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• SQL Clustering on Hyper V - is a cluster within a cluster a benefit.

  - by Chris W

  This is a re-hash of a question I asked a while back - after a consultant has come in firing ideas in to other teams in the department the whole issue has been raised again hence I'm looking for more detailed answers. We're intending to set-up a multi-instance SQL Cluster across a number of physical blades which will run a variety of different systems across each SQL instance. In general use there will be one virtual SQL instance running on each VM host. Again, in general operation each VM host will run on a dedicated underlying blade. The set-up should give us lots of flexibility for maintenance of any individual VM or underlying blade with all the SQL instances able to fail over as required. My original plan had been to do the following: Install 2008 R2 on each blade Add Hyper V to each blade Install a 2008 R2 VM to each blade Within the VMs - create a failover cluster and then install SQL Server clustering. The consultant has suggested that we instead do the following: Install 2008 R2 on each blade Add Hyper V to each blade Install a 2008 R2 VM to each blade Create a cluster on the HOST machines which will host all the VMs. Within the VMs - create a failover cluster and then install SQL Server clustering. The big difference is the addition of step 4 whereby we cluster all of the guest VMs as well. The argument is that it improves maintenance further since we have no ties at all between the SQL cluster and physical hardware. We can in theory live migrate the guest VMs around the hosts without affecting the SQL cluster at all so we for routine maintenance physical blades we move the SQL cluster around without interruption and without needing to failover. It sounds like a nice idea but I've not come across anything on the internet where people say they've done this and it works OK. Can I actually do the live migrations of the guests without the SQL Cluster hosted within them getting upset? Does anyone have any experience of this set up, good or bad? Are there some pros and cons that I've not considered? I appreciate that mirroring is also a valuable option to consider - in this case we're favouring clustering since it will do the whole of each instance and we have a good number of databases. Some DBs are for lumbering 3rd party systems that may not even work kindly with mirroring (and my understanding of clustering is that fail overs are completely transparent to the clients). Thanks.

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• How to enjoy DVD on Apple iPad

  - by user44251

  I believe many people spent a sleepless night yesterday waiting for the new Apple Tablet to come, just a few days ago or perhaps longer I noticed fierce debate about it, its name, size, capacity, processor, main features, price etc. And now, they can take a long breath with the new Apple Tablet named iPad officially released on 28, January, 2010 (Beijing Time). But I know a new battle just begins. iPad, sounds somewhat like iPod and it really shares some similarities in terms of shape like smart, light and portable. It has a 9.7-inch, LED-backlit, IPS display with a remarkable precise Multi-Touch screen. And yet, at just 1.5 lbs and 0.5 inches thin, it's easy to carry and use everywhere. It can greatly facilitates your experience with the web, emails, photos and videos. Right now, it can run almost 140.000 of the apps on the Apple store. It can even run the apps you have downloaded for your iPhone or iPod touch. But so far, I haven't seen any possibility that it can work with DVD, probability there is no built-in DVD-ROM or DVD player which can play DVD directly. As Apple iPad states, the video formats supported are MPEG-4 (MP4, M4V), H.264, MOV etc and audio formats accepted are AAC, Proteceted AAC, MP3, AIFF and WAV etc, those are formats that are commonly used with iMac. This could really a hard nut to crack if you want to watch your favourite DVD on this magic Apple iPad. But don't worry, there is still way out, you just need a few steps for ripping and importing DVD movies to Apple iPad with a simple application DVD to iPad converter What's on DVD to iPad Converter for Mac DVD to iPad converter for Mac is a powerful and professional application designed for the newly released Apple iPad which can rip, convert your DVD contents to Apple iPad compatible MPEG-4 (MP4, M4V), H.264, MOV etc, and other popular file formats like AVI, WMV, MPG, MKV, VOB, 3GP, FLV etc can also be converted so that you can put on your portable devices like iPod, iPhone, iRiver, BlackBerry etc. Besides, it can also extract audio from DVD videos and save as MP3, AIFF, AAC, WAV etc. Mac DVD to iPad converter has also been enhanced that can run both on PowerPC and Intel (Snow Leopard included). It can offer versatile editing features which allows you to make your own DVD videos. For example, you can cut your DVD to whatever length you like by Trim, crop off unwanted parts from DVD clips by Crop, add special effect like Gray, Emboss and Old film to make your videos more artistic. Besides, its built-in merging feature and batch mode allows you to join several DVD clips into a single one and do batch conversion. And more features can be expected if you afford a few minutes to try.

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• PHP hits 100% CPU and eats RAM at the same time Monday to Friday

  - by Daniel Samuels

  We run a learning platform for primary schools here in the UK and it's all been running extremely well. However at around 4PM Monday to Friday we see the same issue arise -- 1-2 PHP threads will spike to 100% CPU and gradually start eating up RAM until the server(s) fall over. 98%+ of our requests are HTTPS, these come into our Layer 7 load balancer which then decrypts the SSL data, adds the X-HTTP-Forwarded-For header and forwards the data onto an application server (we have 2 of those at the moment) on port 80. Our application servers have Varnish on port 80 which takes in the request from the load balancer and passes the request through to Nginx on port 81. Nginx then works out which 'vhost' it needs to use and passes any PHP processing through to PHP-CGI which is listening on a socket (managed through spawn-fcgi). There's an instance of Memcached running too, MySQL runs on a separate server / slave setup. Throughout the day the load will typically go no higher than 0.8 on either of the application servers, however at around 4PM our problem arises. I've managed to run strace on a few of the actual threads when they cause the problem and I always see the same thing: stat("/usr/share/zoneinfo/Europe/London", {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644,st_size=3661, ...}) = 0 stat("/usr/share/zoneinfo/Europe/London", {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644,st_size=3661, ...}) = 0 This is repeated infinitely and never stops until you SEGKILL the process or oomkiller kills it. There are no cron jobs scheduled to run at that time and I don't have any way of seeing exactly what Nginx request is associated with the PHP process which is running. We are running PHP 5.3.14 which we upgraded to from 5.3.8 last week to rule out the older version being the problem. This issue has been going on a few months now and we have no idea what is causing it. We deploy our software very frequently, so it's difficult to track down a specific release which may have started the problem - especially as we do not know the date of the first occurrence of this issue. Varnish is version 3.0.1, Nginx is 1.0.6 (which I understand is about a year old now), our servers are running CentOS release 5.7 (Final) they have Intel i3 540s at 3.07Ghz and 8GB of RAM. There's a discussion on the Debian mailing list about something very similar, you can find that here. Has anyone seen anything like this in the past, does anyone have any ideas or suggestions? Are there a way of linking an Nginx request directly to a PHP thread? Is there a better way of seeing what the PHP process is doing? (I've seen GDB mentioned, though I'll have to recompile PHP) Thanks!

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• Random Computer Crashes

  - by Josh W.

  Ok, here's a wierd one for you all. Occasionally my PC here at work will crash in a very peculiar way. My dual monitors will suddenly go blank as if there is no longer a video signal, the USB mouse light will go dark and mouse stays unresponsive, the keyboard lights will not change status when the appropriate keys are pressed (Num/Caps/Scoll Lock). The CD Tray WILL open and close. But the computer will not respond to a ping request. For all intents & purposes it's as if the computer is off, except it wasn't intentional by me. The power light and internal fans are still on and I've now lost any unsaved work. Now here's where it gets wierd. This PC is part of a batch of PC's we got from a local vendor who does our initial system builds. Mine, and 6 other co-workers PCs all have the same issue. Originally we thought it was a bad combination of hardware, but through trial and error the only thing we haven't eliminated are the OS, Mobo & CPU. The problem was so bad for some of them that they ended up going back to their 5 year old dinosaurs in order to get some work done, for me the problem isn't as bad, maybe once every other day or so, but still enough to bite me in the ass if I've forgotten my ritualistic pressing of CTRL-S every 1-5 minutes. In this case we've tried two different video cards, two different power supplies, two different memory configurations, running on a UPS/not on UPS, updating/rolling back video drivers, three different bios revisions. The only things we haven't swapped are the mobo & cpu, mainly because a new mobo means a new Hardware Abstraction Layer, ie re-install of windows and there's alot of other software on this PC that takes forever to reload by hand. There was a base image that our systems team created with all the drivers installed and the basic setup of software our company uses, but they then must customize the setup for us programmers so it takes a while to get a new configuration up and going. I'm a programmer by day and am usually pretty good at diagnosing computer problems whether through trial and error or not. We've pretty much exhausted all the ideas we can think of here, short of a new mobo/cpu. Was hoping someone out there might have anything else we can try.. Relevant Parts: OS: XP Pro 32-bit Motherboard: Intel DG41RQ CPU: Intel Core-2 Quad Q9400 @ 2.66GHz Current BIOS Version/Date Intel Corp. RQG4110H.86A.0014.2010.0306.1151, 3/6/2010 Dual LCD's, Viewsonic VG930m & Samsung SyncMaster 910v (other people have different models, but listed in case there's some very wierd problem with the signals being sent/received) PS/2 Keyboard USB Microsoft Intellimouse BIOS Versions Tried: R 0013 12/23/2009 R 0014 3/6/2010 Video cards Tried GeForce 8400 GS Radeon HD 4350 - ASUS EAH4350 Two Different Power Supplies a 380W & 550W Ram Configurations 2GB - 1 x 2GB 4GB - 2 x 2GB

