the connection string, but timeouts happen long before the 300 second (5 minute) value: <add name="MyConnectionString" connectionString="Data Source=MyServer;Initial Catalog=MyDatabase;Integrated Security=SSPI;Connection Timeout=300;"/> I'm at a total loss already as to what is causing these Timeout issues. Any ideas are appreciated.

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• Xcache - No different after using it

  - by Charles Yeung

  Hi I have installed Xcache in my site(using xampp), I have tested more then 10 times on several page and the result is same as default(no any cache installed), is it something wrong with the configure? Updated [xcache-common] ;; install as zend extension (recommended), normally "$extension_dir/xcache.so" zend_extension = /usr/local/lib/php/extensions/non-debug-non-zts-xxx/xcache.so zend_extension_ts = /usr/local/lib/php/extensions/non-debug-zts-xxx/xcache.so ;; For windows users, replace xcache.so with php_xcache.dll zend_extension_ts = C:\xampp\php\ext\php_xcache.dll ;; or install as extension, make sure your extension_dir setting is correct ; extension = xcache.so ;; or win32: ; extension = php_xcache.dll [xcache.admin] xcache.admin.enable_auth = On xcache.admin.user = "mOo" ; xcache.admin.pass = md5($your_password) xcache.admin.pass = "" [xcache] ; ini only settings, all the values here is default unless explained ; select low level shm/allocator scheme implemenation xcache.shm_scheme = "mmap" ; to disable: xcache.size=0 ; to enable : xcache.size=64M etc (any size > 0) and your system mmap allows xcache.size = 60M ; set to cpu count (cat /proc/cpuinfo |grep -c processor) xcache.count = 1 ; just a hash hints, you can always store count(items) > slots xcache.slots = 8K ; ttl of the cache item, 0=forever xcache.ttl = 0 ; interval of gc scanning expired items, 0=no scan, other values is in seconds xcache.gc_interval = 0 ; same as aboves but for variable cache xcache.var_size = 4M xcache.var_count = 1 xcache.var_slots = 8K ; default ttl xcache.var_ttl = 0 xcache.var_maxttl = 0 xcache.var_gc_interval = 300 xcache.test = Off ; N/A for /dev/zero xcache.readonly_protection = Off ; for *nix, xcache.mmap_path is a file path, not directory. ; Use something like "/tmp/xcache" if you want to turn on ReadonlyProtection ; 2 group of php won't share the same /tmp/xcache ; for win32, xcache.mmap_path=anonymous map name, not file path xcache.mmap_path = "/dev/zero" ; leave it blank(disabled) or "/tmp/phpcore/" ; make sure it's writable by php (without checking open_basedir) xcache.coredump_directory = "" ; per request settings xcache.cacher = On xcache.stat = On xcache.optimizer = Off [xcache.coverager] ; per request settings ; enable coverage data collecting for xcache.coveragedump_directory and xcache_coverager_start/stop/get/clean() functions (will hurt executing performance) xcache.coverager = Off ; ini only settings ; make sure it's readable (care open_basedir) by coverage viewer script ; requires xcache.coverager=On xcache.coveragedump_directory = "" Thanks you

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• modify this code .. please help me?

  - by Sam

  i wana modify this code from static choices to dynamic this for 3 choices var PollhttpObject=null; function DoVote() {if(document.getElementById('PollRadio1').checke d)DoVote_Submit(1);else if(document.getElementById('PollRadio2').checked)DoVote_Submit(2);else if(document.getElementById('PollRadio3').checked)DoVote_Submit(3);else alert('?????: ?????? ?????? ??? ?????????? ??????? ?? ????? ??? ?? ???????');return false;} function DisbalePoll(TheCase) {document.getElementById('VoteBttn').onclick=function(){alert('!?????? ??? ?? ??????? ??????');} document.getElementById('PollRadio1').disabled='true';document.getElementById('PollRadio2').disabled='true';document.getElementById('PollRadio3').disabled='true';if(TheCase=='EXPIRED') {document.getElementById('VoteBttn').src='images/design/VoteBttn_OFF.jpg';document.getElementById('ResultBttn').src='images/design/ResultsBttn_OFF.jpg';document.getElementById('VoteBttn').onclick='';document.getElementById('ResultBttn').onclick='';document.getElementById('ResultBttn').style.cursor='';document.getElementById('VoteBttn').style.cursor='';}} function DoVote_Submit(VoteID) {if(VoteID!=0)DisbalePoll();try{PollhttpObject=getHTTPObject();if(PollhttpObject!=null) {PollhttpObject.onreadystatechange=PollOutput;PollhttpObject.open("GET","Ajax.aspx?ACTION=POLL&VOTEID="+ VoteID+"&RND="+ Math.floor(Math.random()*10001),true);PollhttpObject.send(null);}} catch(e){} return false;} function PollOutput(){if(PollhttpObject.readyState==4) {var SearchResult=PollhttpObject.responseText;document.getElementById('PollProgress').style.display='none';document.getElementById('PollFormDiv').style.display='block';if(SearchResult.length=2&&SearchResult.substr(0,2)=='OK') {var ReturnedValue=SearchResult.split("#");document.getElementById('PollBar1').style.width=0+'px';document.getElementById('PollBar2').style.width=0+'px';document.getElementById('PollBar3').style.width=0+'px';document.getElementById('PollRate1').innerHTML="0 (0%)";document.getElementById('PollRate2').innerHTML="0 (0%)";document.getElementById('PollRate3').innerHTML="0 (0%)";window.setTimeout('DrawPollBars(0, '+ ReturnedValue[1]+', 0, '+ ReturnedValue[2]+', 0, '+ ReturnedValue[3]+')',150);} else if(SearchResult.length=2&&SearchResult.substr(0,2)=='NO') {alert("?????: ??? ??? ???????? ?????");}} else {document.getElementById('PollProgress').style.display='block';document.getElementById('PollFormDiv').style.display='none';}} function DrawPollBars(Bar1Var,Bar1Width,Bar2Var,Bar2Width,Bar3Var,Bar3Width) {var TotalVotes=parseInt(Bar1Width)+parseInt(Bar2Width)+parseInt(Bar3Width);var IncVal=parseFloat(TotalVotes/10);var NewBar1Width=0;var NewBar2Width=0;var NewBar3Width=0;var Bar1NextVar;var Bar2NextVar;var Bar3NextVar;if(parseInt(parseInt(Bar1Var)*200/TotalVotes)0)NewBar1Width=parseInt(Bar1Var)*200/TotalVotes;else if(Bar1Var0)NewBar1Width=1;else NewBar1Width=0;if(parseInt(parseInt(Bar2Var)*200/TotalVotes)0)NewBar2Width=parseInt(Bar2Var)*200/TotalVotes;else if(Bar2Var0)NewBar2Width=1;else NewBar2Width=0;if(parseInt(parseInt(Bar3Var)*200/TotalVotes)0)NewBar3Width=parseInt(Bar3Var)*200/TotalVotes;else if(Bar3Var0)NewBar3Width=1;else NewBar3Width=0;document.getElementById('PollBar1').style.width=NewBar1Width+'px';document.getElementById('PollBar2').style.width=NewBar2Width+'px';document.getElementById('PollBar3').style.width=NewBar3Width+'px';document.getElementById('PollRate1').innerHTML=parseFloat(Bar1Var).toFixed(0)+" ("+ parseFloat(parseFloat(Bar1Var)/TotalVotes*100).toFixed(1)+"%)";document.getElementById('PollRate2').innerHTML=parseFloat(Bar2Var).toFixed(0)+" ("+ parseFloat(parseFloat(Bar2Var)/TotalVotes*100).toFixed(1)+"%)";document.getElementById('PollRate3').innerHTML=parseFloat(Bar3Var).toFixed(0)+" ("+ parseFloat(parseFloat(Bar3Var)/TotalVotes*100).toFixed(1)+"%)";if(Bar1Var!=Bar1Width||Bar2Var!=Bar2Width||Bar3Var!=Bar3Width) {if(parseFloat(Bar1Var)+IncVal<=parseInt(Bar1Width))Bar1NextVar=parseFloat(Bar1Var)+IncVal;else Bar1NextVar=Bar1Width;if(parseFloat(Bar2Var)+IncVal<=parseInt(Bar2Width))Bar2NextVar=parseFloat(Bar2Var)+IncVal;else Bar2NextVar=Bar2Width;if(parseFloat(Bar3Var)+IncVal<=parseInt(Bar3Width))Bar3NextVar=parseFloat(Bar3Var)+IncVal;else Bar3NextVar=Bar3Width;window.setTimeout('DrawPollBars('+ Bar1NextVar+', '+ Bar1Width+', '+ Bar2NextVar+', '+ Bar2Width+', '+ Bar3NextVar+', '+ Bar3Width+')',80); }}

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• Is this a legitimate implementation of a 'remember me' function for my web app?

