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  • How do I recover a BTRFS filesystem with "parent transid verify failed" errors?

    - by Evan P.
    I've got an external USB disk running btrfs. I use it for backups, and each time I do a backup I take a snapshot. However, it's giving me this error now: parent transid verify failed on 109973766144 wanted 1823 found 1821 parent transid verify failed on 109973766144 wanted 1823 found 1821 Obviously, this is a non-critical disk, but I have a few files on here that aren't available elsewhere. Is there any way to recover data from this disk? Maybe by mounting one of the snapshots as root?

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  • SQL SERVER – An Efficiency Tool to Compare and Synchronize SQL Server Databases

    - by Pinal Dave
    There is no need to reinvent the wheel if it is already invented and if the wheel is already available at ease, there is no need to wait to grab it. Here is the similar situation. I came across a very interesting situation and I had to look for an efficient tool which can make my life easier and solve my business problem. Here is the scenario. One of the developers had deleted few rows from the very important mapping table of our development server (thankfully, it was not the production server). Though it was a development server, the entire development team had to stop working as the application started to crash on every page. Think about the lost of manpower and efficiency which we started to loose.  Pretty much every department had to stop working as our internal development application stopped working. Thankfully, we even take a backup of our development server and we had access to full backup of the entire database at 6 AM morning. We do not take as a frequent backup of development server as production server (naturally!). Even though we had a full backup, the solution was not to restore the database. Think about it, there were plenty of the other operations since the last good full backup and if we restore a full backup, we will pretty much overwrite on the top of the work done by developers since morning. Now, as restoring the full backup was not an option we decided to restore the same database on another server. Once we had restored our database to another server, the challenge was to compare the table from where the database was deleted. The mapping table from where the data were deleted contained over 5000 rows and it was humanly impossible to compare both the tables manually. Finally we decided to use efficiency tool dbForge Data Compare for SQL Server from DevArt. dbForge Data Compare for SQL Server is a powerful, fast and easy to use SQL compare tool, capable of using native SQL Server backups as metadata source. (FYI we Downloaded dbForge Data Compare) Once we discovered the product, we immediately downloaded the product and installed on our development server. After we installed the product, we were greeted with the following screen. We clicked on the New Data Comparision to start our new comparison project. It brought up following screen. Here is the best part of the product, we just had to enter our database connection username and password along with source and destination details and we are done. The entire process is very simple and self intuiting. The best part was that for the source, we can either select database or even backup. This was indeed fantastic feature. Think about this, if you have a very big database, it will take long time to restore on the server. Once it is restored, you will be able to work with it. However, when you are working with dbForge Data Compare it will accept database backup as your source or destination. Once I click on the execute it brought up following screen where it displayed an excellent summary of the data compare. It has dedicated tabs for the what is changing in what table as well had details of the changed data. The best part is that, once we had reviewed the change. We click on the Synchronize button in the menu bar and it brought up following screen. You can see that the screen has very simple straight forward but very powerful features. You can generate a script to synchronize from target to source or even from source to target. Additionally, the database is a very complicated world and there are extensive options to configure various database options on the next screen. We also have the option to either generate script or directly execute the script to target server. I like to play on the safe side and I generated the script for my synchronization and later on after review I deployed the scripts on the server. Well, my team and we were able to get going from our disaster in less than 10 minutes. There were few people in our team were indeed disappointed as they were thinking of going home early that day but in less than 10 minutes they had to get back to work. There are so many other features in  dbForge Data Compare for SQL Server, I am already planning to make this product company wide recommended product for Data Compare tool. Hats off to the team who have build this product. Here are few of the features salient features of the dbForge Data Compare for SQL Server Perform SQL Server database comparison to detect changes Compare SQL Server backups with live databases Analyze data differences between two databases Synchronize two databases that went out of sync Restore data of a particular table from the backup Generate data comparison reports in Excel and HTML formats Copy look-up data from development database to production Automate routine data synchronization tasks with command-line interface Go Ahead and Download the dbForge Data Compare for SQL Server right away. It is always a good idea to get familiar with the important tools before hand instead of learning it under pressure of disaster. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQL Utility, T SQL, Technology

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  • How to Back Up Ubuntu the Easy Way with Déjà Dup

    - by Chris Hoffman
    Déjà Dup is a simple — yet powerful — backup tool included with Ubuntu. It offers the power of rsync with incremental backups, encryption, scheduling, and support for remote services. With Déjà Dup, you can quickly revert files to previous versions or restore missing files from a file manager window. It’s a graphical frontend to Duplicity, which itself uses rsync. It offers the power of rsync with a simple interface. Make Your Own Windows 8 Start Button with Zero Memory Usage Reader Request: How To Repair Blurry Photos HTG Explains: What Can You Find in an Email Header?