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• How can I reverse mouse movement (X & Y axis) system-wide? (Win 7 x64)

  - by Scivitri

  Short Version I'm looking for a way to reverse the X and Y mouse axis movements. The computer is running Windows 7, x64 and Logitech SetPoint 6.32. I would like a system-level, permanent fix; such as a mouse driver modification or a registry tweak. Does anyone know of a solid way of implementing this, or how to find the registry values to change this? I'll settle quite happily for how to enable the orientation feature in SetPoint 6.32 for mice as well as trackballs. Long Version People seem never to understand why I would want this, and I commonly hear "just use the mouse right-side up!" advice. Dyslexia is not something which can be cured by "just reading things right." While I appreciate the attempts to help, I'm hoping some background may help people understand. I have a user with an unusual form of dyslexia, for whom mouse movements are backward. If she wants to move her cursor left, she will move the mouse right. If she wants the cursor to move up, she'll move the mouse down. She used to hold her mouse upside-down, which makes sophisticated clicking difficult, is terrible for ergonomics, and makes multi-button mice completely useless. In olden times, mouse drivers included an orientation feature (typically a hot-air balloon you dragged upward to set the mouse movement orientation) which could be used to set the relationship between mouse movement and cursor movement. Several years ago, mouse drivers were "improved" and this feature has since been limited to trackballs. After losing the orientation feature she went back to upside-down mousing for a bit, until finding UberOptions, a tweak for Logitech SetPoint, which would enable all features for all pointing devices. This included the orientation feature. And there was much rejoicing. Now her mouse has died, and current Logitech mice require a newer version of SetPoint for which UberOptions has not been updated. We've also seen MAF-Mouse (the developer indicated the version for 64-bit Windows does not support USB mice, yet) and Sakasa (while it works, commentary on the web indicate it tends to break randomly and often. It's also just a running program, so not system-wide.). I have seen some very sophisticated registry hacks. For example, I used to use a hack which would change the codes created by the F1-F12 keys when the F-Lock key was invented and defaulted to screwing my keyboard up. I'm hoping there's a way to flip X and Y in the registry; or some other, similar, system-level tweak out there. Another solution could be re-enabling the orientation feature for mice, as well as trackballs. It's very frustrating that input device drivers include the functionality we desperately need for an accessibilty concern, but it's been disabled in the name of making the drivers more idiot-proof.

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• Why Photoshop CS5's photomerge's result immediately disappear?

  - by koiyu

  I have a bunch of JPG-files which I want to stitch together with Photoshop's Photomerge function. I choose File → Automate → Photomerge... and browse for the files. Photoshop opens the files and starts analyzing. I see the process bar filling and different phases are mentioned on the process bar. Nothing weird there. When the merging is done (and if I don't blink my eyes), I can see layers-palette is populated with the chosen files and, by quickly judging from the layer thumbnails, they're properly aligned. Sometimes the image window itself can be seen, but not always. Problem is that the layers and the image disappear in a flash. There is no error message. Everything is like prior starting the photomerge. No file has been changed. I could continue to use Photoshop normally. This is what I've tried so far: Loaded folder which has 38 JPG images, 4272 x 2848 and ˜ 5 megabytes per file Loaded the same files, but chose Use Files instead of Use Folder in the photomerge's window Loaded 19 JPG images, 4272 x 2848 and ˜ 5 megabytes per file Loaded 10 JPG images, ⇑ see above Loaded 5 JPG images, see above Loaded 3 JPG images, see above Scaled the images to 2256 x 1504 and ˜< 1 megabytes per file Loaded in a set of 38, 19, 10, 5, 3 Following steps are tested with these smaller files and with a set of 5 images Read Adobe's forums and reduced the amount of RAM Photoshop uses gradually from ˜ 80 % to 50 % (though I didn't understand the logic behind this) Would've reduced cache tile size to 128K, but it was set so already Disabled OpenGL Scaled the images to 800 x 533 and ˜ 100 kilobytes per file, loaded a set of 5 Read more unanswered threads around the internet In between each test I closed and reopened Photoshop. This is the first time I've even tried using photomerge. Am I doing something wrong? How can I locate what is the problem? How do I fix this? Photoshop is 64 bit Extended CS5 version. I'm on a mid-2010 quad-core (i5) iMac with up-to-date Mac OS X 10.6.6. Edit: Weird. First loading the images into one file via File → Scripts → Load Files into Stack… and then using Edit → Auto-Align Layers…, which, effectively, is the same as photomerge (even the dialog looks kind of the same), works! Even with the original JPGs without any issues. This doesn't fix photomerge, though.

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• how to setup kismet.conf on Ubuntu

  - by Registered User

  I installed Kismet on my Ubuntu 10.04 machine as apt-get install kismet every thing seems to work fine. but when I launch it I see following error kismet Launching kismet_server: //usr/bin/kismet_server Suid priv-dropping disabled. This may not be secure. No specific sources given to be enabled, all will be enabled. Non-RFMon VAPs will be destroyed on multi-vap interfaces (ie, madwifi-ng) Enabling channel hopping. Enabling channel splitting. NOTICE: Disabling channel hopping, no enabled sources are able to change channel. Source 0 (addme): Opening none source interface none... FATAL: Please configure at least one packet source. Kismet will not function if no packet sources are defined in kismet.conf or on the command line. Please read the README for more information about configuring Kismet. Kismet exiting. Done. I followed this guide http://www.ubuntugeek.com/kismet-an-802-11-wireless-network-detector-sniffer-and-intrusion-detection-system.html#more-1776 how ever in kismet.conf I am not clear with following line source=none,none,addme as to what should I change this to. lspci -vnn shows 0c:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Broadcom Corporation BCM4312 802.11b/g [14e4:4315] (rev 01) Subsystem: Dell Device [1028:000c] Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 17 Memory at f69fc000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K] Capabilities: [40] Power Management version 3 Capabilities: [58] Vendor Specific Information <?> Capabilities: [e8] Message Signalled Interrupts: Mask- 64bit+ Queue=0/0 Enable- Capabilities: [d0] Express Endpoint, MSI 00 Capabilities: [100] Advanced Error Reporting <?> Capabilities: [13c] Virtual Channel <?> Capabilities: [160] Device Serial Number Capabilities: [16c] Power Budgeting <?> Kernel driver in use: wl Kernel modules: wl, ssb and iwconfig shows lo no wireless extensions. eth0 no wireless extensions. eth1 IEEE 802.11bg ESSID:"WIKUCD" Mode:Managed Frequency:2.462 GHz Access Point: <00:43:92:21:H5:09> Bit Rate=11 Mb/s Tx-Power:24 dBm Retry min limit:7 RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off Encryption key:off Power Managementmode:All packets received Link Quality=1/5 Signal level=-81 dBm Noise level=-90 dBm Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0 Tx excessive retries:169 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0 So what should I be putting in place of source=none,none,addme with output I mentioned above ?

