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  • ?????create or replace???PL/SQL??

    - by Liu Maclean(???)
    ????T.Askmaclean.com?????10gR2??????procedure,?????????create or replace ??????????????????,????Oracle???????????????????procedure? ??Maclean ??2?10gR2???????????PL/SQL?????: ??1: ??Flashback Query ????,?????????????flashback database,??????????create or replace???SQL??source$??????????undo data,????????????: SQL> select * from V$version; BANNER ---------------------------------------------------------------- Oracle Database 10g Enterprise Edition Release 10.2.0.5.0 - 64bi PL/SQL Release 10.2.0.5.0 - Production CORE 10.2.0.5.0 Production TNS for Linux: Version 10.2.0.5.0 - Production NLSRTL Version 10.2.0.5.0 - Production SQL> select * from global_name; GLOBAL_NAME -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- www.oracledatabase12g.com SQL> create or replace procedure maclean_proc as   2  begin   3  execute immediate 'select 1 from dual';   4  end;   5  / Procedure created. SQL> select * from dba_source where name='MACLEAN_PROC'; OWNER      NAME                           TYPE               LINE TEXT ---------- ------------------------------ ------------ ---------- -------------------------------------------------- SYS        MACLEAN_PROC                   PROCEDURE             1 procedure maclean_proc as SYS        MACLEAN_PROC                   PROCEDURE             2 begin SYS        MACLEAN_PROC                   PROCEDURE             3 execute immediate 'select 1 from dual'; SYS        MACLEAN_PROC                   PROCEDURE             4 end; SQL> select current_scn from v$database; CURRENT_SCN -----------     2660057 create or replace procedure maclean_proc as begin -- I am new procedure execute immediate 'select 2 from dual'; end; / Procedure created. SQL> select current_scn from v$database; CURRENT_SCN -----------     2660113 SQL> select * from dba_source where name='MACLEAN_PROC'; OWNER      NAME                           TYPE               LINE TEXT ---------- ------------------------------ ------------ ---------- -------------------------------------------------- SYS        MACLEAN_PROC                   PROCEDURE             1 procedure maclean_proc as SYS        MACLEAN_PROC                   PROCEDURE             2 begin SYS        MACLEAN_PROC                   PROCEDURE             3 -- I am new procedure SYS        MACLEAN_PROC                   PROCEDURE             4 execute immediate 'select 2 from dual'; SYS        MACLEAN_PROC                   PROCEDURE             5 end; SQL> create table old_source as select * from dba_source as of scn 2660057 where name='MACLEAN_PROC'; Table created. SQL> select * from old_source where name='MACLEAN_PROC'; OWNER      NAME                           TYPE               LINE TEXT ---------- ------------------------------ ------------ ---------- -------------------------------------------------- SYS        MACLEAN_PROC                   PROCEDURE             1 procedure maclean_proc as SYS        MACLEAN_PROC                   PROCEDURE             2 begin SYS        MACLEAN_PROC                   PROCEDURE             3 execute immediate 'select 1 from dual'; SYS        MACLEAN_PROC                   PROCEDURE             4 end; ?????????scn??flashback query????,????????as of timestamp??????????,????PL/SQL????????????????undo??????????,????????????replace/drop ??????PL/SQL??? ??2 ??logminer??replace/drop PL/SQL?????SQL???DELETE??,??logminer?UNDO SQL???PL/SQL?????? ????????????????archivelog????,??????????????? minimal supplemental logging,??????????Unsupported SQLREDO???: create or replace?? ?? procedure???????SQL??????, ??????procedure????????????????, source$??????????????: SQL> ALTER DATABASE ADD SUPPLEMENTAL LOG DATA; Database altered. SQL> create or replace procedure maclean_proc as   2  begin   3  execute immediate 'select 1 from dual';   4  end;   5  / Procedure created. SQL> SQL> oradebug setmypid; Statement processed. SQL> SQL> oradebug event 10046 trace name context forever,level 12; Statement processed. SQL> SQL> create or replace procedure maclean_proc as   2  begin   3  execute immediate 'select 2 from dual';   4  end;   5  / Procedure created. SQL> oradebug tracefile_name /s01/admin/G10R25/udump/g10r25_ora_4305.trc [oracle@vrh8 ~]$ egrep  "update|insert|delete|merge"  /s01/admin/G10R25/udump/g10r25_ora_4305.trc delete from procedureinfo$ where obj#=:1 delete from argument$ where obj#=:1 delete from procedurec$ where obj#=:1 delete from procedureplsql$ where obj#=:1 delete from procedurejava$ where obj#=:1 delete from vtable$ where obj#=:1 insert into procedureinfo$(obj#,procedure#,overload#,procedurename,properties,itypeobj#) values (:1,:2,:3,:4,:5,:6) insert into argument$( obj#,procedure$,procedure#,overload#,position#,sequence#,level#,argument,type#,default#,in_out,length,precision#,scale,radix,charsetid,charsetform,properties,type_owner,type_name,type_subname,type_linkname,pls_type) values (:1,:2,:3,:4,:5,:6,:7,:8,:9,:10,:11,:12,:13,:14,:15,:16,:17,:18,:19,:20,:21,:22,:23) insert into procedureplsql$(obj#,procedure#,entrypoint#) values (:1,:2,:3) update procedure$ set audit$=:2,options=:3 where obj#=:1 delete from source$ where obj#=:1 insert into source$(obj#,line,source) values (:1,:2,:3) delete from idl_ub1$ where obj#=:1 and part=:2 and version<>:3 delete from idl_char$ where obj#=:1 and part=:2 and version<>:3 delete from idl_ub2$ where obj#=:1 and part=:2 and version<>:3 delete from idl_sb4$ where obj#=:1 and part=:2 and version<>:3 delete from ncomp_dll$ where obj#=:1 returning dllname into :2 update idl_sb4$ set piece#=:1 ,length=:2 , piece=:3 where obj#=:4 and part=:5 and piece#=:6 and version=:7 update idl_ub1$ set piece#=:1 ,length=:2 , piece=:3 where obj#=:4 and part=:5 and piece#=:6 and version=:7 update idl_char$ set piece#=:1 ,length=:2 , piece=:3 where obj#=:4 and part=:5 and piece#=:6 and version=:7 update idl_ub2$ set piece#=:1 ,length=:2 , piece=:3 where obj#=:4 and part=:5 and piece#=:6 and version=:7 delete from idl_ub1$ where obj#=:1 and part=:2 and version<>:3 delete from idl_char$ where obj#=:1 and part=:2 and version<>:3 delete from idl_ub2$ where obj#=:1 and part=:2 and version<>:3 delete from idl_sb4$ where obj#=:1 and part=:2 and version<>:3 delete from ncomp_dll$ where obj#=:1 returning dllname into :2 delete from idl_ub1$ where obj#=:1 and part=:2 and (piece#<:3 or piece#>:4) and version=:5 delete from idl_char$ where obj#=:1 and part=:2 and (piece#<:3 or piece#>:4) and version=:5 delete from idl_ub2$ where obj#=:1 and part=:2 and (piece#<:3 or piece#>:4) and version=:5 delete from idl_sb4$ where obj#=:1 and part=:2 and (piece#<:3 or piece#>:4) and version=:5 delete from idl_ub1$ where obj#=:1 and part=:2 and version<>:3 delete from idl_char$ where obj#=:1 and part=:2 and version<>:3 delete from idl_ub2$ where obj#=:1 and part=:2 and version<>:3 delete from idl_sb4$ where obj#=:1 and part=:2 and version<>:3 delete from ncomp_dll$ where obj#=:1 returning dllname into :2 update idl_sb4$ set piece#=:1 ,length=:2 , piece=:3 where obj#=:4 and part=:5 and piece#=:6 and version=:7 update idl_ub1$ set piece#=:1 ,length=:2 , piece=:3 where obj#=:4 and part=:5 and piece#=:6 and version=:7 delete from idl_char$ where obj#=:1 and part=:2 and (piece#<:3 or piece#>:4) and version=:5 delete from idl_ub2$ where obj#=:1 and part=:2 and (piece#<:3 or piece#>:4) and version=:5 delete from error$ where obj#=:1 delete from settings$ where obj# = :1 insert into settings$(obj#, param, value) values (:1, :2, :3) delete from warning_settings$ where obj# = :1 insert into warning_settings$(obj#, warning_num, global_mod, property) values (:1, :2, :3, :4) delete from dependency$ where d_obj#=:1 delete from access$ where d_obj#=:1 insert into dependency$(d_obj#,d_timestamp,order#,p_obj#,p_timestamp, property, d_attrs)values (:1,:2,:3,:4,:5,:6, :7) insert into access$(d_obj#,order#,columns,types) values (:1,:2,:3,:4) update obj$ set obj#=:6,type#=:7,ctime=:8,mtime=:9,stime=:10,status=:11,dataobj#=:13,flags=:14,oid$=:15,spare1=:16, spare2=:17 where owner#=:1 and name=:2 and namespace=:3 and(remoteowner=:4 or remoteowner is null and :4 is null)and(linkname=:5 or linkname is null and :5 is null)and(subname=:12 or subname is null and :12 is null) ?drop procedure??????source$???PL/SQL?????: SQL> oradebug setmypid; Statement processed. SQL> oradebug event 10046 trace name context forever,level 12; Statement processed. SQL> drop procedure maclean_proc; Procedure dropped. SQL> oradebug tracefile_name /s01/admin/G10R25/udump/g10r25_ora_4331.trc delete from context$ where obj#=:1 delete from dir$ where obj#=:1 delete from type_misc$ where obj#=:1 delete from library$ where obj#=:1 delete from procedure$ where obj#=:1 delete from javaobj$ where obj#=:1 delete from operator$ where obj#=:1 delete from opbinding$ where obj#=:1 delete from opancillary$ where obj#=:1 delete from oparg$ where obj# = :1 delete from com$ where obj#=:1 delete from source$ where obj#=:1 delete from idl_ub1$ where obj#=:1 and part=:2 delete from idl_char$ where obj#=:1 and part=:2 delete from idl_ub2$ where obj#=:1 and part=:2 delete from idl_sb4$ where obj#=:1 and part=:2 delete from ncomp_dll$ where obj#=:1 returning dllname into :2 delete from idl_ub1$ where obj#=:1 and part=:2 delete from idl_char$ where obj#=:1 and part=:2 delete from idl_ub2$ where obj#=:1 and part=:2 delete from idl_sb4$ where obj#=:1 and part=:2 delete from ncomp_dll$ where obj#=:1 returning dllname into :2 delete from idl_ub1$ where obj#=:1 and part=:2 delete from idl_char$ where obj#=:1 and part=:2 delete from idl_ub2$ where obj#=:1 and part=:2 delete from idl_sb4$ where obj#=:1 and part=:2 delete from ncomp_dll$ where obj#=:1 returning dllname into :2 delete from error$ where obj#=:1 delete from settings$ where obj# = :1 delete from procedureinfo$ where obj#=:1 delete from argument$ where obj#=:1 delete from procedurec$ where obj#=:1 delete from procedureplsql$ where obj#=:1 delete from procedurejava$ where obj#=:1 delete from vtable$ where obj#=:1 delete from dependency$ where d_obj#=:1 delete from access$ where d_obj#=:1 delete from objauth$ where obj#=:1 update obj$ set obj#=:6,type#=:7,ctime=:8,mtime=:9,stime=:10,status=:11,dataobj#=:13,flags=:14,oid$=:15,spare1=:16, spare2=:17 where owner#=:1 and name=:2 and namespace=:3 and(remoteowner=:4 or remoteowner is null and :4 is null)and(linkname=:5 or linkname is null and :5 is null)and(subname=:12 or subname is null and :12 is null) ??????????source$???redo: SQL> alter system switch logfile; System altered. SQL> select sequence#,name from v$archived_log where sequence#=(select max(sequence#) from v$archived_log);  SEQUENCE# ---------- NAME --------------------------------------------------------------------------------        242 /s01/flash_recovery_area/G10R25/archivelog/2012_05_21/o1_mf_1_242_7vnm13k6_.arc SQL> exec dbms_logmnr.add_logfile ('/s01/flash_recovery_area/G10R25/archivelog/2012_05_21/o1_mf_1_242_7vnm13k6_.arc',options => dbms_logmnr.new); PL/SQL procedure successfully completed. SQL> exec dbms_logmnr.start_logmnr(options => dbms_logmnr.dict_from_online_catalog); PL/SQL procedure successfully completed. SQL> select sql_redo,sql_undo from v$logmnr_contents where seg_name = 'SOURCE$' and operation='DELETE'; delete from "SYS"."SOURCE$" where "OBJ#" = '56059' and "LINE" = '1' and "SOURCE" = 'procedure maclean_proc as ' and ROWID = 'AAAABIAABAAALpyAAN'; insert into "SYS"."SOURCE$"("OBJ#","LINE","SOURCE") values ('56059','1','procedure maclean_proc as '); delete from "SYS"."SOURCE$" where "OBJ#" = '56059' and "LINE" = '2' and "SOURCE" = 'begin ' and ROWID = 'AAAABIAABAAALpyAAO'; insert into "SYS"."SOURCE$"("OBJ#","LINE","SOURCE") values ('56059','2','begin '); delete from "SYS"."SOURCE$" where "OBJ#" = '56059' and "LINE" = '3' and "SOURCE" = 'execute immediate ''select 1 from dual''; ' and ROWID = 'AAAABIAABAAALpyAAP'; insert into "SYS"."SOURCE$"("OBJ#","LINE","SOURCE") values ('56059','3','execute immediate ''select 1 from dual''; '); delete from "SYS"."SOURCE$" where "OBJ#" = '56059' and "LINE" = '4' and "SOURCE" = 'end;' and ROWID = 'AAAABIAABAAALpyAAQ'; insert into "SYS"."SOURCE$"("OBJ#","LINE","SOURCE") values ('56059','4','end;'); delete from "SYS"."SOURCE$" where "OBJ#" = '56059' and "LINE" = '1' and "SOURCE" = 'procedure maclean_proc as ' and ROWID = 'AAAABIAABAAALpyAAJ'; insert into "SYS"."SOURCE$"("OBJ#","LINE","SOURCE") values ('56059','1','procedure maclean_proc as '); delete from "SYS"."SOURCE$" where "OBJ#" = '56059' and "LINE" = '2' and "SOURCE" = 'begin ' and ROWID = 'AAAABIAABAAALpyAAK'; insert into "SYS"."SOURCE$"("OBJ#","LINE","SOURCE") values ('56059','2','begin '); delete from "SYS"."SOURCE$" where "OBJ#" = '56059' and "LINE" = '3' and "SOURCE" = 'execute immediate ''select 2 from dual''; ' and ROWID = 'AAAABIAABAAALpyAAL'; insert into "SYS"."SOURCE$"("OBJ#","LINE","SOURCE") values ('56059','3','execute immediate ''select 2 from dual''; '); delete from "SYS"."SOURCE$" where "OBJ#" = '56059' and "LINE" = '4' and "SOURCE" = 'end;' and ROWID = 'AAAABIAABAAALpyAAM'; insert into "SYS"."SOURCE$"("OBJ#","LINE","SOURCE") values ('56059','4','end;'); ???? logminer???UNDO SQL???????source$????,?DELETE????????????,????SOURCE????????????PL/SQL???DDL???

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  • iptables syn flood countermeasure