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  • Use Drive Mirroring for Instant Backup in Windows 7

    - by Trevor Bekolay
    Even with the best backup solution, a hard drive crash means you’ll lose a few hours of work. By enabling drive mirroring in Windows 7, you’ll always have an up-to-date copy of your data. Windows 7’s mirroring – which is only available in Professional, Enterprise, and Ultimate editions – is a software implementation of RAID 1, which means that two or more disks are holding the exact same data. The files are constantly kept in sync, so that if one of the disks fails, you won’t lose any data. Note that mirroring is not technically a backup solution, because if you accidentally delete a file, it’s gone from both hard disks (though you may be able to recover the file). As an additional caveat, having mirrored disks requires changing them to “dynamic disks,” which can only be read within modern versions of Windows (you may have problems working with a dynamic disk in other operating systems or in older versions of Windows). See this Wikipedia page for more information. You will need at least one empty disk to set up disk mirroring. We’ll show you how to mirror an existing disk (of equal or lesser size) without losing any data on the mirrored drive, and how to set up two empty disks as mirrored copies from the get-go. Mirroring an Existing Drive Click on the start button and type partitions in the search box. Click on the Create and format hard disk partitions entry that shows up. Alternatively, if you’ve disabled the search box, press Win+R to open the Run window and type in: diskmgmt.msc The Disk Management window will appear. We’ve got a small disk, labeled OldData, that we want to mirror in a second disk of the same size. Note: The disk that you will use to mirror the existing disk must be unallocated. If it is not, then right-click on it and select Delete Volume… to mark it as unallocated. This will destroy any data on that drive. Right-click on the existing disk that you want to mirror. Select Add Mirror…. Select the disk that you want to use to mirror the existing disk’s data and press Add Mirror. You will be warned that this process will change the existing disk from basic to dynamic. Note that this process will not delete any data on the disk! The new disk will be marked as a mirror, and it will starting copying data from the existing drive to the new one. Eventually the drives will be synced up (it can take a while), and any data added to the E: drive will exist on both physical hard drives. Setting Up Two New Drives as Mirrored If you have two new equal-sized drives, you can format them to be mirrored copies of each other from the get-go. Open the Disk Management window as described above. Make sure that the drives are unallocated. If they’re not, and you don’t need the data on either of them, right-click and select Delete volume…. Right-click on one of the unallocated drives and select New Mirrored Volume…. A wizard will pop up. Click Next. Click on the drives you want to hold the mirrored data and click Add. Note that you can add any number of drives. Click Next. Assign it a drive letter that makes sense, and then click Next. You’re limited to using the NTFS file system for mirrored drives, so enter a volume label, enable compression if you want, and then click Next. Click Finish to start formatting the drives. You will be warned that the new drives will be converted to dynamic disks. And that’s it! You now have two mirrored drives. Any files added to E: will reside on both physical disks, in case something happens to one of them. Conclusion While the switch from basic to dynamic disks can be a problem for people who dual-boot into another operating system, setting up drive mirroring is an easy way to make sure that your data can be recovered in case of a hard drive crash. Of course, even with drive mirroring, we advocate regular backups to external drives or online backup services. Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Rebit Backup Software [Review]Disabling Instant Search in Outlook 2007Restore Files from Backups on Windows Home ServerSecond Copy 7 [Review]Backup Windows Home Server Folders to an External Hard Drive TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server Snagit 10 VMware Workstation 7 Acronis Online Backup Windows Firewall with Advanced Security – How To Guides Sculptris 1.0, 3D Drawing app AceStock, a Tiny Desktop Quote Monitor Gmail Button Addon (Firefox) Hyperwords addon (Firefox) Backup Outlook 2010