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• Triple (3) Monitors under Linux

  - by widgisoft

  I have a 3 monitor setup (each 1680x1050) via an Nvidia NVS440 (2 GPUs, 2 outputs per GPU totalling 4 outputs); this works fine under Windows XP,7 but caused considerable headaches under Linux (Ubuntu 9.04). I had previously used an XFX 9600GT and the onboard XFX 9300GS to produce the same result but the card was noisy and power hungry and I was hoping that there was some magical switch in the NVS4400 that got rid of this annoying problem - turns out the NVS440 is just 2 cards on one physical PCB :-p (I searched the net high and low for people using this card under Linux but found nothing, if anything the card uses less power and is fan less so I was to benefit from it either way) Anyway, using either set up there were 5 solutions available: Have 3 separate X instances, all un joined Have 3 separate X instances, adjoined by Xinerama Have 2 separate X instances - One using twin-view, both adjoined by Xinerama Have 2 separate X instances - One using twin-view but no Xinerama Have a single Twin-view setup and leave the 3rd screen unplugged :-p The 4rd option, using 2 separate X instances and twinview (but no xinerama) was the best balance in terms of performance and usability but caused 2 really annoying issues You couldn't control (without altering the shortcuts) which screen an application opened onto - and once it was opened you couldn't move it to another screen without opening up terminal and forcing it to move Nvidia's overriding or falsifying of Xinerama breaks and the 2 screens joined by Twin view behave like a single huge screen causing popups to open in the middle of both screens and maximising of windows stretches to the width of the first 2 screens Firefox can only run one instance as the same user so having multiple firefox windows requires at least 2 users The second option "feels" like the right option, but OpenGL is basically disabled and playing any sort of game or even running anything graphical causes a huge performance drop and instability - even trying to run a basic emulator for gba or gens just causes the system to fall over. It works just enough to stare at your desktop and do nothing but as soon as you start doing some work - opening windows, dragging things around - running multiple copies of firefox it just really feels slow. The last open, only going dual screen works perfectly and everything performs as required, full GPU acceleration - two logical screen spaces - perfect, just make it work across GPUs like windows! :-p Anyway, I know RandR was supposed to pick up the slack when it would introduced GPU objects of sorts to allow multiple GPUs to be stitched together to create one huge desktop at a much deeper layer than Xinerama. I was wondering if this has now been fixed (I noticed X server 1.7 is out) and whether anyone has got it running successfully? Again, my requirements are: One huge desktop to drag any window across Maximising of windows to each screen (as XP does) Running fullscreen apps on the primary screen and disabling the mouse from moving onto the others or on all 3 stretched Finally as a side note; I am aware of the Matrox triple (and dual) head splitter but even the price they go for on eBay is more than I can afford atm, my argument: I shouldn't have to buy extra hardware to get something to work on Linux when it's something that's existed in the windows world for a long time (can you tell I don't get on with X :-p); If I had the cash I'd have bought the latest version of this box already (the new version finally supports large resolutions as the displays I have 1680x1050 each).

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• How do you backup 40+ Centos5.5 servers?

  - by John Little

  We are embarrassed to ask this question. Apologies for our lack of UNIX expertise. We have inherited 40+ centos 5.5 servers, and don't know how to back them up. We need low level clone type images so that we could restore the servers from scratch if we had to replace the HDs etc. We have used the "dd" command, but we assume this only works if you want to back up one local disk to another, not 40 servers to one server with an external USB HD attached. All 40 servers have a pair of mirrored disks (dont know if its HW or SW raid). Most only have 100MB used. SErvers are running apache, zend, tomcat, mysql etc. Ideally we dont want to have to shut them down to backup (but could). We assume that standard unix commands like tar, cpio, rsync, scp etc. are of no use as they only copy files, not partitions, all attributes, groups etc. i.e. do not produce a result which can simply be re-imaged to a new HD to get the serer back from dead. We have a large SAN, a spare windows box and spare unix boxes, but these are only visible to one layer in the network. We have an unused Dell DL2000 monster tape unit, but no sw or documentation for it. WE have a copy of symantec backup exec, but we have no budget for unix client licenses. (The company has negative amounts of money). We need to be able to initiate the backup remotely, as we can only access the servers in person in an emergency (i.e. to restore) Googling returns some applications to do this, e.g. clonezilla - looks difficult to install and invasive. Mondo, only seems to support backup if you are local to the machine. Amanda might be an option, but looks like days/weeks of work to learn and setup? Is there anything built into Centos, or do we have to go the route of installing, learning and configuring a set of backup softwares? Any ideas? This must be a pretty standard problem which goggling doesnt give an obvious answer.

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• Why would a process monitoring script use exit 1; on finding no problems?

  - by user568458

  General question: On a Linux (Centos) server, if a process monitoring script run by cron is set to close with exit 1; rather than exit 0; on finding that everything is okay and that no action is needed, is that a mistake? Or are there legitimate reasons for calling exit 1; instead of exit 0; on the "Everything's fine, no action needed" condition? exit 0; on finding no problems seems to me to be more appropriate. But maybe there's something I'm not aware of. For example, maybe there's something specific to Cron? Or maybe there's a convention in process monitoring scripts that 'failure' means 'this script failed to need to fix a problem' (rather than what I would expect which is that exit 1; would mean 'the process being monitored has failed'?) My specific case: I'm looking at a process monitoring script written by my web hosting company. By process monitoring script, I mean a script executed by Cron on a regular basis that checks if an important system process is running, and if it isn't running, takes actions such as mailing an administrator or restarting the process. Here's the (generalised) structure of their script, for a service running on port 8080 (in this case, Apache Tomcat): SERVICE=$(/usr/sbin/lsof -i tcp:8080 | wc -l); if [ $SERVICE != 0 ]; then exit 1; else #take action fi Seems simple enough even for someone with limited knowledge like me, except the exit 1; part seems odd. As I understand it, exit 0; closes a program and signifies to the parent that executed the program that everything is fine, exit n; where n0 and n<127 signifies that there has been some kind of error or problem. Here, their script seems to go against that rule - it calls exit 1; in the condition where everything is fine, and doesn't exit after taking remedial action in the problem condition. To me, this looks like a mistake - but my experience in this area is limited. Are there cases where calling exit 1; in the "Everything's fine, no action needed" condition is more appropriate than calling exit 0;? Or is it a mistake? Wider context is pretty simple. It's a Centos VPS, running Plesk. The script is being called by Cron via Plesk's "Scheduled tasks" Cron manager. There's no custom layer between Cron and this script that would respond in an unusual way to the exit call. It's a fairly average, almost out-of-the box Plesk-managed Centos VPS (in so far as there is such a thing). The process being monitored by this script is Apache Tomcat.

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• Which hardware to VM ratio for Build-Server virtualization?

  - by Martin

  Let's start with saying that I'm a total noob wrt. to server virtualization. That is, I use VMs often during development, but they're simple desktop machine things for me. Now to my problem: We have two (physical) build servers, one master, one slave running Jenkins to do daily tasks and build (Visual C++ Builds) our release packages for our software. As such these machines are critical to our company, because we do lot's releases and without a controlled environment to create them, we can't ship fixes. (And currently there's no proper backup of these machines in place, because they do not hold any data as such - it just would be a major pain to setup them again should they go bust. (But setting up backup that I'd know would work in case of HW failure would even be more pain, so we have skipped that until now.)) Therefore (and for scaling purposes) we would like to go virtual with these machines. Outsourcing to the cloud is not an option, not at all, so we'll have to use on-premises hardware and VM hosts. Each Build-Server (master or slave) is a fully configured (installs, licenses, shares in case of the master, ...) Windows Server box. I would now ideally like to just convert the (two) existing physical nodes to VM images and run them. Later add more VM slave instances as clones of the existing ones. And here begin my questions: Should I go for one VM per one hardware-box or should I go for something where a single hardware runs multiple VMs? That would mean a single point of failure hardware wise and doesn't seem like a good idea ... or?? Since we're doing C++ compilation with Visual Studio, I assume that during a build the hardware (processor cores + disk) will be fully utilized, so going with more than one build-node per hardware doesn't seem to make much sense?? Wrt. to hardware options, does it make any difference which VM software we use (VMWare, MS, Virtualbox, ... ?) (We're using Windows exclusively for our builds.) Regarding budget: We have a normal small company (20 developers) budget for this. ;-) That is, if it's going to cost a few k$ it's going to cost. If it's free - the better. I strongly prefer solutions where there's no multi-k$ maintenance costs per year.