    - by Penegal
    I'm trying to adjust my iptables firewall to increase the security of my server, and I found something a bit problematic here : I have to set INPUT policy to ACCEPT and, in addition, to have a rule saying iptables -I INPUT -i eth0 -j ACCEPT. Here comes my script (launched manually for tests) : #!/bin/sh IPT=/sbin/iptables echo "Clearing firewall rules" $IPT -F $IPT -Z $IPT -t nat -F $IPT -t nat -Z $IPT -t mangle -F $IPT -t mangle -Z $IPT -X echo "Defining logging policy for dropped packets" $IPT -N LOGDROP $IPT -A LOGDROP -j LOG -m limit --limit 5/min --log-level debug --log-prefix "iptables rejected: " $IPT -A LOGDROP -j DROP echo "Setting firewall policy" $IPT -P INPUT DROP # Deny all incoming connections $IPT -P OUTPUT ACCEPT # Allow all outgoing connections $IPT -P FORWARD DROP # Deny all forwaring echo "Allowing connections from/to lo and incoming connections from eth0" $IPT -I INPUT -i lo -j ACCEPT $IPT -I OUTPUT -o lo -j ACCEPT #$IPT -I INPUT -i eth0 -j ACCEPT echo "Setting SYN flood countermeasures" $IPT -A INPUT -p tcp -i eth0 --syn -m limit --limit 100/second --limit-burst 200 -j LOGDROP echo "Allowing outgoing traffic corresponding to already initiated connections" $IPT -A OUTPUT -p ALL -m state --state ESTABLISHED,RELATED -j ACCEPT echo "Allowing incoming SSH" $IPT -A INPUT -p tcp --dport 22 -m state --state NEW -m recent --set --name SSH -j ACCEPT echo "Setting SSH bruteforce attacks countermeasures (deny more than 10 connections every 10 minutes)" $IPT -A INPUT -p tcp --dport 22 -m recent --update --seconds 600 --hitcount 10 --rttl --name SSH -j LOGDROP echo "Allowing incoming traffic for HTTP, SMTP, NTP, PgSQL and SolR" $IPT -A INPUT -p tcp --dport 25 -i eth0 -j ACCEPT $IPT -A INPUT -p tcp --dport 80 -i eth0 -j ACCEPT $IPT -A INPUT -p udp --dport 123 -i eth0 -j ACCEPT $IPT -A INPUT -p tcp --dport 5433 -i eth0.2654 -s 172.16.0.2 -j ACCEPT $IPT -A INPUT -p udp --dport 5433 -i eth0.2654 -s 172.16.0.2 -j ACCEPT $IPT -A INPUT -p tcp --dport 8983 -i eth0.2654 -s 172.16.0.2 -j ACCEPT $IPT -A INPUT -p udp --dport 8983 -i eth0.2654 -s 172.16.0.2 -j ACCEPT echo "Allowing outgoing traffic for ICMP, SSH, whois, SMTP, DNS, HTTP, PgSQL and SolR" $IPT -A OUTPUT -p tcp --dport 22 -j ACCEPT $IPT -A OUTPUT -p tcp --dport 25 -o eth0 -j ACCEPT $IPT -A OUTPUT -p tcp --dport 43 -o eth0 -j ACCEPT $IPT -A OUTPUT -p tcp --dport 53 -o eth0 -j ACCEPT $IPT -A OUTPUT -p udp --dport 53 -o eth0 -j ACCEPT $IPT -A OUTPUT -p tcp --dport 80 -o eth0 -j ACCEPT $IPT -A OUTPUT -p udp --dport 80 -o eth0 -j ACCEPT #$IPT -A OUTPUT -p tcp --dport 5433 -o eth0 -d 176.31.236.101 -j ACCEPT #$IPT -A OUTPUT -p udp --dport 5433 -o eth0 -d 176.31.236.101 -j ACCEPT #$IPT -A OUTPUT -p tcp --dport 8983 -o eth0 -d 176.31.236.101 -j ACCEPT #$IPT -A OUTPUT -p udp --dport 8983 -o eth0 -d 176.31.236.101 -j ACCEPT $IPT -A OUTPUT -p tcp --sport 5433 -o eth0.2654 -j ACCEPT $IPT -A OUTPUT -p udp --sport 5433 -o eth0.2654 -j ACCEPT $IPT -A OUTPUT -p tcp --sport 8983 -o eth0.2654 -j ACCEPT $IPT -A OUTPUT -p udp --sport 8983 -o eth0.2654 -j ACCEPT $IPT -A OUTPUT -p icmp -j ACCEPT echo "Allowing outgoing FTP backup" $IPT -A OUTPUT -p tcp --dport 20:21 -o eth0 -d 91.121.190.78 -j ACCEPT echo "Dropping and logging everything else" $IPT -A INPUT -s 0/0 -j LOGDROP $IPT -A OUTPUT -j LOGDROP $IPT -A FORWARD -j LOGDROP echo "Firewall loaded." echo "Maintaining new rules for 3 minutes for tests" sleep 180 $IPT -nvL echo "Clearing firewall rules" $IPT -F $IPT -Z $IPT -t nat -F $IPT -t nat -Z $IPT -t mangle -F $IPT -t mangle -Z $IPT -X $IPT -P INPUT ACCEPT $IPT -P OUTPUT ACCEPT $IPT -P FORWARD ACCEPT When I launch this script (I only have a SSH access), the shell displays every message up to Maintaining new rules for 3 minutes for tests, the server is unresponsive during the 3 minutes delay and then resume normal operations. The only solution I found until now was to set $IPT -P INPUT ACCEPT and $IPT -I INPUT -i eth0 -j ACCEPT, but this configuration does not protect me of any attack, which is a great shame for a firewall. I suspect that the error comes from my script and not from iptables, but I don't understand what's wrong with my script. Could some do-gooder explain me my error, please? EDIT: here comes the result of iptables -nvL with the "accept all input" ($IPT -P INPUT ACCEPT and $IPT -I INPUT -i eth0 -j ACCEPT) solution : Chain INPUT (policy ACCEPT 0 packets, 0 bytes) pkts bytes target prot opt in out source destination 1 52 ACCEPT all -- eth0 * 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 0 0 ACCEPT all -- lo * 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 0 0 LOGDROP tcp -- eth0 * 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 tcp flags:0x17/0x02 limit: avg 100/sec burst 200 0 0 ACCEPT tcp -- * * 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 tcp dpt:22 state NEW recent: SET name: SSH side: source 0 0 LOGDROP tcp -- * * 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 tcp dpt:22 recent: UPDATE seconds: 600 hit_count: 10 TTL-Match name: SSH side: source 0 0 ACCEPT tcp -- eth0 * 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 tcp dpt:25 0 0 ACCEPT tcp -- eth0 * 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 tcp dpt:80 0 0 ACCEPT udp -- eth0 * 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 udp dpt:123 0 0 ACCEPT tcp -- eth0.2654 * 172.16.0.2 0.0.0.0/0 tcp dpt:5433 0 0 ACCEPT udp -- eth0.2654 * 172.16.0.2 0.0.0.0/0 udp dpt:5433 0 0 ACCEPT tcp -- eth0.2654 * 172.16.0.2 0.0.0.0/0 tcp dpt:8983 0 0 ACCEPT udp -- eth0.2654 * 172.16.0.2 0.0.0.0/0 udp dpt:8983 0 0 LOGDROP all -- * * 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 Chain FORWARD (policy ACCEPT 0 packets, 0 bytes) pkts bytes target prot opt in out source destination 0 0 LOGDROP all -- * * 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 Chain OUTPUT (policy ACCEPT 0 packets, 0 bytes) pkts bytes target prot opt in out source destination 0 0 ACCEPT all -- * lo 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 2 728 ACCEPT all -- * * 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 state RELATED,ESTABLISHED 0 0 ACCEPT tcp -- * * 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 tcp dpt:22 0 0 ACCEPT tcp -- * eth0 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 tcp dpt:25 0 0 ACCEPT tcp -- * eth0 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 tcp dpt:43 0 0 ACCEPT tcp -- * eth0 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 tcp dpt:53 0 0 ACCEPT udp -- * eth0 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 udp dpt:53 0 0 ACCEPT tcp -- * eth0 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 tcp dpt:80 0 0 ACCEPT udp -- * eth0 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 udp dpt:80 0 0 ACCEPT tcp -- * eth0.2654 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 tcp spt:5433 0 0 ACCEPT udp -- * eth0.2654 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 udp spt:5433 0 0 ACCEPT tcp -- * eth0.2654 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 tcp spt:8983 0 0 ACCEPT udp -- * eth0.2654 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 udp spt:8983 0 0 ACCEPT icmp -- * * 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 0 0 ACCEPT tcp -- * eth0 0.0.0.0/0 91.121.190.78 tcp dpts:20:21 0 0 LOGDROP all -- * * 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 Chain LOGDROP (5 references) pkts bytes target prot opt in out source destination 0 0 LOG all -- * * 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 limit: avg 5/min burst 5 LOG flags 0 level 7 prefix `iptables rejected: ' 0 0 DROP all -- * * 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 EDIT #2 : I modified my script (policy ACCEPT, defining authorized incoming packets then logging and dropping everything else) to write iptables -nvL results to a file and to allow only 10 ICMP requests per second, logging and dropping everything else. The result proved unexpected : while the server was unavailable to SSH connections, even already established, I ping-flooded it from another server, and the ping rate was restricted to 10 requests per second. During this test, I also tried to open new SSH connections, which remained unanswered until the script flushed rules. Here comes the iptables stats written after these tests : Chain INPUT (policy ACCEPT 0 packets, 0 bytes) pkts bytes target prot opt in out source destination 600 35520 ACCEPT all -- lo * 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 6 360 LOGDROP tcp -- eth0 * 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 tcp flags:0x17/0x02 limit: avg 100/sec burst 200 0 0 LOGDROP tcp -- eth0 * 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 tcp dpt:80 STRING match "w00tw00t.at.ISC.SANS." ALGO name bm TO 65535 0 0 LOGDROP tcp -- * * 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 tcp dpt:80 STRING match "Host: anoticiapb.com.br" ALGO name bm TO 65535 0 0 LOGDROP tcp -- * * 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 tcp dpt:80 STRING match "Host: www.anoticiapb.com.br" ALGO name bm TO 65535 105 8820 ACCEPT icmp -- * * 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 limit: avg 10/sec burst 5 830 69720 LOGDROP icmp -- * * 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 0 0 ACCEPT tcp -- * * 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 tcp dpt:22 state NEW recent: SET name: SSH side: source 0 0 LOGDROP tcp -- * * 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 tcp dpt:22 recent: UPDATE seconds: 600 hit_count: 10 TTL-Match name: SSH side: source 0 0 ACCEPT tcp -- eth0 * 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 tcp dpt:25 0 0 ACCEPT tcp -- eth0 * 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 tcp dpt:80 0 0 ACCEPT udp -- eth0 * 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 udp dpt:80 0 0 ACCEPT udp -- eth0 * 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 udp dpt:123 0 0 ACCEPT tcp -- eth0 * 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 tcp dpt:443 0 0 ACCEPT tcp -- eth0.2654 * 172.16.0.1 0.0.0.0/0 tcp spt:5433 0 0 ACCEPT udp -- eth0.2654 * 172.16.0.1 0.0.0.0/0 udp spt:5433 0 0 ACCEPT tcp -- eth0.2654 * 172.16.0.1 0.0.0.0/0 tcp spt:8983 0 0 ACCEPT udp -- eth0.2654 * 172.16.0.1 0.0.0.0/0 udp spt:8983 16 1684 LOGDROP all -- * * 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 Chain FORWARD (policy ACCEPT 0 packets, 0 bytes) pkts bytes target prot opt in out source destination 0 0 LOGDROP all -- * * 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 Chain OUTPUT (policy ACCEPT 0 packets, 0 bytes) pkts bytes target prot opt in out source destination 600 35520 ACCEPT all -- * lo 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 0 0 LOGDROP tcp -- * eth0 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 tcp dpt:80 owner UID match 33 0 0 LOGDROP udp -- * eth0 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 udp dpt:80 owner UID match 33 116 11136 ACCEPT all -- * * 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 state RELATED,ESTABLISHED 0 0 ACCEPT tcp -- * * 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 tcp dpt:22 0 0 ACCEPT tcp -- * eth0 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 tcp dpt:25 0 0 ACCEPT tcp -- * eth0 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 tcp dpt:53 0 0 ACCEPT udp -- * eth0 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 udp dpt:53 0 0 ACCEPT tcp -- * eth0 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 tcp dpt:80 0 0 ACCEPT udp -- * eth0 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 udp dpt:80 0 0 ACCEPT tcp -- * eth0.2654 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 tcp dpt:5433 0 0 ACCEPT udp -- * eth0.2654 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 udp dpt:5433 0 0 ACCEPT tcp -- * eth0.2654 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 tcp dpt:8983 0 0 ACCEPT udp -- * eth0.2654 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 udp dpt:8983 0 0 ACCEPT icmp -- * * 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 0 0 ACCEPT tcp -- * eth0 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 tcp dpt:43 0 0 ACCEPT tcp -- * eth0 0.0.0.0/0 91.121.190.18 tcp dpts:20:21 7 1249 LOGDROP all -- * * 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 Chain LOGDROP (11 references) pkts bytes target prot opt in out source destination 35 3156 LOG all -- * * 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 limit: avg 1/sec burst 5 LOG flags 0 level 7 prefix `iptables rejected: ' 859 73013 DROP all -- * * 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 Here comes the log content added during this test : Mar 28 09:52:51 localhost kernel: iptables rejected: IN=eth0 OUT= MAC=00:25:90:54:d7:88:10:8c:cf:28:39:80:08:00 SRC=194.51.74.245 DST=176.31.238.3 LEN=52 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=51 ID=55666 DF PROTO=TCP SPT=57504 DPT=22 WINDOW=501 RES=0x00 ACK URGP=0 Mar 28 09:52:51 localhost kernel: iptables rejected: IN=eth0 OUT= MAC=00:25:90:54:d7:88:10:8c:cf:28:39:80:08:00 SRC=194.51.74.245 DST=176.31.238.3 LEN=52 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=51 ID=55667 DF PROTO=TCP SPT=57504 DPT=22 WINDOW=501 RES=0x00 ACK URGP=0 Mar 28 09:52:51 localhost kernel: iptables rejected: IN=eth0 OUT= MAC=00:25:90:54:d7:88:10:8c:cf:28:39:80:08:00 SRC=194.51.74.245 DST=176.31.238.3 LEN=64 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=51 ID=55668 DF PROTO=TCP SPT=57504 DPT=22 WINDOW=501 RES=0x00 ACK URGP=0 Mar 28 09:52:51 localhost kernel: iptables rejected: IN=eth0 OUT= MAC=00:25:90:54:d7:88:10:8c:cf:28:39:80:08:00 SRC=194.51.74.245 DST=176.31.238.3 LEN=64 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=51 ID=55669 DF PROTO=TCP SPT=57504 DPT=22 WINDOW=501 RES=0x00 ACK URGP=0 Mar 28 09:52:52 localhost kernel: iptables rejected: IN=eth0 OUT= MAC=00:25:90:54:d7:88:10:8c:cf:28:39:80:08:00 SRC=194.51.74.245 DST=176.31.238.3 LEN=64 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=51 ID=55670 DF PROTO=TCP SPT=57504 DPT=22 WINDOW=501 RES=0x00 ACK URGP=0 Mar 28 09:52:54 localhost kernel: iptables rejected: IN=eth0 OUT= MAC=00:25:90:54:d7:88:10:8c:cf:28:39:80:08:00 SRC=194.51.74.245 DST=176.31.238.3 LEN=64 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=51 ID=55671 DF PROTO=TCP SPT=57504 DPT=22 WINDOW=501 RES=0x00 ACK URGP=0 Mar 28 09:52:58 localhost kernel: iptables rejected: IN=eth0 OUT= MAC=00:25:90:54:d7:88:10:8c:cf:28:39:80:08:00 SRC=194.51.74.245 DST=176.31.238.3 LEN=64 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=51 ID=55672 DF PROTO=TCP SPT=57504 DPT=22 WINDOW=501 RES=0x00 ACK URGP=0 Mar 28 09:52:59 localhost kernel: iptables rejected: IN=eth0 OUT= MAC=00:25:90:54:d7:88:10:8c:cf:28:39:80:08:00 SRC=176.31.236.101 DST=176.31.238.3 LEN=84 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=63 ID=0 DF PROTO=ICMP TYPE=8 CODE=0 ID=7430 SEQ=6 Mar 28 09:52:59 localhost kernel: iptables rejected: IN=eth0 OUT= MAC=00:25:90:54:d7:88:10:8c:cf:28:39:80:08:00 SRC=176.31.236.101 DST=176.31.238.3 LEN=84 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=63 ID=0 DF PROTO=ICMP TYPE=8 CODE=0 ID=7430 SEQ=7 Mar 28 09:52:59 localhost kernel: iptables rejected: IN=eth0 OUT= MAC=00:25:90:54:d7:88:10:8c:cf:28:39:80:08:00 SRC=176.31.236.101 DST=176.31.238.3 LEN=84 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=63 ID=0 DF PROTO=ICMP TYPE=8 CODE=0 ID=7430 SEQ=8 Mar 28 09:52:59 localhost kernel: iptables rejected: IN=eth0 OUT= MAC=00:25:90:54:d7:88:10:8c:cf:28:39:80:08:00 SRC=176.31.236.101 DST=176.31.238.3 LEN=84 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=63 ID=0 DF PROTO=ICMP TYPE=8 CODE=0 ID=7430 SEQ=9 Mar 28 09:52:59 localhost kernel: iptables rejected: IN=eth0 OUT= MAC=00:25:90:54:d7:88:10:8c:cf:28:39:80:08:00 SRC=176.31.236.101 DST=176.31.238.3 LEN=84 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=63 ID=0 DF PROTO=ICMP TYPE=8 CODE=0 ID=7430 SEQ=59 Mar 28 09:53:00 localhost kernel: iptables rejected: IN=eth0 OUT= MAC=00:25:90:54:d7:88:10:8c:cf:28:39:80:08:00 SRC=176.31.236.101 DST=176.31.238.3 LEN=84 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=63 ID=0 DF PROTO=ICMP TYPE=8 CODE=0 ID=7430 SEQ=152 Mar 28 09:53:01 localhost kernel: iptables rejected: IN=eth0 OUT= MAC=00:25:90:54:d7:88:10:8c:cf:28:39:80:08:00 SRC=176.31.236.101 DST=176.31.238.3 LEN=84 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=63 ID=0 DF PROTO=ICMP TYPE=8 CODE=0 ID=7430 SEQ=246 Mar 28 09:53:02 localhost kernel: iptables rejected: IN=eth0 OUT= MAC=00:25:90:54:d7:88:10:8c:cf:28:39:80:08:00 SRC=176.31.236.101 DST=176.31.238.3 LEN=84 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=63 ID=0 DF PROTO=ICMP TYPE=8 CODE=0 ID=7430 SEQ=339 Mar 28 09:53:03 localhost kernel: iptables rejected: IN=eth0 OUT= MAC=00:25:90:54:d7:88:10:8c:cf:28:39:80:08:00 SRC=176.31.236.101 DST=176.31.238.3 LEN=84 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=63 ID=0 DF PROTO=ICMP TYPE=8 CODE=0 ID=7430 SEQ=432 Mar 28 09:53:04 localhost kernel: iptables rejected: IN=eth0 OUT= MAC=00:25:90:54:d7:88:10:8c:cf:28:39:80:08:00 SRC=176.31.236.101 DST=176.31.238.3 LEN=84 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=63 ID=0 DF PROTO=ICMP TYPE=8 CODE=0 ID=7430 SEQ=524 Mar 28 09:53:05 localhost kernel: iptables rejected: IN=eth0 OUT= MAC=00:25:90:54:d7:88:10:8c:cf:28:39:80:08:00 SRC=176.31.236.101 DST=176.31.238.3 LEN=84 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=63 ID=0 DF PROTO=ICMP TYPE=8 CODE=0 ID=7430 SEQ=617 Mar 28 09:53:06 localhost kernel: iptables rejected: IN=eth0 OUT= MAC=00:25:90:54:d7:88:10:8c:cf:28:39:80:08:00 SRC=176.31.236.101 DST=176.31.238.3 LEN=84 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=63 ID=0 DF PROTO=ICMP TYPE=8 CODE=0 ID=7430 SEQ=711 Mar 28 09:53:07 localhost kernel: iptables rejected: IN=eth0 OUT= MAC=00:25:90:54:d7:88:10:8c:cf:28:39:80:08:00 SRC=176.31.236.101 DST=176.31.238.3 LEN=84 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=63 ID=0 DF PROTO=ICMP TYPE=8 CODE=0 ID=7430 SEQ=804 Mar 28 09:53:08 localhost kernel: iptables rejected: IN=eth0 OUT= MAC=00:25:90:54:d7:88:10:8c:cf:28:39:80:08:00 SRC=176.31.236.101 DST=176.31.238.3 LEN=84 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=63 ID=0 DF PROTO=ICMP TYPE=8 CODE=0 ID=7430 SEQ=897 Mar 28 09:53:16 localhost kernel: iptables rejected: IN=eth0 OUT= MAC=00:25:90:54:d7:88:c0:62:6b:e3:5c:80:08:00 SRC=194.51.74.245 DST=176.31.238.3 LEN=60 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=51 ID=61402 DF PROTO=TCP SPT=57637 DPT=22 WINDOW=5840 RES=0x00 SYN URGP=0 Mar 28 09:53:19 localhost kernel: iptables rejected: IN=eth0 OUT= MAC=00:25:90:54:d7:88:c0:62:6b:e3:5c:80:08:00 SRC=194.51.74.245 DST=176.31.238.3 LEN=60 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=51 ID=61403 DF PROTO=TCP SPT=57637 DPT=22 WINDOW=5840 RES=0x00 SYN URGP=0 Mar 28 09:53:21 localhost kernel: iptables rejected: IN=eth0 OUT= MAC=00:25:90:54:d7:88:10:8c:cf:28:39:80:08:00 SRC=194.51.74.245 DST=176.31.238.3 LEN=64 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=51 ID=55674 DF PROTO=TCP SPT=57504 DPT=22 WINDOW=501 RES=0x00 ACK URGP=0 Mar 28 09:53:25 localhost kernel: iptables rejected: IN=eth0 OUT= MAC=00:25:90:54:d7:88:c0:62:6b:e3:5c:80:08:00 SRC=194.51.74.245 DST=176.31.238.3 LEN=60 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=51 ID=61404 DF PROTO=TCP SPT=57637 DPT=22 WINDOW=5840 RES=0x00 SYN URGP=0 Mar 28 09:53:37 localhost kernel: iptables rejected: IN=eth0 OUT= MAC=00:25:90:54:d7:88:10:8c:cf:28:39:80:08:00 SRC=194.51.74.245 DST=176.31.238.3 LEN=116 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=51 ID=55675 DF PROTO=TCP SPT=57504 DPT=22 WINDOW=501 RES=0x00 ACK PSH URGP=0 Mar 28 09:53:37 localhost kernel: iptables rejected: IN=eth0 OUT= MAC=00:25:90:54:d7:88:10:8c:cf:28:39:80:08:00 SRC=194.51.74.245 DST=176.31.238.3 LEN=116 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=51 ID=55676 DF PROTO=TCP SPT=57504 DPT=22 WINDOW=501 RES=0x00 ACK PSH URGP=0 Mar 28 09:53:37 localhost kernel: iptables rejected: IN=eth0 OUT= MAC=00:25:90:54:d7:88:10:8c:cf:28:39:80:08:00 SRC=194.51.74.245 DST=176.31.238.3 LEN=180 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=51 ID=55677 DF PROTO=TCP SPT=57504 DPT=22 WINDOW=501 RES=0x00 ACK PSH URGP=0 Mar 28 09:53:38 localhost kernel: iptables rejected: IN=eth0 OUT= MAC=00:25:90:54:d7:88:10:8c:cf:28:39:80:08:00 SRC=194.51.74.245 DST=176.31.238.3 LEN=180 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=51 ID=55678 DF PROTO=TCP SPT=57504 DPT=22 WINDOW=501 RES=0x00 ACK PSH URGP=0 Mar 28 09:53:39 localhost kernel: iptables rejected: IN=eth0 OUT= MAC=00:25:90:54:d7:88:10:8c:cf:28:39:80:08:00 SRC=194.51.74.245 DST=176.31.238.3 LEN=180 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=51 ID=55679 DF PROTO=TCP SPT=57504 DPT=22 WINDOW=501 RES=0x00 ACK PSH URGP=0 Mar 28 09:53:39 localhost kernel: iptables rejected: IN=eth0 OUT= MAC=00:25:90:54:d7:88:c0:62:6b:e3:5c:80:08:00 SRC=194.51.74.245 DST=176.31.238.3 LEN=60 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=51 ID=5055 DF PROTO=TCP SPT=57638 DPT=22 WINDOW=5840 RES=0x00 SYN URGP=0 Mar 28 09:53:41 localhost kernel: iptables rejected: IN=eth0 OUT= MAC=00:25:90:54:d7:88:10:8c:cf:28:39:80:08:00 SRC=194.51.74.245 DST=176.31.238.3 LEN=180 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=51 ID=55680 DF PROTO=TCP SPT=57504 DPT=22 WINDOW=501 RES=0x00 ACK PSH URGP=0 Mar 28 09:53:42 localhost kernel: iptables rejected: IN=eth0 OUT= MAC=00:25:90:54:d7:88:c0:62:6b:e3:5c:80:08:00 SRC=194.51.74.245 DST=176.31.238.3 LEN=60 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=51 ID=5056 DF PROTO=TCP SPT=57638 DPT=22 WINDOW=5840 RES=0x00 SYN URGP=0 Mar 28 09:53:45 localhost kernel: iptables rejected: IN=eth0 OUT= MAC=00:25:90:54:d7:88:10:8c:cf:28:39:80:08:00 SRC=194.51.74.245 DST=176.31.238.3 LEN=180 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=51 ID=55681 DF PROTO=TCP SPT=57504 DPT=22 WINDOW=501 RES=0x00 ACK PSH URGP=0 Mar 28 09:53:48 localhost kernel: iptables rejected: IN=eth0 OUT= MAC=00:25:90:54:d7:88:c0:62:6b:e3:5c:80:08:00 SRC=194.51.74.245 DST=176.31.238.3 LEN=60 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=51 ID=5057 DF PROTO=TCP SPT=57638 DPT=22 WINDOW=5840 RES=0x00 SYN URGP=0 If I correctly interpreted these results, they say that ICMP rules were correctly interpreted by iptables, but SSH rules were not. This does not make any sense... Does somebody understand where my error comes from? EDIT #3 : After some more tests, I found out that commenting the SYN flood countermeasure removes the problem. I continue researches in this way but, meanwhile, if somebody sees my anti SYN flood rule error...