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  • Friday Fun: Splash Back

    - by Asian Angel
    The best part of the week has finally arrived, so why not take a few minutes to have some quick fun? In this week’s game you get to play with alien goo as you work to clear the game board and reach as high a level as possible Latest Features How-To Geek ETC How to Upgrade Windows 7 Easily (And Understand Whether You Should) The How-To Geek Guide to Audio Editing: Basic Noise Removal Install a Wii Game Loader for Easy Backups and Fast Load Times The Best of CES (Consumer Electronics Show) in 2011 The Worst of CES (Consumer Electronics Show) in 2011 HTG Projects: How to Create Your Own Custom Papercraft Toy Calvin and Hobbes Mix It Up in this Fight Club Parody [Video] Choose from 124 Awesome HTML5 Games to Play at Mozilla Labs Game On Gallery Google Translate for Android Updates to Include Conversation Mode and More Move Your Photoshop Scratch Disk for Improved Performance Winter Storm Clouds on the Horizon Wallpaper Existential Angry Birds [Video]

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  • How To Enlarge a Virtual Machine’s Disk in VirtualBox or VMware

    - by Chris Hoffman
    When you create a virtual hard disk in VirtualBox or VMware, you specify a maximum disk size. If you want more space on your virtual machine’s hard disk later, you’ll have to enlarge the virtual hard disk and partition. Note that you may want to back up your virtual hard disk file before performing these operations – there’s always a chance something can go wrong, so it’s always good to have backups. However, the process worked fine for us. Image Credit: flickrsven How To Create a Customized Windows 7 Installation Disc With Integrated Updates How to Get Pro Features in Windows Home Versions with Third Party Tools HTG Explains: Is ReadyBoost Worth Using?

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  • Transparent Data Encryption Helps Customers Address Regulatory Compliance

    - by Troy Kitch
    Regulations such as the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards (PCI DSS), U.S. state security breach notification laws, HIPAA HITECH and more, call for the use of data encryption or redaction to protect sensitive personally identifiable information (PII). From the outset, Oracle has delivered the industry's most advanced technology to safeguard data where it lives—in the database. Oracle provides a comprehensive portfolio of security solutions to ensure data privacy, protect against insider threats, and enable regulatory compliance for both Oracle and non-Oracle Databases. Organizations worldwide rely on Oracle Database Security solutions to help address industry and government regulatory compliance. Specifically, Oracle Advanced Security helps organizations like Educational Testing Service, TransUnion Interactive, Orbitz, and the National Marrow Donor Program comply with privacy and regulatory mandates by transparently encrypting sensitive information such as credit cards, social security numbers, and personally identifiable information (PII). By encrypting data at rest and whenever it leaves the database over the network or via backups, Oracle Advanced Security provides organizations the most cost-effective solution for comprehensive data protection. Watch the video and learn why organizations choose Oracle Advanced Security with transparent data encryption.

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  • What Counts For a DBA: Simplicity

