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• How to immediate send mail without prompt confirmation dialog

  - by lmengyew

  I'm using Delphi XE3 and below is my sample application: unit Unit1; interface uses Winapi.Windows, Winapi.Messages, System.SysUtils, System.Variants, System.Classes, Vcl.Graphics, Vcl.Controls, Vcl.Forms, Vcl.Dialogs, Vcl.StdCtrls; type TForm1 = class(TForm) Button1: TButton; procedure Button1Click(Sender: TObject); private function Send(const FromAddr, ToAddr, Subject: String; const AttachFiles: array of string; const MsgBody: String): boolean; end; var Form1: TForm1; implementation uses Winapi.Mapi; {$R *.dfm} procedure TForm1.Button1Click(Sender: TObject); begin Send('', '[email protected]', 'test', [], ''); end; function TForm1.Send(const FromAddr, ToAddr, Subject: String; const AttachFiles: array of string; const MsgBody: String): boolean; var Msg: TMapiMessage; lpSender, lpRecipient: TMapiRecipDesc; Attach: array of TMapiFileDesc; SMTP: TFNMapiSendMail; MAPIModule: HModule; i: integer; S: string; begin Result := False; FillChar(Msg, SizeOf(Msg), 0); Msg.lpszSubject := PAnsiChar(UTF8String(Subject)); Msg.lpszNoteText := PAnsiChar(UTF8String(MsgBody)); if FromAddr <> '' then begin lpSender.ulRecipClass := MAPI_ORIG; lpSender.lpszName := PAnsiChar(UTF8String(FromAddr)); lpSender.lpszAddress := PAnsiChar(UTF8String(FromAddr)); lpSender.ulReserved := 0; lpSender.ulEIDSize := 0; lpSender.lpEntryID := Nil; Msg.lpOriginator := @lpSender; end; if ToAddr <> '' then begin lpRecipient.ulRecipClass := MAPI_TO; lpRecipient.lpszName := PAnsiChar(UTF8String(ToAddr)); lpRecipient.lpszAddress := PAnsiChar(UTF8String(ToAddr)); lpRecipient.ulReserved := 0; lpRecipient.ulEIDSize := 0; lpRecipient.lpEntryID := Nil; Msg.nRecipCount := 1; Msg.lpRecips := @lpRecipient; end; SetLength(Attach, Length(AttachFiles)); FillChar(Attach[0], Length(Attach) * SizeOf(TMapiFileDesc), 0); i := 0; for S in AttachFiles do begin Attach[i].nPosition := Cardinal($FFFFFFFF); Attach[i].lpszPathName := PAnsiChar(UTF8String(S)); Inc(i); end; Msg.nFileCount := Length(AttachFiles); if Msg.nFileCount = 0 then Msg.lpFiles := nil else Msg.lpFiles := @Attach[0]; MAPIModule := LoadLibrary(PChar(MAPIDLL)); if MAPIModule <> 0 then begin try @SMTP := GetProcAddress(MAPIModule, 'MAPISendMail'); if @SMTP <> nil then Result := SMTP(0, Application.Handle, Msg, 0, 0) = SUCCESS_SUCCESS; finally FreeLibrary(MAPIModule); end; end; end; end. When i click the Button1, it will prompt the confirmation dialog as print screen. My question is how to immediate send mail without prompt the confirmation dialog? Is this possible to achieve?

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• Dynamically loading Assemblies to reduce Runtime Depencies