  - by user246114

  Hi, I'm trying to add a "remember me" feature to my web app to let a user stay logged in between browser restarts. I think I got the bulk of it. I'm using google app engine for the backend which lets me use java servlets. Here is some pseudo-code to demo: public class MyServlet { public void handleRequest() { if (getThreadLocalRequest().getSession().getAttribute("user") != null) { // User already has session running for them. } else { // No session, but check if they chose 'remember me' during // their initial login, if so we can have them 'auto log in' // now. Cookie[] cookies = getThreadLocalRequest().getCookies(); if (cookies.find("rememberMePlz").exists()) { // The value of this cookie is the cookie id, which is a // unique string that is in no way based upon the user's // name/email/id, and is hard to randomly generate. String cookieid = cookies.find("rememberMePlz").value(); // Get the user object associated with this cookie id from // the data store, would probably be a two-step process like: // // select * from cookies where cookieid = 'cookieid'; // select * from users where userid = 'userid fetched from above select'; User user = DataStore.getUserByCookieId(cookieid); if (user != null) { // Start session for them. getThreadLocalRequest().getSession() .setAttribute("user", user); } else { // Either couldn't find a matching cookie with the // supplied id, or maybe we expired the cookie on // our side or blocked it. } } } } } // On first login, if user wanted us to remember them, we'd generate // an instance of this object for them in the data store. We send the // cookieid value down to the client and they persist it on their side // in the "rememberMePlz" cookie. public class CookieLong { private String mCookieId; private String mUserId; private long mExpirationDate; } Alright, this all makes sense. The only frightening thing is what happens if someone finds out the value of the cookie? A malicious individual could set that cookie in their browser and access my site, and essentially be logged in as the user associated with it! On the same note, I guess this is why the cookie ids must be difficult to randomly generate, because a malicious user doesn't have to steal someone's cookie - they could just randomly assign cookie values and start logging in as whichever user happens to be associated with that cookie, if any, right? Scary stuff, I feel like I should at least include the username in the client cookie such that when it presents itself to the server, I won't auto-login unless the username+cookieid match in the DataStore. Any comments would be great, I'm new to this and trying to figure out a best practice. I'm not writing a site which contains any sensitive personal information, but I'd like to minimize any potential for abuse all the same, Thanks

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• Stored procedure performance randomly plummets; trivial ALTER fixes it. Why?

  - by gWiz

  I have a couple of stored procedures on SQL Server 2005 that I've noticed will suddenly take a significantly long time to complete when invoked from my ASP.NET MVC app running in an IIS6 web farm of four servers. Normal, expected completion time is less than a second; unexpected anomalous completion time is 25-45 seconds. The problem doesn't seem to ever correct itself. However, if I ALTER the stored procedure (even if I don't change anything in the procedure, except to perhaps add a space to the script created by SSMS Modify command), the completion time reverts to expected completion time. IIS and SQL Server are running on separate boxes, both running Windows Server 2003 R2 Enterprise Edition. SQL Server is Standard Edition. All machines have dual Xeon E5450 3GHz CPUs and 4GB RAM. SQL Server is accessed using its TCP/IP protocol over gigabit ethernet (not sure what physical medium). The problem is present from all web servers in the web farm. When I invoke the procedure from a query window in SSMS on my development machine, the procedure completes in normal time. This is strange because I was under the impression that SSMS used the same SqlClient driver as in .NET. When I point my development instance of the web app to the production database, I again get the anomalous long completion time. If my SqlCommand Timeout is too short, I get System.Data.SqlClient.SqlException: Timeout expired. The timeout period elapsed prior to completion of the operation or the server is not responding. Question: Why would performing ALTER on the stored procedure, without actually changing anything in it, restore the completion time to less than a second, as expected? Edit: To clarify, when the procedure is running slow for the app, it simultaneously runs fine in SSMS with the same parameters. The only difference I can discern is login credentials (next time I notice the behavior, I'll be checking from SSMS with the same creds). The ultimate goal is to get the procs to sustainably run with expected speed without requiring occasional intervention. Resolution: I wanted to to update this question in case others are experiencing this issue. Following the leads of the answers below, I was able to consistently reproduce this behavior. In order to test, I utilize sp_recompile and pass it one of the susceptible sprocs. I then initiate a website request from my browser that will invoke the sproc with atypical parameters. Lastly, I initiate a website request to a page that invokes the sproc with typical parameters, and observe that the request does not complete because of a SQL timeout on the sproc invocation. To resolve this on SQL Server 2005, I've added OPTIMIZE FOR hints to my SELECT. The sprocs that were vulnerable all have the "all-in-one" pattern described in this article. This pattern is certainly not ideal but was a necessary trade-off given the timeframe for the project.

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• Issues in Ajax based applications

  - by Sinuhe

  I'm very interested in developing Ajax based applications. This is, loading almost all of the content of the application via XMLHttpRequest, instead of only some combos and widgets. But if I try to do this form scratch, soon I find some problems without an easy solution. I wonder if there is some framework (both client and server side) to deal with this issues. As far as I know, there isn't (but I've searched mainly in Java world). So I am seriously thinking of doing my own framework, at least for my projects. Therefore, in this question I ask for several things. First, the possible problems of an ajax based development. Then, I'm looking for some framework or utility in order to deal with them. Finally, if there is no framework available, what features must it have. Here are the issues I thought: 1 - JavaScript must be enabled. Security paranoia isn't the only problem: a lot of mobile devices couldn't use the application, too. 2 - Sometimes you need to update more than one DIV (e.g. main content, menu and breadcrumbs). 3 - Unknown response type: when you make an Ajax call, you set the callback function too, usually specifying if expected response is a javascript object or in which DIV put the result. But this fails when you get another type of response: for example when the session has expired and the user must log in again. 4 - Browser's refresh, back and forward buttons can be a real pain. User will expect different behaviors depending on the situation. 5 - When search engines indexes a site, only follow links. Thus, content load by Ajax won't "exist" for who doesn't know about it yet. 6 - Users can ask for open a link in a different window/tab. 7 - Address bar doesn't show the "real" page you are in. So, you can't copy the location and send it to a friend or bookmark the page. 8 - If you want to monetize the site, you can put some advertisings. As you don't refresh entire page and you want to change the ad after some time, you have to refresh only the DIV where the ad is. But this can violate the Terms and Conditions of your ad service. In fact, it can go against AdSense TOS. 9 - When you refresh an entire page, all JavaScript gets "cleaned". But in Ajax calls, all JavaScript objects will remain. 10 - You can't easily change your CSS properties.

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• SQL not yielding expected results

  - by AnonJr

  I have three tables related to this particular query: Lawson_Employees: LawsonID (pk), LastName, FirstName, AccCode (numeric) Lawson_DeptInfo: AccCode (pk), AccCode2 (don't ask, HR set up), DisplayName tblExpirationDates: EmpID (pk), ACLS (date), EP (date), CPR (date), CPR_Imported (date), PALS (date), Note The goal is to get the data I need to report on all those who have already expired in one or more certification, or are going to expire in the next 90 days. Some important notes: This is being run as part of a vbScript, so the 90-day date is being calculated when the script is run. I'm using 2010-08-31 as a placeholder since its the result at the time this question is being posted. All cards expire at the end of the month. (which is why the above date is for the end of August and not 90 days on the dot) A valid EP card supersedes ACLS certification, but only the latter is required of some employees. (wasn't going to worry about it until I got this question answered, but if I can get the help I'll take it) The CPR column contains the expiration date for the last class they took with us. (NULL if they didn't take any classes with us) The CPR_Imported column contains the expiration date for the last class they took somewhere else. (NULL if they didn't take it elsewhere, and bravo for following policy) The distinction between CPR classes is important for other reports. For purposes of this report, all we really care about is which one is the most current - or at least is currently current. If I have to, I'll ignore ACLS and PALS for the time being as it is non-compliance with CPR training that is the big issue at the moment. (not that the others won't be, but they weren't mentioned in the last meeting...) Here's the query I have so far, which is giving me good data: SELECT iEmp.LawsonID, iEmp.LastName, iEmp.FirstName, dept.AccCode2, dept.DisplayName, Exp.ACLS, Exp.EP, Exp.CPR, Exp.CPR_Imported, Exp.PALS, Exp.Note FROM (Lawson_Employees AS iEmp LEFT JOIN Lawson_DeptInfo AS dept ON dept.AccCode = iEmp.AccCode) LEFT JOIN tblExpirationDates AS Exp ON iEmp.LawsonID = Exp.EmpID WHERE iEmp.CurrentEmp = 1 AND ((Exp.ACLS <= #2010-08-31# AND Exp.ACLS IS NOT NULL) OR (Exp.CPR <= #2010-08-31# AND Exp.CPR_Imported <= #2010-08-31#) OR (Exp.PALS <= #2010-08-31# AND Exp.PALS IS NOT NULL)) ORDER BY dept.AccCode2, iEmp.LastName, iEmp.FirstName; After perusing the result set, I think I'm missing some expiration dates that should be in the result set. Am I missing something? This is the sucky part of being the only developer in the department... no one to ask for a little help.

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• Mac Safari randomly recreating cookie when I refresh my login screen. Very bizarre

  - by mcintyre321

  We have found an issue in our app where Safari on the Mac randomly recreates a login cookie from a logged off session. I have a fiddler archive with this behaviour here. Note that some stuff has been removed from this to make it easier to get, but nothing which sets a cookie or anything has been taken out - only repetitions of requests 3-8. I'll talk you through the running order Request 1: user logs out via call to /logout.aspx - Set-Cookie returned setting cookie expiry date to 1999 Requests 2-8: user refreshes login page sending calls to root or /res/en-US/s.js - no cookie is sent to server or received back, and access is denied. I have cut out a lot of requests of this nature from the log as they are boring Request 9: request for /res/en-US/s.js - Hv3 authentication cookie has mysteriously reappeared! Wat. There was NO set-cookie! WTFF! Request 10+ : now the cookie has reappeared, the site logs the user in AGAIN The cookie, when examined in Safari looks like <dict> <key>Created</key> <real>259603523.26834899</real> <key>Domain</key> <string>.mysite.dev</string> <key>Expires</key> <date>2010-03-24T16:05:22Z</date> <key>HttpOnly</key> <string>TRUE</string> <key>Name</key> <string>.Hv3</string> <key>Path</key> <string>/</string> </dict> One thing to note is that in Safari, the cookie domain is .mysite.dev not mysite.dev (which is the cookie domain specified in web.config) - however, given that access is denied in requests 2-8, it looks like the cookie has expired OK. If you look in the list of cookies in the browser during 2-8, the .Hv3 cookie is not there. Is this our bug or Safari's? What can I do to stop it happening?