    - by Louis Davidson
    Too many computer processes do an apparently simple task in a bizarrely complex way. They remind me of this strip by one of my favorite artists: Rube Goldberg. In order to keep the boss from knowing one was late, a process is devised whereby the cuckoo clock kisses a live cuckoo bird, who then pulls a string, which triggers a hat flinging, which in turn lands on a rod that removes a typewriter cover…and so on. We rely on creating automated processes to keep on top of tasks. DBAs have a lot of tasks to perform: backups, performance tuning, data movement, system monitoring, and of course, avoiding being noticed.  Every day, there are many steps to perform to maintain the database infrastructure, including: checking physical structures, re-indexing tables where needed, backing up the databases, checking those backups, running the ETL, and preparing the daily reports and yes, all of these processes have to complete before you can call it a day, and probably before many others have started that same day. Some of these tasks are just naturally complicated on their own. Other tasks become complicated because the database architecture is excessively rigid, and we often discover during “production testing” that certain processes need to be changed because the written requirements barely resembled the actual customer requirements.   Then, with no time to change that rigid structure, we are forced to heap layer upon layer of code onto the problematic processes. Instead of a slight table change and a new index, we end up with 4 new ETL processes, 20 temp tables, 30 extra queries, and 1000 lines of SQL code.  Report writers then need to build reports and make magical numbers appear from those toxic data structures that are overly complex and probably filled with inconsistent data. What starts out as a collection of fairly simple tasks turns into a Goldbergian nightmare of daily processes that are likely to cause your dinner to be interrupted by the smartphone doing the vibration dance that signifies trouble at the mill. So what to do? Well, if it is at all possible, simplify the problem by either going into the code and refactoring the complex code to simple, or taking all of the processes and simplifying them into small, independent, easily-tested steps.  The former approach usually requires an agreement on changing underlying structures that requires countless mind-numbing meetings; while the latter can generally be done to any complex process without the same frustration or anger, though it will still leave you with lots of steps to complete, the ability to test each step independently will definitely increase the quality of the overall process (and with each step reporting status back, finding an actual problem within the process will be definitely less unpleasant.) We all know the principle behind simplifying a sequence of processes because we learned it in math classes in our early years of attending school, starting with elementary school. In my 4 years (ok, 9 years) of undergraduate work, I remember pretty much one thing from my many math classes that I apply daily to my career as a data architect, data programmer, and as an occasional indentured DBA: “show your work”. This process of showing your work was my first lesson in simplification. Each step in the process was in fact, far simpler than the entire process.  When you were working an equation that took both sides of 4 sheets of paper, showing your work was important because the teacher could see every step, judge it, and mark it accordingly.  So often I would make an error in the first few lines of a problem which meant that the rest of the work was actually moving me closer to a very wrong answer, no matter how correct the math was in the subsequent steps. Yet, when I got my grade back, I would sometimes be pleasantly surprised. I passed, yet missed every problem on the test. But why? While I got the fact that 1+1=2 wrong in every problem, the teacher could see that I was using the right process. In a computer process, the process is very similar. We take complex processes, show our work by storing intermediate values, and test each step independently. When a process has 100 steps, each step becomes a simple step that is tested and verified, such that there will be 100 places where data is stored, validated, and can be checked off as complete. If you get step 1 of 100 wrong, you can fix it and be confident (that if you did your job of testing the other steps better than the one you had to repair,) that the rest of the process works. If you have 100 steps, and store the state of the process exactly once, the resulting testable chunk of code will be far more complex and finding the error will require checking all 100 steps as one, and usually it would be easier to find a specific needle in a stack of similarly shaped needles.  The goal is to strive for simplicity either in the solution, or at least by simplifying every process down to as many, independent, testable, simple tasks as possible.  For the tasks that really can’t be done completely independently, minimally take those tasks and break them down into simpler steps that can be tested independently.  Like working out division problems longhand, have each step of the larger problem verified and tested.

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  • R2 and Idera Idera SQL Safe (Freeware Edition)

    - by DavidWimbush
    Good news: the Freeware edition of Idera SQL Safe works on R2. You might not care but I certainly do. Here's why:  In September last year I started using Idera SQL Safe (the Freeware Edition) to get backup compression on my SQL 2005 servers. It seemed like a good idea at the time - it was free and my backups ran much faster and took up much less disk space. I really thought I'd actually scored a free lunch. Until they discontinued the product. I was thinking about what to do when I heard that R2 Standard would include native backup compression so I've just been keeping my fingers crossed since then. So I installed R2 Developer on my laptop, installed SQL Safe and kicked off a restore with it. No problem. Phew! Now I won't have to do a special, non-compressed backup and restore when we migrate.

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  • Oracle Database 11g Release 2 is SAP certified for Unix and Linux platforms.

    - by jenny.gelhausen
    SAP announces certification of Oracle Database 11g Release 2 on all available UNIX and Linux platforms. This certification comes along with the immediate availability of the following important options and features: * Advanced Compression Option (table, RMAN backup, expdp, DG Network) * Real Application Testing * Oracle Database 11g Release 2 Database Vault * Oracle Database 11g Release 2 RAC * Advanced Encryption for tablespaces, RMAN backups, expdp, DG Network * Direct NFS * Deferred Segments * Online Patching All above functionality has been fully integrated within the SAP products so they can be utilized and managed from within the SAP solution stack. All required migration steps can be done fully online. Learn why Oracle is the #1 Database for Deploying SAP Applications SAP Certification announcement var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www."); document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E")); try { var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-13185312-1"); pageTracker._trackPageview(); } catch(err) {}

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  • Scheduling Jobs in SQL Server Express

    As we all know SQL Server 2005 Express is a very powerful free edition of SQL Server 2005. However it does not contain SQL Server Agent service. Because of this scheduling jobs is not possible. So if we want to do this we have to install a free or commercial 3rd party product. This usually isn't allowed due to the security policies of many hosting companies and thus presents a problem. Maybe we want to schedule daily backups, database reindexing, statistics updating, etc. This is why I wanted to have a solution based only on SQL Server 2005 Express and not dependent on the hosting company. And of course there is one based on our old friend the Service Broker.