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

  - by Mario De Schaepmeester

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

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• How to prevent dual booted OSes from damaging each other?

  - by user1252434

  For better compatibility and performance in games I'm thinking about installing Windows additionally to Linux. I have security concerns about this, though. Note: "Windows" in the remaining text includes not only the OS but also any software running on it. Regardless of whether it comes included or is additionally installed, whether it is started intentionally or unintentionally (virus, malware). Is there an easy way to achieve the following requirements: Windows MUST NOT be able to kill my linux partition or my data disk neither single files (virus infection) nor overwriting the whole disk Windows MUST NOT be able to read data disk (- extra protection against spyware) Linux may or may not have access to the windows partition both Linux and Windows should have full access to the graphics card this rules out desktop VM solutions for gaming I want the manufacturer's windows graphics card driver Regarding Windows to be unable to destroy my linux install: this is not just the usual paranoia, that has happened to me in the past. So I don't accept "no ext4 driver" as an argument. Once bitten, twice shy. And even if destruction targeted at specific (linux) files is nearly impossible, there should be no way to shred the whole partition. I may accept the risk of malware breaking out of a barrier (e.g. VM) around the whole windows box, though. Currently I have a system disk (SSD) and a data disk (HDD), both SATA. I expect I have to add another disk. If i don't: even better. My CPU is a Intel Core i5, with VT-x and VT-d available, though untested. Ideas I've had so far: deactivate or hide other HDs until reboot at low level possible? can the boot loader (grub) do this for me? tiny VM layer: load windows in a VM that provides access to almost all hardware, except the HDs any ready made software solution for this? Preferably free. as I said: the main problem seems to be to provide full access to the graphics card hardware switch to cut power to disks commercial products expensive and lots of warnings against cheap home built solutions preferably all three hard disks with one switch (one push) mobile racks - won't wear of daily swapping be a problem?

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• How to find the process(es) which are hogging the machine

  - by Aaron Digulla

  Scenario: All of a sudden, my computer feels sluggish. Mouse moves but windows take ages to open, etc. uptime says the load is 7.69 and raising. What is the fastest way to find out which process(es) are the cause of the load? Now, "top" and similar tools isn't the answer because they either show CPU or memory usage but not both at the same time. What I need is the single command which I might be able to type as it happens - something that will figure out any of System is trying to swap 8GB of RAM to disk because process X ... or process X seeks all over the disk or process X uses 400% CPU" So what I'm looking for is iostat, htop/atop and similar tools run into one with an output like this: 1235 cp - Disk trashing 87 chrome - Uses 2&nbsp;GB of RAM 137 nfs_bench - Uses 95% of the network bandwidth I don't want a tool that gives me some numbers which I can analyze but a tool that tells me exactly which process causes the current load. Assume that the user in front of the keyboard barely knows how to write "process", but the user is quickly overwhelmed when it comes to "resident size", "virtual memory" or "process life cycle". My argument goes like this: A user notices a problem. There can be thousands of reasons ... well, almost :-) The user wants to know the source of the problem. The current solutions give me lots of numbers, and I need to know what these numbers mean. What I'm looking for is a meta tool. 99% of the data is irrelevant to the problem. So what the tool should do is look for processes which hog some resource and list only those along with "this process needs a lot of CPU, this produces many IRQs, this process allocates a lot of RAM (and it's still growing)". This will be a relatively short list. It will be much more simple for someone new to this to locate the culprit from this list than from the output of, say, htop which gives me about 5000 numbers but requires me to fold multi-threaded processes myself (I have 50 lines which say VIRT 2750M but only 16 GB of RAM - the machine ought to swap itself to death but of course, this is a misinterpretation of the data that can happen quickly).

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• Local dns for testing websites using mobile devices

  - by Morpheu5

  Hi. I have no idea where to start from so sorry in advance if this topic has already been discussed. I usually develop web sites using my laptop as a development server, and recently I needed to test a web site using various mobile devices that can connect via wifi. Having no real AP, I set up a ad-hoc network using my laptop's wireless card and the devices can correctly browse the Internet and access the laptop's web server. The setup is as follows: subnet: 192.168.1.0/24 gateway to the Internet (wired adsl router/modem): 192.168.1.1 laptop: 192.168.1.64 (eth0, wired if connected to the gateway) and 192.168.1.32 (eth1, wifi if somewhat bridged to eth0) mobile devices (same for all, I only use one of them at any time for simplicity): 192.168.1.11 with default gw 192.168.1.1 Now, if I open either 192.168.1.32 or 192.168.1.64 from the mobile devices, I correctly get the default host of my Apache configuration. However I usually work with virtual hosts for many practical reasons, one of which being Drupal's peculiar implementation of multi-sites. For those who don't know how this works, Drupal takes the request's hostname and searches into its sites/ subdirectories for an appropriate configuration file. So, for example, suppose I request www.example.com, then Drupal would search for a config file in the following directories: sites/www.example.com/ sites/example.com/ sites/com/ sites/default/ So I decided to adopt the following style of virtual hosts: if the website I'm working on will be accessible using www.example.com I set up a sites/www.example.com/ directory and create a virtual host for local.www.example.com so Drupal have no trouble finding it. I've been told this is suboptimal from a dns point of view since I'd have to create an authoritative entry for example.com and turn Bind on only when I'm supposed to access the local copy, which is weird. However, if this is the only path I can follow, I still have some problems with Bind's configuration, as I couldn't find any guide that tells me in a clear, noob-friendly way, how to set up such an entry. On the other hand, I was wondering if I could set up an authoritative entry for local, so I could access www.example.com.local and tell in some way (which I don't even know if this is possible) Apache to put www.example.com instead of www.example.com.local in the relevant environment variable. Anyway, I have a last problem, sort of: when I launch Bind in debug mode with high verbosity, and make 192.168.1.32 as the primary dns for the devices, the output doesn't say anything about requests being made from the devices to Bind, so I'm not even sure it comes into play. As you can see, I'm a complete noob at these matters, but I'm eager to learn, so any help/pointer will be appreciated.

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• Why Photoshop CS5's photomerge's result immediately disappear?

  - by koiyu

  I have a bunch of JPG-files which I want to stitch together with Photoshop's Photomerge function. I choose File → Automate → Photomerge... and browse for the files. Photoshop opens the files and starts analyzing. I see the process bar filling and different phases are mentioned on the process bar. Nothing weird there. When the merging is done (and if I don't blink my eyes), I can see layers-palette is populated with the chosen files and, by quickly judging from the layer thumbnails, they're properly aligned. Sometimes the image window itself can be seen, but not always. Problem is that the layers and the image disappear in a flash. There is no error message. Everything is like prior starting the photomerge. No file has been changed. I could continue to use Photoshop normally. This is what I've tried so far: Loaded folder which has 38 JPG images, 4272 x 2848 and ˜ 5 megabytes per file Loaded the same files, but chose Use Files instead of Use Folder in the photomerge's window Loaded 19 JPG images, 4272 x 2848 and ˜ 5 megabytes per file Loaded 10 JPG images, ⇑ see above Loaded 5 JPG images, see above Loaded 3 JPG images, see above Scaled the images to 2256 x 1504 and ˜< 1 megabytes per file Loaded in a set of 38, 19, 10, 5, 3 Following steps are tested with these smaller files and with a set of 5 images Read Adobe's forums and reduced the amount of RAM Photoshop uses gradually from ˜ 80 % to 50 % (though I didn't understand the logic behind this) Would've reduced cache tile size to 128K, but it was set so already Disabled OpenGL Scaled the images to 800 x 533 and ˜ 100 kilobytes per file, loaded a set of 5 Read more unanswered threads around the internet In between each test I closed and reopened Photoshop. This is the first time I've even tried using photomerge. Am I doing something wrong? How can I locate what is the problem? How do I fix this? Photoshop is 64 bit Extended CS5 version. I'm on a mid-2010 quad-core (i5) iMac with up-to-date Mac OS X 10.6.6. Edit: Weird. First loading the images into one file via File → Scripts → Load Files into Stack… and then using Edit → Auto-Align Layers…, which, effectively, is the same as photomerge (even the dialog looks kind of the same), works! Even with the original JPGs without any issues. This doesn't fix photomerge, though.