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  • Parallelism in .NET – Part 12, More on Task Decomposition

    - by Reed
    Many tasks can be decomposed using a Data Decomposition approach, but often, this is not appropriate.  Frequently, decomposing the problem into distinctive tasks that must be performed is a more natural abstraction. However, as I mentioned in Part 1, Task Decomposition tends to be a bit more difficult than data decomposition, and can require a bit more effort.  Before we being parallelizing our algorithm based on the tasks being performed, we need to decompose our problem, and take special care of certain considerations such as ordering and grouping of tasks. Up to this point in this series, I’ve focused on parallelization techniques which are most appropriate when a problem space can be decomposed by data.  Using PLINQ and the Parallel class, I’ve shown how problem spaces where there is a collection of data, and each element needs to be processed, can potentially be parallelized. However, there are many other routines where this is not appropriate.  Often, instead of working on a collection of data, there is a single piece of data which must be processed using an algorithm or series of algorithms.  Here, there is no collection of data, but there may still be opportunities for parallelism. As I mentioned before, in cases like this, the approach is to look at your overall routine, and decompose your problem space based on tasks.  The idea here is to look for discrete “tasks,” individual pieces of work which can be conceptually thought of as a single operation. Let’s revisit the example I used in Part 1, an application startup path.  Say we want our program, at startup, to do a bunch of individual actions, or “tasks”.  The following is our list of duties we must perform right at startup: Display a splash screen Request a license from our license manager Check for an update to the software from our web server If an update is available, download it Setup our menu structure based on our current license Open and display our main, welcome Window Hide the splash screen The first step in Task Decomposition is breaking up the problem space into discrete tasks. This, naturally, can be abstracted as seven discrete tasks.  In the serial version of our program, if we were to diagram this, the general process would appear as: These tasks, obviously, provide some opportunities for parallelism.  Before we can parallelize this routine, we need to analyze these tasks, and find any dependencies between tasks.  In this case, our dependencies include: The splash screen must be displayed first, and as quickly as possible. We can’t download an update before we see whether one exists. Our menu structure depends on our license, so we must check for the license before setting up the menus. Since our welcome screen will notify the user of an update, we can’t show it until we’ve downloaded the update. Since our welcome screen includes menus that are customized based off the licensing, we can’t display it until we’ve received a license. We can’t hide the splash until our welcome screen is displayed. By listing our dependencies, we start to see the natural ordering that must occur for the tasks to be processed correctly. The second step in Task Decomposition is determining the dependencies between tasks, and ordering tasks based on their dependencies. Looking at these tasks, and looking at all the dependencies, we quickly see that even a simple decomposition such as this one can get quite complicated.  In order to simplify the problem of defining the dependencies, it’s often a useful practice to group our tasks into larger, discrete tasks.  The goal when grouping tasks is that you want to make each task “group” have as few dependencies as possible to other tasks or groups, and then work out the dependencies within that group.  Typically, this works best when any external dependency is based on the “last” task within the group when it’s ordered, although that is not a firm requirement.  This process is often called Grouping Tasks.  In our case, we can easily group together tasks, effectively turning this into four discrete task groups: 1. Show our splash screen – This needs to be left as its own task.  First, multiple things depend on this task, mainly because we want this to start before any other action, and start as quickly as possible. 2. Check for Update and Download the Update if it Exists - These two tasks logically group together.  We know we only download an update if the update exists, so that naturally follows.  This task has one dependency as an input, and other tasks only rely on the final task within this group. 3. Request a License, and then Setup the Menus – Here, we can group these two tasks together.  Although we mentioned that our welcome screen depends on the license returned, it also depends on setting up the menu, which is the final task here.  Setting up our menus cannot happen until after our license is requested.  By grouping these together, we further reduce our problem space. 4. Display welcome and hide splash - Finally, we can display our welcome window and hide our splash screen.  This task group depends on all three previous task groups – it cannot happen until all three of the previous groups have completed. By grouping the tasks together, we reduce our problem space, and can naturally see a pattern for how this process can be parallelized.  The diagram below shows one approach: The orange boxes show each task group, with each task represented within.  We can, now, effectively take these tasks, and run a large portion of this process in parallel, including the portions which may be the most time consuming.  We’ve now created two parallel paths which our process execution can follow, hopefully speeding up the application startup time dramatically. The main point to remember here is that, when decomposing your problem space by tasks, you need to: Define each discrete action as an individual Task Discover dependencies between your tasks Group tasks based on their dependencies Order the tasks and groups of tasks

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  • UCM 11g is 4 days old!

    - by kyle.hatlestad
    Ok...so I missed posting a blog entry when UCM 11g and the entire ECM suite released on Tuesday. Hopefully you've already seen the announcements on any number of the Oracle ECM blogs out there such as ECM Alerts, Fusion ECM, bex huff, or C4. So I won't bore you with the same talking points like 179 million check-ins per day or 124 web site page hits per second. Instead, I thought I'd show some screenshots of the new features in UCM and URM 11g. WebLogic Server and Enterprise Manager So probably the biggest change in 11g is UCM and URM now run on top of the WebLogic Server application server. This is a huge step as ECM is now on a standard platform with the rest of Oracle Fusion Middleware which makes installation, configuration, and integration consistent among all the products. From a feature perspective, it's also beneficial because it's now integrated with Oracle Enterprise Manager. Enterprise Manager provides a lot of provisioning control over servers as well as performance monitoring and access to logs and debugging information. Desktop Integration Suite Desktop Integration Suite got a complete overhaul for 11g. It exposes a lot more features within Windows Explorer such as saved searches, workflow queue, and checked-out items. It also now support metadata pop-up screens to let users fill in additional metadata when they drag-n-drop files in! And the integration within Office applications has changed significantly by introducing a dedicated UCM menu to do open, save, compare, etc. Site Studio for External Applications In UCM Site Studio 10gR4, a major architectural shift was introduced which brought several new objects such as elements, region definitions, region templates, and placeholder definitions. This truly separated the content from the display and from the definition. It also allowed separation of the content from needing to be rendered on a complete Site Studio page. Well, the new Site Studio for External Applications takes advantage of that architecture and introduces pre-built tags and plug-ins to JDeveloper to allow to go from simply adding a content area to your web application page to building an entire web site, just like you would have done in Site Studio Designer. In addition to these changes, enhancements to the core Site Studio have been added as well. One of the big ones is called Designer Mode which allows power-users to bypass the standard rules defined by the placeholder definition or template and perform any number of additional actions. This reduces the need to go back to Site Studio Designer or JDeveloper to make more advanced changes to the site. Dashboards As part of the updated records management functionality in both UCM and URM, users can now set a dashboard view on their home page to surface common functions in a single view. It has pre-built "portlets" users can choose from to display and organize they way they want. Behind the scenes, these dashboards are stored as Content Folios. So the dashboards themselves are content items that can be revisioned and shared between users. And new dashboard portlets can be easily added (like the User Profile one in the screenshots) by getting a copy of an existing one, modifying the display, and then checking it in as a new one to select from. URM Interface Enhancements URM includes several new UI and usability enhancements in 11g. There is a new view for physical records, a place to configure "favorite" items to quickly get to, and new placement of the records management menu. BI Publisher Reports Records management in UCM and URM now offer reports generated through embedded BI Publisher. Templates are controlled by rich text files checked directly into the repository, so they can be easily modified. Other Features A new Inbound Refinery conversion option is available that does native Microsoft Office HTML conversion. If your IBR is on Windows and you have the native applications loaded, the IBR can use them to produce HTML. A new GUI template editor for Dynamic Converter is available. It's written in Java so is available through all the supported browsers and platforms. The original ActiveX based editor is also still available. The Component Manager interface has changed to help provide an easier and more descriptive way to enable core components that are installed along with UCM. All of the supported components are immediately available to turn on and do not have to be installed separately as in previous versions. My Downloads is located in the My Content Server menu and provides for easy download of client installs including Desktop Integration Suite and Site Studio Designer. Well, hopefully that gives you a taste for some of the new things in 11g. We're all pretty excited here at Oracle about all the new changes and enhancements. Over the next few months I hope to highlight some of these features more in-depth, so keep your eye out for those posts.

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  • Add Background Images and Themes to Windows 7 Media Center

    - by DigitalGeekery
    Are you tired of the same Windows Media Center look and feel? Today we’ll show you how change the background and apply themes to WMC. Changing the Basic Color Scheme in WMC There are a couple of very basic color scheme options built in to Windows 7 Media Center. From the WMC Start Menu, select Settings on the Tasks strip and then select General. On the General settings screen select Visual and Sound Effects.   Under Color scheme you’ll find options for Windows Media Center standard, High contrast white, and High contrast black. Simply select a color scheme and click Save before exiting.   If you have used Media Center before you are familiar with the standard blue default theme. There is also the high contrast white. And, the high contrast black. Changing the Background Image with Media Center Studio Themes and custom backgrounds need to be added with the third-party software, Media Center Studio. You can find the download link at the end of this article. You can use your own high resolution photo, or download one from the Internet. For best results, you’ll want to find an image that meets or exceeds the resolution of your monitor. Also, using a darker colored background image is ideal as it should contrast better with the lighter colored text of the start menu. Once you’ve downloaded and installed Media Center Studio (link below), open the application select the Home tab on the ribbon and make sure you are on the Themes tab below. Click New. Select Biography from the left pane and type in a name for your new theme.   Next, click on the triangle next to Images to expand the list below. You’ll want to browse to Images > Common > Background. You should see a list of PNG image files located below Background. We will want to swap out the COMMON.ANIMATED.BACKGROUND.PNG and the COMMON.BACKGROUND.PNG images. Select COMMON.ANIMATED.BACKGROUND.PNG and click on the Browse button on the right.   Browse for your photo and click Open. Your selected image will appear on the left pane. Now, do the same for the COMMON.BACKGROUND.PNG. When finished, select the Home tab on the ribbon at the top and click Save.   Now switch to the Themes tab on the ribbon and the Themes tab below. (There are two Themes tabs which can be a bit confusing). Select your theme on the right pane and click Apply. Note: You won’t see the image backgrounds displayed. Your theme will be applied to Media Center. Close out of Media Center Studio and open Windows Media Center to check out your new background.   You can load multiple backgrounds images and switch them periodically as your mood changes. You might like to find a nice background featuring your favorite movie or TV show.   Perhaps you can even find a background of your favorite sports team.   Installing Themes with Media Center Studio Theme7MC has made available a small group of Media Center Studio Theme packs that are simple to download and install. You can find the download link below. Note: Before installing a theme, turn off any extenders and close Windows Media Center. Download any (or all) of the Theme7MC theme packages to your Media Center PC. Open Media Center Studio, select the Themes tab (the one at the top) and click Import Theme.   Browse for the theme you wish to import and click Open. Select your theme from the themes pane and click Apply. Media Center Studio will proceed to apply your theme. You should then see your new theme appear under Current theme on the left theme pane. Close out of Media Center Studio. Open Media Center and enjoy your new theme. Conclusion Media Center Studio runs on Windows 7 or Vista and gives users a solution for personalizing their Media Center backgrounds. It is a Beta application, however, so it still has a few bugs. Currently, there are only a handful of themes available at Themes7MC, but what they have is pretty slick. If you’d like to further customize the look of Media Center, check out our previous article on how to customize the Media Center start menu with Media Center Studio. Downloads Media Center Studio Theme7MC Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Using Netflix Watchnow in Windows Vista Media Center (Gmedia)How To Rip a Music CD in Windows 7 Media CenterAutomatically Mount and View ISO files in Windows 7 Media CenterSchedule Updates for Windows Media CenterIntegrate Hulu Desktop and Windows Media Center in Windows 7 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 CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server Snagit 10 VMware Workstation 7 Acronis Online Backup AceStock, a Tiny Desktop Quote Monitor Gmail Button Addon (Firefox) Hyperwords addon (Firefox) Backup Outlook 2010 Daily Motivator (Firefox) FetchMp3 Can Download Videos & Convert Them to Mp3

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  • Diagnose PC Hardware Problems with an Ubuntu Live CD

    - by Trevor Bekolay
    So your PC randomly shuts down or gives you the blue screen of death, but you can’t figure out what’s wrong. The problem could be bad memory or hardware related, and thankfully the Ubuntu Live CD has some tools to help you figure it out. Test your RAM with memtest86+ RAM problems are difficult to diagnose—they can range from annoying program crashes, or crippling reboot loops. Even if you’re not having problems, when you install new RAM it’s a good idea to thoroughly test it. The Ubuntu Live CD includes a tool called Memtest86+ that will do just that—test your computer’s RAM! Unlike many of the Live CD tools that we’ve looked at so far, Memtest86+ has to be run outside of a graphical Ubuntu session. Fortunately, it only takes a few keystrokes. Note: If you used UNetbootin to create an Ubuntu flash drive, then memtest86+ will not be available. We recommend using the Universal USB Installer from Pendrivelinux instead (persistence is possible with Universal USB Installer, but not mandatory). Boot up your computer with a Ubuntu Live CD or USB drive. You will be greeted with this screen: Use the down arrow key to select the Test memory option and hit Enter. Memtest86+ will immediately start testing your RAM. If you suspect that a certain part of memory is the problem, you can select certain portions of memory by pressing “c” and changing that option. You can also select specific tests to run. However, the default settings of Memtest86+ will exhaustively test your memory, so we recommend leaving the settings alone. Memtest86+ will run a variety of tests that can take some time to complete, so start it running before you go to bed to give it adequate time. Test your CPU with cpuburn Random shutdowns – especially when doing computationally intensive tasks – can be a sign of a faulty CPU, power supply, or cooling system. A utility called cpuburn can help you determine if one of these pieces of hardware is the problem. Note: cpuburn is designed to stress test your computer – it will run it fast and cause the CPU to heat up, which may exacerbate small problems that otherwise would be minor. It is a powerful diagnostic tool, but should be used with caution. Boot up your computer with a Ubuntu Live CD or USB drive, and choose to run Ubuntu from the CD or USB drive. When the desktop environment loads up, open the Synaptic Package Manager by clicking on the System menu in the top-left of the screen, then selecting Administration, and then Synaptic Package Manager. Cpuburn is in the universe repository. To enable the universe repository, click on Settings in the menu at the top, and then Repositories. Add a checkmark in the box labeled “Community-maintained Open Source software (universe)”. Click close. In the main Synaptic window, click the Reload button. After the package list has reloaded and the search index has been rebuilt, enter “cpuburn” in the Quick search text box. Click the checkbox in the left column, and select Mark for Installation. Click the Apply button near the top of the window. As cpuburn installs, it will caution you about the possible dangers of its use. Assuming you wish to take the risk (and if your computer is randomly restarting constantly, it’s probably worth it), open a terminal window by clicking on the Applications menu in the top-left of the screen and then selection Applications > Terminal. Cpuburn includes a number of tools to test different types of CPUs. If your CPU is more than six years old, see the full list; for modern AMD CPUs, use the terminal command burnK7 and for modern Intel processors, use the terminal command burnP6 Our processor is an Intel, so we ran burnP6. Once it started up, it immediately pushed the CPU up to 99.7% total usage, according to the Linux utility “top”. If your computer is having a CPU, power supply, or cooling problem, then your computer is likely to shutdown within ten or fifteen minutes. Because of the strain this program puts on your computer, we don’t recommend leaving it running overnight – if there’s a problem, it should crop up relatively quickly. Cpuburn’s tools, including burnP6, have no interface; once they start running, they will start driving your CPU until you stop them. To stop a program like burnP6, press Ctrl+C in the terminal window that is running the program. Conclusion The Ubuntu Live CD provides two great testing tools to diagnose a tricky computer problem, or to stress test a new computer. While they are advanced tools that should be used with caution, they’re extremely useful and easy enough that anyone can use them. Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Reset Your Ubuntu Password Easily from the Live CDCreate a Persistent Bootable Ubuntu USB Flash DriveAdding extra Repositories on UbuntuHow to Share folders with your Ubuntu Virtual Machine (guest)Building a New Computer – Part 3: Setting it Up 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 Have Fun Editing Photo Editing with Citrify Outlook Connector Upgrade Error Gadfly is a cool Twitter/Silverlight app Enable DreamScene in Windows 7 Microsoft’s “How Do I ?” Videos Home Networks – How do they look like & the problems they cause

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  • 8 Things You Can Do In Android’s Developer Options

    - by Chris Hoffman
    The Developer Options menu in Android is a hidden menu with a variety of advanced options. These options are intended for developers, but many of them will be interesting to geeks. You’ll have to perform a secret handshake to enable the Developer Options menu in the Settings screen, as it’s hidden from Android users by default. Follow the simple steps to quickly enable Developer Options. Enable USB Debugging “USB debugging” sounds like an option only an Android developer would need, but it’s probably the most widely used hidden option in Android. USB debugging allows applications on your computer to interface with your Android phone over the USB connection. This is required for a variety of advanced tricks, including rooting an Android phone, unlocking it, installing a custom ROM, or even using a desktop program that captures screenshots of your Android device’s screen. You can also use ADB commands to push and pull files between your device and your computer or create and restore complete local backups of your Android device without rooting. USB debugging can be a security concern, as it gives computers you plug your device into access to your phone. You could plug your device into a malicious USB charging port, which would try to compromise you. That’s why Android forces you to agree to a prompt every time you plug your device into a new computer with USB debugging enabled. Set a Desktop Backup Password If you use the above ADB trick to create local backups of your Android device over USB, you can protect them with a password with the Set a desktop backup password option here. This password encrypts your backups to secure them, so you won’t be able to access them if you forget the password. Disable or Speed Up Animations When you move between apps and screens in Android, you’re spending some of that time looking at animations and waiting for them to go away. You can disable these animations entirely by changing the Window animation scale, Transition animation scale, and Animator duration scale options here. If you like animations but just wish they were faster, you can speed them up. On a fast phone or tablet, this can make switching between apps nearly instant. If you thought your Android phone was speedy before, just try disabling animations and you’ll be surprised how much faster it can seem. Force-Enable FXAA For OpenGL Games If you have a high-end phone or tablet with great graphics performance and you play 3D games on it, there’s a way to make those games look even better. Just go to the Developer Options screen and enable the Force 4x MSAA option. This will force Android to use 4x multisample anti-aliasing in OpenGL ES 2.0 games and other apps. This requires more graphics power and will probably drain your battery a bit faster, but it will improve image quality in some games. This is a bit like force-enabling antialiasing using the NVIDIA Control Panel on a Windows gaming PC. See How Bad Task Killers Are We’ve written before about how task killers are worse than useless on Android. If you use a task killer, you’re just slowing down your system by throwing out cached data and forcing Android to load apps from system storage whenever you open them again. Don’t believe us? Enable the Don’t keep activities option on the Developer options screen and Android will force-close every app you use as soon as you exit it. Enable this app and use your phone normally for a few minutes — you’ll see just how harmful throwing out all that cached data is and how much it will slow down your phone. Don’t actually use this option unless you want to see how bad it is! It will make your phone perform much more slowly — there’s a reason Google has hidden these options away from average users who might accidentally change them. Fake Your GPS Location The Allow mock locations option allows you to set fake GPS locations, tricking Android into thinking you’re at a location where you actually aren’t. Use this option along with an app like Fake GPS location and you can trick your Android device and the apps running on it into thinking you’re at locations where you actually aren’t. How would this be useful? Well, you could fake a GPS check-in at a location without actually going there or confuse your friends in a location-tracking app by seemingly teleporting around the world. Stay Awake While Charging You can use Android’s Daydream Mode to display certain apps while charging your device. If you want to force Android to display a standard Android app that hasn’t been designed for Daydream Mode, you can enable the Stay awake option here. Android will keep your device’s screen on while charging and won’t turn it off. It’s like Daydream Mode, but can support any app and allows users to interact with them. Show Always-On-Top CPU Usage You can view CPU usage data by toggling the Show CPU usage option to On. This information will appear on top of whatever app you’re using. If you’re a Linux user, the three numbers on top probably look familiar — they represent the system load average. From left to right, the numbers represent your system load over the last one, five, and fifteen minutes. This isn’t the kind of thing you’d want enabled most of the time, but it can save you from having to install third-party floating CPU apps if you want to see CPU usage information for some reason. Most of the other options here will only be useful to developers debugging their Android apps. You shouldn’t start changing options you don’t understand. If you want to undo any of these changes, you can quickly erase all your custom options by sliding the switch at the top of the screen to Off.     

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  • Windows Azure: General Availability of Web Sites + Mobile Services, New AutoScale + Alerts Support, No Credit Card Needed for MSDN