  - by Rick Strahl

  I've been working on a request to the West Wind Application Configuration library to add JSON support. The config library is a very easy to use code-first approach to configuration: You create a class that holds the configuration data that inherits from a base configuration class, and then assign a persistence provider at runtime that determines where and how the configuration data is store. Currently the library supports .NET Configuration stores (web.config/app.config), XML files, SQL records and string storage.About once a week somebody asks me about JSON support and I've deflected this question for the longest time because frankly I think that JSON as a configuration store doesn't really buy a heck of a lot over XML. Both formats require the user to perform some fixup of the plain configuration data - in XML into XML tags, with JSON using JSON delimiters for properties and property formatting rules. Sure JSON is a little less verbose and maybe a little easier to read if you have hierarchical data, but overall the differences are pretty minor in my opinion. And yet - the requests keep rolling in.Hard Link Issues in a Component LibraryAnother reason I've been hesitant is that I really didn't want to pull in a dependency on an external JSON library - in this case JSON.NET - into the core library. If you're not using JSON.NET elsewhere I don't want a user to have to require a hard dependency on JSON.NET unless they want to use the JSON feature. JSON.NET is also sensitive to versions and doesn't play nice with multiple versions when hard linked. For example, when you have a reference to V4.4 in your project but the host application has a reference to version 4.5 you can run into assembly load problems. NuGet's Update-Package can solve some of this *if* you can recompile, but that's not ideal for a component that's supposed to be just plug and play. This is no criticism of JSON.NET - this really applies to any dependency that might change.  So hard linking the DLL can be problematic for a number reasons, but the primary reason is to not force loading of JSON.NET unless you actually need it when you use the JSON configuration features of the library.Enter Dynamic LoadingSo rather than adding an assembly reference to the project, I decided that it would be better to dynamically load the DLL at runtime and then use dynamic typing to access various classes. This allows me to run without a hard assembly reference and allows more flexibility with version number differences now and in the future.But there are also a couple of downsides:No assembly reference means only dynamic access - no compiler type checking or IntellisenseRequirement for the host application to have reference to JSON.NET or else get runtime errorsThe former is minor, but the latter can be problematic. Runtime errors are always painful, but in this case I'm willing to live with this. If you want to use JSON configuration settings JSON.NET needs to be loaded in the project. If this is a Web project, it'll likely be there already.So there are a few things that are needed to make this work:Dynamically create an instance and optionally attempt to load an Assembly (if not loaded)Load types into dynamic variablesUse Reflection for a few tasks like statics/enumsThe dynamic keyword in C# makes the formerly most difficult Reflection part - method calls and property assignments - fairly painless. But as cool as dynamic is it doesn't handle all aspects of Reflection. Specifically it doesn't deal with object activation, truly dynamic (string based) member activation or accessing of non instance members, so there's still a little bit of work left to do with Reflection.Dynamic Object InstantiationThe first step in getting the process rolling is to instantiate the type you need to work with. This might be a two step process - loading the instance from a string value, since we don't have a hard type reference and potentially having to load the assembly. Although the host project might have a reference to JSON.NET, that instance might have not been loaded yet since it hasn't been accessed yet. In ASP.NET this won't be a problem, since ASP.NET preloads all referenced assemblies on AppDomain startup, but in other executable project, assemblies are just in time loaded only when they are accessed.Instantiating a type is a two step process: Finding the type reference and then activating it. Here's the generic code out of my ReflectionUtils library I use for this:/// <summary> /// Creates an instance of a type based on a string. Assumes that the type's /// </summary> /// <param name="typeName">Common name of the type</param> /// <param name="args">Any constructor parameters</param> /// <returns></returns> public static object CreateInstanceFromString(string typeName, params object[] args) { object instance = null; Type type = null; try { type = GetTypeFromName(typeName); if (type == null) return null; instance = Activator.CreateInstance(type, args); } catch { return null; } return instance; } /// <summary> /// Helper routine that looks up a type name and tries to retrieve the /// full type reference in the actively executing assemblies. /// </summary> /// <param name="typeName"></param> /// <returns></returns> public static Type GetTypeFromName(string typeName) { Type type = null; // Let default name binding find it type = Type.GetType(typeName, false); if (type != null) return type; // look through assembly list var assemblies = AppDomain.CurrentDomain.GetAssemblies(); // try to find manually foreach (Assembly asm in assemblies) { type = asm.GetType(typeName, false); if (type != null) break; } return type; } To use this for loading JSON.NET I have a small factory function that instantiates JSON.NET and sets a bunch of configuration settings on the generated object. The startup code also looks for failure and tries loading up the assembly when it fails since that's the main reason the load would fail. Finally it also caches the loaded instance for reuse (according to James the JSON.NET instance is thread safe and quite a bit faster when cached). Here's what the factory function looks like in JsonSerializationUtils:/// <summary> /// Dynamically creates an instance of JSON.NET /// </summary> /// <param name="throwExceptions">If true throws exceptions otherwise returns null</param> /// <returns>Dynamic JsonSerializer instance</returns> public static dynamic CreateJsonNet(bool throwExceptions = true) { if (JsonNet != null) return JsonNet; lock (SyncLock) { if (JsonNet != null) return JsonNet; // Try to create instance dynamic json = ReflectionUtils.CreateInstanceFromString("Newtonsoft.Json.JsonSerializer"); if (json == null) { try { var ass = AppDomain.CurrentDomain.Load("Newtonsoft.Json"); json = ReflectionUtils.CreateInstanceFromString("Newtonsoft.Json.JsonSerializer"); } catch (Exception ex) { if (throwExceptions) throw; return null; } } if (json == null) return null; json.ReferenceLoopHandling = (dynamic) ReflectionUtils.GetStaticProperty("Newtonsoft.Json.ReferenceLoopHandling", "Ignore"); // Enums as strings in JSON dynamic enumConverter = ReflectionUtils.CreateInstanceFromString("Newtonsoft.Json.Converters.StringEnumConverter"); json.Converters.Add(enumConverter); JsonNet = json; } return JsonNet; }This code's purpose is to return a fully configured JsonSerializer instance. As you can see the code tries to create an instance and when it fails tries to load the assembly, and then re-tries loading.Once the instance is loaded some configuration occurs on it. Specifically I set the ReferenceLoopHandling option to not blow up immediately when circular references are encountered. There are a host of other small config setting that might be useful to set, but the default seem to be good enough in recent versions. Note that I'm setting ReferenceLoopHandling which requires an Enum value to be set. There's no real easy way (short of using the cardinal numeric value) to set a property or pass parameters from static values or enums. This means I still need to use Reflection to make this work. I'm using the same ReflectionUtils class I previously used to handle this for me. The function looks up the type and then uses Type.InvokeMember() to read the static property.Another feature I need is have Enum values serialized as strings rather than numeric values which is the default. To do this I can use the StringEnumConverter to convert enums to strings by adding it to the Converters collection.As you can see there's still a bit of Reflection to be done even in C# 4+ with dynamic, but with a few helpers this process is relatively painless.Doing the actual JSON ConversionFinally I need to actually do my JSON conversions. For the Utility class I need serialization that works for both strings and files so I created four methods that handle these tasks two each for serialization and deserialization for string and file.Here's what the File Serialization looks like:/// <summary> /// Serializes an object instance to a JSON file. /// </summary> /// <param name="value">the value to serialize</param> /// <param name="fileName">Full path to the file to write out with JSON.</param> /// <param name="throwExceptions">Determines whether exceptions are thrown or false is returned</param> /// <param name="formatJsonOutput">if true pretty-formats the JSON with line breaks</param> /// <returns>true or false</returns> public static bool SerializeToFile(object value, string fileName, bool throwExceptions = false, bool formatJsonOutput = false) { dynamic writer = null; FileStream fs = null; try { Type type = value.GetType(); var json = CreateJsonNet(throwExceptions); if (json == null) return false; fs = new FileStream(fileName, FileMode.Create); var sw = new StreamWriter(fs, Encoding.UTF8); writer = Activator.CreateInstance(JsonTextWriterType, sw); if (formatJsonOutput) writer.Formatting = (dynamic)Enum.Parse(FormattingType, "Indented"); writer.QuoteChar = '"'; json.Serialize(writer, value); } catch (Exception ex) { Debug.WriteLine("JsonSerializer Serialize error: " + ex.Message); if (throwExceptions) throw; return false; } finally { if (writer != null) writer.Close(); if (fs != null) fs.Close(); } return true; }You can see more of the dynamic invocation in this code. First I grab the dynamic JsonSerializer instance using the CreateJsonNet() method shown earlier which returns a dynamic. I then create a JsonTextWriter and configure a couple of enum settings on it, and then call Serialize() on the serializer instance with the JsonTextWriter that writes the output to disk. Although this code is dynamic it's still fairly short and readable.For full circle operation here's the DeserializeFromFile() version:/// <summary> /// Deserializes an object from file and returns a reference. /// </summary> /// <param name="fileName">name of the file to serialize to</param> /// <param name="objectType">The Type of the object. Use typeof(yourobject class)</param> /// <param name="binarySerialization">determines whether we use Xml or Binary serialization</param> /// <param name="throwExceptions">determines whether failure will throw rather than return null on failure</param> /// <returns>Instance of the deserialized object or null. Must be cast to your object type</returns> public static object DeserializeFromFile(string fileName, Type objectType, bool throwExceptions = false) { dynamic json = CreateJsonNet(throwExceptions); if (json == null) return null; object result = null; dynamic reader = null; FileStream fs = null; try { fs = new FileStream(fileName, FileMode.Open, FileAccess.Read); var sr = new StreamReader(fs, Encoding.UTF8); reader = Activator.CreateInstance(JsonTextReaderType, sr); result = json.Deserialize(reader, objectType); reader.Close(); } catch (Exception ex) { Debug.WriteLine("JsonNetSerialization Deserialization Error: " + ex.Message); if (throwExceptions) throw; return null; } finally { if (reader != null) reader.Close(); if (fs != null) fs.Close(); } return result; }This code is a little more compact since there are no prettifying options to set. Here JsonTextReader is created dynamically and it receives the output from the Deserialize() operation on the serializer.You can take a look at the full JsonSerializationUtils.cs file on GitHub to see the rest of the operations, but the string operations are very similar - the code is fairly repetitive.These generic serialization utilities isolate the dynamic serialization logic that has to deal with the dynamic nature of JSON.NET, and any code that uses these functions is none the wiser that JSON.NET is dynamically loaded.Using the JsonSerializationUtils WrapperThe final consumer of the SerializationUtils wrapper is an actual ConfigurationProvider, that is responsible for handling reading and writing JSON values to and from files. The provider is simple a small wrapper around the SerializationUtils component and there's very little code to make this work now:The whole provider looks like this:/// <summary> /// Reads and Writes configuration settings in .NET config files and /// sections. Allows reading and writing to default or external files /// and specification of the configuration section that settings are /// applied to. /// </summary> public class JsonFileConfigurationProvider<TAppConfiguration> : ConfigurationProviderBase<TAppConfiguration> where TAppConfiguration: AppConfiguration, new() { /// <summary> /// Optional - the Configuration file where configuration settings are /// stored in. If not specified uses the default Configuration Manager /// and its default store. /// </summary> public string JsonConfigurationFile { get { return _JsonConfigurationFile; } set { _JsonConfigurationFile = value; } } private string _JsonConfigurationFile = string.Empty; public override bool Read(AppConfiguration config) { var newConfig = JsonSerializationUtils.DeserializeFromFile(JsonConfigurationFile, typeof(TAppConfiguration)) as TAppConfiguration; if (newConfig == null) { if(Write(config)) return true; return false; } DecryptFields(newConfig); DataUtils.CopyObjectData(newConfig, config, "Provider,ErrorMessage"); return true; } /// <summary> /// Return /// </summary> /// <typeparam name="TAppConfig"></typeparam> /// <returns></returns> public override TAppConfig Read<TAppConfig>() { var result = JsonSerializationUtils.DeserializeFromFile(JsonConfigurationFile, typeof(TAppConfig)) as TAppConfig; if (result != null) DecryptFields(result); return result; } /// <summary> /// Write configuration to XmlConfigurationFile location /// </summary> /// <param name="config"></param> /// <returns></returns> public override bool Write(AppConfiguration config) { EncryptFields(config); bool result = JsonSerializationUtils.SerializeToFile(config, JsonConfigurationFile,false,true); // Have to decrypt again to make sure the properties are readable afterwards DecryptFields(config); return result; } }This incidentally demonstrates how easy it is to create a new provider for the West Wind Application Configuration component. Simply implementing 3 methods will do in most cases.Note this code doesn't have any dynamic dependencies - all that's abstracted away in the JsonSerializationUtils(). From here on, serializing JSON is just a matter of calling the static methods on the SerializationUtils class.Already, there are several other places in some other tools where I use JSON serialization this is coming in very handy. With a couple of lines of code I was able to add JSON.NET support to an older AJAX library that I use replacing quite a bit of code that was previously in use. And for any other manual JSON operations (in a couple of apps I use JSON Serialization for 'blob' like document storage) this is also going to be handy.Performance?Some of you might be thinking that using dynamic and Reflection can't be good for performance. And you'd be right… In performing some informal testing it looks like the performance of the native code is nearly twice as fast as the dynamic code. Most of the slowness is attributable to type lookups. To test I created a native class that uses an actual reference to JSON.NET and performance was consistently around 85-90% faster with the referenced code. That being said though - I serialized 10,000 objects in 80ms vs. 45ms so this isn't hardly slouchy. For the configuration component speed is not that important because both read and write operations typically happen once on first access and then every once in a while. But for other operations - say a serializer trying to handle AJAX requests on a Web Server one would be well served to create a hard dependency.Dynamic Loading - Worth it?On occasion dynamic loading makes sense. But there's a price to be paid in added code complexity and a performance hit. But for some operations that are not pivotal to a component or application and only used under certain circumstances dynamic loading can be beneficial to avoid having to ship extra files and loading down distributions. These days when you create new projects in Visual Studio with 30 assemblies before you even add your own code, trying to keep file counts under control seems a good idea. It's not the kind of thing you do on a regular basis, but when needed it can be a useful tool. Hopefully some of you find this information useful…© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2013Posted in .NET  C#   Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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• Dynamically loading Assemblies to reduce Runtime Dependencies