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• Bridging and iptables SNAT conflict

  - by sad_admin

  Hello I am working on a setup here and have it working with one minor exception. Devices on one side of my bridge aren't getting SNAT'd to the Internet. The Diagram / Overview: Primary_Network (Site_A) | | Internet ------- Linux_Bridge_GW (GW) | | Secondary/CoLo Site (Site_B) Here is the setup: 1.) Site_A has all the production servers and workstations. 2.) Site_B has a set of servers that we would like to fail-over to and also serve our internet facing services from. 3.) GW has two interfaces that are trunked and carrying the appropriate VLAN traffic (allow layer-2 propagation of traffic between sites) //this all works perfectly fine. 4.) The problem that is being encountered is, hosts from Site_B have their default GW at Site_A (same subnet) GW does not have IPs on the VLANs that are being passed. 5.) All hosts at Site_A can reach the Internet without problem. 6.) GW has an addresses on a subnet that is ONLY for Internet destined traffic. (This was done so that Websense would not have to parse unnecessary traffic. We use this VLAN as the monitor port's source on the switch where Websense is sitting). What I think is happening: 1.) Packet/Frame comes in on physdev at Site_B destined for Internet. 2.) Kernel sees packet, and forwards it out the other side of the bridge to that host's default GW. 3.) Site_A (containing core-network's Default-GW) sees that packet is destined for a host it doesn't know about, so it sends it to it's default GW (the linux bridge, since it's Internet bound). 4.) The kernel says "Hey, I've seen you before" and therefore doesn't do SNAT'ing on the packet and sends it out to the Internet where it's black-holed. Why I think it's happening: 1.) A tcpdump on the internet facing NIC shows the packet leaving the interface with the private address as it's source. What I would like: 1.) Have the packet SNAT'd. 2.) Something like the below would be awesome a.) packet comes in from Site_B b.) kernel sees that the packet is NOT destined for itself or any private address c.) kernel says "OK, well since you're destined for the Internet I'm going to send you out this interface rather than forward you to your normal default GW that's WAAAY over there." d.) packet comes in from internet and is sent out the appropriate bridge physdev depending on which site the host it's destined for is at. Thanks for any assistance or guidance that you are willing to offer. Best Regards, Sad Admin

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• HttpWebRequest and Ignoring SSL Certificate Errors

  - by Rick Strahl

  Man I can't believe this. I'm still mucking around with OFX servers and it drives me absolutely crazy how some these servers are just so unbelievably misconfigured. I've recently hit three different 3 major brokerages which fail HTTP validation with bad or corrupt certificates at least according to the .NET WebRequest class. What's somewhat odd here though is that WinInet seems to find no issue with these servers - it's only .NET's Http client that's ultra finicky. So the question then becomes how do you tell HttpWebRequest to ignore certificate errors? In WinInet there used to be a host of flags to do this, but it's not quite so easy with WebRequest. Basically you need to configure the CertificatePolicy on the ServicePointManager by creating a custom policy. Not exactly trivial. Here's the code to hook it up: public bool CreateWebRequestObject(string Url) {    try     {        this.WebRequest =  (HttpWebRequest) System.Net.WebRequest.Create(Url);         if (this.IgnoreCertificateErrors)            ServicePointManager.CertificatePolicy = delegate { return true; };}One thing to watch out for is that this an application global setting. There's one global ServicePointManager and once you set this value any subsequent requests will inherit this policy as well, which may or may not be what you want. So it's probably a good idea to set the policy when the app starts and leave it be - otherwise you may run into odd behavior in some situations especially in multi-thread situations.Another way to deal with this is in you application .config file. Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} <configuration>   <system.net>     <settings>       <servicePointManager           checkCertificateName="false"           checkCertificateRevocationList="false"                />     </settings>   </system.net> </configuration> This seems to work most of the time, although I've seen some situations where it doesn't, but where the code implementation works which is frustrating. The .config settings aren't as inclusive as the programmatic code that can ignore any and all cert errors - shrug. Anyway, the code approach got me past the stopper issue. It still amazes me that theses OFX servers even require this. After all this is financial data we're talking about here. The last thing I want to do is disable extra checks on the certificates. Well I guess I shouldn't be surprised - these are the same companies that apparently don't believe in XML enough to generate valid XML (or even valid SGML for that matter)...© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2011Posted in .NET  CSharp  HTTP  

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• ERROR: Linux route add command failed: external program exited with error status: 4

  - by JohnMerlino

  A remote machine running fedora uses openvpn, and multiple developers were successfully able to connect to it via their client openvpn. However, I am running Ubuntu 12.04 and I am having trouble connecting to the server via vpn. I copied ca.crt, home.key, and home.crt from the server to my local machine to /etc/openvpn folder. My client.conf file looks like this: ############################################## # Sample client-side OpenVPN 2.0 config file # # for connecting to multi-client server. # # # # This configuration can be used by multiple # # clients, however each client should have # # its own cert and key files. # # # # On Windows, you might want to rename this # # file so it has a .ovpn extension # ############################################## # Specify that we are a client and that we # will be pulling certain config file directives # from the server. client # Use the same setting as you are using on # the server. # On most systems, the VPN will not function # unless you partially or fully disable # the firewall for the TUN/TAP interface. ;dev tap dev tun # Windows needs the TAP-Win32 adapter name # from the Network Connections panel # if you have more than one. On XP SP2, # you may need to disable the firewall # for the TAP adapter. ;dev-node MyTap # Are we connecting to a TCP or # UDP server? Use the same setting as # on the server. ;proto tcp proto udp # The hostname/IP and port of the server. # You can have multiple remote entries # to load balance between the servers. remote xx.xxx.xx.130 1194 ;remote my-server-2 1194 # Choose a random host from the remote # list for load-balancing. Otherwise # try hosts in the order specified. ;remote-random # Keep trying indefinitely to resolve the # host name of the OpenVPN server. Very useful # on machines which are not permanently connected # to the internet such as laptops. resolv-retry infinite # Most clients don't need to bind to # a specific local port number. nobind # Downgrade privileges after initialization (non-Windows only) ;user nobody ;group nogroup # Try to preserve some state across restarts. persist-key persist-tun # If you are connecting through an # HTTP proxy to reach the actual OpenVPN # server, put the proxy server/IP and # port number here. See the man page # if your proxy server requires # authentication. ;http-proxy-retry # retry on connection failures ;http-proxy [proxy server] [proxy port #] # Wireless networks often produce a lot # of duplicate packets. Set this flag # to silence duplicate packet warnings. ;mute-replay-warnings # SSL/TLS parms. # See the server config file for more # description. It's best to use # a separate .crt/.key file pair # for each client. A single ca # file can be used for all clients. ca ca.crt cert home.crt key home.key # Verify server certificate by checking # that the certicate has the nsCertType # field set to "server". This is an # important precaution to protect against # a potential attack discussed here: # http://openvpn.net/howto.html#mitm # # To use this feature, you will need to generate # your server certificates with the nsCertType # field set to "server". The build-key-server # script in the easy-rsa folder will do this. ns-cert-type server # If a tls-auth key is used on the server # then every client must also have the key. ;tls-auth ta.key 1 # Select a cryptographic cipher. # If the cipher option is used on the server # then you must also specify it here. ;cipher x # Enable compression on the VPN link. # Don't enable this unless it is also # enabled in the server config file. comp-lzo # Set log file verbosity. verb 3 # Silence repeating messages ;mute 20 But when I start server and look in /var/log/syslog, I notice the following error: May 27 22:13:51 myuser ovpn-client[5626]: /sbin/route add -net 10.27.12.1 netmask 255.255.255.252 gw 10.27.12.37 May 27 22:13:51 myuser ovpn-client[5626]: ERROR: Linux route add command failed: external program exited with error status: 4 May 27 22:13:51 myuser ovpn-client[5626]: /sbin/route add -net 172.27.12.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 gw 10.27.12.37 May 27 22:13:51 myuser ovpn-client[5626]: /sbin/route add -net 10.27.12.1 netmask 255.255.255.255 gw 10.27.12.37 And I am unable to connect to the server via openvpn: $ ssh [email protected] ssh: connect to host xxx.xx.xx.130 port 22: No route to host What may I be doing wrong?