    - by ScottGu
    This morning we released a major set of updates to Windows Azure.  These updates included: Web Sites: General Availability Release of Windows Azure Web Sites with SLA Mobile Services: General Availability Release of Windows Azure Mobile Services with SLA Auto-Scale: New automatic scaling support for Web Sites, Cloud Services and Virtual Machines Alerts/Notifications: New email alerting support for all Compute Services (Web Sites, Mobile Services, Cloud Services, and Virtual Machines) MSDN: No more credit card requirement for sign-up All of these improvements are now available to use immediately (note: some are still in preview).  Below are more details about them. Web Sites: General Availability Release of Windows Azure Web Sites I’m incredibly excited to announce the General Availability release of Windows Azure Web Sites. The Windows Azure Web Sites service is perfect for hosting a web presence, building customer engagement solutions, and delivering business web apps.  Today’s General Availability release means we are taking off the “preview” tag from the Free and Standard (formerly called reserved) tiers of Windows Azure Web Sites.  This means we are providing: A 99.9% monthly SLA (Service Level Agreement) for the Standard tier Microsoft Support available on a 24x7 basis (with plans that range from developer plans to enterprise Premier support) The Free tier runs in a shared compute environment and supports up to 10 web sites. While the Free tier does not come with an SLA, it works great for rapid development and testing and enables you to quickly spike out ideas at no cost. The Standard tier, which was called “Reserved” during the preview, runs using dedicated per-customer VM instances for great performance, isolation and scalability, and enables you to host up to 500 different Web sites within them.  You can easily scale your Standard instances on-demand using the Windows Azure Management Portal.  You can adjust VM instance sizes from a Small instance size (1 core, 1.75GB of RAM), up to a Medium instance size (2 core, 3.5GB of RAM), or Large instance (4 cores and 7 GB RAM).  You can choose to run between 1 and 10 Standard instances, enabling you to easily scale up your web backend to 40 cores of CPU and 70GB of RAM: Today’s release also includes general availability support for custom domain SSL certificate bindings for web sites running using the Standard tier. Customers will be able to utilize certificates they purchase for their custom domains and use either SNI or IP based SSL encryption. SNI encryption is available for all modern browsers and does not require an IP address.  SSL certificates can be used for individual sites or wild-card mapped across multiple sites (we charge extra for the use of a SSL cert – but the fee is per-cert and not per site which means you pay once for it regardless of how many sites you use it with).  Today’s release also includes the following new features: Auto-Scale support Today’s Windows Azure release adds preview support for Auto-Scaling web sites.  This enables you to setup automatic scale rules based on the activity of your instances – allowing you to automatically scale down (and save money) when they are below a CPU threshold you define, and automatically scale up quickly when traffic increases.  See below for more details. 64-bit and 32-bit mode support You can now choose to run your standard tier instances in either 32-bit or 64-bit mode (previously they only ran in 32-bit mode).  This enables you to address even more memory within individual web applications. Memory dumps Memory dumps can be very useful for diagnosing issues and debugging apps. Using a REST API, you can now get a memory dump of your sites, which you can then use for investigating issues in Visual Studio Debugger, WinDbg, and other tools. Scaling Sites Independently Prior to today’s release, all sites scaled up/down together whenever you scaled any site in a sub-region. So you may have had to keep your proof-of-concept or testing sites in a separate sub-region if you wanted to keep them in the Free tier. This will no longer be necessary.  Windows Azure Web Sites can now mix different tier levels in the same geographic sub-region. This allows you, for example, to selectively move some of your sites in the West US sub-region up to Standard tier when they require the features, scalability, and SLA of the Standard tier. Full pricing details on Windows Azure Web Sites can be found here.  Note that the “Shared Tier” of Windows Azure Web Sites remains in preview mode (and continues to have discounted preview pricing).  Mobile Services: General Availability Release of Windows Azure Mobile Services I’m incredibly excited to announce the General Availability release of Windows Azure Mobile Services.  Mobile Services is perfect for building scalable cloud back-ends for Windows 8.x, Windows Phone, Apple iOS, Android, and HTML/JavaScript applications.  Customers We’ve seen tremendous adoption of Windows Azure Mobile Services since we first previewed it last September, and more than 20,000 customers are now running mobile back-ends in production using it.  These customers range from startups like Yatterbox, to university students using Mobile Services to complete apps like Sly Fox in their spare time, to media giants like Verdens Gang finding new ways to deliver content, and telcos like TalkTalk Business delivering the up-to-the-minute information their customers require.  In today’s Build keynote, we demonstrated how TalkTalk Business is using Windows Azure Mobile Services to deliver service, outage and billing information to its customers, wherever they might be. Partners When we unveiled the source control and Custom API features I blogged about two weeks ago, we enabled a range of new scenarios, one of which is a more flexible way to work with third party services.  The following blogs, samples and tutorials from our partners cover great ways you can extend Mobile Services to help you build rich modern apps: New Relic allows developers to monitor and manage the end-to-end performance of iOS and Android applications connected to Mobile Services. SendGrid eliminates the complexity of sending email from Mobile Services, saving time and money, while providing reliable delivery to the inbox. Twilio provides a telephony infrastructure web service in the cloud that you can use with Mobile Services to integrate phone calls, text messages and IP voice communications into your mobile apps. Xamarin provides a Mobile Services add on to make it easy building cross-platform connected mobile aps. Pusher allows quickly and securely add scalable real-time messaging functionality to Mobile Services-based web and mobile apps. Visual Studio 2013 and Windows 8.1 This week during //build/ keynote, we demonstrated how Visual Studio 2013, Mobile Services and Windows 8.1 make building connected apps easier than ever. Developers building Windows 8 applications in Visual Studio can now connect them to Windows Azure Mobile Services by simply right clicking then choosing Add Connected Service. You can either create a new Mobile Service or choose existing Mobile Service in the Add Connected Service dialog. Once completed, Visual Studio adds a reference to Mobile Services SDK to your project and generates a Mobile Services client initialization snippet automatically. Add Push Notifications Push Notifications and Live Tiles are a key to building engaging experiences. Visual Studio 2013 and Mobile Services make it super easy to add push notifications to your Windows 8.1 app, by clicking Add a Push Notification item: The Add Push Notification wizard will then guide you through the registration with the Windows Store as well as connecting your app to a new or existing mobile service. Upon completion of the wizard, Visual Studio will configure your mobile service with the WNS credentials, as well as add sample logic to your client project and your mobile service that demonstrates how to send push notifications to your app. Server Explorer Integration In Visual Studio 2013 you can also now view your Mobile Services in the the Server Explorer. You can add tables, edit, and save server side scripts without ever leaving Visual Studio, as shown on the image below: Pricing With today’s general availability release we are announcing that we will be offering Mobile Services in three tiers – Free, Standard, and Premium.  Each tier is metered using a simple pricing model based on the # of API calls (bandwidth is included at no extra charge), and the Standard and Premium tiers are backed by 99.9% monthly SLAs.  You can elastically scale up or down the number of instances you have of each tier to increase the # of API requests your service can support – allowing you to efficiently scale as your business grows. The following table summarizes the new pricing model (full pricing details here):   You can find the full details of the new pricing model here. Build Conference Talks The //BUILD/ conference will be packed with sessions covering every aspect of developing connected applications with Mobile Services. The best part is that, even if you can’t be with us in San Francisco, every session is being streamed live. Be sure not to miss these talks: Mobile Services – Soup to Nuts — Josh Twist Building Cross-Platform Apps with Windows Azure Mobile Services — Chris Risner Connected Windows Phone Apps made Easy with Mobile Services — Yavor Georgiev Build Connected Windows 8.1 Apps with Mobile Services — Nick Harris Who’s that user? Identity in Mobile Apps — Dinesh Kulkarni Building REST Services with JavaScript — Nathan Totten Going Live and Beyond with Windows Azure Mobile Services — Kirill Gavrylyuk , Paul Batum Protips for Windows Azure Mobile Services — Chris Risner AutoScale: Dynamically scale up/down your app based on real-world usage One of the key benefits of Windows Azure is that you can dynamically scale your application in response to changing demand. In the past, though, you have had to either manually change the scale of your application, or use additional tooling (such as WASABi or MetricsHub) to automatically scale your application. Today, we’re announcing that AutoScale will be built-into Windows Azure directly.  With today’s release it is now enabled for Cloud Services, Virtual Machines and Web Sites (Mobile Services support will come soon). Auto-scale enables you to configure Windows Azure to automatically scale your application dynamically on your behalf (without any manual intervention) so you can achieve the ideal performance and cost balance. Once configured it will regularly adjust the number of instances running in response to the load in your application. Currently, we support two different load metrics: CPU percentage Storage queue depth (Cloud Services and Virtual Machines only) We’ll enable automatic scaling on even more scale metrics in future updates. When to use Auto-Scale The following are good criteria for services/apps that will benefit from the use of auto-scale: The service/app can scale horizontally (e.g. it can be duplicated to multiple instances) The service/app load changes over time If your app meets these criteria, then you should look to leverage auto-scale. How to Enable Auto-Scale To enable auto-scale, simply navigate to the Scale tab in the Windows Azure Management Portal for the app/service you wish to enable.  Within the scale tab turn the Auto-Scale setting on to either CPU or Queue (for Cloud Services and VMs) to enable Auto-Scale.  Then change the instance count and target CPU settings to configure the Auto-Scale ranges you want to maintain. The image below demonstrates how to enable Auto-Scale on a Windows Azure Web-Site.  I’ve configured the web-site so that it will run using between 1 and 5 VM instances.  The exact # used will depend on the aggregate CPU of the VMs using the 40-70% range I’ve configured below.  If the aggregate CPU goes above 70%, then Windows Azure will automatically add new VMs to the pool (up to the maximum of 5 instances I’ve configured it to use).  If the aggregate CPU drops below 40% then Windows Azure will automatically start shutting down VMs to save me money: Once you’ve turned auto-scale on, you can return to the Scale tab at any point and select Off to manually set the number of instances. Using the Auto-Scale Preview With today’s update you can now, in just a few minutes, have Windows Azure automatically adjust the number of instances you have running  in your apps to keep your service performant at an even better cost. Auto-scale is being released today as a preview feature, and will be free until General Availability. During preview, each subscription is limited to 10 separate auto-scale rules across all of the resources they have (Web sites, Cloud services or Virtual Machines). If you hit the 10 limit, you can disable auto-scale for any resource to enable it for another. Alerts and Notifications Starting today we are now providing the ability to configure threshold based alerts on monitoring metrics. This feature is available for compute services (cloud services, VM, websites and mobiles services). Alerts provide you the ability to get proactively notified of active or impending issues within your application.  You can define alert rules for: Virtual machine monitoring metrics that are collected from the host operating system (CPU percentage, network in/out, disk read bytes/sec and disk write bytes/sec) and on monitoring metrics from monitoring web endpoint urls (response time and uptime) that you have configured. Cloud service monitoring metrics that are collected from the host operating system (same as VM), monitoring metrics from the guest VM (from performance counters within the VM) and on monitoring metrics from monitoring web endpoint urls (response time and uptime) that you have configured. For Web Sites and Mobile Services, alerting rules can be configured on monitoring metrics from monitoring endpoint urls (response time and uptime) that you have configured. Creating Alert Rules You can add an alert rule for a monitoring metric by navigating to the Setting -> Alerts tab in the Windows Azure Management Portal. Click on the Add Rule button to create an alert rule. Give the alert rule a name and optionally add a description. Then pick the service which you want to define the alert rule on: The next step in the alert creation wizard will then filter the monitoring metrics based on the service you selected:   Once created the rule will show up in your alerts list within the settings tab: The rule above is defined as “not activated” since it hasn’t tripped over the CPU threshold we set.  If the CPU on the above machine goes over the limit, though, I’ll get an email notifying me from an Windows Azure Alerts email address ([email protected]). And when I log into the portal and revisit the alerts tab I’ll see it highlighted in red.  Clicking it will then enable me to see what is causing it to fail, as well as view the history of when it has happened in the past. Alert Notifications With today’s initial preview you can now easily create alerting rules based on monitoring metrics and get notified on active or impending issues within your application that require attention. During preview, each subscription is limited to 10 alert rules across all of the services that support alert rules. No More Credit Card Requirement for MSDN Subscribers Earlier this month (during TechEd 2013), Windows Azure announced that MSDN users will get Windows Azure Credits every month that they can use for any Windows Azure services they want. You can read details about this in my previous Dev/Test blog post. Today we are making further updates to enable an easier Windows Azure signup for MSDN users. MSDN users will now not be required to provide payment information (e.g. no credit card) during sign-up, so long as they use the service within the included monetary credit for the billing period. For usage beyond the monetary credit, they can enable overages by providing the payment information and remove the spending limit. This enables a super easy, one page sign-up experience for MSDN users.  Simply sign-up for your Windows Azure trial using the same Microsoft ID that you use to manage your MSDN account, then complete the one page sign-up form below and you will be able to spend your free monthly MSDN credits (up to $150 each month) on any Windows Azure resource for dev/test:   This makes it trivially easy for every MDSN customer to start using Windows Azure today.  If you haven’t signed up yet, I definitely recommend checking it out. Summary Today’s release includes a ton of great features that enable you to build even better cloud solutions.  If you don’t already have a Windows Azure account, you can sign-up for a free trial and start using all of the above features today.  Then visit the Windows Azure Developer Center to learn more about how to build apps with it. Hope this helps, Scott P.S. In addition to blogging, I am also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at: twitter.com/scottgu

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  • Cold Start

    - by antony.reynolds
    Well we had snow drifts 3ft deep on Saturday so it must be spring time.  In preparation for Spring we decided to move the lawn tractor.  Of course after sitting in the garage all winter it refused to start.  I then come into the office and need to start my 11g SOA Suite installation.  I thought about this and decided my tractor might be cranky but at least I can script the startup of my SOA Suite 11g installation. So with this in mind I created 6 scripts.  I created them for Linux but they should translate to Windows without too many problems.  This is left as an exercise to the reader, note you will have to hardcode more than I did in the Linux scripts and create separate script files for the sqlplus and WLST sections. Order to start things I believe there should be order in all things, especially starting the SOA Suite.  So here is my preferred order. Start Database This is need by EM and the rest of SOA Suite so best to start it before the Admin Server and managed servers. Start Node Manager on all machines This is needed if you want the scripts to work across machines. Start Admin Server Once this is done in theory you can manually stat the managed servers using WebLogic console.  But then you have to wait for console to be available.  Scripting it all is quicker and easier way of starting. Start Managed Servers & Clusters Best to start them one per physical machine at a time to avoid undue load on the machines.  Non-clustered install will have just soa_server1 and bam_serv1 by default.  Clusters will have at least SOA and BAM clusters that can be started as a group or individually.  I have provided scripts for standalone servers, but easy to change them to work with clusters. Starting Database I have provided a very primitive script (available here) to start the database, the listener and the DB console.  The section highlighted in red needs to match your database name. #!/bin/sh echo "##############################" echo "# Setting Oracle Environment #" echo "##############################" . oraenv <<-EOF orcl EOF echo "#####################" echo "# Starting Database #" echo "#####################" sqlplus / as sysdba <<-EOF startup exit EOF echo "#####################" echo "# Starting Listener #" echo "#####################" lsnrctl start echo "######################" echo "# Starting dbConsole #" echo "######################" emctl start dbconsole read -p "Hit <enter> to continue" Starting SOA Suite My script for starting the SOA Suite (available here) breaks the task down into five sections. Setting the Environment First set up the environment variables.  The variables highlighted in red probably need changing for your environment. #!/bin/sh echo "###########################" echo "# Setting SOA Environment #" echo "###########################" export MW_HOME=~oracle/Middleware11gPS1 export WL_HOME=$MW_HOME/wlserver_10.3 export ORACLE_HOME=$MW_HOME/Oracle_SOA export DOMAIN_NAME=soa_std_domain export DOMAIN_HOME=$MW_HOME/user_projects/domains/$DOMAIN_NAME Starting the Node Manager I start node manager with a nohup to stop it exiting when the script terminates and I redirect the standard output and standard error to a file in a logs directory. cd $DOMAIN_HOME echo "#########################" echo "# Starting Node Manager #" echo "#########################" nohup $WL_HOME/server/bin/startNodeManager.sh >logs/NodeManager.out 2>&1 & Starting the Admin Server I had problems starting the Admin Server from Node Manager so I decided to start it using the command line script.  I again use nohup and redirect output. echo "#########################" echo "# Starting Admin Server #" echo "#########################" nohup ./startWebLogic.sh >logs/AdminServer.out 2>&1 & Starting the Managed Servers I then used WLST (WebLogic Scripting Tool) to start the managed servers.  First I waited for the Admin Server to come up by putting a connect command in a loop.  I could have put the WLST commands into a separate script file but I wanted to reduce the number of files I was using and so used redirected input (here syntax). $ORACLE_HOME/common/bin/wlst.sh <<-EOF import time sleep=time.sleep print "#####################################" print "# Waiting for Admin Server to Start #" print "#####################################" while True:   try:     connect(adminServerName="AdminServer")     break   except:     sleep(10) I then start the SOA server and tell WLST to wait until it is started before returning.  If starting a cluster then the start command would be modified accordingly to start the SOA cluster. print "#######################" print "# Starting SOA Server #" print "#######################" start(name="soa_server1", block="true") I then start the BAM server in the same way as the SOA server. print "#######################" print "# Starting BAM Server #" print "#######################" start(name="bam_server1", block="true") EOF Finally I let people know the servers are up and wait for input in case I am running in a separate window, in which case the result would be lost without the read command. echo "#####################" echo "# SOA Suite Started #" echo "#####################" read -p "Hit <enter> to continue" Stopping the SOA Suite My script for shutting down the SOA Suite (available here)  is basically the reverse of my startup script.  After setting the environment I connect to the Admin Server using WLST and shut down the managed servers and the admin server.  Again the script would need modifying for a cluster. Stopping the Servers If I cannot connect to the Admin Server I try to connect to the node manager, in case the Admin Server is down but the managed servers are up. #!/bin/sh echo "###########################" echo "# Setting SOA Environment #" echo "###########################" export MW_HOME=~oracle/Middleware11gPS1 export WL_HOME=$MW_HOME/wlserver_10.3 export ORACLE_HOME=$MW_HOME/Oracle_SOA export DOMAIN_NAME=soa_std_domain export DOMAIN_HOME=$MW_HOME/user_projects/domains/$DOMAIN_NAME cd $DOMAIN_HOME $MW_HOME/Oracle_SOA/common/bin/wlst.sh <<-EOF try:   print("#############################")   print("# Connecting to AdminServer #")   print("#############################")   connect(username='weblogic',password='welcome1',url='t3://localhost:7001') except:   print "#########################################"   print "#   Unable to connect to Admin Server   #"   print "# Attempting to connect to Node Manager #"   print "#########################################"   nmConnect(domainName=os.getenv("DOMAIN_NAME")) print "#######################" print "# Stopping BAM Server #" print "#######################" shutdown('bam_server1') print "#######################" print "# Stopping SOA Server #" print "#######################" shutdown('soa_server1') print "#########################" print "# Stopping Admin Server #" print "#########################" shutdown('AdminServer') disconnect() nmDisconnect() EOF Stopping the Node Manager I stopped the node manager by searching for the java node manager process using the ps command and then killing that process. echo "#########################" echo "# Stopping Node Manager #" echo "#########################" kill -9 `ps -ef | grep java | grep NodeManager |  awk '{print $2;}'` echo "#####################" echo "# SOA Suite Stopped #" echo "#####################" read -p "Hit <enter> to continue" Stopping the Database Again my script for shutting down the database is the reverse of my start script.  It is available here.  The only change needed might be to the database name. #!/bin/sh echo "##############################" echo "# Setting Oracle Environment #" echo "##############################" . oraenv <<-EOF orcl EOF echo "######################" echo "# Stopping dbConsole #" echo "######################" emctl stop dbconsole echo "#####################" echo "# Stopping Listener #" echo "#####################" lsnrctl stop echo "#####################" echo "# Stopping Database #" echo "#####################" sqlplus / as sysdba <<-EOF shutdown immediate exit EOF read -p "Hit <enter> to continue" Cleaning Up Cleaning SOA Suite I often run tests and want to clean up all the log files.  The following script (available here) does this for the WebLogic servers in a given domain on a machine.  After setting the domain I just remove all files under the servers logs directories.  It also cleans up the log files I created with my startup scripts.  These scripts could be enhanced to copy off the log files if you needed them but in my test environments I don’t need them and would prefer to reclaim the disk space. #!/bin/sh echo "###########################" echo "# Setting SOA Environment #" echo "###########################" export MW_HOME=~oracle/Middleware11gPS1 export WL_HOME=$MW_HOME/wlserver_10.3 export ORACLE_HOME=$MW_HOME/Oracle_SOA export DOMAIN_NAME=soa_std_domain export DOMAIN_HOME=$MW_HOME/user_projects/domains/$DOMAIN_NAME echo "##########################" echo "# Cleaning SOA Log Files #" echo "##########################" cd $DOMAIN_HOME rm -Rf logs/* servers/*/logs/* read -p "Hit <enter> to continue" Cleaning Database I also created a script to clean up the dump files of an Oracle database instance and also the EM log files (available here).  This relies on the machine name being correct as the EM log files are stored in a directory that is based on the hostname and the Oracle SID. #!/bin/sh echo "##############################" echo "# Setting Oracle Environment #" echo "##############################" . oraenv <<-EOF orcl EOF echo "#############################" echo "# Cleaning Oracle Log Files #" echo "#############################" rm -Rf $ORACLE_BASE/admin/$ORACLE_SID/*dump/* rm -Rf $ORACLE_HOME/`hostname`_$ORACLE_SID/sysman/log/* read -p "Hit <enter> to continue" Summary Hope you find the above scripts useful.  They certainly stop me hanging around waiting for things to happen on my test machine and make it easy to run a test, change parameters, bounce the SOA Suite and clean the logs between runs so I can see exactly what is happening. Now I need to get that mower started…

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  • Building The Right SharePoint Team For Your Organization

