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• Apache + Tomcat error 120006 Using mod_proxy_ajp for Load Balance

  - by Wakaru44

  I have an apache 2 frontend with two nodes, and a backend with two instances of tomcat 6 balance with mod_proxy_ajp. The bbdd is in a separate machine. All machines use RHEL, 6.2 on the frontend, 5.5 on the backend. The infraestructure is virtualized using VMware. # This is the apache config in one of the virtualHost. ProxyPreserveHost On ProxyPass / balancer://liferay/ <Proxy balancer://liferay> BalancerMember ajp://lrab:8009 route=liferaya BalancerMember ajp://lrbb:8009 route=liferayb status=+H ProxySet lbmethod=byrequests nofailover=on </Proxy> The conector in tomcat is now configured like this: <!-- Define an AJP 1.3 Connector on port 8009 --> <Connector port="8009" protocol="AJP/1.3" redirectPort="8443" URIEncoding="UTF-8" enableLookups="false" allowTrace="true" /> Do you think it could be useful to set a maxThreads parameter, like in this post?? in that case, How can i determine a proper number of threads? From time to time, we get errors like this [Tue Sep 18 17:57:02 2012] [error] ajp_read_header: ajp_ilink_receive failed [Tue Sep 18 17:57:02 2012] [error] (120006)APR does not understand this error code: proxy: read response failed from 192.168.1.104:8009 (lrab) And apache switches to the pasive node (if its active) or fails with 503. Some things i have tried so far: I think that i have some performance issues with one of the applications, Here you can see a threadDump But i'm not quite sure about it. I also started to monitor the network connection. I have noticed that there are some pings lost when i have a "ping -f " so maybe it could be a network issue, but the success rate is 100% (so the lost packets are only a few among the flood, but maybe, i don't know, enough to break the link betwen apache and tomcat). I wrote a python script to check connectivity with timestamps on the pings, so i can know when the network fails. After sniffing the network , i can also see some RST packets, but i don't know if that is a normal behaviour (some applications do that to end a network communication). I have also noticed that the applications have problems communicating with the database, but im not even sure if this could be related or not. If you think so, i can post more info about it. I changed the connector on the tomcats to use the native one, but still the same. I need not even a solution to this, but maybe some guidance on how can i troubleshoot this better ¿Analyze threads, monitor mysql performance, sniff the traffic between apaches and tomcats? Ultimately, all i need is to balance the tomcat instances in Active/pasive mode, so if there is another way to do it, i could give it a try.

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• Further Performance Tuning on Medium SharePoint Farm?

  - by elorg

  I figured I would post this here, since it may be related more to the server configuration than the SharePoint configuration or a combination of both? I'm open for ideas to try, or even feedback on things that maybe have been configured incorrectly as far as performance is concerned. We have a medium MOSS 2007 install prepped and ready for receiving the WSS 2003 data to upgrade. The environment was originally architected by a previous coworker, and I have since added a few configuration modifications to assist with performance before we finally performed the install. When testing the new site collections & SharePoint install (no actual data yet), things seemed a bit slow. I had assumed that it was because I was accessing it remotely. Apparently the client is still experiencing this and it is unacceptably slow. 1 SQL Server running SQL Server 2008 2x SharePoint WFEs - hosting queries (no index) 1x SharePoint Index - hosting index (no queries) MOSS 2007 installed and patched up through December '09 on WFEs & Index All 4 servers are VMs, should have more than sufficient disk space & RAM (don't recall at the moment), and are running Windows Server 2008 - everything is 64-bit. The WFEs have Windows NLB configured, with a DNS name & IP for the NLB cluster. Single NIC on each server (virtual, since VMWare). The Index server is configured as a WFE (outside of the NLB cluster) so that it can index itself and replicate the indexes to the WFEs that will serve the queries. Everything is configured & working properly - it just takes a minute or two to load a page on the local LAN. The client is still using their old portal (we haven't started the migration/upgrade just yet) so there's virtually no data or users. We need to either further tune the configuration, or fix anything that may have been configured incorrectly which is causing this slowness? I've already reviewed & taken into account everything that I could find that was relevant before we even started the install. Does anyone have ideas or pointers? Perhaps there's something that I've missed?

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• Logging raw HTTP request/response in ASP.NET MVC & IIS7

  - by Greg Beech

  I'm writing a web service (using ASP.NET MVC) and for support purposes we'd like to be able to log the requests and response in as close as possible to the raw, on-the-wire format (i.e including HTTP method, path, all headers, and the body) into a database. What I'm not sure of is how to get hold of this data in the least 'mangled' way. I can re-constitute what I believe the request looks like by inspecting all the properties of the HttpRequest object and building a string from them (and similarly for the response) but I'd really like to get hold of the actual request/response data that's sent on the wire. I'm happy to use any interception mechanism such as filters, modules, etc. and the solution can be specific to IIS7. However, I'd prefer to keep it in managed code only. Any recommendations? Edit: I note that HttpRequest has a SaveAs method which can save the request to disk but this reconstructs the request from the internal state using a load of internal helper methods that cannot be accessed publicly (quite why this doesn't allow saving to a user-provided stream I don't know). So it's starting to look like I'll have to do my best to reconstruct the request/response text from the objects... groan. Edit 2: Please note that I said the whole request including method, path, headers etc. The current responses only look at the body streams which does not include this information. Edit 3: Does nobody read questions around here? Five answers so far and yet not one even hints at a way to get the whole raw on-the-wire request. Yes, I know I can capture the output streams and the headers and the URL and all that stuff from the request object. I already said that in the question, see: I can re-constitute what I believe the request looks like by inspecting all the properties of the HttpRequest object and building a string from them (and similarly for the response) but I'd really like to get hold of the actual request/response data that's sent on the wire. If you know the complete raw data (including headers, url, http method, etc.) simply cannot be retrieved then that would be useful to know. Similarly if you know how to get it all in the raw format (yes, I still mean including headers, url, http method, etc.) without having to reconstruct it, which is what I asked, then that would be very useful. But telling me that I can reconstruct it from the HttpRequest/HttpResponse objects is not useful. I know that. I already said it. Please note: Before anybody starts saying this is a bad idea, or will limit scalability, etc., we'll also be implementing throttling, sequential delivery, and anti-replay mechanisms in a distributed environment, so database logging is required anyway. I'm not looking for a discussion of whether this is a good idea, I'm looking for how it can be done.

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• Why won't vyatta allow SMTP through my firewall?

  - by Solignis

  I am setting up a vyatta router on VMware ESXi, But I see to have hit a major snag, I could not get my firewall and NAT to work correctly. I am not sure what was wrong with NAT but it "seems" to be working now. But the firewall is not allowing traffic from my WAN interface (eth0) to my LAN (eth1). I can confirm its the firewall because I disabled all firewall rules and everything worked with just NAT. If put the firewalls (WAN and LAN) back in place nothing can get through to port 25. I am not really sure what the issue could be I am using pretty basic firewall rules, I wrote the rules while looking at the vyatta docs so unless there is something odd with the documentation they "should" be working. Here is my NAT rules so far; vyatta@gateway# show service nat rule 20 { description "Zimbra SNAT #1" outbound-interface eth0 outside-address { address 74.XXX.XXX.XXX } source { address 10.0.0.17 } type source } rule 21 { description "Zimbra SMTP #1" destination { address 74.XXX.XXX.XXX port 25 } inbound-interface eth0 inside-address { address 10.0.0.17 } protocol tcp type destination } rule 100 { description "Default LAN -> WAN" outbound-interface eth0 outside-address { address 74.XXX.XXX.XXX } source { address 10.0.0.0/24 } type source } Then here is my firewall rules, this is where I believe the problem is. vyatta@gateway# show firewall all-ping enable broadcast-ping disable conntrack-expect-table-size 4096 conntrack-hash-size 4096 conntrack-table-size 32768 conntrack-tcp-loose enable ipv6-receive-redirects disable ipv6-src-route disable ip-src-route disable log-martians enable name LAN_in { rule 100 { action accept description "Default LAN -> any" protocol all source { address 10.0.0.0/24 } } } name LAN_out { } name LOCAL { rule 100 { action accept state { established enable } } } name WAN_in { rule 20 { action accept description "Allow SMTP connections to MX01" destination { address 74.XXX.XXX.XXX port 25 } protocol tcp } rule 100 { action accept description "Allow established connections back through" state { established enable } } } name WAN_out { } receive-redirects disable send-redirects enable source-validation disable syn-cookies enable SIDENOTE To test for open ports I have using this website, http://www.yougetsignal.com/tools/open-ports/, it showed port 25 as open without the firewall rules and closed with the firewall rules. UPDATE Just to see if the firewall was working properly I made a rule to block SSH from the WAN interface. When I checked for port 22 on my primary WAN address it said it was still open even though I outright blocked the port. Here is the rule I used; rule 21 { action reject destination { address 74.219.80.163 port 22 } protocol tcp } So now I am convinced either I am doing something wrong or the firewall is not working like it should.