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  • How to do firmware updates/upgrades to a Blackberry

    - by Luis Alvarado
    I have several clients/friends that have Blackberry and wish to update their phone but without installing Windows. Any windows. Just doing it from Ubuntu. How can this be done. The update the mention is for the firmware and new programs for the phone. I do not know much about Blackberries since am more of an android guy. At the end they want support for upgrade/update the Blackberry from within Linux and sync it to the PC (Backups, upload/download stuff to and from it). I have seen 2 types of projects working on this: Linberry (From Venezuela ;) ) - http://linberry.webcindario.com/ Barry - http://www.netdirect.ca/software/packages/barry but so far neither offers updating the firmware or downloading updates. Are there any Ubuntu blackberry projects I am not aware of.

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  • Bitdefender Safebox Offers 2GB Free Storage for Android Users

    - by Jason Fitzpatrick
    Android: If you’re always on the lookout for new–and free!–cloud storage solutions, security company BitDefender has a new cloud service for Android uers. Safebox accounts come with a free 2GB storage to get you started. For those of you in the “You can never have enough backups!” camp, Bitdefender’s Safebox is a new offering (currently only available for PC/Android setups) on the remote-storage market. Free personal accounts come with 2GB of storage which is on par with other cloud storage providers. If you’re looking for cloud storage with the maximum number of features and heavy third-party support you’ll want to stick with a well established player like Dropbox. If you’re just looking for some extra storage for overflow media or some redundancy for your current backup solution, Safebox is a viable storage solution. Bitdefender Safebox [via Addicted Tips] Make Your Own Windows 8 Start Button with Zero Memory Usage Reader Request: How To Repair Blurry Photos HTG Explains: What Can You Find in an Email Header?

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  • Improve efficiency of web building setup and processes - Wordpress on Mac

    - by Rob
    Can anyone see any ways in which I can improve my speed and efficiency with the following setup? Or if there are any obvious holes in my building process? This is for building Wordpress websites on Mac: 1) I have a standard Wordpress setup that I work from which includes various plugins that I tend to use across all setups - thus cutting out the step of having to download them all the time! 2) My standard WP files are copied into a Dropbox folder - thus creating backups of the files. 3) I then open up MAMP and setup a local version. 4) I open up Coda and setup the FTP details so files can be uploaded to the live domain by using the publish button. If anyone has any advice on how to improve this process then please let me know!

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  • Script to email files content

    - by Tarun
    I have created a shell script that takes backups everyday and emails its execution as successfull or unsuccessfull. Now I want that it send the contents of log file it creates with the mail as well. I have seen how to send file as attachement but I want to send the contents of the file as email message and not the file. Please Help. Its code is like #Email Settings Message_Success="Database Backup generated successfully" Message_Failure="Problem occured while generating Database Backup please verify" Subject="Database Backup Status Mail" Recipients="[email protected]" #Verify Backup Created if [ -f "$Path_Mysql_Dump" ]; then echo "Database Backup Created" >> $Path_Log_File echo "$Message_Success" | mail -s "$Subject" "$Recipients" else echo "Database Backup not created please verify the process will terminate" >> $Path_Log_File echo "$Message_Failure" | mail -s "$Subject" "$Recipients" exit -1 fi

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  • Cloud storage that works with rsnapshot?

    - by humbledude
    I’ve started using rsnapshot as my backup system for my home PC. I really like the idea of hard links and how they are handled. But I can’t find the best workflow. Currently I keep my snapshots on the same partition and will copy the newest snapshot to a pen-drive at the end of the week. Cloud storage is what I’m looking for. Dropbox doesn’t fit my needs, because there is no way to make Dropbox respect hard links — all snapshots are treated as full snapshots. Renting a server is pretty expensive, so my question is, are there better alternatives for backup in the cloud? I would like to benefit from hard links and send only incremental backups, just like I do with my local host.