    - by Mark Rackley
    I see the question posted fairly often asking what kind SharePoint team an organization should have. How many people do I need? What roles do I need to fill? What is best for my organization? Well, just like every other answer in SharePoint, the correct answer is “it depends”. Do you ever get sick of hearing that??? I know I do… So, let me give you my thoughts and opinions based upon my experience and what I’ve seen and let you come to your own conclusions. What are the possible SharePoint roles? I guess the first thing you need to understand are the different roles that exist in SharePoint (and their are LOTS). Remember, SharePoint is a massive beast and you will NOT find one person who can do it all. If you are hoping to find that person you will be sorely disappointed. For the most part this is true in SharePoint 2007 and 2010. However, generally things are improved in 2010 and easier for junior individuals to grasp. SharePoint Administrator The absolutely positively only role that you should not be without no matter the size of your organization or SharePoint deployment is a SharePoint administrator. These guys are essential to keeping things running and figuring out what’s wrong when things aren’t running well. These unsung heroes do more before 10 am than I do all day. The bad thing is, when these guys are awesome, you don’t even know they exist because everything is running so smoothly. You should definitely invest some time and money here to make sure you have some competent if not rockstar help. You need an admin who truly loves SharePoint and will go that extra mile when necessary. Let me give you a real world example of what I’m talking about: We have a rockstar admin… and I’m sure she’s sick of my throwing her name around so she’ll just have to live with remaining anonymous in this post… sorry Lori… Anyway! A couple of weeks ago our Server teams came to us and said Hi Lori, I’m finalizing the MOSS servers and doing updates that require a restart; can I restart them? Seems like a harmless request from your server team does it not? Sure, go ahead and apply the patches and reboot during our scheduled maintenance window. No problem? right? Sounded fair to me… but no…. not to our fearless SharePoint admin… I need a complete list of patches that will be applied. There is an update that is out there that will break SharePoint… KB973917 is the patch that has been shown to cause issues. What? You mean Microsoft released a patch that would actually adversely affect SharePoint? If we did NOT have a rockstar admin, our server team would have applied these patches and then when some problem occurred in SharePoint we’d have to go through the fun task of tracking down exactly what caused the issue and resolve it. How much time would that have taken? If you have a junior SharePoint admin or an admin who’s not out there staying on top of what’s going on you could have spent days tracking down something so simple as applying a patch you should not have applied. I will even go as far to say the only SharePoint rockstar you NEED in your organization is a SharePoint admin. You can always outsource really complicated development projects or bring in a rockstar contractor every now and then to make sure you aren’t way off track in other areas. For your day-to-day sanity and to keep SharePoint running smoothly, you need an awesome Admin. Some rockstars in this category are: Ben Curry, Mike Watson, Joel Oleson, Todd Klindt, Shane Young, John Ferringer, Sean McDonough, and of course Lori Gowin. SharePoint Developer Another essential role for your SharePoint deployment is a SharePoint developer. Things do start to get a little hazy here and there are many flavors of “developers”. Are you writing custom code? using SharePoint Designer? What about SharePoint Branding?  Are all of these considered developers? I would say yes. Are they interchangeable? I’d say no. Development in SharePoint is such a large beast in itself. I would say that it’s not so large that you can’t know it all well, but it is so large that there are many people who specialize in one particular category. If you are lucky enough to have someone on staff who knows it all well, you better make sure they are well taken care of because those guys are ready-made to move over to a consulting role and charge you 3 times what you are probably paying them. :) Some of the all-around rockstars are Eric Shupps, Andrew Connell (go Razorbacks), Rob Foster, Paul Schaeflein, and Todd Bleeker SharePoint Power User/No-Code Solutions Developer These SharePoint Swiss Army Knives are essential for quick wins in your organization. These people can twist the out-of-the-box functionality to make it do things you would not even imagine. Give these guys SharePoint Designer, jQuery, InfoPath, and a little time and they will create views, dashboards, and KPI’s that will blow your mind away and give your execs the “wow” they are looking for. Not only can they deliver that wow factor, but they can mashup, merge, and really help make your SharePoint application usable and deliver an overall better user experience. Before you hand off a project to your SharePoint Custom Code developer, let one of these rockstars look at it and show you what they can do (in probably less time). I would say the second most important role you can fill in your organization is one of these guys. Rockstars in this category are Christina Wheeler, Laura Rogers, Jennifer Mason, and Mark Miller SharePoint Developer – Custom Code If you want to really integrate SharePoint into your legacy systems, or really twist it and make it bend to your will, you are going to have to open up Visual Studio and write some custom code.  Remember, SharePoint is essentially just a big, huge, ginormous .NET application, so you CAN write code to make it do ANYTHING, but do you really want to spend the time and effort to do so? At some point with every other form of SharePoint development you are going to run into SOME limitation (SPD Workflows is the big one that comes to mind). If you truly want to knock down all the walls then custom development is the way to go. PLEASE keep in mind when you are looking for a custom code developer that a .NET developer does NOT equal a SharePoint developer. Just SOME of the things these guys write are: Custom Workflows Custom Web Parts Web Service functionality Import data from legacy systems Export data to legacy systems Custom Actions Event Receivers Service Applications (2010) These guys are also the ones generally responsible for packaging everything up into solution packages (you are doing that, right?). Rockstars in this category are Phil Wicklund, Christina Wheeler, Geoff Varosky, and Brian Jackett. SharePoint Branding “But it LOOKS like SharePoint!” Somebody call the WAAAAAAAAAAAAHMbulance…   Themes, Master Pages, Page Layouts, Zones, and over 2000 styles in CSS.. these guys not only have to be comfortable with all of SharePoint’s quirks and pain points when branding, but they have to know it TWICE for publishing and non-publishing sites.  Not only that, but these guys really need to have an eye for graphic design and be able to translate the ramblings of business into something visually stunning. They also have to be comfortable with XSLT, XML, and be able to hand off what they do to your custom developers for them to package as solutions (which you are doing, right?). These rockstars include Heater Waterman, Cathy Dew, and Marcy Kellar SharePoint Architect SharePoint Architects are generally SharePoint Admins or Developers who have moved into more of a BA role? Is that fair to say? These guys really have a grasp and understanding for what SharePoint IS and what it can do. These guys help you structure your farms to meet your needs and help you design your applications the correct way. It’s always a good idea to bring in a rockstar SharePoint Architect to do a sanity check and make sure you aren’t doing anything stupid.  Most organizations probably do not have a rockstar architect on staff. These guys are generally brought in at the deployment of a farm, upgrade of a farm, or for large development projects. I personally also find architects very useful for sitting down with the business to translate their needs into what SharePoint can do. A good architect will be able to pick out what can be done out-of-the-box and what has to be custom built and hand those requirements to the development Staff. Architects can generally fill in as an admin or a developer when needed. Some rockstar architects are Rick Taylor, Dan Usher, Bill English, Spence Harbar, Neil Hodgkins, Eric Harlan, and Bjørn Furuknap. Other Roles / Specialties On top of all these other roles you also get these people who specialize in things like Reporting, BDC (BCS in 2010), Search, Performance, Security, Project Management, etc... etc... etc... Again, most organizations will not have one of these gurus on staff, they’ll just pay out the nose for them when they need them. :) SharePoint End User Everyone else in your organization that touches SharePoint falls into this category. What they actually DO in SharePoint is determined by your governance and what permissions you give these guys. Hopefully you have these guys on a fairly short leash and are NOT giving them access to tools like SharePoint Designer. Sadly end users are the ones who truly make your deployment a success by using it, but are also your biggest enemy in breaking it.  :)  We love you guys… really!!! Okay, all that’s fine and dandy, but what should MY SharePoint team look like? It depends! Okay… Are you just doing out of the box team sites with no custom development? Then you are probably fine with a great Admin team and a great No-Code Solution Development team. How many people do you need? Depends on how busy you can keep them. Sorry, can’t answer the question about numbers without knowing your specific needs. I can just tell you who you MIGHT need and what they will do for you. I’ll leave you with what my ideal SharePoint Team would look like for a particular scenario: Farm / Organization Structure Dev, QA, and 2 Production Farms. 5000 – 10000 Users Custom Development and Integration with legacy systems Team Sites, My Sites, Intranet, Document libraries and overall company collaboration Team Rockstar SharePoint Administrator 2-3 junior SharePoint Administrators SharePoint Architect / Lead Developer 2 Power User / No-Code Solution Developers 2-3 Custom Code developers Branding expert With a team of that size and skill set, they should be able to keep a substantial SharePoint deployment running smoothly and meet your business needs. This does NOT mean that you would not need to bring in contract help from time to time when you need an uber specialist in one area. Also, this team assumes there will be ongoing development for the life of your SharePoint farm. If you are just going to be doing sporadic custom development, it might make sense to partner with an awesome firm that specializes in that sort of work (I can give you the name of a couple if you are interested).  Again though, the size of your team depends on the number of requests you are receiving and how much active deployment you are doing. So, don’t bring in a team that looks like this and then yell at me because they are sitting around with nothing to do or are so overwhelmed that nothing is getting done. I do URGE you to take the proper time to asses your needs and determine what team is BEST for your organization. Also, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE do not skimp on the talent. When it comes to SharePoint you really do get what you pay for when it comes to employees, contractors, and software.  SharePoint can become absolutely critical to your business and because you skimped on hiring a developer he created a web part that brings down the farm because he doesn’t know what he’s doing, or you hire an admin who thinks it’s fine to stick everything in the same Content Database and then can’t figure out why people are complaining. SharePoint can be an enormous blessing to an organization or it’s biggest curse. Spend the time and money to do it right, or be prepared to spending even more time and money later to fix it.

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  • eBooks on iPad vs. Kindle: More Debate than Smackdown

    - by andrewbrust
    When the iPad was presented at its San Francisco launch event on January 28th, Steve Jobs spent a significant amount of time explaining how well the device would serve as an eBook reader. He showed the iBooks reader application and iBookstore and laid down the gauntlet before Amazon and its beloved Kindle device. Almost immediately afterwards, criticism came rushing forth that the iPad could never beat the Kindle for book reading. The curious part of that criticism is that virtually no one offering it had actually used the iPad yet. A few weeks later, on April 3rd, the iPad was released for sale in the United States. I bought one on that day and in the few additional weeks that have elapsed, I’ve given quite a workout to most of its capabilities, including its eBook features. I’ve also spent some time with the Kindle, albeit a first-generation model, to see how it actually compares to the iPad. I had some expectations going in, but I came away with conclusions about each device that were more scenario-based than absolute. I present my findings to you here.   Vital Statistics Let’s start with an inventory of each device’s underlying technology. The iPad has a color, backlit LCD screen and an on-screen keyboard. It has a battery which, on a full charge, lasts anywhere from 6-10 hours. The Kindle offers a monochrome, reflective E Ink display, a physical keyboard and a battery that on my first gen loaner unit can go up to a week between charges (Amazon claims the battery on the Kindle 2 can last up to 2 weeks on a single charge). The Kindle connects to Amazon’s Kindle Store using a 3G modem (the technology and network vary depending on the model) that incurs no airtime service charges whatsoever. The iPad units that are on-sale today work over WiFi only. 3G-equipped models will be on sale shortly and will command a $130 premium over their WiFi-only counterparts. 3G service on the iPad, in the U.S. from AT&T, will be fee-based, with a 250MB plan at $14.99 per month and an unlimited plan at $29.99. No contract is required for 3G service. All these tech specs aside, I think a more useful observation is that the iPad is a multi-purpose Internet-connected entertainment device, while the Kindle is a dedicated reading device. The question is whether those differences in design and intended use create a clear-cut winner for reading electronic publications. Let’s take a look at each device, in isolation, now.   Kindle To me, what’s most innovative about the Kindle is its E Ink display. E Ink really looks like ink on a sheet of paper. It requires no backlight, it’s fully visible in direct sunlight and it causes almost none of the eyestrain that LCD-based computer display technology (like that used on the iPad) does. It’s really versatile in an all-around way. Forgive me if this sounds precious, but reading on it is really a joy. In fact, it’s a genuinely relaxing experience. Through the Kindle Store, Amazon allows users to download books (including audio books), magazines, newspapers and blog feeds. Books and magazines can be purchased either on a single-issue basis or as an annual subscription. Books, of course, are purchased singly. Oddly, blogs are not free, but instead carry a monthly subscription fee, typically $1.99. To me this is ludicrous, but I suppose the free 3G service is partially to blame. Books and magazine issues download quickly. Magazine and blog subscriptions cause new issues or posts to be pushed to your device on an automated basis. Available blogs include 9000-odd feeds that Amazon offers on the Kindle Store; unless I missed something, arbitrary RSS feeds are not supported (though there are third party workarounds to this limitation). The shopping experience is integrated well, has an huge selection, and offers certain graphical perks. For example, magazine and newspaper logos are displayed in menus, and book cover thumbnails appear as well. A simple search mechanism is provided and text entry through the physical keyboard is relatively painless. It’s very easy and straightforward to enter the store, find something you like and start reading it quickly. If you know what you’re looking for, it’s even faster. Given Kindle’s high portability, very reliable battery, instant-on capability and highly integrated content acquisition, it makes reading on whim, and in random spurts of downtime, very attractive. The Kindle’s home screen lists all of your publications, and easily lets you select one, then start reading it. Once opened, publications display in crisp, attractive text that is adjustable in size. “Turning” pages is achieved through buttons dedicated to the task. Notes can be recorded, bookmarks can be saved and pages can be saved as clippings. I am not an avid book reader, and yet I found the Kindle made it really fun, convenient and soothing to read. There’s something about the easy access to the material and the simplicity of the display that makes the Kindle seduce you into chilling out and reading page after page. On the other hand, the Kindle has an awkward navigation interface. While menus are displayed clearly on the screen, the method of selecting menu items is tricky: alongside the right-hand edge of the main display is a thin column that acts as a second display. It has a white background, and a scrollable silver cursor that is moved up or down through the use of the device’s scrollwheel. Picking a menu item on the main display involves scrolling the silver cursor to a position parallel to that menu item and pushing the scrollwheel in. This navigation technique creates a disconnect, literally. You don’t really click on a selection so much as you gesture toward it. I got used to this technique quickly, but I didn’t love it. It definitely created a kind of anxiety in me, making me feel the need to speed through menus and get to my destination document quickly. Once there, I could calm down and relax. Books are great on the Kindle. Magazines and newspapers much less so. I found the rendering of photographs, and even illustrations, to be unacceptably crude. For this reason, I expect that reading textbooks on the Kindle may leave students wanting. I found that the original flow and layout of any publication was sacrificed on the Kindle. In effect, browsing a magazine or newspaper was almost impossible. Reading the text of individual articles was enjoyable, but having to read this way made the whole experience much more “a la carte” than cohesive and thematic between articles. I imagine that for academic journals this is ideal, but for consumer publications it imposes a stripped-down, low-fidelity experience that evokes a sense of deprivation. In general, the Kindle is great for reading text. For just about anything else, especially activity that involves exploratory browsing, meandering and short-attention-span reading, it presents a real barrier to entry and adoption. Avid book readers will enjoy the Kindle (if they’re not already). It’s a great device for losing oneself in a book over long sittings. Multitaskers who are more interested in periodicals, be they online or off, will like it much less, as they will find compromise, and even sacrifice, to be palpable.   iPad The iPad is a very different device from the Kindle. While the Kindle is oriented to pages of text, the iPad orbits around applications and their interfaces. Be it the pinch and zoom experience in the browser, the rich media features that augment content on news and weather sites, or the ability to interact with social networking services like Twitter, the iPad is versatile. While it shares a slate-like form factor with the Kindle, it’s effectively an elegant personal computer. One of its many features is the iBook application and integration of the iBookstore. But it’s a multi-purpose device. That turns out to be good and bad, depending on what you’re reading. The iBookstore is great for browsing. It’s color, rich animation-laden user interface make it possible to shop for books, rather than merely search and acquire them. Unfortunately, its selection is rather sparse at the moment. If you’re looking for a New York Times bestseller, or other popular titles, you should be OK. If you want to read something more specialized, it’s much harder. Unlike the awkward navigation interface of the Kindle, the iPad offers a nearly flawless touch-screen interface that seduces the user into tinkering and kibitzing every bit as much as the Kindle lulls you into a deep, concentrated read. It’s a dynamic and interactive device, whereas the Kindle is static and passive. The iBook reader is slick and fun. Use the iPad in landscape mode and you can read the book in 2-up (left/right 2-page) display; use it in portrait mode and you can read one page at a time. Rather than clicking a hardware button to turn pages, you simply drag and wipe from right-to-left to flip the single or right-hand page. The page actually travels through an animated path as it would in a physical book. The intuitiveness of the interface is uncanny. The reader also accommodates saving of bookmarks, searching of the text, and the ability to highlight a word and look it up in a dictionary. Pages display brightly and clearly. They’re easy to read. But the backlight and the glare made me less comfortable than I was with the Kindle. The knowledge that completely different applications (including the Web and email and Twitter) were just a few taps away made me antsy and very tempted to task-switch. The knowledge that battery life is an issue created subtle discomfort. If the Kindle makes you feel like you’re in a library reading room, then the iPad makes you feel, at best, like you’re under fluorescent lights at a Barnes and Noble or Borders store. If you’re lucky, you’d be on a couch or at a reading table in the store, but you might also be standing up, in the aisles. Clearly, I didn’t find this conducive to focused and sustained reading. But that may have more to do with my own tendency to read periodicals far more than books, and my neurotic . And, truth be known, the book reading experience, when not explicitly compared to Kindle’s, was still pleasant. It is also important to point out that Kindle Store-sourced books can be read on the iPad through a Kindle reader application, from Amazon, specific to the device. This offered a less rich experience than the iBooks reader, but it was completely adequate. Despite the Kindle brand of the reader, however, it offered little in terms of simulating the reading experience on its namesake device. When it comes to periodicals, the iPad wins hands down. Magazines, even if merely scanned images of their print editions, read on the iPad in a way that felt similar to reading hard copy. The full color display, touch navigation and even the ability to render advertisements in their full glory makes the iPad a great way to read through any piece of work that is measured in pages, rather than chapters. There are many ways to get magazines and newspapers onto the iPad, including the Zinio reader, and publication-specific applications like the Wall Street Journal’s and Popular Science’s. The New York Times’ free Editors’ Choice application offers a Times Reader-like interface to a subset of the Gray Lady’s daily content. The completely Web-based but iPad-optimized Times Skimmer site (at www.nytimes.com/timesskimmer) works well too. Even conventional Web sites themselves can be read much like magazines, given the iPad’s ability to zoom in on the text and crop out advertisements on the margins. While the Kindle does have an experimental Web browser, it reminded me a lot of early mobile phone browsers, only in a larger size. For text-heavy sites with simple layout, it works fine. For just about anything else, it becomes more trouble than it’s worth. And given the way magazine articles make me think of things I want to look up online, I think that’s a real liability for the Kindle.   Summing Up What I came to realize is that the Kindle isn’t so much a computer or even an Internet device as it is a printer. While it doesn’t use physical paper, it still renders its content a page at a time, just like a laser printer does, and its output appears strikingly similar. You can read the rendered text, but you can’t interact with it in any way. That’s why the navigation requires a separate cursor display area. And because of the page-oriented rendering behavior, turning pages causes a flash on the display and requires a sometimes long pause before the next page is rendered. The good side of this is that once the page is generated, no battery power is required to display it. That makes for great battery life, optimal viewing under most lighting conditions (as long as there is some light) and low-eyestrain text-centric display of content. The Kindle is highly portable, has an excellent selection in its store and is refreshingly distraction-free. All of this is ideal for reading books. And iPad doesn’t offer any of it. What iPad does offer is versatility, variety, richness and luxury. It’s flush with accoutrements even if it’s low on focused, sustained text display. That makes it inferior to the Kindle for book reading. But that also makes it better than the Kindle for almost everything else. As such, and given that its book reading experience is still decent (even if not superior), I think the iPad will give Kindle a run for its money. True book lovers, and people on a budget, will want the Kindle. People with a robust amount of discretionary income may want both devices. Everyone else who is interested in a slate form factor e-reading device, especially if they also wish to have leisure-friendly Internet access, will likely choose the iPad exclusively. One thing is for sure: iPad has reduced Kindle’s market, and may have shifted its mass market potential to a mere niche play. If Amazon is smart, it will improve its iPad-based Kindle reader app significantly. It can then leverage the iPad channel as a significant market for the Kindle Store. After all, selling the eBooks themselves is what Amazon should care most about.

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  • Upgrading VSIX extensions from VS2012 to VS2013

    - by Tarun Arora [Microsoft MVP]
    Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/TarunArora/archive/2013/06/27/upgrading-vsix-extensions-from-vs2012-to-vs2013.aspx  As consumers of your Visual Studio extensions start to move over to VS 2013, you will have to upgrade the Visual Studio extensions you build for Visual Studio 2012 to Visual Studio 2013 and republish to the Visual Studio extension gallery. Failing which, it will not be possible for your consumers to install and use your extensions on Visual Studio 2013.   Objective In this blog post, I’ll show you how simple it is to upgrade your Visual Studio 2012 extension to Visual Studio 2013. There aren’t any reported breaking changes between VS 2012 SDK and VS 2013 SDK, the upgrade usually involves, rebuilding the extension against VS 2013 SDK and updating the vsix manifest file.              Walkthrough Download the Visual Studio 2013 SDK - You will need to download the Visual Studio 2013 SDK in order to open up the Visual Studio extension project in Visual Studio 2013. The SDK can be downloaded from here. Install the SDK before you proceed.                2. Once the VS 2013 SDK has been installed, open up your package project. For the purposes of this blog post, I’ll open up the Avanade Extension – Software Inventory in Visual Studio 2013. You will notice that Visual Studio doesn’t load the project but let’s you know that the project needs to be Migrated.                  3. Right click the project and choose the option ‘Reload Project’ from the Context Menu.                  4. Choosing the Reload Project option brings up an upgrade window, telling you that the upgrade is a one way only upgrade i.e. the project will be changed to work with Visual Studio 2013 and you will not be able to open the project up in Visual Studio 2012. My recommendation would be to create a Visual Studio 2013 branch and upgrading the project in that branch only, so if you need to go back to Visual Studio 2012 project at some point, you have a handy reference in a separate branch.             5. Upon clicking Ok, the project is updated. See below, the following changes are made at the time of upgrade,           - The runtime version is updated in the Resources.Designer.cs file                      - The Minimum version of Visual Studio in the package project file is changed from 11.0 to 12.0                    6. Reference VS 2013 dll’s rather than VS 2012 dll’s. So reference Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Client.dll and Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Controls.dll from C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 12.0\Common7\IDE\ReferenceAssemblies\v2.0 and C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 12.0\Common7\IDE\ReferenceAssemblies\v4.5. If you have any other API references, then change the references to point to VS 2013 instead of VS 2012.                          7. Rebuild your solution to ensure there are no breaking changes. Success!                8. Update VSIX Manifest file (the file source.extnsion.vsixmanifest contains the meta data for your VSIX).          - Update the Install Targets from 11.0 to 12.0. This basically enforces that the extension can be installed on Visual Studio 2013 version of Visual Studio.                         - Update the Dependencies from Visual Studio MPF 11.0 to Visual Studio MPF 12.0              9. Rebuild the solution and open up the bin folder for the Package project and look for the file *.vsix file [Microsoft Visual Studio Extension].         - This is basically the installer for your extension.                 - Double click the installer to launch the installer wizard. Viola! You can see the package installation wizard opens up and gives you the option to install the extension for Visual Studio 2013.                    - Click Install to Continue                    - Note – If you run into the exception “23/06/2013 10:42:18 - Install Error : Microsoft.VisualStudio.ExtensionManager.InstallByMsiException: The InstalledByMSI element in extension Avanade Extensions cannot be 'true' when installing an extension through the Extensions and Updates Installer.  The element can only be 'true' when an MSI lays down the extension manifest file.” Ensure you have the option “This VSIX is installed by Windows Installer” unchecked in the Install Targets tab.        10. Verifying that the extension has installed correctly.           - Open Extension Manager and verify that the installed extension shows up in the extension manager “list of installed VSIX”.                      11. First Look at the updated Extension                         - The links have now been moved to the context menu, so to see the navigation links, you’ll have to right click on the icon and select the option from the context menu.                                        Note – The Avanade Extension being used in the demo has been developed by Utkarsh and Tarun. The Software Inventory Extension for Visual Studio 2012…  allows you to see the list of Software installed on the hosted build server right from with in Visual Studio,  the extension also allows you to export this list to excel. More details on how this has been implemented can be found here.   I hope you found this useful. In case you have any questions or feedback, feel free to reach out on Visual Studio extensibility MSDN forums or via Microsoft Visual Studio feedback forum. Thank you for taking the time out and reading this blog post. If you enjoyed the post, remember to subscribe to http://feeds.feedburner.com/TarunArora. Stay tuned!