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• An IOCP documentation interpretation question - buffer ownership ambiguity

  - by Poni

  Since I'm not a native English speaker I might be missing something so maybe someone here knows better than me. Taken from WSASend's doumentation at MSDN: lpBuffers [in] A pointer to an array of WSABUF structures. Each WSABUF structure contains a pointer to a buffer and the length, in bytes, of the buffer. For a Winsock application, once the WSASend function is called, the system owns these buffers and the application may not access them. This array must remain valid for the duration of the send operation. Ok, can you see the bold text? That's the unclear spot! I can think of two translations for this line (might be something else, you name it): Translation 1 - "buffers" refers to the OVERLAPPED structure that I pass this function when calling it. I may reuse the object again only when getting a completion notification about it. Translation 2 - "buffers" refer to the actual buffers, those with the data I'm sending. If the WSABUF object points to one buffer, then I cannot touch this buffer until the operation is complete. Can anyone tell what's the right interpretation to that line? And..... If the answer is the second one - how would you resolve it? Because to me it implies that for each and every data/buffer I'm sending I must retain a copy of it at the sender side - thus having MANY "pending" buffers (in different sizes) on an high traffic application, which really going to hurt "scalability". Statement 1: In addition to the above paragraph (the "And...."), I thought that IOCP copies the data to-be-sent to it's own buffer and sends from there, unless you set SO_SNDBUF to zero. Statement 2: I use stack-allocated buffers (you know, something like char cBuff[1024]; at the function body - if the translation to the main question is the second option (i.e buffers must stay as they are until the send is complete), then... that really screws things up big-time! Can you think of a way to resolve it? (I know, I asked it in other words above).

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• Why don't my scrollbars work properly when programmatically hiding rows in silverlight Datagrid?

  - by Luke Vilnis

  I have a Silverlight datagrid with custom code that allows for +/- buttons on the lefthand side and can display a table with a tree structure. The +/- buttons are bound to a IsExpanded property on my ViewModelRows, as I call them. The visibility of rows is bound to an IsVisible property on the ViewModelRows which is determined based on whether or not all of the parent rows are expanded. Straightforward enough. This code works fine in that if I scroll up and down the grid with PageUp/PageDown or the arrow keys, all the right rows are hidden and everything has the right structure and I can play with the +/- buttons to my hearts content. However, the vertical scroll bar on the right hand side, although it starts off the correct size and it scrolls through the rows smoothly, when I collapse rows and then re-expand them, doesn't go back to its correct size. The scrollbar can still usually be moved around to scroll through the whole collection, but because it is too big, once the bar moves to the bottom, there are still more rows to go through and it sort of jerkily shoots all the way down to the bottom or sometimes fails to scroll at all. This is pretty hard to describe so I included a screenshot with the black lines drawn on to show the difference in scrollbar length even though the two grids have the same number of rows expanded. I think this might be a bug related to the way the Datagrid does virtualization of rows. It seems to me like it isn't properly keeping track of how tall each row is supposed to be when expansion states change. Is there a way to programmatically "poke" (read hack) it to recalculate its scrollbar size on LoadingRow or something ugly like that? I'd include a code sample but there's 2 c# files and 1 xaml file so I wanted to see if anyone else has heard of this sort of issue before I try to make it reproducible in a self-contained way. Once again, scrolling with the arrow keys works fine so I'm pretty sure the underlying logic and binding is working, there's just some issue with the row height not being calculated properly. Since I'm a new user, it won't let me use image tags so here's the link to a picture of the problem: http://img210.imageshack.us/img210/8760/messedupscrollbars.png

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• Is it possible to "stealth" dual boot a machine?

  - by BrianH

  I have a loaner laptop that has MS Windows with locked down permissions. It works okay for what I need to do, but I started wondering if there was a way to install a separate Windows OS on a separate hard drive to do what I want to do on it. Virtual I wish I could use VirtualBox or VMWare, but that is not an option (I even tried VBox portable). External Drive My next trial was see if it was possible to install Windows on an external drive, and then plug that drive in and boot from it whenever I wanted my own OS. After a few Google searches, I see that is not really a possibility. Swap Primary Drive Another option, would be to get a second internal hard drive, take the existing HD out, and install a new Windows OS on the secondary HD. This would mean swapping the internal hard drive each time I want to switch OSs - doable, but not very convenient. Dual Boot The laptop has an expansion slot where a second hard drive can be plugged in quickly. I thought about Dual booting, but I don't want to mess with the MBR on the primary hard drive. When I have to give the laptop back, I don't want a dual-boot screen to popup. Summary Is there a way to have 2 hard-drives on a machine, each with it's own OS, and maybe use BIOS settings to have only 1 hard drive active at a time? That way both hard drives could be physically connected, but only one would actually be active at a time. I basically want a second OS that does not (can not) affect the existing OS in any way, and can be removed at any time without affecting the existing OS. The secondary OS does not need any of the files on the main hard drive - it's basically like having 2 separate computers using the same hard ware... Is this possible, or would it be easier just to go out and buy a different laptop? Thanks in advance! EDIT I just discovered that my BIOS allows me to pick (at startup) which hard drive I want to boot from. I poked around in the BIOS and there is not a place to disable certain devices, like the primary hard drive. My only concern about plugging in a second hard drive and installing Windows to the second hard drive is that it will mess with the primary hard drive, or add a bootloader screen to pick which windows install to use. My thought would be to physically unplug the primary, plug in the secondary and install windows to the secondary. After the install is working properly, I can plug the primary back in and use the BIOS feature to determine which drive to boot to. Is there any way after I have 2 separate installs on 2 separate hard drives that one of the installs could mess with the MBR on the other drive?

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• Some domain names not resolving on local network

  - by Solignis

  I am not really sure where to start with this one... I have a small network setup with some linux servers (Ubuntu 11.04 Server). 2 servers are running BIND 9 (NS01, NS02), they are configured as master and slave respectively. 1 server is running Zimbra ZCS 7.1.1 (MX01), it has a private BIND 9 server running to achieve a split DNS configuration. This DNS server does not interact with the other two, it forwards queries it can resolve to the other 2 that is it. No zone transfers. Zimbra is hosting 3 domains at the moment, solignis.local, solignis.com, campbellsurvey.net. The problem From with in my network I cannot connect to mail.campbellsurvey.net. When I mean I cannot connect, I mean if I open firefox and type https://mail.campbellsurvey.net I go nowhere, the address is supposed to connect to my Zimbra webmail. But it goes nowhere, the odd thing is if I try the same task from outside of the network it brings the website up like normal. If I try to create an account in thunderbird to connect to the same server using IMAP4 or POP3 I get an error saying that thunderbird cannot find the domain name. Even the zimbra client fails too. It is like from with in my own walls that campbellsurvey.net does not exist. But if step outside I can get it work with no problem at all. I had thought maybe the problem was with the DNS server (BIND 9), so just to eliminate it as a possibility I configured a windows server I use for VMware VCenter as a DNS server to see what would happen. The result was the same, its like something is preventing connections to those domains, but I have checked various firewalls and such. I checked port forwards, etc. So I am running out of ideas I know this is not a lot of information to work from and I can give more details about certain things as needed. I am just trying to figure out what could be going wrong. Any help you could offer would be much appreciated.