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  • Should I add old code into my repository?

    - by Ben Brocka
    I've got an SVN repository of a PHP site and the last programmer didn't use source control properly. As a result, only code since I started working here is in the Repo. I have a bunch of old copies of the full code base saved in files as "backups" but they're not in source control. I don't know why most of the copies were saved nor do I have any reasonable way to tag them to a version number. Due to upgrades to the frameworks and database drivers involved, the old code is quite defunct; it no longer works on the current server config. However, the previous programmers had some...unique...logic, so I hate to be completely without old copies to refer to what on earth they were doing. Should I keep this stuff in version control? How? Wall off the old code in separate Tags/branches?

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  • 2010 SQLPeople Person of the Year

    - by andyleonard
    Introduction Back in 2010, I started recognizing the SQLPeople Person of the Year. It's been a tradition ever since. "But Andy, you're writing this in 2010." Yep. Good eye, Pep. The Award Goes To: Steve Jones ( Blog | @way0utwest ). I am not a DBA - I'm a database developer. I joke and say I look like the world's greatest DBA when there's no contention, the jobs are finishing successfully, queries return data quickly and accurately, and the backups succeed. But anyone looks like the world's greatest...(read more)

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  • Update: TFS Power Tools March 2011

    - by Enrique Lima
    There is an update available for the TFS Power Tools and the TFS Build Power Tools. Among the updates to the Tools: Changes to the Team Foundation Server Backups Add-In for TFS Admin Console. Added functionality to the Windows Shell Extension. Changes to the tfpt command line tool that allows you to script build management commands. For a full detail of the changes, read Brian Harry’s post  http://blogs.msdn.com/b/bharry/archive/2011/03/03/mar-11-team-foundation-server-power-tools-are-available.aspx To download the Power Tools: Team Foundation Server Power Tools Team Foundation Server Build Extensions Power Tool

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  • How can I downgrade my version of Evolution to the one used in Ubuntu 11.04?

    - by Johnny
    I just upgraded, and like a few other users I had issues with Evolution email after the upgrade from 11.04 to 11.10 and then 12.04. I know to make backups, but in this case I stupidly didn't think that the program would be changed (Firefox wasn't modified at all), and so I failed to make a backup. Three days later I am still having issues, and recovering the emails is proving to be difficult with only partial recovery or it not working at all. My question is, can I add in some source to use the 11.04 version of Evolution, since that version was working fine and would know what to do with the current files (Inbox, Outbox, etc.) I also noticed that Evolution's restore feature said it changed the way emails are handled, so it seems like a downgrade could put everything back to normal. Worst case scenario, I start over, but I wanted to try everything first. Thanks in advance! I'm also open to any suggestions for restoring the old emails files to the current version of Evolution.

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  • How Can I Safely Destroy Sensitive Data CDs/DVDs?