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• Using Unity – Part 3

  - by nmarun

  The previous blog was about registering and invoking different types dynamically. In this one I’d like to show how Unity manages/disposes the instances – say hello to Lifetime Managers. When a type gets registered, either through the config file or when RegisterType method is explicitly called, the default behavior is that the container uses a transient lifetime manager. In other words, the unity container creates a new instance of the type when Resolve or ResolveAll method is called. Whereas, when you register an existing object using the RegisterInstance method, the container uses a container controlled lifetime manager - a singleton pattern. It does this by storing the reference of the object and that means so as long as the container is ‘alive’, your registered instance does not go out of scope and will be disposed only after the container either goes out of scope or when the code explicitly disposes the container. Let’s see how we can use these and test if something is a singleton or a transient instance. Continuing on the same solution used in the previous blogs, I have made the following changes: First is to add typeAlias elements for TransientLifetimeManager type: 1: <typeAlias alias="transient" type="Microsoft.Practices.Unity.TransientLifetimeManager, Microsoft.Practices.Unity"/> You then need to tell what type(s) you want to be transient by nature: 1: <type type="IProduct" mapTo="Product2"> 2: <lifetime type="transient" /> 3: </type> 4: <!--<type type="IProduct" mapTo="Product2" />--> The lifetime element’s type attribute matches with the alias attribute of the typeAlias element. Now since ‘transient’ is the default behavior, you can have a concise version of the same as line 4 shows. Also note that I’ve changed the mapTo attribute from ‘Product’ to ‘Product2’. I’ve done this to help understand the transient nature of the instance of the type Product2. By making this change, you are basically saying when a type of IProduct needs to be resolved, Unity should create an instance of Product2 by default. 1: public string WriteProductDetails() 2: { 3: return string.Format("Name: {0}<br/>Category: {1}<br/>Mfg Date: {2}<br/>Hash Code: {3}", 4: Name, Category, MfgDate.ToString("MM/dd/yyyy hh:mm:ss tt"), GetHashCode()); 5: } Again, the above change is purely for the purpose of making the example more clear to understand. The display will show the full date and also displays the hash code of the current instance. The GetHashCode() method returns an integer when an instance gets created – a new integer for every instance. When you run the application, you’ll see something like the below: Now when you click on the ‘Get Product2 Instance’ button, you’ll see that the Mfg Date (which is set in the constructor) and the Hash Code are different from the one created on page load. This proves to us that a new instance is created every single time. To make this a singleton, we need to add a type alias for the ContainerControlledLifetimeManager class and then change the type attribute of the lifetime element to singleton. 1: <typeAlias alias="singleton" type="Microsoft.Practices.Unity.ContainerControlledLifetimeManager, Microsoft.Practices.Unity"/> 2: ... 3: <type type="IProduct" mapTo="Product2"> 4: <lifetime type="singleton" /> 5: </type> Running the application now gets me the following output: Click on the button below and you’ll see that the Mfg Date and the Hash code remain unchanged => the unity container is storing the reference the first time it is created and then returns the same instance every time the type needs to be resolved. Digging more deeper into this, Unity provides more than the two lifetime managers. ExternallyControlledLifetimeManager – maintains a weak reference to type mappings and instances. Unity returns the same instance as long as the some code is holding a strong reference to this instance. For this, you need: 1: <typeAlias alias="external" type="Microsoft.Practices.Unity.ExternallyControlledLifetimeManager, Microsoft.Practices.Unity"/> 2: ... 3: <type type="IProduct" mapTo="Product2"> 4: <lifetime type="external" /> 5: </type> PerThreadLifetimeManager – Unity returns a unique instance of an object for each thread – so this effectively is a singleton behavior on a  per-thread basis. 1: <typeAlias alias="perThread" type="Microsoft.Practices.Unity.PerThreadLifetimeManager, Microsoft.Practices.Unity"/> 2: ... 3: <type type="IProduct" mapTo="Product2"> 4: <lifetime type="perThread" /> 5: </type> One thing to note about this is that if you use RegisterInstance method to register an existing object, this instance will be returned for every thread, making this a purely singleton behavior. Needless to say, this type of lifetime management is useful in multi-threaded applications (duh!!). I hope this blog provided some basics on lifetime management of objects resolved in Unity and in the next blog, I’ll talk about Injection. Please see the code used here.

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• Secure wipe of a hard drive using WinPE.

  - by Derek Meier

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} The wiping of a hard drive is typically seen as fairly trivial.  There are tons of applications out there that will do it for you.  Point àClickàGlobal-Thermo Nuclear War. However, these applications are typically expensive or unreliable.  Plus, if you have a laptop or lack a secondary computer to put the hard drive into – how on earth do you wipe it quickly and easily while still conforming to a 7 pass rule (this means that every possible bit on the hard drive is set to 0 and then to 1 seven times in a row)?  Yes, one pass should be enough – as turning every bit from a 1 to a zero will wipe the data from existence.  But, we’re dealing with tinfoil hat wearing types here people.  DOD standards dictate at least 3 passes, and typically 7 is the preferred amount.  I’m not going to argue about data recovery.  I have been told to use 7 passes, and so I will.  So say we all! Quite some time ago I used to make a BartPE XP-based boot cd for the original purpose of securely wiping data.  I loved BartPE and integrated so many plugins into my builds that I could do pretty much anything directly from CD.  Reset passwords, uninstall security updates, wipe drives, chkdsk, remove spyware, install Windows, etc.  However, with the newer multi-core systems and new chipsets coming out from vendors, I found that BartPE was rather difficult to keep up to date.  I have since switched to WinPE 3.0 (Windows Preinstallation Environment). http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc748933(WS.10).aspx  It is fairly simple to create your own CD, and I have made a few helpful scripts to easily integrate drivers and rebuild the ISO file for you.  I’ll cover making your own boot CD utilizing WinPE 3.0 in a later post – I can talk about WinPE forever and need to collect my thoughts!!  My wife loves talking about WinPE almost as much as talking about Doctor Who.  Wait, did I say loves?  Hmmmm, I may have meant loathes. The topic at hand?  Right. Wiping a drive! I must have drunk too much coffee this morning.  I like to use a simple batch script that calls a combination of diskpart.exe from Microsoft® and Sdelete.exe created by our friend Mark Russinovich. http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897443.aspx All of the following files are located within the same directory on my WinPE boot CD. Here are the contents of wipe_me.bat, script.txt and sdelete.reg. Wipe_me.bat:   @echo off echo. echo     I will completely wipe the local hard drives using echo     7 individual wipes. The data will NOT echo     be recoverable.  I will begin after you pause echo. echo Preparing to partition and format disk. Diskpart.exe /s "script.txt" REM I was annoyed by not having a completely automated script – and Sdelete wants you to accept the license agreement. So, I added a registry file to skip doing that. regedit /S sdelete.reg rem sdelete options selected are: -p (passes) -c (zero free space) -s (recurse through subdirectories, if any) -z (clean free space) [drive letter] sdelete.exe -p 7 -c -s -z c: echo. echo Pass seven complete. echo. echo Wiping complete. Pause exit script.txt: list disk select disk 0 clean create partition primary select partition 1 active format FS=NTFS LABEL="New Volume" QUICK assign letter=c exit *Notes: This script assumes one local hard drive – change the script as you see fit for your environment.  The clean command will overwrite the master boot record and any hidden sector information – so be careful!   sdelete.reg: Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Sysinternals\SDelete] "EulaAccepted"=dword:00000001   With a combination of WinPE, sdelete.exe and your friendly neighborhood text editor you can begin wiping drives as quickly and easily as possible!  I hope this helps, I get asked this a lot in my line of work. Best of luck, Derek

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• The Challenge with HTML5 – In Pictures