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• How to Configure Source NAT (Private IP => Public IP Outbound)

  - by DavidScherer

  I'm running VMWare ESXi Free and have Zentyal SBS 3.2 running as a Gateway. I have 5 Public IPS (CIDR/29, let's call them 69.1.1.1 - 69.1.1.5) and currently Zentyal is bound to 69.1.1.1 as the Gateway, with the other 4 Public IPs set as Virtual Interfaces in Zentyal (wan2-wan5) I have machines sitting on the Private Network (10.34.251.x) that, when going Outbound (to Google for instance) should be seen by the Internet as an IP other than the Gateway (69.1.1.1), this is because our machines need to be able to communicate with 3rd party APIs that expect these requests to come from a specific IP. From what I could find, SNAT (Source NAT) in Zentyal is used to achieve this, but I'm not sure how to configure it and cannot find a specific piece of Documentation for it at Zentyal. I've tried setting this up a couple different ways, with no results and at this point I have no idea if I'm going about this completely wrong, or my lack of experience with networking and the associated terminology is preventing me from placing the correct values in the correct fields. I get the following form to set up "SNAT" rules in Zentyal: Perhaps someone can offer some guidance and definitions for the fields above? SNAT Address Is this the Public IP I want to masquerade? Outgoing Interface Should this by my External NIC (one connected to Public 'Net), or is it the "Private" interface? It sounds as though this should be the External interface as I want the traffic from the internal network sent Out over this Interface (using a different IP than normal, anyway) Source Is the the Source on the internal network (one of the private IPs?), a public IP I want to masquerade as, or something else entirely? Destination Is this a place on the Internet (eg, "Only do this for the Site Google.com"/IP) or am I allowing myself to become confused again? Service I'm assuming this allows me to restrict which services this rule will apply to, but is it for a service on the internal network or a service being accessed on the external network? If I can offer any further details or information to make what I'm trying to do more clear, I will happily do so. Honestly any kind of help here would be very appreciated. I'm not a NetOps or anything even close, I spend most of my day writing code and my entire "team" at this company consists of "me, myself, and I" so while I try to broaden my KB at every possible opportunity, I can only learn so much, so fast and I feel like with networking especially there's just so much, coupled with a learning curve for each solution that likes to (from my limited perspective) use slightly different terminology that what I'm used to (and I don't exactly have the necessary experience to cross reference this stuff with the stuff I already know in context).

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• 2nd Year College - Learning - Microsoft Server Products

  - by Ryan

  As the title says, I just finished my first year of college (majoring in Software Engineering). Fortunately my school likes Microsoft enough, and I can get pretty much anything I want that Microsoft sells. I also can get IBM Websphere and the like for free as well. Earlier this year, I set up an oldish computer (2.6 Pentium D, x64) to run ubuntu server headless. I'm predominately a Java developer, so Apache, Maven, Nexus, Sonar, SVN, etc made it onto the machine. It worked really well for personal and school projects, especially team projects (quick ramp up). Anyways, I started to pick up C# to complement my Java knowledge (don't judge me :P), and am interested in working with some of the associated Microsoft equivalents. The machine currently has the Ubuntu install, as well as Windows 7 Ultimate. I do all of my actual development work off my laptop, also running Windows 7 Ultimate. I was wondering what software you would recommend putting on the machine. I’m not actually serving anything off the machine itself, but in Ubuntu I had it doing integration tests with Hudson on every commit, and profiling my applications, etc, etc. The machine would be running headless, and I would remote into it. Here is what I am currently leaning towards / wondering about: Windows 7 Ultimate vs Windows Server 2008 (R2) (no one is really clear why I should go with one over the other) Windows Team Foundation Sharepoint (Never used it before, kind of meh about it) IBM Websphere or Glassfish (Some Java EE web server) SQL Server 2008 A DVCS In order to better control product conflicts / limit resource use, I’m wondering if I should install things into virtual machines (I can get VmWare or Microsoft Virtualization Products) I also plan on installing everything I had running under Linux (it’s almost entirely Java based development software, so it’ll run on both, only reason I went with ubuntu during the year was because the apache build seemed better). I’m primarily looking to become familiar with enterprise software development tools, as well as get something functional that will help my development process. (IE, I’ll still use project and assign tasks even though I might be the only one to assign tasks to, just to practice doing so). Is there any other software / configuration details I should explore? Opinions on my current list? I primarily use C#, Java, and PHP. I'm familiar with ruby, and python as well. Thanks!

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• Proper HTML technique to create an web form out of an image

  - by Lars

  I plan to create an interactive golf score card for my website (XHTML). (Btw. thats how such a scorecard looks like: ScoreCard). So at the end one should be able to insert a score for each hole in the appropriated input field in the virtual scorecard on the website. For me it is very important that the interactive scorecard really looks the same as the original (paper-) scorecard does and so my first approach was to scan and slice the scorecard image to reach that appearance. Here you can see the way I sliced the image: The idea was to insert HTML text input for each score field ending up with something like this: After I sliced the image I reconstructed it using the HTML . To do that I put the image slices as the cell background. <table> <tr> <td style="background: url("slice1.jpg") width="58px" height="25px"> <input type="text"></inputText> </td> </tr> ... </table> At the first moment this worked fine (as Gimp offers quite a nice feature for this). Then the problem was that I had to create a HTML table to create the exact layout. As you can see the lower part of the layout is split up into 3 columns. The middle column is split up into several (for each hole) rows. So the left and right column have to be spanned over those rows. Ok finally that worked, but it lead to some kind of scaling problem. If I zoom in or out on the table the middle column (and only that one) is not scaled the right way. Iam not able to fix this, and so I start doubting if this is the right technique for html image virtualization. Iam really no specialist in the area of creating websites, so I would really appriciate any help on this. Maybe there is a complete other and better technique to do that, as I think it is a common job in webcreation. I couldnt find any nice examples or tuts on that.

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• SQL Server suddenly using only a small portion of CPU.