  - by Rick Strahl

  I've been working on a request to the West Wind Application Configuration library to add JSON support. The config library is a very easy to use code-first approach to configuration: You create a class that holds the configuration data that inherits from a base configuration class, and then assign a persistence provider at runtime that determines where and how the configuration data is store. Currently the library supports .NET Configuration stores (web.config/app.config), XML files, SQL records and string storage.About once a week somebody asks me about JSON support and I've deflected this question for the longest time because frankly I think that JSON as a configuration store doesn't really buy a heck of a lot over XML. Both formats require the user to perform some fixup of the plain configuration data - in XML into XML tags, with JSON using JSON delimiters for properties and property formatting rules. Sure JSON is a little less verbose and maybe a little easier to read if you have hierarchical data, but overall the differences are pretty minor in my opinion. And yet - the requests keep rolling in.Hard Link Issues in a Component LibraryAnother reason I've been hesitant is that I really didn't want to pull in a dependency on an external JSON library - in this case JSON.NET - into the core library. If you're not using JSON.NET elsewhere I don't want a user to have to require a hard dependency on JSON.NET unless they want to use the JSON feature. JSON.NET is also sensitive to versions and doesn't play nice with multiple versions when hard linked. For example, when you have a reference to V4.4 in your project but the host application has a reference to version 4.5 you can run into assembly load problems. NuGet's Update-Package can solve some of this *if* you can recompile, but that's not ideal for a component that's supposed to be just plug and play. This is no criticism of JSON.NET - this really applies to any dependency that might change.  So hard linking the DLL can be problematic for a number reasons, but the primary reason is to not force loading of JSON.NET unless you actually need it when you use the JSON configuration features of the library.Enter Dynamic LoadingSo rather than adding an assembly reference to the project, I decided that it would be better to dynamically load the DLL at runtime and then use dynamic typing to access various classes. This allows me to run without a hard assembly reference and allows more flexibility with version number differences now and in the future.But there are also a couple of downsides:No assembly reference means only dynamic access - no compiler type checking or IntellisenseRequirement for the host application to have reference to JSON.NET or else get runtime errorsThe former is minor, but the latter can be problematic. Runtime errors are always painful, but in this case I'm willing to live with this. If you want to use JSON configuration settings JSON.NET needs to be loaded in the project. If this is a Web project, it'll likely be there already.So there are a few things that are needed to make this work:Dynamically create an instance and optionally attempt to load an Assembly (if not loaded)Load types into dynamic variablesUse Reflection for a few tasks like statics/enumsThe dynamic keyword in C# makes the formerly most difficult Reflection part - method calls and property assignments - fairly painless. But as cool as dynamic is it doesn't handle all aspects of Reflection. Specifically it doesn't deal with object activation, truly dynamic (string based) member activation or accessing of non instance members, so there's still a little bit of work left to do with Reflection.Dynamic Object InstantiationThe first step in getting the process rolling is to instantiate the type you need to work with. This might be a two step process - loading the instance from a string value, since we don't have a hard type reference and potentially having to load the assembly. Although the host project might have a reference to JSON.NET, that instance might have not been loaded yet since it hasn't been accessed yet. In ASP.NET this won't be a problem, since ASP.NET preloads all referenced assemblies on AppDomain startup, but in other executable project, assemblies are just in time loaded only when they are accessed.Instantiating a type is a two step process: Finding the type reference and then activating it. Here's the generic code out of my ReflectionUtils library I use for this:/// <summary> /// Creates an instance of a type based on a string. Assumes that the type's /// </summary> /// <param name="typeName">Common name of the type</param> /// <param name="args">Any constructor parameters</param> /// <returns></returns> public static object CreateInstanceFromString(string typeName, params object[] args) { object instance = null; Type type = null; try { type = GetTypeFromName(typeName); if (type == null) return null; instance = Activator.CreateInstance(type, args); } catch { return null; } return instance; } /// <summary> /// Helper routine that looks up a type name and tries to retrieve the /// full type reference in the actively executing assemblies. /// </summary> /// <param name="typeName"></param> /// <returns></returns> public static Type GetTypeFromName(string typeName) { Type type = null; // Let default name binding find it type = Type.GetType(typeName, false); if (type != null) return type; // look through assembly list var assemblies = AppDomain.CurrentDomain.GetAssemblies(); // try to find manually foreach (Assembly asm in assemblies) { type = asm.GetType(typeName, false); if (type != null) break; } return type; } To use this for loading JSON.NET I have a small factory function that instantiates JSON.NET and sets a bunch of configuration settings on the generated object. The startup code also looks for failure and tries loading up the assembly when it fails since that's the main reason the load would fail. Finally it also caches the loaded instance for reuse (according to James the JSON.NET instance is thread safe and quite a bit faster when cached). Here's what the factory function looks like in JsonSerializationUtils:/// <summary> /// Dynamically creates an instance of JSON.NET /// </summary> /// <param name="throwExceptions">If true throws exceptions otherwise returns null</param> /// <returns>Dynamic JsonSerializer instance</returns> public static dynamic CreateJsonNet(bool throwExceptions = true) { if (JsonNet != null) return JsonNet; lock (SyncLock) { if (JsonNet != null) return JsonNet; // Try to create instance dynamic json = ReflectionUtils.CreateInstanceFromString("Newtonsoft.Json.JsonSerializer"); if (json == null) { try { var ass = AppDomain.CurrentDomain.Load("Newtonsoft.Json"); json = ReflectionUtils.CreateInstanceFromString("Newtonsoft.Json.JsonSerializer"); } catch (Exception ex) { if (throwExceptions) throw; return null; } } if (json == null) return null; json.ReferenceLoopHandling = (dynamic) ReflectionUtils.GetStaticProperty("Newtonsoft.Json.ReferenceLoopHandling", "Ignore"); // Enums as strings in JSON dynamic enumConverter = ReflectionUtils.CreateInstanceFromString("Newtonsoft.Json.Converters.StringEnumConverter"); json.Converters.Add(enumConverter); JsonNet = json; } return JsonNet; }This code's purpose is to return a fully configured JsonSerializer instance. As you can see the code tries to create an instance and when it fails tries to load the assembly, and then re-tries loading.Once the instance is loaded some configuration occurs on it. Specifically I set the ReferenceLoopHandling option to not blow up immediately when circular references are encountered. There are a host of other small config setting that might be useful to set, but the default seem to be good enough in recent versions. Note that I'm setting ReferenceLoopHandling which requires an Enum value to be set. There's no real easy way (short of using the cardinal numeric value) to set a property or pass parameters from static values or enums. This means I still need to use Reflection to make this work. I'm using the same ReflectionUtils class I previously used to handle this for me. The function looks up the type and then uses Type.InvokeMember() to read the static property.Another feature I need is have Enum values serialized as strings rather than numeric values which is the default. To do this I can use the StringEnumConverter to convert enums to strings by adding it to the Converters collection.As you can see there's still a bit of Reflection to be done even in C# 4+ with dynamic, but with a few helpers this process is relatively painless.Doing the actual JSON ConversionFinally I need to actually do my JSON conversions. For the Utility class I need serialization that works for both strings and files so I created four methods that handle these tasks two each for serialization and deserialization for string and file.Here's what the File Serialization looks like:/// <summary> /// Serializes an object instance to a JSON file. /// </summary> /// <param name="value">the value to serialize</param> /// <param name="fileName">Full path to the file to write out with JSON.</param> /// <param name="throwExceptions">Determines whether exceptions are thrown or false is returned</param> /// <param name="formatJsonOutput">if true pretty-formats the JSON with line breaks</param> /// <returns>true or false</returns> public static bool SerializeToFile(object value, string fileName, bool throwExceptions = false, bool formatJsonOutput = false) { dynamic writer = null; FileStream fs = null; try { Type type = value.GetType(); var json = CreateJsonNet(throwExceptions); if (json == null) return false; fs = new FileStream(fileName, FileMode.Create); var sw = new StreamWriter(fs, Encoding.UTF8); writer = Activator.CreateInstance(JsonTextWriterType, sw); if (formatJsonOutput) writer.Formatting = (dynamic)Enum.Parse(FormattingType, "Indented"); writer.QuoteChar = '"'; json.Serialize(writer, value); } catch (Exception ex) { Debug.WriteLine("JsonSerializer Serialize error: " + ex.Message); if (throwExceptions) throw; return false; } finally { if (writer != null) writer.Close(); if (fs != null) fs.Close(); } return true; }You can see more of the dynamic invocation in this code. First I grab the dynamic JsonSerializer instance using the CreateJsonNet() method shown earlier which returns a dynamic. I then create a JsonTextWriter and configure a couple of enum settings on it, and then call Serialize() on the serializer instance with the JsonTextWriter that writes the output to disk. Although this code is dynamic it's still fairly short and readable.For full circle operation here's the DeserializeFromFile() version:/// <summary> /// Deserializes an object from file and returns a reference. /// </summary> /// <param name="fileName">name of the file to serialize to</param> /// <param name="objectType">The Type of the object. Use typeof(yourobject class)</param> /// <param name="binarySerialization">determines whether we use Xml or Binary serialization</param> /// <param name="throwExceptions">determines whether failure will throw rather than return null on failure</param> /// <returns>Instance of the deserialized object or null. Must be cast to your object type</returns> public static object DeserializeFromFile(string fileName, Type objectType, bool throwExceptions = false) { dynamic json = CreateJsonNet(throwExceptions); if (json == null) return null; object result = null; dynamic reader = null; FileStream fs = null; try { fs = new FileStream(fileName, FileMode.Open, FileAccess.Read); var sr = new StreamReader(fs, Encoding.UTF8); reader = Activator.CreateInstance(JsonTextReaderType, sr); result = json.Deserialize(reader, objectType); reader.Close(); } catch (Exception ex) { Debug.WriteLine("JsonNetSerialization Deserialization Error: " + ex.Message); if (throwExceptions) throw; return null; } finally { if (reader != null) reader.Close(); if (fs != null) fs.Close(); } return result; }This code is a little more compact since there are no prettifying options to set. Here JsonTextReader is created dynamically and it receives the output from the Deserialize() operation on the serializer.You can take a look at the full JsonSerializationUtils.cs file on GitHub to see the rest of the operations, but the string operations are very similar - the code is fairly repetitive.These generic serialization utilities isolate the dynamic serialization logic that has to deal with the dynamic nature of JSON.NET, and any code that uses these functions is none the wiser that JSON.NET is dynamically loaded.Using the JsonSerializationUtils WrapperThe final consumer of the SerializationUtils wrapper is an actual ConfigurationProvider, that is responsible for handling reading and writing JSON values to and from files. The provider is simple a small wrapper around the SerializationUtils component and there's very little code to make this work now:The whole provider looks like this:/// <summary> /// Reads and Writes configuration settings in .NET config files and /// sections. Allows reading and writing to default or external files /// and specification of the configuration section that settings are /// applied to. /// </summary> public class JsonFileConfigurationProvider<TAppConfiguration> : ConfigurationProviderBase<TAppConfiguration> where TAppConfiguration: AppConfiguration, new() { /// <summary> /// Optional - the Configuration file where configuration settings are /// stored in. If not specified uses the default Configuration Manager /// and its default store. /// </summary> public string JsonConfigurationFile { get { return _JsonConfigurationFile; } set { _JsonConfigurationFile = value; } } private string _JsonConfigurationFile = string.Empty; public override bool Read(AppConfiguration config) { var newConfig = JsonSerializationUtils.DeserializeFromFile(JsonConfigurationFile, typeof(TAppConfiguration)) as TAppConfiguration; if (newConfig == null) { if(Write(config)) return true; return false; } DecryptFields(newConfig); DataUtils.CopyObjectData(newConfig, config, "Provider,ErrorMessage"); return true; } /// <summary> /// Return /// </summary> /// <typeparam name="TAppConfig"></typeparam> /// <returns></returns> public override TAppConfig Read<TAppConfig>() { var result = JsonSerializationUtils.DeserializeFromFile(JsonConfigurationFile, typeof(TAppConfig)) as TAppConfig; if (result != null) DecryptFields(result); return result; } /// <summary> /// Write configuration to XmlConfigurationFile location /// </summary> /// <param name="config"></param> /// <returns></returns> public override bool Write(AppConfiguration config) { EncryptFields(config); bool result = JsonSerializationUtils.SerializeToFile(config, JsonConfigurationFile,false,true); // Have to decrypt again to make sure the properties are readable afterwards DecryptFields(config); return result; } }This incidentally demonstrates how easy it is to create a new provider for the West Wind Application Configuration component. Simply implementing 3 methods will do in most cases.Note this code doesn't have any dynamic dependencies - all that's abstracted away in the JsonSerializationUtils(). From here on, serializing JSON is just a matter of calling the static methods on the SerializationUtils class.Already, there are several other places in some other tools where I use JSON serialization this is coming in very handy. With a couple of lines of code I was able to add JSON.NET support to an older AJAX library that I use replacing quite a bit of code that was previously in use. And for any other manual JSON operations (in a couple of apps I use JSON Serialization for 'blob' like document storage) this is also going to be handy.Performance?Some of you might be thinking that using dynamic and Reflection can't be good for performance. And you'd be right… In performing some informal testing it looks like the performance of the native code is nearly twice as fast as the dynamic code. Most of the slowness is attributable to type lookups. To test I created a native class that uses an actual reference to JSON.NET and performance was consistently around 85-90% faster with the referenced code. This will change though depending on the size of objects serialized - the larger the object the more processing time is spent inside the actual dynamically activated components and the less difference there will be. Dynamic code is always slower, but how much it really affects your application primarily depends on how frequently the dynamic code is called in relation to the non-dynamic code executing. In most situations where dynamic code is used 'to get the process rolling' as I do here the overhead is small enough to not matter.All that being said though - I serialized 10,000 objects in 80ms vs. 45ms so this is hardly slouchy performance. For the configuration component speed is not that important because both read and write operations typically happen once on first access and then every once in a while. But for other operations - say a serializer trying to handle AJAX requests on a Web Server one would be well served to create a hard dependency.Dynamic Loading - Worth it?Dynamic loading is not something you need to worry about but on occasion dynamic loading makes sense. But there's a price to be paid in added code  and a performance hit which depends on how frequently the dynamic code is accessed. But for some operations that are not pivotal to a component or application and are only used under certain circumstances dynamic loading can be beneficial to avoid having to ship extra files adding dependencies and loading down distributions. These days when you create new projects in Visual Studio with 30 assemblies before you even add your own code, trying to keep file counts under control seems like a good idea. It's not the kind of thing you do on a regular basis, but when needed it can be a useful option in your toolset… © Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2013Posted in .NET  C#   Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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• How to consume PHP SOAP service using WCF