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• Action Cache for root URL not working

  - by askegg

  Here's the setup. I have web site which is essentially a simple CMS. Here is the routes file: map.connect ':url', :controller => :pages, :action => :show map.root :controller => :pages, :action => :show, :url => "/" The page controller is thus: class PagesController < ApplicationController before_filter :verify_access, :except => [:show] # Cache show action if we are not logged in. caches_action :show, :layout => false, :unless => Proc.new { |controller| controller.logged_in? } def update @page = Page.find(params[:id]) respond_to do |format| expire_action :action => :show, :url => @page.url So when a visitor hits "/" it maps to :controller = "pages, :action = "show, :url = "/". This generates a cached version on first try, then returns the appropriate result there after. The log files show: Processing PagesController#show (for 127.0.0.1 at 2009-08-02 14:15:01) [GET] Parameters: {"action"=>"show", "url"=>"/", "controller"=>"pages"} Cached fragment hit: views/out.local// (0.1ms) Rendering template within layouts/application Filter chain halted as [#<ActionController::Filters::AroundFilter:0x23eb03c @identifier=nil, @method=#<Proc:0x01904858@/Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/actionpack-2.3.3/lib/action_controller/caching/actions.rb:64>, @kind=:filter, @options={:only=>#<Set: {"show"}>, :if=>nil, :unless=>#<Proc:0x025137ac@/Users/askegg/Sites/out/app/controllers/pages_controller.rb:6>}>] did_not_yield. Completed in 2ms (View: 1, DB: 0) | 200 OK [http://out.local/] OK - all good so far. When I update the page, it should expire the cache (see above). The logs show: Page Load (0.2ms) SELECT * FROM "pages" WHERE ("pages"."id" = 3) Page Load (0.1ms) SELECT "pages".id FROM "pages" WHERE ("pages"."url" = '/' AND "pages".domain_id = 1 AND "pages".id <> 3) LIMIT 1 Expired fragment: views/out.local/index (0.1ms) Redirected to http://out.local/pages/3 Completed in 9ms (DB: 0) | 302 Found [http://out.local/pages/3] See the problem? Rails is clearing the cache named "index", but it sets it as "/". Naturally this results in the cache NOT being cleared, so visitors are now seeing the old version.

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• Squid w/ SquidGuard fails w/ "Too few redirector processes are running"

  - by DKNUCKLES

  I'm trying to implement a Squid proxy in a quick and easy fashion and I'm receiving some errors I have been unable to resolve. The box is a pre-made appliance, however it seems to fail on launch.The following is the cache.log file when I attempt to launch the squid service. 2012/11/18 22:14:29| Starting Squid Cache version 3.0.STABLE20-20091201 for i686 -pc-linux-gnu... 2012/11/18 22:14:29| Process ID 12647 2012/11/18 22:14:29| With 1024 file descriptors available 2012/11/18 22:14:29| Performing DNS Tests... 2012/11/18 22:14:29| Successful DNS name lookup tests... 2012/11/18 22:14:29| DNS Socket created at 0.0.0.0, port 40513, FD 8 2012/11/18 22:14:29| Adding nameserver 192.168.0.78 from /etc/resolv.conf 2012/11/18 22:14:29| Adding nameserver 8.8.8.8 from /etc/resolv.conf 2012/11/18 22:14:29| helperOpenServers: Starting 5/5 'bin' processes 2012/11/18 22:14:29| ipcCreate: /opt/squidguard/bin: (13) Permission denied 2012/11/18 22:14:29| ipcCreate: /opt/squidguard/bin: (13) Permission denied 2012/11/18 22:14:29| ipcCreate: /opt/squidguard/bin: (13) Permission denied 2012/11/18 22:14:29| ipcCreate: /opt/squidguard/bin: (13) Permission denied 2012/11/18 22:14:29| ipcCreate: /opt/squidguard/bin: (13) Permission denied 2012/11/18 22:14:29| helperOpenServers: Starting 5/5 'squid-auth.pl' processes 2012/11/18 22:14:29| User-Agent logging is disabled. 2012/11/18 22:14:29| Referer logging is disabled. 2012/11/18 22:14:29| Unlinkd pipe opened on FD 23 2012/11/18 22:14:29| Swap maxSize 10240000 + 8192 KB, estimated 788322 objects 2012/11/18 22:14:29| Target number of buckets: 39416 2012/11/18 22:14:29| Using 65536 Store buckets 2012/11/18 22:14:29| Max Mem size: 8192 KB 2012/11/18 22:14:29| Max Swap size: 10240000 KB 2012/11/18 22:14:29| Version 1 of swap file with LFS support detected... 2012/11/18 22:14:29| Rebuilding storage in /opt/squid3/var/cache (DIRTY) 2012/11/18 22:14:29| Using Least Load store dir selection 2012/11/18 22:14:29| Set Current Directory to /opt/squid3/var/cache 2012/11/18 22:14:29| Loaded Icons. 2012/11/18 22:14:29| Accepting HTTP connections at 10.0.0.6, port 3128, FD 25. 2012/11/18 22:14:29| Accepting ICP messages at 0.0.0.0, port 3130, FD 26. 2012/11/18 22:14:29| HTCP Disabled. 2012/11/18 22:14:29| Ready to serve requests. 2012/11/18 22:14:29| Done reading /opt/squid3/var/cache swaplog (0 entries) 2012/11/18 22:14:29| Finished rebuilding storage from disk. 2012/11/18 22:14:29| 0 Entries scanned 2012/11/18 22:14:29| 0 Invalid entries. 2012/11/18 22:14:29| 0 With invalid flags. 2012/11/18 22:14:29| 0 Objects loaded. 2012/11/18 22:14:29| 0 Objects expired. 2012/11/18 22:14:29| 0 Objects cancelled. 2012/11/18 22:14:29| 0 Duplicate URLs purged. 2012/11/18 22:14:29| 0 Swapfile clashes avoided. 2012/11/18 22:14:29| Took 0.02 seconds ( 0.00 objects/sec). 2012/11/18 22:14:29| Beginning Validation Procedure 2012/11/18 22:14:29| WARNING: redirector #1 (FD 9) exited 2012/11/18 22:14:29| WARNING: redirector #2 (FD 10) exited 2012/11/18 22:14:29| WARNING: redirector #3 (FD 11) exited 2012/11/18 22:14:29| WARNING: redirector #4 (FD 12) exited 2012/11/18 22:14:29| Too few redirector processes are running FATAL: The redirector helpers are crashing too rapidly, need help! Squid Cache (Version 3.0.STABLE20-20091201): Terminated abnormally. CPU Usage: 0.112 seconds = 0.032 user + 0.080 sys Maximum Resident Size: 0 KB Page faults with physical i/o: 0 Memory usage for squid via mallinfo(): total space in arena: 2944 KB Ordinary blocks: 2857 KB 6 blks Small blocks: 0 KB 0 blks Holding blocks: 1772 KB 8 blks Free Small blocks: 0 KB Free Ordinary blocks: 86 KB Total in use: 4629 KB 157% Total free: 86 KB 3% The "permission denied" area is where I have been focusing my attention with no luck. The following is what I've tried. Chmod'ing the /opt/squidguard/bin folder to 777 Changing the user that squidguard runs under to root / nobody / www-data / squid3 Tried changing ownership of the /opt/squidguard/bin folder to all names listed above after assigning that user to run with squid. Any help with this would be greatly appreciated.

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• Issue in setting up VPN connection (IKEv1) using android (ICS vpn client) with Strongswan 4.5.0 server