  - by hermiod

  We've got a Windows 2008 R2 server running SQL Server 2008. All of a sudden, the SQLServer process is refusing to go above 20% CPU usage. As of last week, when running a heavy query against the db it would rise to 100% usage as I would expect. We've had this server for a while and it seems strange that it would just suddenly have this limit. This limit is causing our queries to take a lot longer than they normally would. No one has (knowingly at least) made any changes to the server configuration. After a bit of investigation, I discovered the sys.dm_os_sys_memory view. This shows 'available physical memory is high' bu at the same time the available physical memory is 339552kb where as the total is 4193848kb. It is worth noting that this is a virtual server running on vmware. Is there a setting somewhere with in SQL Server that sets the maximum CPU usage? I've found the settings in resource governor, although this is currently off as it always has been. We have recently started using Spotlight for SQL Server by Quest Software. It's playback database was located on this server for a short time this morning, I first noticed the problem shortly afterwards, although I hadn't been doing any queries prior to this so I don't know if this is the point at which the problem began, however the database was working as expected on Friday afternoon. The Windows log shows that the following settings were applied to the SpotlightPlaybackDatabase when it was created. 02/21/2011 08:45:02,spid60,Unknown,Setting database option TORN_PAGE_DETECTION to ON for database SpotlightPlaybackDatabase. 02/21/2011 08:45:02,spid60,Unknown,Setting database option MULTI_USER to ON for database SpotlightPlaybackDatabase. 02/21/2011 08:45:02,spid60,Unknown,Setting database option READ_WRITE to ON for database SpotlightPlaybackDatabase. 02/21/2011 08:45:02,spid60,Unknown,Setting database option AUTO_UPDATE_STATISTICS to ON for database SpotlightPlaybackDatabase. 02/21/2011 08:45:02,spid60,Unknown,Setting database option AUTO_CREATE_STATISTICS to ON for database SpotlightPlaybackDatabase. 02/21/2011 08:45:02,spid60,Unknown,Setting database option ANSI_WARNINGS to OFF for database SpotlightPlaybackDatabase. 02/21/2011 08:45:02,spid60,Unknown,Setting database option CONCAT_NULL_YIELDS_NULL to ON for database SpotlightPlaybackDatabase. 02/21/2011 08:45:02,spid60,Unknown,Setting database option RECOVERY to SIMPLE for database SpotlightPlaybackDatabase. 02/21/2011 08:45:02,spid60,Unknown,Setting database option QUOTED_IDENTIFIER to OFF for database SpotlightPlaybackDatabase. 02/21/2011 08:45:02,spid60,Unknown,Setting database option AUTO_CLOSE to OFF for database SpotlightPlaybackDatabase. Could any of these settings changes modified the settings applied to the whole server?

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• Approaches for Content-based Item Recommendations

  - by PartlyCloudy

  Hello, I'm currently developing an application where I want to group similar items. Items (like videos) can be created by users and also their attributes can be altered or extended later (like new tags). Instead of relying on users' preferences as most collaborative filtering mechanisms do, I want to compare item similarity based on the items' attributes (like similar length, similar colors, similar set of tags, etc.). The computation is necessary for two main purposes: Suggesting x similar items for a given item and for clustering into groups of similar items. My application so far is follows an asynchronous design and I want to decouple this clustering component as far as possible. The creation of new items or the addition of new attributes for an existing item will be advertised by publishing events the component can then consume. Computations can be provided best-effort and "snapshotted", which means that I'm okay with the best result possible at a given point in time, although result quality will eventually increase. So I am now searching for appropriate algorithms to compute both similar items and clusters. At important constraint is scalability. Initially the application has to handle a few thousand items, but later million items might be possible as well. Of course, computations will then be executed on additional nodes, but the algorithm itself should scale. It would also be nice if the algorithm supports some kind of incremental mode on partial changes of the data. My initial thought of comparing each item with each other and storing the numerical similarity sounds a little bit crude. Also, it requires n*(n-1)/2 entries for storing all similarities and any change or new item will eventually cause n similarity computations. Thanks in advance! UPDATE tl;dr To clarify what I want, here is my targeted scenario: User generate entries (think of documents) User edit entry meta data (think of tags) And here is what my system should provide: List of similar entries to a given item as recommendation Clusters of similar entries Both calculations should be based on: The meta data/attributes of entries (i.e. usage of similar tags) Thus, the distance of two entries using appropriate metrics NOT based on user votings, preferences or actions (unlike collaborative filtering). Although users may create entries and change attributes, the computation should only take into account the items and their attributes, and not the users associated with (just like a system where only items and no users exist). Ideally, the algorithm should support: permanent changes of attributes of an entry incrementally compute similar entries/clusters on changes scale something better than a simple distance table, if possible (because of the O(n²) space complexity)

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• Database design advice needed.

  - by user346271

  Hi all, I'm a lone developer for a telecoms company, and am after some database design advice from anyone with a bit of time to answer. I am inserting into one table ~2 million rows each day, these tables then get archived and compressed on a monthly basis. Each monthly table contains ~15,000,000 rows. Although this is increasing month on month. For every insert I do above I am combining the data from rows which belong together and creating another "correlated" table. This table is currently not being archived, as I need to make sure I never miss an update to the correlated table. (Hope that makes sense) Although in general this information should remain fairly static after a couple of days of processing. All of the above is working perfectly. However my company now wishes to perform some stats against this data, and these tables are getting too large to provide the results in what would be deemed a reasonable time. Even with the appropriate indexes set. So I guess after all the above my question is quite simple. Should I write a script which groups the data from my correlated table into smaller tables. Or should I store the queries result sets in something like memcache? I'm already using mysqls cache, but due to having limited control over how long the data is stored for, it's not working ideally. The main advantages I can see of using something like memcache: No blocking on my correlated table after the query has been cashed. Greater flexibility of sharing the collected data between the backend collector and front end processor. (i.e custom reports could be written in the backend and the results of these stored in the cache under a key which then gets shared with anyone who would want to see the data of this report) Redundancy and scalability if we start sharing this data with a large amount of customers. The main disadvantages I can see of using something like memcache: Data is not persistent if machine is rebooted / cache is flushed. The main advantages of using MySql Persistent data. Less code changes (although adding something like memcache is trivial anyway) The main disadvantages of using MySql Have to define table templates every time I want to store provide a new set of grouped data. Have to write a program which loops through the correlated data and fills these new tables. Potentially will still grow slower as the data continues to be filled. Apologies for quite a long question. It's helped me to write down these thoughts here anyway, and any advice/help/experience with dealing with this sort of problem would be greatly appreciated. Many thanks. Alan

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• Ubuntu + SSL ports + AVAST

  - by jurajvt

  I have an interesting problem with communication via standard SSL ports. Fresh installed Ubuntu 14.04 server + Postfix + Dovecot, SASL authentication provided by Dovecot, self-signed certificate generated trough the Dovecot script mkcert.sh. Redirected ports on ZyWALL USG 200. I can send and receive e-mails from outside with standard ports 25 and 110, but not over 587. I am connecting to my server from machine with Windows 8.1 + VMWare Player + Ubuntu 14.04 Desktop + ssh. On Windows host I have installed Avast! antivirus. When I am trying to telnet from virtual machine to server over 587, it refused connection. But when I turn on Avast! it let me in to message Connected to... Same with nmap. When Avast! is turned on it is show me all SSL ports. When I turned it off, only standard ports appeared. OpenSSL shows me CONNECTED(00000003). But outside virtual machine directly in Windows 8.1 using nmap with zenmap there are not opened SSL ports in both Avast! states. From other external linux machines are problems with touching SSL ports same - refused. I have turned on submission in master.cf and 587 port is correctly listening on 0.0.0.0 in process master.pid which belongs to Postfix. I can telnet, or nmap over port 587 to my domain directly from server. Other ports like 995, 993 are OK on localhost, too. It is true, that I can't send emails via 587 anyway (Avast! turned on/off), but I can see ports opened. It is possible, that I have simply bad certificate and Avast! has right one, so with turned it on I can see opened ports? EDIT: To be more clear, I can't see or using port 587 everywhere from outside (tried Thunderbird, telnet, openssl, nmap, putty, swaks; both from Linux or Windows machines) and that is my problem. It was only by chance that I saw opened ports when Avast! is turned on.

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• Should I HttpCombine Google Jquery Hosted File?