  - by mr.b

  I am new in web services so apologize me if I am making some cardinal mistake here, hehe. I have built SOAP service using PHP. Service is SOAP 1.2 compatible, and I have WSDL available. I have enabled sessions, so that I can track login status, etc. I don't need some super security here (ie message-level security), all I need is transport security (HTTPS), since this service will be used infrequently, and performances are not so much of an issue. I am having difficulties making it to work at all. C# throws some unclear exception ("Server returned an invalid SOAP Fault. Please see InnerException for more details.", which in turn says "Unbound prefix used in qualified name 'rpc:ProcedureNotPresent'."), but consuming service using PHP SOAP client behaves as expected (including session and all). So far, I have following code. note: due to amount of real code, I am posting minimal code configuration PHP SOAP server (using Zend Soap Server library), including class(es) exposed via service: <?php class Verification_LiteralDocumentProxy { protected $instance; public function __call($methodName, $args) { if ($this->instance === null) { $this->instance = new Verification(); } $result = call_user_func_array(array($this->instance, $methodName), $args[0]); return array($methodName.'Result' => $result); } } class Verification { private $guid = ''; private $hwid = ''; /** * Initialize connection * * @param string GUID * @param string HWID * @return bool */ public function Initialize($guid, $hwid) { $this->guid = $guid; $this->hwid = $hwid; return true; } /** * Closes session * * @return void */ public function Close() { // if session is working, $this->hwid and $this->guid // should contain non-empty values } } // start up session stuff $sess = Session::instance(); require_once 'Zend/Soap/Server.php'; $server = new Zend_Soap_Server('https://www.somesite.com/api?wsdl'); $server->setClass('Verification_LiteralDocumentProxy'); $server->setPersistence(SOAP_PERSISTENCE_SESSION); $server->handle(); WSDL: <definitions xmlns="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/wsdl/" xmlns:tns="https://www.somesite.com/api" xmlns:soap="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/wsdl/soap/" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns:soap-enc="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/" xmlns:wsdl="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/wsdl/" name="Verification" targetNamespace="https://www.somesite.com/api"> <types> <xsd:schema targetNamespace="https://www.somesite.com/api"> <xsd:element name="Initialize"> <xsd:complexType> <xsd:sequence> <xsd:element name="guid" type="xsd:string"/> <xsd:element name="hwid" type="xsd:string"/> </xsd:sequence> </xsd:complexType> </xsd:element> <xsd:element name="InitializeResponse"> <xsd:complexType> <xsd:sequence> <xsd:element name="InitializeResult" type="xsd:boolean"/> </xsd:sequence> </xsd:complexType> </xsd:element> <xsd:element name="Close"> <xsd:complexType/> </xsd:element> </xsd:schema> </types> <portType name="VerificationPort"> <operation name="Initialize"> <documentation> Initializes connection with server</documentation> <input message="tns:InitializeIn"/> <output message="tns:InitializeOut"/> </operation> <operation name="Close"> <documentation> Closes session between client and server</documentation> <input message="tns:CloseIn"/> </operation> </portType> <binding name="VerificationBinding" type="tns:VerificationPort"> <soap:binding style="document" transport="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/http"/> <operation name="Initialize"> <soap:operation soapAction="https://www.somesite.com/api#Initialize"/> <input> <soap:body use="literal"/> </input> <output> <soap:body use="literal"/> </output> </operation> <operation name="Close"> <soap:operation soapAction="https://www.somesite.com/api#Close"/> <input> <soap:body use="literal"/> </input> <output> <soap:body use="literal"/> </output> </operation> </binding> <service name="VerificationService"> <port name="VerificationPort" binding="tns:VerificationBinding"> <soap:address location="https://www.somesite.com/api"/> </port> </service> <message name="InitializeIn"> <part name="parameters" element="tns:Initialize"/> </message> <message name="InitializeOut"> <part name="parameters" element="tns:InitializeResponse"/> </message> <message name="CloseIn"> <part name="parameters" element="tns:Close"/> </message> </definitions> And finally, WCF C# consumer code: [ServiceContract(SessionMode = SessionMode.Required)] public interface IVerification { [OperationContract(Action = "Initialize", IsInitiating = true)] bool Initialize(string guid, string hwid); [OperationContract(Action = "Close", IsInitiating = false, IsTerminating = true)] void Close(); } class Program { static void Main(string[] args) { WSHttpBinding whb = new WSHttpBinding(SecurityMode.Transport, true); ChannelFactory<IVerification> cf = new ChannelFactory<IVerification>( whb, "https://www.somesite.com/api"); IVerification client = cf.CreateChannel(); Console.WriteLine(client.Initialize("123451515", "15498518").ToString()); client.Close(); } } Any ideas? What am I doing wrong here? Thanks!

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• Windows Azure: Import/Export Hard Drives, VM ACLs, Web Sockets, Remote Debugging, Continuous Delivery, New Relic, Billing Alerts and More