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  • How to Run Low-Cost Minecraft on a Raspberry Pi for Block Building on the Cheap

    - by Jason Fitzpatrick
    We’ve shown you how to run your own blocktastic personal Minecraft server on a Windows/OSX box, but what if you crave something lighter weight, more energy efficient, and always ready for your friends? Read on as we turn a tiny Raspberry Pi machine into a low-cost Minecraft server you can leave on 24/7 for around a penny a day. Why Do I Want to Do This? There’s two aspects to this tutorial, running your own Minecraft server and specifically running that Minecraft server on a Raspberry Pi. Why would you want to run your own Minecraft server? It’s a really great way to extend and build upon the Minecraft play experience. You can leave the server running when you’re not playing so friends and family can join and continue building your world. You can mess around with game variables and introduce mods in a way that isn’t possible when you’re playing the stand-alone game. It also gives you the kind of control over your multiplayer experience that using public servers doesn’t, without incurring the cost of hosting a private server on a remote host. While running a Minecraft server on its own is appealing enough to a dedicated Minecraft fan, running it on the Raspberry Pi is even more appealing. The tiny little Pi uses so little resources that you can leave your Minecraft server running 24/7 for a couple bucks a year. Aside from the initial cost outlay of the Pi, an SD card, and a little bit of time setting it up, you’ll have an always-on Minecraft server at a monthly cost of around one gumball. What Do I Need? For this tutorial you’ll need a mix of hardware and software tools; aside from the actual Raspberry Pi and SD card, everything is free. 1 Raspberry Pi (preferably a 512MB model) 1 4GB+ SD card This tutorial assumes that you have already familiarized yourself with the Raspberry Pi and have installed a copy of the Debian-derivative Raspbian on the device. If you have not got your Pi up and running yet, don’t worry! Check out our guide, The HTG Guide to Getting Started with Raspberry Pi, to get up to speed. Optimizing Raspbian for the Minecraft Server Unlike other builds we’ve shared where you can layer multiple projects over one another (e.g. the Pi is more than powerful enough to serve as a weather/email indicator and a Google Cloud Print server at the same time) running a Minecraft server is a pretty intense operation for the little Pi and we’d strongly recommend dedicating the entire Pi to the process. Minecraft seems like a simple game, with all its blocky-ness and what not, but it’s actually a pretty complex game beneath the simple skin and required a lot of processing power. As such, we’re going to tweak the configuration file and other settings to optimize Rasbian for the job. The first thing you’ll need to do is dig into the Raspi-Config application to make a few minor changes. If you’re installing Raspbian fresh, wait for the last step (which is the Raspi-Config), if you already installed it, head to the terminal and type in “sudo raspi-config” to launch it again. One of the first and most important things we need to attend to is cranking up the overclock setting. We need all the power we can get to make our Minecraft experience enjoyable. In Raspi-Config, select option number 7 “Overclock”. Be prepared for some stern warnings about overclocking, but rest easy knowing that overclocking is directly supported by the Raspberry Pi foundation and has been included in the configuration options since late 2012. Once you’re in the actual selection screen, select “Turbo 1000MhHz”. Again, you’ll be warned that the degree of overclocking you’ve selected carries risks (specifically, potential corruption of the SD card, but no risk of actual hardware damage). Click OK and wait for the device to reset. Next, make sure you’re set to boot to the command prompt, not the desktop. Select number 3 “Enable Boot to Desktop/Scratch”  and make sure “Console Text console” is selected. Back at the Raspi-Config menu, select number 8 “Advanced Options’. There are two critical changes we need to make in here and one option change. First, the critical changes. Select A3 “Memory Split”: Change the amount of memory available to the GPU to 16MB (down from the default 64MB). Our Minecraft server is going to ruin in a GUI-less environment; there’s no reason to allocate any more than the bare minimum to the GPU. After selecting the GPU memory, you’ll be returned to the main menu. Select “Advanced Options” again and then select A4 “SSH”. Within the sub-menu, enable SSH. There is very little reason to keep this Pi connected to a monitor and keyboard, by enabling SSH we can remotely access the machine from anywhere on the network. Finally (and optionally) return again to the “Advanced Options” menu and select A2 “Hostname”. Here you can change your hostname from “raspberrypi” to a more fitting Minecraft name. We opted for the highly creative hostname “minecraft”, but feel free to spice it up a bit with whatever you feel like: creepertown, minecraft4life, or miner-box are all great minecraft server names. That’s it for the Raspbian configuration tab down to the bottom of the main screen and select “Finish” to reboot. After rebooting you can now SSH into your terminal, or continue working from the keyboard hooked up to your Pi (we strongly recommend switching over to SSH as it allows you to easily cut and paste the commands). If you’ve never used SSH before, check out how to use PuTTY with your Pi here. Installing Java on the Pi The Minecraft server runs on Java, so the first thing we need to do on our freshly configured Pi is install it. Log into your Pi via SSH and then, at the command prompt, enter the following command to make a directory for the installation: sudo mkdir /java/ Now we need to download the newest version of Java. At the time of this publication the newest release is the OCT 2013 update and the link/filename we use will reflect that. Please check for a more current version of the Linux ARMv6/7 Java release on the Java download page and update the link/filename accordingly when following our instructions. At the command prompt, enter the following command: sudo wget --no-check-certificate http://www.java.net/download/jdk8/archive/b111/binaries/jdk-8-ea-b111-linux-arm-vfp-hflt-09_oct_2013.tar.gz Once the download has finished successfully, enter the following command: sudo tar zxvf jdk-8-ea-b111-linux-arm-vfp-hflt-09_oct_2013.tar.gz -C /opt/ Fun fact: the /opt/ directory name scheme is a remnant of early Unix design wherein the /opt/ directory was for “optional” software installed after the main operating system; it was the /Program Files/ of the Unix world. After the file has finished extracting, enter: sudo /opt/jdk1.8.0/bin/java -version This command will return the version number of your new Java installation like so: java version "1.8.0-ea" Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.8.0-ea-b111) Java HotSpot(TM) Client VM (build 25.0-b53, mixed mode) If you don’t see the above printout (or a variation thereof if you’re using a newer version of Java), try to extract the archive again. If you do see the readout, enter the following command to tidy up after yourself: sudo rm jdk-8-ea-b111-linux-arm-vfp-hflt-09_oct_2013.tar.gz At this point Java is installed and we’re ready to move onto installing our Minecraft server! Installing and Configuring the Minecraft Server Now that we have a foundation for our Minecraft server, it’s time to install the part that matter. We’ll be using SpigotMC a lightweight and stable Minecraft server build that works wonderfully on the Pi. First, grab a copy of the the code with the following command: sudo wget http://ci.md-5.net/job/Spigot/lastSuccessfulBuild/artifact/Spigot-Server/target/spigot.jar This link should remain stable over time, as it points directly to the most current stable release of Spigot, but if you have any issues you can always reference the SpigotMC download page here. After the download finishes successfully, enter the following command: sudo /opt/jdk1.8.0/bin/java -Xms256M -Xmx496M -jar /home/pi/spigot.jar nogui Note: if you’re running the command on a 256MB Pi change the 256 and 496 in the above command to 128 and 256, respectively. Your server will launch and a flurry of on-screen activity will follow. Be prepared to wait around 3-6 minutes or so for the process of setting up the server and generating the map to finish. Future startups will take much less time, around 20-30 seconds. Note: If at any point during the configuration or play process things get really weird (e.g. your new Minecraft server freaks out and starts spawning you in the Nether and killing you instantly), use the “stop” command at the command prompt to gracefully shutdown the server and let you restart and troubleshoot it. After the process has finished, head over to the computer you normally play Minecraft on, fire it up, and click on Multiplayer. You should see your server: If your world doesn’t popup immediately during the network scan, hit the Add button and manually enter the address of your Pi. Once you connect to the server, you’ll see the status change in the server status window: According to the server, we’re in game. According to the actual Minecraft app, we’re also in game but it’s the middle of the night in survival mode: Boo! Spawning in the dead of night, weaponless and without shelter is no way to start things. No worries though, we need to do some more configuration; no time to sit around and get shot at by skeletons. Besides, if you try and play it without some configuration tweaks first, you’ll likely find it quite unstable. We’re just here to confirm the server is up, running, and accepting incoming connections. Once we’ve confirmed the server is running and connectable (albeit not very playable yet), it’s time to shut down the server. Via the server console, enter the command “stop” to shut everything down. When you’re returned to the command prompt, enter the following command: sudo nano server.properties When the configuration file opens up, make the following changes (or just cut and paste our config file minus the first two lines with the name and date stamp): #Minecraft server properties #Thu Oct 17 22:53:51 UTC 2013 generator-settings= #Default is true, toggle to false allow-nether=false level-name=world enable-query=false allow-flight=false server-port=25565 level-type=DEFAULT enable-rcon=false force-gamemode=false level-seed= server-ip= max-build-height=256 spawn-npcs=true white-list=false spawn-animals=true texture-pack= snooper-enabled=true hardcore=false online-mode=true pvp=true difficulty=1 player-idle-timeout=0 gamemode=0 #Default 20; you only need to lower this if you're running #a public server and worried about loads. max-players=20 spawn-monsters=true #Default is 10, 3-5 ideal for Pi view-distance=5 generate-structures=true spawn-protection=16 motd=A Minecraft Server In the server status window, seen through your SSH connection to the pi, enter the following command to give yourself operator status on your Minecraft server (so that you can use more powerful commands in game, without always returning to the server status window). op [your minecraft nickname] At this point things are looking better but we still have a little tweaking to do before the server is really enjoyable. To that end, let’s install some plugins. The first plugin, and the one you should install above all others, is NoSpawnChunks. To install the plugin, first visit the NoSpawnChunks webpage and grab the download link for the most current version. As of this writing the current release is v0.3. Back at the command prompt (the command prompt of your Pi, not the server console–if your server is still active shut it down) enter the following commands: cd /home/pi/plugins sudo wget http://dev.bukkit.org/media/files/586/974/NoSpawnChunks.jar Next, visit the ClearLag plugin page, and grab the latest link (as of this tutorial, it’s v2.6.0). Enter the following at the command prompt: sudo wget http://dev.bukkit.org/media/files/743/213/Clearlag.jar Because the files aren’t compressed in a .ZIP or similar container, that’s all there is to it: the plugins are parked in the plugin directory. (Remember this for future plugin downloads, the file needs to be whateverplugin.jar, so if it’s compressed you need to uncompress it in the plugin directory.) Resart the server: sudo /opt/jdk1.8.0/bin/java -Xms256M -Xmx496M -jar /home/pi/spigot.jar nogui Be prepared for a slightly longer startup time (closer to the 3-6 minutes and much longer than the 30 seconds you just experienced) as the plugins affect the world map and need a minute to massage everything. After the spawn process finishes, type the following at the server console: plugins This lists all the plugins currently active on the server. You should see something like this: If the plugins aren’t loaded, you may need to stop and restart the server. After confirming your plugins are loaded, go ahead and join the game. You should notice significantly snappier play. In addition, you’ll get occasional messages from the plugins indicating they are active, as seen below: At this point Java is installed, the server is installed, and we’ve tweaked our settings for for the Pi.  It’s time to start building with friends!     

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  • Center Pictures and Other Objects in Office 2007 & 2010

    - by Matthew Guay
    Sometimes it can be difficult to center a picture in a document just by dragging it dragging it around. Today we show you how to center pictures, images, and other objects perfectly in Word and PowerPoint. Note: For this tutorial we’re using Office 2010, but the steps are nearly identical in 2007. Centering a Picture in Word First let’s insert a picture into our document.  Click the Insert tab, and then click Picture. Once you select the picture you want, it will be added to your document.  Usually, pictures are added wherever your curser was in the document, so in a blank document it will be added at the top left. Also notice Picture Tools show up in the Ribbon after inserting an image. Note: The following menu items are available in Picture Tools Format tab which is displayed when you select the object or image you’re working with. How do we align the picture just like we want?  Click Position to get some quick placement options, including centered in the middle of the document or on the top.    However, for more advanced placement, we can use the Align tool.  If Word isn’t maximized, you may only see the icon without the “Align” label. Notice the tools were grayed out in the menu by default.  To be able to change the Alignment, we need to first change the text wrap settings. Click the Wrap Text button, and any option other than “In Line with Text”.  Your choice will depend on the document you’re writing, just choose the option that works best in the document.   Now, select the Align tools again.  You can now position your image precisely with these options. Align Center will position your picture in the center of the page widthwise. Align Middle will put the picture in the middle of the page height-wise. This works the same with textboxes.  Simply click the Align button in the Format tab, and you can center it in the page. And if you’d like to align several objects together, simply select them all, click Group, and then select Group from the menu.   Now, in the align tools, you can center the whole group on your page for a heading, or whatever you want to use the pictures for. These steps also work the same with Office 2007. Center objects in PowerPoint This works similar in PowerPoint, except that pictures are automatically set for square wrapping automatically, so you don’t have to change anything.  Simply insert the picture or other object of your choice, click Align, and choose the option you want. Additionally, if one object is already aligned like you want, drag another object near it and you will see a Smart Guide to help you align or center the second object with the first.  This only works with shapes in PowerPoint 2010 beta, but will work with pictures, textboxes, and media in the final release this summer. Conclusion These are good methods for centering images and objects in Word and PowerPoint.  From designing perfect headers to emphasizing your message in a PowerPoint presentation, this is something we’ve found useful and hope you will too. Since we’re talking about Office here, it’s worth mentioning that Microsoft has announced the Technology Guarantee Program for Office 2010. Essentially what this means is, if you purchase a version of Office 2007 between March 5th and September 30th of this year, when Office 2010 is released you’ll be able to upgrade to it for free! Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Add or Remove Apps from the Microsoft Office 2007 or 2010 SuiteAdd More Functions To Office 2007 By Installing Add-InsCustomize Your Welcome Picture Choices in Windows VistaEasily Rotate Pictures In Word 2007Add Effects To Your Pictures in Word 2007 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 Discover New Bundled Feeds in Google Reader Play Music in Chrome by Simply Dragging a File 15 Great Illustrations by Chow Hon Lam Easily Sync Files & Folders with Friends & Family Amazon Free Kindle for PC Download Stretch popurls.com with a Stylish Script (Firefox)

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  • How do you re-mount an ext3 fs readwrite after it gets mounted readonly from a disk error?

    - by cagenut
    Its a relatively common problem when something goes wrong in a SAN for ext3 to detect the disk write errors and remount the filesystem read-only. Thats all well and good, only when the SAN is fixed I can't figure out how to re-re-mount the filesystem read-write without rebooting. Behold: [root@localhost ~]# multipath -ll mpath0 (36001f93000a310000299000200000000) dm-2 XIOTECH,ISE1400 [size=1.1T][features=1 queue_if_no_path][hwhandler=0][rw] \_ round-robin 0 [prio=2][active] \_ 1:0:0:1 sdb 8:16 [active][ready] \_ 2:0:0:1 sdc 8:32 [active][ready] [root@localhost ~]# mount /dev/mapper/mpath0 /mnt/foo [root@localhost ~]# touch /mnt/foo/blah All good, now I yank the LUN out from under it. [root@localhost ~]# touch /mnt/foo/blah [root@localhost ~]# touch /mnt/foo/blah touch: cannot touch `/mnt/foo/blah': Read-only file system [root@localhost ~]# tail /var/log/messages Mar 18 13:17:33 localhost multipathd: sdb: tur checker reports path is down Mar 18 13:17:34 localhost multipathd: sdc: tur checker reports path is down Mar 18 13:17:35 localhost kernel: Aborting journal on device dm-2. Mar 18 13:17:35 localhost kernel: Buffer I/O error on device dm-2, logical block 1545 Mar 18 13:17:35 localhost kernel: lost page write due to I/O error on dm-2 Mar 18 13:17:36 localhost kernel: ext3_abort called. Mar 18 13:17:36 localhost kernel: EXT3-fs error (device dm-2): ext3_journal_start_sb: Detected aborted journal Mar 18 13:17:36 localhost kernel: Remounting filesystem read-only It only thinks its read-only, in reality its not even there. [root@localhost ~]# multipath -ll sdb: checker msg is "tur checker reports path is down" sdc: checker msg is "tur checker reports path is down" mpath0 (36001f93000a310000299000200000000) dm-2 XIOTECH,ISE1400 [size=1.1T][features=0][hwhandler=0][rw] \_ round-robin 0 [prio=0][enabled] \_ 1:0:0:1 sdb 8:16 [failed][faulty] \_ 2:0:0:1 sdc 8:32 [failed][faulty] [root@localhost ~]# ll /mnt/foo/ ls: reading directory /mnt/foo/: Input/output error total 20 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Mar 18 13:11 bar How it still remembers that 'bar' file being there... mystery, but not important right now. Now I re-present the LUN: [root@localhost ~]# tail /var/log/messages Mar 18 13:23:58 localhost multipathd: sdb: tur checker reports path is up Mar 18 13:23:58 localhost multipathd: 8:16: reinstated Mar 18 13:23:58 localhost multipathd: mpath0: queue_if_no_path enabled Mar 18 13:23:58 localhost multipathd: mpath0: Recovered to normal mode Mar 18 13:23:58 localhost multipathd: mpath0: remaining active paths: 1 Mar 18 13:23:58 localhost multipathd: dm-2: add map (uevent) Mar 18 13:23:58 localhost multipathd: dm-2: devmap already registered Mar 18 13:23:59 localhost multipathd: sdc: tur checker reports path is up Mar 18 13:23:59 localhost multipathd: 8:32: reinstated Mar 18 13:23:59 localhost multipathd: mpath0: remaining active paths: 2 Mar 18 13:23:59 localhost multipathd: dm-2: add map (uevent) Mar 18 13:23:59 localhost multipathd: dm-2: devmap already registered [root@localhost ~]# multipath -ll mpath0 (36001f93000a310000299000200000000) dm-2 XIOTECH,ISE1400 [size=1.1T][features=1 queue_if_no_path][hwhandler=0][rw] \_ round-robin 0 [prio=2][enabled] \_ 1:0:0:1 sdb 8:16 [active][ready] \_ 2:0:0:1 sdc 8:32 [active][ready] Great right? It says [rw] right there. Not so fast: [root@localhost ~]# touch /mnt/foo/blah touch: cannot touch `/mnt/foo/blah': Read-only file system OK, doesn't do it automatically, I'll just give it a little push: [root@localhost ~]# mount -o remount /mnt/foo mount: block device /dev/mapper/mpath0 is write-protected, mounting read-only Noooooooooo. I have tried all sorts of different mount/tune2fs/dmsetup commands and I cannot figure out how to get it to un-flag the block device as write-protected. Rebooting will fix it, but I'd much rather do it on-line. An hour of googling has gotten me nowhere either. Save me ServerFault.

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  • Day 4 - Game Sprites In Action

    - by dapostolov
    Yesterday I drew an image on the screen. Most exciting, but ... I spent more time blogging about it then actual coding. So this next little while I'm going to streamline my game and research and simply post key notes. Quick notes on the last session: The most important thing I wanted to point out were the following methods:           spriteBatch.Begin(SpriteBlendMode.AlphaBlend);           spriteBatch.Draw(sprite, position, Color.White);           spriteBatch.End(); The spriteBatch object is used to draw Textures and a 2D texture is called a Sprite A texture is generally an image, which is called an Asset in XNA The Draw Method in the Game1.cs is looped (until exit) and utilises the spriteBatch object to draw a Scene To begin drawing a Scene you call the Begin Method. To end a Scene you call the End Method. And to place an image on the Scene you call the Draw method. The most simple implementation of the draw method is:           spriteBatch.Draw(sprite, position, Color.White); 1) sprite - the 2D texture you loaded to draw 2) position - the 2d vector, a set of x & y coordinates 3) Color.White - the tint to apply to the texture, in this case, white light = nothing, nada, no tint. Game Sprites In Action! Today, I played around with Draw methods to get comfortable with their "quirks". The following is an example of the above draw method, but with more parameters available for us to use. Let's investigate!             spriteBatch.Draw(sprite, position2, null, Color.White, MathHelper.ToRadians(45.0f), new Vector2(sprite.Width / 2, sprite.Height / 2), 1.0F, SpriteEffects.None, 0.0F); The parameters (in order): 1) sprite  the texture to display 2) position2 the position on the screen / scene this can also be a rectangle 3) null the portion of the image to display within an image null = display full image this is generally used for animation strips / grids (more on this below) 4) Color.White Texture tinting White = no tint 5) MathHelper.ToRadians(45.0f) rotation of the object, in this case 45 degrees rotates from the set plotting point. 6) new Vector(0,0) the plotting point in this case the top left corner the image will rotate from the top left of the texture in the code above, the point is set to the middle of the image. 7) 1.0f Image scaling (1x) 8) SpriteEffects.None you can flip the image horizontally or vertically 9) 0.0f The z index of the image. 0 = closer, 1 behind? And playing around with different combinations I was able to come up with the following whacky display:   Checking off Yesterdays Intention List: learn game development terminology (in progress) - We learned sprite, scene, texture, and asset. how to place and position (rotate) a static image on the screen (completed) - The thing to note was, it's was in radians and I found a cool helper method to convert degrees into radians. Also, the image rotates from it's specified point. how to layer static images on the screen (completed) - I couldn't seem to get the zIndex working, but one things for sure, the order you draw the image in also determines how it is rendered on the screen. understand image scaling (in progress) - I'm not sure I have this fully covered, but for the most part plug a number in the scaling field and the image grows / shrinks accordingly. can we reuse images? (completed) - yes, I loaded one image and plotted the bugger all over the screen. understand how framerate is handled in XNA (in progress) - I hacked together some code to display the framerate each second. A framerate of 60 appears to be the standard. Interesting to note, the GameTime object does provide you with some cool timing capabilities, such as...is the game running slow? Need to investigate this down the road. how to display text , basic shapes, and colors on the screen (in progress) - i got text rendered on the screen, and i understand containing rectangles. However, I didn't display "shapes" & "colors" how to interact with an image (collision of user input?) (todo) how to animate an image and understand basic animation techniques (in progress) - I was able to create a stripe animation of numbers ranging from 1 - 4, each block was 40 x 40 pixles for a total stripe size of 160 x 40. Using the portion (source Rectangle) parameter, i limited this display to each section at varying intervals. It was interesting to note my first implementation animated at rocket speed. I then tried to create a smoother animation by limiting the redraw capacity, which seemed to work. I guess a little more research will have to be put into this for animating characters / scenes. how to detect colliding images or screen edges (todo) - but the rectangle object can detect collisions I believe. how to manipulate the image, lets say colors, stretching (in progress) - I haven't figured out how to modify a specific color to be another color, but the tinting parameter definately could be used. As for stretching, use the rectangle object as the positioning and the image will stretch to fit! how to focus on a segment of an image...like only displaying a frame on a film reel (completed) - as per basic animation techniques what's the best way to manage images (compression, storage, location, prevent artwork theft, etc.) (todo) Tomorrows Intention Tomorrow I am going to take a stab at rendering a game menu and from there I'm going to investigate how I can improve upon the code and techniques. Intention List: Render a menu, fancy or not Show the mouse cursor Hook up click event A basic animation of somesort Investigate image / menu techniques D.