  - by chobo2

  Hi I am using something called HttpCombiner: http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/HttpCombiner An HTTP handler that combines multiple CSS, Javascript or URL into one response for faster page load. It can combine, compress and cache response which results in faster page load and better scalability of web application It's a good practice to use many small Javascript and CSS files instead of one large Javascript/CSS file for better code maintainability, but bad in terms of website performance. Although you should write your Javascript code in small files and break large CSS files into small chunks but when browser requests those javascript and css files, it makes one Http request per file. Every Http Request results in a network roundtrip form your browser to the server and the delay in reaching the server and coming back to the browser is called latency. So, if you have four javascripts and three css files loaded by a page, you are wasting time in seven network roundtrips. Within USA, latency is average 70ms. So, you waste 7x70 = 490ms, about half a second of delay. Outside USA, average latency is around 200ms. So, that means 1400ms of waiting. Browser cannot show the page properly until Css and Javascripts are fully loaded. So, the more latency you have, the slower page loads. You can reduce the wait time by using a CDN. Read my previous blog post about using CDN. However, a better solution is to deliver multiple files over one request using an HttpHandler that combines several files and delivers as one output. So, instead of putting many or tag, you just put one and one tag, and point them to the HttpHandler. You tell the handler which files to combine and it delivers those files in one response. This saves browser from making many requests and eliminates the latency. This Http Handler reads the file names defined in a configuration and combines all those files and delivers as one response. It delivers the response as gzip compressed to save bandwidth. Moreover, it generates proper cache header to cache the response in browser cache, so that, browser does not request it again on future visit. Now I am wondering since it can handle adding links should I put in it the jquery file? The reason I am not sure is if it gets combined with my other files I think I might close the advantages of it being hosted on googles servers such as caching(my thinking is if it gets combined it will look different so even if a user has it in it's cache I am not sure if it will use the one for the cahce or not). So should I combine it or only the finals that I am using locally?

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• How to Create Auto Playlists in Windows Media Player 12

  - by DigitalGeekery

  Are you getting tired of the same old playlists in Windows Media Player? Today we’ll show you how to create dynamic auto playlists based on criteria you choose in WMP 12 in Windows 7. Auto Playlists In Library view, click on Create playlist dropdown arrow and select Create auto playlist. On the New Auto Playlist window type in a name for the playlist in the text box. Now we need to choose our criteria by which to filter your playlist. Select Click here to add criteria. For our example, we will create a playlist of songs that were added to the library in the last week from the Alternative genre. So, we will first select Date Added from the dropdown list. Many criteria will have addition options to configure. In the example below you will see that we have a few options to fine tune.   We will filter all the songs added to the library in the last 7 days. We will select Is After from the first dropdown list. Then select Last 7 Days from the second dropdown list. You can add multiple criteria to further filter your playlist. If you can’t find the criteria you are looking for, select “More” at the bottom of the dropdown list.   This will pull up a filter window with all the criteria. Select a filter and then click OK when finished.   From the Genre dropdown, we will select Alternative. If you’d like to add Pictures, Videos, or TV Shows to your auto playlists you can do so by selecting them from the dropdown list under And also include. You will then be able to select criteria for your pictures, videos, or TV shows from the dropdown list.   Finally, you can also add restrictions to your music such as the number of items, duration, or total size. We will limit the duration of our playlist to one hour by selecting Limit Total Duration To… Then type in 1 hour…Click OK.   Our library is automatically filtered and a playlist is created based on the criteria we selected. When additional songs are added to the Windows Media Player library, any of new songs that fit the criteria will automatically be added to the New Songs playlist. You can also save a copy of an auto playlist as a regular playlist. Switch to Playlists view by clicking Playlists from either the top menu or the navigation bar. Select the Play tab and then click Clear list to remove any tracks from the list pane.   Right-click on the playlist you want to save, select Add to, and then Play list. The songs from your auto playlist will appear as an Unsaved list on the list pane. Click Save list. Type in a name for your playlist. Your auto playlist will continue to change as you add or remove items from your Media Player library that meet the criteria you established. The new saved playlist we just created will stay as it is currently. Editing a Auto playlist is easy. Right-click on the playlist and select Edit. Now you are ready to enjoy your playlist. Conclusion Auto playlists are great way to keep your playlists fresh in Windows Media Player 12. Users can get creative and experiment with the wide variety of criteria to customize their listening experience. If you are new to playlists in Windows Media Player, you may want to check our our previous post on how to create custom playlists in Windows Media Player 12. Are you looking to get better sound from WMP 12? Take a look at how to improve playback using enhancements in Windows Media Player 12. Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Create Custom Playlists in Windows Media Player 12Fixing When Windows Media Player Library Won’t Let You Add FilesInstall and Use the VLC Media Player on Ubuntu LinuxMake Windows Media Player Automatically Open in Mini Player ModeMake VLC Player Look like Windows Media Player 10 TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips VMware Workstation 7 Acronis Online Backup DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Error Goblin Explains Windows Error Codes Twelve must-have Google Chrome plugins Cool Looking Skins for Windows Media Player 12 Move the Mouse Pointer With Your Face Movement Using eViacam Boot Windows Faster With Boot Performance Diagnostics Create Ringtones For Your Android Phone With RingDroid

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• Week in Geek: 4chan Falls Victim to DDoS Attack Edition