  - by ScottGu

  Two weeks ago we released a giant set of improvements to Windows Azure, as well as a significant update of the Windows Azure SDK. This morning we released another massive set of enhancements to Windows Azure.  Today’s new capabilities include: Storage: Import/Export Hard Disk Drives to your Storage Accounts HDInsight: General Availability of our Hadoop Service in the cloud Virtual Machines: New VM Gallery, ACL support for VIPs Web Sites: WebSocket and Remote Debugging Support Notification Hubs: Segmented customer push notification support with tag expressions TFS & GIT: Continuous Delivery Support for Web Sites + Cloud Services Developer Analytics: New Relic support for Web Sites + Mobile Services Service Bus: Support for partitioned queues and topics Billing: New Billing Alert Service that sends emails notifications when your bill hits a threshold you define All of these improvements are now available to use immediately (note that some features are still in preview).  Below are more details about them. Storage: Import/Export Hard Disk Drives to Windows Azure I am excited to announce the preview of our new Windows Azure Import/Export Service! The Windows Azure Import/Export Service enables you to move large amounts of on-premises data into and out of your Windows Azure Storage accounts. It does this by enabling you to securely ship hard disk drives directly to our Windows Azure data centers. Once we receive the drives we’ll automatically transfer the data to or from your Windows Azure Storage account.  This enables you to import or export massive amounts of data more quickly and cost effectively (and not be constrained by available network bandwidth). Encrypted Transport Our Import/Export service provides built-in support for BitLocker disk encryption – which enables you to securely encrypt data on the hard drives before you send it, and not have to worry about it being compromised even if the disk is lost/stolen in transit (since the content on the transported hard drives is completely encrypted and you are the only one who has the key to it).  The drive preparation tool we are shipping today makes setting up bitlocker encryption on these hard drives easy. How to Import/Export your first Hard Drive of Data You can read our Getting Started Guide to learn more about how to begin using the import/export service.  You can create import and export jobs via the Windows Azure Management Portal as well as programmatically using our Server Management APIs. It is really easy to create a new import or export job using the Windows Azure Management Portal.  Simply navigate to a Windows Azure storage account, and then click the new Import/Export tab now available within it (note: if you don’t have this tab make sure to sign-up for the Import/Export preview): Then click the “Create Import Job” or “Create Export Job” commands at the bottom of it.  This will launch a wizard that easily walks you through the steps required: For more comprehensive information about Import/Export, refer to Windows Azure Storage team blog.  You can also send questions and comments to the [email protected] email address. We think you’ll find this new service makes it much easier to move data into and out of Windows Azure, and it will dramatically cut down the network bandwidth required when working on large data migration projects.  We hope you like it. HDInsight: 100% Compatible Hadoop Service in the Cloud Last week we announced the general availability release of Windows Azure HDInsight. HDInsight is a 100% compatible Hadoop service that allows you to easily provision and manage Hadoop clusters for big data processing in Windows Azure.  This release is now live in production, backed by an enterprise SLA, supported 24x7 by Microsoft Support, and is ready to use for production scenarios. HDInsight allows you to use Apache Hadoop tools, such as Pig and Hive, to process large amounts of data in Windows Azure Blob Storage. Because data is stored in Windows Azure Blob Storage, you can choose to dynamically create Hadoop clusters only when you need them, and then shut them down when they are no longer required (since you pay only for the time the Hadoop cluster instances are running this provides a super cost effective way to use them).  You can create Hadoop clusters using either the Windows Azure Management Portal (see below) or using our PowerShell and Cross Platform Command line tools: The import/export hard drive support that came out today is a perfect companion service to use with HDInsight – the combination allows you to easily ingest, process and optionally export a limitless amount of data.  We’ve also integrated HDInsight with our Business Intelligence tools, so users can leverage familiar tools like Excel in order to analyze the output of jobs.  You can find out more about how to get started with HDInsight here. Virtual Machines: VM Gallery Enhancements Today’s update of Windows Azure brings with it a new Virtual Machine gallery that you can use to create new VMs in the cloud.  You can launch the gallery by doing New->Compute->Virtual Machine->From Gallery within the Windows Azure Management Portal: The new Virtual Machine Gallery includes some nice enhancements that make it even easier to use: Search: You can now easily search and filter images using the search box in the top-right of the dialog.  For example, simply type “SQL” and we’ll filter to show those images in the gallery that contain that substring. Category Tree-view: Each month we add more built-in VM images to the gallery.  You can continue to browse these using the “All” view within the VM Gallery – or now quickly filter them using the category tree-view on the left-hand side of the dialog.  For example, by selecting “Oracle” in the tree-view you can now quickly filter to see the official Oracle supplied images. MSDN and Supported checkboxes: With today’s update we are also introducing filters that makes it easy to filter out types of images that you may not be interested in. The first checkbox is MSDN: using this filter you can exclude any image that is not part of the Windows Azure benefits for MSDN subscribers (which have highly discounted pricing - you can learn more about the MSDN pricing here). The second checkbox is Supported: this filter will exclude any image that contains prerelease software, so you can feel confident that the software you choose to deploy is fully supported by Windows Azure and our partners. Sort options: We sort gallery images by what we think customers are most interested in, but sometimes you might want to sort using different views. So we’re providing some additional sort options, like “Newest,” to customize the image list for what suits you best. Pricing information: We now provide additional pricing information about images and options on how to cost effectively run them directly within the VM Gallery. The above improvements make it even easier to use the VM Gallery and quickly create launch and run Virtual Machines in the cloud. Virtual Machines: ACL Support for VIPs A few months ago we exposed the ability to configure Access Control Lists (ACLs) for Virtual Machines using Windows PowerShell cmdlets and our Service Management API. With today’s release, you can now configure VM ACLs using the Windows Azure Management Portal as well. You can now do this by clicking the new Manage ACL command in the Endpoints tab of a virtual machine instance: This will enable you to configure an ordered list of permit and deny rules to scope the traffic that can access your VM’s network endpoints. For example, if you were on a virtual network, you could limit RDP access to a Windows Azure virtual machine to only a few computers attached to your enterprise. Or if you weren’t on a virtual network you could alternatively limit traffic from public IPs that can access your workloads: Here is the default behaviors for ACLs in Windows Azure: By default (i.e. no rules specified), all traffic is permitted. When using only Permit rules, all other traffic is denied. When using only Deny rules, all other traffic is permitted. When there is a combination of Permit and Deny rules, all other traffic is denied. Lastly, remember that configuring endpoints does not automatically configure them within the VM if it also has firewall rules enabled at the OS level.  So if you create an endpoint using the Windows Azure Management Portal, Windows PowerShell, or REST API, be sure to also configure your guest VM firewall appropriately as well. Web Sites: Web Sockets Support With today’s release you can now use Web Sockets with Windows Azure Web Sites.  This feature enables you to easily integrate real-time communication scenarios within your web based applications, and is available at no extra charge (it even works with the free tier).  Higher level programming libraries like SignalR and socket.io are also now supported with it. You can enable Web Sockets support on a web site by navigating to the Configure tab of a Web Site, and by toggling Web Sockets support to “on”: Once Web Sockets is enabled you can start to integrate some really cool scenarios into your web applications.  Check out the new SignalR documentation hub on www.asp.net to learn more about some of the awesome scenarios you can do with it. Web Sites: Remote Debugging Support The Windows Azure SDK 2.2 we released two weeks ago introduced remote debugging support for Windows Azure Cloud Services. With today’s Windows Azure release we are extending this remote debugging support to also work with Windows Azure Web Sites. With live, remote debugging support inside of Visual Studio, you are able to have more visibility than ever before into how your code is operating live in Windows Azure. It is now super easy to attach the debugger and quickly see what is going on with your application in the cloud. Remote Debugging of a Windows Azure Web Site using VS 2013 Enabling the remote debugging of a Windows Azure Web Site using VS 2013 is really easy.  Start by opening up your web application’s project within Visual Studio. Then navigate to the “Server Explorer” tab within Visual Studio, and click on the deployed web-site you want to debug that is running within Windows Azure using the Windows Azure->Web Sites node in the Server Explorer.  Then right-click and choose the “Attach Debugger” option on it: When you do this Visual Studio will remotely attach the debugger to the Web Site running within Windows Azure.  The debugger will then stop the web site’s execution when it hits any break points that you have set within your web application’s project inside Visual Studio.  For example, below I set a breakpoint on the “ViewBag.Message” assignment statement within the HomeController of the standard ASP.NET MVC project template.  When I hit refresh on the “About” page of the web site within the browser, the breakpoint was triggered and I am now able to debug the app remotely using Visual Studio: Note above how we can debug variables (including autos/watchlist/etc), as well as use the Immediate and Command Windows. In the debug session above I used the Immediate Window to explore some of the request object state, as well as to dynamically change the ViewBag.Message property.  When we click the the “Continue” button (or press F5) the app will continue execution and the Web Site will render the content back to the browser.  This makes it super easy to debug web apps remotely. Tips for Better Debugging To get the best experience while debugging, we recommend publishing your site using the Debug configuration within Visual Studio’s Web Publish dialog. This will ensure that debug symbol information is uploaded to the Web Site which will enable a richer debug experience within Visual Studio.  You can find this option on the Web Publish dialog on the Settings tab: When you ultimately deploy/run the application in production we recommend using the “Release” configuration setting – the release configuration is memory optimized and will provide the best production performance.  To learn more about diagnosing and debugging Windows Azure Web Sites read our new Troubleshooting Windows Azure Web Sites in Visual Studio guide. Notification Hubs: Segmented Push Notification support with tag expressions In August we announced the General Availability of Windows Azure Notification Hubs - a powerful Mobile Push Notifications service that makes it easy to send high volume push notifications with low latency from any mobile app back-end.  Notification hubs can be used with any mobile app back-end (including ones built using our Mobile Services capability) and can also be used with back-ends that run in the cloud as well as on-premises. Beginning with the initial release, Notification Hubs allowed developers to send personalized push notifications to both individual users as well as groups of users by interest, by associating their devices with tags representing the logical target of the notification. For example, by registering all devices of customers interested in a favorite MLB team with a corresponding tag, it is possible to broadcast one message to millions of Boston Red Sox fans and another message to millions of St. Louis Cardinals fans with a single API call respectively. New support for using tag expressions to enable advanced customer segmentation With today’s release we are adding support for even more advanced customer targeting.  