  - by Kushagra Bhatnagar

  I am facing issues in setting up VPN connection(IKEv1) using android (ICS vpn client) and Strongswan 4.5.0 server. Below is the set up: Strongswan server is running on ubuntu linux machine which is connected to some wifi hotspot. Using the steps in this guide link, I generated CA, server and client certificate. Once certificates are generated, following (clientCert.p12 and caCert.pem) are sent to mobile via mail and installed on android device. Below are the ip addresses assigned to various interfaces Linux server wlan0 interface ip where server is running: 192.168.43.212, android device eth0 interface ip address: 192.168.43.62; Android device is also attached with the same wifi hotspot. On the Android device, I uses IPsec Xauth RSA option for setting up VPN authentication configuration. I am using the following ipsec.conf configuration: # basic configuration config setup plutodebug=all # crlcheckinterval=600 # strictcrlpolicy=yes # cachecrls=yes nat_traversal=yes # charonstart=yes plutostart=yes # Add connections here. # Sample VPN connections conn ios1 keyexchange=ikev1 authby=xauthrsasig xauth=server left=%defaultroute leftsubnet=0.0.0.0/0 leftfirewall=yes leftcert=serverCert.pem right=192.168.43.62 rightsubnet=10.0.0.0/24 rightsourceip=10.0.0.2 rightcert=clientCert.pem pfs=no auto=add      With the above configurations when I enable VPN on android device, VPN connection is not successful and it gets timed out in Authentication phase. I ran wireshark on both the android device and strongswan server, from the tcpdump below are the observations. Initially Identity Protection (Main mode) exchanges happens between device and server and all are successful. After all successful Identity Protection (Main mode) exchanges server is sending Transaction (Config mode) to device. In reply android device is sending Informational message instead of Transaction (Config mode) message. Further server is keep on sending Transaction (Config mode) message and device is again sending Identity Protection (Main mode) messages. Finally timeout happens and connection fails. I also capture Strongswan server logs and below are the snippets from the server logs which also verifies the same(described above). Apr 27 21:09:40 Linux pluto[12105]: | **parse ISAKMP Message: Apr 27 21:09:40 Linux pluto[12105]: | initiator cookie: Apr 27 21:09:40 Linux pluto[12105]: | 06 fd 61 b8 86 82 df ed Apr 27 21:09:40 Linux pluto[12105]: | responder cookie: Apr 27 21:09:40 Linux pluto[12105]: | 73 7a af 76 74 f0 39 8b Apr 27 21:09:40 Linux pluto[12105]: | next payload type: ISAKMP_NEXT_HASH Apr 27 21:09:40 Linux pluto[12105]: | ISAKMP version: ISAKMP Version 1.0 Apr 27 21:09:40 Linux pluto[12105]: | exchange type: ISAKMP_XCHG_INFO Apr 27 21:09:40 Linux pluto[12105]: | flags: ISAKMP_FLAG_ENCRYPTION Apr 27 21:09:40 Linux pluto[12105]: | message ID: a2 80 ad 82 Apr 27 21:09:40 Linux pluto[12105]: | length: 92 Apr 27 21:09:40 Linux pluto[12105]: | ICOOKIE: 06 fd 61 b8 86 82 df ed Apr 27 21:09:40 Linux pluto[12105]: | RCOOKIE: 73 7a af 76 74 f0 39 8b Apr 27 21:09:40 Linux pluto[12105]: | peer: c0 a8 2b 3e Apr 27 21:09:40 Linux pluto[12105]: | state hash entry 25 Apr 27 21:09:40 Linux pluto[12105]: | state object not found Apr 27 21:09:40 Linux pluto[12105]: packet from 192.168.43.62:500: Informational Exchange is for an unknown (expired?) SA Apr 27 21:09:40 Linux pluto[12105]: | next event EVENT_RETRANSMIT in 10 seconds for #9 Can anyone please provide update on this issue. Why the VPN connection gets timed out and why the ISAKMP exchanges are not proper between Android and strongswan server.

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• Facing issues in setting up VPN connection(IKEv1) using iphone (Defult Cisco VPN client) and Strongswan 4.5.0 server

  - by Kushagra Bhatnagar

  I am facing issues in setting up VPN connection(IKEv1) using iPhone (Defult Cisco VPN client) and Strongswan 4.5.0 server. The Strongswan server is running on Ubuntu Linux, which is connected to some wifi hotspot. This is the guide which was used. I generated CA, server and client certificate, with the only difference mentioned below. “While generating server certificate, as per link CN=vpn.strongswan.org instead of this I changed CN name to CN=192.168.43.212.” Once certificates are generated, following (clientCert.p12 and caCert.pem) are sent to mobile via mail and installed on iphone. After installation I notice that certificates are considered as trusted also. Below are the ip addresses assigned to various interfaces Linux server wlan0 interface ip where server is running: 192.168.43.212 Iphone eth0 interface ip address: 192.168.43.72. iphone is also attached with the same wifi hotspot. Below is the snapshot of client configurations. Description Strong swan Server 192.168.43.212 Account ipsecvpn Password ***** Use certificate ON Certificate client The above username and password are in sync with the ipsec.secrets file. I am using the following ipsec.conf configuration: # basic configuration config setup plutodebug=all # crlcheckinterval=600 # strictcrlpolicy=yes # cachecrls=yes nat_traversal=yes # charonstart=yes plutostart=yes # Add connections here. # Sample VPN connections conn ios1 keyexchange=ikev1 authby=xauthrsasig xauth=server left=%defaultroute leftsubnet=0.0.0.0/0 leftfirewall=yes leftcert=serverCert.pem right=192.168.43.72 rightsubnet=10.0.0.0/24 rightsourceip=10.0.0.2 rightcert=clientCert.pem pfs=no auto=add With the above configurations when I enable VPN on iphone, it says Could not able to verify server certificate. I ran Wireshark on a Linux server and observe that initially some ISAKMP message exchanges happens between client and server, which are successful but before authorization, client is sending some informational message and soon after this client is showing error as popup Could not able to verify server certificate. Capture logs on Strongswan server and in server logs below errors are observed: From auth.log Apr 25 20:16:08 Linux pluto[4025]: | ISAKMP version: ISAKMP Version 1.0 Apr 25 20:16:08 Linux pluto[4025]: | exchange type: ISAKMP_XCHG_INFO Apr 25 20:16:08 Linux pluto[4025]: | flags: ISAKMP_FLAG_ENCRYPTION Apr 25 20:16:08 Linux pluto[4025]: | message ID: 9d 1a ea 4d Apr 25 20:16:08 Linux pluto[4025]: | length: 76 Apr 25 20:16:08 Linux pluto[4025]: | ICOOKIE: f6 b7 06 b2 b1 84 5b 93 Apr 25 20:16:08 Linux pluto[4025]: | RCOOKIE: 86 92 a0 c2 a6 2f ac be Apr 25 20:16:08 Linux pluto[4025]: | peer: c0 a8 2b 48 Apr 25 20:16:08 Linux pluto[4025]: | state hash entry 8 Apr 25 20:16:08 Linux pluto[4025]: | state object not found Apr 25 20:16:08 Linux pluto[4025]: **packet from 192.168.43.72:500: Informational Exchange is for an unknown (expired?) SA** Apr 25 20:16:08 Linux pluto[4025]: | next event EVENT_RETRANSMIT in 8 seconds for #8 Apr 25 20:16:16 Linux pluto[4025]: | Apr 25 20:16:16 Linux pluto[4025]: | *time to handle event Apr 25 20:16:16 Linux pluto[4025]: | event after this is EVENT_RETRANSMIT in 2 seconds Apr 25 20:16:16 Linux pluto[4025]: | handling event EVENT_RETRANSMIT for 192.168.43.72 "ios1" #8 Apr 25 20:16:16 Linux pluto[4025]: | sending 76 bytes for EVENT_RETRANSMIT through wlan0 to 192.168.43.72:500: Apr 25 20:16:16 Linux pluto[4025]: | a6 a5 86 41 4b fb ff 99 c9 18 34 61 01 7b f1 d9 Apr 25 20:16:16 Linux pluto[4025]: | 08 10 06 01 e9 1c ea 60 00 00 00 4c ba 7d c8 08 Apr 25 20:16:16 Linux pluto[4025]: | 13 47 95 18 19 31 45 30 2e 22 f9 4d 85 2c 27 bc Apr 25 20:16:16 Linux pluto[4025]: | 9e 9b e1 ae 1e 35 51 6f ab 80 f5 73 3c 15 8d 20 Apr 25 20:16:16 Linux pluto[4025]: | 4b 46 47 86 50 24 3f 13 15 7d d5 17 Apr 25 20:16:16 Linux pluto[4025]: | inserting event EVENT_RETRANSMIT, timeout in 40 seconds for #8 Apr 25 20:16:16 Linux pluto[4025]: | next event EVENT_RETRANSMIT in 2 seconds for #10 Apr 25 20:16:16 Linux pluto[4025]: | rejected packet: Apr 25 20:16:16 Linux pluto[4025]: | Apr 25 20:16:16 Linux pluto[4025]: | control: Apr 25 20:16:16 Linux pluto[4025]: | 30 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 0b 00 00 00 Apr 25 20:16:16 Linux pluto[4025]: | 6f 00 00 00 02 03 03 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 Apr 25 20:16:16 Linux pluto[4025]: | 02 00 00 00 c0 a8 2b 48 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 Apr 25 20:16:16 Linux pluto[4025]: | name: Apr 25 20:16:16 Linux pluto[4025]: | 02 00 01 f4 c0 a8 2b 48 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 Apr 25 20:16:16 Linux pluto[4025]: **ERROR: asynchronous network error report on wlan0 for message to 192.168.43.72 port 500, complainant 192.168.43.72: Connection refused [errno 111, origin ICMP type 3 code 3 (not authenticated)]** Anybody please provide some update about this error and how to solve this issue.