    - by Jason Fitzpatrick
    You have a pile of DVDs with sensitive information on them and you need to safely and effectively dispose of them so no data recovery is possible. What’s the most safe and efficient way to get the job done? Today’s Question & Answer session comes to us courtesy of SuperUser—a subdivision of Stack Exchange, a community-driven grouping of Q&A web sites. The Question SuperUser reader HaLaBi wants to know how he can safely destroy CDs and DVDs with personal data on them: I have old CDs/DVDs which have some backups, these backups have some work and personal files. I always had problems when I needed to physically destroy them to make sure no one will reuse them. Breaking them is dangerous, pieces could fly fast and may cause harm. Scratching them badly is what I always do but it takes long time and I managed to read some of the data in the scratched CDs/DVDs. What’s the way to physically destroy a CD/DVD safely? How should he approach the problem? The Answer SuperUser contributor Journeyman Geek offers a practical solution coupled with a slightly mad-scientist solution: The proper way is to get yourself a shredder that also handles cds – look online for cd shredders. This is the right option if you end up doing this routinely. I don’t do this very often – For small scale destruction I favour a pair of tin snips – they have enough force to cut through a cd, yet are blunt enough to cause small cracks along the sheer line. Kitchen shears with one serrated side work well too. You want to damage the data layer along with shearing along the plastic, and these work magnificently. Do it in a bag, cause this generates sparkly bits. There’s also the fun, and probably dangerous way – find yourself an old microwave, and microwave them. I would suggest doing this in a well ventilated area of course, and not using your mother’s good microwave. There’s a lot of videos of this on YouTube – such as this (who’s done this in a kitchen… and using his mom’s microwave). This results in a very much destroyed cd in every respect. If I was an evil hacker mastermind, this is what I’d do. The other options are better for the rest of us. Another contributor, Keltari, notes that the only safe (and DoD approved) way to dispose of data is total destruction: The answer by Journeyman Geek is good enough for almost everything. But oddly, that common phrase “Good enough for government work” does not apply – depending on which part of the government. It is technically possible to recover data from shredded/broken/etc CDs and DVDs. If you have a microscope handy, put the disc in it and you can see the pits. The disc can be reassembled and the data can be reconstructed — minus the data that was physically destroyed. So why not just pulverize the disc into dust? Or burn it to a crisp? While technically, that would completely eliminate the data, it leaves no record of the disc having existed. And in some places, like DoD and other secure facilities, the data needs to be destroyed, but the disc needs to exist. If there is a security audit, the disc can be pulled to show it has been destroyed. So how can a disc exist, yet be destroyed? Well, the most common method is grinding the disc down to destroy the data, yet keep the label surface of the disc intact. Basically, it’s no different than using sandpaper on the writable side, till the data is gone. Have something to add to the explanation? Sound off in the the comments. Want to read more answers from other tech-savvy Stack Exchange users? Check out the full discussion thread here.     

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  • How To Use Layer Masks and Vector Masks to Remove Complex Backgrounds in Photoshop

    - by Eric Z Goodnight
    Ever removed a background in Photoshop, only to find want to use parts of that background later? Layer Masks and Vector Masks are the elegant and often misunderstood answer to this common problem. Keep reading to see how they work. In this article, we’ll learn exactly what a Layer Mask is, and two methods to use them in practically any version of Photoshop, including a simpler example for less experienced Photoshop users, and another for more seasoned users who are comfortable with the Pen tool and vectors Latest Features How-To Geek ETC How to Upgrade Windows 7 Easily (And Understand Whether You Should) The How-To Geek Guide to Audio Editing: Basic Noise Removal Install a Wii Game Loader for Easy Backups and Fast Load Times The Best of CES (Consumer Electronics Show) in 2011 The Worst of CES (Consumer Electronics Show) in 2011 HTG Projects: How to Create Your Own Custom Papercraft Toy Outlook2Evernote Imports Notes from Outlook to Evernote Firefox 4.0 Beta 9 Available for Download – Get Your Copy Now The Frustrations of a Computer Literate Watching a Newbie Use a Computer [Humorous Video] Season0nPass Jailbreaks Current Gen Apple TVs IBM’s Jeopardy Playing Computer Watson Shows The Pros How It’s Done [Video] Tranquil Juice Drop Abstract Wallpaper

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  • Developing Schema Compare for Oracle (Part 5): Query Snapshots