You can now identify customers that you want to send push notifications to by defining rich tag expressions. With tag expressions, you can now not only broadcast notifications to Boston Red Sox fans, but take that segmenting a step farther and reach more granular segments. This opens up a variety of scenarios, for example: Offers based on multiple preferences—e.g. send a game day vegetarian special to users tagged as both a Boston Red Sox fan AND a vegetarian Push content to multiple segments in a single message—e.g. rain delay information only to users who are tagged as either a Boston Red Sox fan OR a St. Louis Cardinal fan Avoid presenting subsets of a segment with irrelevant content—e.g. season ticket availability reminder to users who are tagged as a Boston Red Sox fan but NOT also a season ticket holder To illustrate with code, consider a restaurant chain app that sends an offer related to a Red Sox vs Cardinals game for users in Boston. Devices can be tagged by your app with location tags (e.g. “Loc:Boston”) and interest tags (e.g. “Follows:RedSox”, “Follows:Cardinals”), and then a notification can be sent by your back-end to “(Follows:RedSox || Follows:Cardinals) && Loc:Boston” in order to deliver an offer to all devices in Boston that follow either the RedSox or the Cardinals. This can be done directly in your server backend send logic using the code below: var notification = new WindowsNotification(messagePayload); hub.SendNotificationAsync(notification, "(Follows:RedSox || Follows:Cardinals) && Loc:Boston"); In your expressions you can use all Boolean operators: AND (&&), OR (||), and NOT (!).  Some other cool use cases for tag expressions that are now supported include: Social: To “all my group except me” - group:id && !user:id Events: Touchdown event is sent to everybody following either team or any of the players involved in the action: Followteam:A || Followteam:B || followplayer:1 || followplayer:2 … Hours: Send notifications at specific times. E.g. Tag devices with time zone and when it is 12pm in Seattle send to: GMT8 && follows:thaifood Versions and platforms: Send a reminder to people still using your first version for Android - version:1.0 && platform:Android For help on getting started with Notification Hubs, visit the Notification Hub documentation center.  Then download the latest NuGet package (or use the Notification Hubs REST APIs directly) to start sending push notifications using tag expressions.  They are really powerful and enable a bunch of great new scenarios. TFS & GIT: Continuous Delivery Support for Web Sites + Cloud Services With today’s Windows Azure release we are making it really easy to enable continuous delivery support with Windows Azure and Team Foundation Services.  Team Foundation Services is a cloud based offering from Microsoft that provides integrated source control (with both TFS and Git support), build server, test execution, collaboration tools, and agile planning support.  It makes it really easy to setup a team project (complete with automated builds and test runners) in the cloud, and it has really rich integration with Visual Studio. With today’s Windows Azure release it is now really easy to enable continuous delivery support with both TFS and Git based repositories hosted using Team Foundation Services.  This enables a workflow where when code is checked in, built successfully on an automated build server, and all tests pass on it – I can automatically have the app deployed on Windows Azure with zero manual intervention or work required. The below screen-shots demonstrate how to quickly setup a continuous delivery workflow to Windows Azure with a Git-based ASP.NET MVC project hosted using Team Foundation Services. Enabling Continuous Delivery to Windows Azure with Team Foundation Services The project I’m going to enable continuous delivery with is a simple ASP.NET MVC project whose source code I’m hosting using Team Foundation Services.  I did this by creating a “SimpleContinuousDeploymentTest” repository there using Git – and then used the new built-in Git tooling support within Visual Studio 2013 to push the source code to it.  Below is a screen-shot of the Git repository hosted within Team Foundation Services: I can access the repository within Visual Studio 2013 and easily make commits with it (as well as branch, merge and do other tasks).  Using VS 2013 I can also setup automated builds to take place in the cloud using Team Foundation Services every time someone checks in code to the repository: The cool thing about this is that I don’t have to buy or rent my own build server – Team Foundation Services automatically maintains its own build server farm and can automatically queue up a build for me (for free) every time someone checks in code using the above settings.  This build server (and automated testing) support now works with both TFS and Git based source control repositories. Connecting a Team Foundation Services project to Windows Azure Once I have a source repository hosted in Team Foundation Services with Automated Builds and Testing set up, I can then go even further and set it up so that it will be automatically deployed to Windows Azure when a source code commit is made to the repository (assuming the Build + Tests pass).  Enabling this is now really easy.  To set this up with a Windows Azure Web Site simply use the New->Compute->Web Site->Custom Create command inside the Windows Azure Management Portal.  This will create a dialog like below.  I gave the web site a name and then made sure the “Publish from source control” checkbox was selected: When we click next we’ll be prompted for the location of the source repository.  We’ll select “Team Foundation Services”: Once we do this we’ll be prompted for our Team Foundation Services account that our source repository is hosted under (in this case my TFS account is “scottguthrie”): When we click the “Authorize Now” button we’ll be prompted to give Windows Azure permissions to connect to the Team Foundation Services account.  Once we do this we’ll be prompted to pick the source repository we want to connect to.  Starting with today’s Windows Azure release you can now connect to both TFS and Git based source repositories.  This new support allows me to connect to the “SimpleContinuousDeploymentTest” respository we created earlier: Clicking the finish button will then create the Web Site with the continuous delivery hooks setup with Team Foundation Services.  Now every time someone pushes source control to the repository in Team Foundation Services, it will kick off an automated build, run all of the unit tests in the solution , and if they pass the app will be automatically deployed to our Web Site in Windows Azure.  You can monitor the history and status of these automated deployments using the Deployments tab within the Web Site: This enables a really slick continuous delivery workflow, and enables you to build and deploy apps in a really nice way. Developer Analytics: New Relic support for Web Sites + Mobile Services With today’s Windows Azure release we are making it really easy to enable Developer Analytics and Monitoring support with both Windows Azure Web Site and Windows Azure Mobile Services.  We are partnering with New Relic, who provide a great dev analytics and app performance monitoring offering, to enable this - and we have updated the Windows Azure Management Portal to make it really easy to configure. Enabling New Relic with a Windows Azure Web Site Enabling New Relic support with a Windows Azure Web Site is now really easy.  Simply navigate to the Configure tab of a Web Site and scroll down to the “developer analytics” section that is now within it: Clicking the “add-on” button will display some additional UI.  If you don’t already have a New Relic subscription, you can click the “view windows azure store” button to obtain a subscription (note: New Relic has a perpetually free tier so you can enable it even without paying anything): Clicking the “view windows azure store” button will launch the integrated Windows Azure Store experience we have within the Windows Azure Management Portal.  You can use this to browse from a variety of great add-on services – including New Relic: Select “New Relic” within the dialog above, then click the next button, and you’ll be able to choose which type of New Relic subscription you wish to purchase.  For this demo we’ll simply select the “Free Standard Version” – which does not cost anything and can be used forever:  Once we’ve signed-up for our New Relic subscription and added it to our Windows Azure account, we can go back to the Web Site’s configuration tab and choose to use the New Relic add-on with our Windows Azure Web Site.  We can do this by simply selecting it from the “add-on” dropdown (it is automatically populated within it once we have a New Relic subscription in our account): Clicking the “Save” button will then cause the Windows Azure Management Portal to automatically populate all of the needed New Relic configuration settings to our Web Site: Deploying the New Relic Agent as part of a Web Site The final step to enable developer analytics using New Relic is to add the New Relic runtime agent to our web app.  We can do this within Visual Studio by right-clicking on our web project and selecting the “Manage NuGet Packages” context menu: This will bring up the NuGet package manager.  You can search for “New Relic” within it to find the New Relic agent.  Note that there is both a 32-bit and 64-bit edition of it – make sure to install the version that matches how your Web Site is running within Windows Azure (note: you can configure your Web Site to run in either 32-bit or 64-bit mode using the Web Site’s “Configuration” tab within the Windows Azure Management Portal): Once we install the NuGet package we are all set to go.  We’ll simply re-publish the web site again to Windows Azure and New Relic will now automatically start monitoring the application Monitoring a Web Site using New Relic Now that the application has developer analytics support with New Relic enabled, we can launch the New Relic monitoring portal to start monitoring the health of it.  We can do this by clicking on the “Add Ons” tab in the left-hand side of the Windows Azure Management Portal.  Then select the New Relic add-on we signed-up for within it.  The Windows Azure Management Portal will provide some default information about the add-on when we do this.  Clicking the “Manage” button in the tray at the bottom will launch a new browser tab and single-sign us into the New Relic monitoring portal associated with our account: When we do this a new browser tab will launch with the New Relic admin tool loaded within it: We can now see insights into how our app is performing – without having to have written a single line of monitoring code.  The New Relic service provides a ton of great built-in monitoring features allowing us to quickly see: Performance times (including browser rendering speed) for the overall site and individual pages.  You can optionally set alert thresholds to trigger if the speed does not meet a threshold you specify. Information about where in the world your customers are hitting the site from (and how performance varies by region) Details on the latency performance of external services your web apps are using (for example: SQL, Storage, Twitter, etc) Error information including call stack details for exceptions that have occurred at runtime SQL Server profiling information – including which queries executed against your database and what their performance was And a whole bunch more… The cool thing about New Relic is that you don’t need to write monitoring code within your application to get all of the above reports (plus a lot more).  The New Relic agent automatically enables the CLR profiler within applications and automatically captures the information necessary to identify these.  This makes it super easy to get started and immediately have a rich developer analytics view for your solutions with very little effort. If you haven’t tried New Relic out yet with Windows Azure I recommend you do so – I think you’ll find it helps you build even better cloud applications.  Following the above steps will help you get started and deliver you a really good application monitoring solution in only minutes. Service Bus: Support for partitioned queues and topics With today’s release, we are enabling support within Service Bus for partitioned queues and topics. Enabling partitioning enables you to achieve a higher message throughput and better availability from your queues and topics. Higher message throughput is achieved by implementing multiple message brokers for each partitioned queue and topic.  The  multiple messaging stores will also provide higher availability. You can create a partitioned queue or topic by simply checking the Enable Partitioning option in the custom create wizard for a Queue or Topic: Read this article to learn more about partitioned queues and topics and how to take advantage of them today. Billing: New Billing Alert Service Today’s Windows Azure update enables a new Billing Alert Service Preview that enables you to get proactive email notifications when your Windows Azure bill goes above a certain monetary threshold that you configure.  This makes it easier to manage your bill and avoid potential surprises at the end of the month. With the Billing Alert Service Preview, you can now create email alerts to monitor and manage your monetary credits or your current bill total.  To set up an alert first sign-up for the free Billing Alert Service Preview.  Then visit the account management page, click on a subscription you have setup, and then navigate to the new Alerts tab that is available: The alerts tab allows you to setup email alerts that will be sent automatically once a certain threshold is hit.  For example, by clicking the “add alert” button above I can setup a rule to send myself email anytime my Windows Azure bill goes above $100 for the month: The Billing Alert Service will evolve to support additional aspects of your bill as well as support multiple forms of alerts such as SMS.  Try out the new Billing Alert Service Preview today and give us feedback. Summary Today’s Windows Azure release enables a ton of great new scenarios, and makes building applications hosted in the cloud even easier. 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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• External USB drive is failing