  - by Asian Angel

  This week we learned how to tweak the low battery action on a Windows 7 laptop, access an eBook collection anywhere in the world, “extend iPad battery life, batch resize photos, & sync massive music collections”, went on a reign of destruction with Snow Crusher, and had fun decorating our desktops with abstract icon collections. Photo by pasukaru76. Random Geek Links We have included extra news article goodness to help you catch up on any developments that you may have missed during the holiday break this past week. Note: The three 27C3 articles listed here represent three different presentations at the 27th Chaos Communication Congress hacker conference. 4chan victim of DDoS as FBI investigates role in PayPal attack Users of 4chan may have gotten a taste of their own medicine after the site was knocked offline by a DDoS attack from an unknown origin early Thursday morning. Report: FBI seizes server in probe of WikiLeaks attacks The FBI has seized a server in Texas as part of its hunt for the groups behind the pro-WikiLeaks denial-of-service attacks launched in December against PayPal, Visa, MasterCard, and others. Mozilla exposes older user-account database Mozilla has disabled 44,000 older user accounts for its Firefox add-ons site after a security researcher found part of a database of the account information on a publicly available server. Data breach affects 4.9 million Honda customers Japanese automaker Honda has put some 2.2 million customers in the United States on a security breach alert after a database containing information on the owners and their cars was hacked. Chinese Trojan discovered in Android games An Android-based Trojan called “Geinimi” has been discovered in the wild and the Trojan is capable of sending personal information to remote servers and exhibits botnet-like behavior. 27C3 presentation claims many mobiles vulnerable to SMS attacks According to security experts, an ‘SMS of death’ threatens to disable many current Sony Ericsson, Samsung, Motorola, Micromax and LG mobiles. 27C3: GSM cell phones even easier to tap Security researchers have demonstrated how open source software on a number of revamped, entry-level cell phones can decrypt and record mobile phone calls in the GSM network. 27C3: danger lurks in PDF documents Security researcher Julia Wolf has pointed out numerous, previously hardly known, security problems in connection with Adobe’s PDF standard. Critical update for WordPress A critical update has been made available for WordPress in the form of version 3.0.4. The update fixes a security bug in WordPress’s KSES library. McAfee Labs Predicts Geolocation, Mobile Devices and Apple Will Top the List of Targets for Emerging Threats in 2011 The list comprises 2010’s most buzzed about platforms and services, including Google’s Android, Apple’s iPhone, foursquare, Google TV and the Mac OS X platform, which are all expected to become major targets for cybercriminals. McAfee Labs also predicts that politically motivated attacks will be on the rise. Windows Phone 7 piracy materializes with FreeMarketplace A proof-of-concept application, FreeMarketplace, that allows any Windows Phone 7 application to be downloaded and installed free of charge has been developed. Empty email accounts, and some bad buzz for Hotmail In the past few days, a number of Hotmail users have been complaining about a rather disconcerting issue: their Hotmail accounts, some up to 10 years old, appear completely empty.  No emails, no folders, nothing, just what appears to be a new account. Reports: Nintendo warns of 3DS risk for kids Nintendo has reportedly issued a warning that the 3DS, its eagerly awaited glasses-free 3D portable gaming device, should not be used by children under 6 when the gadget is in 3D-viewing mode. Google eyes ‘cloaking’ as next antispam target Google plans to take a closer look at the practice of “cloaking,” or presenting one look to a Googlebot crawling one’s site while presenting another look to users. Facebook, Twitter stock trading drawing SEC eye? The high degree of investor interest in shares of hot Silicon Valley companies that aren’t yet publicly traded–like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Zynga–may be leading to scrutiny from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Random TinyHacker Links Photo by jcraveiro. Exciting Software Set for Release in 2011 A few bloggers from great websites such as How-To Geek, Guiding Tech and 7 Tutorials took the time to sit down and talk about their software wishes for 2011. Take the time to read it and share… Wikileaks Infopr0n An infographic detailing the quest to plug WikiLeaks. The New York Times Guide to Mobile Apps A growing collection of all mobile app coverage by the New York Times as well as lists of favorite apps from Times writers. 7,000,000,000 (Video) A fascinating look at the world’s population via National Geographic Magazine. Super User Questions Check out the great answers to these hot questions from Super User. How to use a Personal computer as a Linux web server for development purposes? How to link processing power of old computers together? Free virtualization tool for testing suspicious files? Why do some actions not work with Remote Desktop? What is the simplest way to send a large batch of pictures to a distant friend or colleague? How-To Geek Weekly Article Recap Had a busy week and need to get caught up on your HTG reading? Then sit back and relax while enjoying these hot posts full of how-to roundup goodness. The 50 Best How-To Geek Windows Articles of 2010 The 20 Best How-To Geek Explainer Topics for 2010 The 20 Best How-To Geek Linux Articles of 2010 How to Search Just the Site You’re Viewing Using Google Search Ask the Readers: Backing Your Files Up – Local Storage versus the Cloud One Year Ago on How-To Geek Need more how-to geekiness for your weekend? Then look through this great batch of articles from one year ago that focus on dual-booting and O.S. installation goodness. Dual Boot Your Pre-Installed Windows 7 Computer with Vista Dual Boot Your Pre-Installed Windows 7 Computer with XP How To Setup a USB Flash Drive to Install Windows 7 Dual Boot Your Pre-Installed Windows 7 Computer with Ubuntu Easily Install Ubuntu Linux with Windows Using the Wubi Installer The Geek Note We hope that you and your families have had a terrific holiday break as everyone prepares to return to work and school this week. Remember to keep those great tips coming in to us at [email protected]! Photo by pjbeardsley. Latest Features How-To Geek ETC The 20 Best How-To Geek Linux Articles of 2010 The 50 Best How-To Geek Windows Articles of 2010 The 20 Best How-To Geek Explainer Topics for 2010 How to Disable Caps Lock Key in Windows 7 or Vista How to Use the Avira Rescue CD to Clean Your Infected PC The Complete List of iPad Tips, Tricks, and Tutorials Tune Pop Enhances Android Music Notifications Another Busy Night in Gotham City Wallpaper Classic Super Mario Brothers Theme for Chrome and Iron Experimental Firefox Builds Put Tabs on the Title Bar (Available for Download) Android Trojan Found in the Wild Chaos, Panic, and Disorder Wallpaper

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• Add Zune Desktop Player to Windows 7 Media Center

  - by DigitalGeekery

  Are you a Zune owner who prefers the Zune player for media playback? Today we’ll show you how to integrate the Zune player with WMC using Media Center Studio. You’ll need to download Media Center Studio and the Zune Desktop player software. (See download links below) Also, make sure you have Media Center closed. Some of the actions in Media Center Studio cannot be performed while WMC is open. Open Media Center Studio and click on the Start Menu tab at the top of the application.   Click the Application button. Here we will create an Entry Point for the Zune player so that we can add it to Media Center. Type in a name for your entry point in the title text box. This is the name that will appear under the tile when added to the Media Center start menu. Next, type in the path to the Zune player. By default this should be C:\Program Files\Zune\Zune.exe. Note: Be sure to use the original path, not a link to the desktop icon.   The Active image is the image that will appear on the tile in Media Center. If you wish to change the default image, click the Browse button and select a different image. Select Stop the currently playing media from the When launched do the following: dropdown list.  Otherwise, if you open Zune player from WMC while playing another form of media, that media will continue to play in the background.   Now we will choose a keystroke to use to exit the Zune player software and return to Media Center. Click on the the green plus (+) button. When prompted, press a key to use to the close the Zune player. Note: This may also work with your Media Center remote. You may want to set a keyboard keystroke as well as a button on your remote to close the program. You may not be able to set certain remote buttons to close the application. We found that the back arrow button worked well. You can also choose a keystroke to kill the program if desired. Be sure to save your work before exiting by clicking the Save button on the Home tab.   Next, select the Start Menu tab and click on the next to Entry points to reveal the available entry points. Find the Zune player tile in the Entry points area. We want to drag the tile out onto one of the menu strips on the start menu. We will drag ours onto the Extras Library strip. When you begin to drag the tile, green plus (+) signs will appear in between the tiles. When you’ve dragged the tile over any of the green plus signs, the  red “Move” label will turn to a blue “Move to” label. Now you can drop the tile into position. Save your changes and then close Media Center Studio. When you open Media Center, you should see your Zune tile on the start menu. When you select the Zune tile in WMC, Media Center will be minimized and Zune player will be launched. Now you can enjoy your media through the Zune player. When you close Zune player with the previously assigned keystroke or by clicking the “X” at the top right, Windows Media Center will be re-opened. Conclusion We found the Zune player worked with two different Media Center remotes that we tested. It was a times a little tricky at times to tell where you were when navigating through the Zune software with a remote, but it did work. In addition to managing your music, the Zune player is a nice way to add podcasts to your Media Center setup. We should also mention that you don’t need to actually own a Zune to install and use the Zune player software. Media Center Studio works on both Vista and Windows 7. We covered Media Center Studio a bit more in depth in a previous post on customizing the Windows Media Center start menu. Are you new to Zune player? Familiarize yourself a bit more by checking out some of our earlier posts like how to update your Zune player, and experiencing your music a whole new way with Zune for PC.   Downloads Zune Desktop Player download Media Center Studio download Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips How To Rip a Music CD in Windows 7 Media CenterIntegrate Hulu Desktop and Windows Media Center in Windows 7Using Netflix Watchnow in Windows Vista Media Center (Gmedia)Fixing When Windows Media Player Library Won’t Let You Add FilesBuilt-in Quick Launch Hotkeys in Windows Vista TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips VMware Workstation 7 Acronis Online Backup DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Bypass Waiting Time On Customer Service Calls With Lucyphone MELTUP – "The Beginning Of US Currency Crisis And Hyperinflation" Enable or Disable the Task Manager Using TaskMgrED Explorer++ is a Worthy Windows Explorer Alternative Error Goblin Explains Windows Error Codes Twelve must-have Google Chrome plugins

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• Add Background Images and Themes to Windows 7 Media Center

  - by DigitalGeekery

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

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• Pigs in Socks?