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  • Enable DreamScene in Any Version of Vista or Windows 7

    - by DigitalGeekery
    Windows DreamScene was a utility available for Vista Ultimate that allowed users to set video as desktop wallpaper. It was dropped in Windows 7, but we’ll take a look at how to play DreamScenes in all versions of Windows 7 or Vista. Downloading DreamScenes First, you’ll need to find some DreamScenes to download. We’ve found some nice ones at both DreamScene.org and DeviantArt. You can find those download links at the end of the article. They’ll come as compressed files, so you’ll need to extract them after downloading. Windows 7 DreamScene Activator If you are running Windows 7 you can use Windows 7 DreamScene Activator. This free portable utility enables DreamScene in both 32 & 64 bit versions of Windows 7. Users can then set either MPG or WMV files as desktop wallpaper. Download and extract the Windows 7 DreamScene Activator (link below). Once extracted, you’ll need to run the application as administrator. Right-click on the .exe and select Run as administrator. Click on Enable DreamScene. This will also restart Windows Explorer if it is open. To play your DreamScene, browse for the file in Windows Explorer, right-click the file and select Set as Desktop Background. Enjoy your new Windows 7 DreamScene.   Although it says it is for Windows 7 only, we were able to get it to work with no problems on Vista Home Premium x32 as well.   You can Pause the DreamScene at anytime by right-clicking on the desktop and selecting Pause DreamScene.   When you are ready for a change, click Disable DreamScene and switch back to your previous wallpaper. Using VLC Media Player Users of all versions of Windows 7 & Vista can enable a DreamScene using VLC. Recently, we showed you how to set a video as your desktop wallpaper in VLC.  Since DreamScenes are in MPEG or WMV format, we will use the same tactic to display them as desktop wallpaper. We’ll just need to make a few additional tweaks to the VLC settings. You’ll need to download and install VLC media player if you don’t already have it. You can find the download link below. Next, select Tools > Preferences from the Menu. Select the Video button on the left and then choose DirectX video output from the Output dropdown list. Next, select All under Show Settings at the lower left, then select the Video button on the left pane. Uncheck Show media title on video. This will prevent VLC from constantly showing the title of the video on the screen each time the video loops. Click Save and the restart VLC.   Now we will add the video to our playlist and set it to continuously loop. Select View > Playlist from the Menu. Select the Add file button from the bottom of the Playlist window and select Add file.   Browse for your file and click Open.   Click the Loop button at the bottom so the video plays in a continuous loop.   Now, we’re ready to play the video. After the video starts playing, select Video > DirectX Wallpaper from the Menu, then minimize VLC.   If you’re using Aero Themes, you may get a pop-up warning and Windows will switch automatically to a basic theme.   If looping one video gets to be a little repetitive, you can add multiple videos to your playlist in VLC and loop the entire playlist. Just make sure you toggle the Loop button on the playlist window to Loop All. Now you’ve got a nice DreamScene playing on your desktop. Another cool trick you can do with VLC is take snapshots of favorite movie scenes and set them as backgrounds. When you’re ready to go back to your old wallpaper, maximize VLC, select Video and click DirectX Wallpaper again to turn it off the video background. Occasionally we were left with a black screen and had to manually change our wallpaper back to normal even after turning off the DirectX Wallpaper. Note: Keep in mind that using the VLC method takes up a lot of resources so if you try to run it on older hardware, or say a netbook, you’re not going to get good results. We also tried to use the VLC method in XP, but couldn’t get it to work. If you have leave a comment and let us know. While the DreamScene feature never really caught on in Vista, we find them to be a cool way to pump a little life into your desktop on any version of Vista or Windows 7. Downloads DreamScenes from Dreamscene.org DreamScenes from DeviantArt Download VLC media player Windows 7 DreamScene Activator Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Wait, How do I Turn on DreamScene Again?Enable Run Command on Windows 7 or Vista Start MenuEnable or Disable UAC From the Windows 7 / Vista Command LineUnderstanding Windows Vista Aero Glass RequirementsEnable Mapping to \HostnameC$ Share on Windows 7 or Vista 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 Microsoft Office Web Apps Guide Know if Someone Accessed Your Facebook Account Shop for Music with Windows Media Player 12 Access Free Documentaries at BBC Documentaries Rent Cameras In Bulk At CameraRenter Download Songs From MySpace

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  • Multiple data centers and HTTP traffic: DNS Round Robin is the ONLY way to assure instant fail-over?

    - by vmiazzo
    Hi, Multiple A records pointing to the same domain seem to be used almost exclusively to implement DNS Round Robin as a cheap load balancing technique. The usual warning against DNS RR is that it is not good for high availability. When 1 IP goes down clients will continue to use it for minutes. A load balancer is often suggested as a better choice. Both claims are not completely true: When the traffic is HTTP then, most of the HTML browsers are able to automatically try the next A record if the previous is down, without a new DNS look-up. Read here chapter 3.1 and here. When multiple data centers are involved then, DNS RR is the only option to distribute traffic across them. So, is it true that, with multiple data centers and HTTP traffic, the use of DNS RR is the ONLY way to assure instant fail-over when one data center goes down? Thanks, Valentino Edit: Off course each data center has a local Load Balancer with hot spare. It's OK to sacrifice session affinity for an instant fail-over. AFAIK the only way for a DNS to suggest a data center instead of another is to reply with just the IP (or IPs) associated to that data center. If the data center becomes unreachable then all those IP are also unreachables. This means that, even if smart HTML browsers are able to instantly try another A record , all the attempts will fail until the local cache entry expires and a new DNS lookup is done, fetching the new working IPs (I assume DNS automatically suggests to a new data center when one fail). So, "smart DNS" cannot assure instant fail-over. Conversely a DNS round-robin permits it. When one data center fail, the smart HTML browsers (most of them) instantly try the other cached A records jumping to another (working) data center. So, DNS round-robin doesn't assure session affinity or the lowest RTT but seems to be the only way to assure instant fail-over when the clients are "smart" HTML browsers. Edit 2: Some people suggest TCP Anycast as a definitive solution. In this paper (chapter 6) is explained that Anycast fail-over is related to BGP convergence. For this reason Anycast can employ from 15 minutes to 20 seconds to complete. 20 seconds are possible on networks where the topology was optimized for this. Probably just CDN operators can grant such fast fail-overs. Edit 3:* I did some DNS look-ups and traceroutes (maybe some expert can double check) and: The only CDN using TCP Anycast seems to be CacheFly, other operators like CDN networks and BitGravity use CacheFly. Seems that their edges cannot be used as reverse proxies. Therefore, they cannot be used to grant instant failover. Akamai and LimeLight seems to use geo-aware DNS. But! They return multiple A records. From traceroutes seems that the returned IPs are on the same data center. So, I'm puzzled on how they can offer a 100% SLA when one data center goes down.

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  • Reading train stop display names from a resource bundle

    - by Frank Nimphius
    v\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} o\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} w\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} .shape {behavior:url(#default#VML);} Normal 0 false false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";} In Oracle JDeveloper 11g R1, you set the display name of a train stop of an ADF bounded task flow train model by using the Oracle JDeveloper Structure Window. To do so Double-click onto the bounded task flow configuration file (XML) located in the Application Navigator so the task flow diagram open In the task flow diagram, select the view activity node for which you want to define the display name. In the Structure Window., expand the view activity node and then the train-stop node therein Add the display name element by using the right-click context menu on the train-stop node, selecting Insert inside train-stop > Display Name Edit the Display Name value with the Property Inspector Following the steps outlined above, you can define static display names – like "PF1" for page fragment 1 shown in the image below - for train stops to show at runtime. In the following, I explain how you can change the static display string to a dynamic string that reads the display label from a resource bundle so train stop labels can be internationalized. There are different strategies available for managing message bundles within an Oracle JDeveloper project. In this blog entry, I decided to build and configure the default properties file as indicated by the projects properties. To learn about the suggested file name and location, open the JDeveloper project properties (use a right mouse click on the project node in the Application Navigator and choose Project Properties. Select the Resource Bundle node to see the suggested name and location for the default message bundle. Note that this is the resource bundle that Oracle JDeveloper would automatically create when you assign a text resource to an ADF Faces component in a page. For the train stop display name, we need to create the message bundle manually as there is no context menu help available in Oracle JDeveloper. For this, use a right mouse click on the JDeveloper project and choose New | General | File from the menu and in the opened dialog. Specify the message bundle file name as the name looked up before in the project properties Resource Bundle option. Also, ensure that the file is saved in a directory structure that matches the package structure shown in the Resource Bundle dialog. For example, you would save the properties file in the View Project's src > adf > sample directory if the package structure was "adf.sample" (adf.sample.ViewControllerBundle). Edit the properties file and define key – values pairs for the train stop component. In the sample, such key value pairs are TrainStop1=Train Stop 1 TrainStop2=Train Stop 2 TrainStop3=Train Stop 3 Next, double click the faces-config.xml file and switch the opened editor to the Overview tab. Select the Application category and press the green plus icon next to the Resource Bundle section. Define the resource bundle Base Name as the package and properties file name, for example adf.sample.ViewControllerBundle Finally, define a variable name for the message bundle so the bundle can be accessed from Expression Language. For this blog example, the name is chosen as "messageBundle". <resource-bundle>   <base-name>adf.sample.ViewControllerBundle</base-name>   <var>messageBundle</var> </resource-bundle> Next, select the display-name element in the train stop node (similar to when creating the display name) and use the Property Inspector to change the static display string to an EL expression referencing the message bundle. For example: #{messageBundle.TrainStop1} At runtime, the train stops now show display names read from a message bundle (the properties file).

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  • How to Apply a Business Card Template to a Contact and Customize it in Outlook 2013

    - by Lori Kaufman
    If you want to add a business card template to an existing contact in Outlook, you can do so without having to enter all of the information again. We will also show you how to customize the layout and format of the text on the card. Microsoft provides a couple of business card templates you can use. We will use their Blue Sky template as an example. To open the archive file for the template you downloaded, double-click on the .cab file. NOTE: You can also use a tool like 7-Zip to open the archive. A new Extract tab becomes available under Compressed Folder Tools and the files in the archive are listed. Select the .vcf file in the list of files. This automatically activates the Extract tab. Click Extract To and select a location or select Choose location if the desired location is not on the drop-down menu. Select a folder in which you want to save the .vcf file on the Copy Items dialog box and click Copy. NOTE: Use the Make New Folder button to create a new folder for the location, if desired. Double-click on the .vcf file that you copied out of the .cab archive file. By default, .vcf files are associated with Outlook so, when you double-click on a .vcf file, it automatically opens in a Contact window in Outlook. Change the Full Name to match the existing contact to which you want to apply this template. Delete the other contact info from the template. If you want to add any additional information not in the existing contact, enter it. Click Save & Close to save the contact with the new template. The Duplicate Contact Detected dialog box displays. To update the existing contact, select the Update information of selected Contact option. Click Update. NOTE: If you want to create a new contact from this template, select the Add new contact option. With the Contacts folder open (the People link on the Navigation Bar), click Business Card in the Current View section of the Home tab. You may notice that not all the fields from your contact display on the business card you just updated. Double-click on the contact to update the contact and the business card. On the Contact window, right-click on the image of the business card and select Edit Business Card from the popup menu. The Edit Business Card dialog box displays. You can change the design of the card, including changing he background color or image. The Fields box allows you to specify which fields display on the business card and in what order. Notice, in our example, that Company is listed below the Full Name, but no text displays on the business card below the name. That’s because we did not enter any information for Company in the Contact. We have information in Job Title. So, we select Company and click Remove to remove that field. Now, we want to add Job Title. First, select the field below which you want to add the new field. We select Full Name to add the Job Title below that. Then, we click Add and select Organization | Job Title from the popup menu to insert the Job Title. To make the Job Title white like the name, we select Job Title in the list of Fields and click the Font Color button in the Edit section. On the Color dialog box, select the color you want to use for the text in the selected field. Click OK. You can also make text bold, italic, or underlined. We chose to make the Job Title bold and the Full Name bold and italic. We also need to remove the Business Phone because this contact only has a mobile phone number. So, we add a Mobile Phone from the Phone submenu. Then, we need to remove enough blank lines so the Mobile Phone is visible on the card. We also added a website and email address and removed more blank lines so they are visible. You can also move text to the right side of the card or make it centered on the card. We also changed the color of the bottom three lines to blue. Click OK to accept your changes and close the dialog box. Your new business card design displays on the Contact window. Click Save & Close to save the changes you made to the business card for this contact and close the Contact window. The final design of the business card displays in the Business Card view on the People screen. If you have a signature that contains the business card for the contact you just updated, you will also need to update the signature by removing the business card and adding it again using the Business Card button in the Signature editor. You can also add the updated Business Card to a signature without the image or without the vCard (.vcf) file.     

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  • How do you re-mount an ext3 fs readwrite after it gets mounted readonly from a disk error?

    - by cagenut
    Its a relatively common problem when something goes wrong in a SAN for ext3 to detect the disk write errors and remount the filesystem read-only. Thats all well and good, only when the SAN is fixed I can't figure out how to re-re-mount the filesystem read-write without rebooting. Behold: [root@localhost ~]# multipath -ll mpath0 (36001f93000a310000299000200000000) dm-2 XIOTECH,ISE1400 [size=1.1T][features=1 queue_if_no_path][hwhandler=0][rw] \_ round-robin 0 [prio=2][active] \_ 1:0:0:1 sdb 8:16 [active][ready] \_ 2:0:0:1 sdc 8:32 [active][ready] [root@localhost ~]# mount /dev/mapper/mpath0 /mnt/foo [root@localhost ~]# touch /mnt/foo/blah All good, now I yank the LUN out from under it. [root@localhost ~]# touch /mnt/foo/blah [root@localhost ~]# touch /mnt/foo/blah touch: cannot touch `/mnt/foo/blah': Read-only file system [root@localhost ~]# tail /var/log/messages Mar 18 13:17:33 localhost multipathd: sdb: tur checker reports path is down Mar 18 13:17:34 localhost multipathd: sdc: tur checker reports path is down Mar 18 13:17:35 localhost kernel: Aborting journal on device dm-2. Mar 18 13:17:35 localhost kernel: Buffer I/O error on device dm-2, logical block 1545 Mar 18 13:17:35 localhost kernel: lost page write due to I/O error on dm-2 Mar 18 13:17:36 localhost kernel: ext3_abort called. Mar 18 13:17:36 localhost kernel: EXT3-fs error (device dm-2): ext3_journal_start_sb: Detected aborted journal Mar 18 13:17:36 localhost kernel: Remounting filesystem read-only It only thinks its read-only, in reality its not even there. [root@localhost ~]# multipath -ll sdb: checker msg is "tur checker reports path is down" sdc: checker msg is "tur checker reports path is down" mpath0 (36001f93000a310000299000200000000) dm-2 XIOTECH,ISE1400 [size=1.1T][features=0][hwhandler=0][rw] \_ round-robin 0 [prio=0][enabled] \_ 1:0:0:1 sdb 8:16 [failed][faulty] \_ 2:0:0:1 sdc 8:32 [failed][faulty] [root@localhost ~]# ll /mnt/foo/ ls: reading directory /mnt/foo/: Input/output error total 20 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Mar 18 13:11 bar How it still remembers that 'bar' file being there... mystery, but not important right now. Now I re-present the LUN: [root@localhost ~]# tail /var/log/messages Mar 18 13:23:58 localhost multipathd: sdb: tur checker reports path is up Mar 18 13:23:58 localhost multipathd: 8:16: reinstated Mar 18 13:23:58 localhost multipathd: mpath0: queue_if_no_path enabled Mar 18 13:23:58 localhost multipathd: mpath0: Recovered to normal mode Mar 18 13:23:58 localhost multipathd: mpath0: remaining active paths: 1 Mar 18 13:23:58 localhost multipathd: dm-2: add map (uevent) Mar 18 13:23:58 localhost multipathd: dm-2: devmap already registered Mar 18 13:23:59 localhost multipathd: sdc: tur checker reports path is up Mar 18 13:23:59 localhost multipathd: 8:32: reinstated Mar 18 13:23:59 localhost multipathd: mpath0: remaining active paths: 2 Mar 18 13:23:59 localhost multipathd: dm-2: add map (uevent) Mar 18 13:23:59 localhost multipathd: dm-2: devmap already registered [root@localhost ~]# multipath -ll mpath0 (36001f93000a310000299000200000000) dm-2 XIOTECH,ISE1400 [size=1.1T][features=1 queue_if_no_path][hwhandler=0][rw] \_ round-robin 0 [prio=2][enabled] \_ 1:0:0:1 sdb 8:16 [active][ready] \_ 2:0:0:1 sdc 8:32 [active][ready] Great right? It says [rw] right there. Not so fast: [root@localhost ~]# touch /mnt/foo/blah touch: cannot touch `/mnt/foo/blah': Read-only file system OK, doesn't do it automatically, I'll just give it a little push: [root@localhost ~]# mount -o remount /mnt/foo mount: block device /dev/mapper/mpath0 is write-protected, mounting read-only The hell you are: [root@localhost ~]# mount -o remount,rw /mnt/foo mount: block device /dev/mapper/mpath0 is write-protected, mounting read-only Noooooooooo. I have tried all sorts of different mount/tune2fs/dmsetup commands and I cannot figure out how to get it to un-flag the block device as write-protected. Rebooting will fix it, but I'd much rather do it on-line. An hour of googling has gotten me nowhere either. Save me ServerFault.

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  • Getting Started with ADF Mobile Sample Apps

    - by Denis T
    Getting Started with ADF Mobile Sample Apps   Installation Steps Install JDeveloper 11.1.2.3.0 from Oracle Technology Network After installing JDeveloper, go to Help menu and select "Check For Updates" and find the ADF Mobile extension and install this. It will require you restart JDeveloper For iOS development, be on a Mac and have Xcode installed. (Currently only Xcode 4.4 is officially supported. Xcode 4.5 support is coming soon) For Android development, have the Android SDK installed. In the JDeveloper Tools menu, select "Preferences". In the Preferences dialog, select ADF Mobile. You can expand it to select configure your Platform preferences for things like the location of Xcode and the Android SDK. In your /jdeveloper/jdev/extensions/oracle.adf.mobile/Samples folder you will find a PublicSamples.zip. Unzip this into the Samples folder so you have all the projects ready to go. Open each of the sample application's .JWS file to open the corresponding workspace. Then from the "Application" menu, select "Deploy" and then select the deployment profile for the platform you wish to deploy to. Try deploying to the simulator/emulator on each platform first because it won't require signing. Note: If you wish to deploy to the Android emulator, it must be running before you start the deployment.   Sample Application Details   Recommended Order of Use Application Name Description 1 HelloWorld The "hello world" application for ADF Mobile, which demonstrates the basic structure of the framework. This basic application has a single application feature that is implemented with a local HTML file. Use this application to ascertain that the development environment is set up correctly to compile and deploy an application. See also Section 4.2.2, "What Happens When You Create an ADF Mobile Application." 2 CompGallery This application is meant to be a runtime application and not necessarily to review the code, though that is available. It serves as an introduction to the ADF Mobile AMX UI components by demonstrating all of these components. Using this application, you can change the attributes of these components at runtime and see the effects of those changes in real time without recompiling and redeploying the application after each change. See generally Chapter 8, "Creating ADF Mobile AMX User Interface." 3 LayoutDemo This application demonstrates the user interface layout and shows how to create the various list and button styles that are commonly used in mobile applications. It also demonstrates how to create the action sheet style of a popup component and how to use various chart and gauge components. See Section 8.3, "Creating and Using UI Components" and Section 8.5, "Providing Data Visualization." Note: This application must be opened from the Samples directory or the Default springboard option must be cleared in the Applications page of the adfmf-application.xml overview editor, then selected again. 4 JavaDemo This application demonstrates how to bind the user interface to Java beans. It also demonstrates how to invoke EL bindings from the Java layer using the supplied utility classes. See also Section 8.10, "Using Event Listeners" and Section 9.2, "Understanding EL Support." 5 Navigation This application demonstrates the various navigation techniques in ADF Mobile, including bounded task flows and routers. It also demonstrates the various page transitions. See also Section 7.2, "Creating Task Flows." Note: This application must be opened from the Samples directory or the Default springboard option must be cleared in the Applications page of the adfmf-application.xml overview editor, then selected again. 6 LifecycleEvents This application implements lifecycle event handlers on the ADF Mobile application itself and its embedded application features. This application shows you where to insert code to enable the applications to perform their own logic at certain points in the lifecycle. See also Section 5.6, "About Lifecycle Event Listeners." Note: iOS, the LifecycleEvents sample application logs data to the Console application, located at Applications-Utilities-Console application. 7 DeviceDemo This application shows you how to use the DeviceFeatures data control to expose such device features as geolocation, e-mail, SMS, and contacts, as well as how to query the device for its properties. See also Section 9.5, "Using the DeviceFeatures Data Control." Note: You must also run this application on an actual device because SMS and some of the device properties do not function on an iOS simulator or Android emulator. 8 GestureDemo This application demonstrates how gestures can be implemented and used in ADF Mobile applications. See also Section 8.4, "Enabling Gestures." 9 StockTracker This application demonstrates how data change events use Java to enable data changes to be reflected in the user interface. It also has a variety of layout use cases, gestures and basic mobile patterns. See also Section 9.7, "Data Change Events."