  - by dwahlin

  I love working with Web technologies and am looking forward to the new functionality that HTML5 will ultimately bring to the table (some of which can be used today). Having been through the div versus layer battle back in the IE4 and Netscape 4 days I think we’re headed down that road again as a result of browsers implementing features differently. I’ve been spending a lot of time researching and playing around with HTML5 samples and features (mainly because we’re already seeing demand for training on HTML5) and there’s a lot of great stuff there that will truly revolutionize web applications as we know them. However, browsers just aren’t there yet and many people outside of the development world don’t really feel a need to upgrade their browser if it’s working reasonably well (Mom and Dad come to mind) so it’s going to be awhile. There’s a nice test site at http://www.HTML5Test.com that runs through different HTML5 features and scores how well they’re supported. They don’t test for everything and are very clear about that on the site: “The HTML5 test score is only an indication of how well your browser supports the upcoming HTML5 standard and related specifications. It does not try to test all of the new features offered by HTML5, nor does it try to test the functionality of each feature it does detect. Despite these shortcomings we hope that by quantifying the level of support users and web developers will get an idea of how hard the browser manufacturers work on improving their browsers and the web as a development platform. The score is calculated by testing for the many new features of HTML5. Each feature is worth one or more points. Apart from the main HTML5 specification and other specifications created the W3C HTML Working Group, this test also awards points for supporting related drafts and specifications. Some of these specifications were initially part of HTML5, but are now further developed by other W3C working groups. WebGL is also part of this test despite not being developed by the W3C, because it extends the HTML5 canvas element with a 3d context. The test also awards bonus points for supporting audio and video codecs and supporting SVG or MathML embedding in a plain HTML document. These test do not count towards the total score because HTML5 does not specify any required audio or video codec. Also SVG and MathML are not required by HTML5, the specification only specifies rules for how such content should be embedded inside a plain HTML file. Please be aware that the specifications that are being tested are still in development and could change before receiving an official status. In the future new tests will be added for the pieces of the specification that are currently still missing. The maximum number of points that can be scored is 300 at this moment, but this is a moving goalpost.” It looks like their tests haven’t been updated since June, but the numbers are pretty scary as a developer because it means I’m going to have to do a lot of browser sniffing before assuming a particular feature is available to use. Not that much different from what we do today as far as browser sniffing you say? I’d have to disagree since HTML5 takes it to a whole new level. In today’s world we have script libraries such as jQuery (my personal favorite), Prototype, script.aculo.us, YUI Library, MooTools, etc. that handle the heavy lifting for us. Until those libraries handle all of the key HTML5 features available it’s going to be a challenge. Certain features such as Canvas are supported fairly well across most of the major browsers while other features such as audio and video are hit or miss depending upon what codec you want to use. Run the tests yourself to see what passes and what fails for different browsers. You can also view the HTML5 Test Suite Conformance Results at http://test.w3.org/html/tests/reporting/report.htm (a work in progress). The table below lists the scores that the HTML5Test site returned for different browsers I have installed on my desktop PC and laptop. A specific list of tests run and features supported are given when you go to the site. Note that I went ahead and tested the IE9 beta and it didn’t do nearly as good as I expected it would, but it’s not officially out yet so I expect that number will change a lot. Am I opposed to HTML5 as a result of these tests? Of course not - I’m actually really excited about what it offers.  However, I’m trying to be realistic and feel it'll definitely add a new level of headache to the Web application development process having been through something like this many years ago. On the flipside, developers that are able to target a specific browser (typically Intranet apps) or master the cross-browser issues are going to release some pretty sweet applications. Check out http://html5gallery.com/ for a look at some of the more cutting-edge sites out there that use HTML5. Also check out the http://www.beautyoftheweb.com site that Microsoft put together to showcase IE9. Chrome 8 Safari 5 for Windows     Opera 10 Firefox 3.6     Internet Explorer 9 Beta (Note that it’s still beta) Internet Explorer 8

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• Adobe Photoshop Vs Lightroom Vs Aperture

  - by Aditi

  Adobe Photoshop is the standard choice for photographers, graphic artists and Web designers. Adobe Photoshop Lightroom  & Apple’s Aperture are also in the same league but the usage is vastly different. Although Photoshop is most popular & widely used by photographers, but in many ways it’s less relevant to photographers than ever before. As Lightroom & Aperture is aimed squarely at photographers for photo-processing. With this write up we are going to help you choose what is right for you and why. Adobe Photoshop Adobe Photoshop is the most liked tool for the detailed photo editing & designing work. Photoshop provides great features for rollover and Image slicing. Adobe Photoshop includes comprehensive optimization features for producing the highest quality Web graphics with the smallest possible file sizes. You can also create startling animations with it. Designers & Editors know how important precise masking is, PhotoShop lets you do that with various detailing tools. Art history brush, contact sheets, and history palette are some of the smart features, which add to its viability. Download Whether you’re producing printed pages or moving images, you can work more efficiently and produce better results because of its smooth integration across other adobe applications. Buy supporting layer effects, it allows you to quickly add drop shadows, inner and outer glows, bevels, and embossing to layers. It also provides Seamless Web Graphics Workflow. Photoshop is hands-down the BEST for editing. Photoshop Cons: • Slower, less precise editing features in Bridge • Processing lots of images requires actions and can be slower than exporting images from Lightroom • Much slower with editing and processing a large number of images Aperture Apple Aperture is aimed at the professional photographer who shoots predominantly raw files. It helps them to manage their workflow and perform their initial Raw conversion in a better way. Aperture provides adjustment tools such as Histogram to modify color and white balance, but most of the editing of photos is left for Photoshop. It gives users the option of seeing their photographs laid out like slides or negatives on a light table. It boasts of – stars, color-coding and easy techniques for filtering and picking images. Aperture has moved forward few steps than Photoshop, but most of the editing work has been left for Photoshop as it features seamless Photoshop integration. Aperture Pros: Aperture is a step up from the iPhoto software that comes with every Mac, and fairly easy to learn. Adjustments are made in a logical order from top to bottom of the menu. You can store the images in a library or any folder you choose. Aperture also works really well with direct Canon files. It is just $79 if you buy it through Apple’s App Store Moving forward, it will run on the iPad, and possibly the iPhone – Adobe products like Lightroom and Photoshop may never offer these options It is much nicer and simpler user interface. Lightroom Lightroom does a smashing job of basic fixing and editing. It is more advanced tool for photographers. They can use it to have a startling photography effect. Light room has many advanced features, which makes it one of the best tools for photographers and far ahead of the other two. They are Nondestructive editing. Nothing is actually changed in an image until the photo is exported. Better controls over organizing your photos. Lightroom helps to gather a group of photos to use in a slideshow. Lightroom has larger Compare and Survey views of images. Quickly customizable interface. Simple keystrokes allow you to perform different All Lightroom controls are kept available in panels right next to the photos. Always-available History palette, it doesn’t go when you close lightroom. You gain more colors to work with compared to Photoshop and with more precise control. Local control, or adjusting small parts of a photo without affecting anything else, has long been an important part of photography. In Lightroom 2, you can darken, lighten, and affect color and change sharpness and other aspects of specific areas in the photo simply by brushing your cursor across the areas. Photoshop has far more power in its Cloning and Healing Brush tools than Lightroom, but Lightroom offers simple cloning and healing that’s nondestructive. Lightroom supports the RAW formats of more cameras than Aperture. Lightroom provides the option of storing images outside the application in the file system. It costs less than photoshop. Download Why PhotoShop is advanced than Lightroom? There are countless image processing plug-ins on the market for doing specialized processing in Photoshop. For example, if your image needs sophisticated noise reduction, you can use the Noiseware plug-in with Photoshop to do a much better job or noise removal than Lightroom can do. Lightroom’s advantages over Aperture 3 Will always have better integration with Photoshop. Lightroom is backed by bigger and more active user community (So abundant availability for tutorials, etc.) Better noise reduction tool. Especially for photographers the Lens-distortion correction tool  is perfect Lightroom Cons: • Have to Import images to work on them • Slows down with over 10,000 images in the catalog • For processing just one or two images this is a slower workflow Photoshop Pros: • ACR has the same RAW processing controls as Lightroom • ACR Histogram is specialized to the chosen color space (Lightroom is locked into ProPhoto RGB color space with an sRGB tone curve) • Don’t have to Import images to open in Bridge or ACR • Ability to customize processing of RAW images with Photoshop Actions Pricing and Availability Get LightRoomGet PhotoShop Latest version Of Photoshop can be purchased from Adobe store and Adobe authorized reseller and it costs US$999. Latest version of Aperture can be bought for US$199 from Apple Online store or Mac App Store. You can buy latest version of LightRoom from Adobe Store or Adobe Authorized reseller for US$299. Related posts:Adobe Photoshop CS5 vs Photoshop CS5 extended Web based Alternatives to Photoshop 10 Free Alternatives for Adobe Photoshop Software