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• Bypass DNSSEC for local Stub zones

  - by Starsky

  I am using bind 9.9.2 as a DNSSEC validating recursive resolver in an Internet DMZ. I want to point to my internal DNS servers as stub zones (ideally) or anything except slave zones (to avoid very large zone transfers). We use a routable ip space for our Internal addressing. Sorry if I am using an IP space that you own in my example, but 167.x.x.x is the first zone I found that fits my issue. E.G dnssec-enable yes; dnssec-validation yes; dnssec-accept-expired no; zone "16.172.in-addr.arpa" { type stub; masters { 167.255.1.53; } } zone "myzone.com" in { type stub; masters { 167.255.1.53; } } When queries hit the DNS server, they attempt at being validated, and fail because 167.in-addr.arpa HAS an RRSIG record, but sub zones do not (and should not!). Google dns is used in this example, but in reality it would be my recursive resolver. @8.8.8.8 -x 167.255.1.53 +dnssec ; (1 server found) ;; global options: +cmd ;; Got answer: ;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NXDOMAIN, id: 17488 ;; flags: qr rd ra ad; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 0, AUTHORITY: 6, ADDITIONAL: 1 ;; OPT PSEUDOSECTION: ; EDNS: version: 0, flags: do; udp: 512 ;; QUESTION SECTION: ;53.1.255.167.in-addr.arpa. IN PTR ;; AUTHORITY SECTION: 167.in-addr.arpa. 1800 IN SOA z.arin.net. dns-ops.arin.net. 2013100713 1800 900 691200 10800 167.in-addr.arpa. 1800 IN RRSIG SOA 5 3 86400 20131017160124 20131007160124 812 167.in-addr.arpa. Lcl8sCps7LapnAj4n403KXx7A3GO7+2z/9Q2R2mwkh9FL26iDx7GlU4+ NufGd92IEJCdBu9IgcZP4I9QcKi8DI28og27WrfKd5moSl/STj02GliS qPTfNiewmTTIDw5++IlhITbp+CoJuZCRCdDbyWKmd5NSLcbskAwbCVlO vVA= 167.in-addr.arpa. 10800 IN NSEC 1.167.in-addr.arpa. NS SOA TXT RRSIG NSEC DNSKEY 167.in-addr.arpa. 10800 IN RRSIG NSEC 5 3 10800 20131017160124 20131007160124 812 167.in-addr.arpa. XALsd59i+XGvCIzjhTUFXcr11/M8prcaaPQ5yFSbvP9TzqjJ3wpizvH6 202MdrIWbsT1Dndri49lHKAXgBQ5OOsUmOh+eoRYR5okxRO4VLc5Tkze Gh0fQLcwGXPuv9A4SFNIrNyi3XU4Qvq0cViKXIuEGTa3C+zMPuvc0her oKk= 254.167.in-addr.arpa. 10800 IN NSEC 26.167.in-addr.arpa. NS RRSIG NSEC 254.167.in-addr.arpa. 10800 IN RRSIG NSEC 5 4 10800 20131017160124 20131007160124 812 167.in-addr.arpa. xnsLBTnPhdyABdvqtEHPxa6Y6NASfYAWfW1yYlNliTyV8TFeNOqewjwj nY43CWD77ftFDDQTLFEOPpV5vwmnUGYTRztK+kB5UrlflhPgiqYiBaBD RQaFQ8DIKaof8/snusZjK7aNmfe09t9gRcaX/pXn3liKz7m/ggxZi0f9 xo0= ;; Query time: 31 msec ;; SERVER: 8.8.8.8#53(8.8.8.8) ;; WHEN: Mon Oct 7 16:52:59 2013 ;; MSG SIZE rcvd: 722 Is there a way to bypass DNSSEC validation for specific zones? Any zone that I host internally, I do not want DNSSEC validation performed on. I have only see this interfere w/ certain reverse zones where the top level has DS/RRSIG records. Thanks.

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• Week in Geek: LastPass Rescues Xmarks Edition

  - by Asian Angel

  This week we learned how to breathe new life into an aging Windows Mobile 6.x device, use filters in Photoshop, backup and move VirtualBox machines, use the BitDefender Rescue CD to clean an infected PC, and had fun setting up a pirates theme on our computers. Photo by _nash. Weekly Feature Do you love using the Faenza icon set on your Ubuntu system but feel that there are a few much needed icons missing (or you desire a different version of a particular icon)? Then you may want to take a look at the Faenza Variants icon pack. The icons are available in the following sizes: 16px, 22px, 32px, 48px and scalable sizes. Photo by Asian Angel. Faenza Variants Random Geek Links Another week with extra link goodness to help keep you on top of the news. Photo by Asian Angel. LastPass acquires Xmarks, premium service announced Xmarks announced that it has been acquired by LastPass, a cross-platform password management service. This also means that Xmarks is now in transition from a “free” to a “freemium” business model. WikiLeaks reappears on European Net domains WikiLeaks has re-emerged on a Swiss Internet domain followed by domains in Germany, Finland, and the Netherlands, sidestepping a move that had in effect taken the controversial site off the Internet. Iran: Yes, Stuxnet hurt our nuclear program The Stuxnet worm got some big play from Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who acknowledged that the malware dinged his nuclear program. More Windows Rogues than Just AV – Fake Defragmenter Check Disk Don’t think for a second that rogues are limited to scareware, because as so-called products such as “System Defragmenter”, “Scan Disk” “Check Disk” prove, they’re not. Internet Explorer’s Protected Mode can be bypassed Researchers from Verizon Business have now described a way of bypassing Protected Mode in IE 7 and 8 in order to gain access to user accounts. Can you really see who viewed your Facebook profile? Rogue application spreads virally Once again, a rogue application is spreading virally between Facebook users pretending to offer you a way of seeing who has viewed your profile. More holes in Palm’s WebOS Researchers Orlando Barrera and Daniel Herrera, who both work for security firm SecTheory, have discovered a gaping security hole in Palm’s WebOS smartphone operating system. Next-gen banking Trojans hit APAC With the proliferation of banking Trojans, Web and smartphone users of online banking services have to be on constant alert to avoid falling prey to fraud schemes, warned Etay Maor, project manager for RSA Fraud Action. AVG update cripples 64-bit computers A signature update automatically deployed by the AVG virus scanner Thursday has crippled numerous computers. Article includes link to forums to fix computers affected after a restart. Congress moves to outlaw ‘mystery charges’ for Web shoppers Legislation that makes it illegal for Web merchants and so-called post-transaction marketers to charge credit cards without the card owners’ say-so came closer to becoming law this week. Ballmer Set to “Look Into” Windows Home Server Drive Extender Fiasco Tuesday’s announcement from Microsoft regarding the removal of Drive Extender from Windows Home Server has sent shock waves across the web. Google tweaks search recipe to ding scam artists Google has changed its search algorithm to penalize sites deemed to provide an “extremely poor user experience” following a New York Times story on a merchant who justified abusive behavior towards customers as a search-engine optimization tactic. Geek Video of the Week Watch as our two friends debate back and forth about the early adoption of new technology through multiple time periods (Stone Age to the far future). Will our reluctant friend finally succumb to the temptation? Photo by CollegeHumor. Early Adopters Through History Random TinyHacker Links Fix Issues in Windows 7 Using Reliability Monitor Learn how to analyze Windows 7 errors and then fix them using the built-in reliability monitor. Learn About IE Tab Groups Tab groups is a useful feature in IE 8. Here’s a detailed guide to what it is all about. Google’s Book Helps You Learn About Browsers and Web A cool new online book by the Google Chrome team on browsers and the web. TrustPort Internet Security 2011 – Good Security from a Less Known Provider TrustPort is not exactly a well-known provider of security solutions. At least not in the consumer space. This review tests in detail their latest offering. How the World is Using Cell phones An infographic showing the shocking demographics of cell phone use. Super User Questions See the great answers to these questions from Super User. I am unable to access my C drive. It says it is unable to display current owner. List of Windows special directories/shortcuts like ‘%TEMP%’ Is using multiple passes for wiping a disk really necessary? How can I view two files side by side in Notepad++ Is there any tool that automatically puts screenshots to my Dropbox? How-To Geek Weekly Article Recap Look through our hottest articles from this past week at How-To Geek. How to Create a Software RAID Array in Windows 7 9 Alternatives for Windows Home Server’s Drive Extender Why Doesn’t Disk Cleanup Delete Everything from the Temp Folder? Ask the Readers: How Much Do You Customize Your Operating System? How to Upload Really Large Files to SkyDrive, Dropbox, or Email One Year Ago on How-To Geek Enjoy reading through these awesome articles from one year ago. How To Upgrade from Vista to Windows 7 Home Premium Edition How To Fix No Aero Transparency in Windows 7 Troubleshoot Startup Problems with Startup Repair Tool in Windows 7 & Vista Rename the Guest Account in Windows 7 for Enhanced Security Disable Error Reporting in XP, Vista, and Windows 7 The Geek Note That wraps things up here for this week. Regardless of the weather wherever you may be, we hope that you have an opportunity to get outside and have some fun! Remember to keep sending those great tips in to us at [email protected]. Photo by Tony the Misfit. Latest Features How-To Geek ETC The How-To Geek Guide to Learning Photoshop, Part 8: Filters Get the Complete Android Guide eBook for Only 99 Cents [Update: Expired] Improve Digital Photography by Calibrating Your Monitor The How-To Geek Guide to Learning Photoshop, Part 7: Design and Typography How to Choose What to Back Up on Your Linux Home Server How To Harmonize Your Dual-Boot Setup for Windows and Ubuntu Hang in There Scrat! – Ice Age Wallpaper How Do You Know When You’ve Passed Geek and Headed to Nerd? On The Tip – A Lamborghini Theme for Chrome and Iron What if Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner were Human? [Video] Peaceful Winter Cabin Wallpaper Store Tabs for Later Viewing in Opera with Tab Vault

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• Remote Desktop to Your Azure Virtual Machine