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  • Having an issue with overwriting an element of a file correctly (numeric)

    - by IngeniousHax
    This is an ATM style program, but currently it doesn't do exactly what I need it to do... I need to get the current balance, and when money is transferred from either checking or savings, it should add it to checking and subtract it from savings. which is does, but not correctly... Input example -=[ Funds Transfer ]=- -=[ Savings to Checking ]=- Account Name: nomadic Amount to transfer: $400 New Balance in Checking: $900 // original was 500 New Balance in Savings: $7.7068e+012 // this should now be 1100... Here is my code, it's a lot of code, but there are no errors, so throwing it into an IDE and compiling should be fairly quick for whoever would like to help. mainBankClass.h mainBankClass.h #ifndef MAINBANKCLASS_H #define MAINBANKCLASS_H #include <iostream> #include <fstream> #include <string> using namespace std; class Banking { protected: string checkAcctName, saveAcctName; // Name on the account int acctNumber[13]; // Account number float acctBalance, initSaveDeposit, initCheckDeposit, depAmt; // amount in account, and amount to deposit public: char getBalanceChoice(); // Get name on account for displaying relevant information char newAccountMenu(); // Create a new account and assign it a random account number void invalid(char *); // If an invalid option is chosen char menu(); // Print the main menu for the user. virtual float deposit(){ return 0; } // virtual function for deposits // virtual float withdrawal() = 0; // Virtual function for withdrawals void fatal(char *); // Handles fatal errors. Banking(); }; class Checking : public Banking { public: friend ostream operator<<(ostream &, Checking &); friend istream operator>>(istream &, Checking &); Checking operator <= (const Checking &) const; void newCheckingAccount(); void viewCheckingBalance(); void transferFromSaving(); float deposit() { return (acctBalance += depAmt); } }; class Saving : public Banking { public: friend ostream &operator<<(ostream &, Saving &); friend istream &operator>>(istream &, Saving &); Saving operator <= (const Saving &) const; void newSavingAccount(); void viewSavingBalance(); void transferFromChecking(); float deposit() { return (acctBalance += depAmt); } }; class checkAndSave : public Banking { public: void newCheckAndSave(); void viewBothBalances(); }; #endif bankAccount.cpp #include <iostream> #include <sstream> #include <string> #include <iomanip> #include <fstream> #include <time.h> #include "MainBankClass.h" /*****************************\ | BANKING CONSTRUCTOR | \*****************************/ Banking::Banking() { string acctName; // Name on the account acctNumber[13] = 0; // Account number acctBalance = 0; initCheckDeposit = 0; initSaveDeposit = 0; depAmt = 0; }; /********************************\ | The following code is to print the menu | | and recieve the users choice on what | | they want to do with the ATM | \********************************/ char Banking::menu() { char choice; system("cls"); cout << "\t\t -=[ Main Menu ]=- \n\n" << "\tA) Create New Account\n" << "\tB) View Account Balance\n" << "\tC) Transfer Funds From Checking To Savings\n" << "\tD) Transfer Funds From Savings To Checking\n" << "\tE) Exit\n" << "\n\n\tSelection: "; cin >> choice; cin.ignore(); choice = toupper(choice); while(!isalpha(choice)) { invalid("[!!] Invalid selection.\n[!!] Choose a valid option: "); cin >> choice; cin.ignore(); } return choice; } /*********************\ | Will read in account choic | | and display it for the user | \*********************/ char Banking::getBalanceChoice() { char choice; fstream saveFile("saving.dat", ios::in | ios::beg); system("cls"); cout << "\t\t -=[ View Account Balance ]=-\n\n"; cout << "A) View Checking Account\n" << "B) View Saving Account\n" << "C) View Checking \\ Saving Account\n" << endl; cout << "Choice: "; cin >> choice; choice = toupper(choice); if(!isalpha(choice)) fatal(" [!!] Invalid Choice"); return choice; } /***************************\ | Incase an invalid decision to made | | this throws the error message sent | | to it by the calling area | \***************************/ void Banking::invalid(char *msg) { cout << msg; } /*************************\ | Used if files can not be opened | | and exits with code 251: | | miscommunication with server | \*************************/ void Banking::fatal(char *msg) { cout << msg; exit(1); } /***************************\ | Create an account, either checking | | or savings, or both. | | Must should create a randomly | | generated account number that will | | correspond with each account. | \***************************/ /************************\ NOTE:: WILL BE UPDATED TO CONTAIN A PIN FOR ACCOUNT VERIFICATION *************************/ char Banking::newAccountMenu() { srand(time(NULL)); // Seed random generator with time initialized to NULL char acctChoice; // choice for the account type ofstream checkFile("checking.dat", ios::out | ios::app); // For saving checking accounts ofstream saveFile("saving.dat", ios::out | ios::app); // For saving savings accounts system("cls"); cout << "\t\t-=[ New Account Creation ]=-\n\n" << endl; cout << "A) Checking Account\n" << "B) Savings Account\n" << "C) Checking and Saving Account\n" << endl; cout << "New account type: "; cin >> acctChoice; acctChoice = toupper(acctChoice); cin.clear(); cin.sync(); return acctChoice; } /********************************************************************* ********************************************************************** CHECKING ACCOUNT CODE ********************************************************************** **********************************************************************/ // New Checking Account Creation void Checking::newCheckingAccount() { system("cls"); ofstream checkFile("checking.dat", ios::out | ios::app); // For saving checking accounts cout << "\t\t -=[ New Checking Account ]=- \n" << endl; cout << "Name of the main holder to be on the account: "; getline(cin, checkAcctName); cout << "Initial deposit amount: $"; cin >> initCheckDeposit; if(initCheckDeposit <= 0) { while(initCheckDeposit <= 0) { invalid("[!!] 0 or negative amount entered\nMaybe a typo?\n"); cout << "Deposit Amount: $"; cin >> initCheckDeposit; } } if(!checkFile) fatal("[!!] Fatal Error 251: Miscommunication with server\n"); checkFile << checkAcctName << endl; for(int j = 0; j < 13; j++) { acctNumber[j] = (rand() % 10); // Build a random checking account number checkFile << acctNumber[j]; } checkFile << endl; checkFile << initCheckDeposit << endl; checkFile.close(); } void Checking::viewCheckingBalance() { fstream checkFile("checking.dat", ios::in | ios::beg); string name; int i = 0; double balance = 0; system("cls"); cout << "\t\t -=[ View Checking Account ]=-\n\n" << endl; cout << "Account Name: "; cin.sync(); getline(cin, name); getline(checkFile, checkAcctName); while(name != checkAcctName && !checkFile.fail()) { i++; getline(checkFile, checkAcctName); } if(name == checkAcctName) { system("cls"); cout << "\t\t -=[ Checking Account Balance ]=-\n\n" << endl; cout << "Account Name: " << checkAcctName << "\n"; cout << "Account Number: "; for(int j = 0; j < 13; j++) { char input_number; stringstream converter; checkFile.get(input_number); converter << input_number; converter >> acctNumber[j]; cout << acctNumber[j]; } // if balance a problem, try the below commented out line // checkFile.ignore(numeric_limits<streamsize>::max(), '\n'); cout << endl; checkFile >> acctBalance; cout << "Balance: $" << fixed << showpoint << setprecision(2) << acctBalance << endl; } else fatal("[!!] Invalid Account\n"); checkFile.close(); getchar(); } void Checking::transferFromSaving() // Move funds FROM SAVINGS to CHECKING { system("cls"); string name; long checkPos = 0; long savePos = 0; float savingBalance = 0; string saveAcctName; int i = 0; cin.clear(); fstream saveFile("saving.dat", ios::in | ios::out | ios::beg); fstream checkFile("checking.dat", ios::in | ios::out | ios::beg); cout << "\t\t-=[ Funds Transfer ]=-" << endl; cout << "\t\t-=[ Savings to Checking ]=-" << endl; cout << "Account Name: "; cin.sync(); getline(cin, name); getline(checkFile, checkAcctName); while(name != checkAcctName && !checkFile.fail()) { i++; getline(checkFile, checkAcctName); } getline(saveFile, saveAcctName); while(name != saveAcctName && !saveFile.fail()) { i = 0; i++; getline(saveFile, saveAcctName); } if(name == checkAcctName) { cout << "Amount to transfer: $"; float depAmt = 0; cin >> depAmt; for(int j = 0; j < 13; j++) { char input_number; stringstream converter; checkFile.get(input_number); converter << input_number; converter >> acctNumber[j]; } checkPos = checkFile.tellg(); // if the file is found, get the position of acctBalance and store it in ptrPos checkFile.seekg(checkPos); checkFile >> acctBalance; savePos = saveFile.tellg(); saveFile.seekg(savePos); // sending the cursor in the file to ptrPos + 1 to ignore white space saveFile >> savingBalance; if(savingBalance < depAmt) // if checking account does not have enough funds, exit with NSF code fatal("[!!] Insufficient Funds\n"); acctBalance += depAmt; // can be changed to an overloaded operator savingBalance -= depAmt; // can be changed to an overloaded operator checkFile.seekp(checkPos); // go to position previously set above checkFile << acctBalance; // write new balance to checkFile saveFile.seekp(savePos); // same thing as above comment saveFile << savingBalance; // write new balance to saveFile cout << "New Balance in Checking: $" << acctBalance << endl; // will be removed later cout << "New Balance in Savings: $" << savingBalance << endl; // will be removed later aswell } else fatal("[!!] Linked accounts do not exist.\n"); // if account is not found saveFile.close(); checkFile.close(); } /******************************************************** ******************************************************** SAVING ACCOUNT CODE ********************************************************* *********************************************************/ void Saving::newSavingAccount() { system("cls"); ofstream saveFile("saving.dat", ios::out | ios::app); // For saving savings accounts cout << "\t\t -=[ New Savings Account ]=- \n" << endl; cout << "Name of the main holder to be on account: "; getline(cin, saveAcctName); cout << "Deposit Amount: $"; cin >> initSaveDeposit; if(initSaveDeposit <= 0) { while(initSaveDeposit <= 0) { invalid("[!!]0 or negative value entered.\nPerhaps a typo?\n"); cout << "Deposit amount: $"; cin >> initSaveDeposit; } } if(!saveFile) fatal("[!!] Fatal Error 251: Miscommunication with server\n"); saveFile << saveAcctName << endl; for(int j = 0; j < 13; j++) { acctNumber[j] = (rand() % 10); saveFile << acctNumber[j]; } saveFile << endl; saveFile << initSaveDeposit << endl; saveFile.close(); } void Saving::viewSavingBalance() { string name; int i = 0; fstream saveFile("saving.dat", ios::in | ios::beg); cin.clear(); system("cls"); cout << "\t\t -=[ View Saving Account ]=-\n\n" << endl; cout << "Account Name: "; cin.sync(); getline(cin, name); getline(saveFile, saveAcctName); while(name != saveAcctName && !saveFile.fail()) { i++; getline(saveFile, saveAcctName); } if(name == saveAcctName) { system("cls"); cout << "\t\t -=[ Saving Account Balance ]=-\n\n" << endl; cout << "Account Name: " << saveAcctName << "\n"; cout << "Account Number: "; for(int j = 0; j < 13; j++) { char input_number; stringstream converter; saveFile.get(input_number); converter << input_number; converter >> acctNumber[j]; cout << acctNumber[j]; } // if balance a problem, try the below commented out line // checkFile.ignore(numeric_limits<streamsize>::max(), '\n'); cout << endl; saveFile >> acctBalance; cout << "Balance: $" << fixed << showpoint << setprecision(2) << acctBalance << endl; } else fatal("[!!] Invalid Account\n"); saveFile.close(); getchar(); } // NEED TO WORK ON THIS PORTION TOMORROW AND MONDAY, ADD OVERLOADED OPS FOR ASSIGNMENT!!!!!!! void Saving::transferFromChecking() // This is to take money FROM checking and ADD IT TO SAVING { system("cls"); string name; long savePos = 0; long checkPos = 0; float checkingBalance = 0; string checkAcctName; int i = 0; cin.clear(); fstream saveFile("saving.dat", ios::in | ios::out | ios::beg); fstream checkFile("checking.dat", ios::in | ios::out | ios::beg); cout << "\t\t-=[ Funds Transfer ]=-" << endl; cout << "\t\t-=[ Checking to Savings ]=-" << endl; cout << "Account Name: "; cin.sync(); getline(cin, name); getline(saveFile, saveAcctName); getline(checkFile, checkAcctName); while(name != saveAcctName && name != checkAcctName && !saveFile.fail() && !checkFile.fail()) { i++; getline(saveFile, saveAcctName); getline(checkFile, checkAcctName); } if(name == saveAcctName) { cout << "Amount to transfer: $"; float depAmt = 0; cin >> depAmt; for(int j = 0; j < 13; j++) { char input_number; stringstream converter; saveFile.get(input_number); converter << input_number; converter >> acctNumber[j]; } savePos = saveFile.tellg(); // if the file is found, get the position of acctBalance and store it in ptrPos saveFile.seekg(savePos); saveFile >> acctBalance; checkPos = checkFile.tellg(); checkFile.seekg(checkPos); // if file is found, store current position of the cursor to ptrPos checkFile >> checkingBalance; if(checkingBalance < depAmt) // if checking account does not have enough funds, exit with NSF code fatal("[!!] Insufficient Funds\n"); // Can also place overloaded op here acctBalance += depAmt; // can be changed to an overloaded operator checkingBalance -= depAmt; // can be changed to an overloaded operator saveFile.seekg(savePos); // go to position previously set above saveFile << acctBalance; // write new balance to saveFile checkFile.seekg(checkPos); // same thing as above comment checkFile << checkingBalance; // write new balance to checkFile cout << "New Balance in Savings: $" << acctBalance << endl; // will be removed later cout << "New Balance in Checking: $" << checkingBalance << endl; // will be removed later aswell } else fatal("[!!] Linked accounts do not exist.\n"); // if account is not found saveFile.close(); checkFile.close(); } /******************************************** ******************************************** CHECK AND SAVE CODE ********************************************** **********************************************/ void checkAndSave::newCheckAndSave() { system("cls"); ofstream saveFile("saving.dat", ios::out | ios::app); // For saving savings accounts ofstream checkFile("checking.dat", ios::out | ios::app); // For saving checking accounts cout << "\t -=[ New Checking & Saving Account ]=- \n" << endl; cout << "Name of the main holder to be on account: "; getline(cin, checkAcctName); saveAcctName = checkAcctName; cout << "Checking Deposit Amount: $"; cin >> initCheckDeposit; if(initCheckDeposit <= 0) { while(initCheckDeposit <= 0) { invalid("[!!] 0 or negative amount entered\nMaybe a typo?\n"); cout << "Deposit Amount: $"; cin >> initCheckDeposit; } } cout << "Saving Deposit Amount: $"; cin >> initSaveDeposit; if(initSaveDeposit <= 0) { while(initSaveDeposit <= 0) { invalid("[!!]0 or negative value entered.\nPerhaps a typo?\n"); cout << "Deposit amount: $"; cin >> initSaveDeposit; } } if(!saveFile || !checkFile) fatal("[!!] Fatal Error 251: Miscommunication with server\n"); checkFile << checkAcctName << endl; saveFile << saveAcctName << endl; for(int j = 0; j < 13; j++) { acctNumber[j] = (rand() % 10); checkFile << acctNumber[j]; saveFile << acctNumber[j]; } saveFile << endl; saveFile << initSaveDeposit << endl; checkFile << endl; checkFile << initCheckDeposit << endl; checkFile.close(); saveFile.close(); } void checkAndSave::viewBothBalances() { string name; int i = 0; fstream checkFile("checking.dat", ios::in | ios::beg); fstream saveFile("saving.dat", ios::in | ios::beg); system("cls"); cin.clear(); cout << "\t-=[ Saving & Checking Account Balance ]=-\n\n" << endl; cout << "Account Name: "; cin.sync(); getline(cin, name); getline(checkFile, checkAcctName); saveAcctName = name; /**********************\ | Checking Account portion | | of the checking & savings | | overview | \**********************/ while(name != checkAcctName && !checkFile.fail()) { i++; getline(checkFile, checkAcctName); } system("cls"); if(name != checkAcctName && checkFile.fail()) invalid("\n\n[!!] No Checking Account Found\n"); cout << "\t\t -=[ Checking Account ]=- \n" << endl; cout << "Account Name: " << checkAcctName << "\n"; cout << "Account Number: "; for(int j = 0; j < 13; j++) { char input_number; stringstream converter; checkFile.get(input_number); converter << input_number; converter >> acctNumber[j]; cout << acctNumber[j]; } // if balance a problem, try the below commented out line // checkFile.ignore(numeric_limits<streamsize>::max(), '\n'); cout << endl; checkFile >> acctBalance; cout << "Balance: $" << fixed << showpoint << setprecision(2) << acctBalance << endl; /*********************\ | Saving Account portion | | of the checking & saving | | overview | \*********************/ getline(saveFile, saveAcctName); while(name != saveAcctName && !saveFile.fail()) { i++; getline(saveFile, saveAcctName); } if(name != saveAcctName && saveFile.fail()) invalid("\n\n[!!] No Saving Account Found\n"); if(name == saveAcctName) { cout << "\t\t -=[ Saving Account ]=-\n\n" << endl; cout << "Account Name: " << saveAcctName << "\n"; cout << "Account Number: "; for(int j = 0; j < 13; j++) { char input_number; stringstream converter; saveFile.get(input_number); converter << input_number; converter >> acctNumber[j]; cout << acctNumber[j]; } // if balance a problem, try the below commented out line // checkFile.ignore(numeric_limits<streamsize>::max(), '\n'); cout << endl; saveFile >> acctBalance; cout << "Balance: $" << fixed << showpoint << setprecision(2) << acctBalance << endl; } if(name != saveAcctName && name != checkAcctName && saveFile.fail() && checkFile.fail()) fatal("[!!] No Accounts Have Been Found\n"); checkFile.close(); saveFile.close(); getchar(); } Main.cpp #include <iostream> #include "MainBankClass.h" using namespace std; int main() { Banking bank; Checking check; Saving save; checkAndSave CanS; char choice; choice = bank.menu(); // Call the banking menu switch(choice) { case 'A': choice = bank.newAccountMenu(); switch(choice) { case 'A': check.newCheckingAccount(); break; case 'B': save.newSavingAccount(); break; case 'C': CanS.newCheckAndSave(); break; default: system("cls"); bank.fatal("[!!] Invalid option\n"); break; } break; /***********************************************/ case 'B': choice = bank.getBalanceChoice(); switch(choice) { case 'A': check.viewCheckingBalance(); break; case 'B': save.viewSavingBalance(); break; case 'C': CanS.viewBothBalances(); break; default: bank.fatal("Invalid decision\n"); break; } /*************************************************/ break; case 'C': check.transferFromSaving(); break; case 'D': save.transferFromChecking(); break; case 'E': system("cls"); cout << "\t\t-=[ Disconnecting From System ]=-\n"; cout << "\t\t\t Thank you" << endl; cout << "\t\t Have a nice day!" << endl; exit(1); break; default: system("cls"); bank.invalid("\n\n\n\n\t\t [+] Invalid Selection \n\t\t[+] Disconnecting From System \n\t\t\tGood-bye \n\n\n\n\n\n\n"); exit(1); break; } return 0; }

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  • Transfer all 1&1 web and e-mail services to own Synology NAS using No-IP for DDNS

    - by Neo
    I have a domain x-treem.net. The registrar is DomainDiscover and I have a hosting package with 1&1 which includes web and e-mail. I also have an additional package with 1&1 - Microsoft Exchange which centralises all my e-mails, tasks, contacts, notes, etc. and I connect to it with my PC (Outlook) and my Android phone. I have just purchased a Synology NAS (DS213) and I can see I can run a web server (Web Station), e-mail server (Mail Server) on it amongst other things. I am behind a dynamic IP. So, I'm looking to get some clarification on what I must do to consolidate my services and make use of my NAS to do as much as possible and save third-party hosting costs. My registrar specifies nameservers as NS45.1AND1.CO.UK and NS46.1AND1.CO.UK. The MX record is mx00.1and1.co.uk and mx01.1and1.co.uk. I'm aware of the concept of DDNS and I am looking at using No-IP.com for this. This is where I need clarification. If I registered with the No-IP paid service and pointed my registrar to No-IP's nameservers, and used the DDNS support on my NAS (which supports No-IP), then any requests to x-treem.net would go to my NAS. Is that correct? Therefore, web requests would hit the web server on my NAS, and e-mails would hit the mail server on my NAS? So, given all of the above, I can then drop 1&1 completely and use my NAS for everything. I use MySQL, phpMyAdmin, phpBB on 1&1 all of which the Synology NAS appears to support in its available packages. As for Microsoft Exchange, Synology offers Zafara which appears to be a drop-in replacement for Exchange. Am I on the right track here, or is there anything I am missing?

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  • How do you import CA certificates onto an Android phone?

    - by f50driver
    Hi all, I want to connect to my University's wireless using my Nexus One. When I go to "Add Wi-Fi network" in Wireless Settings I fill in the Network SSID and select 802.1x Enterprise for the security and fill everything out. The problem is that our university's wireless uses Thawte Premium Server CA certificate for certification. When I click the drop down list for CA certificate I get nothing in the list (just N/A) Now I have the certificate (Thawte Premium Server CA.pem) and have moved it to my SD card, but it doesn't look like Android automatically detects it. Where should I put the certificate so that the Android wireless manager recognizes it. In other words, how can I import a CA certificate so that Android recognizes that it is on the phone and displays it in the CA Certificate drop down list. Thanks for any help, Tomek P.S. My phone is not rooted EDIT: After doing some research it looks like you are able to install certificates by going to your phone's settings Location & Security Install from SD card Unfortunately it looks like the only accepted file extension is .p12. It does not look like there is a way to import .cer or .pem files (which are the only two files that come with the Thawte certificates) at this moment. It does look like you can use a converter to convert your .cer or .pem files to .p12, however a key file is needed. https://www.sslshopper.com/ssl-converter.html I do not know where to get this key file for the Thawte certificates.

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