  - by MightyZot

  My wonderful wife Annie surprised me with a cruise to Cozumel for my fortieth birthday. I love to travel. Every trip is ripe with adventure, crazy things to see and experience. For example, on the way to Mobile Alabama to catch our boat, some dude hauling a mobile home lost a window and we drove through a cloud of busting glass going 80 miles per hour! The night before the cruise, we stayed in the Malaga Inn and I crawled UNDER the hotel to look at an old civil war bunker. WOAH! Then, on the way to and from Cozumel, the boat plowed through two beautiful and slightly violent storms. But, the adventures you have while travelling often pale in comparison to the cult of personalities you meet along the way.  :) We met many cool people during our travels and we made some new friends. Todd and Andrea are in the publishing business (www.myneworleans.com) and teaching, respectively. Erika is a teacher too and Matt has a pig on his foot. This story is about the pig. Without that pig on Matt’s foot, we probably would have hit a buoy and drowned. Alright, so…this pig on Matt’s foot…this is no henna tatt, this is a man’s tattoo. Apparently, getting tattoos on your feet is very painful because there is very little muscle and fat and lots of nifty nerves to tell you that you might be doing something stupid. Pig and rooster tattoos carry special meaning for sailors of old. According to some sources, having a tattoo of a pig or rooster on one foot or the other will keep you from drowning. There are many great musings as to why a pig and a rooster might save your life. The most plausible in my opinion is that pigs and roosters were common livestock tagging along with the crew. Since they were shipped in wooden crates, pigs and roosters were often counted amongst the survivors when ships succumbed to Davy Jones’ Locker. I didn’t spend a whole lot of time researching the pig and the rooster, so consider these musings as you would a grain of salt. And, I was not able to find a lot of what you might consider credible history regarding the tradition. What I did find was a comfort, or solace, in the maritime tradition. Seems like raw traditions like the pig and the rooster are in danger of getting lost in a sea of non-permanence. I mean, what traditions are us old programmers and techies leaving behind for future generations? Makes me wonder what Ward Christensen has tattooed on his left foot.  I guess my choice would have to be a Commodore 64.   (I met Ward, by the way, in an elevator after he received his Dvorak awards in 1992. He was a very non-assuming individual sporting business casual and was very much a “sailor” of an old-school programmer. I can’t remember his exact words, but I think they were essentially that he felt it odd that he was getting an award for just doing his work. I’m sure that Ward doesn’t know this…he couldn’t have set a more positive example for a young 22 year old programmer. Thanks Ward!)

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• Test Drive Windows 7 Online with Virtual Labs

  - by Matthew Guay

  Did you miss out on the Windows 7 public beta and want to try it out before you actually make the leap and upgrade? Maybe you want to learn how to deploy new features in a business environment. Here’s how you can test drive Windows 7 directly from your browser. Whether you manage 10,000 desktops or simply manage your own laptop, it’s usually best to test out a new OS before installing it.  If you’re upgrading from Windows XP you may find many things unfamiliar.  Microsoft has setup a special Windows 7 Test Drive website with resources to help IT professionals test and deploy Windows 7 in their workplaces.  This is a great resource to try out Windows 7 from the comfort of your browser, and look at some of the new features without even installing it. Please note that the online version is not nearly as responsive as a full standard install of Windows 7.  It also does not run the full Aero interface or desktop effects, and may refresh slowly depending on your Internet connection.  So don’t judge Windows 7’s performance based on this virtual lab, but use it as a way to learn more about Windows 7 without installing it. Getting Started To test drive Windows 7, visit Microsoft’s Windows 7 Test Drive website (link below).  You will need to run the Windows 7 Test Drive in Internet Explorer, as it requires Active X support.  We received this error when attempting to run the Test Drive in Firefox: Now, click the “Take a Test Drive” link on the bottom left of the page. This site includes several test drives to demonstrate different features of Windows 7 and its related ecosystem of products including Windows Server 2008 R2, some of which, including the XP Mode test drive, are not yet ready.  For this test, we selected the MED-V Test drive, as this includes Office 2007 and 2010 so you can test them in Windows 7 as well.  Simply select the test drive you want, and click “Try it now!”   If you haven’t run a Windows test drive before, you will be asked to install an ActiveX control.  Click the link to install. Click the yellow bar at the top of the page in Internet Explorer, and select to Install the add-on.  You may have to approve a UAC prompt to finish the install. Once this is finished, click the link on the bottom of the page to return to your test drive.  The test drive page should automatically refresh; if it doesn’t, click refresh to reload it. Now the test drive will load the components.   Once its fully loaded, click the link to launch Windows 7 in a new window. You may see a prompt warning that the server may have been impersonated.  Simply click Yes to proceed. The test lab will give you some getting started directions; click Close Window when you’re ready to try out Windows 7. Here’s the default desktop in the Windows 7 test drive.  You can use it just like a normal Windows computer, but do note that it may function slowly depending on your internet connection.   This test drive includes both Office 2007 and Office 2010 Tech Preview, so you can try out both in Windows 7 as well. You can try out the new Windows 7 applications such as the reworked Paint with the Ribbon interface from Office. Or you can even test the newest version of Media Center, though it will warn you that it may not function good with the down-scaled graphics in the test drive.   Most importantly, you can try out the new features in Windows 7, such as Jumplists and even Aero Snap.  Once again, these features will not function the quickest, but it does let you test them out. While working with the Virtual Lab, there are different tasks it walks you through. You can also download a copy of the lab manual in PDF format to help you navigate through the various objectives. The test drive system is running Microsoft Forefront Security, the enterprise security solution from which Microsoft Security Essentials has adapted components from. Conclusion These virtual labs are great for tech students, or those of you who want to get a first-hand trial of the new features. Also, if you’re not sure on how to deploy something and want to practice in a virtual environment, these labs are quite valuable.While these labs are geared toward IT professionals, it’s a good way for anyone to try out Windows 7 features from the comfort of your current computer. Test Drive Windows 7 Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Mount Multiple ISO Images Using Virtual CloneDriveHow To Delete a VHD in Windows 7Keyboard Shortcuts for VMware WorkstationMount an ISO image in Windows 7 or VistaHow To Turn a Physical Computer Into A Virtual Machine with Disk2vhd TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 If it were only this easy SyncToy syncs Files and Folders across Computers on a Network (or partitions on the same drive) Classic Cinema Online offers 100’s of OnDemand Movies OutSync will Sync Photos of your Friends on Facebook and Outlook Windows 7 Easter Theme YoWindoW, a real time weather screensaver

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• Change the User Interface Language in Ubuntu

  - by Matthew Guay

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

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• SharePoint.DesignFactory.ContentFiles–building WCM sites