  - by Shaun

  The Windows Azure Team had just published their new development portal this week and the SDK 1.3. Within this new release there are a lot of cool feature available. The one I’m looking forward to is Remote Desktop Access to your running Windows Azure Virtual Machine.   Configuration Remote Desktop Access It would be very simple to make the azure service enable the remote desktop access. First of all let’s create a new windows azure project from the Visual Studio. In this example I just created a normal MVC 2 web role without any modifications. Then we right-click the azure project node in the solution explorer window and select “Publish”. Then let’s select the “Deploy your Windows Azure project to Windows Azure” on the top radio button. And then select the credential, deployment service/slot, storage and label as susal. You must have the Management API Certificates uploaded to your Windows Azure account, and install the certification on you machine before in order to use this one-click deployment feature. If you are familiar with this dialog you will notice that there’s a linkage named “Configure Remote Desktop connections”. Here is where you need to make this service enable the remote desktop feature. After clicked this link we will set the configuration of the remote desktop access authorization information. There are 4 steps we need to do to configure our access. Certificates: We need either create or select a certificate file in order to encypt the access cerdenticals. In this example I will use the certificate file for my Management API. Username: The remote desktop user name to access the virtual machine. Password: The password for the access. Expiration: The access cerdentals would be expired after 1 month by default but we can amend here. After that we clicked the OK button to back to the publish dialog.   The next step is to back to the new windows azure portal and navigate to the hosted services list. I created a new hosted service and upload the certificate file onto this service. The user name and password access to the azure machine must be encrypted from the local machine, and then send to the windows azure platform, then decrypted on the azure side by the same file. This is why we need to upload the certificate file onto azure. We navigated to the “Hosted Services, Storage Accounts & CDN"” from the left panel and created a new hosted service named “SDK13” and selected the “Certificates” node. Then we clicked the “Add Certificates” button. Then we select the local certificate file and the password to install it into this azure service.   The final step would be back to our Visual Studio and in the pulish dialog just click the OK button. The Visual Studio will upload our package and the configuration into our service with the remote desktop settings.   Remote Desktop Access to Azure Virtual Machine All things had been done, let’s have a look back on the Windows Azure Development Portal. If I selected the web role that I had just published we can see on the toolbar there’s a section named “Remote Access”. In this section the Enable checkbox had been checked which means this role has the Remote Desktop Access feature enabled. If we want to modify the access cerdentals we can simply click the Configure button. Then we can update the user name, password, certificates and the expiration date.   Let’s select the instance node under the web role. In this case I just created one instance for demo. We can see that when we selected the instance node, the Connect button turned enabled. After clicked this button there will be a RDP file downloaded. This is a Remote Desctop configuration file that we can use to access to our azure virtual machine. Let’s download it to our local machine and execute. We input the user name and password we specified when we published our application to azure and then click OK. There might be some certificates warning dislog appeared. This is because the certificates we use to encryption is not signed by a trusted provider. Just select OK in these cases as we know the certificate is safty to us. Finally, the virtual machine of Windows Azure appeared.   A Quick Look into the Azure Virtual Machine Let’s just have a very quick look into our virtual machine. There are 3 disks available for us: C, D and E. Disk C: Store the local resource, diagnosis information, etc. Disk D: System disk which contains the OS, IIS, .NET Frameworks, etc. Disk E: Sotre our application code. The IIS which hosting our webiste on Azure. The IP configuration of the azure virtual machine.   Summary In this post I covered one of the new feature of the Azure SDK 1.3 – Remote Desktop Access. We can set the access per service and all of the instances of this service could be accessed through the remote desktop tool. With this feature we can deep into the virtual machines of our instances to see the inner information such as the system event, IIS log, system information, etc. But we should pay attention to modify the system settings. 2 reasons from what I know for now: 1. If we have more than one instances against our service we should ensure that all system settings we modifed are applied to all instances/virtual machines. Otherwise, as the machines are under the azure load balance proxy our application process may doesn’t work due to the defferent settings between the instances. 2. When the virtual machine encounted some problem and need to be translated to another physical machine all settings we made would be disappeared.   Hope this helps, Shaun All documents and related graphics, codes are provided "AS IS" without warranty of any kind. Copyright © Shaun Ziyan Xu. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons License.

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• Merge replication stopping without errors in SQL 2008 R2

  - by Rob Farley

  A non-SQL MVP friend of mine, who also happens to be a client, asked me for some help again last week. I was planning on writing this up even before Rob Volk (@sql_r) listed his T-SQL Tuesday topic for this month. Earlier in the year, I (well, LobsterPot Solutions, although I’d been the person mostly involved) had helped out with a merge replication problem. The Merge Agent on the subscriber was just stopping every time, shortly after it started. With no errors anywhere – not in the Windows Event Log, the SQL Agent logs, not anywhere. We’d managed to get the system working again, but didn’t have a good reason about what had happened, and last week, the problem occurred again. I asked him about writing up the experience in a blog post, largely because of the red herrings that we encountered. It was an interesting experience for me, also because I didn’t end up touching my computer the whole time – just tapping on my phone via Twitter and Live Msgr. You see, the thing with replication is that a useful troubleshooting option is to reinitialise the thing. We’d done that last time, and it had started to work again – eventually. I say eventually, because the link being used between the sites is relatively slow, and it took a long while for the initialisation to finish. Meanwhile, we’d been doing some investigation into what the problem could be, and were suitably pleased when the problem disappeared. So I got a message saying that a replication problem had occurred again. Reinitialising wasn’t going to be an option this time either. In this scenario, the subscriber having the problem happened to be in a different domain to the publisher. The other subscribers (within the domain) were fine, just this one in a different domain had the problem. Part of the problem seemed to be a log file that wasn’t being backed up properly. They’d been trying to back up to a backup device that had a corruption, and the log file was growing. Turned out, this wasn’t related to the problem, but of course, any time you’re troubleshooting and you see something untoward, you wonder. Having got past that problem, my next thought was that perhaps there was a problem with the account being used. But the other subscribers were using the same account, without any problems. The client pointed out that that it was almost exactly six months since the last failure (later shown to be a complete red herring). It sounded like something might’ve expired. Checking through certificates and trusts showed no sign of anything, and besides, there wasn’t a problem running a command-prompt window using the account in question, from the subscriber box. ...except that when he ran the sqlcmd –E –S servername command I recommended, it failed with a Named Pipes error. I’ve seen problems with firewalls rejecting connections via Named Pipes but letting TCP/IP through, so I got him to look into SQL Configuration Manager to see what kind of connection was being preferred... Everything seemed fine. And strangely, he could connect via Management Studio. Turned out, he had a typo in the servername of the sqlcmd command. That particular red herring must’ve been reflected in his cheeks as he told me. During the time, I also pinged a friend of mine to find out who I should ask, and Ted Kruger (@onpnt) ‘s name came up. Ted (and thanks again, Ted – really) reconfirmed some of my thoughts around the idea of an account expiring, and also suggesting bumping up the logging to level 4 (2 is Verbose, 4 is undocumented ridiculousness). I’d just told the client to push the logging up to level 2, but the log file wasn’t appearing. Checking permissions showed that the user did have permission on the folder, but still no file was appearing. Then it was noticed that the user had been switched earlier as part of the troubleshooting, and switching it back to the real user caused the log file to appear. Still no errors. A lot more information being pushed out, but still no errors. Ted suggested making sure the FQDNs were okay from both ends, in case the servers were unable to talk to each other. DNS problems can lead to hassles which can stop replication from working. No luck there either – it was all working fine. Another server started to report a problem as well. These two boxes were both SQL 2008 R2 (SP1), while the others, still working, were SQL 2005. Around this time, the client tried an idea that I’d shown him a few years ago – using a Profiler trace to see what was being called on the servers. It turned out that the last call being made on the publisher was sp_MSenumschemachange. A quick interwebs search on that showed a problem that exists in SQL Server 2008 R2, when stored procedures have more than 4000 characters. Running that stored procedure (with the same parameters) manually on SQL 2005 listed three stored procedures, the first of which did indeed have more than 4000 characters. Still no error though, and the problem as listed at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2539378 describes an error that should occur in the Event log. However, this problem is the type of thing that is fixed by a reinitialisation (because it doesn’t need to send the procedure change across as a transaction). And a look in the change history of the long stored procs (you all keep them, right?), showed that the problem from six months earlier could well have been down to this too. Applying SP2 (with sufficient paranoia about backups and how to get back out again if necessary) fixed the problem. The stored proc changes went through immediately after the service pack was applied, and it’s been running happily since. The funny thing is that I didn’t solve the problem. He had put the Profiler trace on the server, and had done the search that found a forum post pointing at this particular problem. I’d asked Ted too, and although he’d given some useful information, nothing that he’d come up with had actually been the solution either. Sometimes, asking for help is the most useful thing you can do. Often though, you don’t end up getting the help from the person you asked – the sounding board is actually what you need. @rob_farley

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• Persisting Session Between Different Browser Instances