    - by Simon Cooper
    If you've emailed us about a bug you've encountered with the EAP or beta versions of Schema Compare for Oracle, we probably asked you to send us a query snapshot of your databases. Here, I explain what a query snapshot is, and how it helps us fix your bug. Problem 1: Debugging users' bug reports When we started the Schema Compare project, we knew we were going to get problems with users' databases - configurations we hadn't considered, features that weren't installed, unicode issues, wierd dependencies... With SQL Compare, users are generally happy to send us a database backup that we can restore using a single RESTORE DATABASE command on our test servers and immediately reproduce the problem. Oracle, on the other hand, would be a lot more tricky. As Oracle generally has a 1-to-1 mapping between instances and databases, any databases users sent would have to be restored to their own instance. Furthermore, the number of steps required to get a properly working database, and the size of most oracle databases, made it infeasible to ask every customer who came across a bug during our beta program to send us their databases. We also knew that there would be lots of issues with data security that would make it hard to get backups. So we needed an easier way to be able to debug customers issues and sort out what strange schema data Oracle was returning. Problem 2: Test execution time Another issue we knew we would have to solve was the execution time of the tests we would produce for the Schema Compare engine. Our initial prototype showed that querying the data dictionary for schema information was going to be slow (at least 15 seconds per database), and this is generally proportional to the size of the database. If you're running thousands of tests on the same databases, each one registering separate schemas, not only would the tests would take hours and hours to run, but the test servers would be hammered senseless. The solution To solve these, we needed to be able to populate the schema of a database without actually connecting to it. Well, the IDataReader interface is the primary way we read data from an Oracle server. The data dictionary queries we use return their data in terms of simple strings and numbers, which we then process and reconstruct into an object model, and the results of these queries are identical for identical schemas. So, we can record the raw results of the queries once, and then replay these results to construct the same object model as many times as required without needing to actually connect to the original database. This is what query snapshots do. They are binary files containing the raw unprocessed data we get back from the oracle server for all the queries we run on the data dictionary to get schema information. The core of the query snapshot generation takes the results of the IDataReader we get from running queries on Oracle, and passes the row data to a BinaryWriter that writes it straight to a file. The query snapshot can then be replayed to create the same object model; when the results of a specific query is needed by the population code, we can simply read the binary data stored in the file on disk and present it through an IDataReader wrapper. This is far faster than querying the server over the network, and allows us to run tests in a reasonable time. They also allow us to easily debug a customers problem; using a simple snapshot generation program, users can generate a query snapshot that could be sent along with a bug report that we can immediately replay on our machines to let us debug the issue, rather than having to obtain database backups and restore databases to test systems. There are also far fewer problems with data security; query snapshots only contain schema information, which is generally less sensitive than table data. Query snapshots implementation However, actually implementing such a feature did have a couple of 'gotchas' to it. My second blog post detailed the development of the dependencies algorithm we use to ensure we get all the dependencies in the database, and that algorithm uses data from both databases to find all the needed objects - what database you're comparing to affects what objects get populated from both databases. We get information on these additional objects using an appropriate WHERE clause on all the population queries. So, in order to accurately replay the results of querying the live database, the query snapshot needs to be a snapshot of a comparison of two databases, not just populating a single database. Furthermore, although the code population queries (eg querying all_tab_cols to get column information) can simply be passed straight from the IDataReader to the BinaryWriter, we need to hook into and run the live dependencies algorithm while we're creating the snapshot to ensure we get the same WHERE clauses, and the same query results, as if we were populating straight from a live system. We also need to store the results of the dependencies queries themselves, as the resulting dependency graph is stored within the OracleDatabase object that is produced, and is later used to help order actions in synchronization scripts. This is significantly helped by the dependencies algorithm being a deterministic algorithm - given the same input, it will always return the same output. Therefore, when we're replaying a query snapshot, and processing dependency information, we simply have to return the results of the queries in the order we got them from the live database, rather than trying to calculate the contents of all_dependencies on the fly. Query snapshots are a significant feature in Schema Compare that really helps us to debug problems with the tool, as well as making our testers happier. Although not really user-visible, they are very useful to the development team to help us fix bugs in the product much faster than we otherwise would be able to.

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  • Keep Your Data Local: Free Offline Alternatives to 6 Popular Web Apps

    - by Chris Hoffman
    Web apps are all the rage, but offline apps still have their place. Whether you want better offline support or you just want to keep your sensitive data on your PC, there’s a free desktop app that can replace your web-based productivity app. We’ve looked at web-based alternatives to desktop apps, and now we’ll do the opposite. Here  are some solid — and completely free — offline desktop alternatives to popular web apps. Be sure to perform regular backups if you store your only copies of important data locally. You wouldn’t want to lose it all when your hard drive inevitably bites the dust.    

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  • GLIBC_2.8 not found

    - by Thomas Nilsson
    As a newbie I seem to have messed up my upgrade leaving my system in a very unstable state. I attempted an upgrade from 8.04LTS which ended in an error about libc and kernel upgrades. I tried to upgrade the kernel but am now unsure if that worked, because when I retried my dist-upgrade there was a lot of errors about pre-dependencies and leaving packages un-configured. Now I have a system that answers almost every command with: /lib/libc.so.6: version `GLIBC_2.8' not found (required by /lib/libselinux.so.1) I probably should try a complete re-installation, but I'm investigating if there is any possibility of getting a working glibc so that I at least can have some commands working to ensure that my backups are recent etc. before doing the clean install. not even 'ls' works without saying "glibc_2.8 not found".

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