  - by svdoever

  One of the use cases where we use the SharePoint.DesignFactory.ContentFiles tooling is in building SharePoint Publishing (WCM) solutions for SharePoint 2007, SharePoint 2010 and Office365. Publishing solutions are often solutions that have one instance, the publishing site (possibly with subsites), that in most cases need to go through DTAP. If you dissect a publishing site, in most case you have the following findings: The publishing site spans a site collection The branding of the site is specified in the root site, because: Master pages live in the root site (/_catalogs/masterpage) Page layouts live in the root site (/_catalogs/masterpage) The style library lives in the root site ( /Style Library) and contains images, css, javascript, xslt transformations for your CQWP’s, … Preconfigured web parts live in the root site (/_catalogs/wp) The root site and subsites contains a document library called Pages (or your language-specific version of it) containing publishing pages using the page layouts and master pages The site collection contains content types, fields and lists When using the SharePoint.DesignFactory.ContentFiles tooling it is very easy to create, test, package and deploy the artifacts that can be uploaded to the SharePoint content database. This can be done in a fast and simple way without the need to create and deploy WSP packages. If we look at the above list of artifacts we can use SharePoint.DesignFactory.ContentFiles for master pages, page layouts, the style library, web part configurations, and initial publishing pages (these are normally made through the SharePoint web UI). Some artifacts like content types, fields and lists in the above list can NOT be handled by SharePoint.DesignFactory.ContentFiles, because they can’t be uploaded to the SharePoint content database. The good thing is that these artifacts are the artifacts that don’t change that much in the development of a SharePoint Publishing solution. There are however multiple ways to create these artifacts: Use paper script: create them manually in each of the environments based on documentation Automate the creation of the artifacts using (PowerShell) script Develop a WSP package to create these artifacts I’m not a big fan of the third option (see my blog post Thoughts on building deployable and updatable SharePoint solutions). It is a lot of work to create content types, fields and list definitions using all kind of XML files, and it is not allowed to modify these artifacts when in use. I know… SharePoint 2010 has some content type upgrade possibilities, but I think it is just too cumbersome. The first option has the problem that content types and fields get ID’s, and that these ID’s must be used by the metadata on for example page layouts. No problem for SharePoint.DesignFactory.ContentFiles, because it supports deploy-time resolving of these ID’s using PowerShell. For example consider the following metadata definition for the page layout contactpage-wcm.aspx.properties.ps1: Metadata page layout # This script must return a hashtable @{ name=value; ... } of field name-value pairs # for the content file that this script applies to. # On deployment to SharePoint, these values are written as fields in the corresponding list item (if any) # Note that fields must exist; they can be updated but not created or deleted. # This script is called right after the file is deployed to SharePoint.   # You can use the script parameters and arbitrary PowerShell code to interact with SharePoint. # e.g. to calculate properties and values at deployment time.   param([string]$SourcePath, [string]$RelativeUrl, $Context) @{     "ContentTypeId" = $Context.GetContentTypeID('GeneralPage');     "MasterPageDescription" = "Cloud Aviator Contact pagelayout (wcm - don't use)";     "PublishingHidden" = "1";     "PublishingAssociatedContentType" = $Context.GetAssociatedContentTypeInfo('GeneralPage') } The PowerShell functions GetContentTypeID and GetAssociatedContentTypeInfo can at deploy-time resolve the required information from the server we are deploying to. I personally prefer the second option: automate creation through PowerShell, because there are PowerShell scripts available to export content types and fields. An example project structure for a typical SharePoint WCM site looks like: Note that this project uses DualLayout. So if you build Publishing sites using SharePoint, checkout out the completely free SharePoint.DesignFactory.ContentFiles tooling and start flying!

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• SQL Server and Hyper-V Dynamic Memory Part 3

  - by SQLOS Team

  In parts 1 and 2 of this series we looked at the basics of Hyper-V Dynamic Memory and SQL Server memory management. In this part Serdar looks at configuration guidelines for SQL Server memory management. Part 3: Configuration Guidelines for Hyper-V Dynamic Memory and SQL Server Now that we understand SQL Server Memory Management and Hyper-V Dynamic Memory basics, let’s take a look at general configuration guidelines in order to utilize benefits of Hyper-V Dynamic Memory in your SQL Server VMs. Requirements Host Operating System Requirements Hyper-V Dynamic Memory feature is introduced with Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1. Therefore in order to use Dynamic Memory for your virtual machines, you need to have Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 or Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 SP1 in your Hyper-V host. Guest Operating System Requirements In addition to this Dynamic Memory is only supported in Standard, Web, Enterprise and Datacenter editions of windows running inside VMs. Make sure that your VM is running one of these editions. For additional requirements on each operating system see “Dynamic Memory Configuration Guidelines” here. SQL Server Requirements All versions of SQL Server support Hyper-V Dynamic Memory. However, only certain editions of SQL Server are aware of dynamically changing system memory. To have a truly dynamic environment for your SQL Server VMs make sure that you are running one of the SQL Server editions listed below: ·         SQL Server 2005 Enterprise ·         SQL Server 2008 Enterprise / Datacenter Editions ·         SQL Server 2008 R2 Enterprise / Datacenter Editions Configuration guidelines for other versions of SQL Server are covered below in the FAQ section. Guidelines for configuring Dynamic Memory Parameters Here is how to configure Dynamic Memory for your SQL VMs in a nutshell: Hyper-V Dynamic Memory Parameter Recommendation Startup RAM 1 GB + SQL Min Server Memory Maximum RAM > SQL Max Server Memory Memory Buffer % 5 Memory Weight Based on performance needs   Startup RAM In order to ensure that your SQL Server VMs can start correctly, ensure that Startup RAM is higher than configured SQL Min Server Memory for your VMs. Otherwise SQL Server service will need to do paging in order to start since it will not be able to see enough memory during startup. Also note that Startup Memory will always be reserved for your VMs. This will guarantee a certain level of performance for your SQL Servers, however setting this too high will limit the consolidation benefits you’ll get out of your virtualization environment. Maximum RAM This one is obvious. If you’ve configured SQL Max Server Memory for your SQL Server, make sure that Dynamic Memory Maximum RAM configuration is higher than this value. Otherwise your SQL Server will not grow to memory values higher than the value configured for Dynamic Memory. Memory Buffer % Memory buffer configuration is used to provision file cache to virtual machines in order to improve performance. Due to the fact that SQL Server is managing its own buffer pool, Memory Buffer setting should be configured to the lowest value possible, 5%. Configuring a higher memory buffer will prevent low resource notifications from Windows Memory Manager and it will prevent reclaiming memory from SQL Server VMs. Memory Weight Memory weight configuration defines the importance of memory to a VM. Configure higher values for the VMs that have higher performance requirements. VMs with higher memory weight will have more memory under high memory pressure conditions on your host. Questions and Answers Q1 – Which SQL Server memory model is best for Dynamic Memory? The best SQL Server model for Dynamic Memory is “Locked Page Memory Model”. This memory model ensures that SQL Server memory is never paged out and it’s also adaptive to dynamically changing memory in the system. This will be extremely useful when Dynamic Memory is attempting to remove memory from SQL Server VMs ensuring no SQL Server memory is paged out. You can find instructions on configuring “Locked Page Memory Model” for your SQL Servers here. Q2 – What about other SQL Server Editions, how should I configure Dynamic Memory for them? Other editions of SQL Server do not adapt to dynamically changing environments. They will determine how much memory they should allocate during startup and don’t change this value afterwards. Therefore make sure that you configure a higher startup memory for your VM because that will be all the memory that SQL Server utilize Tune Maximum Memory and Memory Buffer based on the other workloads running on the system. If there are no other workloads consider using Static Memory for these editions. Q3 – What if I have multiple SQL Server instances in a VM? Having multiple SQL Server instances in a VM is not a general recommendation for predictable performance, manageability and isolation. In order to achieve a predictable behavior make sure that you configure SQL Min Server Memory and SQL Max Server Memory for each instance in the VM. And make sure that: ·         Dynamic Memory Startup Memory is greater than the sum of SQL Min Server Memory values for the instances in the VM ·         Dynamic Memory Maximum Memory is greater than the sum of SQL Max Server Memory values for the instances in the VM Q4 – I’m using Large Page Memory Model for my SQL Server. Can I still use Dynamic Memory? The short answer is no. SQL Server does not dynamically change its memory size when configured with Large Page Memory Model. In virtualized environments Hyper-V provides large page support by default. Most of the time, Large Page Memory Model doesn’t bring any benefits to a SQL Server if it’s running in virtualized environments. Q5 – How do I monitor SQL performance when I’m trying Dynamic Memory on my VMs? Use the performance counters below to monitor memory performance for SQL Server: Process - Working Set: This counter is available in the VM via process performance counters. It represents the actual amount of physical memory being used by SQL Server process in the VM. SQL Server – Buffer Cache Hit Ratio: This counter is available in the VM via SQL Server counters. This represents the paging being done by SQL Server. A rate of 90% or higher is desirable. Conclusion These blog posts are a quick start to a story that will be developing more in the near future. We’re still continuing our testing and investigations to provide more detailed configuration guidelines with example performance numbers with a white paper in the upcoming months. Now it’s time to give SQL Server and Hyper-V Dynamic Memory a try. Use this guidelines to kick-start your environment. See what you think about it and let us know of your experiences. - Serdar Sutay Originally posted at http://blogs.msdn.com/b/sqlosteam/

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