  - by imran_ku07

      Introduction:          By default inproc session's identifier cookie is saved in browser memory. This cookie is known as non persistent cookie identifier. This simply means that if the user closes his browser then the cookie is immediately removed. On the other hand cookies which stored on the user’s hard drive and can be reused for later visits are called persistent cookies. Persistent cookies are less used than nonpersistent cookies because of security. Simply because nonpersistent cookies makes session hijacking attacks more difficult and more limited. If you are using shared computer then there are lot of chances that your persistent session will be used by other shared members. However this is not always the case, lot of users desired that their session will remain persisted even they open two instances of same browser or when they close and open a new browser. So in this article i will provide a very simple way to persist your session even the browser is closed.   Description:          Let's create a simple ASP.NET Web Application. In this article i will use Web Form but it also works in MVC. Open Default.aspx.cs and add the following code in Page_Load.    protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)        {            if (Session["Message"] != null)                Response.Write(Session["Message"].ToString());            Session["Message"] = "Hello, Imran";        }          This page simply shows a message if a session exist previously and set the session.          Now just run the application, you will just see an empty page on first try. After refreshing the page you will see the Message "Hello, Imran". Now just close the browser and reopen it or just open another browser instance, you will get the exactly same behavior when you run your application first time . Why the session is not persisted between browser instances. The simple reason is non persistent session cookie identifier. The session cookie identifier is not shared between browser instances. Now let's make it persistent.          To make your application share session between different browser instances just add the following code in global.asax.    protected void Application_PostMapRequestHandler(object sender, EventArgs e)           {               if (Request.Cookies["ASP.NET_SessionIdTemp"] != null)               {                   if (Request.Cookies["ASP.NET_SessionId"] == null)                       Request.Cookies.Add(new HttpCookie("ASP.NET_SessionId", Request.Cookies["ASP.NET_SessionIdTemp"].Value));                   else                       Request.Cookies["ASP.NET_SessionId"].Value = Request.Cookies["ASP.NET_SessionIdTemp"].Value;               }           }          protected void Application_PostRequestHandlerExecute(object sender, EventArgs e)        {             HttpCookie cookie = new HttpCookie("ASP.NET_SessionIdTemp", Session.SessionID);               cookie.Expires = DateTime.Now.AddMinutes(Session.Timeout);               Response.Cookies.Add(cookie);         }          This code simply state that during Application_PostRequestHandlerExecute(which is executed after HttpHandler) just add a persistent cookie ASP.NET_SessionIdTemp which contains the value of current user SessionID and sets the timeout to current user session timeout.          In Application_PostMapRequestHandler(which is executed just before th session is restored) we just check whether the Request cookie contains ASP.NET_SessionIdTemp. If yes then just add or update ASP.NET_SessionId cookie with ASP.NET_SessionIdTemp. So when a new browser instance is open, then a check will made that if ASP.NET_SessionIdTemp exist then simply add or update ASP.NET_SessionId cookie with ASP.NET_SessionIdTemp.          So run your application again, you will get the last closed browser session(if it is not expired).   Summary:          Persistence session is great way to increase the user usability. But always beware the security before doing this. However there are some cases in which you might need persistence session. In this article i just go through how to do this simply. So hopefully you will again enjoy this simple article too.

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• IIS 7.0 informational HTTP status codes

  - by Samir R. Bhogayta

  1xx - Informational These HTTP status codes indicate a provisional response. The client computer receives one or more 1xx responses before the client computer receives a regular response. IIS 7.0 uses the following informational HTTP status codes: 100 - Continue. 101 - Switching protocols. 2xx - Success These HTTP status codes indicate that the server successfully accepted the request. IIS 7.0 uses the following success HTTP status codes: 200 - OK. The client request has succeeded. 201 - Created. 202 - Accepted. 203 - Nonauthoritative information. 204 - No content. 205 - Reset content. 206 - Partial content. 3xx - Redirection These HTTP status codes indicate that the client browser must take more action to fulfill the request. For example, the client browser may have to request a different page on the server. Or, the client browser may have to repeat the request by using a proxy server. IIS 7.0 uses the following redirection HTTP status codes: 301 - Moved permanently. 302 - Object moved. 304 - Not modified. 307 - Temporary redirect. 4xx - Client error These HTTP status codes indicate that an error occurred and that the client browser appears to be at fault. For example, the client browser may have requested a page that does not exist. Or, the client browser may not have provided valid authentication information. IIS 7.0 uses the following client error HTTP status codes: 400 - Bad request. The request could not be understood by the server due to malformed syntax. The client should not repeat the request without modifications. IIS 7.0 defines the following HTTP status codes that indicate a more specific cause of a 400 error: 400.1 - Invalid Destination Header. 400.2 - Invalid Depth Header. 400.3 - Invalid If Header. 400.4 - Invalid Overwrite Header. 400.5 - Invalid Translate Header. 400.6 - Invalid Request Body. 400.7 - Invalid Content Length. 400.8 - Invalid Timeout. 400.9 - Invalid Lock Token. 401 - Access denied. IIS 7.0 defines several HTTP status codes that indicate a more specific cause of a 401 error. The following specific HTTP status codes are displayed in the client browser but are not displayed in the IIS log: 401.1 - Logon failed. 401.2 - Logon failed due to server configuration. 401.3 - Unauthorized due to ACL on resource. 401.4 - Authorization failed by filter. 401.5 - Authorization failed by ISAPI/CGI application. 403 - Forbidden. IIS 7.0 defines the following HTTP status codes that indicate a more specific cause of a 403 error: 403.1 - Execute access forbidden. 403.2 - Read access forbidden. 403.3 - Write access forbidden. 403.4 - SSL required. 403.5 - SSL 128 required. 403.6 - IP address rejected. 403.7 - Client certificate required. 403.8 - Site access denied. 403.9 - Forbidden: Too many clients are trying to connect to the Web server. 403.10 - Forbidden: Web server is configured to deny Execute access. 403.11 - Forbidden: Password has been changed. 403.12 - Mapper denied access. 403.13 - Client certificate revoked. 403.14 - Directory listing denied. 403.15 - Forbidden: Client access licenses have exceeded limits on the Web server. 403.16 - Client certificate is untrusted or invalid. 403.17 - Client certificate has expired or is not yet valid. 403.18 - Cannot execute requested URL in the current application pool. 403.19 - Cannot execute CGI applications for the client in this application pool. 403.20 - Forbidden: Passport logon failed. 403.21 - Forbidden: Source access denied. 403.22 - Forbidden: Infinite depth is denied. 404 - Not found. IIS 7.0 defines the following HTTP status codes that indicate a more specific cause of a 404 error: 404.0 - Not found. 404.1 - Site Not Found. 404.2 - ISAPI or CGI restriction. 404.3 - MIME type restriction. 404.4 - No handler configured. 404.5 - Denied by request filtering configuration. 404.6 - Verb denied. 404.7 - File extension denied. 404.8 - Hidden namespace. 404.9 - File attribute hidden. 404.10 - Request header too long. 404.11 - Request contains double escape sequence. 404.12 - Request contains high-bit characters. 404.13 - Content length too large. 404.14 - Request URL too long. 404.15 - Query string too long. 404.16 - DAV request sent to the static file handler. 404.17 - Dynamic content mapped to the static file handler via a wildcard MIME mapping. 404.18 - Querystring sequence denied. 404.19 - Denied by filtering rule. 405 - Method Not Allowed. 406 - Client browser does not accept the MIME type of the requested page. 408 - Request timed out. 412 - Precondition failed. 5xx - Server error These HTTP status codes indicate that the server cannot complete the request because the server encounters an error. IIS 7.0 uses the following server error HTTP status codes: 500 - Internal server error. IIS 7.0 defines the following HTTP status codes that indicate a more specific cause of a 500 error: 500.0 - Module or ISAPI error occurred. 500.11 - Application is shutting down on the Web server. 500.12 - Application is busy restarting on the Web server. 500.13 - Web server is too busy. 500.15 - Direct requests for Global.asax are not allowed. 500.19 - Configuration data is invalid. 500.21 - Module not recognized. 500.22 - An ASP.NET httpModules configuration does not apply in Managed Pipeline mode. 500.23 - An ASP.NET httpHandlers configuration does not apply in Managed Pipeline mode. 500.24 - An ASP.NET impersonation configuration does not apply in Managed Pipeline mode. 500.50 - A rewrite error occurred during RQ_BEGIN_REQUEST notification handling. A configuration or inbound rule execution error occurred. Note Here is where the distributed rules configuration is read for both inbound and outbound rules. 500.51 - A rewrite error occurred during GL_PRE_BEGIN_REQUEST notification handling. A global configuration or global rule execution error occurred. Note Here is where the global rules configuration is read. 500.52 - A rewrite error occurred during RQ_SEND_RESPONSE notification handling. An outbound rule execution occurred. 500.53 - A rewrite error occurred during RQ_RELEASE_REQUEST_STATE notification handling. An outbound rule execution error occurred. The rule is configured to be executed before the output user cache gets updated. 500.100 - Internal ASP error. 501 - Header values specify a configuration that is not implemented. 502 - Web server received an invalid response while acting as a gateway or proxy. IIS 7.0 defines the following HTTP status codes that indicate a more specific cause of a 502 error: 502.1 - CGI application timeout. 502.2 - Bad gateway. 503 - Service unavailable. IIS 7.0 defines the following HTTP status codes that indicate a more specific cause of a 503 error: 503.0 - Application pool unavailable. 503.2 - Concurrent request limit exceeded.