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• Creating an ASP.NET report using Visual Studio 2010 - Part 3

  - by rajbk

  We continue building our report in this three part series. Creating an ASP.NET report using Visual Studio 2010 - Part 1 Creating an ASP.NET report using Visual Studio 2010 - Part 2 Adding the ReportViewer control and filter drop downs. Open the source code for index.aspx and add a ScriptManager control. This control is required for the ReportViewer control. Add a DropDownList for the categories and suppliers. Add the ReportViewer control. The markup after these steps is shown below. <div> <asp:ScriptManager ID="smScriptManager" runat="server"> </asp:ScriptManager> <div id="searchFilter"> Filter by: Category : <asp:DropDownList ID="ddlCategories" runat="server" /> and Supplier : <asp:DropDownList ID="ddlSuppliers" runat="server" /> </div> <rsweb:ReportViewer ID="rvProducts" runat="server"> </rsweb:ReportViewer> </div> The design view for index.aspx is shown below. The dropdowns will display the categories and suppliers in the database. Changing the selection in the drop downs will cause the report to be filtered by the selections in the dropdowns. You will see how to do this in the next steps.   Attaching the RDLC to the ReportViewer control by clicking on the top right of the control, going to Report Viewer tasks and selecting Products.rdlc.   Resize the ReportViewer control by dragging at the bottom right corner. I set mine to 800px x 500px. You can also set this value in source view. Defining the data sources. We will now define the Data Source used to populate the report. Go back to the “ReportViewer Tasks” and select “Choose Data Sources” Select a “New data source..” Select “Object” and name your Data Source ID “odsProducts”   In the next screen, choose “ProductRepository” as your business object. Choose “GetProductsProjected” in the next screen.   The method requires a SupplierID and CategoryID. We will set these so that our data source gets the values from the drop down lists we defined earlier. Set the parameter source to be of type “Control” and set the ControlIDs to be ddlSuppliers and ddlCategories respectively. Your screen will look like this: We are now going to define the data source for our drop downs. Select the ddlCategory drop down and pick “Choose Data Source”. Pick “Object” and give it an id “odsCategories”   In the next screen, choose “ProductRepository” Select the GetCategories() method in the next screen.   Select “CategoryName” and “CategoryID” in the next screen. We are done defining the data source for the Category drop down. Perform the same steps for the Suppliers drop down.   Select each dropdown and set the AppendDataBoundItems to true and AutoPostback to true.     The AppendDataBoundItems is needed because we are going to insert an “All“ list item with a value of empty. Go to each drop down and add this list item markup as shown below> Finally, double click on each drop down in the designer and add the following code in the code behind. This along with the “Autopostback= true” attribute refreshes the report anytime a drop down is changed. protected void ddlCategories_SelectedIndexChanged(object sender, EventArgs e) { rvProducts.LocalReport.Refresh(); }   protected void ddlSuppliers_SelectedIndexChanged(object sender, EventArgs e) { rvProducts.LocalReport.Refresh(); } Compile your report and run the page. You should see the report rendered. Note that the tool bar in the ReportViewer control gives you a couple of options including the ability to export the data to Excel, PDF or word.   Conclusion Through this three part series, we did the following: Created a data layer for use by our RDLC. Created an RDLC using the report wizard and define a dataset for the report. Used the report design surface to design our report including adding a chart. Used the ReportViewer control to attach the RDLC. Connected our ReportWiewer to a data source and take parameter values from the drop downlists. Used AutoPostBack to refresh the reports when the dropdown selection was changed. RDLCs allow you to create interactive reports including drill downs and grouping. For even more advanced reports you can use Microsoft® SQL Server™ Reporting Services with RDLs. With RDLs, the report is rendered on the report server instead of the web server. Another nice thing about RDLs is that you can define a parameter list for the report and it gets rendered automatically for you. RDLCs and RDLs both have their advantages and its best to compare them and choose the right one for your requirements. Download VS2010 RTM Sample project NorthwindReports.zip   Alfred Borden: Are you watching closely?

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• Change the User Interface Language in Ubuntu

  - by Matthew Guay

  Would you like to use your Ubuntu computer in another language?  Here’s how you can easily change your interface language in Ubuntu. Ubuntu’s default install only includes a couple languages, but it makes it easy to find and add a new interface language to your computer.  To get started, open the System menu, select Administration, and then click Language Support. Ubuntu may ask if you want to update or add components to your current default language when you first open the dialog.  Click Install to go ahead and install the additional components, or you can click Remind Me Later to wait as these will be installed automatically when you add a new language. Now we’re ready to find and add an interface language to Ubuntu.  Click Install / Remove Languages to add the language you want. Find the language you want in the list, and click the check box to install it.  Ubuntu will show you all the components it will install for the language; this often includes spellchecking files for OpenOffice as well.  Once you’ve made your selection, click Apply Changes to install your new language.  Make sure you’re connected to the internet, as Ubuntu will have to download the additional components you’ve selected. Enter your system password when prompted, and then Ubuntu will download the needed languages files and install them.   Back in the main Language & Text dialog, we’re now ready to set our new language as default.  Find your new language in the list, and then click and drag it to the top of the list. Notice that Thai is the first language listed, and English is the second.  This will make Thai the default language for menus and windows in this account.  The tooltip reminds us that this setting does not effect system settings like currency or date formats. To change these, select the Text Tab and pick your new language from the drop-down menu.  You can preview the changes in the bottom Example box. The changes we just made will only affect this user account; the login screen and startup will not be affected.  If you wish to change the language in the startup and login screens also, click Apply System-Wide in both dialogs.  Other user accounts will still retain their original language settings; if you wish to change them, you must do it from those accounts. Once you have your new language settings all set, you’ll need to log out of your account and log back in to see your new interface language.  When you re-login, Ubuntu may ask you if you want to update your user folders’ names to your new language.  For example, here Ubuntu is asking if we want to change our folders to their Thai equivalents.  If you wish to do so, click Update or its equivalents in your language. Now your interface will be almost completely translated into your new language.  As you can see here, applications with generic names are translated to Thai but ones with specific names like Shutter keep their original name. Even the help dialogs are translated, which makes it easy for users around to world to get started with Ubuntu.  Once again, you may notice some things that are still in English, but almost everything is translated. Adding a new interface language doesn’t add the new language to your keyboard, so you’ll still need to set that up.  Check out our article on adding languages to your keyboard to get this setup. If you wish to revert to your original language or switch to another new language, simply repeat the above steps, this time dragging your original or new language to the top instead of the one you chose previously. Conclusion Ubuntu has a large number of supported interface languages to make it user-friendly to people around the globe.  And since you can set the language for each user account, it’s easy for multi-lingual individuals to share the same computer. Or, if you’re using Windows, check out our article on how you can Change the User Interface Language in Vista or Windows 7, too! Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Restart the Ubuntu Gnome User Interface QuicklyChange the User Interface Language in Vista or Windows 7Create a Samba User on UbuntuInstall Samba Server on UbuntuSee Which Groups Your Linux User Belongs To TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips VMware Workstation 7 Acronis Online Backup DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro FetchMp3 Can Download Videos & Convert Them to Mp3 Use Flixtime To Create Video Slideshows Creating a Password Reset Disk in Windows Bypass Waiting Time On Customer Service Calls With Lucyphone MELTUP – "The Beginning Of US Currency Crisis And Hyperinflation" Enable or Disable the Task Manager Using TaskMgrED

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