  - by dma_k

  I have an external USB 2.0 drive WD My Book Mirror Edition, running in RAID 1 (mirroring) mode. A while ago the hard drive started to fail: it stops responding (directories are not listed returning an error after a big timeout). Sometimes it works for weeks before a failure, sometimes – few hours. Small write operations (like removing few files or editing a small file) do not harm, but when copying large files to the drive over the network, or creating the archive locally, the kernel dumps. Also interesting to note that once kernel has failed, Linux does not want to reboot normally (reboot hangs); when Linux box is shutdown with power button, WD drive does not go to sleep mode (as it usually does): leds continue to run, pressing and holding the "shutdown" button on drive's back panel does not do anything; only unplugging the power cord helps. Here goes the boot log: Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 1.514106] ehci_hcd: USB 2.0 'Enhanced' Host Controller (EHCI) Driver Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 1.657738] ehci_hcd 0000:00:1d.7: PCI INT A -> GSI 23 (level, low) -> IRQ 23 Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 1.673747] ehci_hcd 0000:00:1d.7: setting latency timer to 64 Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 1.673751] ehci_hcd 0000:00:1d.7: EHCI Host Controller Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 1.725224] ehci_hcd 0000:00:1d.7: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 1 Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 1.741647] ehci_hcd 0000:00:1d.7: using broken periodic workaround Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 1.761790] ehci_hcd 0000:00:1d.7: cache line size of 32 is not supported Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 1.761873] ehci_hcd 0000:00:1d.7: irq 23, io mem 0xfdfff000 Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 1.796043] ehci_hcd 0000:00:1d.7: USB 2.0 started, EHCI 1.00 Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 1.879069] usb usb1: New USB device found, idVendor=1d6b, idProduct=0002 Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 1.895446] usb usb1: New USB device strings: Mfr=3, Product=2, SerialNumber=1 Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 1.911796] usb usb1: Product: EHCI Host Controller Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 1.928015] usb usb1: Manufacturer: Linux 2.6.32-5-686 ehci_hcd Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 1.944331] usb usb1: SerialNumber: 0000:00:1d.7 Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 1.961285] usb usb1: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 1.994412] hub 1-0:1.0: USB hub found Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 2.010864] hub 1-0:1.0: 8 ports detected Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 2.085939] uhci_hcd: USB Universal Host Controller Interface driver Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 2.191945] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.0: PCI INT A -> GSI 23 (level, low) -> IRQ 23 Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 2.226029] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.0: setting latency timer to 64 Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 2.226034] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.0: UHCI Host Controller Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 2.243237] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.0: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 2 Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 2.260390] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.0: irq 23, io base 0x0000fe00 Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 2.277517] usb usb2: New USB device found, idVendor=1d6b, idProduct=0001 Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 2.294815] usb usb2: New USB device strings: Mfr=3, Product=2, SerialNumber=1 Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 2.312173] usb usb2: Product: UHCI Host Controller Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 2.329534] usb usb2: Manufacturer: Linux 2.6.32-5-686 uhci_hcd Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 2.346828] usb usb2: SerialNumber: 0000:00:1d.0 Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 2.412989] usb usb2: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 2.430651] usb 1-2: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 2 Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 2.449046] hub 2-0:1.0: USB hub found Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 2.466514] hub 2-0:1.0: 2 ports detected Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 2.484639] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.1: PCI INT B -> GSI 19 (level, low) -> IRQ 19 Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 2.537750] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.1: setting latency timer to 64 Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 2.537756] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.1: UHCI Host Controller Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 2.555085] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.1: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 3 Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 2.572231] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.1: irq 19, io base 0x0000fd00 Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 2.589593] usb usb3: New USB device found, idVendor=1d6b, idProduct=0001 Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 2.606869] usb usb3: New USB device strings: Mfr=3, Product=2, SerialNumber=1 Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 2.624134] usb usb3: Product: UHCI Host Controller Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 2.641329] usb usb3: Manufacturer: Linux 2.6.32-5-686 uhci_hcd Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 2.658505] usb usb3: SerialNumber: 0000:00:1d.1 Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 2.675843] usb usb3: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 2.692864] hub 3-0:1.0: USB hub found Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 2.709651] hub 3-0:1.0: 2 ports detected Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 2.727378] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.2: PCI INT C -> GSI 18 (level, low) -> IRQ 18 Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 2.768252] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.2: setting latency timer to 64 Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 2.768258] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.2: UHCI Host Controller Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 2.806679] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.2: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 4 Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 2.824117] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.2: irq 18, io base 0x0000fc00 Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 2.841405] usb 1-2: New USB device found, idVendor=1058, idProduct=1104 Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 2.858448] usb 1-2: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3 Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 2.875347] usb 1-2: Product: My Book Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 2.892113] usb 1-2: Manufacturer: Western Digital Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 2.908915] usb 1-2: SerialNumber: 575532553130303530353538 Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 2.943242] usb usb4: New USB device found, idVendor=1d6b, idProduct=0001 Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 2.960405] usb usb4: New USB device strings: Mfr=3, Product=2, SerialNumber=1 Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 2.977615] usb usb4: Product: UHCI Host Controller Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 2.994687] usb usb4: Manufacturer: Linux 2.6.32-5-686 uhci_hcd Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 3.011711] usb usb4: SerialNumber: 0000:00:1d.2 Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 3.029589] usb usb4: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 3.082027] sd 2:0:0:0: [sda] Attached SCSI disk Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 3.103953] usb 1-2: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 3.122625] hub 4-0:1.0: USB hub found Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 3.140484] hub 4-0:1.0: 2 ports detected Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 3.161680] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.3: PCI INT D -> GSI 16 (level, low) -> IRQ 16 Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 3.181257] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.3: setting latency timer to 64 Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 3.181263] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.3: UHCI Host Controller Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 3.198614] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.3: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 5 Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 3.216012] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.3: irq 16, io base 0x0000fb00 Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 3.249877] Uniform CD-ROM driver Revision: 3.20 Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 3.267765] usb usb5: New USB device found, idVendor=1d6b, idProduct=0001 Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 3.284947] usb usb5: New USB device strings: Mfr=3, Product=2, SerialNumber=1 Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 3.302023] usb usb5: Product: UHCI Host Controller Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 3.319215] usb usb5: Manufacturer: Linux 2.6.32-5-686 uhci_hcd Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 3.336298] usb usb5: SerialNumber: 0000:00:1d.3 Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 3.368377] Initializing USB Mass Storage driver... Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 3.390652] usbcore: registered new interface driver hiddev Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 3.408109] scsi4 : SCSI emulation for USB Mass Storage devices Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 3.425281] sr 0:0:1:0: Attached scsi CD-ROM sr0 Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 3.438978] sr 0:0:1:0: Attached scsi generic sg0 type 5 Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 3.456328] usbcore: registered new interface driver usb-storage Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 3.474564] usb-storage: device found at 2 Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 3.474567] usb-storage: waiting for device to settle before scanning Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 3.475320] sd 2:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg1 type 0 Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 3.492587] USB Mass Storage support registered. Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 3.510930] usb usb5: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 3.531076] hub 5-0:1.0: USB hub found Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 3.548399] hub 5-0:1.0: 2 ports detected Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 3.591743] input: Western Digital My Book as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1d.7/usb1/1-2/1-2:1.1/input/input2 Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 3.609515] generic-usb 0003:1058:1104.0001: input,hidraw0: USB HID v1.11 Device [Western Digital My Book] on usb-0000:00:1d.7-2/input1 Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 3.627466] usbcore: registered new interface driver usbhid Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 8.581664] usb-storage: device scan complete Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 8.624270] scsi 4:0:0:0: Direct-Access WD My Book 1008 PQ: 0 ANSI: 4 Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 8.655135] scsi 4:0:0:1: Enclosure WD My Book Device 1008 PQ: 0 ANSI: 4 Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 8.675393] sd 4:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg2 type 0 Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 8.698669] scsi 4:0:0:1: Attached scsi generic sg3 type 13 Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 8.723370] sd 4:0:0:0: [sdb] 1953513472 512-byte logical blocks: (1.00 TB/931 GiB) Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 8.750477] sd 4:0:0:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 8.769411] sd 4:0:0:0: [sdb] Mode Sense: 10 00 00 00 Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 8.769414] sd 4:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 8.822971] sd 4:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 8.841978] sdb: sdb1 Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 8.905580] sd 4:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 8.924173] sd 4:0:0:0: [sdb] Attached SCSI disk Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 11.600492] XFS mounting filesystem sdb1 Aug 16 00:32:21 kernel: [ 12.222948] Ending clean XFS mount for filesystem: sdb1 After a while the following appears in a log: Aug 16 09:30:56 kernel: [32359.112029] usb 1-2: reset high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 2 Aug 16 09:31:59 kernel: [32422.112035] usb 1-2: reset high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 2 Aug 16 09:33:00 kernel: [32483.112029] usb 1-2: reset high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 2 And then it is followed by few kernel dumps, which I think, are not good: Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32520.428027] INFO: task xfssyncd:1002 blocked for more than 120 seconds. Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32520.462689] "echo 0 > /proc/sys/kernel/hung_task_timeout_secs" disables this message. Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32520.497422] xfssyncd D c3d84a60 0 1002 2 0x00000000 Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32520.532117] f6c9aa80 00000046 c1132742 c3d84a60 00000286 c1418100 c1418100 00000000 Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32520.566867] f6c9ac3c c2808100 00000000 f653b18b 00001d76 00000001 f6c9aa80 c3c3f0e0 Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32520.601343] 08e59242 f6c9ac3c 2e41392b 00000000 08e59242 00000000 c3f7fb48 0067385a Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32520.635533] Call Trace: Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32520.668991] [<c1132742>] ? cfq_set_request+0x0/0x290 Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32520.702804] [<c126b532>] ? io_schedule+0x5f/0x98 Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32520.736555] [<c1128be0>] ? get_request_wait+0xcb/0x146 Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32520.770360] [<c10437ba>] ? autoremove_wake_function+0x0/0x2d Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32520.804110] [<c112907c>] ? __make_request+0x2cc/0x3d9 Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32520.837713] [<c1128230>] ? blk_peek_request+0x135/0x143 Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32520.871265] [<f8582987>] ? scsi_dispatch_cmd+0x185/0x1e5 [scsi_mod] Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32520.904407] [<c1127cf1>] ? generic_make_request+0x266/0x2b4 Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32520.937007] [<c10cf821>] ? bvec_alloc_bs+0x95/0xaf Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32520.969033] [<c1127dfb>] ? submit_bio+0xbc/0xd6 Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32521.000485] [<c10cffd1>] ? bio_add_page+0x28/0x2e Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32521.031403] [<f8918d38>] ? _xfs_buf_ioapply+0x206/0x22b [xfs] Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32521.061888] [<f89197bd>] ? xfs_buf_iorequest+0x38/0x60 [xfs] Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32521.091845] [<f8907230>] ? xlog_bdstrat_cb+0x16/0x3d [xfs] Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32521.121222] [<f8905781>] ? XFS_bwrite+0x32/0x64 [xfs] Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32521.150007] [<f89059be>] ? xlog_sync+0x20b/0x311 [xfs] Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32521.178214] [<f89112fc>] ? xfs_trans_ail_tail+0x12/0x27 [xfs] Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32521.205914] [<f8906261>] ? xlog_state_sync_all+0xa2/0x141 [xfs] Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32521.233074] [<f8906611>] ? _xfs_log_force+0x51/0x68 [xfs] Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32521.259664] [<c103abaf>] ? process_timeout+0x0/0x5 Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32521.285662] [<f8906636>] ? xfs_log_force+0xe/0x27 [xfs] Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32521.311171] [<f89202df>] ? xfs_sync_worker+0x17/0x5c [xfs] Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32521.336117] [<f891fbb7>] ? xfssyncd+0x134/0x17d [xfs] Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32521.360498] [<f891fa83>] ? xfssyncd+0x0/0x17d [xfs] Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32521.384211] [<c1043588>] ? kthread+0x61/0x66 Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32521.407890] [<c1043527>] ? kthread+0x0/0x66 Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32521.430876] [<c1003d47>] ? kernel_thread_helper+0x7/0x10 Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32521.453394] INFO: task flush-8:16:12945 blocked for more than 120 seconds. Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32521.476116] "echo 0 > /proc/sys/kernel/hung_task_timeout_secs" disables this message. Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32521.498579] flush-8:16 D 00000000 0 12945 2 0x00000000 Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32521.520649] f4e4d540 00000046 e412e940 00000000 00000002 c1418100 c1418100 c14136ac Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32521.542426] f4e4d6fc c2808100 00000000 00000000 000008b4 00000001 f4e4d540 c3c3f0e0 Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32521.563745] 02e905a8 f4e4d6fc 007a5399 00000000 02e905a8 00000000 f4e2db48 00670b98 Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32521.585077] Call Trace: Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32521.605790] [<c126b532>] ? io_schedule+0x5f/0x98 Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32521.626184] [<c1128be0>] ? get_request_wait+0xcb/0x146 Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32521.646133] [<c10437ba>] ? autoremove_wake_function+0x0/0x2d Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32521.665659] [<c112907c>] ? __make_request+0x2cc/0x3d9 Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32521.684716] [<f891796e>] ? xfs_convert_page+0x30a/0x331 [xfs] Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32521.703366] [<c1127cf1>] ? generic_make_request+0x266/0x2b4 Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32521.721644] [<c10cf821>] ? bvec_alloc_bs+0x95/0xaf Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32521.739465] [<c1127dfb>] ? submit_bio+0xbc/0xd6 Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32521.756896] [<c10cfa45>] ? bio_alloc_bioset+0x7b/0xba Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32521.774046] [<f8917af0>] ? xfs_submit_ioend_bio+0x3b/0x44 [xfs] Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32521.790694] [<f8917ba3>] ? xfs_submit_ioend+0xaa/0xc4 [xfs] Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32521.806736] [<f891817d>] ? xfs_page_state_convert+0x5c0/0x61c [xfs] Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32521.822859] [<c113705b>] ? __lookup_tag+0x8e/0xee Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32521.838958] [<f891840d>] ? xfs_vm_writepage+0x91/0xc4 [xfs] Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32521.855039] [<c108bbcc>] ? __writepage+0x8/0x22 Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32521.871067] [<c108c17b>] ? write_cache_pages+0x1af/0x29f Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32521.886616] [<c108bbc4>] ? __writepage+0x0/0x22 Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32521.901593] [<c108c285>] ? generic_writepages+0x1a/0x21 Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32521.916455] [<f8918338>] ? xfs_vm_writepages+0x0/0x38 [xfs] Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32521.931484] [<c108c2a5>] ? do_writepages+0x19/0x25 Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32521.946648] [<c10c80d9>] ? writeback_single_inode+0xc7/0x273 Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32521.961675] [<c10c8c44>] ? writeback_inodes_wb+0x3dd/0x49c Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32521.976831] [<c10c8e18>] ? wb_writeback+0x115/0x178 Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32521.991778] [<c10c901f>] ? wb_do_writeback+0x121/0x131 Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32522.006538] [<c103abaf>] ? process_timeout+0x0/0x5 Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32522.021091] [<c10c9050>] ? bdi_writeback_task+0x21/0x89 Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32522.035493] [<c10979e5>] ? bdi_start_fn+0x59/0xa4 Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32522.049765] [<c109798c>] ? bdi_start_fn+0x0/0xa4 Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32522.063792] [<c1043588>] ? kthread+0x61/0x66 Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32522.077612] [<c1043527>] ? kthread+0x0/0x66 Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32522.091260] [<c1003d47>] ? kernel_thread_helper+0x7/0x10 Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32522.104966] INFO: task smartctl:13098 blocked for more than 120 seconds. Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32522.118883] "echo 0 > /proc/sys/kernel/hung_task_timeout_secs" disables this message. Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32522.133012] smartctl D 00000020 0 13098 13097 0x00000000 Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32522.147221] e50b9540 00000086 c11d28a8 00000020 00000770 c1418100 c1418100 c14136ac Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32522.161720] e50b96fc c2808100 00000000 e53e8800 00000000 00000020 c3cec000 c13886c0 Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32522.176217] f99dab68 e50b96fc 007a4f1e 00000001 c4082f24 c4082ed8 00000001 c3c3f0e0 Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32522.190737] Call Trace: Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32522.205038] [<c11d28a8>] ? __netdev_alloc_skb+0x14/0x2d Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32522.219605] [<c126b799>] ? schedule_timeout+0x20/0xb0 Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32522.234144] [<c112820d>] ? blk_peek_request+0x112/0x143 Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32522.248649] [<f85873b6>] ? scsi_request_fn+0x3c1/0x47a [scsi_mod] Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32522.263233] [<c103aba8>] ? del_timer+0x55/0x5c Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32522.277773] [<c126b6a2>] ? wait_for_common+0xa4/0x100 Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32522.292342] [<c102cd8d>] ? default_wake_function+0x0/0x8 Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32522.306958] [<c112b3d1>] ? blk_execute_rq+0x8b/0xb2 Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32522.321569] [<c112b2ac>] ? blk_end_sync_rq+0x0/0x23 Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32522.336070] [<c112b58b>] ? blk_recount_segments+0x13/0x20 Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32522.350583] [<c1127307>] ? blk_rq_bio_prep+0x44/0x74 Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32522.365059] [<c112b0b2>] ? blk_rq_map_kern+0xc5/0xee Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32522.379439] [<c112e2a5>] ? sg_scsi_ioctl+0x221/0x2aa Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32522.393801] [<c112e672>] ? scsi_cmd_ioctl+0x344/0x39a Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32522.408140] [<c1024c87>] ? update_curr+0x106/0x1b3 Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32522.422566] [<c1024c87>] ? update_curr+0x106/0x1b3 Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32522.436832] [<f87676aa>] ? sd_ioctl+0x90/0xb5 [sd_mod] Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32522.451228] [<c112c35f>] ? __blkdev_driver_ioctl+0x53/0x63 Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32522.465689] [<c112cbbf>] ? blkdev_ioctl+0x850/0x891 Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32522.479982] [<c1020474>] ? __wake_up_common+0x34/0x59 Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32522.494138] [<c10244cd>] ? complete+0x28/0x36 Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32522.507986] [<c1086c64>] ? find_get_page+0x1f/0x81 Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32522.521671] [<c10abed5>] ? add_partial+0xe/0x40 Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32522.535285] [<c1086e68>] ? lock_page+0x8/0x1d Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32522.548797] [<c1087432>] ? filemap_fault+0xb5/0x2e6 Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32522.562141] [<c109941c>] ? __do_fault+0x381/0x3b1 Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32522.575441] [<c10d0c30>] ? block_ioctl+0x27/0x2c Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32522.588708] [<c10d0c09>] ? block_ioctl+0x0/0x2c Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32522.601858] [<c10bcd78>] ? vfs_ioctl+0x1c/0x5f Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32522.614917] [<c10bd30c>] ? do_vfs_ioctl+0x4aa/0x4e5 Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32522.627961] [<c10350db>] ? __do_softirq+0x115/0x151 Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32522.640901] [<c126e270>] ? do_page_fault+0x2f1/0x307 Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32522.653803] [<c10bd388>] ? sys_ioctl+0x41/0x58 Aug 16 09:33:40 kernel: [32522.666674] [<c10030fb>] ? sysenter_do_call+0x12/0x28 Then again few messages reset high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 2. I have browsed and read similar error reports here and there and I tried: I have upgraded the kernel from v2.6.26-2 to 2.6.32-5, which has not solved the problem. They say, this might a cable problem. I have tried to replace the USB-to-miniUSB cable (that connects external drive with computer) with another one. No changes. Somebody suggests to try another USB port. I have only 4 external USB ports, tried another one with no success. They say to try uhci_hcd. I have unmounted the device, unloaded ehci_hcd and mounted again. The difference was that now in log I get reset full speed USB device using uhci_hcd and address 2 and similar kernel dumps after a while. They say to echo 128 > /sys/block/sdb/device/max_sectors. I tried it with ehci_hcd with no success (note: I have issued this command after the drive was mounted but before using it actively). I have lauched smartmond and checking periodically the output of smartctl: drive temperature is OK, number of bad sectors and uncorrectable errors is 0. Nothing suspicious is reported by S.M.A.R.T. except maybe the following: Aug 16 12:40:12 kernel: [43715.314566] program smartctl is using a deprecated SCSI ioctl, please convert it to SG_IO Aug 16 12:40:13 kernel: [43715.705622] program smartctl is using a deprecated SCSI ioctl, please convert it to SG_IO Of course, I have not tried all combinations of above. But unfortunately, I am run out of cardinal ideas. If anybody can advice something specific about the problem, you are very welcome.

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