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• The Presentation Isn't Over Until It's Over

  - by Phil Factor

  The senior corporate dignitaries settled into their seats looking important in a blue-suited sort of way. The lights dimmed as I strode out in front to give my presentation.  I had ten vital minutes to make my pitch.  I was about to dazzle the top management of a large software company who were considering the purchase of my software product. I would present them with a dazzling synthesis of diagrams, graphs, followed by  a live demonstration of my software projected from my laptop.  My preparation had been meticulous: It had to be: A year’s hard work was at stake, so I’d prepared it to perfection.  I stood up and took them all in, with a gaze of sublime confidence. Then the laptop expired. There are several possible alternative plans of action when this happens     A. Stare at the smoking laptop vacuously, flapping ones mouth slowly up and down     B. Stand frozen like a statue, locked in indecision between fright and flight.     C. Run out of the room, weeping     D. Pretend that this was all planned     E. Abandon the presentation in favour of a stilted and tedious dissertation about the software     F. Shake your fist at the sky, and curse the sense of humour of your preferred deity I started for a few seconds on plan B, normally referred to as the ‘Rabbit in the headlamps of the car’ technique. Suddenly, a little voice inside my head spoke. It spoke the famous inane words of Yogi Berra; ‘The game isn't over until it's over.’ ‘Too right’, I thought. What to do? I ran through the alternatives A-F inclusive in my mind but none appealed to me. I was completely unprepared for this. Nowadays, longevity has since taught me more than I wanted to know about the wacky sense of humour of fate, and I would have taken two laptops. I hadn’t, but decided to do the presentation anyway as planned. I started out ignoring the dead laptop, but pretending, instead that it was still working. The audience looked startled. They were expecting plan B to be succeeded by plan C, I suspect. They weren’t used to denial on this scale. After my introductory talk, which didn’t require any visuals, I came to the diagram that described the application I’d written.  I’d taken ages over it and it was hot stuff. Well, it would have been had it been projected onto the screen. It wasn’t. Before I describe what happened then, I must explain that I have thespian tendencies.  My  triumph as Professor Higgins in My Fair Lady at the local operatic society is now long forgotten, but I remember at the time of my finest performance, the moment that, glancing up over the vast audience of  moist-eyed faces at the during the poignant  scene between Eliza and Higgins at the end, I  realised that I had a talent that one day could possibly  be harnessed for commercial use I just talked about the diagram as if it was there, but throwing in some extra description. The audience nodded helpfully when I’d done enough. Emboldened, I began a sort of mime, well, more of a ballet, to represent each slide as I came to it. Heaven knows I’d done my preparation and, in my mind’s eye, I could see every detail, but I had to somehow project the reality of that vision to the audience, much the same way any actor playing Macbeth should do the ghost of Banquo.  My desperation gave me a manic energy. If you’ve ever demonstrated a windows application entirely by mime, gesture and florid description, you’ll understand the scale of the challenge, but then I had nothing to lose. With a brief sentence of description here and there, and arms flailing whilst outlining the size and shape of  graphs and diagrams, I used the many tricks of mime, gesture and body-language  learned from playing Captain Hook, or the Sheriff of Nottingham in pantomime. I set out determinedly on my desperate venture. There wasn’t time to do anything but focus on the challenge of the task: the world around me narrowed down to ten faces and my presentation: ten souls who had to be hypnotized into seeing a Windows application:  one that was slick, well organized and functional I don’t remember the details. Eight minutes of my life are gone completely. I was a thespian berserker.  I know however that I followed the basic plan of building the presentation in a carefully controlled crescendo until the dazzling finale where the results were displayed on-screen.  ‘And here you see the results, neatly formatted and grouped carefully to enhance the significance of the figures, together with running trend-graphs!’ I waved a mime to signify an animated  window-opening, and looked up, in my first pause, to gaze defiantly  at the audience.  It was a sight I’ll never forget. Ten pairs of eyes were gazing in rapt attention at the imaginary window, and several pairs of eyes were glancing at the imaginary graphs and figures.  I hadn’t had an audience like that since my starring role in  Beauty and the Beast.  At that moment, I realized that my desperate ploy might work. I sat down, slightly winded, when my ten minutes were up.  For the first and last time in my life, the audience of a  ‘PowerPoint’ presentation burst into spontaneous applause. ‘Any questions?’ ‘Yes,  Have you got an agent?’ Yes, in case you’re wondering, I got the deal. They bought the software product from me there and then. However, it was a life-changing experience for me and I have never ever again trusted technology as part of a presentation.  Even if things can’t go wrong, they’ll go wrong and they’ll kill the flow of what you’re presenting.  if you can’t do something without the techno-props, then you shouldn’t do it.  The greatest lesson of all is that great presentations require preparation and  ‘stage-presence’ rather than fancy graphics. They’re a great supporting aid, but they should never dominate to the point that you’re lost without them.

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• Calculated Fields - Idiosyncracies

  - by PointsToShare

  © 2011 By: Dov Trietsch. All rights reserved Calculated Fields and some of their Idiosyncrasies Did you try to write a calculate field formula directly into the screen? Good Luck – You’ll need it! Calculated Fields are a sophisticated OOB feature of SharePoint, so you could think that they are best left to the end users – at least to the power users. But they reach their limits before the “Professionals “do, and the tough ones come back to us anyway. Back to business; the simpler the formula, the easier it is. Still, use your favorite editor to write it, then cut it and paste it to the ridiculously small window. What about complex formulae? Write them in steps! Here is a case in point and an idiosyncrasy or two. Our welders need to be certified and recertified every two years. Some of them are certifiable…., but I digress. To be certified you need to pass an eye exam, and two more tests – test A and test B. for each of those you have an expiry date. When renewed, each expiry date is advanced by two years from the date of renewal. My users wanted a visual clue so that when the supervisor looks at the list, she’ll have a KPI symbol telling her if anything expired (Red), is going to expire within the next 90 days (Yellow) or is not to be worried about (green). Not all the dates are filled and any blank date implies a complete lack of certification in the particular requirement. Obviously, I needed to figure the minimal of these 3 dates – a simple enough formula: =MIN([Date_EyeExam], {Date_TestA], [Date_TestB]). Aha! Here is idiosyncrasy #1. When one of the dates is a null, MIN(Date1, Date2) returns the non null date. Null is construed as “Far, far away”. The funny thing is that when you compare it to Today, the null is the lesser one. So a null it is less than today, but not when MIN is calculated. Now, to me the fact that the welder does not have an exam date, is synonymous with his exam being prehistoric, or at least past due. So here is what I did: Solution: Let’s set a blank date to 1/1/1800. How will we do that? Use the IF. IF([Field] rel relValue, TrueValue, FalseValue). rel is any relationship operator <, >, <=, >=, =, <>. If the field is related to the relValue as prescribed, the “IF” returns the TrueValue, otherwise it returns the FalseValue. Thus: =IF([SomeDate]="",1/1/1800,[SomeDate]) will return 1/1/1800 if the date is blank and the date itself if not. So, using this formula, if the welder missed an exam, the returned exam date will be far in the past. It would be nice if we could take such a formula and make it into a reusable function. Alas, here is a calculated field serious shortcoming: You cannot write subs and functions!! Aha, but we can use interim calculated fields! So let’s create 3 calculated fields as follows: 1: c_DateTestA as a calculated field of the date type, with the formula:  IF([Date_TestA]="",1/1/1800,[Date_TestA]) 2: c_DateTestB as a calculated field of the date type, with the formula:  IF([Date_TestB]="",1/1/1800,[Date_TestB]) 3: c_DateEyeExam as a calculated field of the date type, with the formula:  IF([Date_EyeExam]="",1/1/1800,[Date_EyeExam]) And now use these to get c_MinDate. This is again a calculated field of type date with the formula: MIN(c_DateTestA, cDateTestB, c_DateEyeExam) Note that I missed the square parentheses. In “properly named fields – where there are no embedded spaces, we don’t need the square parentheses. I actually strongly recommend using underscores in place of spaces in all the field names in your lists. Among other things, it makes using CAML much simpler. Now, we still need to apply the KPI to this minimal date. I am going to use the available KPI graphics that come with SharePoint and are always available in your 12 hive. "/_layouts/images/kpidefault-2.gif" is the Red KPI "/_layouts/images/kpidefault-1.gif" is the Yellow KPI "/_layouts/images/kpidefault-0.gif" is the Green KPI And here is the nested IF formula that will do the trick: =IF(c_MinDate<=Today,"/_layouts/images/kpidefault-2.gif", IF(cMinDate<Today+90,"/_layouts/images/kpidefault-1.gif","/_layouts/images/kpidefault-0.gif")) Nice! BUT when I tested, it did not work! This is Idiosyncrasy #2: A calculated field based on a calculated field based on a calculated field does not work. You have to stop at two levels! Back to the drawing board: We have to reduce by one level. How? We’ll eliminate the c_DateX items in the formula and replace them with the proper IF formulae. Notice that this needs to be done with precision. You are much better off in doing it in your favorite line editor, than inside the cramped space that SharePoint gives you. So here is the result: MIN(IF([Date_TestA]="",1/1/1800,[ Date_TestA]), IF([Date_TestB]="",1/1/1800,[ Date_TestB]), 1/1/1800), IF([Date_EyeExam]="",1/1/1800,[Date_EyeExam])) Note that I bolded the parentheses and painted them red. They have to match for this formula to work. Now we can leave the KPI formula as is and test again. This time with SUCCESS! Conclusion: build the inner functions first, and then embed them inside the outer formulae. Do this as long as necessary. Use your favorite line editor. Limit yourself to 2 levels. That’s all folks! Almost! As soon as I finished doing all of the above, my users added yet another level of complexity. They added another test, a test that must be passed, but never expires and asked for yet another KPI, this time in Black to denote that any test is not just past due, but altogether missing. I just finished this. Let’s hope it ends here! And OH, the formula  =IF(c_MinDate<=Today,"/_layouts/images/kpidefault-2.gif",IF(cMinDate<Today+90,"/_layouts/images/kpidefault-1.gif","/_layouts/images/kpidefault-0.gif")) Deals with “Today” and this is a subject deserving a discussion of its own!  That’s all folks?! (and this time I mean it)

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